KANT IN HIROSHIMA
A BICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF KANT
2004
PEACE AS A FRUIT IN THE ORCHARD OF PRACTICAL REASON
" Beati pacifici,quoniam filii Dei
vocabuntur." Mt.V,9.
In 2004 it will have passed 200 years since the death of Inmmanuel Kant. He was not the first to work on the subject of peace, since l'Abbe de Saint Pierre, Jeremy Bentham and J.J. Rousseau were obvious precursors. Perpetual Peace is, however, the first systematic approach on international harmony by means of juridical order.
Kant has no city in Germany to be celebrated. His Königsberg is not
any more a German city and even its name, Königsberg, is out of the
maps of contemporary Europe. That, in no way, disminish the extremely
important German presence in an intellectual hommage to Kant and
Kant's though. But it explains why it is not Germany necessarily the
place for such a celebration. Instead, it looks pertinent to suggest
a country with a high level of intellectual activity and an
impressive tradition of studies on German thought, as Japan really is
(1), and a city which is the tragic symbol of how long men are able
to go in the abandonment of peace: Hiroshima.
(1) An example of the afinities with the German studies and the
German thought in Japan is the fact of being the influence of Karl
Jasper in that country the strongest and most important in the the
world. Already in life of the Heidelberg's professor it was founded
the Jaspers Society of Tokio, and japanes is at head of the series of
languages to whicht this thinker's works have been translated.
AN ANNIVERSARY OF THE THINKING ON PEACE
The celebration of the anniversary of Kant's death, as an occasion to
renew the thinking on peace, should concern Peace and Conflict
Research, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Political Science, Law
Philosophy, Sociology of Law, General Theory of the State and Law,
International Law and Constitutional Law.

This last discipline, particularly, because the Kant's construction
includes constitutions as stonecorners of his pacific structure. The
constitution was, in last analysis, an expression of rationality
within the State, an anchor through which every State remains
anchorage in rationality. And the process toward universal peace
should be a way of increasing rationality in the external behaviour
of States in relation with each other. Therefore, peace becomes the
result of humanisation of the human race. If, according to the old
Aristotelian definition, reason is the specific difference which
separates man from the animal realm, the increase of reason through
the expansion of rationality in their international conduct marks,
doubtless, the way through which men develop themselves more
effectively as human beings. So, to say it with Kant's words:
"...the settlement of their differences by the mode of a civil
process, and not by the barbarous means of war, can be realised", in
order to prevent "to see oneself...degraded like the lower animals to
the level of the mechanical plays of Nature".
The abstinence of Japan and Germany from participation in the Persian
Gulf war, because of constitutional hindrances, suggests a distant
but clear resonance of Kant's insistence on constitutions as
instruments for the construction of peace.
He was aware of the fact that a permanent state of peace was not an
immediate goal but an effort for many generations. One year after
"Perpetual Peace", he wrote in "The Elements of Metaphysics of Law":
"...Hence the Perpetual Peace as the ultimate end of all the Right of
Nations becomes in fact (for practical circumstances of the 18th
Century) an impracticable idea. The political principles, however,
which aims at such an end, and which enjoin the formation of such
unions among the States as may promote a continuous approximation to
a Perpetual Peace, are not impracticable; they are as practicable as
this approximation itself, which is a practical problem involving a
duty, and founded upon the Right of individual men and States."
A few pages later, writing the conclusions of this part of his
Metaphysic of Practical Reason, he shows how in peace converge ideal
and practical interest:
"Hence the question no longer is as to whether Perpetual Peace is a
real thing or as to whether we may not be deceiving ourselves when we
adopt the former alternative, but we must act on the supposition of
its being real. We must work for what may perhaps not be realised,
and establish a constitution which yet seems adapted to bring it
about (mayhap Republicanism in all States, together and separately).
