From Erasmus to Kant

Not only “what Europe is”, but “what it should become”

So far we have asked what Europe is. Now we ask: what should it become?

The reason people asked this question is tragic. The history of Europe is full of wars between Europeans: the Hundred Years’ War, the wars of religion, the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), the wars of Louis XIV and of Napoleon, then the two world wars.

Almost every great project of European unity was born after a war or during one. European unity was not at first an economic project, but a peace project.

In 2012 the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize for its contribution, over more than six decades, to peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights. For us the topic is very close: since 2022, the largest war in Europe since 1945 has been fought on Moldova’s border.

Six centuries of plans

The first plans were meant only for Christian princes. Gradually the circle widened: in 1623 Émeric Crucé proposed an assembly of all the states of the world, including non-Christian ones. Notice how the solution changes: from a council of princes to a parliament, then to a federation of free states and to “the United States of Europe”.

Most of these plans were received with irony and never applied. But their ideas survived and, in the 20th century, made their way into real treaties.

A European without a fixed homeland

Erasmus of Rotterdam (c. 1466–1536) was the best-known scholar of the Renaissance in northern Europe. He lived in Paris, Cambridge, Italy and Basel, and wrote only in Latin, the common language of the learned.

Republic of letters (Lat. respublica litterarum): the community of scholars across Europe, linked by letters, books and the Latin language, across state borders. Example: Erasmus had correspondents in dozens of cities.

In 1522 the reformer Zwingli offered him citizenship of Zurich. Erasmus replied that he wished to be a “citizen of the world”, belonging to all, or rather a foreigner everywhere.

Since 1987 his name has been carried by the European academic mobility programme. Erasmus+ is also open to students from Moldova. Few know that Erasmus was one of the first great critics of war.

The peace that complains

In 1515 Erasmus published an essay named after an old Latin proverb, from his collection of Adages.

“War is sweet to those who have not tried it.”Erasmus, Adagia, IV, i, 1: Dulce bellum inexpertis (1515)

In 1517 he wrote The Complaint of Peace (Querela pacis), while the great kings of the day were planning a meeting for a general peace. The form of the text is unusual: Peace speaks in the first person. She complains that she is driven out from everywhere: from the palaces of kings, from universities, where scholars quarrel, from monasteries and even from families.

Her arguments can be summed up in four, as in the diagram.

Erasmus’s solution: education, not institutions

Erasmus does not propose a “European government”. His solutions are moral and educational. Princes must be brought up in the spirit of peace: in 1516 he had written The Education of a Christian Prince for the future emperor Charles V.

Arbitration: the settlement of a conflict by a neutral person or group chosen by the parties, instead of force. Example: two neighbours quarrelling over a plot of land ask someone they both respect to decide.

And peace is worth buying even at a high price, because every war costs more. Erasmus believed that a Europe united by the same culture and the same faith could settle its conflicts by reason, not by arms.

The first detailed plan for perpetual peace

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) involved almost all the great powers of Europe. During the peace negotiations at Utrecht, a French priest in the French delegation, Charles-Irénée Castel, Abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658–1743), published his Project for Making Peace Perpetual in Europe (1713). It is the first European peace plan written with the precision of a treaty.

Perpetual peace: a peace that is not just a truce between two wars, but a lasting state, guaranteed by rules. Example: a war between France and Germany seems unthinkable today.

The sovereigns conclude a perpetual alliance, guarantee one another’s territories and send representatives to a permanent Senate of Europe, which arbitrates disputes. Whoever attacks another state becomes the enemy of all. Expenses are paid from common contributions.

What remains of the project

Some of these ideas will sound familiar. The idea that an attack on one is an attack on all is called collective security. It would be taken up by the League of Nations (1920), the UN (1945) and NATO (1949).

Collective security: a system in which states undertake to respond together to an attack on any one of them. Example: Article 5 of the NATO Treaty.

In its own time, however, the project was received with irony. Cardinal Fleury, France’s chief minister, is said to have told the abbé that he had forgotten an essential article: first to send missionaries to convert the hearts of the princes.

Rousseau: the project is good, but will not be realised

Jean-Jacques Rousseau put the abbé’s manuscripts in order. He wrote an Abstract of the project (1761), full of sympathy, and a Judgement on Perpetual Peace (posthumous, 1782), which criticises it.

Rousseau does not say the project is wrong: applied, it would benefit everyone. The problem is the princes, who want more power abroad and at home, and war helps them in both. They will not willingly accept a project that would limit them.

“If the project is not realised, it is not because it is chimerical, but because men are not rational.”J.-J. Rousseau, Judgement on Perpetual Peace (paraphrased)

His conclusion is even more troubling. A European federation could only be created through revolutions, and such a change might do more harm in a moment than it would prevent for centuries. Hence his question: is a European league something to be desired or something to be feared?

