Kant and Just War Theory: The Problem Outlined

Abstract

We have seen how the idea of war forms a key theme for Kant’s philosophy as a whole. It enters his theoretical philosophy—in his theory of knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reaso.—as the model of human interaction most to be avoided, since the outcome of war is never determined by reason alone; it enters his practical philosophy as the paradigm case of the breakdown of human relations most to be feared and shunned; it enters his aesthetic thinking as a form of human behaviour that epitomizes the dynamically sublime; and it enters his teleological thinking as a key example of how the negative and dispiriting aspects of human experience can be turned to the advantage of the species. Each one of these uses of the idea of war is highly contentious; none the less the overriding pattern is one of a rejection of war as an acceptable future.form of human behaviour. War can be seen as a form of interaction that lies between that of the lives of savages and the lives of genuinely human individuals. The abiding impression given of war by Kant in the main writings of his critical philosophy is of war as a mode of conduct that has to be overcome. In none of his references to war does he appear to take for granted its presence and persistence in human society: each mention of it alludes to it as a transitional or episodic process, and one by no means inevitable for the human race.

The right of nations is a right in the condition (iuridice. of war, that is of the lack of public justice, and there is no other principle appropriate to it than that all the actions of the nation (Volk) in regard to others stand solely under the stipulations under which the creation of public justice is possible, that is, a union of nations.

Kant (19: 598)¹