German Chancellor Scholz pays tribute to Kant on the 300th anniversary of his birth

Berlin (dpa) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has paid tribute to the great philosopher Immanuel Kant on the 300th anniversary of his birth, describing him as one of the most important exponents of Western philosophy. In his commemorative speech, Scholz claimed that Russian President Putin had no right to allude to Kant in his policies. “We all want peace in our times. But peace at any price would not be peace at all,” Scholz said in Berlin. “For Kant, it is clear: those who are attacked are allowed to defend themselves,” the chancellor said in a reference to Kant’s book “Perpetual Peace”. He added that Kant wrote that a forced peace treaty, one that is broken by the aggressor at the “first favourable opportunity”, would be a mere truce, a suspension of hostilities, not peace, which means the end of all hostilities. “I believe that we should bear this warning of Kant in mind when we are looking for ways out of the wars of our time,” said Scholz. Putin had used Kant as one of his justifications for the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.