Problems with Religion and Politics 375against the community."^177 Freedom of the pen is essential. To speak up
about perceived wrongs does not necessarily constitute disobedience.
This freedom of speech follows from Kant's view of what legitimizes the
power of government. This is the social contract. Disagreeing with both
Hobbes and Locke, Kant argues that the social contract should not be un¬
derstood as an explanation of the origin of government but as a normative
idea that clarifies the relationship between a government and its citizens.
It shows, according to Kant, that government can ultimately be justified
only by the consent of those who are governed and that governmental power
is morally justified only in cases where all rational beings can agree to it.
"For right consists merely in limiting everybody else's freedom to the point
where it can coexist with my freedom according to a universal law, and the
public law in a community is no more than a state of actual legislation in
accordance with this principle and combined with power."^178 The people
have "inalienable rights" against the government, even if these rights can
never justify disobedience or rebellion.
There is no contradiction between Kant's rejection of a right to rebel¬
lion and his enthusiasm for the French Revolution, or better: Kant himself
saw no contradiction between the two. Louis XVI had in effect abdicated
when he called the Estates-General. So, legally speaking, the French Rev¬
olution was not rebellion. "In France the States-General could change the
national constitution, even though it was charged only with getting the fi¬
nances into order. For they were representatives of the entire nation (Volk)
after the king allowed them to pass decrees in accordance with indetermi¬
nate powers. Before that, the king represented the nation .. ,"^179
In the third part of the essay, Kant asked whether the human race as a
whole should be loved or disdained. His answer was that this depended on
the answer to another question, namely whether the human race had ten¬
dencies that would allow constant progress or whether it was condemned
to evil forever. Mendelssohn had written that the view "that the whole of
mankind down here should be moving ever forward, perfecting itself in the
sequence of times," was chimerical.1S0 His position was motivated, at least
in part, by Jewish ideas of human corruption. Christian doctrine, of course,
emphasized to an even greater extent the ineradicable evil of humanity and
the impossibility of salvation by human devices. If Kant took "a different
view" from that of Mendelssohn, he also took a view that was quite dif¬
ferent from that of convinced Christians, whether they were influenced by
Rosicrucianism or not.