Peace as Security: Kant’s Ideal of Peace | On Campus & Online

Yes We Kant: Lectures in Critical Philosophy and the Legacy of the Enlightenment

For the Series >

Tuesday | 07.01.25 | 18:00

Third Lecture |

(In Hebrew)

Dr. Dror Yinon, The Program for Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies, Bar-Ilan University; The Spinoza Center, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

Kant’s systematic critical oeuvre does not include an essay titled “A Critique of Political Reason,” nor does it offer political philosophy among the essays included in the system. The discussion of the political, as along with the discussion of history, was relegated to his later writings. In general, Kant’s philosophical-political view is the least known of his views. Nevertheless, Kant did not ignore the challenges that politics posed to his thought, and he wrote about them in the last two decades of his life. Is there a gap between the Kantian moral philosophy and its practice, and primarily—is it possible to realize the moral imperative within the political framework? What is incumbent on a political society? Kant’s response is to posit peace as a key concept in the relations between human societies and as an ideal of the international law that nations must strive to realize. In this lecture we will clarify, among other things, the relevance of Kant’s position to our times. 

 

In celebration of Immanuel Kant's 300th birthday

The 14th Series of The Spinoza Center

Produced by Prof. Pini Ifergan, Dr. Dror Yinon

This year, 2024, is the 300th birthday of Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern era and of Western philosophy in general. It is hard to find an intellectual discipline or an aspect of modern daily life untouched by Kant’s philosophy: the place of human beings in the world and the rational imperatives that bind them shape their scientific activity, moral consciousness, and aesthetic appreciation of the natural environment and the art they create. Kant, perhaps more than any other philosopher, is identified with the Enlightenment, and alongside it has been subject in recent years to reexamination and sharp criticism of its failures, as its problematic aspects are exposed along with disappointment over its unrealized promises of progress, of a steady march toward the improvement of humankind.

As in many places worldwide, the Spinoza Center at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute will mark the event with a series of lectures on various aspects of Kant’s philosophy that may enrich thinking about current social and political issues.

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