There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or instead only a co...

The purpose of this article is to present a critical assessment of Jürgen Habermas' reformulation of Kant's philosophical project Toward Perpetual Peace. Special attention is paid to how well Habermas' proposed multi-level institutional model fares in comparison with Kant's proposal—a league of states. I argue that Habermas' critique of the league fails in important respects, and that his proposal faces at least two problems. The first is that it implies a problematic asymmetry between powerful and less powerful states. The second (...) is that it entails creating a global police force that has an obligation to intervene against egregious human rights violations worldwide, and that this seems incompatible with the idea that every person has an innate right to freedom. There are important normative constraints relevant for institutional design in the international domain that Habermas does not take sufficiently into account. However, this does not mean that Kant's league cannot be supplemented with more comprehensive forms of institutional cooperation between states. On the basis of my assessment of the multi-level model, I propose a hybrid model combining elements from Kant and Habermas. (shrink)

It is hardly surprising that the two greatest Kantian philosophers of the twentieth century's second half would, at some point of time, reflect and comment on one of the most famous writings of the Königsberg sage, namely on Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. Of course, in recent decades, and especially around the celebration of the 200th anniversary of its publication, many commentary articles and books have been published on Kant's little essay, but it makes a difference when Jürgen Habermas and (...) John Rawls make an effort to get to an appropriate understanding of Kant's text in the present-day world. Here I will describe some of the main features of their understanding of Kant's peace proposal. I will first briefly recall the main scheme of Kant's essay, anticipating the writings of Habermas and Rawls by employing their new vocabularies and schemes in describing Kant's position. The main purpose of my outline of Kant's essay is to investigate how much of Kant's proposal has remained alive in Habermas and Rawls. (shrink)

Em seu artigo de 1995, comemorativo dos 200 anos da obra Rumo à paz perpétua de Kant, Habermas fez uma série de críticas tanto normativas como históricas acerca do cosmopolitismo kantiano. A primeira delas assinala o caráter negativo do conceito de paz: porque, como pensador do século XVIII, Kant desconhecia o sentido da guerra total e; não considerava as mudanças necessárias nas condições econômicas, sociais e culturais necessárias para fomentar a paz. Contudo, o projeto kantiano de paz apresenta um sentido (...) positivo na medida em que a paz depende de reformas políticas que propiciem o desenvolvimento da constituição republicana, ao mesmo tempo em que uma tensão irremediável entre guerra e paz possibilita uma aproximação constante à paz perpétua e exige um espírito de liberdade negativa tanto religiosa como econômica. (shrink)