Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

THE RAWLSIAN IDEA OF DEMOCRATIC PEACE AS PEACE BY SATISFACTION
autonomy with individualism and social order (see Doyle, 1997: 257); the
second article describes the way liberal republics will progressively establish
peace among themselves by means of the foedus pacifi cum – Kant says
that this pacifi c federation is feasible (Kant, 1795: 134); and the third article
establishes a cosmopolitan law to operate in conjunction with the pacifi c
union, a law limited by a condition of universal hospitality (see Idem, 126-
140). Th is cosmopolitan right is rooted in the human right to freedom, a
right that acquires a normative meaning in civil society. Since this is the
right of a foreigner not to be treated with hostility in any other people’s territory,
human hospitality “does appear to include the right of access and the
obligation of maintaining the opportunity for citizens to exchange goods
and ideas, without imposing the obligation to trade” (Doyle, 1997: 258). It is
a type of right referring to voluntary actions and that depends on reciprocity
(Höff e, 2001: 140).
Th e zone of peace, which Kant called the foedus pacifi cum, has been
established between liberal societies since the eighteenth century. Th us, the
peace between liberal states, the aggression against non-liberal states and
complacency about the future are assumed to be predominant features of
international relations among liberal states; and this allowed the vision of
the state as “a coalition or conglomerate of coalitions and interests, representing
individuals and groups” (Doyle, 1997: 19) to spread; as protector
and promoter of human rights. Antithetic to this vision is the realistic way
of understanding the political world as a jungle, given the constancy of the
possibility of war among all states and societies - these are conceived as natural,
rational and national actors of the state of war. In this sense, it is considered
that the moments of peace among states emanate from the balance
of forces between them and not from their cooperation and integration.
Th e idea of democratic peace, based on the observation that democracies
do not go to war with each other, is the basis of liberal portrait of
the political world, the perception that this world is “at the minimum a
heterogeneous state of peace and war and might become a state of global
peace, in which the expectations of war disappear” (Idem, 210). However,
if the constant appeal of the paladins of the democratic peace thesis to the
philosophical project of “Perpetual Peace” relies on the synchrony between
the contemporary concept of democracy and the Kantian concept of republic,
both of which are concerned with the representative system – which
allows for the Kantian distinction between a republican constitution and a
democratic constitution to be overcome (Kant, 1795: 107) it eventually falls
under suspicion. And this because the Kantian theory of peace conforms to
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