There is no forbidding of the absolute in Kant. What is the 'ultimate evil' for Kant? The formal execution of a dethroned monarch by revolutionaries, "a complete _reversal_ of the principles which govern the relationship between the sovereign and the people. For it amounts to making the people, who owe their existence purely to the legislation of the sovereign, into rulers over the sovereign, thereby brazenly adopting violence as a deliberate principle and exalting it above the most sacred canons of right. And this, like an abyss which engulfs everything beyond hope of return, is an act of suicide by the state, and it would seem to be a crime for which there can be no atonement" (_The Metaphysics of Morals_). And this notion of the state of right, whose opposite is the 'ultimate evil,' becomes an absolute prohibition against revolution in Kant's political philosophy. Kant wrote in "On the Common Saying: 'This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice'": "It thus follows [from the theory of the original contract] that all resistance against the supreme legislative power, all incitement of the subjects to violent expressions of discontent, all defiance which breaks out into rebellion, is the greatest and most punishable crime in a commonwealth, for it destroys its very foundations. This prohibition is *absolute*. And even if the power of the state or its agent, the head of state, has violated the original contract by authorizing the government to act tyrannically, and has thereby, in the eyes of the subject, forfeited the right to legislate, the subject is still not entitled to offer counter-resistance. The reason for this is that the people, under an existing civil constitution, has no longer any right to judge how the constitution should be administered.... Nor can a right of necessity...be invoked here as means of removing the barriers which restrict the power of the people; for it is monstrous to suppose that we can have a right to do wrong in the direst (physical) distress." Kant goes on to condemn the "errors" of elevating the Happiness of the People over the Principle of Right and thus of advocating the overthrow of the existing state. For Kant, "It is obvious...that the principle of happiness...has ill effects in political right just as in morality....[for] the people are unwilling to give up their universal human desire to seek happiness in their own way, and thus become rebels."
Further, Kant says that a rebel should be punished by nothing short of death: "There can thus be no rightful resistance on the part of the people to the legislative head of state. For a state of right becomes possible only through submission to his universal legislative will. Thus there can be no right of _sedition_ (_seditio_), and still less a right of _rebellion_ (_rebellio_), least of all a right to _lay hands on_ the person of the monarch as an individual...on the pretext that he has misused his power.... The least attempt to do so is _high treason_..., and a traitor of this kind, as one who has tried to _destroy his fatherland_ (_parricida_), may be punished with nothing less than death" (_The Metaphysics of Morals_). Given Kant's political morality, one might say that the 'Good German' was a good Kantian.
What would better sustain the subject's unconditional obedience to the law, *even in the face of material deprivation, physical distress, and political oppression*, than the intimations of his soul's divinity and immortality? Kant wrote in "On the Common Saying": "Admittedly, it [the principle of happiness] does not contradict the experience which the *history* of maxims derived from various principles provides. Such experience, alas, proves that most of them are based on selfishness. But it does contradict our (necessarily inward) experience that no idea can so greatly elevate the human mind and inspire it with such enthusiasm as that of a pure moral conviction, respecting duty above all else, struggling with countless evils of existence and even with their most seductive temptations, and yet overcoming them -- for we may rightly assume that man can do so. The fact that man is aware that he can do this just because he ought discloses within him an ample store of divine capabilities and inspire him, so to speak, with a holy awe at the greatness and sublimity of his true vocation." Ah, the flesh is weak, but the spirit is willing!
Kant also endorses panoptic surveillance & discipline. In _The Metaphysics of Morals_, Kant sounds as if he were speaking for the present Mayor of New York: "From the same source [the basic right of ownership], the rights of economic and financial administration and of the police force are derived. The police look after public _security_, _convenience_ and _propriety_; for it makes it much easier for the government to perform its business of governing the people by laws if the public sense of propriety...is not dulled by affronts to the moral sense such as begging, uproar in the streets, offensive smells and public prostitution (_venus volgivaga_)." What fascist would disagree with Kant here?
Yoshie