We discuss the demandingness of Kant’s ethics. Whilst previous discussions of this issue focused on imperfect duties, our first aim is to show that Kantian demandingness is especially salient in the class of perfect duties. Our second aim is to introduce a fine-grained picture of demandingness by distinguishing between different possible components of a moral theory which can lead to demandingness: a required process of decision making, overridingness and the stringent content of demands, due to a standpoint of moral purity. (...) This distinction allows a specification of the sources of demandingness in Kant. The most characteristically Kantian form of demandingness springs from overridingness and purity and comes as a constant threat that an agent might find herself in a situation in which, due to no fault of her own, she is required to sacrifice everything for little to no non-moral goods. Our third aim is to discuss whether Kant has the resources to reply to those who criticize his ethics based on its demandingness. For this purpose we discuss Kant’s notion of “rationalizing” in the context of various types of current conceptions of demandingness and calls for moderate ethical theories. (shrink)

In ‘Happiness and Human Flourishing’, Thomas E. Hill, Jr, contrasts Kant's notion of happiness with that of human flourishing, explains the role of happiness in Kant's ethics, and suggests some reasons why Kant portrays happiness rather than flourishing as the non-moral good of the individual. While there is much I agree with in Hill's essay, I disagree with Hill on how best to conceive of human flourishing in Kant's philosophy, and on the importance of human flourishing in Kant's ethics. Comparing (...) my views with Hill's is not what chiefly interests me, however. After section 1, I make little explicit reference to ‘Happiness and Human Flourishing’. Instead, I seek to expand the discussion begun there by Hill of ‘how happiness and human flourishing are relevant to [Kantian] ethics’. (shrink)

Kant takes autonomy to be recognizably valuable. In claiming that non-Kantian views of morality treat the morally good will as heteronomous, he intends to present an objection to these views. He expects proponents of these views to recognize that the implication of heteronomy is a serious objection; his task is not to convince them that heteronomy is bad, but to convince them that their views imply heteronomy.

By focusing on human virtues rather than the general morality of rational beings, Kant’s virtue theory presents systematic arguments from the perspectives of reason and experiential emotion, norms and disposition, spirituality and humanity, etc., which is of great significance to an overall understanding of Kantian ethics, thus clarifying misunderstandings from the past decades.

Kant's conception of moral agency is often charged with attributing no role to feelings. I suggest that respect is the effective force driving moral action. I then argue that four additional types of rational feelings are necessary conditions of moral agency: The affective inner life of moral agents deliberating how to act and reflecting on their deeds is rich and complex . To act morally we must turn our affective moral perception towards the ends of moral action: the welfare of (...) others ; and our own moral being . Feelings shape our particular moral acts . I tentatively suggest that the diversity of moral feelings might be as great as the range of our duties. (shrink)

A new book by Stephen Engstrom repeats a criticism of Bruce Aune's of Kant's derivation of the universalizability formula of the categorical imperative. The criticism is that Kant omitted at least one substantive premise in the derivation of the formula: ‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.’ The grounds for the formula that are given in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, however, are said to support (...) only a weaker requirement, namely, that a maxim conform to a universal law. Hence, Kant omits at least one necessary substantive premise of the derivation. This paper attempts to show that nothing substantive is omitted from the argument. It only needs two principles of inference that it is assumed add nothing substantive to the premises. (shrink)

This paper considers two contenders for the title of highest good in Kant's theory of practical reason: happiness proportioned to virtue and the maximization of happiness and virtue. I defend the against criticisms made by Andrews Reath and others, and show how it resolves a dualism between prudential and moral practical reasoning. By distinguishing between the highest good as a principle of evaluation and an object of agency, I conclude that the maximization of happiness and virtue is a corollary of (...) the instantiation of the proportionality thesis. (shrink)

Little extended attention has been given to Kant's notion of self-conceit, though it appears throughout his theoretical and practical philosophy. Authors who discuss self-conceit often describe it as a kind of imperiousness or arrogance in which the conceited agent seeks to impose selfish principles upon others, or sees others as worthless. I argue that these features of self-conceit are symptoms of a deeper and more thoroughgoing failure. Self-conceit is best described as the tendency to insist upon one to oneself or (...) to others s will or inclinations upon others, and more centrally the tendency to reconstruct evidence and rationalize so that one may be convinced of one’s own virtue. While the conceited agent may ultimately impose her judgement upon others, she does so in order to preserve her delusion of virtue. (shrink)

