The peace theories of Rawls and Kant: Basic structure, original position and substantive principle

Abstract

Although Rawls claims that his Law of Peoples inherits Kant’s ideas of the Pacific Federation in Perpetual Peace, this study demonstrates that Rawls deviates from Kant’s peace theory in three crucial dimensions: the original position, the basic structure and the substantive principles. First, Rawls’s basic structure in The Law of Peoples has a moral sense and is about the attitude of interactions among nations. In contrast, Kant’s international peace theory has a unique role for the basic global structure in a legal sense, which should be understood inseparably with concepts such as rights, laws and the vertical distribution of sovereignty. Second, Kant’s legal peace is rooted in moral universalism, constituting a justificatory device of the global original position. On the other hand, Rawls justifies the principles of the law of peoples to some collective entities in his device of the international original position. Lastly, Kant’s international project is a kind of legal peace theory, aiming for the juridification of international relationships, while Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is a modified form of democratic peace theory, focusing on the improvement of the domestic political system of sovereign countries.