Bloomsbury War and Peace after Kant: Hegel’s Political Realism and the Aesthetics of Conflict

This timely volume explores the significance of Kant’s notion of perpetual peace and its implications for contemporary political and philosophical thought. Kant believed that perpetual peace should be conceived not as a static state but rather as a form of activity that needs to be constantly exercised and actualized. But how achievable is this? In 14 chapters, leading and emerging scholars ask whether Kant’s perpetual peace is a political and theoretical utopia, as it is often characterized, or whether it is in fact a fundamentally realistic theoretical proposal that remains productive in light of today’s global conflicts. The book is divided into three neat parts: an introduction to Kant’s vision of cosmopolitan peace, framed in the context of contemporary debates around peace-making; an in-depth examination of the critiques that Hegel, often regarded as a political realist, launched against Kant’s idealism; and a deep dive into the underexplored connection between Kant’s aesthetic thought and his moral-political philosophy. Engaging with a number of Kantian texts from Perpetual Peace to Critique of Judgment, War and Peace after Kant reveals not only the breadth ofKant’s reflections on conflict, but also their enduring relevance to todays world where war seems inescapable.