Resistance to the authority and revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:

Locke y Kant

Abstract

The discussion about resistance to authority has strongly resurfaced at the end of the seventeenth century and in the course of eighteenth. This occurred as result of the political climate that existed in England, the North American colonies and France, and also because of the political theory renewal that took place during modernity. In this context, Locke and Kant, witnesses of the revolutionary events, wrote extensively on whether it is possible for the people to rise up against unjust orders. Locke philosophically justified the resistance; on the other hand, Kant rejected it forcefully. Firstly, this article develops the thought of Locke about this issue and places it in the English framework at the end of the XVII century and, second, describe the legal philosophy of Kant on this problem, and reconstructs the relation of it with the French Revolution. Finally, we explain the treatment of the French legal texts by the right of resistance, especially the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 and the Citizen of 1789 and the Constitution of the year I of 1793.