So German!
Translation of the Speech by Federal Chancellor Scholz at the Ceremony to Mark the 300th Birthday of Immanuel Kant on April 22nd, 2024 in Berlin
Monday, 22 April 2024 in Berlin
Ladies and gentlemen,
It’s the milestone anniversaries in particular that attract a lot of attention. At the end of the day, of course, it’s a coincidence that this year marks the 300th anniversary of Kant’s birth. A fortunate coincidence, because I think Kant has more to say to us right now than he has for a long time – especially this year, especially at this time, not only from a philosophical point of view, but also from a political and geopolitical perspective.
It starts with the fact that Kant hails from Königsberg. He grew up there, lived there all his life and researched and taught there for decades at the Albertus University. The fact that Kant never left Königsberg seems strange to us today. Kant himself was completely at peace with this. “A large city such as Königsberg on the river Pregel”, he wrote, “can well be taken as an appropriate place for broadening one’s knowledge of human beings as well as of the world, where this knowledge can be acquired without even travelling” 1 .
I, myself, think that travelling is educational. It never hurts to have your own sensory perception, your own experience and your own point of view. But it is true that, in Kant’s day, Königsberg was by no means a backwater somewhere far from the beaten track. In Kant’s day and age, East Prussia’s metropolis was one of the largest cities in Germany, numbering 60,000 inhabitants. It was an important hub of trade and shipping, culture and science – smaller than Berlin or Hamburg, but at the time significantly larger than Cologne, Munich, Leipzig and Frankfurt.
Königsberg is still the city of Immanuel Kant. And this city is no further away from us today, in terms of distance, than it was back then. From Berlin to Königsberg it is barely more than 500 kilometres as the crow flies, i.e. no further than from Berlin to Aachen, Karlsruhe, Ulm or Munich. However, it seems to us to be much further away. It seems to us as if this Königsberg is so far away and that it somehow belongs to another age.
After all, Kant’s Königsberg is called Kaliningrad today and is part of Russia – since 1946 as the capital of the Kaliningrad Oblast, first as part of the Soviet Union and, since 1992, as part of the Russian Federation. And this is precisely how Kant, whose anniversary we are marking, finds himself at the heart of the geopolitical upheavals of our time, at the heart of the watershed that Russia’s ruler Putin has unleashed with his brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.
It’s not just that Kant’s home city, Russia’s exclave Kaliningrad, is once again located in a particularly neuralgic zone of European history and politics. Kant’s big question about the conditions for the possibility of lasting peace in times of war is also back at the top of the agenda today.
That’s why it’s a good idea to revisit Kant’s seminal work “Toward Perpetual Peace” 2 especially now. I’ve done that, and I must say that this very slim volume contains much that can give us orientation and, despite everything, confidence today. I want to talk about certain aspects of this work today.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s important first of all that the great man himself and his work do not fall by the wayside amid the upheavals of the present. According to reports from Kaliningrad, Kant is omnipresent there today. Kant’s name has been appropriated in an all-encompassing way. The philosopher of Königsberg is akin to Kaliningrad’s “brand” today. Although the house in which he was born was demolished a long time ago, the city’s university has been called Immanuel Kant University since 2005. In Kaliningrad, there’s the Kant Market and Kant chocolate. People drink Kant mulled wine and purchase Kant fridge magnets and Kant mugs. And when couples get married in Kaliningrad, they have their picture taken – in a somewhat macabre fashion – in front of Immanuel Kant’s grave.
This all seems to be a direct result of the personal passion for Kant that Russia’s President has expressed publicly time and again in recent years. Kant, Putin emphasises, is one of his “favourite philosophers”. He declared the following on a visit to Kant’s grave in July 2005: “Kant was a categorical opponent of resolving interstate disputes through war. And we are trying to adhere to this part of his teachings. […] I believe that the vision presented by Kant should and can be realised by our generation.” 3 Thus spoke Putin.
