Institutions of Peace. Perspectives from Kantian Political Theory

The question of peace and its institutions is currently a topical issue. However, important aspects of this topic still await clarification. How, precisely, to define peace? And how is peace best established (Hathaway and Shapiro 2017)? Is peace always preferable to conflict (Margalit 2013; Forst 2011)? The recent literature on war and peace (Huber 2022; Ripstein 2021a, Niesen 2021) relies critically on Kant’s notion of the state, and his understanding of both international and cosmopolitan law. Unclear, however, is what the establishment of peace requires, as part of a Kantian approach. Is a full-blown ‘world federation’ necessary, as some (Kleingeld 2004) argue? Others (Ripstein 2009, p. 227-228) think Kant’s theory lacks ‘the resources to argue for either an executive or a legislative international body.’ This workshop addresses these and related issues with which the discipline is currently grappling. What has become clear to Kantian scholars, is that to shed light on these questions, it is neccesary to understand how national law, international law and cosmopolitan law should work together as one system of public law. However, scholars disagree about the status of the rather restricted rights and duties of international and cosmopolitan law that Kant mentions (Huber 2022). Are these rights and duties already ‘public’ and ‘peremptory’ (Ripstein 2021b) or perhaps still ‘natural’ and ‘provisional’, in need of further institutional development (Niesen 2021)? We invite scholars in all career stages and also from backgrounds traditionally marginalized to send working papers on these issues. The aim is to publish accepted papers.

Forst 2011 Rainer Forst, ‘Die normative Ordnung von Gerechtigkeit unde Frieden’ in: Kritik der Rechtfertigungsverhältnisse. Perspektiven einer kritischen Theorie der Politik, Suhrkamp, Berlin 2011. Hathaway and Shapiro 2017 Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, The Internationalists. And Their Plan to Outlaw War, Allen Lane 2017. Herlin-Karnell and Rossi 2021 Ester Herlin-Karnell and Enzo Rossi (eds.), The Public Uses of Coercion and Force. From Consitutionalism to War, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2021. Huber 2022 Jakob Huber, Kant’s Grounded Cosmopolitanism, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2022. Kant 1996 Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1996. Kleingeld 2004 Pauline Kleingeld, ‘Approaching Perpetual Peace: Kant's Defence of a League of States and his Ideal of a World Federation’, European Journal of Philosophy 12 (2004), 3. Margalit 2013 Avishai Margalit, On Compromise and Rotten Compromises, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 2013. Risptein 2009 Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom. Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2009. Ripstein 2021a Arthur Ripstein, Kant and the Law of War, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2021. Ripstein 2021b Arthur Ripstein, ‘From Constitutionalism to War—and Back Again: A Reply’, in Herlin-Karnell and Rossi 2021. Niesen 2021 Peter Niesen, ‘Vulnerability, Space, Communication: Three Conditions of Adequacy for Cosmopolitan Right: Comment on Arthur Ripstein, Kant and the Law of War’, in Herlin-Karnell and Rossi 2021.

1: What constitutes peace?
2: Does transferring power to international unions like the UN or EU promote peace or undermine it?
3: What would Kant’s position be on today’s institutions of international and cosmopolitan law?
4: Is Kant's framework for international law enough, or should we further develop it?

1: Kant’s theory of peace and Kantian theories of peace
2: Political theory of institutions of international and cosmopolitan law
3: Kant on international law
4: Kant on cosmopolitan law
5: The architecture of Kant’s theory of public law
6: Kantian approaches to the relation between peace and justice