Keeping the public debt under control to guarantee peace. Some legal reflections on the modernity of the 4th preliminary article of Kant's project of perpetual peace

Abstract

In the ‘century of debt’ that was the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant was well aware of the pecuniary power that borrowing represents for any state and the realisation of its civil and/or military ambitions. The 4th preliminary article of the Perpetual Peace Project forbids the use of debt for military purposes: “National debts must not be contracted in order to support the interests of the state outside”. While he does not subscribe in every respect to Hume’s pessimism about the very principle of public debt, Kant shares some of his criticisms. The hierarchy of types of debts established according to their modalities of constitution (internal/external financing, limited/unlimited) and their uses (civil/military) testifies to a series of axiological judgments on debt that suggest the basic elements of a legal regime of public debt.

The present contribution aims at analysing the 4th preliminary article in the light of the economic, financial and political context of Prussia and other European states at the end of the 18th century. It compares Kant’s position on public debt with those of his contemporaries (Hume, Diderot) and of the classical economists (Melon, Smith...). It also identifies the legal characteristics of Kant’s framework of public debt and underlines its scope and limits.