374 Kant: A BiographyKant argues that this is false. The concept of duty is "simpler, clearer,
more comprehensible, and more natural" than any motive drawn from hap¬
piness. Maxims based on happiness are notoriously difficult to formulate
and act on. Yet moral education had been based on such maxims until now.
Kant went on to argue that this is what impeded moral progress, and that
this did not prove the old saw that moral theory could not work in practice.
It would work, if only it were tried.
Garve had objected to Kant that it was incomprehensible how anyone
"can be conscious of having achieved complete detachment from his de¬
sire for happiness." Kant admitted that no one could ever be conscious of
having acted purely from duty. Now, if it is impossible to know in principle
whether one has ever accomplished a certain thing, then one might be ex¬
cused for thinking that there is a real problem in "trying" to do it. And even
if it did make sense to keep trying to achieve what we can never know to have
actually achieved, it still would not be true that the concept of pure duty
is simpler, clearer, and more comprehensible and natural. It was not an ar¬
gument against Garve that provides independent evidence for Kant's view.
Indeed, his admission that we can never know whether we have acted from
duty alone shows that there is a problem with his derivation of duty from
pure reason alone - a problem Garve did not have. Garve's view may make
morality more external, but it does give a more sensible account of it. Kant's
idealism was perhaps more inspiring, but it was not necessarily a clearer
formulation and better defense of ordinary moral convictions.
The second part of the essay is an attempt to answer two questions:
(i) why must we obey existing governments? and (2) are there circum¬
stances in which we are justified in (a) disobeying or (b) overthrowing
existing governments? The French and American Revolutions, as well as
the actions of Frederick William II and his censors, had made this a highly
relevant question for Kant for both political and personal reasons. Kant's
answer to (2b) is simply that there are no circumstances in which we have
a right to revolution. Though revolutions might improve things in some
cases, they are never justified. There can be neither a legal nor a moral
right to revolution. His answer to (2a) is almost equally negative. Citizens
have no right to disobey, even when they perceive a law to be unjust. In¬
deed, they are not the ones who decide whether a law is just — only the law¬
makers can do that. Yet they have the right to question the justness of laws.
The lawmaker must recognize the citizen's right "to inform the public of
his views on whatever in the sovereign's decrees appears to him as a wrong