Perpetual Peace

A Philosophical Essay

Immanuel Kant 1795

This essay presents a plan for lasting peace between states. Its plan follows a treaty's format, with six preliminary articles and three main articles.

124 pages 2h 25m reading time

A founding text of modern thinking about world peace and international law.
Argues that countries whose citizens have a say in government (Kant calls them "republics") are less likely to go to war, because the people who would pay for and fight a war must agree to it.
Proposes a voluntary league of free nations, plus a basic right of strangers to be treated without hostility when they visit other lands, rather than a single world government.
Its idea of a league of nations helped inspire the League of Nations after World War I and later the United Nations.
It is a key early source for "democratic peace theory," the widely studied idea that democracies rarely go to war with each other.

Named after a tavern sign

The title jokes about a Dutch inn sign that showed a graveyard under the words "Perpetual Peace."
Answered a real treaty

Kant wrote it soon after Prussia made a separate peace with revolutionary France in the Peace of Basel.
A quick success

The essay sold quickly, and Kant added a new section for a second edition the following year.