Kant and Standing Armies
Samuel Ivan F. Ngan
Article Review August 31, 2012
Forced to be Free, Not Free to be Slaves by J. Gabriel
“Paying men to kill and be killed is inconsistent with the rights of humanity. Paying men to kill and be killed for the maintenance of a standing army results in an inconsistency in the concept of a person. The inconsistency in turn undermines the possibility for the only form of government that is consistent with possibility of perpetual peace, a republican government.” - J. Gabriel
The Article by J. Gabriel, aims to present Rousseau and Kant’s argument that having to pay for standing armies deprives humans of their freedom. The cause for the need of standing armies is that even with the presence of the social contract, there exist no binding contract among nations, and thus Kant seeks to solve violence, yet again, to result in a “peaceful federation among all the peoples of the earth”. Kant, as he always is not fond of inconsistencies, writes that paying soldiers to kill or be killed is against human rights, as it clearly violates the rights of the one killed, it also violates the one being paid to do so.
J. Gabriel writes about two concepts in order to help explain Kant’s arguments. He gathers these concepts from David Thoreau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s, Civil Disobedience and On the Social Contract which illustrate how paying human beings to kill leads to a contradiction of these concepts. First is the concept of a human being. Human beings are by nature should be free of any constraint in choosing for themselves, whether to eat or not to eat, or whether killing an animal is humane or not, or maybe to kill or not to kill. But these so-called freedoms are then consolidated by social contract into a law made by the people themselves so that to be rationally free, “individuals must obey the law they give themselves through universal reason, not subjective inclinations.” Thus in our democratic forms of government
Article Review August 31, 2012
Forced to be Free, Not Free to be Slaves by J. Gabriel
“Paying men to kill and be killed is inconsistent with the rights of humanity. Paying men to kill and be killed for the maintenance of a standing army results in an inconsistency in the concept of a person. The inconsistency in turn undermines the possibility for the only form of government that is consistent with possibility of perpetual peace, a republican government.” - J. Gabriel
The Article by J. Gabriel, aims to present Rousseau and Kant’s argument that having to pay for standing armies deprives humans of their freedom. The cause for the need of standing armies is that even with the presence of the social contract, there exist no binding contract among nations, and thus Kant seeks to solve violence, yet again, to result in a “peaceful federation among all the peoples of the earth”. Kant, as he always is not fond of inconsistencies, writes that paying soldiers to kill or be killed is against human rights, as it clearly violates the rights of the one killed, it also violates the one being paid to do so.
J. Gabriel writes about two concepts in order to help explain Kant’s arguments. He gathers these concepts from David Thoreau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s, Civil Disobedience and On the Social Contract which illustrate how paying human beings to kill leads to a contradiction of these concepts. First is the concept of a human being. Human beings are by nature should be free of any constraint in choosing for themselves, whether to eat or not to eat, or whether killing an animal is humane or not, or maybe to kill or not to kill. But these so-called freedoms are then consolidated by social contract into a law made by the people themselves so that to be rationally free, “individuals must obey the law they give themselves through universal reason, not subjective inclinations.” Thus in our democratic forms of government