Social Superego and the Republic: Ingeborg Maus on Kant’s Radical Theory of Democracy

This article aims to show that Ingeborg Maus’s interpretation of Kant’s political philosophy re-establishes Kant as a radical thinker of democracy in the canon of democratic theory, from which Cold War liberalism had excluded him. Using the concept ‘social superego’, Maus argues that trust in elitist authorities is foreign to Kant’s republican politics. In a comparison with Arthur Ripstein, it is shown why Maus rejects the right to resistance and the right to revolution as residues of authoritarian democracy justifications. Finally, the thesis is put forward that populism is a new form of such a superego and that the theory of popular sovereignty is also an effective antidote to it.