Two authors, two views of human nature

Both want peace. The difference lies in how they see the powerful: Saint-Pierre believes reason will persuade them, Rousseau that their passions are stronger.

The lesson of both still holds today: peace needs common institutions, but institutions do not work if those in power have an interest in getting round them.

“It’s a utopia!” Is that an argument?

When someone proposes an ambitious project (perpetual peace, EU accession, eliminating corruption), the reply often comes quickly: “It’s a utopia!”. Let us analyse the reply.

Political utopia: a project for an ideal society, considered impossible to achieve. The word comes from Thomas More’s book Utopia (1516) and means “no place”. Example: a Europe without visas and without Franco-German wars seemed a utopia in 1913.

Sometimes the reply is just an appeal to ridicule: the project is dismissed with irony, without examining the arguments. At other times it hides a real argument, as with Rousseau: a project can be good but not achievable today, and may become achievable if conditions change.

The rule: when you hear “it’s a utopia”, ask for clarification. Is this about what is good or about what is possible? And why, exactly, would it not be possible? But Rousseau also warns us of the opposite mistake: in the name of a utopia, some have justified violence.

A title taken from an inn sign

In April 1795, Prussia and revolutionary France signed the Peace of Basel. A few months later Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), professor at Königsberg and the most important philosopher of the age, published a text of about fifty pages: Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch (Zum ewigen Frieden).

The title is ironic. Kant says he took it from the sign of a Dutch inn on which a graveyard was painted: the only place where peace is truly “perpetual”. His question is whether perpetual peace can also exist among the living.

The work imitates the form of a peace treaty: it has preliminary articles, definitive articles, supplements and even a “secret article”. This is not mere play. Kant wants to show that peace is not a gift of luck but a problem of law: it must be established by rules, just as a state is established.

What must stop: the preliminary articles

The six preliminary articles list the practices that make trust between states impossible. They do not yet build peace, but they clear the ground for it.

Perhaps the most important is the second: a state cannot be inherited, exchanged, bought or given away, because it is not property but a community of people.

The last article says that even in war there are limits: without them, no future peace is possible.

Moldova in Kant’s articles

Moldova’s history offers concrete examples of these principles. In 1812, by the Peace of Bucharest, the Russian and Ottoman Empires decided the fate of the territory between the Prut and the Dniester without asking its inhabitants. This is exactly the “exchange” of territories and people condemned by the second article.

In 1939, the secret additional protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact divided Eastern Europe into spheres of influence: a typical case of a “secret reservation”, forbidden by the first article.

The Declaration of Independence of 27 August 1991 refers explicitly to this pact. Kant’s principles can be found in our state’s birth certificate.

Three levels of peace: the definitive articles

The most important part of the work is the three definitive articles. They no longer say what must stop, but how peace is built.

Kant describes peace on three levels, one inside the other: within the state, between states and between people, as citizens of the world.

Cosmopolitanism (Gk. kosmopolites, “citizen of the world”): the idea that every person belongs, beyond their own state, to a community of all humankind. Example: Erasmus wanted to be a “citizen of the world”; Kant turns the idea into a right.

The first article: the republic

“The civil constitution of every state shall be republican.”I. Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795), first definitive article

Republican constitution: for Kant, this does not just mean “without a king”, but freedom, the same laws for all, equality among citizens, separation of powers and representation. Example: a constitutional monarchy can also be “republican” in this sense.

Why would the republic bring peace? In a republic, declaring war requires the consent of the citizens. And those who would have to fight, pay and rebuild after the war will think twice before starting “such a bad game”. An absolute monarch loses nothing of his feasts, hunts and palaces: he can declare war as if it were a party.

The second article: a federation, not a world state

“The right of nations shall be based on a federalism of free states.”I. Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795), second definitive article

Between states, as once between individuals, there is a “state of nature”: each takes justice into its own hands, by force. Individuals left it by creating the state. It would seem logical for states likewise to create a world state.

Kant rejects this solution. A world state could become a “soulless despotism” and erase the diversity of peoples. He proposes something more modest: a federation of free states (Völkerbund), a voluntary alliance that expands gradually and only keeps the peace, without taking over the sovereign power of its members.

Negative surrogate: Kant’s name for the federation. It is not the ideal solution (a state of all peoples), but the possible substitute, which at least prevents war. Example: an agreement between neighbours not to quarrel is not a friendship, but it is better than quarrelling.

The third article: hospitality

Besides the right within states and the right between states, Kant introduces a new right: the right of people as citizens of the world.

“Hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else’s territory.”I. Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795), third definitive article (trans. H. B. Nisbet)

The right is limited: the stranger may visit, but has no right to settle wherever he likes. Kant nevertheless uses it for a harsh critique of colonialism: Europeans claim merely to “visit” other continents, but conquer them and enslave their inhabitants. His argument: the Earth is a sphere, so people must learn to live alongside one another.

“The peoples of the earth have thus entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere.”I. Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795), third definitive article (trans. H. B. Nisbet)

In 2022 the Republic of Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe, took in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ukraine. Ordinary families opened their homes to strangers: Kant’s hospitality in its most concrete form.

The guarantee: “even a nation of devils”

Why would this project be achievable if people are not saints? Kant answers that peace does not depend on people’s goodness, but on well-built institutions.

“The problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils, so long as they possess understanding.”I. Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795), first supplement (paraphrased)

Not everyone needs to be good; the rules must make the selfishness of some limit that of others. Here lies the great difference from Erasmus.

Moreover, Kant believes that history itself works for peace: the spirit of commerce cannot coexist with war and makes people seek peace out of interest, even before they seek it out of duty. The idea that economic interdependence makes war too costly would, a century and a half later, underlie the European Coal and Steel Community (1951).

Critical thinking: analysing Kant’s argument

The argument linking the republic and peace can be reconstructed as in the diagram. Premise 3 is unstated, but without it the conclusion does not follow.

Hidden premise: an unstated premise that the argument nevertheless needs. Example: “Ion is a student, so he has free time” hides the premise “all students have free time”.

The argument is valid, but is it sound? The hidden premise is the weak point. In August 1914 enthusiastic crowds took to the streets in several countries with parliaments to welcome the start of the war. Propaganda and disinformation can make citizens support a war that is not in their interest (we will return to this in Lecture 12).

On the other hand, liberal democracies have almost never fought one another: the theory of the “democratic peace”, formulated by Michael Doyle in 1983, with reference to Kant.

Careful: a correlation does not automatically prove a cause. What else might explain peace between democracies?

Hugo and “the United States of Europe”

In the 19th century Europe experienced a new force, nationalism, and nation states built ever larger armies. In this context the writer Victor Hugo presided, on 21 August 1849, over the International Peace Congress in Paris.

“A day will come when you, France, Russia, Italy, England, Germany, all you nations of the continent, without losing your distinct qualities and your glorious individuality, will merge closely into a higher unity and form the European brotherhood.”Victor Hugo, opening speech to the Peace Congress, Paris, 1849 (translated from the French)

Hugo announced a day when cannonballs would be replaced by votes. Note the formula: unity without losing national identity. We find the same idea in the EU’s motto, “United in diversity” (Lecture 9).

In 1870, in exile on the island of Guernsey, Hugo planted an oak tree he called “the oak of the United States of Europe”. The oak is still alive today.

Coudenhove-Kalergi and the Paneuropean movement

After the First World War the idea moved from literature into politics. In 1923 Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894–1972), a young Austrian diplomat, published the book Pan-Europa and founded the Paneuropean Union, the first organised movement for the unification of Europe.

His argument: a fragmented Europe would either be destroyed by a new conflict or dominated by the powers outside it. The solution: a political and economic union with a common market. Among its supporters: Aristide Briand, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Albert Einstein.

The project also had limits: Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europe left out Britain, regarded as a world empire, and Soviet Russia. The question from the first lecture returns: where does Europe end, and who decides?

It took another world war for these ideas to become reality. On 9 May 1950 Robert Schuman proposed pooling the coal and steel production of France and Germany. But that is the subject of Lecture 5.

Is the EU Kant’s project?

We return to the question of the lecture. The European Union is often presented as “the fulfilment of Kant’s dream”. To see whether this is true, we compare the 1795 project with today’s Union, point by point.

The similarities are clear: the democratic condition, voluntary accession, gradual enlargement. The big differences concern relations between states and the rights of people.

Three possible answers

The EU as Kant’s fulfilment. The member states are democracies, war between them is unthinkable, accession is voluntary. Jürgen Habermas, for example, saw the European project as a continuation of Kant’s idea of subjecting relations between states to law.

The EU as a departure from Kant. Kant asked for a minimal federation. The EU has a common currency, law that takes precedence over national laws and institutions that take binding decisions. Kant feared a central power that would erase the differences between peoples, as Eurosceptics do today (Lecture 13).

The EU as a Kantian horizon. Perhaps the most precise: the EU was not built to a philosophical plan, but through small, concrete steps. Kant’s ideas worked as a horizon: a direction, not a blueprint.

Build your position

Answer the question of the lecture using the scheme from Lecture 1. There is no imposed answer: what matters is that you can support your thesis and answer someone who disagrees.

Example thesis: “The EU is not the fulfilment of Kant’s project but goes beyond it, because it gives people much more than the right to visit.” Now look for the best objection.