%0 Journal Article
%T On political responsibility in post
%A Genevi¨¨ve Rousseli¨¨re
%J European Journal of Political Theory
%@ 1741-2730
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1474885115588100
%X In ¡°On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy,¡± Kant holds the seemingly untenable position that lying is always prohibited, even if the lie is addressed to a murderer in an attempt to save the life of an innocent man. This article argues that Kant's position on lying should be placed back in its original context, namely a response to Benjamin Constant about the responsibility of individual agents toward political principles in post-revolutionary times. I show that Constant's theory of political responsibility, which sanctions the lie, is not based on expediency, but on principled realism, whereas Kant endorses a position that I describe as ¡®political juridicism.¡¯ This analysis enables us to uncover two plausible Republican theories of political responsibility in post-revolutionary times behind an apparently strictly ethical debate
%K Kant
%K Constant
%K responsibility
%K lying
%K revolution
%K Right
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1474885115588100