Perpetual Peace

Immanuel Kant's short essay from seventeen ninety-five, written in the form of a peace treaty and addressed to rulers who treat war as ordinary politics. For the last episode of the series, Paul Guyer reads Toward Perpetual Peace: the strange story behind its title, the three articles meant to make war obsolete, and a right of hospitality aimed straight at the colonial empires of Europe. Kant thought China and Japan had every right to shut their doors. He also thought nature itself guarantees that peace will come. Guyer accepts the first claim and dismantles the second, and the reason why is the argument this whole series has been building.