Kant: What Makes A Good King?

The main point that Kant is trying to get across in this part of the reading that a good King allows freedom in the ways that people think and believe in different religions. Kant states “He [a good king] sees that there is no danger to his lawgiving in allowing his subjects to make public use of their reason and to publish their thoughts on a better formulation of his legislation” (6). Kant wants men to be able to speak freely and have the ability to criticize different views from their own instead of being fed what they are supposed to say and do. On pages four and five Kant says, “The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.” I believe

Allowing people to think freely and come up with their own ideas was what the enlightenment was about. Kant says, “And what a people may not decree for itself can even less be decreed for them by a monarch, for his lawgiving authority rests on his uniting the general public will in his own” (5). What he is saying is that if people cannot think for themselves and make rules for themselves, then the king cannot make these rules for the, because his authority is based on bringing his people together through what they want and believe. I believe that Kant writes it like this to make the reader think about how it is their responsibility to think and make their own decisions. This is also what makes a good king, the ability to allow the people to think and question any laws that are put into place. However, the last part of the quote makes me wonder if Kant is saying that the king needs to unite his people under his laws or if the king needs to take the people’s opinions on laws into his own to unite them all. Since Kant is writing about the Enlightenment and being a good king I think it is that he wants the king to take the people’s opinions on laws into account instead of using just his laws and imposing them on the people. If the king allows for the people to speak their opinion on different laws, they would be thinking for themselves and being active in what is going on in their