Kant and Kierkegaard are two philosophers who are not usually bracketed together. Yet, for one commentator, Ronald Green, in his book Kierkegaard and Kant: The Hidden Debt , a deep similarity between them is seen in the centrality both accord to the notion of freedom. Kierkegaard, for example, in one of his Journal entries, expresses a ‘passion’ for human freedom. Freedom is for Kierkegaard also linked to a paradox that lies at the heart of thought. In Philosophical Fragment Kierkegaard writes (...) about the ‘paradox of thought’: ‘the paradox is the passion of thought […] the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without the passion.’. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the suggestion that Kant offers a solution to the Reinhold/Sidgwick Problem in his Metaphysics of Morals. The problem, briefly, is about how Kant can hold moral evil to be imputable when he also seems to hold that freedom is found only in moral actions. After providing a new formulation of this problem under the title ‘Objection R/S’ and describing the popular strategy for addressing it through reference to this text, the paper recounts (...) some of the history relevant to interpreting the passage in question. The paper then argues that this strategy is not supported by the text and indeed proves to be contrary to other arguments that are central to Kant's moral thought. The closing section briefly considers other possible ways of addressing the Objection R/S. (shrink)

In his early writings, Kant says that the solution to the puzzle of how morality can serve as a motivating force in human life is nothing less than the “philosophers’ stone.” In this dissertation I show that for years Kant searched for the philosophers’ stone in the concept of “respect” (Achtung), which he understood as the complex effect practical reason has on feeling. -/- I sketch the history of that search in Chapters 1-2. In Chapter 3 I show that Kant’s (...) analysis in Groundwork I is incomplete because it does not explain how respect functions as a feeling in motivating choice. In Chapter 4 I argue that Kant’s subsequent attempt to sidestep this explanation in Groundwork III is unsuccessful, and that his position remains open to a skeptical threat. The argument in the second Critique, which I reconstruct in Chapters 5-6, overcomes this threat, and in doing so explains how the feeling of respect is both painful and pleasurable. -/- In the course of defending these claims, I provide an alternative reading of the shift in Kant’s ethical project from the Groundwork of 1785 to the second Critique of 1788 Against a common view in the literature, I argue that the shift does not concern the direction of Kant’s deduction (from freedom to morality, or morality to freedom); rather, it concerns his view of human sensibility and the resources he thinks we have to make our practical self-understanding intelligible. In the second Critique, I argue, Kant develops a novel approach to moral feeling from the perspective of the human agent; and this in turn clears room in his ethics for a new kind of a priori knowledge—namely, knowledge of what the activity of practical reason must feel like. By way of conclusion, I offer a few reasons for why the form of Kant’s argument in the second Critique is still relevant today, as it shows why we can only address moral skepticism from a first-personal perspective. (shrink)

In the first Critique Kant introduced the analytic/synthetic distinction and illustrated it with theoretical propositions. As his main aim in that work was to justify synthetic a priori propositions, Kant was able to bring his central questions into relief and discuss the methodology of their solution by contrasting synthetic propositions, such as: “Every event has a cause” with analytic propositions, such as: “Every effect has a cause.” Consequently, few commentators have any difficulty in stating as propositions the propositions Kant is (...) justifying in the first Critique or in pointing out the difficulty of justifying such propositions. (shrink)

For some time now ethical debates have been fought on a field whose boundaries are the historical theories of Kant's deontology and Mill's utilitarianism. Recently, however, several have chosen to leave the battlefield entirely—to suggest, in various ways, that both of the major ethical theories share a common, flawed outlook. Thomas Nagel, for example, has argued that founding ethics on the sole ground of interpersonal obligations unnecessarily “fragments” human value. Such an account has the effect of pitting one species of (...) human value against other quite legitimate values. Or approaching the matter from quite another direction, Philippa Foot also holds that morality, as a system of interpersonal obligations, is too limiting. However, she proposes to counter the advancing forces of modern ethics by championing an Aristotelian doctrine of virtue. (shrink)