And, just three years ago, in 2021, Putin issued a decree ordering that Kant was to be celebrated on a grand scale in Russia on the occasion of his 300th birthday: as one of mankind’s greatest thinkers and philosophers. A large international congress was also planned, which was due to be underway in Kaliningrad at the moment.
But then something came to pass that changed everything. On Putin’s orders, Russia’s troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an independent neighbouring country that is a sovereign state under international law. Since then, Putin has provided a bewildering array of justifications for doing this. Even before the war, in the summer of 2021, he had claimed in his essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” that both nations were in fact “one people”. That is as wrong as the motive behind it is transparent.
Ukraine is an independent nation with its own history and its own diverse culture. Irrespective of this, Ukraine is a sovereign state, in other words – to quote Kant – “a society of human beings, whom no one out the state itself may command or dispose of” 4 .
Putin denies all of this. He sometimes refers to what he calls the “denazification” of Ukraine. On other occasions, he cites the need to defend Russia against the alleged aggression of what he calls the “collective West”. It was not Russia that started the war, but this “collective West”, he asserts.
Ladies and gentlemen, all of these attempts to justify Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine are far-fetched. They are absurd and contrived. They imply threats to Russia that don’t exist. Kant himself was clear-sighted in his criticism of the bad habit engaged in by one who “invents evil aims which [he] attributes to others” 5 . This is precisely what we’re dealing with here.
The reality looks different. Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is a war of choice, a war of aggression chosen by Putin himself. It is Russia’s ruler who has instigated this largest military conflict in Europe since the Second World War – wantonly, destructively and unprovoked.
Under Putin’s supreme command, Russia’s soldiers have committed indescribable war crimes against the civilian population since the beginning of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine, indiscriminately shooting, torturing and raping civilians and abducting children. We must never forget the massacres of civilians carried out by Russian soldiers in Bucha and Irpin. I saw this terrible devastation in Irpin with my own eyes. I will never forget the images I saw that day.
Under Putin’s supreme command, Russian troops have also razed to the ground residential areas, railway stations, hospitals, schools and entire cities elsewhere in Ukraine. Mariupol, Bakhmut, Popasna, Rubizhne and Avdiivka: these and other names stand for destroyed cities and communities that have been wiped out. They stand for a will to destroy that few of us in 21st century Europe would have thought possible in its sheer excess.
Under Putin’s supreme command, Russia’s war against Ukraine has disrupted the global supply of food, energy and raw materials, with dire consequences for many countries in the Global South in particular.
Under Putin’s supreme command, Russia has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its own citizens on the front since the beginning of the war. Forced recruits and mercenaries, prisoners, young and old, in many cases members of ethnic minorities, are all being driven to their deaths as cannon fodder –indiscriminately, ruthlessly, mercilessly.
Or, to take a leaf from the biting criticism that the Enlightenment philosopher Kant expressed of the despotic heads of state of his time, under Putin’s supreme command, subjects in Russia today are once again – in Kant’s words – being “treated as objects to be used and used up at will” 6 . It was precisely this instrumentalisation and exploitation of people that Kant denounced. This is diametrically opposed to all of his notions of human rights, freedom, autonomy and the dignity of each and every human being. Putin has not the remotest right to invoke Kant for this reason alone.
Ladies and gentlemen, what applies to Kant’s idea of human rights and human dignity also applies to his thoughts on war and peace. Here, too, Putin doesn’t have the remotest right to refer in a positive light to Kant – on the contrary.
Since Russia launched its neo-imperial war of aggression against Ukraine under Putin’s supreme command, nothing in Europe and beyond has been the same again. “The world afterwards is no longer the same as it was before,” is how I put it to the German Bundestag on 27 February 2022.
