Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay

Kant · en
The problem now arises, How shall men live together, each free to
work out his own development, without at the same time interfering
with a like liberty on the part of his neighbour? The solution
of this problem is the state. Here the liberty of each member is
guaranteed and its limits strictly defined. A perfectly just civil
constitution, administered according to the principles of right,
would be that under which the greatest possible amount of liberty
was left to each citizen within these limits. This is the ideal
of Kant, and here lies the greatest practical problem which has
presented itself to humanity. An ideal of this kind is difficult of
realisation. But nature imposes no such duty upon us. “Out of such
crooked material as man is made,” says Kant, “nothing can be hammered
quite straight.” (Proposition 6.) We must make our constitution as
good as we can and, with that, rest content.

The direct cause of this transition from a state of nature and
conditions of unlimited freedom to civil society with its coercive
and restraining forces is found in the evils of that state of nature
as they are painted by Hobbes. A wild lawless freedom becomes
impossible for man: he is compelled to seek the protection of a
civil society. He lives in uncertainty and insecurity: his liberty
is so far worthless that he cannot peacefully enjoy it. For this
peace he voluntarily yields up some part of his independence. The
establishment of the state is in the interest of his development to
a higher civilisation. It is more—the guarantee of his existence
and self-preservation. This is the sense, says Professor Paulsen,
in which Kant like Hobbes regards the state as “resting on a
contract,”[52] that is to say, on the free will of all.[53] _Volenti
non fit injuria._ Only, adds Paulsen, we must remember that this
contract is not a historical fact, as it seemed to some writers of
the eighteenth century, but an “idea of reason”: we are speaking here
not of the history of the establishment of the state, but of the
reason of its existence. (Paulsen’s _Kant_, p. 354.)[54]