Reason, Right, and Revolution: Kant and Locke

Author(s): Katrin Flikschuh

Source: Philosophy & Public Affairs , Fall, 2008, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Fall, 2008), pp. 375-404
Published by: Wiley

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KATRIN FLIKSCHUH Reason, Right, and
Revolution: Kant and Locke

I. INTRODUCTION

Current readers often bring implicitly Lockean intuitions to

reaction to Kant on revolution: they assume that individual
to protect themselves, by violent means if necessary, against
coercive authority by their government. Underlying this ass
broader commitment to natural rights morality that m
attribute to Locke and Kant alike. On this basis Kant is often
inconsistency: for one committed to pre-civil individua
denial of a right to resist a rights-violating government seem
tory. It is, however, also often suggested that Kant's no-righ
tion is marginal to his practical philosophy overall, cons
unfortunate philosophical slipup that is at odds with his supp
French Revolution and explicable in terms of his excessively
understanding of constitutionalism and outdated conception
eignty. These supposed anachronisms within Kant's philosop
are said to warrant a turn to his ethical writings from whic
tive basis for a right to revolution is derived via appeal to

Earlier versions of this article were given at a conference on Kant's Doctr

Jena during the summer of 2007; at the political philosophy seminar at th
Edinburgh, the philosophy seminar at the University of Bristol, and the
workshop at the LSE. My thanks to participants at these events for their h
and suggestions, including Chris Bertram, Sharon Byrd, Thomas Christian
Cecile Fabre, Tim Hayward, Joachim Hruschka, Chandran Kukathas, Jen
Hannes Leitgeb, Bernd Ludwig, and Leif Wenar. I am especially grateful to P
generous guidance on Locke; to Christian List for fascinating exchanges on
group agency, and to Arthur Ripstein for sustained and always enjoyab
Kant. Many thanks, finally, to the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs f
suggestions for revision of the penultimate draft.

© 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Philosophy & Public Affairs 36, no. 4

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376 Philosophy & Public Affairs

enjoinder to treat the humanity in persons as an end

precept patently violated by rights-abusing governm
The first and principal aim of this article is to sho
inconsistency in Kant's denial of a right to revolu
share Locke's natural rights morality according t
devolve their pre-civil enforcement powers upon a g
tively appointed for that purpose. In Kant's pre-civil
als have valid claims to Right {Recht)2 but lack re
powers. Legitimate enforcement of pre-civil right cla
in the civil condition. Kant's is a public, not a natura
and the denial of a right to revolution is a corollary
ter of Kantian Right. One may retort that the consis
tion is hardly sufficient to commend it: what matte
morality of the revolution argument. I concede that

i. Earlier studies of Kant's position on revolution tend to focus

sistency between his denial of a right to revolution and his en
Revolution. See Dieter Henrich, "Kant uber die Revolution," in Materialien zu Kants
Rechtsphilosophie, ed. Zwi Batscha (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), pp. 359-65; L. W. Beck,
"Kant and the Right of Revolution," Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971): 411-22. More
recent approaches detect inconsistencies between Kant's juridical and his ethical position.
See Thomas Hill, "A Kantian Perspective on Political Violence," in his Respect, Pluralism
and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 200-237; Sarah Williams Holtman,
"Revolution, Contradiction, and Kantian Citizenship," in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals:
Interpretive Essays, ed. Mark Timmons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 209-31;
Christine Korsgaard, "Taking the Law into Our Own Hands: Kant on the Right to Revolu-
tion," in Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls, ed. Andrews Reath et al.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 297-328. Others find fault not with Kant
but with his readers who mistakenly take the no-right to revolution to apply to political
regimes in general rather than, as Kant intended, to constitutional regimes only. See
Sharon Byrd and Joachim Hruschka, "The Natural Law Duty to Recognise Private Property
of Ownership: Kant's Theory of Property Rights in His Doctrine of Right," University of
Toronto Law Journal 56 (2006): 217-82, esp. pp. 241-44; Kenneth Westphal, "Kant on the
State, Law, and Obedience to Authority in the Alleged Anti-revolutionary Writings," Journal
of Philosophical Research 17 (1992): 383-425.
2. I here retain Mary Gregor's originally suggested convention of rendering Recht as
capitalized 'Right' in order to indicate the difference in connotation between Roman-law
inspired German Recht and common-law English terms of rights, law, justice. (See Imman-
uel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991], pp. x-xii.) Unfortunately the 1996 edition omits this useful convention, trans-
lating Recht as either 'right' or 'rights'. Unless otherwise stated, all citations from Kant's
texts below are taken from the Cambridge Edition of the Works oflmmanuel Kant: Practical
Philosophy Vol. IV (1996), ed. Mary Gregor and Allen Wood. Page references are to the
Prussian Academy volumes and pagination.

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377 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

revolution is morally problematic in certain respects. Nonetheless, it is

not without merit morally. This becomes clear once we consider an
aspect of the Lockean position that is usually taken for granted, namely
its presumption of revolution as a public act. Although liberal defenders
of revolution usually invoke some version of Locke's natural rights pre-
mises, they do not usually think of the exercise of the right to revolution
as the mere aggregate of individuals' private judgments on the matter.
To the contrary, Lockean revolution tends to be thought of as the united
action of citizens collectively engaged against their government in behalf
of civil society as a whole: despite individualist natural rights premises, it
is the presumed public nature of the act that accounts for the continuing
approbation of Lockean revolution. From a Kantian perspective, the
question is whether the Lockean has the theoretical resources by
means of which to transform individually held natural rights into a
collectively exercised public right. This is the second, subsidiary
concern of this article: can the Lockean consistently underwrite the idea
of revolution as a public act by appeal to individually grounded natural
rights to self-defense?
Interest in this debate need not be seen as confined to card-carrying
Kantians and confirmed Lockeans respectively. Lockean and Kantian
influences deeply pervade current liberal thinking, with the more recent
Kant-inspired preoccupation with public reasoning supplementing the
longer-standing Lockean commitment to individually held natural
rights. Their noticeable distance from one another on the issue of revo-
lution may be one indication of the philosophical and political gulf that
separates these two thinkers more generally. This may in turn redound
on our conception of the cohesiveness of much current liberal political
thinking. But the substantive issue of revolution itself continues to
remain of interest also. Although today's mature liberal societies are not
generally threatened by the prospect of internal rebellion, closely related
questions over the legitimate use of political violence to further sup-
posed moral ends remain salient domestically as well as globally, as is
attested by recent arguments in favor of 'exporting' liberal revolution.3
This article is written from a Kantian perspective. It makes no pre-
tense at comparative philosophical analysis but employs the Lockean

3. For a recent argument along these lines, see Arthur Isak Applbaum, "Forcing a
People to Be Free," Philosophy & Public Affairs 35 (2007): 359-400, esp. pp. 391-96.

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378 Philosophy & Public Affairs

position as an intuitive point of contrast with the le

many highly counterintuitive nature of Kant's ap
possible difficulty with the Lockean position as it is
today, my intention is not to defend Kant by way of
but to indicate ways in which taking Kant seriously o
serve to reveal morally problematic dimensions w
moral self-evidence of which is generally taken for
juxtaposes Lockean and Kantian intuitions over a
revolution. Section III sets out the public character o
Right. Section IV shows how Kant's no-right to revo
corollary from his public morality of Right. Section
asking whether Locke's affirmation of individuals' n
pre-civil condition coherently translates into the pe
civil condition. I shall suggest that while the Lockea
tent on at least one possible construal of what it is to
this construal is too thin for the Kantian. Througho
cerned with the idea of a right to revolution, not wi
revolutions as social events.4 Since there is no incon
edging that revolutions can happen and denying a
nothing I shall say about Kant's position on the no-r
implies anything at all about his positive assessment
character of the French Revolution as a world-historic event.