Neuroscientific claims have a significant impact on traditional philosophy. This essay, focusing on the field of moral neuroscience, discusses how and why philosophy can contribute to neuroscientific progress. First, viewing the interactions between moral neuroscience and moral philosophy, it becomes clear that moral philosophy can and does contribute to moral neuroscience in two ways: as explanandum and as explanans. Next, it is shown that moral philosophy is well suited to contribute to moral neuroscience in both of these two ways in (...) the context of the problem of ecological validity. Philosophy can play the role of an agent for ecological validity, since traditional philosophy shapes and reflects part of our social reality. Finally, based on these arguments, I tentatively sketch how a Kantian account of moral incentive can play this role. (shrink)

Humanity is an important notion within Kant's moral theory. The humanity formulation of the categorical imperative commands: ‘So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means’ . Kant's analysis of ethical obligation and his expositions of rights and duties in the Metaphysics of Morals refer frequently to humanity. How we understand this concept, then, has signifcant implications for how (...) we understand Kant's ethics. (shrink)

Emergence is interpreted in a non-dualist framework of thought. No metaphysical distinction between the higher and basic levels of organization is supposed, but only a duality of modes of access. Moreover, these modes of access are not construed as mere ways of revealing intrinsic patterns of organization: They are supposed to be constitutive of them, in Kant’s sense. The emergent levels of organization, and the inter-level causations as well, are therefore neither illusory nor ontologically real: They are objective in the (...) sense of transcendental epistemology. This neo-Kantian approach defuses several paradoxes associated with the concept of downward causation, and enables one to make good sense of it independently of any prejudice about the existence (or inexistence) of a hierarchy of levels of being. (shrink)

This article analyses the teleological argument justifying historical progress in Kant's Guarantee of Perpetual Peace. It starts by examining the controversies produced by Kant's claim that the teleology of nature supports the idea of a providential development of humanity towards moral progress and the possibility of achieving a cosmopolitan political constitution. It further illustrates how Kant's teleological argument in Perpetual Peace needs to be assessed with reference to two systematically relevant issues: first, the problem of coordination linked to the necessity (...) of realizing the ‘highest good’ as a historical end of practical reason, and secondly the problem of continuity posed by the temporal limitation of all individual efforts to cultivate moral dispositions. To illustrate the implications of both issues for the teleological argument in Perpetual Peace, the article draws attention to some important developments in Kant's analysis of teleology following the Critique of Judgment. (shrink)

The indispensability of the ‘postulate of practical reason with regard to Right’ to Kant's property argument in the Rechtslehre is now widely recognized. However, most commentators continue to focus their attention on the relation between the postulate and the deduction of the concept of intelligible possession. The nature of this relation remains a matter of dispute in part because the precise position of the postulate within chapter one of the Rechtslehre remains undecided. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that (...) the related question has been neglected, as to why Kant should characterize the postulate of Right as a postulate of practical reason. Yet the fact that he does so is of some significance – especially if one recalls the definition in the Critique of Practical Reason of postulates of practical reason as practically necessary but theoretically indemonstrable propositions. What is of interest about this definition is not just the fact that it designates postulates as practically necessary and as theoretically indemonstrable at the same time – even more intriguing is the intimated relation between practical necessity and theoretical indemonstrability. Kant does not think the postulates' theoretical indemonstrability morally insignificant. To the contrary, their moral significance for us appears to be a function, in part, of their theoretical indemonstrability. (shrink)

Kant’s ethics conceives of rational beings as autonomous–capable of legislating the moral law, and of motivating themselves to act out of respect for that law. Kant’s ethics also includes a notion of the highest good, the union of virtue with happiness proportional to, and consequent on, virtue. According to Kant, morality sets forth the highest good as an object of the totality of all things good as ends. Much about Kant’s conception of the highest good is controversial. This paper focuses (...) on the apparent conflict between Kant’s claim that we are autonomous, and passages in which he seems to suggest that we require belief in the possibility of the highest good to motivate moral action. I distinguish three distinct versions of these problematic claims that seem to be present in Kant’s texts: that the highest good serves as (1) a motivational supplement to respect for the moral law, (2) a fundamental spring of right action, and (3) a condition of the bindingness of moral requirements. I argue that the texts are better interpreted to yield alternatives to (2) and (3) that do not conflict with our autonomy. I also argue that, properly understood, (1) does not conflict with our autonomy. In arguing for the last claim, I explore Kant’s notion of radical evil and its implications for human agency and virtue. (shrink)

