European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

306 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYIn short, if it is true that war and peace play a dynamizing functionof the development of humanity, Kant´s assertion that war is “thegreatest disgrace of civilised nations“ denounces that specific Europeansituation which we have referred to. Even though the outcome wasnot what Kant was foreseeing, the Revolution indeed came to agreewith him 10 . That is why before the Revolution, the existing system ofStates making war disturbed him and he showed pessimism regardingits prompt transformation. In this context prior to the Revolution, theidea of perpetual peace was simply that: an idea on the horizon 11 .Sometime later, when the civil constitution was dinamised with theadvent of the republican state, Kant wrote as someone who sees that it istime to lift war to a different level: institutionalising or constitutionalizingpeace.The dynamization of legal relations among States, the constitutionof pacts among nations under laws, etc… have become realisabletasks. This gives Kant the perfect occasion to take the idea of perpetualperfect peace to an Essay or an outline of perpetual Peace; i.e. of termsunder which “an agreement among nations” can be established, thattakes war into consideration, lifting it to a different level, legalizing thebehaviour with it, in order to make it impossible. We are in front of asketch which inscribes peace in a framework of legality. The power ofcivilization that encloses this proposal of legality is unquestionable.effects of any political action/situation in the life of society, the place where the marchof liberty is measured. In other words, the primary reference of freedom to the stronglydistinguished will in individuals is undoubtedly Kant.10I want to insist: obviously Kant’s political thought is forged in the historicalexperience of his particular time and age. Kant´s diverse political works can becommented upon according to each of the European historical events that Kantexperienced. This said, I do not believe that the Kantian political proposals can beconsidered less current or inadequate for this reason; instead, they ought to becontemplated from the normative place in which they are formulated, in other words,from their critical edge: there where the scope of human fulfilment is measured, theplenitude that is prevailing and reigning over the daily good that remains proposed asreal action in each case. (I am thinking of the criticism of abstract humanism whichunchains romanticism with darts that will point sharply at Kant).11In Idea..., a paper motivated by critical-epistemological will, as we have explainedin footnote 5, Kant presents the conceptual identity of the landmarks of progress instrict correspondence with a historical time, which is internal to them, so to speak, in asimple mode perhaps, i.e., without establishing any reflection warning us about thestructure of that historical-human (and not physical) time, or about its form of totality,etc. Let us remember the assertion that the state of post-state or federative civilizationimplies experiencing all the hardships and evils of the unsocial sociability, “...so serious,that no wonder Rousseau longed for the state of nature...”, said Kant.