Perpetual Peace and the Case against Just War Theory

Abstract

This chapter examines the case for regarding Perpetual Peac. and the Metaphysics of Moral. as entirely at odds in their treatment of just war theory. In Perpetual Peac. Kant can be regarded as being generally hostile to any just war doctrine, whereas in the Metaphysics of Moral. he can be interpreted as being a good deal more supportive. It asks if it is possible to portray the polemic against Kant’s forerunners in international law as ‘miserable’ or ‘sorry’ comforters in Perpetual Peac. as out of character with Kant’s wider reception of the tradition. From this perspective is it possible to present the Metaphysics of Moral. as displaying a more constructive reception of the tradition? If the line of argument followed by Sharon Byrd, Joachim Hruschka, Brian Orend and Susan Shell is correct then something like this must be possible. Because Kant is neither a realist who holds that world politics is above morality and law, nor a pacificist who holds that war in general is morally unjustifiable, Orend concludes he ‘must be a just war theorist.’1 If we are to accept Kant as a thinker who integrates just war thinking positively into his philosophy, the remarks he makes about Grotius, Pufendorf and Vattel in Perpetual Peac. have to be interpreted as untypical, and the positive remarks he makes about the right to go to war in the Metaphysics of Moral. have to be interpreted as deriving from his systematic philosophy of international right.