This paper aims to show what republic means in the political thought of Immanuel Kant, by examining his concepts of popular sovereignty, separation of powers, and system of representation in the historical context of eighteenth century.
Kant can be located in the genealogy of the theory of sovereignty, which was developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in Europe. To overcome the state of nature, i. e. state of war among people, it was necessary to establish an absolute sovereignty. In this tradition, Rousseau solved the problem of the legitimation of the legislative power of sovereignty, by elaborating the idea of social contract. In addition, Rousseau formulated the strict separation of powers between legislative and executive, so as to avoid the problem of despotism.
The ideas of the popular sovereignty and the separation of powers are also found in the political writings of Kant, who tried to avoid the problem of despotism not only in monarchy, but also in democracy, which can be called the paradox of democracy in the executive. In his theory, it is clear that the people has the legislative power. If the monarch had nevertheless the legislative and executive power, he would be a despot. Similarly, if the people had the legislative and executive power at once, such a regime would be despotic, as it was in ancient Greece. Kant finds “the way of government”, i. e. the separation of powers between legislative and executive more important than “the form of government” （monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy）. When these two powers are properly separated, the regime can be called “republican”. In this way, Kant denies the despotism found in the ancient democracy.
It would be also important to consider the paradox of democracy in the legislative in modern states. In modern large territorial states, it is quite difficult to organize a people’s assembly for the legislation which was often seen in democratic city-states in ancient Greece. Kant showed the conditions for the legitimate legislation and thus grounded the legislation by the assembly of the representatives with the principle of “original contract”. In this way, Kant has constructed the concept of modern “republic”.
