What is a “just war”? Why can full-blown democracy be just as terrifying as tyranny? When is it okay to force your will on someone else? Is it possible to criticize a national trait and still be a citizen? Why doesn’t logic always explain everything? And how is the fact that land is limited connected to the rise of laws and the birth of the state?

Innate thoughts and ways of knowing

Kant lived from 1724 to 1804 and is considered one of the founding thinkers of European liberalism. He drew a sharp line between nature and freedom. His work laid the groundwork for the German constitution and helped inspire the liberation movements and liberal values that shaped 18th-century Europe.

In the first part of his life, Kant followed European rationalism. For rationalists, the core idea is innate knowledge, something we’re born with. It’s not learned from experience, not something we invent and definitely not a product of imagination. Their go-to method for figuring things out is deduction.

Here’s a simple example of deduction: the idea of God as something we’re born with. You can’t understand God without first realizing who you are. You see yourself as a limited, uncertain person, someone who doubts and struggles. And if you feel doubt, it means you’re not all-powerful. You can only understand that you’re imperfect if you compare yourself to something perfect – God. Innate ideas aren’t just about logic or strict beliefs. They’re more than that.

Transcendental means a type of knowledge that looks at how we understand things, not the things themselves, but how our mind works when we try to understand them.

Kant’s revolution in Philosophy.

Pre-Kantian philosophy is known as the dogmatic way of thinking. It’s based on the idea that our thoughts or ideas must match reality, that’s how we come to know something. This view sees truth in two ways: as accuracy (matching reality) or as correctness (following certain rules). Correctness – our thoughts are true if they follow the mental rules we use to understand things. So, something is considered real if it fits the way our mind naturally organizes experience. Kant introduced the idea of the a priori – built-in structures in our mind that shape how we experience the world. The a priori lays down the framework for how experience unfolds. For Kant, truth is always tied to possible experience

Before Kant, space was thought of as something the mind creates – a product of thinking. But Kant argued that to even understand space, we already need an inner sense of it. This shows that concepts don’t just come from abstract thinking, they depend on mental structures we already have. Without those, we wouldn’t be able to grasp the concept at all.

In any kind of knowledge, there are two parts: our senses and our understanding. Understanding is then split into the mind and reason. The difference is that the mind works with things we can actually experience, while reason tries to go beyond that.

According to Kant, reason finds in things only what it has already put there to begin with. The unconscious already holds everything within itself, it just gradually uncovers things as experience unfolds.

For Kant, experience always means what we take in through our senses. That’s where the a priori starts to show up. We can only know things if they’re given to us in experience. Any object is really just how the mind puts different parts of experience together into one whole.

It’s the mix of sensations that makes something real. We don’t control what we feel and our mind isn’t the one creating it. You can take what seems like the same thing, break it down, and realize it’s really just a structured set of sensations. That moment when you try to understand an object by focusing on how it feels – that’s as far as reflection can go. Our senses are the passive layer of consciousness.

The categorical imperative is the core of Kant’s ethics.

There’s the realm of actuality and appearances, and then there’s the realm of duty. In the phenomenal world, we’re driven by sensory pleasures. But in the moral world it’s the imperative that rules.

We’re looking at two opposing realms: the domain of physical life – nature and the domain of morality – ethics. And this distinction is absolutely central to Kant. The categorical imperative is the maxim of your will. What matters most is that the principle behind your action could be made universal. That alone has the power to liberate. Because no being should ever act toward another in a way that denies their belonging to the human race – that is, their conscience, their rights and ultimately, their freedom.

And we slip into something less than human when we allow the human in us to be diminished. In other words, if my rights are violated and I don’t stand up for myself, I’m not just letting it happen – I’m disrupting the metaphysical order of the world. I’m committing a moral offense against myself.

Freedom, Right and Morality: Kant’s Triad

Kant’s distinction between morality and right. The essence of being human lies in our freedom. In this sense, right is the meeting point between freedom and nature. By definition, a human being is free. They have the right to full authority over everything that belongs to the realm of nature.

Right concerns only the external and actions or, in Kant’s terms, it doesn’t touch the grounds or motives behind those actions, or the way of thinking that guides them. Right exists solely in the realm of actions. And the moment it starts creeping into the realm of free discussion, into the realm of thought, then, according to Kant, the state can go away. A civil servant, once home, can write whatever they want in a journal, publish it and share it however they want. For example, they might argue that Islam’s influence has a negative effect on their country’s folk traditions, because Islamic music is built on a different tonal structure. And then that same civil servant shows up to work and follows the rules, treating their fellow citizens, including Muslims, with the same respect as anyone else.

