| From Utopia ... |
| Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) |
| Zum ewigen Frieden (1795) [Perpetual Peace] |
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| Kant touched on both the themes of peace and opposition to centralised states in his 1795 essay xOn Perpetual Peace:
"Federalism, from the Latin word 'foedus', means contract, pact, treaty or convention; it implies an agreement, thanks to which one or more heads of the family, one or more local communities, one or more groups of communities or States commit in equality themselves and each other to reach one or more particular objectives; the achievement of these objectives belongs exclusively and particularly to the delegates of the federation. In substance, the federal system is the opposite of administrative centralism, a system which characterises the unitarian democracies. In a federation, the competences of the central authority are limited. On the contrary, in the centralised governments, the competences of the supreme authority multiply, become larger and more direct, and the supreme organ is finally empowered to intervene in the affairs of the region, the community and each individual citizen. From this derives the oppression of centralism, under which disappear not only the
regional and communities' liberties, but also those of the individual and of the nation." |