And thus we must put an end to the evils of wars, which have been the
chief interest of the international arrangements of all States
without exceptions. And although the realisation of their purpose may
always remain but a pious wish, yet we do certainly not deceive
ourselves in adopting the maxim of action that will guide us in
working incessantly for it; for it is a duty to do this...If the idea
is carried forward by gradual Reform, and in accordance with fixed
Principles, it may lead by a continuous approximation to the highest
Practical Good, to Perpetual Peace."
The world is still approaching perpetual peace. That is not the minor
reason why the 200 anniversary of Kant's death appears with such an
extraordinary relevance in the first decade of the 21st Century. In
1903 Prof. Robert Latta, from Glasgow University, wrote: "Although it
is more than 100 years since Kant's essay was written, its
substantial value is practically unpaired. Anyone who is acquainted
with the general character of the mind of Kant will find in him sound
common sense, clear recognition of the essential facts of the case
and a remarkable power of analytically exhibiting the conditions on
which the facts necessarily depend. These characteristics are
manifest in the essay on Perpetual Peace. Kant is not pessimistic
enough to believe that a perpetual peace is an unrealisable dream or
a consummation devoutly to be feared, nor is he optimistic enough to
fancy that it is an ideal which could easily be realised if men would
but turn their hearts to one another. For Kant's Perpetual Peace is
an ideal, not merely as a speculative Utopian idea, with which in
fancy we may play, but a moral principle, which ought to be, and
therefore can be, realised. Yet he makes it perfectly clear that we
cannot hope to approach the realisation of it unless we honestly face
political facts and get a firm grasp of the indispensable conditions
of a lasting peace."
After the two world wars and the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and
Nagasaky, that Kant would surely have qualified as "bellum
internecinum", the words of Prof. Latta, written almost a century
ago, have today even more pertinence that in 1903.
A TEXT OF ANTICIPATION
Kant's book anticipates some of the peculiar evils of our time. For
instance, cold war, that is a deteriorated state of peace, and one of
its sinister consequences: the enormous, pervasive and insidious
secret apparatus of the intelligence establishment, along with the
basic immorality of spying and clandestine activities:
"...those infernal acts (assassins, poisoners, the use of treachery,
spying) already vile in themselves, on carrying into use, are not
long confined to the sphere of war...vices such as these, whence once
encouraged, cannot in the nature of things be stamped out and would
be carried over into the state of peace, when their presence would be
utterly destructive to the purpose of that state".
Also he foresaw a situation like the nuclear apocalypse: "...a war of
extermination, where the process ofF anihilation, would strike both
parties at once and all right as well, would bring about Perpetual
Peace only in the great graveyard of human race."
It was also clear for him the intrinsic perversity of armaments
career and militarism: "...(standing armies) are always threatening other states with war by appearing to be in constant readiness to fight. They incite the various States to outride one another in the number of their soldiers and to their members no limit can be set. Now, to the sums devoted to that purpose, peace at last becomes even more oppressive than a short war, these standing armies are themselves the cause of wars of aggression, undertaken to get rid of this burden."
Kant had a preview of another issue of our days, foreign debt as a
result of armaments: "...This ingenious invention (credit) of a commercial people in the present Century is, in other words, a treasury for the carrying on wars which may exceed the treasury of all other States taken together...The ease then with which war may be waged, coupled with the inclination which seems to be implanted in human nature, is a great obstacle in the way of potential peace."
                       DEMOCRACY AND WAR

Perhaps the more actual relevance of Kant's thought lies in his
insistence on the consent of the affected by war to enter in it:
"If, as must be under this (republican) constitution, every one of
them is required to determine whether there shall be war or not,
nothing is more natural than they should weigh the matter well,
before undertaking such a bad business. For in decreeing war, they
would of necessity be resolving to bring down the miseries of war
upon their country. This implies: they must fight themselves; they
must hand over the cost of the war out of their own property; they
must do their poor best to make good the devastation which it leaves
behind; and finally, they have to accept a burden of debt which will
embittered even peace itself, and which they can never pay off on
account of the new wars which are always impending".
