‘To Perpetual Peace’

The German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote the essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch over two hundred years ago.  Even today, this essay plays a prominent part in discussions about war and peace.
In this lecture, Professor Gertrudis Van de Vijver explores Kant's ideas about peace and war from the three epistemological positions – preformationism, metamorphosis and epigenesis – that Kant defined in an attempt to describe the autonomy of the living organism. Kant considers this problem in consistent political terms on the basis of the question of which social structures would be best able to ensure our autonomy. This is the epigenesis for him: departing from certain basic structures and dispositions while allowing space for historical encounters and chance. From here, Kant is able to outline the primary conditions for stable world peace because, while Kant views human nature as warlike, world peace is not impossible in his view. Gertrudis Van de Vijver shows us the historical and epistemological context in which we should read this essay and explains how we can transfer Kant's ideas to the current political context.

Prof. Gertrudis Van de Vijver is professor at Ghent University where, in 1988, she obtained a doctorate for her dissertation on A sense of purpose in cybernetics, connectionism and cognitivism. Between two epistemological options: naturalism and constructivism. Her research is primarily focused on the epistemological implications of problems of complexity, self-organisation and teleology in the life sciences, psychology and cognition.