Kant's Theory of European Integration: Kant's Toward Perpetual Peace and changing forms of separated powers in the evolution of military and politics

TY - UNPB

T1 - Kant's Theory of European Integration

T2 - Kant's Toward Perpetual Peace and changing forms of separated powers in the evolution of military and politics

AU - Harste, Gorm

PY - 2009

Y1 - 2009

N2 -   Abstract:Immanuel Kant developed a rather wide range of concepts to describe the process of an "ever broader union" of European states. Kant's theory posed a dilemma with two aspects. On the one hand republican states were free, and on the other they were obliged to follow rules of a union of states, for instance regulations of non-intervention. Debates have focused this dilemma as if it was a real contradiction. The argument in the present paper is that there is no such contradiction. To the contrary, in his philosophy of reflective judgement, Kant describes the compelling duty as not to stick to private lust and interests but to communicate and deliberate in a public argumentation. No actor can sustain an interest in becoming isolated from others. Thus the coercive power of a federation is not the negative one to force a state or a sovereign people, for instance by intervention, but to let it cooperate with other states rather than to isolate it. Kant observes a guarantee that such a form of integration could emerge and succeed, because the military powers of Europe had to develop complexities of separated powers in their organisation of states. Underneath the unity of isolated "autonomous" states, strong convergence processes took place in those separated subsystems that were functional to well-organised states.

AB -   Abstract:Immanuel Kant developed a rather wide range of concepts to describe the process of an "ever broader union" of European states. Kant's theory posed a dilemma with two aspects. On the one hand republican states were free, and on the other they were obliged to follow rules of a union of states, for instance regulations of non-intervention. Debates have focused this dilemma as if it was a real contradiction. The argument in the present paper is that there is no such contradiction. To the contrary, in his philosophy of reflective judgement, Kant describes the compelling duty as not to stick to private lust and interests but to communicate and deliberate in a public argumentation. No actor can sustain an interest in becoming isolated from others. Thus the coercive power of a federation is not the negative one to force a state or a sovereign people, for instance by intervention, but to let it cooperate with other states rather than to isolate it. Kant observes a guarantee that such a form of integration could emerge and succeed, because the military powers of Europe had to develop complexities of separated powers in their organisation of states. Underneath the unity of isolated "autonomous" states, strong convergence processes took place in those separated subsystems that were functional to well-organised states.

KW - Kant

KW - Kant, Rawls, folkeret, suverænitet, militær revolution, realisme, idealisme, engelsk skole

KW - Historiefilosofi

KW - Statsdannelse

KW - Tysk historie

KW - Kant

KW - Kant, Rawls, sovereignty, military revolutions, realism, idealism, English school

KW - Philosophy of History

KW - State-building

KW - German history

M3 - Working paper

SP - 53

EP - 84

BT - Kant's Theory of European Integration

PB - Duncker & Humblot

CY - Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik / Annual Review of Law and Ethics

ER -