Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality he dubbed the “Categorical Imperative” (CI). Immorality thus involves a violation of the CI and is thereby irrational. Other philosophers, such as Locke and Hobbes, had also argued that moral requirements are based on standards of rationality. However, these standards were either desirebased instrumental principles of rationality or based on sui generis rational intuitions. Kant agreed with many of his predecessors that an analysis of practical reason (...) will reveal only the requirement that rational agents must conform to instrumental principles. Yet he argued that conformity to the CI (a non-instrumental principle) and hence to moral requirements themselves, can nevertheless be shown to be essential to rational agency. This argument was based on his striking doctrine that a rational will must be regarded as autonomous, or free in the sense of being the author of the law that binds it. The fundamental principle of morality — the CI — is none other than the law of an autonomous will. Thus, at the heart of Kant's moral philosophy is a conception of reason whose reach in practical affairs goes well beyond that of a Humean ‘slave’ to the passions. Moreover, it is the presence of this self-governing reason in each person that Kant thought offered decisive grounds for viewing each as possessed of equal worth and deserving of equal respect. (shrink)

The idea that there is a distinctively practical use of reason, and correspondingly a distinctively practical form of knowledge, unites many otherwise diverse voices in the history of practical philosophy: from Aristotle to Kant, from Rousseau to Marx, from Hegel to G.E.M. Anscombe, and many others. This volume gathers works by scholars who take inspiration from these and many other historical figures in order to deepen our systematic understanding of questions raised by their work that still are, or ought to (...) be, at the center of contemporary philosophical debate: the form and nature of practical reasoning, agential self-consciousness or practical knowledge, how knowledge of the good relates to our motivational capacity, and the shape of philosophical thinking about sound forms of living together. Accordingly, the volume is divided into three parts: action theory, meta-ethics, and political philosophy. This fusion of perspectives delivers novel possibilities not only for answering the systematic questions outlined above, but also for understanding both what unifies and distinguishes those historical voices that have sought to articulate the concept of practical reason. “This fascinating volume brings out the richness and profundity of an oft-neglected approach to understanding human agency, one that foregrounds action as itself an exercise of reason. Essays on ethics, mind, action, and political philosophy explore the history, substance, and implications of this idea, cutting across while also revealing the unity underlying various parts of philosophy that are typically treated separately.” – Eric Marcus, Auburn University. (shrink)

Kant’s early critics maintained that his theory of freedom faces a dilemma: either it reduces the will’s activity to strict necessity by making it subject to the causality of the moral law, or it reduces the will’s activity to blind chance by liberating it from rules of any kind. This Element offers a new interpretation of Kant’s theory against the backdrop of this controversy. It argues that Kant was a consistent proponent of the claim that the moral law is the (...) causal law of a free will, and that the supposed ability of free will to choose indifferently between options is an empty concept. Freedom, for Kant, is a power to initiate action from oneself, and the only way to exercise this power is through the law of one’s own will, the moral law. Immoral action is not thereby rendered impossible, but it also does not express a genuine ability. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to two problems with Kant's claim that transcendental freedom is timeless. The problems are that this causes conceptual difficulties and fails to vindicate important parts of our moral practices. I then put forward three ways in which we can respond to these charges on Kant's behalf. The first is to defend Kant's claim that transcendental freedom occurs outside of time. The second is to reject this claim, but try to maintain transcendental idealism. And the third is (...) to reject both Kant's claim about the timelessness of freedom and also transcendental idealism itself. (shrink)

