Bohman James, Lutz-Bachmann Matthias (eds.) Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. — 266 p. — ISBN10: 0262522357; ISBN13: 978-0262522359In 1795 Immanuel Kant published an essay entitled "Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." The immediate occasion for the essay was the March 1795 signing of the Treaty of Basel by Prussia and revolutionary France, which Kant condemned as only "the suspension of hostilities, not a peace." In the essay, Kant argues that it is humankind's immediate duty to solve the problem of violence and enter into the cosmopolitan ideal of a universal community of all peoples governed by the rule of law.The essay's two-hundredth anniversary, 1995, also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and of the establishment of the Charter of the United Nations. The essays in this volume were written for a conference held in Frankfurt in May 1995 to commemorate these three anniversaries. Together, the authors argue for the continued theoretical and practical relevance of the cosmopolitan ideals of Kant's essay. They also show that history has both confirmed and outstripped Kant's prognoses. As recent events have shown, we certainly have not emerged from the violence of the state of nature. Accelerating globalization also gives these reconstructions and reappraisals of Kant's cosmopolitan ideal a new urgency. Contributors Karl-Otto Apel, Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, Jurgen Habermas, David Held, Axel Honneth, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Thomas McCarthy, Martha Nussbaum.Introduction. James Bohman and Matthias LutzBachmannKant's cosmopolitan ideal in "Toward Perpetual Peace" - historical reconstructionsKant and cosmopolitanism, Martha Nussbaum
Kant's idea of peace and the philosophical conception of a world republic, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann
Kant's "Toward Perpetual Peace" as historical prognosis from the point of view of moral duty, Karl-Otto ApelHuman rights, international law and the global order - cosmopolitanism 200 years laterKant's idea of perpetual peace, with the benefit of 200 years' hindsight, Jurgen Habermas
Is universalism a moral trap? The presuppositions and limits of a politics of human rights, Axel Honneth
The public spheres of the world citizen, James Bohman
On the idea of a reasonable law of peoples, Thomas McCarthy
Communitarian and cosmopolitan challenges to Kant's conception of world peace, Kenneth Baynes
Cosmopolitan democracy and the global order - a new agenda, David Held.