He over estimated, however, the efficacy of the formal republican
constitution, i.e. the mere separation of legislative and executive
powers, as an instrument to prevent wars; and he could not pay enough attention to a fact with which we are nowadays quite acquainted: that the legislators who may consent war are not the people who actually wage wars and die in them; that the political class solely find out ways to exclude their sons from wars, as it is shown in the cases of former U.S. Vice President, Mr. Dan Quayle, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.S. President George W. Bush, who, when young men, evaded the dangers of the Vietnam war. The political class use to do as a Brazilian general who, according oral tradition, before a battle during the Argentine-Brazilian war (1824 1826) harangued his troops in this way: "Let us animated ourselves, and you go".

Precisely in this point, as in others, the following generations of
scholars should advance in the path initiated by Kant. They must look
not only for formal constitutional and legal remedies but especially
for social and political implementations of the basic idea according
to which nobody who does not consent war must be compelled wage it or suffer its consequences.
Probably that means to neutralise the manipulations of the mass media
over public opinion, to denounce the pressure of economic interests
related to the military-industrial establishment and arm's
traffickers, and to annul pseudo-patriotism, demagoguery and politic
opportunism. And, moreover, to prevent the "fait accompli" technique
through which States's populations find themselves in war without
having had neither the time nor the chance of political reflection
and debate to decide rationally about it, as it was the case in such
different conflicts as the Vietnam and the Malvinas/ Falkland wars.
WAR AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
This last consideration is particularly important because peace is a
major goal in term of social justice. Since poor young men are
primarily the victims of wars. As says Marc Shields:
"In any war, most of the fighting and most of the dying are done by
the youngest soldiers holding the lowest rank. In Vietnam, more than
three out of four of the American killed there were enlisted men
between the ages of 17 and 22 and under the rank of staff sergeant".
Then, the draft system, especially the exemptions to it, was grossly
unfair: by grating generous deferral to those enrolled in university
(in a country where university is basically for the rich), it
effectively allowed the clever and the affluent to avoid service,
while condemning the rest, mainly black and blue-collar whites, to
fight and, often, die; even within the services, the proportion of
blacks in combat roles was higher than in non-combat roles.
In the Malvinas war, the Argentine army had a very few officers dead,
while the dead soldiers were hundreds, and in the sinking of the
cruiser "General Belgrano" all the officers evacuated the ship and
the hundreds of deeds were sailors and sergeants. In the Persian Gulf war, and in the U.S. side, although blacks made up just 14% of the enlistment-age population, accounted for nearly 22% of the active-duty recruits. In the Army which could probably suffer the most casualties, the number was 28%. The rich were unlikely to suffer much: the children of the top 15% of earners had joined at a rate one-fifth the national average. Among enlisted servicemen, only about 20% had a parent who has graduated from university. The offspring of the elite were absent from the sands of Saudi Arabia: only two congressmen and no members of the Bush cabinet had children in the Gulf. The leaders were insulated from the consequences of their decisions and opinions on war. Political classes tend to behave like a hypothetical Brazilian general that according to oral tradition, during the argentine-Brazilian war of 1824-1825, who before a battle harangued his troops in this way:”Let us animated ourselves, and you go”.
WAR AND IMPERIALISM
No less significance has Kant's remarks on imperialism and
colonialism, those evils of the 17th and 18th Centuries whose present
effects are evident. Especially in the Third World, whose peoples
continue to be victimised in the wars at the end of the 20th and the
beginning of the 21st Century, as it was obvious in the Persian Gulf
War, distantly but distinctly rooted in the arbitrary design of the
political map of the region at the collapse of the Ottoman empire, a
draw drawn with obvious imperialistic purposes. These effects are also shown in the international bullying of big powers, systematic violators of the non-intervention and self- determination principles.