II. LOCKEAN AND KANTIAN REVOLUTIONARY INTUITIONS

According to Locke as he is conventionally read today, individu

naturally held entitlements to determinate, largely materially
powers and goods that are fully enforceable by them in the
condition: rights to life, liberty, property. Individuals consent to
from the natural to the civil condition for reasons of convenience:
although in the state of nature each is entitled to judge in his or her own
and in others' behalf consistently with the laws of nature, differences in
natural law interpretation as well as natural biases make it more efficient
to have standing laws known by all and enforced by a central judicial
authority. Upon entrance into civil society individuals cede their unilat-
eral legislative and executive powers to the collective, which in turn

4. Cf. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France,
Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

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379 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

appoints a government entrusted to take on these functions in its behalf.

Yet while each member of civil society consents to accept the finality of
the government' s juridical pronouncements even where his or her private
judgments diverge from public juridical pronouncements, the legitimacy
of coercive public institutions remains tied to standards of natural law
knowable by all through their natural powers of reason. Where the gov-
ernment systematically abuses its coercive authority, it forfeits the trust
bestowed upon it by the people, who may legitimately remove the offend-
ing government and replace it with a rights-respecting one.
There is an arresting shift in Locke from an individual right to self-
(and other) defense in the pre-civil condition to the people's right to
revolution in the civil society. It is not clear how Locke performs this
shift; I shall return to this issue in Section V. Despite this ambiguity, and
given his general assumptions concerning the grounds and limits of
legitimate government, a Lockean right to revolution looks intuitively
self-evident to most and has enjoyed the support of liberals of different
persuasions across the centuries. Of course, liberals nowadays do not
usually subscribe to the metaphysically demanding idea of naturally
held, let alone God-given, rights; nor do they accept the natural law
doctrine that provides the background to Lockean rights. Many invoke
the notion of rights-grounding basic interests instead. Not the violation
of naturally held rights so much as the violation of basic interests as the
legitimate ground of socially protected rights justifies the forcible
removal of an unjust, that is basic interests-violating government.5 Simi-
larly, few nowadays would embrace Locke's theory of actual and volun-
tary consent, emphasizing that individuals are born into societies whose
governmental structures they are subject to independently of their
actual consent.6 Still, the basic Lockean idea of individuals' pre-civil
rights as providing nonnegotiable constraints on governmental author-
ity continues to resonate within current liberalism's commitment to

5. For skepticism over the ease with which current accounts move from a theologically
to a nontheologically grounded natural rights conception, see John Dunn, "What Is Living
and What Is Dead in John Locke?" in Dunn, Interpreting Political Responsibility (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 9-25-
6. For a defense of the abiding actuality of Locke on consent, see A. John Simmons,
" 'Denisons' and 'Aliens': Locke's Problem of Political Consent," in Simmons, Justification
and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001), pp. 158-78.

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380 Philosophy & Public Affairs

moral individualism and corresponding limitation

exercise of governmental powers. From these (m
assumptions, Kant's denial of a right to revolution l
Kant's position on the no-right to revolution is rem
ing across his published writings, though his individ
not always take the same form. Following L. W. Beck
between ethical, teleological, and juridical strands of
here focus on Kant's juridical argument, a version of
following well-known passage from the Doctrine of R
The reason a people has a duty to put up with even
an unbearable abuse of supreme authority is that i
highest legislator can never be regarded as other th
and indeed as abolishing the entire legal constituti
be authorized to resist, there would have to be a pu
it to resist, that is, the highest legislation woul
provision that it is not the highest and that m
subject, by one and the same judgement sovereign
it is subject. This is self-contradictory, and the cont
as soon as one asks who is to be judge in this dispu
and sovereign. For it is then apparent that the peo
judge in its own suit (VI 320).
Like Locke, Kant speaks of 'the people' as undertak
of revolution, not of individual revolutionaries as 't
their own hands'.8 The principal issue raised in the
whether there can be a constitutional, i.e., public
against a tyrannical government. Kant denies this: 't
tion would have to contain a provision that it is not
makes the people, as subject, by one and the same ju
over him to whom it is subject'. The objection diagn
tradiction in the idea of a constitutional right to rev
ing itself less than the highest, the highest legislation

7. Cf. Beck, "Right of Revolution." An instance of the teleologic

"On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It
where Kant reasons that since citizens happiness is not the end o
satisfaction' with their government is no legitimate ground for
297). An instance of the moral argument is given in Perpetual Pea
unlawful a non-universalizable maxim of rebellion (VIII 381).
8. Cf. Korsgaard, "Taking the Law into One's Own Hands," espe

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381 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

subject sovereign over the sovereign. Commentators often find the first
half of this supposed contradiction easier to concede than the second. If
by 'highest legislation' Kant means a constitutional document, and if by
a 'right to revolution' he has in mind the legal act of suspending the
constitution, there may indeed be something contradictory about the
thought of a constitution's containing a provision authorizing the sus-
pension of its authority. A constitutional right to suspend the constitu-
tion seems self-contradictory in the sense of being constitutionally
unenforceable. But even if the first part of Kant's argument is valid so far
as it goes, many deem it excessively legalistic. A constitution is not
merely the highest legal document among relevantly similar legal docu-
ments but constitutes a public declaration that serves as moral founda-
tion to all positive lawmaking. Such a founding document can contain a
suprapositive right to rebellion - a Lockean natural right, in effect - the
constitutional function of which is to uphold and protect the moral basis
of positive lawmaking. Kant's position is said to be legalistic in that
it fails to acknowledge the suprapositive function of a constitutional
right to revolution.9
With this response to the first part of Kant's objection in hand, it is
easy to dispose of the second half also. Again, it may be true, logically,
that if A is subject to B, A cannot simultaneously be sovereign over B. But
it is not obvious that, constitutionally, the people is subordinate to its
government. For Locke, the people is constitutionally sovereign, making
the government subject to the will of the people. Granted, the govern-
ment is not subject to the will of the people in an everyday legal context;
in an everyday context, the people must obey the positive directives
issued by government so long as government legislates in accordance
with constitutional law. Nonetheless, constitutionally, the government's
subordination of the people under its coercive authority is legitimate
only so long as the government abides by the moral founding principles
of the legal system. In sum, critics respond to Kant by retorting that even
though he may be correct in point of positive law, he is nonetheless
in moral error with regard to both aspects of his argument from

9. Cf. Beck, "Right of Revolution," p. 413: "In this argument, we see Kant's formalism in
extremis." Likewise Hill, "Political Violence," p. 210: "Neither Kant's special definition [of
justice and rights] nor the limited conclusion that follows implies that it is always immoral,
or even unjust (in a non-technical sense) to try to destroy the de facto 'legal' system
in one's country."

