Perpetual Peace

In 1795, as the wars of revolutionary France raged, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote a short essay in the form of a peace treaty. Its preliminary articles forbid secret clauses, standing armies and interference in other states; its definitive articles call for republican government, a federation of free states and a right of hospitality for every stranger on earth.

Kant's title came, he said, from a Dutch innkeeper's sign that showed a graveyard. The essay is often cited as an ancestor of the League of Nations and the United Nations, and it is the most accessible way into a philosopher better known for difficult books.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) spent his whole life in and around Königsberg in East Prussia, where he taught at the university for decades and kept such regular habits that, according to legend, neighbours set their clocks by his afternoon walk. He was fifty-seven when he published the Critique of Pure Reason, which changed philosophy.

Answering David Hume, who he said woke him from his dogmatic slumber, Kant asked what we can know, what we ought to do and what we may hope, and gave the world the categorical imperative and the motto of the Enlightenment, 'Dare to know'. His short essay Perpetual Peace is his most accessible work.