Kant on Revolution
example · Kant ·
retold in 3 talks
Kant’s paradox that a revolution is illegal, but if it succeeds and establishes a new legal order, it becomes prohibited to rebel against it, showing how outcomes retroactively validate means.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“every revolution is to be condemned because you overthrow a legal power. But he says if the revolution wins and imposes a new legal order, then you are again prohibited to rebel against it.”59:33 Hegel's 250th Anniversary: Too late? // Slavoj Žižek & Sven-Olov Wallenstein2020-09-09 · 1:42:05
“if the revolution wins and imposes a new legal order then you are again prohibited to rebel against it. If it succeeds its immanent ethical status changes.”
“Kant's greatness is that he was ready to think both at the same time together.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Frauke Berndt1Jean Hyppolite1Frank Sinatra1R.G. Hotho1Rudolf Eichmann1Karl May1Bernard Williams2Rocío Zambrana2
alongside works
Phänomenologie des Geistes2Wissenschaft der Logik (Great Logic)1Streit der Fakultäten / Was ist Aufklärung1Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens1Philosophische Untersuchungen (Wittgenstein)1Michael Kohlhaas1Holzwege, Der Spruch von Anaximander1Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Philosophie des Geistes1
Every retelling 3
59:33 Hegel's 250th Anniversary: Too late? // Slavoj Žižek & Sven-Olov Wallenstein2020-09-09 · 1:42:05
Kant’s paradox that a revolution is illegal, but if it succeeds and establishes a new legal order, it becomes prohibited to rebel against it, showing how outcomes retroactively validate means., illustrating moral luck,imminent temporality
Kant condemns every revolution as overthrowing legal power, yet also says that if a revolution wins and imposes a new legal order, rebellion against it is again prohibited, meaning a revolution's ethical status changes retroactively upon success., illustrating moral luck,retroactive necessity,will have been
Kant simultaneously celebrates the Revolution as a sublime prognostic sign and condemns the trial against the king as the ultimate diabolical evil, a self-destruction of legality from within the form of the law, while Hegel alone was ready to think both together., illustrating French Revolution and philosophy,Hegel vs Kant,reconciliation without synthesis