Ahn Joonggeun’s Thoughts on Peace and Kant: Comparing Kant’s Perpetual Peace with Ahn’s Oriental Peace

This article attempts to critically revisit such comparative works which are in vogue in recent years. First, this article argues that extant studies’ comparative focus on Kant’s peace federation with Ahn’s Oriental peace conference elaborate only half of their peace theory. It is reasonable attempt to compare Kant’s emphasis on free nations’ membership of federation with Ahn’s peace conference with a certain degree of authority on the supranational peace conference. Second, extant comparative studies have neglected the other crucial dimension of Kant and Ahn’s peace thought, that is, the centrality of national states’ sovereignty and non-intervention principle. The so-called democratic peace theorists, who claimed their inheritance of Kantian legacy and Ahn’-Kant comparativists shared such intellectual negligence. Contrary to this theoretical distortion, both Kant and Ahn have placed prominent meaning to the principle of sovereignty and non-intervention. They both believed that such principles were not only preconditions but also consequences of peace federation. In this sense, this article reveals key intellectual loopholes and distortion among extant studies on Kantian legacy and Ahn’s peace thought.