Meanings
- uncountablegovernmentA theoretical global league of republics that would produce world peace.
But still, he argues, if Kant’s hypothesis of a foedus pacificum is correct, as Rawls believes it is, armed conflict between democratic peoples will tend to disappear as they approach the ideal of constitutional regimes.
2006, Alyssa R. Bernstein, “A Human Right to Democracy? Legitimacy and Intervention”, in Raw Martin, David A. Reidy, editors, Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia?, page 2902 more examples
Moreover, the imbalance of Article 2 para. 4 and the right to self-defence is paralleled to a “significant oscillation” in Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” between the positive idea of a world-republic and the negative substitute of a foedus pacificum.
2003, Klaus Dicke, “Peace Through International Law and the Case of Iraq”, in Gerhard Beestermöller, editor, Iraq: Threat and Response, →ISBN, page 21The other face of the foedus pacificum, in other words, is a democratic war theory, an account of how and why republics will fight wars and a recognition that such wars may be very fierce and very frequent until such time as the foedus pacificum covers the earth.
2013, Nicholas Rengger, Just War and International Order: The Uncivil Condition in World Politics, →ISBN, page 58
Origin
- Latinfoedus“alliance”
- Englishfoedus pacificum
From Latin foedus (“alliance”), pācificum (“peaceful”), in reference to the work of Immanuel Kant.
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
foedus pacificum. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/foedus%20pacificum
“foedus pacificum.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/foedus%20pacificum. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “foedus pacificum,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/foedus%20pacificum.
Source: foedus pacificum on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.