Can Resistance To Authority Be A Justified Path To Kantian Peace?

Immanuel Kant’s theory of justifiable resistance to authority is complex and, at times, appears to conflict with his own practice, if not with itself. In texts such as Perpetual Peace, Kant looks forward to a political situation wherein no political resistance (and in particular, no war) would be necessary. Nevertheless, on a personal level, Kant openly praised both the American and the French revolutions. This is in spite of the fact that he argues (e.g., in Metaphysics of Morals) that a citizen never has the right to revolt against the government, suggesting we must cooperate even with war, when it does occur. In various texts he claims that, when a person is in a “private” situation, such as being under an explicit contract to do a specific job or implicitly accepting a social contract with one’s government, resistance is forbidden; external behavior in such situations must be governed by policy or law. In contexts involving the “public” use of reason, on the other hand, such as when a person is faced with a moral decision or is engaged in a philosophical dispute, the freedom of conscience sometimes does require resistance, especially in cases where other persons inappropriately attempt to usurp authority over matters that are rightfully up to the individual to decide. Yet here again, when his own writings on religion were deemed by the censor to have come into conflict with the king’s edict barring the publication of unorthodox theological positions, Kant failed to resist the (arguably unjust) authority; instead, he gave up his (apparently public) right to free philosophical expression, promising never to write or speak on religion again during the king’s reign. In this paper I argue that these apparent contradictions can all be resolved, as long as we properly understand the role of three inter-related distinctions: the role of authority in “public” and “private” contexts; the differing functions of the four faculties of the Prussian university; and moral versus historical modes of assessment. Kant’s key insight is that universities must promote a healthy, public “conflict” between philosophers (the “lower” faculty) and the various (“higher”) faculties, which employ reason in the course of training professionals to serve in various private realms. Although revolutionary acts are morally wrong, revolution may entail historical progress in contexts where genuine (public) philosophical resistance would normally be forbidden. Only when the issue at stake is the historical development of the human race, therefore, will it be justifiable to put aside the universal human duty to obey the authorities in the interest of promoting the guarantee of peace and instead to allow resistance and perhaps even outright revolution. In the end, this is why rulers who have the best interests of the people at heart will allow (if not even encourage) the underlying presence of genuine philosophical resistance among the people.