De Saint-Pierre – Projekt wiecznego pokoju w Europie

Abstract

The article focuses on presenting the most important motives contained in the Project for Setting an Everlasting Peace in Europe, which may be regarded as a pioneering one in respect to the foundation of the modern European Union. De Saint-Pierre quotes the Christian European leaders indicating that the renouncing of wars and founding the arbitration EU institutions is in the interest of both overlords and their subjects. Even in the Enlightenment his Project for Setting an Everlasting Peace in Europe was criticized, among others, by Rousseau and Kant, who placed their hopes for everlasting peace in establishing new republican states – an agreement of nations and not of sovereign rulers. The article concerns certain selected detailed issues of the Project for Setting an Everlasting Peace in Europe. These are, among others, the problem of reconciliation amongst religions as a condition for peace, and the role Poland, according to de Saint-Pierre, (during the reign of Augustus II the Strong), could have played in establishing the European Union member states.