Philosophy and Perpetual Peace

The 2nd supplement to Perpetual Peace specifically concerns philosophy. Kant opens it by distinguishing between objective and subjective secrecy concerning public right. Objectively there is no ground for secrecy as the content of public right is intrinsically public, a point whose amplification we will later find when we turn from Perpetual Peace to the Doctrine of Right. However, the fact that this objective publicity is attached to public right does not entail that there cannot be a certain subjective secrecy attached to it. The subjective secrecy concerns the authorship of certain parts of what can be granted in terms of its content with Kant giving the example that a person may find it prejudicial "to his dignity to announce publicly that he is its author" (Ak. 8: 368).

However whilst the example of subjective secrecy that Kant initially gives concerns authors the discussion that he next opens does not concern them but rather focuses on readers. What he declares to be the "sole article" of this kind that concerns perpetual peace is that the maxims of philosophers concerning the conditions under which public peace is possible should be consulted by states that are arming for war. This "sole article" is understood to involve secrecy in the sense that rulers of states will not wish to make evident the reference to advice that emerges from their subjects. So, rather than openly acknowledging the use of such statements from philosophers it will rather be the practice of states to only tacitly allow the debates of philosophers to take place without indicating that they are in sense being guided by such.

The point about this so-called "secret article" is that it is aimed at making manifest the need for publicity concerning the philosophical debate over the nature of public peace! This "secret article" is also indicated to be based on "universal (morally legislative) human reason" (Ak. 8: 369). So not only is the content of the article officially public it is something indicated to be based effectively on the moral common sense of humanity.

After inserting a discussion of the way in which philosophy is subordinate in practice to other powers in the state Kant returns to the point that rulers should enable the class of philosophers to both exist and debate, not least because philosophers are, he states, incapable of forming seditious factions or clubs. Hence philosophers are not agents of propaganda.

This "secret article" can hardly be understood other than as a reversion to the statement of the first paragraph of Perpetual Peace where Kant argued that since the worldly-wise statesman looks down on the philosopher due to the latter's ineffectual ideas that they cannot consistently state that they face danger from such ideas! In articulating the need for such publicity for philosophy Kant doubtless had in mind the suppression many thinkers faced across Europe in the wake of the French Revolution. There is also ancient precedent as the Roman emperor Domitian exiled philosophers from his polity on the grounds that they were in fact agents of sedition.

The general importance of this "secret article" is the way it introduces the topic of publicity into the discussion of perpetual peace, hence paving the way for the turn, in the appendix, to the formulas of publicity that were discussed in previous postings.

War and Secrecy

As specified in the posting "Publicity II" the reading of Perpetual Peace given in the first set of postings on publicity concerned only a very small portion of this text, namely, that in which the formulas of publicity were explicitly set out. The text of the work involves much more than this and I will, in a series of postings, go through the key formulations of the work from the beginning with specific attention to each clause that involves reference to questions concerning publicity.

The work opens with a brief introductory paragraph in which Kant states that, since "practical politicians" tend to look down on theoretical ones as ineffectual, so, it follows that they should not censor them since their works are of no danger to the state! The first section of the work then opens and this contains preliminary articles for perpetual peace among states, of which there are six. The first states: "No treaty of peace shall be held to be such if it is made with a secret reservation of material for a future war". (Ak. 8: 343) Notably Kant here immediately makes a reference to secrecy and indicates that acting in a way that requires it - thus acting against not merely the negative but also the positive formula of publicity - shows an action that is not in accord with its professed intention and this divergence between the act's real intent and its professed one is sufficient for the act to be deemed wrong.

The key point that is made with regard to such a secret reservation is that it shows that there is in this case no commitment to peace and so the treaty that has been signed by one who holds to this reservation has no claim to be called a peace treaty. Not only is such an act one that fails to match the expressed intent of offering peace it is also, says Kant, "beneath the dignity" of a ruler. To justify the divergence between expressed and real intent would require what Kant terms "jesuitical casuistry" and it is this that is beneath the dignity of the ruler (or minister). Such "refined" calculations demonstrate a principled commitment to avoiding consideration of what principles of publicity would involve and it is this that makes them beneath the dignity of the ruler. In including this reference to dignity Kant is implying a commitment to publicity is part of autonomous moral consideration since, as Kant claimed in the Groundwork: "Autonomy is therefore the ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature" (Ak. 4: 436). If to deliberate in a way that requires secrecy is to lack dignity, i.e. to be swayed by heteronomy, then, by contrast, to act in a way that requires publicity, as is involved in the affirmative principle of publicity, is to act in accordance with autonomy. This reading of the first preliminary article hence confirms that the conclusion of the work with the affirmative principle of publicity is structurally already signaled from the beginning of the work and shows that this affirmative principle is the key formula of it.