We have had to deal with the impacts of this historic watershed moment together ever since – and we are dealing with them. Part of this is supporting the Ukrainians in their brave fight for freedom and independence – with humanitarian and financial assistance, and also with weapons. I consider this to be necessary not only for political and strategic reasons, but also with a view to the ethics of peace. After all, defending one’s own existence against an aggressor creates the preconditions for Ukraine’s ability to engage in peace negotiations freely and without constraints and also for Russia’s willingness to enter into such negotiations. That’s why we’re supporting Ukraine as it is under attack together with all of our partners – for as long as it takes.
Ladies and gentlemen, with his illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, Putin is not least inflicting the most severe damage on his own country and, above all, the citizens of his own country. Whether business, culture, civil society exchange, science and research, in every conceivable field, it is Putin’s regime itself that is robbing millions of Russians of their freedom and opportunities, their development and future or, to use a Kantian concept once again, their human dignity and autonomy.
This year’s anniversary of Kant speaks to this all-encompassing act of self-harm. It was inevitable that the German Kant-Gesellschaft decided not to hold its international anniversary congress in Kaliningrad this year as planned. At the end of the day, it’s obvious that Enlightenment and war of aggression cannot be uttered in the same breath. The categorical imperative and war crimes cannot be uttered in the same breath.
However, this in no way implies that Putin and his power apparatus will now refrain from abusing Kant for their own ends. The opposite is the case. Especially in this anniversary year, we are hearing particularly disturbing and absurd interpretations of Kant coming from Russia. Putin declared the following on a visit to Kaliningrad only at the beginning of this year: “Kant is a foundational thinker.
Of course, his call to use one’s own reason is as relevant today as it can be. For Russia, in practical terms, this means being guided by its national interests.” Well, well! I sincerely doubt that this is what Immanuel Kant had in mind when he declared “Sapere aude!” to be the motto of the Enlightenment in 1784. Kant was certainly not concerned with national interests in his “Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” 7 “Have the courage to make use of your own intellect!” 8 – Rather, it focused on the calling of every individual to “think for himself” 9 , on criticism, on the dignity, autonomy and freedom of each and every individual. In Putin’s autocracy, all of this is trampled underfoot and nipped in the bud on a daily basis, with censorship, disinformation on the internet and surveillance, for example. Where the “owners of the state” 10 – another of Kant’s concepts – of the 21st century employ such practices, they in fact do not want citizens who think for themselves. Rather, they want ignorant and immature subjects because they can only manipulate and use them “up” as “objects to be used […] at will” for their own ends. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Kant would condemn such methods in the strongest possible terms.
Nevertheless, Putin’s regime continues to endeavour to appropriate Kant and his work at almost any cost. Michael Thumann, a long-time Russia correspondent for “DIE ZEIT”, puts this in a nutshell: “There are at least two Kants, a philosopher we revere in Germany and a thinker buried in Kaliningrad who is being connected with Putin’s worldview.”
But Kant’s ability to be connected to war and violence has its limits, even in Russia. This may explain why anti-Kant sentiments have recently been heard from the Russian power apparatus. Governor of the Kaliningrad region Anton Alikhanov recently stated the following at the congress of the Russian Political Science Association: “Today, in 2024, we’re bold enough to assert that not only the First World War began with the work of Kant, but so did the current conflict in Ukraine.” According to Alikhanov, Kant is not only “one of the spiritual creators of the modern West”, but he also has an “almost direct relationship to the global chaos” we’re facing. What’s more, he added, he has “a direct connection to the military conflict in Ukraine” 11 .
It beggars belief. Kant of all people, for whom peace was the “highest […] good” 12 , is now purported to be to blame for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. If Kant really was to blame for Russia’s war against Ukraine, how would that fit together with Putin’s various attempts to use Kant as the “greatest thinker of mankind” for Russia’s ends?
