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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
The spirit that breathes in the Kantian essay Perpetual Peace must benefit every friend of justice, and even our most distant progeny will admire in this monument the elevated frame of mind of the venerable sage. His bold and dignified discourse is unaffected and candid, and it is spiced with a biting wit and a clever spirit. It contains a rich abundance of fruitful ideas and new insights for politics, morals and the history of humanity. For me, the opinion of the author concerning the nature of republicanism, and its relations to other kinds and conditions of the state, was especially interesting. The examination of it occasioned me to think through the subject anew. Hence arose the following remarks.
‘The civil constitution’, Kant says on p. 99, ‘of every state shall be republican. A republican constitution is founded firstly upon the principle of freedom for all members of a society (as men), secondly upon the principle of dependence of everyone upon a single common legislation (as subjects), and thirdly upon the principle of legal equality for everyone (as citizens).’ It seems to me that this definition is unsatisfactory. If the concept of legal dependence already lies in the concept of a constitution in general (p. 99 note), then it cannot be the criterion of the specific character of a republican constitution. Since no principle is given for the division of a constitution in general into its various kinds, the question arises whether the attributes of freedom and equality exhaust the complete concept of a republican constitution.
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