Contrary to widely held assumptions, an evolutionary metaethics need not be non-cognitivist. I define evolutionary metaethics as the claim that certain phenotypic traits expressing certain genes are both necessary and sufficient for explanation of all other phenotypic traits we consider morally significant. A review of the influential cognitivist Immanuel Kants metaethics shows that much of his ethical theory is independent of the anti-naturalist metaphysics of transcendental idealism which itself is incompatible with evolutionary metaethics. By matching those independent aspects to an (...) evolutionary metaethics a cognitivist Kantian evolutionary metaethical theory is a possibility for researchers to consider. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that to educate means to control or guide a person’s acting and development. On the other hand, it is often presupposed that the addressees of education must be seen as being endowed with free will. The question raised in this paper is whether these two assumptions are compatible. It might seem that if the learner is free in her will, she cannot be educated; however, if she is successfully educated, then it is doubtful whether she can (...) be seen as free. Inspired by the current philosophical debate on the compatibility of free will and determinism, this paper spells out two versions of this dilemma. The first version relies on the idea that to be free means being the causal source of one’s actions. The second formulation refers to the notion of freedom as the ability to act otherwise than the way one actually acts. The solution to the dilemma that is developed in this paper, however, uses a third concept of free will—to be free means being able to act on reasons. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Kant remained committed to the necessity and fundamental importance of education throughout his career. Like Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90), Kant holds that a ‘total transformation’ of schools is necessary, and he holds this view not only in the 1770s but in his later years as well. In building my case I try to refute two recent opposing interpretations – Reinhard Brandt’s position that Kant’s early ‘education enthusiasm’ was later replaced by a politics enthusiasm, and (...) Manfred Kuehn’s view that the increasing importance of autonomy in Kant’s mature ethics leads him to de-emphasize education. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no (...) reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works. (shrink)

In her seminal attack on modern moral philosophy, G. E. M. Anscombe claims that Kant's ‘rule about universalizable maxims is useless without stipulations as to what shall count as a relevant description of an action with a view to constructing a maxim about it’. Although this so-called problem of relevant descriptions has received considerable attention in the literature, there is little agreement on how it should be understood or solved. My aim in this paper is, first, to clarify the problem (...) by clearing up several misunderstandings, and, second, to show that the problem is rooted in a standard assumption about Kant's stance on the scope of moral principles—an assumption that precludes its solution. I argue that the problem consists in the fact that Kant's formula of universal law seems to stand in need of an account of moral sensibility that does not render the formula superfluous. But, as my discussion of existing solutions reveals, there can be no such account. Instead, I propose a dissolution: we should think of the formula of universal law itself as Kant's account of moral sensibility. In order to do so, we must reject the standard assumption that a principle is universal if and only if it holds for all instances of the action type that it specifies. (shrink)

In this paper, I give a reconstruction of the so‐called Reinhold–Sidgwick objection and show that Korsgaard‐style Kantian constructivists are committed to two key premises of the underlying argument. According to the Reinhold–Sidgwick objection, the Kantian conception of autonomy entails the absurd conclusion that no one is ever morally responsible for a morally wrong action. My reconstruction of the underlying argument reveals that the objection depends on a third premise, which says that freedom is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. After (...) mapping the common replies to the objection, I demonstrate that none of these replies is available to Kantian constructivists. But they need not be committed to the absurd conclusion that no one is ever morally blameworthy. Kantian constructivists who want to resist the Reinhold–Sidgwick objection are well advised to subject the third premise of the underlying argument to critical scrutiny. (shrink)

Abstract:Recently, the idea that every hypothetical imperative must somehow be ‘backed up’ by a prior categorical imperative has gained a certain influence among Kant interpreters and ethicists influenced by Kant. Since instrumentalism is the position that holds that hypothetical imperatives can by themselves and without the aid of categorical imperatives explain all valid forms of practical reasoning, the influential idea amounts to a rejection of instrumentalism as internally incoherent. This paper argues against this prevailing view both as an interpretation of (...) Kant and as philosophical understanding of practical reason. In particular, it will be argued that many of the arguments that claim to show that hypothetical imperatives must be backed up by categorical imperatives mistakenly assume that the form of practical reasoning must itself occur as a premise within the reasoning. An alternative to this assumption will be offered. I will conclude that while instrumentalism may well be false, there is no reason to believe it is incoherent. (shrink)

