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CONCEPT OF PEACE IN THE GERMAN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY. IMMANUEL KANT AND HIS TREATISE “TO THE PERPETUAL PEACE”

E.V. Martynenko

Abstract

The philosophic doctrine of Immanuel Kant was innovative for its historical period. It harmoniously consisted of both social and political aspects, which could lay the stable foundation for the political stability in Europe for many decades. Unfortunately, his treatise “To the Perpetual Peace” had a vivid tone of social romanticism and political Utopia. Frankly believing in construction of the non-conflictive society based on humanistic and legal principles, the great German philosopher ignored the contradictive trends of the European monarchies, whose main objective was not just the peace as a granted reality, but the advantageous peace. That’s why each of his six main points of the tractate can be estimated as something ideal, that we should aspire to… Our short research is based on the analysis of I. Kant’s philosophic treatise and its influence on the political science not only in the period of the Golden age of German classical philosophy, but even nowadays. His ideas caused genuine interest of his contemporaries – first of all, his German colleagues Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Johann Gottfried Herder, who had their own vision of the peace but on the whole, freely or not, came to the same conclusions as Kant. Their works are also analyzed in the article and thus helped us to formulate some contextual conclusions to the topic in the end of our research.

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