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382 Philosophy & Public Affairs

contradiction. Constitutionally, the people is soverei

ment, and the people's sovereignty is grounded i
rights of each, the protection and promotion of wh
basis of all just lawmaking.
One problem with these Lockean rejoinders is
Hobbes and Rousseau in thinking that there cannot
a sovereign. Civil society does not, as in Locke, prec
but becomes possible through it. Prior to the state t
tude: 'a state {civitas) is a union of a multitude of hu
laws of Right' (VI 313). The unifying principle is the head
under the idea of the general united will. The people
but there is no people without a head to represent its
Kant also dissents from the first Lockean claim c
rights: absent a condition of public Right there are n
Kant does not fail to acknowledge the moral foundati
natural rights. To the contrary, his juridical argume
right to revolution is a moral argument. Revoluti
deliberate act of violent resistance against the sov
head of the civil union, is morally wrong becaus
the civil condition under the idea of the general uni
sary condition of any possible rights.10 Instead o
juridical argument as legalistic on Lockean gro
ask in virtue of which features of his own morality
revolution is repudiated.

in. kant's public morality of right

I suggested that, for Kant, a people is a people only when it has a head to
represent the idea of its unity. I also suggested that there are no natural
rights in Kant's pre-civil condition. In Section IV I shall elaborate on the
first claim. Here I want to show that the public character of Kantian Right
precludes the ascription to him of a Lockean natural rights morality. I
shall proceed in two steps, arguing, first, that a Kantian entitlement
claim differs from a Lockean entitlement claim with regard to its content,

10. This does not mean that the existence of a civil union is a sufficient condition for
having rights. A sufficient condition would be a civil union that constitutes a Rechtsstaat.
But civil union is a necessary condition of any possible development towards a Rechtsstaat.

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383 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

and second, that the distinctive content of a Kantian entitlement claim

renders its unilateral enforcement in the pre-civil condition conceptu-
ally and morally impossible.

A The General Concept of Right and the Innate Right to Freedom of Each

To say that there are no natural rights in the Kantian pre-civil condition
is not to say that there are no morally valid claims to Right in that con-
dition.11 Nor is it to deny that individuals' obligation to enter into the civil
condition is a function of the valid claims to Right they each raise in the
pre-civil condition. Kant is not a positivist about rights: there are morally
valid pre-civil claims to Right and the obligation to enter into the civil
condition is grounded in the acknowledgment that these claims can be
vindicated only in that condition.12 Nonetheless, the contention that
there are morally valid pre-civil claims to Right is significantly weaker
than the Lockean affirmation of fully established natural rights that are
operative in the pre-civil condition. By a 'fully established natural right'
I mean the idea that individuals are pre-socially entitled to certain
specified powers and goods which, when once in a social condition,
they have the authority to defend against transgressions by others.
By 'pre-sociaT I do not mean 'pre-civil': the Lockean state of nature
is a pre-civil, yet social condition in which pre-socially held rights
entitlements are enforceable by their claimants against those they come
into contact with.
In examining the contrast between Kant and Locke, it helps to think of
a rights claim in general as comprised of two jointly necessary, function-
ally separable components: an entitlement claim and an enforcement
claim.13 The entitlement claim specifies what a person has a right to; the
enforcement claim specifies whom the right is held against, and how. On

11. By a 'claim to Right' I mean a justified claim to being in a condition in which it is

possible to have rights.
12. Jeremy Waldron offers a positivist reading of Kant in The Dignity of Legislation
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 36-62. Joachim Hruschka rejects this
positivist reading in "Die Notwehr im Zusammenhang von Kants Rechtslehre," Zeitschrift
fur die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 115 (2003): 201-23.
13. In saying that entitlement claims and enforcements claims are jointly necessary
components of a rights claim, I mean that an entitlement claim without a related enforce-
ment claim would not be a rights entitlement. I nonetheless believe that one can coher-
ently distinguish, within any given rights claim, between the distinct functions of
entitlement and enforcement components.

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384 Philosophy & Public Affairs

the Lockean account, persons' pre-social entitlement

duties of self-preservation, as well as from their
control over their own life. In this sense, Lockean en
specifiable self-referentially, i.e., independently of c
ence with others. The validity of a Lockean enforcem
from the validity of its related entitlement claim: a
sanction acts of transgression by others depends on t
her entitlement claim, not on his or her coexistence
Hence, although they are operative only in a socia
need defending only in that condition - Lockean natu
on criteria that regard coexistence with others a
essential to their specification.14 By contrast, the c
entitlement claim is conceived relationally, so canno
pendently of conditions of coexistence. Given their
the authority to act on related enforcement claims c
of the unilateral imposition of sanctions.
Given these differences in general rights concepti
for the widespread tendency nonetheless to attribut
rights conception along Lockean lines? A large part of
of habit': the tendency is a reflection of the abiding
Lockean position. Admittedly, the Doctrine of Right
tant class of Right - the innate right to freedom of
thought to have the status of an individually held n

14. According to John Simmons, the sources of Lockean rights

aside from individually held interests and powers of self-control, du
as well as duties owed to others: we have rights to the fulfilment of
Simmons, A Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U
68-94. The last category is potentially problematic for the interp
rights deriving from duties towards others surely presuppose ri
ment of their coexistence with those to whom they owe the r
personally find the idea of a right to fulfilment of my duty mor
might reasonably protest that all Lockean rights are grounded in
pre-socially given interests or powers and their coexistence with o
pre-civil social state of nature has a law of nature which governs
Lockean natural rights derive from Lockean natural law which, l
Although I find this a plausible reading of Locke, this is not how he
those who reject the idea of natural law, yet for whom the mora
rights lies precisely in the idea of their pre-social origin, such tha
away a person's rights entitlements even while committing gros
that person. This view of rights seems to me to depend on the id
specifiable entitlement claims.

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385 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

asserts of the innate right that we each have it 'by nature', by which he
means that we have it 'independently of any act that would establish a
right' (VI 237). It is often assumed both that the innate right is a Lockean
natural right and that the entire weight of the argument in the Doctrine of
Right rests on it as its basic premise. Yet a cursory look at the text shows
that Kant begins not with the innate right but with what he calls 'the
moral concept of Right'. This designation immediately indicates the rela-
tional structure of Kantian rights.
In general, for Kant, concepts are not names we give to classes of
objects that would exist independently of our categorizing them as such:
we do not acquire concepts of objects by pointing to the objects these
concepts denote. Kantian concepts are constructs out of sensible intu-
ition in conjunction with (a priori) rules of understanding. Concepts
represent the world mediately - through the 'filter' of our rational under-
standing of it. A conceptual understanding of the world is possible only
for and between rational beings: concepts are the currency of a type of
exchange only rational beings are capable of.15 We operate with a range
of different types of concepts: empirical concepts, such as the concept of
a chair, by means of which we identify and distinguish objects in the
world; pure concepts, such as the concept of God, the content of which
is wholly nonempirical (consisting of notions of omnipotence, omni-
science, moral perfection, which we associate with the idea of God);
practical concepts, which pertain to our agency in the world. In the
Critique of Pure Reason, a concept of practical reason is said to resemble
a concept of pure reason in similarly having no sensible intuitions cor-
responding to it. However, practical concepts are 'not wholly pure con-
cepts of reason in so far as they are connected with something that is
empirical (desire or aversion)'.16 Kant cites 'happiness' as one such
concept, which, though it does not correspond with any particular sen-
sible intuition, nonetheless has sensibly conditioned desire attached to
it. In the Critique of Practical Reason practical concepts are further

15. This idea of our conceptually mediated knowledge of the world presupposes Kant's
much-contested distinction between the world as it is in itself and the world as it neces-
sarily 'appears' to us. The best analysis and interpretation of Kant's transcendental ideal-
ism as epistemological thesis remains Henry Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An
Interpretation and Defense (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 63-130.
16. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan,
1992), B 384.

