Abstract

The following is a critical analysis of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas's contemporary reformulations of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace , and focuses on their respective interpretations of Kant's arguments in favour of the 'negative surrogate' of a foedus pacificum (league of peace) and against the 'positive idea' of world government. It is argued that, however problematic, Habermas's World Parliamentary Democracy, based on the constitution of a reformed United Nations, is superior to Rawls's Society of Peoples--the contemporary ideal of peace must not subordinate the interests of individual persons to the peoples to which they belong, it must be in accordance with the development of a post-Westphalian order, and it must allow for the further development of Kant's idea of a law of world citizenship. It is further argued that Habermas's proposal is the one that is most likely to result in a 'soulless despotism,' as it is not clear that the ideal of peace must necessarily seek the further nullification of state sovereignty and thereby affirm a single, unified, global system of law and litigation. Kant was correct to suggest that a lasting global peace must on the rejection in principle of the threat of use or force among states, including that of a world state.