Kant and the Theory and Practice of International Right. Georg Cavallar

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СКАЧАТЬ factors. Johannes Kunisch has supported still another thesis, arguing that the very structure of hereditary monarchies increased the likelihood of wars. Empires like the Habsburg monarchy were based on the principle of dynastic legitimacy. Within the framework of mercantile theory, the persons inhabiting a certain territory were simply seen as part of that territory rather than as citizens with rights (a theory subsequently criticized by Kant as violating the principle of popular sovereignty). Any problems with succession were exploited by neighbouring states. The year 1740, when Frederick invaded the Habsburg province Silesia, is precisely such a case in point.⁷⁵ Finally, we must not forget Kenneth N. Waltz’s classic and convincing distinction between permissive and efficient causes of war. In the eighteenth century, the permissive cause of war (that which permitted war to occur) was certainly the condition of anarchy in the international political system. The efficient causes must be sought at the individual and societal or state level.⁷⁶ It seems most plausible to argue that wars were the result both of individual royal ambition and of the structure of hereditary monarchies and the international system. This implies that Kant tended to neglect the structural causes of eighteenth-century wars emphasized by Kunisch. Kant had plenty of evidence that Frederick’s Regierungsart in foreign relations was despotic rather than republican. However, he might have ignored the logical conclusion for his political theory. The two parts of the first definitive article do not fit together. In the pragmatic argument in favour of republicanism, Kant attacked enlightened absolutism as being warlike and bent on war. In the second part, where Kant distinguished between Herrschaftsform and Regierungsart, he seems to defend the same despotic system. He refused to refer to foreign relations in his appraisal of Frederick’s rule.

      Kant offered a limited defence of Frederick’s military state. Apparently referring to Prussia, Kant claimed in a footnote to The Contest of Faculties (1798) that ‘a people which occupies extended territories in Europe may feel that monarchy is the only kind of constitution which can enable it to preserve its own existence between powerful neighbours’ (VII, 86, 18–22). Frederick used a similar geopolitical argument in his Political Testament of 1768. In the case of war, the territories of Cleve and Mark in the west and East Prussia would be lost immediately to the French and the Russians respectively. Of course, this was no argument for Frederick in the quarrel between republicans and monarchists. Monarchy was never questioned anyway. For Frederick, Prussia’s geopolitical predicament was another reason to teach the gospel of militarism to his successor: Prussia needed more soldiers, they should be better trained than those of its neighbours, and the Prussian king should be their commander in chief. In times of peace, the king should prepare for the next war.⁷⁷ As far as foreign policy was concerned, Frederick the king was by no means ‘acting by analogy with the laws which a people would give itself in conformity with universal principles of right’ (VII, 88, 6–7). I suppose that Kant was fully aware of this; a lot had been achieved on the domestic level, and he was patient.

      There was a deep discrepancy between Frederick’s domestic and foreign policy. In domestic policy, the king seemed an enlightened, humanitarian ruler who respected the rights of his people. In foreign policy, Frederick appeared as a ruthless, immoral despot who did not hesitate to send his subjects into wars of never-ending aggression and destruction. Some historians have been puzzled by this seeming paradox. Some claim that it should be explained by Frederick’s ambiguous character. Theodor Schieder, for instance, contends that the king was torn between the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment and Machiavellism.⁷⁸ Following Meinecke’s Die Idee der Staatsräson (1924), Schieder sees Frederick’s ‘kingdom of contradictions’ (the subtitle of his biography) as rooted in a more fundamental dichotomy of enlightened absolutism itself. This interpretation is hardly convincing. Frederick’s endorsement of religious tolerance, for instance, was based on prudential and pragmatic rather than humanistic considerations. Frederick thought it was no longer necessary to follow Machiavelli’s advice in domestic affairs. With the rise of absolutism, with the bureaucracy and a strong military in its wake, domestic affairs had been stabilized, as Kant registered with some satisfaction.

      With Frederick, the emphasis shifted to foreign affairs, where a slightly modified Machiavellianism dominated. Frederick established the tradition of the ‘primacy of foreign policy’ in Germany. Ambition was only checked by prudence. Even after the conquest of Silesia, Frederick did not abandon the will to agrandissement. He secretly pondered how to acquire new territories from Saxony and Poland in his Political Testaments.⁷⁹ Frederick was particularly eager to teach his successor that he should rule on his own, instead of leaving the work to ministers. Frederick thought any ruler should control and dominate finances, ‘inner administration’, foreign policy and the army.⁸⁰ The ultimate goal was strengthening the state and increasing its power; other considerations were derivative. No ministers, let alone subjects, should ever interfere in foreign affairs. It was the sole task of the sovereign to decide about the ‘vital interests of the state’, when to wage war and with whom.⁸¹ Frederick’s rule should be seen within the wider context of militarism in European absolutist states. As historians like Skocpol, Tilly, Downing and Mann have argued, most of what these governments did was linked to the army. The growth of central state powers was closely related to international conflicts. Finally, it should be kept in mind that the ‘absolutist project arose from the need to extract taxes to fight wars without the consent of the mass of subjects’.⁸²

      Kant never explicitly attacked Frederick’s foreign policy. In a footnote to the Contest of Faculties, he defined an absolute monarch as someone ‘at whose command war at once begins when he says it shall do so’ (VII, 90, 25–6). Kant’s passage is supposed to criticize the British parliamentary system, which Kant denounced as a deception; however, the same description fitted enlightened absolutism even better. Frederick waged numerous wars without asking the representatives of the people for permission. Kant’s judgement on the British system was too harsh and biased; at the same time, he overlooked, or perhaps intentionally ignored, Frederick’s enlightened absolutism.

      The philosophy of history: ‘Cunning Nature’ carries the day

      Kant condemned the rulers of his age from a moral point of view. The princes cared for nothing except for ‘despotic power’, and contributed ‘not one iota’ to the ‘worth of humanity’ (XXVII, 471). Rulers, violating the categorical imperative, considered their subjects as ‘tools for their own purposes’ (IX, 448, 3). For Kant, one significant example of this violation of human rights was given by the wars of the eighteenth century, where rulers used any citizen ‘to fight in their disputes and slaughter his fellows’ (VII, 89, 13–14). The passage seems to be innocuous, since Kant started it with a restrictive ‘if’. However, I suppose that his contemporaries were aware that this was the actual conduct of most princes, and not a mere possibility. In Kant’s view, nothing indicated that Frederick was an exception to this rule.

      In the previous sections, I have repeatedly emphasized that Frederick’s decisions in domestic policy were not morally motivated. Historians are still puzzled by the problem of motivation. Were Enlightenment rulers including Frederick moved by principle or profit? Some argue that Frederick’s reforms were based on a sober cost–benefit analysis. Frederick’s character, they point out, was ambivalent, torn between Enlightenment humanism and the reason of the state, preferring the latter over the former in case of conflict.⁸³ Others reason that not all Enlightenment rulers were exclusively concerned with the power of their states. If this had been the case, then we would not understand why they devoted time and trouble to the state’s weaker members. As Blanning put it succinctly, not even Joseph II ‘could have hoped to transform a deaf dumb blind crippled lunatic illegitimate unmarried mother into an effective fighting unit’.⁸⁴ In many cases, historians have been quite unfair, placing Enlightenment rulers in catch-22 situations. For example, they expect monarchs to demonstrate their enlightened motivation by dismantling the old order while at the same time endorsing the Enlightenment principle of individual freedom.⁸⁵ The problem involved here is apparently not only one of historical research, but of epistemology as well, and Kant may help us a little. According to the Critique of Pure Reason, we do not know anything СКАЧАТЬ