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386 Philosophy & Public Affairs

differentiated, like theoretical concepts, into empir

cepts. Empirical practical concepts, now associated
practical reason, maintain a connection to 'somethin
By contrast, concepts of pure practical reason perta
of ourselves and others merely as moral agents.17 In
speaks of the concept of duty as a pure practical con
scious of our obligations towards ourselves and other
our status as rational agents, not because of sentim
sympathy we may feel towards others. The Doctrine
asserts that we stand under obligations of Right vis
merely in virtue of each our rational capacity for fr
action, not because we are creatures of need, or vie
Hobbesian distrust, or aspire to the good life with o
For Kant, then, the content of all moral concepts
cal alike - is specified by our practical standing tow
coexisting and interacting rational agents, and makes
physical or psychological needs and capacities. As
has shown, a centrally distinguishing feature of the mor
strictly interpersonal character. Virtue has an intra
Robinson Crusoe owes himself duties of virtue even while alone on his
island. The ethical demand to treat the humanity in my own person never
merely as a means but always at the same time as an end in itself remains
in force even under solitary conditions. By contrast, duties of Right
become relevant only with the arrival of Friday: 'So long as Robinson
remains alone on his island, a Doctrine of Right is superfluous. With
Friday's arrival, a Doctrine of Right becomes morally necessary/19 In one
sense Hruschka's point is perfectly general: Locke would agree that indi-
viduals' rights become practically relevant on Robinson's island only
with Friday's arrival. Nonetheless, conceptually, Robinson and Friday
have rights even before they make contact with one another. When Rob-
inson and Friday encounter one another, the status of each as indepen-
dent rights holder restricts the type of relations they may permissibly
enter into with one another: it is at this point that their respective

17. Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, V: 911.

18. Cf. Bernd Ludwig, "Whence Public Right? The Role of Theoretical and Practical
Reasoning in Kant's Doctrine of Right," in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative
Essays, ed. Mark Timmons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 159-84.
19. Hruschka, "Die Notwehr," p. 205.

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387 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

enforcement authority against one another becomes practically rel-

evant. The arresting feature of Kant'sposition lies in the thought that
until Friday's arrival the concept of Right is morally meaningless on
Crusoe's island: absent the presence of
others, the concept of Right has
no content.20 Right, in Kant, consistsin the morally requisite form of
external relations between two or more persons with regard to the
capacity for freedom of choice and action of each:
The concept of Right, insofar as it is related to an obligation corre-
sponding to it (i.e., the moral concept of Right), has to do, first, only
with the external and indeed practical relation of one person to
another, insofar as their actions, as facts, can have (direct or indirect)
influence on each other. But, second, it does not signify the relation of
one's choice to the mere wish of the other, as in actions of beneficence
or callousness, but only a relation to the other's choice. Third, in this
reciprocal relation of choice no account at all is taken of the matter of
choice, that is, of the end each has in mind with the objects he wants.
... All that is in question is the form in the relation of choice on the
part of both, insofar as choice is regarded merely as free (VI 230).
To raise a Kantian entitlement claim is to raise a claim to being treated
by others in morally requisite ways in virtue of one's capacity for external
freedom. Unlike Lockean entitlement claims, Kantian entitlement
claims cannot intelligibly be raised in the absence of coexistence with
others. Of course, to say that they cannot intelligibly be raised in the
pre-social condition is not to say that they cannot intelligibly be raised in
the pre-civil condition. As for Locke, so for Kant the pre-civil condition is
a social condition. When Friday and Robinson encounter one another on
the island, they find themselves in a pre-civil social condition. In this
condition, and consonant with each their conception of themselves as
beings capable of external freedom, Friday and Robinson will each raise
entitlement to freedom of choice and action claims against one another;
they will each claim morally requisite forms of action-restraint from the
other. Their joint problem will be that neither possesses the authority to
enforce these claims against the other.
I shall consider the problem of rights enforcement immediately
below. Here I want briefly to clarify the status of the innate right in

20. I should point out that my extrapolations from his island example diverge from
those drawn by Hruschka, for whom Kant follows Achenwall's natural rights theory.

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388 Philosophy & Public Affairs

relation to the general concept of Right. The innate ri

subsequent to the analysis of the general concept of R
entitled 'Division of the Doctrine of Right'. Kant th
between innate and acquired rights: 'an innate rig
belongs to everyone by nature, independently of an
establish a right; an acquired right is that for whic
required' (VI 237). The innate right is held independentl
sion of acts, not of coexistence. More specifically,

Freedom (independence from being constrained by an

insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every ot
with a universal law, is the only original right belong
by virtue of his humanity. This principle of innate
involves the following authorizations which are no
from it . . . : innate equality, that is, independence fr
to others to more than he can in turn bind them; hence a man's
quality of being his own master (sui iuris), as well as being a man
beyond reproach {iusti) . . . ; and finally, his being authorized to do to
others anything that does not in itself diminish what is theirs (VI 238).

As with the general concept of Right, the content of the innate right is
specified relationally, so cannot intelligibly be held independently of
coexistence. According to Reinhard Brandt, Kant's distinction between
innate and acquired rights tracks the Roman-law distinction between
inner and their outer suum.21 The innate right specifies entitlements to
requisite forms of interaction pertaining to individuals as moral persons:
'merely in virtue of their humanity'.22 Acquired rights specify relational
entitlements that follow from the commission of actions, more specifi-
cally, from claims to the exclusive use of external objects. Innate and
acquired rights thus constitute distinct subdivisions within the general
concept of Right.23 To assign a 'naturalized' innate right preeminence
over the general concept of Right is to detract from the distinctively

21. Cf. Reinhard Brandt, "Das Erlaubnisgesetz, oder: Vernunft und Geschichte in Kants
Rechtslehre," in Rechtsphilosophien der Aufklarung, ed. Brandt (Berlin: de Gruyter,
1982), pp. 233-75.
22. A detailed analysis of the distinct interpersonal entitlements under the innate right
can be found in Peter Niesen, Kants Theorie der Redefreiheit (Nomos, 2005), pp. 33-127.
23. The relation between innate right and acquired rights remains a matter of interpre-
tative dispute, but is of no consequence in the present context.

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389 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

relational content of Kantian entitlement claims. As we

shall see, this has repercussions on one's understanding
enforcement claims.