Today we live in a world where words are treated as if they were actions. And Kant’s domain of freedom is under attack. The clash of opinions doesn’t belong in the legal realm.

A crime committed out of need is still a crime. Bourgeois law, on the one hand, upholds the principle of equality, on the other, it conceals inequality. The moment law becomes politicized, it starts being applied selectively, based on context. And at that point, what is legal turns into something political. Law still exists, but it starts functioning as an instrument of added force.

There are two Kant’s core principles:

1. Right – its universality;
2. Peace – the cultivation of a moral way of thinking.

According to Kant, land becomes property the moment there’s any act of will to claim it, for example, marking off a plot with stakes. Before that, the land belonged to whoever was working it.

On the separation of powers, the impossibility of direct democracy, and the danger of despotism

In Kant’s time, society was still waiting to be freed from the monarch, as republics hadn’t yet taken shape. Kant’s approach to forming a civil community isn’t based on the idea that life will simply get better if people live together. That, however, was the core assumption of classical Enlightenment thinking.

A desire matters simply because it belongs to the will of choice and that’s the domain of freedom. To follow the law is a moral duty. For Kant, right is grounded in personal freedom or in morality. For Hegel, it’s grounded in morality, not in ethics. Morality arises from the freedom of the individual will. Ethics, on the other hand, comes from being embedded in social contexts, shaped by the spirit of your people.

According to Kant, right is the set of conditions under which the will of one person can coexist with the will of another, according to a universal law of nature.

Strict right is based on the idea of external force, the right to mutually require certain actions from one another, but always under the rules of freedom.

The law of freedom means: I have the right to do anything, as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s freedom. No person can be denied the ability to exercise their freedom, which ultimately includes the right to own property.

Right has no power to establish morality, it’s indifferent to motives. Right doesn’t regulate thought, because thought belongs to the realm of the subjective. From this follow the key principles: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of belief and freedom of the media.

Morality is governed by the categorical imperative – act only according to that principle which could become a universal law. So that no one in this society, including yourself, is excluded from that right. And the first thing you must do is refuse to let anyone treat you in a way that violates your rights.

The right to freedom and how that right gives rise to civil society

I can require someone else to follow the law and by doing that, I’m also requiring them to join civil society. But their personal morality isn’t being controlled. To help a child become a person, we teach them:

1. To take care of their basic physical needs, like not to soil themselves.
2. To use reason, like not grabbing a live wire.
3. And to develop morality, like not poking other people with a screwdriver.

Only then they become a person and truly be free.

Mamardashvili said: “We don’t judge people, we judge actions. Let God judge the person.” The first thing I have an external right to is my body. And that means originally mine is: the place I was born and the work I do.

The basic form of property is the right to land. Every person has a right to their own share of the land, because the land isn’t an endless plain. If it were infinite, we could just spread out forever and never have to interact. But it’s limited and we’re forced into contact and that leads to the creation of civil society.

To “claim land”, I have to mark it in some way, in Roman law, that used to mean working the land. The moment I make that claim, I bind myself to things.

In primitive societies, there’s no trade or exchange, because the best thing is the thing I made for myself. Why would I trade the axe I crafted to fit my own hand for anything else? Every act of exchange feels like a loss, a concession that doesn’t benefit me.

Working the land is one way to mark a claim to it, but just as important is an act of will. My property extends as far as I can maintain control over it. The push toward human interaction starts from a purely material condition, while the concept of property itself is entirely idealistic. The boundary of the original claim is the boundary of force.

The question of property and the state

Within a legal system, we must never ask the question, “Where does this property come from?” As anyone who asks that question is undermining the state, it’s a call to rebellion. In other words, the moment we recognize the rule of law, we have to resist the temptation to challenge someone’s ownership based on how it was acquired in the past. Otherwise, there’s always a “reason to start a war.”

We can speak of different kinds of right:

1. Natural right – the kind I possess simply because I was born human. The right to freedom, the right to mutual coercion. And this right includes the power to compel those who haven’t yet joined society, to join it.
2. Private and public.

The second classification is based on the object of the right:

1. Property rights – over land and money.
2. Personal rights – the right to use another person’s will, governed by contracts.
3. Parental authority, the authority of the head of the household and the right in relation to a servant. The idea of the servant can be applied to the hired worker.The relationship with a servant is, at its core, based on freedom, which means it’s based on a contract. But the servant submits their will to that of the master. They don’t act from their own autonomy, and because of that, they fall short of full personhood.

