Back from the USSR: Kant, Kaliningrad and World Peace
| Author | Howard L. Williams |
| Date | 01 March 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117806060926 |
| Published date | 01 March 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Relations Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol 20(1):27–48
[DOI: 10.1177/0047117806060926]
Back from the USSR: Kant, Kaliningrad
and World Peace1
Howard L. Williams, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK
Abstract
The year 2004 marked the bicentenary of Immanuel Kant’s death. This article evaluates
the main arguments of Kant’s essay on perpetual peace in the light of developments in
world politics since his time. How well have his ideas stood the test of time? Kant’s essay
is placed in the context of his philosophy as a whole and through a close textual analysis
the value of his propositions is assessed. The article looks at the Provisional and
Definitive Articles in their mutual relation and places a good deal more emphasis than is
usual upon the two supplements and appendix. Finally the article takes the complex
circumstances of Kant’s home city, Kaliningrad, as a brief test case for his own theories.
Keywords: Kaliningrad, Kant, perpetual peace, world federalism
Introduction
In a rare tribute to an academic philosopher, the 200th anniversary of Immanuel
Kant’s death was marked by the visit of the German foreign minister, Joschka
Fischer, to Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad, or Koenigsberg as it was formerly called, was
Kant’s birthplace and home throughout his life. The city was in Kant’s day the
principal centre of population in East Prussia and had at one time been the capital
of Prussia itself. In the course of his brief visit Fischer officially opened the new
consulate offices of Germany in the city and laid a wreath at Kant’s tomb alongside
the cathedral. The former Soviet enclave is now stranded as part of the Russian
Federation, with Lithuania to the east and a border to the west with Poland. This
was a poignant occasion: not simply because it marked 200 years since Kant’s
death, but also because it took place in a city with such a complex history. The
position of the former German city of Koenigsberg as a Russian enclave, now
encircled by new member states of the European Union, looks precarious – a far cry
from the thriving Prussian port and most easterly outpost of the German-speaking
world that it was in Kant’s lifetime. This complex and, from a German perspective,
tragic history brings out the importance of world politics to the lives of individuals.
Almost to a person the population of Kaliningrad is Russian-speaking, and there is
hardly a trace of the rich German cultural past, with the number of German speakers
in the enclave to be counted in their hundreds rather than thousands. If Kant has
something to tell us about world peace then it may also have a bearing on the
condition of his uniquely situated home city. Before 1945 Koenigsberg was a major
r
i
city in the German Reich. During the Cold War as Kaliningrad it was a major warm-
water port of the Soviet Union. Now, without a direct land connection, it is the most
westerly part of the Russian Federation.
Here my main focus in evaluating Kant’s theory of world politics is his
remarkable Perpetual Peace.2 I take each of the sections of this book and subject
them in turn to scrutiny. Perpetual Peace begins with a short introduction and six
Preliminary Articles whose observance Kant believes to be an essential pre-
condition for peace. He then turns to the three Definitive Articles which we can here
briefly denote as the republican article, the federative article and the cosmopolitan
article. There are four more sections whose importance is often overlooked: an
appendix which outlines the guarantee of peace; a Secret Article added to the
second and French editions of the book; and two additions that crucially discuss the
relationship between politics, morality and statesmanship. I give a critical overview
of each of these sections, drawing out some of the lessons for us now, and then
complete the article with some brief reflections on how Kaliningrad’s situation
might be affected by a sensitive interpretation of Kant’s ideas. One of the concerns
of the article will be to bring Kant’s reputation out of the shadow of the idealist–
realist divide that international relations theory has cast upon his writings. Kant has
thoroughly systematic things to say about both the normative and factual sides of
international politics. Indeed, he has a coherent theory of international relations that
effectively combines the two.
A key conclusion of Kant’s critical philosophy is that we have to be modest
about what we can know, but we have to be ambitious about what we ought to do.
Perpetual Peace is not simply a book commenting from a philosophical perspective
on what can be done about politics. It represents a point of culmination of Kant’s
critical enterprise, at least in so far as its practical aspect is concerned. Perpetual
Peace indicates how statesmen and ordinary individuals can contribute to the
attainment of the ‘politico-civil state’, which represents a crucial stage in the
attainment of the ultimate goal for humankind of the ‘highest moral good’. The
concept of the highest moral good is one that Kant had introduced in his essay
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) to indicate ‘a duty not of
human beings towards human beings but of the human race toward itself’.3The
realization of this duty would be ‘a universal republic based on the laws of virtue’4
encompassing the human race as a whole and is distinct from a political
commonwealth which requires general external constraint. Though distinct from it,
the ideal of an ethical commonwealth can provide inspiration for the creation and
maintenance of a political commonwealth. What would constitute the ideal goal in
the political realm, and is a goal to which all politicians should necessarily strive, is
to bring the human race out of its present apparently natural condition of war. The
goal is not as comprehensive as that of ‘the highest moral good’ (since that concerns
our inner dispositions as well), but the achievement of the legal relations that are
the focus of the political ideal is nonetheless an important step along the road
towards it. The highest political good consists of the ideal set of relations that
regulate the external relations of human individuals with each other. Perpetual
28 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 20(1)
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