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)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 731-745, December 2021.

An enduring puzzle for theorists of autonomy in the broadly Kantian tradition is how to theorize failures of practical reason. If norms of practical rationality are supposed to be constitutive of agency itself, how can failures to live up them nonetheless be understood as expressions of that agency? Hegelian diagnoses of these difficulties typically emphasize the dichotomies that structure Kantian theories of autonomy, between activity and passivity, reason and nature, norm and desire. They seek to flesh out an alternative that (...) preserves a recognisably post-Kantian notion of autonomy whilst understanding freedom as something that essentially comes in degrees, insisting that self-determination always involves elements of other-determination, and stressing how free subjectivity is inseparable from socio-historically and institutionally bounded character-formation. This article contributes to articulating a Hegelian corrective to Kantian theories of autonomy by beginning to explain the role of habit in Hegel's conception of agency. Building on recent work on Hegel's metaphysics of expression, it shows how he allows us to see conative responses to the world as integral to character development and thus as expressive of free agency, rather than as interruptions to the proper functioning of practical reason. On Hegel's account, the expressive behaviour of mature, reflective agents is grounded in a pre-intentional, affective dimension of subjectivity and presupposes processes of habituation, which he locates at the level of the human ‘soul’. Habit, far from being ‘lifeless, contingent and particular’, is the means by which agents come to make objective contents their own. Understanding the role of habit in Hegel's system is integral to allowing an alternative conceptualization of autonomy to come into view, one on which rational agents express themselves through their affective and emotional responses, rather than merely being a contingent site of those responses. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between Reinhold’s account of free will and Kant’s account in the Religion. This relationship is important because Reinhold considered Kant’s treatment of free will in the Religion to confirm his own view that freedom consists in the capacity to choose for or against the moral law. I argue that despite their shared commitment to freedom as a necessary condition for imputation, these two thinkers have disparate conceptions of the ground for the exercise of free will. (...) This difference indicates difficulties in their respective accounts. (shrink)

C.C.E. Schmid’s doctrine of intelligible fatalism was immensely influential in the immediate reception of Kant’s philosophy. Existing treatments of this doctrine, largely neglected by modern scholarship, echo uncharitable interpretations espoused by Schmid’s contemporaries. I demonstrate that Schmid’s intelligible fatalism is more coherent and philosophically robust than hitherto recognized. I argue for a novel interpretation of Schmid’s account of rational agency, showing that intelligible fatalism is compatible with his conceptions of freedom, obligation, and imputation. Specifically, I argue that the role of (...) consciousness in this account carves out conceptual space for a distinction between the theoretical and the practical that is sufficient to render intelligible fatalism consistent with these conceptions. (shrink)

For Kant, the moral law is the causal law of freedom. However, it is not an explanatory causal law. It is instead a causal law of imputation: it is a law according to which we can be held responsible for the actions the law declares necessary; that is, it is a law according to which we can be considered the causes of whether or not we act lawfully. In this way, the moral law makes possible a kind of causality that (...) is a “third thing” between natural necessity and blind chance. This essay traces the origins of this view to the Antinomy of Pure Reason of the first Critique and shows how it is refined in Kant’s foundational texts in practical philosophy of the 1780s and in his reflections on the nature of human evil from the 1790s. (shrink)