According to Kant, the other -the one in the role of servant -can never be used as a thing. There is a prohibition against exhaustion. Because no one should ever surrender their will entirely.

According to Hegel, the slave is the one who couldn’t stake their life in the struggle. You always have the option to “fall on your sword.” But instead, you choose slow erosion in the face of your mortal enemy. The slave, in becoming a slave, has no illusions about it. And in Hegel’s view, there’s no “middle ground” for servants, there are only persons and things.

Justice, Freedom and the State

Hegel later expands on Kant’s idea, claiming that the state is the construct through which God realizes freedom on earth.

Freedom means the freedom to do whatever I choose. But we have to remember, the land is limited. So eventually, we run into others and interaction becomes inevitable. And this interaction isn’t something we chose, it gives rise to what Kant called “unsociable sociability.” Arguments based on survival alone aren’t enough to justify coming together.

My domain is marked by a sign, working isn’t a necessary marker. I can drive stakes into the ground and declare – this is mine. That right is always provisional. In this sense, nothing can be held permanently. The condition for holding onto something becomes the condition for civilized life and that marks the moment the state begins to emerge.

A family gets a good piece of land, rich and fertile. Over time, the family grows. And under natural right, they might feel they have a fair reason to take land from another family that has fewer children. In a system like this, conflicts will keep happening. If natural right is in charge, there’s no motivation to invest in your land for the long term or to act with a bigger plan in mind. There’s no stable ground for a civilized world, because next year, another family might have a better harvest.

The first act that establishes civil law is ending the condition where everyone is their own judge. You no longer get to be the one who decides what’s just for yourself. The role of determining justice is handed over to something external and that’s the moment the state appears, along with the rule of law and the court.

There are two major attempts by different schools of thought to define the concept of the social contract. The first version (found in Hobbes and Rousseau) says that each person gives up all of their power. In this view, the individual is a product of the sovereign. Citizens are artificial beings and even life itself is handed over. The second version (seen in Locke and Spinoza) holds that each person gives up only part of their power. In this model, individuals retain their natural rights.

From this, two views of the state emerge. In the first model, there is no right to rebellion. But in the second we have not only the right to resist, we have a duty. Because if the sovereign threatens our self-preservation or our conscience, we are obligated to defend them.

We have both private and public right. Private right governs the relationship between two citizens. And with the emergence of the state, I suddenly have a reason to plant trees in my garden, because tomorrow my neighbor won’t be able to take them from me.

The role of the sovereign in the state

At the level of private right, we can identify three types of rights:

1. Personal right – the ability to direct the actions of others. I can make agreements with people to help with certain tasks.
2. Property right.
3. Personal-property right – applying within certain limits: to children, wives and servants. They belong to the household.

Natural relationships are restructured, because the sovereign exists. As a father, you’re obligated to feed your children, even if you’ve stopped loving them. Under natural right, people own unequal amounts of property and that leads to endless conflict. That’s why they enter into a civil contract. And in the end, civil right does two things:

1. We’re not allowed to question why people started out unequal. Everything that happened before the contract isn’t up for debate. Because when the contract was made, everyone gave up everything. The power given to the sovereign is way bigger than anything you owned.
2. The state shouldn’t block people from moving into a free society, even if they started out under personal-property relationships. For example, children should be able to inherit what their parents earned. And a servant can be free to stop being a servant. The state doesn’t raise or educate people, it just creates the space for freedom. Raising people isn’t the job of the state.

Public right arises between the state and its citizens. And according to Kant, public right is divided into three parts:

1. State right – governs the relationship between citizens and the state within a country.
2. International right – governs the relationships between states.
3. Cosmopolitan right – governs how we treat individuals from other countries.

The state is the unification of a large number of people under the rule of law. At its core, it’s an act that takes place before the emergence of the sovereign.

The highest authority is the legislative power. The separation of powers is essential, otherwise, despotism will take hold. If a state doesn’t divide power into legislative, judicial and executive branches, then it basically falls back into a state of nature. Without that separation, we end up in a kind of zombie condition. But if all three branches are functioning properly, then you, as a citizen, have something that’s guaranteed to be yours.

According to Kant, direct democracy is impossible, because when the people rule directly, the assembly itself becomes the sovereign. And that same body can end up holding judicial, legislative, and executive power all at once, bringing us right back to the situation where even a democratic state turns into a kind of zombie.

Active and passive citizens

Citizens are divided into active and passive. Active citizens are those who can make independent decisions, because they provide for themselves. They are able to think with their own minds and live according to their own judgment. Those who are not citizens include women, children and servants. A European blacksmith is a citizen. An Indian blacksmith is not. The Indian blacksmith goes from house to house taking orders, in that sense, he functions as a servant. The European blacksmith sells his goods freely. He’s not part of the household and isn’t subject to personal-property law. A factory worker, on the other hand, is not fully independent, because he’s paid a wage.

