A Quest for Inspiration in the Liberal Peace Paradigm: Back to Bentham?

It is a fundamental dictum in the canon of IR theory that ‘democracies do not wage war against each other’. The philosopher Immanuel Kant is given credit for having originally advanced this essentially liberal research agenda in his essay entitled ‘Perpetual Peace’. The present article intends to offer a reassessment of this view by examining Kant’s critical proposition, confronting it with the contemporary liberal per-spective of Jeremy Bentham, and evaluating its implications on policy recommendations that are based on Kantian ideas. We will see how fundamental epistemological and ethical perspectives are the formative principles of Kant’s peace essay and how these are not compatible with a liberal point of view. Bentham’s ‘Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace ’ provides for a more genuine liberal inspiration. The differences that exist between both philosophers will disclose a norma-tive predicament. KEY WORDS ♦ critical philosophy ♦ democratic peace ♦ ethics ♦ liberalism ♦ political violence The names — albeit not always the ideas — of Thucydides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau or Kant not infrequently appear in present-day articles published in the paradigm of IR theory. From a rhetorical point of view, these benchmarks seem to offer well-established and recognized points of departure for argumentation. At the same time, they elicit the caveat that ‘accounts of a tradition serve to legitimise and circumscribe what counts as proper scholarship ’ (Walker, 1993: 29). Immanuel Kant’s contributions are a case in point. Between 1784 and 1795, Kant, at that time already a famous philosopher, wrote some brief essays to oblige the general public. The last of these essays, entitled Perpetual Peace1 suggests, among other things, tha