Kant wants to show that freedom is possible in the face of natural necessity. Transcendental idealism is his solution, which locates freedom outside of nature. I accept that this makes freedom possible, but object that it precludes the recognition of other rational agents. In making this case, I trace some of the history of Kant’s thoughts on freedom. In several of his earlier works, he argues that we are aware of our own activity. He later abandons this approach, as he (...) worries that any awareness of our activity involves access to the noumenal, and thereby conflicts with the epistemic limits of transcendental idealism. In its place, from the second Critique onwards, Kant argues that we are conscious of the moral law, which tells me that I ought to do something, thus revealing that I can. This is the only proof of freedom consistent with transcendental idealism, but I argue that such an exclusively first-personal approach precludes the recognition of other rational agents. I conclu.. (shrink)

In the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals' Kant is explicit, sometimes to the point of peevishness, in denying anthropology and psychology any part or place in his moral science. Recognizing that this will strike many as counterintuitive he is unrepentant: ‘We require no skill to make ourselves intelligible to the multitude once we renounce all profundity of thought’. That the doctrine to be defended is not exemplified in daily experience or even in imaginable encounters is necessitated by the very (...) nature of morality which cannot be served worse ‘… than by seeking to derive it from examples’. Thus, the project of the moral philosopher begins with the recognition that the moral realm is not mapped by anthropological data and does not get its content therefrom. Rather, moral philosophy must be ‘completely cleansed’ of everything that is appropriate to anthropology. (shrink)

In everyday life, we assume that there are degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. Yet the debate about the nature of moral responsibility often focuses on the “yes or no” question of whether indeterminism is required for moral responsibility, while questions about what accounts for more or less blameworthiness or praiseworthiness are underexplored. In this paper, I defend the idea that degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness can depend in part on degrees of difficulty and degrees of sacrifice required for performing the (...) action in question. Then I turn to the question of how existing accounts of the nature of moral responsibility might be seen to accommodate these facts. In each case of prominent compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts that I consider, I argue that supplementation with added dimensions is required in order to account for facts about degrees of blameworthiness and praiseworthiness. For example, I argue that the reasons-responsiveness view of Fischer and Ravizza requires supplementation that takes us beyond even fine-grained measures of degrees of reasons-responsiveness in order to capture facts about degrees of difficulty to extend the reasons-responsiveness view by appealing to such measures). I conclude by showing that once we recognize the need for these additional parameters, we will be in a position to explain away at least some of the appeal of incompatibilist accounts of moral responsibility. (shrink)

En este trabajo, me propongo reconstruir dos tesis de importancia metaética, jurídica y política que Kant expone en Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloβen Vernunft. Se trata de dos tesis que mantienen una sólida consistencia con dos de los núcleos temáticos de la Rechstlehre, lo que nos permite proponer que el texto de 1793 puede ser considerado una suerte de crítica propedéutica para la metafísica jurídico-política de Kant. La primera de estas tesis será analizada en la sección I y (...) atañe a la concepción metaética de la libertad que Kant presenta en Religion a propósito del análisis del mal radical. La segunda, analizada en la sección II, a la serie de diferencias trazadas entre el estado de naturaleza y la comunidad éticos, por un lado, y el estado de naturaleza y la comunidad jurídico-políticos, por el otro. En una sección III, presentaré el sentido que estas tesis obtienen respecto de la recepción crítica que Kant hace de las teorías modernas iusnaturales. (shrink)

While Kant's pedagogical lectures present an account of moral education, his theory of freedom and morality seems to leave no room for the possibility of an education for freedom and morality. In this paper, it is first shown that Kant's moral philosophy and his educational philosophy are developed within different theoretical paradigms: whereas the former is situated within a transcendentalist framework, the latter relies on a teleological notion of human nature. The second part of this paper demonstrates that the core (...) ideas of Kant's moral philosophy are also present in his pedagogy. This means that the problem of moral education must be solved within the transcendentalist framework. It is finally claimed that Kant himself outlines a solution to this problem in his pedagogical lectures. (shrink)

