ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine the republican theory which might be extracted from Kant. Kant’s categorical imperative seeks to guide all “rational” and “autonomous” beings as to how they “ought” to respond to their sense of “duty” to all other rational beings. The “good organisation” of democratic monarchy explicitly plans for the contingency that, for a time, the elected chamber may be dominated by merely sectional interests or the “self-seeking” which might make the formation of a working majority impossible. The welfare provisions of democratic monarchy not only help to guarantee the material and educational conditions for all to become actual “rational beings”, they help to secure the one-citizen-one vote feature. There are some other of Kant’s arguments which also might very easily be read by extension to imply the rejection of any sort of monarchy even though they only explicitly criticise an hereditary nobility.