B. Unilateral Versus Omnilateral Rights Enforcement

I suggested that Lockean rights are specifiable independently of condi-

tions of coexistence. Lockean entitlement claims derive from individu-
als' pre-socially given interests and powers; related enforcement
authority derives from the validity of entitlement claims. Though fully
operable only in the social condition, individuals have these rights inde-
pendently of that condition. By contrast, Kantian entitlement claims are
not specifiable independently of coexistence. In consequence, related
enforcement authority cannot be coherently conceived in unilateral
terms. Consider Kant's much-criticized contention that the concept of
Right contains the concept of coercion 'by the principle of contradiction'
(VI 231) ,24 The idea is that when we 'think' the concept of Right, we
simultaneously 'think' the concept of coercion.25 It is tempting to take
Kant to be making the same point as Locke: from our valid entitlement
claims, our authority to sanction transgressions against them follows. In
fact, Kant's contention is more radical: rights claims are intrinsically
coercive in that the claim to coercive authority over others is made inde-
pendently of whether others have committed any acts of transgression.
Recall that Kantian entitlement claims are reciprocally relational: I
raise a claim to rightful freedom-treatment against you as you raise such
a claim against me. The universal principle of Right accordingly makes
others' freedom the criterion of the Tightness of my action: 'any action is
right if it can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a
universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can
coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law'

24. For criticisms of Kant's analyticity argument, see Allen Wood, "The Final Form of
Kant's Practical Philosophy," and Paul Guyer, "Kant's Deductions of Right," both in Kant's
Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, ed. MarkTimmons (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), pp. 1-20, esp. pp. 5-10, and pp. 23-64, esp. pp. 46-54, respectively. For an
excellent analysis and defense of the analyticity argument, including discussion of its
distinctiveness from sanction-based approaches, see Arthur Ripstein, "Authority and
Coercion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 32 (2004): 2-35.
25. On Kantian analyticity, see L. W. Beck, "Kant's Theory of Definition," Philosophical
Review (1956): 179-91-

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390 Philosophy & Public Affairs

(VI 230). While the universal principle of Right i

to maxims, the narrower universal law of Right
from ethical obligation:

The universal law of Right, so act externally that t

choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone i
universal law, is indeed a law that lays an obligation
not at all expect, far less demand, that I mysel
freedom to those conditions just for the sake of thi
reason says only that freedom is limited to those
formity with the idea of it and that it may also be
others (VI 231) ,26

The exclusion of reference to agents' maxims signal

self-obligation to other-obligation. In contrast to
where I obligate myself to act in accordance with m
obligation is not self-imposed. Since the ground of m
tion is others' equal freedom entitlement, I am
whether or not I will acknowledgment of my obliga
Indeed, others are entitled to limit my freedom in
universal law of Right. As Arthur Ripstein has shown
that others are entitled to apply coercive sanction
event of my nonperformance in relation to their rights.
I may limit your freedom and you may limit mine whet
us has acted wrongly against the other. Rights claim
coercive in that they raise reciprocal claims to the ju
others' power of will even against others' consent an
any acts on their part. When Robinson meets Friday,
a just entitlement to restrict Friday's external fr
Friday's will; Friday will do likewise.
Kant's formal definition of rightful coercion as a 'h
drance to freedom' (VI 231) is naturally read as a san
ment. If any action is right that accords with oth
universal laws, any action is wrong that does not so a
action undertaken by one designed to prevent the ac

26. For a careful analysis of the difference between universal p

law of Right, see Dieter Scheffel, "Kant's kritische Verwerfung d
Rechtsphilosophien, ed. Reinhard Brandt, pp. 178-213, at pp. 196-
27. Ripstein, Authority and Coercion.

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391 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

coercive insofar as it nonconsensually intrudes upon the latter's power

of choice. Any such action that does not accord with the universal law of
Right is illegitimately coercive; any such action that does accord with the
universal law of Right is legitimately coercive. When Kant defines legiti-
mate coercion as a 'hindrance of a hindrance of freedom* he seems to
have in mind the rightful hindrance of a wrongful hindrance of freedom:
the connotation is of a legitimately coercive rectification of an unjust
action. However, the paragraph immediately following shows that the
coercion argument is not essentially sanction-bound:

Strict Right can be represented as the possibility of a fully reciprocal

use of coercion that is consistent with everyone's freedom in accor-
dance with universal laws. This proposition says, in effect, that right
should not be conceived as made up of two elements, namely an
obligation in accordance with a law and an authorization of him who
by his choice puts another under obligation to coerce him to fulfil it.
Instead one can locate the concept of Right directly in the possibility
of connecting universal reciprocal coercion with the freedom of
everyone (VI 232).

This amounts to a repudiation of sanction-based enforcement argu-

ments. In Kant, given the relational content of entitlements claims,
enforcement claims are constitutive of entitlement claims rather than, as
in Locke, following from them. But if so, must we not say that anyone
who raises a valid entitlement claim against others raises a valid enforce-
ment claim against them? And does this not mean that anyone who has
a valid entitlement claim has the authority to enforce it against others? It
is true that insofar as the enforcement claim is 'contained in' the entitle-
ment claim, anyone who raises a valid entitlement claim raises a valid
enforcement claim. But from the fact that a person raises a valid enforce-
ment claim it does not follow that he or she has the authority to enforce
it. Consider two conditions of rightful enforcement that can be extrapo-
lated from the foregoing analysis: first, any rights relation is reciprocally
coercible, which is to say that my freedom claim against you is as good as
yours is against me. Second, the legitimacy of any coercible freedom
claim is a function of its according with the universal law of Right.
Whether or not I am entitled to coerce you depends on the legitimacy of
my freedom claim relative to the universal law of Right. The same holds
for your claim against me. But under conditions of reciprocal coercion,

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392 Philosophy & Public Affairs

which of us has authority to judge whose claim mee

condition? Kant's argument is that, given the recipr
within any entitlement relation, no constituent m
relation can legitimately enforce his or her entitlem
the other party:

A unilateral will cannot serve as a coercive law for eve

that would infringe upon freedom in accordance wit
So it is only a will putting everyone under obligation
collective general (common) and powerful will, t
everyone this assurance [of lawful freedom]. But
being under a general external (i.e., public) lawgiv
with power is the civil condition (VI 256).

No individual person within a given rights relation h

pronounce binding judgments in respect of that relati
variation of the Lockean argument from natural bias: t
that //"natural biases could be eliminated, individual p
wills could make valid coercive law for everyone. Kant
unilateral rights pronouncements is that they are p
ments. It is impossible in principle for a private perso
mate enforcer of coercive universal laws. This follows from the
conception of Right as specifying reciprocally coercive freedom relation
under universal law. Since no one who coercively imposes law up
others can at the same time be subject to that law's coercive authority
private persons who impose coercive laws upon others place themselve
beyond the coercibility of those laws. In so doing they place themselv
outside the rights relation from within which their claim was raised.
follows that no private rights claimant, in raising a valid entitlement
claim against others, can legitimately enforce this claim against them
while remaining a constituent member of the rights relation. Only an
omnilateral public will - a will that is itself party to no rights relations
can act as authoritative enforcer of coercive universal law in relation to
all claimants simultaneously. In imposing coercive universal law equally
upon all, such a public law enforcer does not violate the reciprocity of
coercion that characterizes rights relations internally. Nor, on the other
hand, is such an enforcement authority itself subject to the coercive
authority of the laws it imposes.

