ABSTRACT
In his Philosophy of Right Hegel rejects Kant's idea of a history ending in perpetual peace. Bringing about perpetual peace is not for him a moral requirement. War, he insists, is not a failure of civilisation, but a positive contribution to social life:
The ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the stabilisation of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so also corruption in nations would be the product of prolonged, let alone, ‘perpetual peace’.
(1821: Par. 324)