During the French Revolution, what was being defended, according to Kant, was precisely the definition of the active citizen. The wage worker doesn’t stand on his own and is a passive citizen. But he’s still a citizen, because the state protects him from slavery and helps ensure that contracts are honored.

As you are fully independent, you’re expected to think for yourself and in that sense, the state becomes enlightened. The state’s role is not to stop people from gaining independence or from forming and developing their own judgments. Propaganda, by its nature, reduces freedom, because it assumes I won’t be thinking with my own head. A true citizen wants to be surrounded by other active citizens – people with full freedom. Whether you choose to support a certain view or not, your judgment should be guided by one principle: does this increase freedom or does it diminish it?

A person loses their civil rights when they commit a crime. The law plays an educational role, it shapes a person for entry into society. And the measure of punishment, according to Kant, follows a just principle: “an eye for an eye,” “measure for measure,” – for a life taken, a life in return.

To punish a criminal means placing them in a position of dependence on the state and in that sense, they automatically shift into the status of a thing. They are no longer a party capable of signing their own judgment. They become a functionary, someone who can no longer act or speak fully on their own behalf. The judge signs the sentence for them, because they had already signed the social contract earlier. By punishing the criminal, the state also takes on a responsibility: not to erase them entirely. They cannot be forced to work to the point of despair.

Forms of government and despotism

There are three forms of government: autocracy (rule by one), aristocracy (rule by a few) and democracy (rule by the people). According to Kant, the wrong form of rule is despotism. The opposite of despotism is the republic. But every form of government, no matter which, carries the risk of slipping into despotism.

Kant wouldn’t have been troubled by a state that called itself an autocratic republic. In such a system, there’s a single person who identifies with the sovereign and has the final word, but only within the scope of legislative power, not judicial or executive. At the same time, there’s popular representation that can either limit this person’s legislative decisions or at least point out when those decisions are flawed. This form of government could also be called a constitutional monarchy. In such a system, laws are drafted by parliament and the monarch gives them final approval. So in this way, even a “proper” autocracy, in Kant’s view, is no longer absolute.

When there is capital punishment and a sovereign, the right to grant pardon appears. But in a lawful state, pardon should never be used in cases where one citizen has taken the life of another. The sovereign may exercise clemency only when the crime was committed against the state itself. Pardon, in that case, is meant to express the splendor of sovereign greatness, a gesture of power, showing that the sovereign stands above the law. Kant, however, is more critical. He argues that the sentence of death itself already carries enough of that splendor.

The justice of war and international relations

Once a state has established the kind of internal structure Kant envisions, only then can we begin to consider its relationships with other states – relationships that, at first, exist in a natural state. In essence, states initially stand in a condition of war toward one another.

The basic “proper” approach to war between states is not the destruction of the enemy’s sovereign. Even though we wage war in order to reorganize other people and their state, so that they relate to us differently, according to new principles – our ultimate goal is to reshape relations between states in a way that makes cooperation possible or even the creation of a lasting peace.

It can be justifiable to start a war when a neighbor becomes excessively armed or expands so much that they begin to loom over us. And this kind of “looming” doesn’t have to be military, it could come through excessive control over trade routes.

According to Kant, no war can ever be justified on the grounds of intervening in the internal affairs of another state. Europeans and the West more broadly do not, in principle, seek a despotic world order. That’s not their choice. From a Kant’s perspective, Russia’s current internal structure is fundamentally despotic. And that means the kind of international order Russia proposes cannot, in its essence, be accepted, because what will be reproduced through Russia’s model? A replication of despotism. What gets multiplied is a system where power is concentrated, freedom is secondary and law serves authority rather than the individual.

In waging war, it cannot be punitive, because you are not the authority that decides justice. You are not the sovereign over others. You cannot absorb a people “into yourself” or turn their lands into colonies.

During war, you cannot plunder the people, because they are private citizens. Even reparations must come with a receipt, a formal acknowledgment. There must be a ban on partisan fighters,
because fighting them means killing the people themselves. Partisans, by definition, act outside the authority of the state and they may not stop fighting even after peace is signed. Only the army should take part in war.

A just war can be initiated in three cases:

1. A direct threat to the existence of our state.
2. A threat to our civil existence, when the very foundation of law is being undermined.
3. When the possibility of establishing perpetual peace is blocked, for example, through despotic relations between states.