Kant on Peace and Conflict

Abstract

On the one hand, Immanuel Kant is famous for his idea of “perpetual peace”; on the other hand, he argues that human beings need antagonism and conflict in order to develop and flourish. By emphasising both the requirement of peace and the productivity of conflict, Kant pays tribute to the inherent ambivalence of human nature that his well-known phrase of man’s “unsociable sociability” (ungesellige Geselligkeit) is meant to capture. But how should we deal with this apparent and somewhat disconcerting ambiguity, which characterises human beings and is the source of never-ending tension? In what way, if any, do peace and conflict go together?