【Course description】
This course aims to reflect philosophically on peace and other related topics, reading Immanuel Kant’s celebrated essay, Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, in English translation (the original German title is Zum Ewigen Frieden: ein Philosophischer Entwurf). In this essay, Kant discusses political institutions that will secure world peace as well as concrete measures to promote peace among the nation states.

This essay has been widely read since it appeared in 1795 and it is said to be one of the intellectual sources of the establishment of the League of Nations and the United Nations. In reading this classic, we will discuss some fundamental philosophical questions concerning peace and war, modern nations states, democracy, human rights, history, politics, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, etc.