I’ve seen the Salvation of the World: Kant’s Reappraisal of French Revolution

In the 1790s, Kant defended the French revolution not only from the perspective of the ‘ideal’ (i.e. the universal value of its legal principles), but also in terms of the ‘event’ per se. Though he insisted on the theoretical negation of the right to resistance, morally condemning the ‘solemn execution’ of the monarch as ‘a crime that can never be expiated’, in the Doctrine of Right as well as in his essay on Moral Progress of Humankind Kant sought to defend the claims of the revolutionaries as legitimate nonetheless. The result was an ambiguity that could only be resolved by reference to his perspective on the way in which institutional change affirms itself historically. Indeed, Kant's complex relationship with revolution throws light on a specific version of his philosophical chiliasm, which abandoned the concept of linearity in historical progress. What Kant emphasized as new in the French revolution was the ‘extra-ordinary’ nature of the event, which interrupted ‘regular’ progress to ‘anticipate’ the political future.