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393 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

IV. THE SOVEREIGN REPRESENTATIVE OF THE GENERAL UNITED WILL

AND THE NO-RIGHT TO REVOLUTION

In Kant's pre-civil social condition, persons unavoidably r

entitlement claims against one another. Given their reciprocally
character, these claims cannot permissibly be enforced ag
another in that condition. Only an omnilateral will has aut
enforce reciprocally coercive entitlement claims against all. Th
lateral will is the idea of the 'collective general (common) and
will' (VI 256). Despite its Rousseauean inspiration, Kant's 'collect
does not represent the idea of popular sovereignty - the thoug
that each subjects himself only to laws which he has co-authore
others.28 The general united will represents the idea of a public
authority as necessary condition of the possible vindication of
but privately unenforceable entitlement claims of each. We
assert in connection with the coercible character of Right that
others' freedom is the ground of my juridical obligation against
can actively limit my freedom in accordance with the univers
Right. Further on - now in the context of the property argum
says that I am entitled to compel others to join into the civil c
with me: 'If it must be possible, in terms of rights, to have an
object as one's own, the subject must also be permitted to
everyone else with whom he comes into conflict about whether
nal object is his or another's to enter along with him into a ci
tion' (VI 256). The two claims are equivalent in meaning: the aut
limit others' freedom in accordance with the universal law of Ri
the authority unilaterally to enforce rights claims against them
authority to compel others to join into the civil condition wit
civil condition is not established through an act of consens
constitution by its members but results from morally necessa
dination by members under a head:

28. But see Andrews Reath, "Legislating for a Realm of Ends: The Social Dim
Autonomy," in Reclaiming the History of Ethics, ed. A. Reath, pp. 214-40. For cri
position, see my "Kant's Kingdom of Ends: Metaphysical, not Political," in A C
to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Jens Timmermann (Cam
bridge University Press, forthcoming).

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394 Philosophy & Public Affairs

[BJetween the commander {imperans) and the subjec

is no partnership. They are not fellow-members: one
tot not coordinated with the other; and those who are
one another must for this very reason consider t
since they are subject to common laws (VI 307).

The relation between head and members is asymmetr

members are subject to the coercive will of the hea
subject to the coercive wills of the members. The reason
obvious by now: the head represents a public, not a priv
insight into the distinctively public character of the in
eignty that grounds Kant's resistance against the idea of
tion. Importantly, the very same insight motivate
Hobbesian sovereignty. Critics of Kant's no-right to
depict his conception of the coercive sovereign as on a
Hobbes: it is because Kant shares Hobbes's sovereignty
he rejects a right to revolution. This objection gets thin
Kant, the people have no right to revolution against th
the sovereign represents the idea of its general united
because the sovereign represents the idea of the genera
repudiates any view of the sovereign as merely the stronge
around. What is wrong with the Hobbesian lawgiver is
acter of his lawgiving. A public lawgiver enforces bindi
freedom not in accordance with his private will but in a
idea of the general united will. Hence not any law decr
eign is just merely in virtue of having emanated from
sovereign, who ought to make public law in accordanc
the general united will, can fail to do so. It is in the contex
a right to revolution that Kant introduces his 'freedom
ment to repudiate Hobbes's contention regarding the so
unlimited coercive authority. While Kant agrees w
members of the civil condition cannot have coercive r
sovereign, the public character of the sovereign's lawgi
the 'non-recalcitrant subject must be able to assume th
not want to do him any wrong'. A subject must have 'w
the sovereign himself, the authorization to make kn
opinion about what it is in the ruler's arrangements th
be a wrong against the commonwealth' (VIII 304).

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395 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

It is the non-recalcitrant subject who has a morally justified claim to

the sovereign's public ear: again, freedom of the pen is not a pre-civil
individual right to free speech but derives as public counterweight
from subjects' acknowledgment of the sovereign's legitimate coercive
authority over them. Where the sovereign is assured of subjects' non-
recalcitrance, he ought to acknowledge their contribution to the public
political process. He ought to acknowledge his personal fallibility in his
role as public lawmaker and ought to listen to subjects' reasoned criti-
cisms and proposals for reform. The sovereign need not always be
responsive to these criticisms and proposals: ultimate responsibility for
judging public right and wrong rests with him as representative head of
the union. The envisaged dynamic of reasoned exchange between
sovereign and subjects nonetheless indicates the essentially refor-
mative character of the Kantian conception of the gradual emer-
gence of the Rechtsstaat from its unavoidable beginnings in more or
less despotic contexts.29
A sovereign may, then, be unjust in the sense of passing unjust laws:
so long as he acknowledges subjects' justified claim to freedom of the
pen as a necessary public counterweight to his coercive authority, the
unjust sovereign is not illegitimate even where he fails to respond posi-
tively to interjections from the public but merely tolerates reasoned
expressions of dissent. Where the sovereign denies subjects' freedom of
the pen his rule may be illegitimate. However, this is by no means a
foregone conclusion.30 The intolerant sovereign may retain legitimacy
merely in virtue of being the sole possible representative of the idea of
the general united will. If, as Kant appears to think, acting as represen-
tative of the idea of the general united will is a sufficient condition of
legitimacy (if not of justice), and if, as he patently does think, the head of
the civil union is the only possible such representative, the latter's legiti-
macy cannot legitimately be challenged by alternative contenders to
that position. The tyrannical sovereign may possess legitimacy merely
insofar as it is not possible for anyone else to represent the idea of the
general united will. This does not mean that it is impossible for the civil

29. I discuss Kant's argument for reform over revolution in more detail in my "Side-
stepping Morality: Korsgaard on Kant's No-right to Revolution," Jahrbuch fiir Recht und
Ethik 14 (2008), forthcoming.
30. For excellent discussion of this problematic situation, see Scheffel, "Kants kritische
Verwerfung," pp. 205-11.

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396 Philosophy & Public Affairs

union ever to dissolve itself. Lewis White Beck draws attention to a

passage in which Kant speaks of revolution as a 'call of nature for fun-
damental reforms'.31 Where oppression has reached a level of intensity
so as to become literally unbearable, social violence may finally erupt
and dissolution result. However, far from constituting a right of the
united people against its head, violent dissolution signals the complete
breakdown of subjects' and sovereign's respective attempts at establish-
ing relations of Right. Such failures of state happen - nature (in current
parlance, 'circumstance') lends a helping hand, enabling those involved
to attempt the civil union anew. Kant does not deny the possibility of
revolution as social event; nor does he deny the possible progressive
political consequences of such events. He denies only that there can be
a right to revolution. The elementary reason for this denial lies in his
conception of the public character of Right and in the consequent con-
stitutive unfitness of unilateral as private wills to take public law into
their own hands.

V. KANTIAN WORRIES OVER A LOCKEAN RIGHT TO REVOLUTION

Kant's emphasis on the public morality of Right has entered mai

liberal thinking. At the same time, his denial of a right to rev
strains against deeply held liberal commitments to the Lockean
naturally held individual rights, including related notions of in
sovereignty. The tension between these two commitments is ev
the standard response to Kant's 'freedom of the pen' argument
Hobbes: the proposal that reasoned dissent may efficaciously co
coercive power seems politically laughable to most. Bemusemen
to incredulity at the point of Kant's denial of a right to revolut
the sovereign repudiates even this sole - albeit laughable - 'palla
the people' (VIII 304). Kant's view of revolution as signalling a c
breakdown in political relations - revolution as social event -
insufficient appeasement.32 Revolution understood as a conscien
undertaken, legitimate political act, hence a right to revo

31. Kant (VIII 373n) cited in L. W. Beck, "Right of Revolution," p. 418.

32. Revolution as a 'call of nature' may anticipate the Marxist conception of
as resulting from a confluence of determining social and economic cond
Skocpol, Social Revolutions.

