Overview over some core themes re: Kantian autonomy.

Kant does not completely work out his philosophical conception of enlightenment. The definition of enlightenment that he offers in his well-known essay on the topic does not seem to completely match the definition that he puts forward later in his essay on the pantheism controversy and in the third Critique. It remains unclear how the two definitions relate to each other and whether and how they rest on the same principle. The lack of clarity in Kant’s conception of enlightenment is (...) left mostly unaddressed in the secondary literature on the topic. This paper suggests that Kant’s philosophical conception of enlightenment rests on the discipline of pure reason. The self-disciplinary principle of reason, which is laid out in the Doctrine of Method of the first Critique, underlies both of Kant’s definitions of enlightenment, although he himself does not clearly demonstrate how it does so. (shrink)

Taking Kant’s philosophy of right as my starting point, I defend the view that just exercise of political power requires economic redistribution. Against the common view that Kant’s political thinking has no economic implications, I argue that republican interpretations of his philosophy of right succeed in reconstructing a cogent argument in favor of public poverty relief. I also argue that the economic implications of Kant’s theory extend beyond public support of the poor. As freedom-enabling institutional structures, states are obliged to (...) remove hindrances to democratic self-legislation. It is reasonable to consider economic inequality as such a hindrance, and so public provisions for the poor is not enough. In order to exercise political power in a just way, public authorities must also take measures to reduce the gap between the richest and the poorest. (shrink)

This article accounts for how Kant’s understanding of enlightenment gives normative, communicative structure to public reason as a practice. Kantian public reason is argued to be collegial. As public reasoners promoting our enlightenment, we should seek optimal scrutiny from a generally unrestricted, intellectually and epistemically diverse audience. To receive this scrutiny, we should communicate in a way that facilitates this audience’s ability to scrutinise our views – situating others as our colleagues – which in turn facilitates their promotion of their (...) own enlightenment. As a practice in which we help others promote their enlightenment by helping them help us promote ours, Kantian public reason is argued to be cooperative. But intriguingly, Kant offers a sufficient justification for this cooperative communication on first-personal grounds. The article details some of Kant’s more concrete thoughts on how we should communicate as public reasoners, and concludes by appraising his parsimonious justification of collegial communication as a resource for addressing contemporary concerns about public discourse. (shrink)

This paper argues that recent accounts of Kantian virtue as “strengthened” inner freedom apply much more clearly to the avoidance of violations of perfect duties than to the fulfillment of imperfect duties, leaving us with the question of how inadequate commitment to morally required ends impacts the exercise of inner freedom. The question is answered through the development of a model of inner freedom that emphasizes the relationship between moral self‐governance and participation in an ethical community.

In this response to Lu-Adler’s “Kant on Public Reason and the Linguistic Other,” I summarize the restrictions the scholarship condition imposes on the public use of reason in Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment?” I then agree that Lu-Adler identifies an even more radical set of restrictions on the public use of reason, confirming that Kant is not the liberal egalitarian he is often supposed to be by intellectual historians, historians of philosophy, and Kant scholars. After that, I suggest that what (...) Lu-Adler calls “the construction of a linguistic other” in Kant’s lectures on logic and anthropology can also be understood as “Kantian linguistic racialization.” I close with a short reflection on how we should respond to Kant’s illiberal, inegalitarian, linguistic racism. (shrink)