Kant was acutely concerned with defining and justifying the legal conditions that secure civil society from a return to the state of nature. This is particularly evident from his obsession with rejecting a right of resistance. In this paper, I survey four types of resistance in eighteenth century Germany, in order to provide a context for understanding Kant’s attempt to separate just from unjust resistance. These are (1) resistance as a legal means to hold rulers accountable, (2) resistance as an instrument of regime change, (3) resistance for the sake of an individual’s conscience and conviction, and (4) resistance as loyal opposition within a constitutional regime. I briefly explore the justifications Kant’s German contemporaries offered for these views. Kant argued that only (4) is compatible with the legal continuity that prevents a return to the state of nature. In this paper I reconstruct his reasons for rejecting (1)-(3) as unjust and present a Kantian view of just resistance, which is compatible with a civil condition.