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397 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

demanded. It is typically at this point that disappointed Kantians turn to

Locke for revolutionary succor.
For most liberal defenders of a right to revolution the idea of such
action as securing individuals' naturally held rights against their govern-
ments is foremost on their minds. The underlying view of revolution is
not, however, of an aggregate of individuals making common cause each
in defense of their particular rights. The dominant view is of revolution
as a public act undertaken by the united citizenry in behalf of the people
as a whole. Yet it is not clear whether a Lockean individually held natural
right to self-defense can support the idea of revolution as a united public
act. The suspicion arises that in much current revolutionary parlance a
(broadly) Lockean natural rights argument is conjoined with a (broadly)
Kantian conception of the people as unified public agent. It is against the
background of this suspicion that I want to consider the subsidiary ques-
tion flagged at the outset of this article: can Locke move consistently
from an affirmation of individually held natural rights to self-defense in
the pre-civil condition to an affirmation of the people's civil right to
revolution in the civil condition? While I believe that he can do so under
at least one description of what constitutes a people, that description is
too thin for the Kantian.
To see this, it will be useful to distinguish between two distinct con-
ceptions of 'a people': the eliminativist view and the emergentist view.33
For the eliminativist, a 'people' as a morally significant entity distinct
from the sum of its constituent members does not exist: the people and
its interests and actions are reducible to the aggregate of its individual
members. By contrast, on the emergentist view, a distinctive type of
agent does emerge from the unification of a multitude into a people. A
'people' consists of more than the sum of its constituent members: the
act of unification brings into existence a public agent whose interests
and actions are relatively autonomous of those of its constituent
individual members.34 Locke is standardly seen as a representative of the

33. I borrow this terminology from Christian List and Philip Pettit, who employ it to
differentiate between two distinct approaches to collective and group agency respectively
in their Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, forthcoming), chapter 3. List and Pettit do not fully endorse either
approach, but seek to develop a third alternative account halfway between the two.
34. This need not mean, as is often assumed, that under the eliminativist view indi-
viduals' interests and agency are simply subsumed under the whole: this is certainly not

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398 Philosophy & Public Affairs

eliminativist view. Society is constituted through act

number of individuals who join together for the pu
rights protection. Decision making is by majority ru
sary to that which is one Body to move one way, it i
should move that way whither the greater force car
consent of the majority' (II 96) ,35 The individual judg
number determine the movement of the whole body
Kant's view, according to which an aggregate of uni
however numerous, cannot add up to a public jud
people results from the unification of a multitude u
united general will. The idea of a public judgment
tinct from that of an aggregate of private judgment
relatively autonomous interests and actions of so
distinct, unitary agent. Kant can plausibly be read a
the emergentist view.
Traditionally, liberals have eyed the emergentist v
They have aligned themselves with the eliminativist
the more attractive or at any rate safer conception g
of collective interests and actions to constituent individual ones. But if
the eliminativist view gets by with a thin conception of collective power,
it also affords no more than a thin conception of collective responsibility.
Consider a passage from chapter 18 of Locke's second Treatise, 'On
Tyranny', in which he discusses the response open to an individual
member of civil society whose rights have manifestly been violated by
a public official:

Whosoever in Authority exceeds the Power given him by the Law, and
makes use of the Force he has under his Command, to compass that
upon the Subject which the Law allows not, ceases in that to be a
Magistrate, and acting without Authority, may be opposed as any
other Man, who by force invades the Right of another (II 202).

The official who acts contrary to the law declares war upon the
affected individual and in so doing forfeits his official status: he is no

the case under the Kantian variant of this view. The essential point here is simply the
relative autonomy of public agency from private agency, i.e., the nonreducibility of public
to private agency.
35. Quotes are from Locke s Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994); arabic numerals refer to individual paragraphs.

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399 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

different from a 'robber or a pirate' (II 228) whose transgressions against

others' rights are punishable by natural law. Yet although Locke affirms
the aggrieved individual's natural right to self-defense against this offi-
cial, he also thinks it unlikely that society will come to his aid:
If such acts of abuse reach no farther than some private Mens Cases,
though they have a right to defend themselves, and to recover by force
what by unlawful force is taken from them; yet the Right to do so will
not easily ingage them in a Contest, wherein they are sure to perish; it
being as impossible for the one or a few oppressed Men to disturb the
Government, where the Body of the People do not think themselves
concerned in it (II 208).

So long as rights abuses do not affect the majority of individuals in

civil society, they are unlikely to come to the aggrieved party's assistance.
Locke's diagnosis of the situation is consistent with his account of natu-
rally rights-holding individuals' consensual entrance into civil society.
For the aggrieved individual effectively to defend his rights (the violation
of which no one contests), he must arouse the support of the majority.
Where the majority judges that they have no interest in this dispute, he
may in this instance be less able to secure his rights than he might have
been under an analogous scenario in the pre-civil condition. Yet this is
what he signed up to when consenting to majority rule upon entrance
into the civil condition. Many current liberal defenders of a right to
revolution will find this unsatisfactory. Should only those have their
rights violations redressed who successfully rouse the majority in their
support? What about the weak and the vulnerable: should society not
defend the rights of those least able to fend for themselves?36 The idea
that the rights of each should be the concern of the whole points beyond
the eliminativist view to one that is closer to the emergentist one. But
where the defense of individuals' rights is seen as a matter of distinctly
public concern, the move from individuals' natural rights of self-defense
in the pre-civil condition to the people's civil right of revolution in

36. Considerations of this type motivate Robert C. Grady's criticisms of Locke in "Obli-
gation, Consent, and Locke's Right to Revolution: 'Who Is to Judge?'" Canadian Journal of
Political Science 9 (1976): 277-92. John Simmons's response that individuals have both a
contractual and a natural law duty to come to the aid of the aggrieved party, although
consistent with the eliminativist perspective, may not entirely satisfy Grady's demands for
societal action. Cf. A. John Simmons, On the Edge of Anarchy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1993), pp. 178-92.

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400 Philosophy & Public Affairs

the political condition may not be that straightforw

autonomy of the public good now enters to complicate
Locke himself sometimes invokes some idea of th
relatively autonomous of the aggregate of individua
rights.38 There are passages that imply that the reason why
slow to rise is not individual disinterest in particular ri
concern to preserve the good of government - rule by
general. Indeed, Locke's defense of the people's right t
be at its strongest where not individual rights violatio
corruption of government is at issue. In chapter 19 of t
'On the Dissolution of Government', Locke distinguish
nal and internal dissolution. External dissolution happe
quest, interned dissolution through corruption wit
legislative branches of government. Locke thinks
in particular, rather than government in general,
of the people:

'Tis in their Legislative, that the Members of a Co

united, and combined together into one coherent
Soul that gives Form, Life, and Unity to the Commo
Essence and Union of the Society consisting in h
the Legislative, when once established by the Majority
ing, and as it were the keeping of that Will. The Con
Legislative is the first and fundamental Act of Society
sion is made for the Continuation of their Union (II 21

The act of establishing the legislative, not mere en

society, gives the Commonwealth its unity, enabling it
This is not as strong as the Kantian requirement of sub
idea of a general united will: in contrast to Kant's sover
executive entertains a peculiarly adversarial relationsh
lative and seems on the whole not to be thought of as
the people's unity. The establishment of the legislat
government nonetheless introduces a unity of will wh
gate of individual wills was available before: the m

37. For example, the public may take an interest in the rights viol
when the aggrieved party does not. Alternatively, the public may ju
insignificant even when the aggrieved party manages to arouse a m
38. Cf. II, 200; 225; 229; 239.

