Thomas Paine:

a Kantian avant la lettre and the role of the republican constitution for the promotion of peace

Abstract

An effective link cannot be established between the writings of Thomas Paine and those of Kant. The different approach they both have to the subjects and the starting point for their discussion are different, and Thomas Paine is far from being a reference in Kant’s political writings. It is unquestionable, however, that there are contact points between these thinkers discourse.
Theoretical discussions about the political and social transformations of Europe in the 18th century reveal similar philosophical concerns from the most varied quarters. Some are academically well structured, like those that appear in texts by Jean Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Others seem to be no more than the intuitions of autodidacts and polemicists; in this case are the writings of Thomas Paine.
Paine’s writings gave voice to many ideas that circulated in the intellectual discussions of his time, but also anticipated others that would later be fully developed, sometimes in a completely different sense, by such prominent authors as Kant. In this sense, texts by Paine, such as Rights of Man or Dissertations on Government, The Affairs of the Bank and Paper Money, and the text by Kant Zum ewigen Frieden allows us to identify a set of themes and concerns that cross them all. Paine’s creative thinking, although theoretically unstructured, seems to have anticipated notions that would be explored by Kant, certainly with a different scope and meaning, in his pamphlet: Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch.
The present article will illustrate how “reason in history” somehow anticipated in the texts of Thomas Paine some of the themes dealt with by Immanuel Kant in that philosophical sketch.