ABSTRACT
The famous work Perpetual Peace of 1795, albeit of chance origin, deserves special attention among Immanuel Kant's political writings, because it is here in light of the dramatic force of the event discussed - war - that many of Kant's fundamental beliefs merge. The definition of the idea of a republic implicit in the First Definitive Article provides the reason why this imaginative agreement among the powerful of the earth must take precedence over Kant's other juridical-political texts, including the Metaphysics of Morals. A civil society according to reason as required by metaphysics of morals is a republic only where all persons enjoy equal freedom. Kant's preceding laborious reasoning was devoted entirely to assuming a mode of thought and perception common for the juridical culture and world powers of his time, who argued in line with the phenomenal nature of man and not according to metaphysics of morals.