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s quite simple. None of this fits together in any way, shape or form. It doesn’t fit together because Kant is simply out of the question as a proponent of wars of aggression, breaches of international law and despotism per se. Kant’s categorical stance is absolutely clear. “No state shall forcibly interfere in the constitution and government of another state,” 13 he writes. But that is exactly what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Kant issues an emphatic warning against wars of aggression and mercenaryism, against the “use of human beings as mere machines and tools” 14 . But the cynical slaughtering of its own recruits, prisoners and mercenaries, which the Russian regime is engaging in on a massive scale in the war against Ukraine, is none other than this. Kant goes on to demand that no state should “allow itself such hostilities as would make mutual trust in a future period of peace impossible”. Methods such as the “employment of assassins” and “poisoners”, the insidious use of “diabolical arts” or the “incitement of treason […] within the enemy state” 15 – none of this should happen under any circumstances.
We would put what he meant differently today, but it’s absolutely clear what Kant was talking about. Methods like these seem all too familiar to us from Russia’s actions right now. Kant issues an emphatic warning against their use. He writes the following: “For there must remain, even in the middle of war, some degree of trust in the enemy’s manner of thinking, since otherwise no peace could possibly be reached, and hostilities would degenerate into a war of extermination.” Here, Kant clairvoyantly anticipates what has become possible in our atomic age, namely that “both parties […] can be eradicated simultaneously”, which ultimately, according to Kant, “could bring about perpetual peace only over the great graveyard of humanity”. 16
Ladies and gentlemen, these observations and considerations alone show that the great Enlightenment philosopher Kant was anything but a naive preacher of peace. Like us today, he lived in an age of great upheaval and armed conflict. He had no illusions about the viciousness of human nature, still less about, as he wrote, “heads of state, who can never get enough of war” 17 .
Despite this, and for this very reason, Kant reflects on how lasting peace could become possible. Despite this, and for this very reason, Kant counters the law of the strong with the authority of the law. Despite this, and for this very reason, Kant puts his faith in the future and in progress. It is precisely this that makes his sketch “Toward Perpetual Peace” so very topical. It is precisely for this reason that it is so worthwhile to consult this little book again, especially now, in these unpeaceful times.
For Kant, it was clear that the “state of nature […] is not a state of peace […] but a state of war. […] Hence the state of peace must be established” 18 . Established, guarded, organised, constantly safeguarded and, if necessary, restored, always using the means of law and politics, which Kant expressly understood as the “the applied doctrine of right” 19 .
Ladies and gentlemen, after decades of peace, we Europeans have to get used to the idea again that the peace that most of us have enjoyed for so long as a self-evident normality and “natural state” is not what it seems. It is in fact not “natural”. It still has to be “established” today – and once again today. It is therefore all the more important that we realise which political and legal conditions, even though they do not guarantee peace among states, nevertheless promote it and make it possible in the first place.
For Kant, these are the legally guaranteed freedom and equality of all citizens – including women – in representative democracies, a functioning separation of powers, a liberal and freely debating public sphere, flourishing global trade with its, according to Kant, “mutual self-interest” 20 and, last but not least, a federal confederation of sovereign states.
For Kant, a global legal order in which all states are organised in a republican and democratic manner at home and with respect for the rights of all other states abroad was the “glory of the world” 21 to be strived for. That would be a world in which no smaller neighbours would have to fear larger ones internationally and in which citizens within all countries would be protected from tyranny.
Let me tell you one thing: this thinking, this conviction, this objective of Kant’s has had a profound influence on my own political work. At any rate, this is the quintessence of what I also consider to be worth striving for, against all the odds and in spite of all setbacks, but nevertheless, in Kant’s words, in a “continual approach” 22 .
Ladies and gentlemen, not a single one of the ingredients necessary for lasting peace in Kant’s view was in any way tried and tested, let alone firmly established, during his own lifetime. Since that time, much of this has become reality, here in Germany, within the framework of the European Union, and to some extent at the global level. We have achieved much more than Kant himself would probably have thought possible. Let’s be clear about how indispensable, how precious, these achievements are when it comes to peace, today more than ever!
