PHIL 315 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Phantasmagoria, Moral Universalism, Utopia
Document Summary
Since humanity desires peace from its beginnings, for kant the idea of peace itself is not characteristic, but only its profile. It all starts with kant not pursuing any kind of political interests. Furthermore, he only develops a purely philosophical argument; here no religious motives intervene. Finally, kant renounces all phantasmagoria of a political nature and recognizes a fundamental element of politics: conflict. Not there, where love and friendship dominate vainly, in the eternal non-place ("utopia") of freedom of conflict, peace should dominate, but precisely where one must deal with conflicts based on fundamental legal principles- moral. This is related to a very clear restriction. The peace considered by kant is a pure legal task, Other restrictions are sovereignly set aside by the philosopher. What humanity has known of peace until now is like a small island in the great sea of violence and war: limited both temporarily and spatially and reduced to the "christian states of europe".
