Mona Lisa Smile?

There has been considerable speculation over the years about how to interpret "Perpetual Peace". Indeed, some want to consider Kant's treatise as gospel to his views on international and cosmopolitan Right. Others want to take a more skeptical track and view this piece as one written with tongue-in-cheek. I happen to think it both. It is a work that is just as good as Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Indeed, it is because, like this great painting, it leaves us wondering. So today's topic is really about the Mona Lisa Smile of Perpetual Peace.

Much of the debate surrounds the opening paragraph of the treatise. Here Kant writes:

"We can leave open the question whether this satirical caption to the picture of a graveyard, which was painted on the sign of a Dutch innkeeper, applies to human beings in general, or specifically to the heads of state, who can never get enough of war, or even just to philosophers who dream the sweet dream of perpetual peace. The author of this essay shall, however, stipulate one condition: since the practical politician tends to look disdainfully upon the political theorist as a mere academic, whose impractical ideas present no danger to the state (since, in the eyes of the politician, the state must be based on principles derived from experience), and who may show his hand without the worldly statesman needing to pay it any heed; then, in case of a conflict with the theorist, the statesman should deal with him consistently and refrain from any allegations of perceived threat to the state in whatever views that the theorist might dare to set forth and publicly express. With this clausula salvatoria the author of this essay is hereby invoking the proper form to protect himself from any malicious interpretation."

Wow, right? What could our Immanuel be up to here? I think there are several things that need to be parsed out.

1) Is war the cause of human beings in general? That is, it is in our nature to be conflictual with others? Or, is war the result of the powerful few who view it as a sport? A couple of reactions here:

A) we could make a case for the first reading. Kant is quite explicit that human nature is that of "asocial sociability". It causes us to get into conflict with each other in a state of nature, to make our freedom and rights so insecure that we must create the civil condition. It might appear then that even absent the monarchies of Kant's time, where powerful kings expressed their continual desire for conquest and war at the expense of their peoples, war will always be with us if there remains any doubt about or insecurity in rights and freedoms. This is of course supported by claims in the Doctrine of Right and throughout the treatise. We also see him make these claims in Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, Theory and Practice and even parts of the third Critique.

B) we could make a case for the second reading though too. Much of Kant's writings about reform of polities and constitutions is only directed at HEADS of STATE. Kant is not very concerned with telling people how to reform their states to accord with republican principles. Nope. Reform must come from the top-down, and such reform cannot be undertaken precipitously. Recall in Theory and Practice his musings about revolution and rebellion (also mirrored later in the Doctrine of Right), or his explicit advice to rulers to only reform when the time is right in Perpetual Peace and the Conflict of the Faculties. This, it appears lends support to the view that it is only the powerful that we need to worry about. And, even if those powerful are not kings from Kant's time, but despots, tyrants, or even increasingly powerful executives, we are left with the same result. War is the provence of the few.

C) The self deprecating view of philosophers. We, political theorists and philosophers are the only ones who seem concerned about this issue. No one else seems to think it a problem! Indeed, the realists and hawks that fly in political circles think nothing of how to end war, as war is a profit to them! Ask Dick Cheney...

2) What about this 'one condition' stipulated by Kant?

A) This is surely a tip to the sensors of his time, but also, let us not forget, to Socrates. Athens did, after all, kill him. Thought can be considered dangerous... We do not want to incite those sleeping and dozing people to wake! We do not want them clamoring for rights or or benefits....or.....power. Again the politician views the political landscape as a zero-sum game, right? What he loses, the people gain, and visa versa. For even Orwell in 1984 warns us about the danger of thought and the danger of thought control (for example by disrupting thought by nonsensical "Newspeak") But....

Why even bring attention to it? If we read Kant as attempting to assuage the minds of the sensors and the King that his work is not dangerous, then why stress how the "worldly" statesman should deal with the author "consistently"? What is the worry if the "worldly" prudential and experienced statesman knows that this work is nothing but academic hullabaloo? Why mock the "experience" of the statesman at all?

I think it is a tipping of the hand of how "dangerous" Kant thought it to be. Perhaps the ideas laid out in Perpetual Peace are so dangerous to the status quo that he had to make it seem like a trifling? Or, perhaps, much like "Socrates" in the Republic, he must warn his audience that the ideas are so extreme that they will either generate scorn or laughter, so not to worry!

B) Or Kant is just a political spin-doctor himself. We must attribute to him a pretty dry wit anyway, with all of his side comments here and there. Perhaps he intentionally spun this small introduction so tight that we, 216 years later, still wonder about the actual meaning. Thus, like the dispute about Mona Lisa, we will probably, in another 200 years, be attempting to figure out Perpetual Peace. That is, of course, if the human race is still "progressing".