Yes, we have every reason to criticise and address the ongoing inadequacies of our achievements; a UN Security Council, for example, in which Russia can prevent its own sanctioning and condemnation by veto; or international law, which, contrary to Kant’s hopes, unfortunately is not yet flanked by a world court that has strong powers of enforcement. The hope that the global “spirit of trade” will secure lasting peace by itself, because, according to Kant, it “cannot coexist with war” 23 , is at the very least clouded.
Nevertheless, for heaven’s sake, we should not be so reckless as to jeopardise what we have achieved since Kant’s time – whether on account of arrogance or weariness. If we did that, we would be jeopardising the greatest political good of all: peace itself.
Ladies and gentlemen, the burning question remains, namely how peace can be possible again tomorrow where war is still being waged bitterly today, where people are being shot at and killed, as is currently the case in Ukraine or, in a completely different conflict, in Gaza. This issue not only concerns those who are directly affected by such hostilities, but it is also on the minds of citizens here in our country. It’s obvious that we cannot find any practical guidelines for resolving armed conflicts in the 21st century in Kant’s “Toward Perpetual Peace”. But the philosopher does offer a number of very wise and thought-provoking pointers.
I have already mentioned one of them. It concerns the need to renounce all methods of war that would destroy any remaining confidence between the warring parties and thus render a later peace settlement impossible. We can only urgently call on the warring parties of our age to be aware of this danger – and to act accordingly.
Kant’s second pointer concerns the question as to the conditions under which warring parties can and should make peace. For Kant, it’s clear that whoever is attacked may defend themselves, and they should also not be forced to enter into a peace treaty that the aggressor concludes with the “ill will” to resume hostilities at the “first good opportunity” 24 . Such a peace treaty, Kant writes, “would represent a mere cease-fire, a postponement of hostilities, and not peace. For peace signifies the end to all hostilities” 25 .
I think we should bear this warning from Kant in mind when looking for ways out of the wars of our time. Where shots are fired and people are being killed, a ceasefire may be desirable if it offers, at the very least, the prospect of paving the way for a lasting and just peace. But where nothing better could be negotiated or brokered at the end of the day than a temporary “postponement of hostilities”, this result would be the prelude to the next war. The danger is great at any rate. And where the rights of the individual count for nothing, where oppression and tyranny hold sway – there, too, no lasting peace can be achieved. Kant imparts no other wisdom when he insists that “[t]he rights of humankind must be held sacred, whatever it may cost those in power” 26 .
All of us long for peace in our time. But peace at any price – that is no peace. Kant also teaches us this insight. Reason and historical experience should teach us to take them to heart.
Thank you very much.
Notes
1 Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, translated by Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 4.
2 Immanuel Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other
Writings on Politics, Peace, and History, translated by David L. Colclasure, New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 2006, p. 67–109.
3 https://www.komersant.info/en/ne-tilky-borshch-putina-zvynuvatyly-u-sprobi-pryvlasnyty-immanuila-kanta/
4 Immanuel Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace”, p. 68.
5 Ibid., p. 108.
6 Ibid., p. 69.
7 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”, in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History, translated by David L. Colclasure, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006, p. 17.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 18.
10 Immanuel Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace”, p. 75.
11 https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/02/12/governor-of-russia-s-kaliningrad-says-german-philosopher-
immanuel-kant-directly-tied-to-war-in-ukraine
12 Immanuel Kant, “Metaphysics of Morals, Doctrine of Right, § 43–§ 62”, in Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History, translated by David L. Colclasure, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006, p. 149.
13 Immanuel Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, p. 70.
14 Ibid., p. 69.
15 Ibid., pp. 70 f.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 67.
18 Ibid., p. 72.
19 Ibid., p. 94.
20 Ibid., p. 92.
21 Cited in Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 342.
22 Immanuel Kant, “Metaphysics of Morals, Doctrine of Right, § 43–§ 62”, p. 149.
23 Immanuel Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, p. 92.
24 Ibid., p. 68.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., p. 104.
For more on Immanuel Kant, check out 300 Years of Kant here, via the Goethe-Institut Canada.