Perpetual Peace
Mary Campbell Smith (1903)
A short political essay by Immanuel Kant, published in 1795 in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the early wars of the revolutionary era. Cast in the form of a mock peace treaty, it lays out the conditions Kant believed would make international peace permanent — including republican government in every state, a federation of free states, and a principle of cosmopolitan hospitality. It is a founding text of modern liberal internationalism and a direct ancestor of the League of Nations and the United Nations.
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