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401 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

political society represents a move from the commonality of individual

interests to the (relative) unity of the public interest.
In chapter 19 it is primarily the prince whose various misdeeds effect
the corruption of the legislative, either by usurping its lawmaking func-
tions, or by preventing it from meeting, or by changing its electorate.39
Similarly, it is the prince who corrupts the executive branch when he
'neglects and abandons that charge, so that the Laws already made can
no longer be put into execution* (II 219). When either legislative or execu-
tive branches of government, or both, have been corrupted through
internal governmental abuse, 'the Government visibly ceases, and the
People become a confused Multitude, without Order or Connexion* (II
219) .40 The established unity of political society is destroyed. Once gov-
ernment has run itself into the ground, the people - surprisingly, now a
'confused Multitude' rather than, as one might expect, an aggregate of
commonly consenting wills - are 'at liberty to provide for themselves by
erecting a new Legislative' (II 220). Locke believes that no one disputes
this. But if no one disputes that a multitude whose government has
self-destructed is at liberty to appoint itself a new one, no one can rea-
sonably dispute the right of a people whose government is still in the
process of self-destructing to rid itself of it before the event:

To tell a people they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new

Legislative, when by Oppression, Artifice, or being delivered over to a
Foreign Power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them they may
expect Relief, when it is too late, and the evil is past Cure

rather Mockery than Relief; and men can

Tyranny, if there be no means to escape it, til
it: And therefore it is, that they have not only
to prevent it (II 220).

I do not see how the right to rid oneself of

follow from the liberty to establish a new one,
a powerful rhetorical argument, which is fo
ing pages by a discussion of government i

39. Cf II, 212-14.

40. This is a remarkable claim on Locke's part given h
passages upon the viability of civil society in the absence
discussion of this puzzle, see Nathan Turcov, "Locke's Seco
against Rebellion'/' Review of Politics 43 (1981): 198-217.

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402 Philosophy & Public Affairs

interestingly, that Locke also discusses cases in w

itself- not merely the executive - abuses the trust b
the people. There is no space for detailed discussion
government as held in trust is to invoke the
government - it is to invoke the idea of the govern
speak in behalf of the majority in relative independen
actual pronouncements on the grounds that only
legislative branch), as unified agent, has decision-
for those areas of interest and concern that arise from the distinct act of
political establishment itself.41 If this is plausible, then the meaning of
'the people* operative in chapter 19 may not be of a piece with the
meaning dominant in the cited passages from chapter 18. There, 'the
people' may be no more than an aggregate of individual wills who reach
common decisions by majority rule. Here a more unified notion of 'the
people' is in play whose concern is to preserve the public good of gov-
ernment. Under the first conception a relatively straightforward connec-
tion obtains between individuals' natural right to self-defense and their
civil right to revolution, subject to majority support, but the idea of the
people's public agency is quite thin. Under the second conception, there
is a much stronger sense of the people's right to preserve the public good
of government, but the connection between this public right and indi-
viduals' natural right to self-defense is not self-evident.42

VI. CONCLUSION

My argument in the last section has not been that in moving

eliminativist to a more emergentist conception of a peop
effect endorses Kantian submission under the idea of a gen
will. I have suggested only that Locke's second argument fo
which operates with a more unitary conception of the peop

41. Cf. John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Ca
versity Press, 1969). One particular such area of necessarily common d
that Dunn identifies is the running of the national economy. Accor
it is the introduction of money into natural trade relations that necess
ment of a common system of governance even apart from individu
efficient rights protection.
42. Although the fact that Locke defends both individuals' and the pe
resistance is widely acknowledged in the Locke literature, the correspon
shifts that seem to be involved at the level of 'the people' seem to go larg

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403 Reason, Right, and Revolution:
Kant and Locke

first, presupposes more than mere appeal to individuals' natural rights.

Minimally, additional premises come into play - premises to do with the
independent public good of government, which may supply reasons for
or against revolution that are distinct from arguments about individuals'
rights and may even conflict with them. While this second Lockean con-
ception of the people should not be conflated with Kant's account, the
Kantian emphasis on the public morality of Right draws attention to the
relative autonomy of public agency from (an aggregate of) private
agency, and to the consequent difficulty in conceiving of the people's
right to revolution as a self-evident extrapolation from an aggregate of
individuals' natural rights to self-defense.
The principal aim of this article has been to defend Kant against
charges of philosophical inconsistency by disappointed Kantians who
would like him to endorse a right to revolution. Given the absence of
natural rights in Kant, and given his conception of the public morality
of Right, it would be highly inconsistent of Kant to endorse the moral
validity of a claim to destroy the necessary condition of any possible
rights when the going gets tough. Even when the going gets very tough
there cannot consistently be, for Kant, a right to revolution, although
state dissolution through internal turmoil can, of course, occur. I have
not, in defending Kant, sought to discredit the Lockean position. I
have acknowledged that from at least one perspective - the elimi-
nativist one - Locke's position, too, is consistent, though it is too thin
a conception of the public for a Kantian. Inconsistencies are most
likely to arise where attempts are made to supplement Kant with
Locke, or Locke with Kant: one will either end up weakening the idea
of the public morality of Right, or undermine the thought of govern-
mental legitimacy as based on individual consent and protection
of natural rights.
This does not mean that one cannot productively think about the
issues here raised across these two thinkers. The idea of revolution is
widely embraced morally and politically, yet little analyzed philosophi-
cally. Among liberals in particular it is often deemed the perhaps quint-
essential expression of concerted public action: yet the stance is often
romantic, not analytical. Recent work on collective rationality and deci-
sion making distinguishes between aggregative and unitary models of
public agency, analyzing the conditions of each, and assessing the
appropriateness of either model in relation to distinct areas of public

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404 Philosophy & Public Affairs

decision making.43 If the argument of the precedin

that eliminativist and emergentist conceptions of a
rather different bases and objects of legitimate revol
literature may be relevant to the question as to whe
ently derive a public right to revolution from i
rights to self-defense.
The contrasting Kantian idea of public reasoning
morality of Right (or justice) is similarly widely embr
of the pen argument in the context of his no-right to re
Kant's commitment to the idea of public reason is ver
this commitment is a consequence of Kant's abandon
thinking, including natural rights, which leaves pub
only alternative method by which to solve disputes
eign and subject. In contrast to Kant, the current lib
public reason remains in many respects quite superf
out by the striking neglect of Kant's argument for r
alternative to violent resistance in the relevant Kant literature.44 It further
manifests itself in the steadily growing literature on coercive interven-
tionism on humanitarian grounds, and on the forceful imposition of
democracy upon peoples unable or unwilling to do it themselves. Often
this literature appeals to Kant as one who surely would have endorsed
resort of political violence for the sake of Right in the international context
even though he so infamously repudiated it in the domestic context.45
These trends belie an especially crusading conflation of public reason
with political violence often, ironically, in the name of Kant. Instead of
continuing to berate Kant for his unwillingness to follow us on the right to
revolution, it may be time to begin to reflect on the reasons for our
unwillingness to follow him down the route of public reasoning to the
point at which its moral demandingness upon us really does begin to bite.

43- For example, Christian list, "The Discursive Dilemma and Public Reason," Ethics
116 (2006): 362-402; Philip Pettit and David Schweikard, "Joint Action and Group Agency,"
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 36 (2006): 18-39; Philip Pettit, "Responsibility Incorpo-
rated," Ethics 117 (2007): 171-201.
44. Public reason in Kant is widely discussed, but rarely in the context of his
no-right to revolution.
45. Cf. Applbaum, "Forcing a People to Be Free." Applbaum both rejects Kant's denial
of a right to revolution and enlists his putative support for coercive imposition of demo-
cratic government upon unwilling distant others.

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