The condemnation of "Perpetual Peace" keeps actuality and congruity:
ôIf one compares with this (mankind at last near to a cosmopolitan
constitution) the inhospitable behaviour of the civilised, primary
commercial States of our Continent, one is horrified at the injustice
they show in their visit to foreign countries and peoples, since
visiting appears to be to them synonymous with conquering; America,
the Negro countries, the Moluccas, the Cape, etc. wherein their
discovery regarded as countries that belonged to no one, for the
natives were entirely disregarded. Into India they introduced on the
pretext of merely establishing trading centres a foreign soldierly
and with this widespread wars, rebellion, treachery and the whole
litany of all the evils which can burden mankind..."
Kant distinguished himself from a certain cynicism of other sons of
the Enlightenment, prone to a Weltanschauung of double standard. Let
us take, for instance, the U.S Declaration of Independence. This
solemn proclamation combines these two strong affirmations:
“all men are created equal”  “the merciless Indians savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions”. It is hinted not too subtly- that subjects in the second sentence are not included in the rhetorical “all” of the first one.
Only after two centuries, historians now in the U.S are more inclined
to accept the genocidal extermination of the previous population of
Indians. Says Benjamin Schwarz, in "The Diversity Myth: America's
Leading Export". included in The Atlantic Monthly, May 1995:
"...building America required nearly 300 years of genocidal war
against Native Americans, a fact that impels to-day's historians to
characterise American expansion on the continent as 'invasion' rather
than 'settlement'. These wars, one of the longest series of ethnic
conflicts in modern history, were resolved not by power sharing but
by obliterationö. In what regards the French revolution, it suffices
to read, in the first revolutionary constitution of 1791, art.8 from
title VII which stated:”Colonies and French posessions in Asia,
Africa and America, since they form part of the French empire, are
not comprehended in the present constitution” , which was eloquent
enough, because this was the constitution that included the famous
Declaration of Man and Citizen Rights from 1789. As one can see,
rights of some men, of some citizens...
KANT, FREEDOM AND TRAGIC OPTIMISM
For countries of the Third World, particularly for the young
republics of Africa, Kants thought has a special meaning. Answering
to the sceptics of his time who saw in the French Revolutionary
Terror a proof of the immaturity of the masses for freedom, as
sceptics of our days have seen the same in the horrible genocidad war
of Rwanda and Burundi, the philosopher replied: In one accept this
assumption, freedom will never be achieved; for one can not arrive at
the maturity for freedom without having already adquired it; one must
be free to learn how to make use of ones powers freely and usefully.
The first attempts will be surely be brutal and will lead to a state
of affairs more painful and dangerous than the former condition under
the dominance but also the protection of an external authority.
However, one can achieve reason anly through ones own experience and
one must be free to be able to undertake them To accept the principle
that freedom is worthless for those under ones control and that one
has the right to refuse it to them forever, is an infringment of the
right of God himself, who has created man to be free (Quoted by Noam
Chomsky, Language and Freedom, The Chomsky Reader, pag.144).
His confidence in freedom was part of an attitude of tragic optimism,
to discribe it with the words of Emmanuel Mounier; a confidence in
just the possibility ûnot the certainty- that the human person has to
overcome his own negativeness. A celebration of Kant must be the
occassion to re-affirm this conditional confidence in man and his
freedom.
The Major of Hiroshima, Mr. Takashi Hitoaki, issued in August 1997 a
Peace Declaration in which he quoted the UNESCO Constitution: Since
war begins in the mind of men, it is in the mind of men that the
defences of the peace must be constructed.
That is exactly the idea of Kant and the idea of a celebration of
Kants contribution to peace as a matter of practical reason: to fight
for peace where war can emerge, that is in the human mind, in the
human heart, in the human emotions.
The celebration of the bicentennial of Perpetual Peace will be the
opportunity to think again on the intellectual and political
responsibilities, and the duties of reason, in the last first decade
of the 21st Century, years after the end of the Cold War, a time when
the illusion -only the illusion, as it is evident today- of a period
in which the enormous economic resources of war might be transfered
to fight hunger, diseases and illiteracy.
by Salvador Maria Lozada,
Former Full Professor of Buenos Aires University
Honorary President,  International Association of Constitutional Law
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