In this paper I highlight and discuss a problem for Kant’s conception of the categorical imperative that arises from the possibility of a differently fine-grained individuation of act types in the formation of maxims. The “Problem from the Manifold of Possible Maxims”, as it might be called, further develops and exacerbates the well-known “Problem of Relevant Descriptions.” In particular, I argue that there are cases in which the same act can be performed both under a universalizable and under a non-universalizable (...) maxim. But then Kant’s moral theory implies, given the necessity of moral truths, that there are acts that are both permissible and impermissible. The discussion reveals that a limitation of the notion of maxims sufficient to rule out a heterogeneous evaluation of two maxims that can underlie the same action is impossible without ad hoc stipulations. Consequently, a modification of Kant’s moral theory is required to at least ensure it’s consistency. The investigation ends with a discussion of two such modifications: First, I examine the suggestion of determining the moral status of actions only relative to some maxim and abandoning the assumption that actions are permissible or impermissible tout court. Such a move, however, is too deep an intervention in Kant’s moral philosophy to count as a suitable modification and, as I will show, faces serious problems on its own. I then discuss the possibility of modifying Kant’s universalization formula so that it quantifies not merely over actual maxims, but over all possible maxims. Although this proposed solution is also problematic, it turns out to be the most promising approach in the context of this investigation. __________________________________________________________________ Zusammenfassung: Diese Untersuchung widmet sich einem Problem, das sich für Kants Konzeption des kategorischen Imperativs aus der Möglichkeit einer unterschiedlich feinkörnigen Individuation von Handlungstypen bei der Bildung von Maximen ergibt. Das hier präsentierte Argument aus der Mannigfaltigkeit möglicher Maximen entwickelt das bekannte „Problem of Relevant Descriptions“ weiter und verschärft es. Ich argumentiere, dass es Fälle gibt, in denen dieselbe Handlung sowohl unter einer universalisierbaren als auch unter einer nicht universalisierbaren Maxime vollzogen werden kann, sodass Kants Moraltheorie, unter der Annahme der Notwendigkeit moralischer Tatsachen, impliziert, dass es Handlungen gibt, die zugleich erlaubt und nicht erlaubt sind. Die Diskussion ergibt, dass eine hinreichende Begrenzung des Maximenbegriffs für das Ausschließen eines heterogenen Auswertungsergebnisses zweier Maximen, die derselben Handlung zugrunde liegen können, ohne ad hoc-Bestimmungen unmöglich ist. Folglich ist eine Modifikation von Kants Moraltheorie erforderlich, um zumindest ihre Konsistenz sicherzustellen. Die Untersuchung endet mit der Diskussion zweier solcher Modifikationen: Zunächst untersuche ich den Lösungsvorschlag, den moralischen Status von Handlungen nur Maximen-relativ zu bestimmen und die Annahme aufzugeben, dass Handlungen tout court erlaubt oder verboten sind. Ein solcher Schritt stellt jedoch einen tiefen Eingriff in Kants Moralphilosophie dar und geht, wie ich zeigen werde, seinerseits mit gravierenden Problemen einher. Anschließend diskutiere ich die Möglichkeit, die Universalisierungsformel des kategorischen Imperativs dahingehend zu modifizieren, dass sie nicht bloß über aktuale, sondern über alle möglichen Maximen quantifiziert. Obgleich auch dieser Lösungsvorschlag problembehaftet ist, erweist er sich im Rahmen dieser Untersuchung als der aussichtsreichste Ansatz. (shrink)

Kant’s early readers were troubled by the appearance of a dilemma facing his theory of freedom. On the one hand, if we explain human actions according to laws or rules, then we risk reducing the activity of the will to necessity (the horn of determinism). But, on the other hand, if we explain human actions without laws or rules, then we face an equally undesirable outcome: that of reducing the will’s activity to mere chance (the horn of indeterminism). After providing (...) an overview of this dilemma, this chapter explores how Fichte and Schelling attempted to resolve it, in ways that ultimately shaped the course of post-Kantian idealism in the late 1790s and early 1800s. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel solution to the long-standing puzzle of why the Canon of Pure Reason maintains, in contradiction to Kant’s position elsewhere in the first Critique, both that practical freedom can be proved through experience, and that the question of our transcendental freedom is properly bracketed as irrelevant in practical matters. The Canon is an a priori investigation of our most fundamental practical capacity. It is argued that Kant intends its starting point to be explanatorily independent of transcendental (...) logic and the ontic more generally, an independence that would be compromised if transcendental freedom were included in that starting point, even in a mode of supposition. In a different sense, however, practical reason precisely is dependent on the ontic: it can be realized only in beings. This species of dependence is used to explain the puzzling claim that practical freedom can be experienced. (shrink)

In this paper, I demonstrate that Kant's commitment to an asymmetry between the control conditions for praise and blame is explained by his endorsement of the principle Ought Implies Can (OIC). I argue that Kant accepts only a relatively weak version of OIC and that he is hence committed only to a relatively weak requirement of alternate possibilities for moral blame. This suggests that whether we are transcendentally free is irrelevant to questions about moral permissibility and moral blameworthiness.

