ABSTRACT
Immanuel Kant is well known for taking a hard, inflexible line on certain particular moral issues, such as lying and revolution. Kant was optimistic about revolutions as forces for moral progress that we might otherwise never achieve. He was known as a supporter of the French Revolution, reportedly referred to as “the old Jacobin". The prima facie problem is how Kant can reconcile his Hobbesian claim that revolution is always contrary to justice with his anti-Hobbesian conviction that there are universal standards of justice that apply to sovereign authorities. Kant argues that trying to incorporate an alleged right to revolution into a constitution for a legal system would be incoherent because it would purport to be a legal authority to destroy the very source of legal authority. Kant’s formula of humanity as an end in itself seems to provide presumptive grounds for questioning an absolute prohibition on revolution.
