There is a consensus that Kant's aim in the Groundwork is to clarify, systematize and vindicate the common conception of morality. Philosophical theory hence serves a restorative function. It can strengthen agents' motivation, protect against self-deception and correct misunderstandings produced by uncritical moral theory. In this paper, I argue that Kant also corrects the common perspective and that Kant's Groundwork shows in which senses the common perspective, even considered apart from its propensity to self-deception and without being influenced by misleading (...) theory, is deficient. Critical practical philosophy needs to set right agents about the stringency of some of their duties, and agents need to be made aware that they have certain other duties. I discuss how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of the stringency of the duty to not make false promises and how Kant corrects the common agent's notion of duties to self. I finally discuss how his critical practical philosophy can become popular and achieve the correction of the common perspective. I stress the role of education informed by philosophical theory for this and contrast it with so called ‘popular philosophy’. (shrink)

I critically examine the plausibility of Kant’s conception of rationalising, a form of self-deception that plays a crucial role for Kant’s moral psychology and his conception of the functions of critical practical philosophy. The main problem I see with Kant’s conception is that there are no theory-independent criteria to determine whether an exercise of rational capacities constitutes rationalising. Kant believes that rationalising is wide-spread and he charges the popular philosophers and other ethical theorists with rationalising. Yet, his opponents could, in (...) turn, charge him with rationalising and some theorists, namely Act-Consequentialists, seem to be in an even stronger position to charge Kant with rationalising than vice versa. In response, I propose standards that do not assume a specific normative theory and that become apparent when we look at clear-cut abuses of rationality. These standards of minimally decent reasoning can help us diagnose rationalising. I develop these standards by looking at inadequate uses of rational capacities that should strike us as problematic regardless of the specific ethical theory we adopt. I emphasise that even an abuse of rational capacities can yield true results and that we can never tell from a single judgement that someone rationalises. Rather, we must look for patterns. (shrink)