‘Eternal Peace’ or ‘Eternal War’? (Immanuil Kant <i>versus</i> Carl Clauzewitz)
Philosophical understanding of the problems of war and peace in the context of Enlightenment ideas has become especially relevant today, amid conflictness rising in the world. The subject of my research is the concepts of peace and war in the works of Kant and Clausewitz, and my article is a comparative study of the basic components of these concepts into "Eternal Peace" and "On War". In I. Kant’s “Eternal Peace” (1795) and C. Clauzewitz’s “On War” (1832), the similar questions are discussed: war and peace as the ways of co-existence of different states on the world space. According to Kant, a war is a survival of “natural”, primitive, non- civilizational state of society; in this case lawsuits among sides are settled not in court, but by the use of application of force. Clausewitz supposes the war is natural continuation of policy: if in the case of peaceful relations the sides (including states) build its relations by diplomatic way under war force is applied and it is naturally just as diplomatic relations. If Kant think authentic peaceful treat cannot be cause for a new war, but point of view of Clausewitz comes to ‘war’ and ‘peace’ are two variants of the same strategy, and transition from strategy in the form of “peace” to the strategy in the form of ‘war’ can be connected with change of political course of a state in general limits of safeguarding of its own security and strengthening of its positions on international scene.