Original scientific paper
KANT: MORALITY AND THE RIGHT TO RESISTANCE
Šefko Kurtović
; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Kant's philosophy in its entirety outgrew its Humeistic heritage of rational empirism i.e. relativism. This relativism is particularly unwelcome in the realm of morality, hence his philosophy of a priori concepts. Since law, as the minimum of morality, would be invalidated by the political (value) relativism, Kant has no politics apart from law - specifically civil, Roman law - which he declares natural (and absolutely rational). Roman private legal principles are the axiomatic foundations on which a structure of deductional theorems of political reasoning is erected. Ubi ius ibi remedium is the central principle which serves to deny and circumvent rights - including the right to revolt - which would make up a set of political supra "rights". In the age of enlightened absolutism - a schematic derivative of the philosophy of rationalism - government ceased to be diffuse. Its bearers became too unequivocal and the whole system turned into a highly visible and assailable target. For Kant (as well as for Hobbes), anarchy is the worst form of tyranny. While Montesquieu and Rousseau sought refuge from tyranny in the diffusion of power, and Raynal and Mably claimed that the right to resist oppression is not only the ultimate remedium but a civil duty, Kant (long before the French revolution and Burke) considers as unpermissible not only the right to resist oppression but was also against revolutions instigated by legitimate sovereigns.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
105854
URI
Publication date:
4.10.1996.
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