Among the most surprising claims in The Methods of Ethics is Sidgwick’s assertion that his key ethical axioms are corroborated by Kant. This article analyses Sidgwick’s claim that his axioms of justice and benevolence closely correspond to particular features in Kant. I shall argue that his claim of agreement with Kant was a serious overstatement. In particular, the restrictions which Sidgwick places on his acceptance of Kant’s universal law formula of the categorical imperative (FUL) seem to call into question whether (...) the alleged convergence with the axiom of justice has a solid basis. Further, Sidgwick seemed unaware of a crucial aspect of Kant’s conception of the humanity formula that constitutes a substantial divide between their views on benevolence. The upshot is that the divide between Kantian and Sidgwickian ethics appears deeper than Sidgwick seemed to realize. This analysis is confirmed by Sidgwick’s famous worries regarding freedom and the existence of God in Kant’s work. (shrink)

My aim is to demonstrate the specificities and differences between transcendental deduction of concepts and deduction of the fundamental principles of pure practical reason in Kant’s metaphysics. First of all it is necessary to examine Kant’s attitude to the metaphysics of his time and the problem of its new justification. Kant in his philosophy explicated not only the theoretical world of cognition, but also the practical world of freedom. Accordingly, the fundamental means of proving metaphysics’ claims are the deduction of (...) pure concepts of understanding and the deduction of the principles of pure practical reason. The underlying premises of the Kantian project of reviving metaphysics, “the Copernican Turn”, the critical methods and basic principles of transcendental idealism also provide the methodological basis of transcendental deduction, a new method of proving the claims of metaphysics in various spheres of human being. Proceeding from the above, I analyse the essence, structure and the peculiarities as well as the differences between the deduction of experience and the deduction of freedom. I single out the following features of the two types of deduction. First, theoretical use of reason is aimed at objects while practical reason is aimed at noumena, the foundations of will and freedom. Second, the transcendental deduction of space and time, as well as the deduction of categories, is preceded by transcendental reduction, which is absent in the deduction of freedom. Third, Kant orients the methodological movement of deductions in opposite directions. Theoretical deduction proceeds from pure forms of sensible intuition to concepts of understanding and thence to fundamental principles. Practical deduction proceeds from a priori principles to the concepts of the metaphysics of morals and thence to moral feelings. Fourth, deduction in the theoretical sphere forbids speculative reason to go beyond experience. Practical deduction has pointed to the intelligible world and has proved its “legitimacy”. (shrink)

Heiko Puls’ work Sittliches Bewusstsein und Kategorischer Imperativ in Kants Grundlegung: Ein Kommentar zum dritten Abschnitt, presents an attempt to show that, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’s argumentation for the objective value of the categorical imperative is almost based upon the same principle as the one presented in the second Critique. More precisely, Puls claims that, like in the Critique of Practical Reason, the Groundwork operates with some kind of fact of reason-theory, which means that our (...) consciousness of the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of our freedom of will. Accordingly, there is no conclusion from a kind of non-moral consciousness of freedom to the freedom of will and from here to the objective value of the categorical imperative, as many interpreters assume. Due to the ambitiousness of his main thesis and his detailed and subtle way of arguing, Puls’ work represents an important and innovative contribution to recent research on Kant’s Groundwork. Nevertheless, his interpretations sometimes seem to favour analysis of loose philological relationships over closer looks on the contexts of passages. Or he focuses excessively on isolated textual evidences for his readings without appropriately recognising the various other evidences against it. In what follows, I give examples for this criticism. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This publication defends a phenomenalist interpretation of Kant’s idealism, which, however, deviates from usual phenomenalist interpretations in several respects. According to my reading, appearances are the content of representations, but not the true object of cognition. The object to which our cognition refers is rather the thing itself as the transcendental object. Nonetheless, we only cognize them as they appear and not as they are in themselves. Thus the unknowability of things as they are in themselves is retained. In the (...) course of my presentation, I discuss a number of aspects of Kant’s philosophy, among which are the distinction between appearances and things in themselves, Kant’s relationship to Cartesian epistemology, the refutation of idealism, and not least his theory of synthesis. My aim is not only to show that Kant is a phenomenalist, but also to characterize the kind of his phenomenalism. (shrink)

Kant attempted to answer the question of whether immoral actions result from a mere lack or failing of reason, or whether they consist in a certain form of rationality, i. e. in immoral reasons. The paper addresses this question by concentrating on Kant’s conception of “rationalising” (“Vernünfteln”). This concept is the key for understanding how immoral actions can be based on reasons and are thus imputable. According to Kant, by rationalising, the moral agent constructs a formal coherence of his maxims (...) that pretends to conform with the moral law but actually follows motives such as self-love or self-conceit. This activity of constructing a rational illusion, which derives from a dialectic of reason, can be imputed to the moral agent. Finally, the paper addresses strategies that Kant develops in order to circumvent the rationalising trap. (shrink)