Although the best-known Hegelian objection against Kant's moral philosophy is the charge that the categorical imperative is an ‘empty formalism’, Hegel's criticisms also include what we might call the realizability objection. Tentatively stated, the realizability objection says that within the sphere of Kantian morality, the good remains an unrealizable ‘ought’ – in other words, the Kantian moral ‘ought’ can never become an ‘is’. In this paper, I attempt to come to grips with this objection in two steps. In the first (...) section of the paper, I provide an initial reading of the objection, according to which Hegel agrees with Kant's formulation of the realizability problem but disagrees with the specific Kantian solution, namely, with the Kantian idea of the highest good and the doctrine of the postulates. In the second section, I go on to argue that this reading is potentially too superficial and offer a more far-reaching interpretation whereby Hegel is ultimately targeting fundamental distinctions of Kant's moral theory. I end by employing these more far-reaching results of Hegel's objection to sketch some features of Hegel's alternative ethical view. (shrink)

The focus of my argument is whether, and in what sense, freedom is “revealed” by the fact of reason in Kant’s second Critique. I examine the passages in which Kant refers to the fact of reason and conclude that he uses the term to refer to our taking morality as authoritative, and to our apprehending the content of the moral law. I then point out how various commentators have claimed each to be the fact of reason. Next I address how (...) each is claimed by Kant to reveal “freedom” to us and argue that our taking morality as authoritative is best understood as referring to our conception of ourselves as autonomous beings, and that our apprehending the moral law’s content reveals only the idea of freedom as a coherent one. So neither would demonstrate not that we are actually autonomous, nor would their conjunction, despite what some commentators have claimed. In closing I defend the highly deflationary position that the fact of reason entitles us to postulate our freedom, but only from the practical point of view, and that it demonstrates that freedom is a coherent idea. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to extract from Kant's writings an account of the nature of the emotions and their function – and to do so despite the fact that Kant neither uses the term ‘emotion’ nor offers a systematic treatment of it. Kant's position, as I interpret it, challenges the contemporary trends that define emotions in terms of other mental states and defines them instead first and foremost as ‘feelings’. Although Kant's views on the nature of feelings have (...) drawn surprisingly little attention, I argue that the faculty of feeling has the distinct role of making us aware of the way our faculties relate to each other and to the world. As I show, feelings are affective appraisals of our activity, and as such they play an indispensable orientational function in the Kantian mind. After spelling out Kant's distinction between feeling and desire, I turn to the distinction between feeling and cognition and show that while feelings are non-cognitive states, they have a form of derived-intentionality. §4 argues that what feelings are about, in this derived sense, is our relationship to ourselves and the world: they function as affective appraisals of the state of our agency. §5 shows that this function is necessary to the activity of the mind insofar as it is orientational. Finally, §6 discusses the examples of epistemic pleasure and moral contentment and argues that they manifest the conditions of cognitive and moral agency respectively. (shrink)

Kant famously claims that the table of the categories of freedom does not require explanation. Kant interpreters have been baffled by this claim, and the disagreement among the increasing number of studies in more recent years suggests that the table is not as straightforward as Kant took it to be. In this article I want to show that a coherent interpretation of the table depends essentially on a clarification of what have been taken to be three fundamental ambiguities in Kants (...) text is, I argue, rooted in a hybrid conception of practical rationality assumed by his interpreters. I believe the task of disambiguating the table in all three cases can be completed. But it will require spelling out Kant’s moral cognitivism in such a way that he emerges as holding what I will call a unitary account of practical rationality. (shrink)

While scholars are slowly coming to realize that Kants reflections on religion in parts II and III of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason interpret religion specifically as one aspect of moral education, namely moral ascetics. After first clearly distinguishing between a cognitive and a conative aspect of moral education, I show how certain historical religious practices serve to provide the conative aspect of moral education. Kant defines this aspect of moral education as practices that render the human agent. (...) By this it is meant that certain practices can inspire moral interests either by justifying rational hope in living up to a certain standard of moral perfection or by endeavouring to unite human beings in a universal, invisible ethical community that inspires cooperation rather than adversity. (shrink)

In this paper I defend three different points: first, that the concept of highest good is derived from an a priori but subjective argument, namely a maxim of pure practical reason; secondly, that the theory regarding the highest good has the validity of a practical regulative knowledge; and thirdly, that the practical regulative knowledge can be understood as the same “holding something to be true” as Kant attributes to hope and believe.