Abstract

This dissertation has two goals. The first is to demonstrate that, contrary to prevailing readings, Immanuel Kant has a just war theory--and an original and compelling one, at that. The second is to develop a more extensive, well-grounded and contemporary Kantian just war theory, using Kant's work as a building block. The focus of this latter theory is on its grounding in human rights protection, its strengths vis-a-vis competing doctrines of realism and pacifism, and its construction of norms of jus ad bellum and jus post bellum. The Kantian tradition of normative thought about the ethics of war and peace, thus construed, offers a substantive contribution to the Just War Tradition and to the positive international laws of armed conflict which have been derived from it