Este texto busca mostrar algunos aspectos de continuidad entre las concepciones de la acción intencional de Kant y Hegel. Esos aspectos son la base de otros conocidos elementos de ruptura que hay entre ellos. Como en las últimas décadas el problema de la concepción de ambos autores en torno a este punto ha sido investigado por múltiples estudiosos, me concentraré fundamentalmente en un punto que no ha sido suficientemente tratado: el modo en que ambos autores conciben la naturaleza de la (...) acción frente a lo que se podría considerar el enfoque dominante al día de hoy: la concepción que llamaré causal-reductiva. Luego de ello sugeriré que en el marco de esta oposición a la concepción causal reductiva surge una divergencia profunda entre Kant y Hegel. (shrink)

In the modern debate in metaethics and moral psychology, moral rationalism is often presented as a view that cannot account for the intimate relation between moral behaviour on one hand and feelings, emotions, or desires on the other. Although there is no lack of references to the classic rationalists of the 18th century in the relevant discussions, the works of these writers are rarely ever examined detail. Yet, as the debate in Kant scholarship between “intellectualists” and “affectivists” impressively shows, a (...) more thorough analysis of what the classic rationalists actually have to say about moral motivation is suited to cast serious doubts on the idea that moral rationalism must crucially neglect the affective–conative side of human psychology. The aim of this paper is to analyse the conceptions of moral motivation that were embraced by Kant's rationalist predecessors—Clarke, Wolff, Burnet, Balguy, and Price—which have not attracted a similar amount of attention by specialists so far. The claim I will defend is that none of those early rationalists actually embraces the motivational thesis that is often taken to be characteristic of moral rationalism, a thesis I shall refer to as strong rationalism about (moral) motivation. (shrink)

Kant entwickelt in der Kritik der Urteilskraft eine philosophische Ästhetik, eine Theorie der organischen Natur. Die beiden scheinbar heterogenen Gegenstandsbereiche sind durch das Prinzip der reflektierenden Urteilskraft, die Idee der Zweckmäßigkeit, verbunden, die der Mensch sowohl bei der Reflexion über die schönen Gegenstände der Natur und der Kunst als auch bei seiner Erforschung der organischen Natur zugrunde legt. Da sich alle Zwecke zuletzt auf den Endzweck des Menschen als moralisches Wesen beziehen, übersteigt die dritte „Kritik" schließlich die Bereiche von Kunst (...) und Natur und berührt Fragen der Moralphilosophie und der Moraltheologie. Zusätzlich entdeckt Kant im subjektiven Vermögen der Urteilskraft jenes Bindeglied unter den menschlichen Gemütskräften, das einen architektonischen Übergang zwischen den Naturbegriffen des Verstandes in der ersten und dem Freiheitsbegriff der Vernunft in der zweiten „Kritik" ermöglicht und die theoretische und die praktische Philosophie in einem einzigen philosophischen System vereinigt. Der vorliegende kooperative Kommentar bietet eine textnahe, fortlaufende Interpretation der „Kritik der Urteilskraft". Für die 3. Auflage anlässlich des 300. Jubiläums Immanuel Kants wurden alle Beiträge überarbeitet und auf den neuesten Forschungsstand gebracht. Mit Beiträgen von: K. Ameriks, J. Bojanowski, R. Brandt, G. Cunico, M. Foessel, E. Förster, C. Fricke, H. Ginsborg, P. Giordanetti, I. Goy, O. Höffe, A. Kablitz, G. Kohler, S. Mathisen, B. Recki, J. Rivera de Rosales, S. Roth und E. Watkins. (shrink)

Contra aquellas lecturas formalistas de la filosofía práctica deKant, se asume una lectura de su propuesta ética a partir delconcepto de máxima. Al referirnos a la moral kantiana comouna moral de máximas, se postula un modelo específico dela acción racional, el cual posibilita la aplicación de la leymoral. La máxima, dentro de este modelo de acción, sirvecomo principio práctico subjetivo de la acción a partir delcual se aplica el imperativo categórico, como su principiopráctico objetivo. Esto implica que la propuesta de (...) Kant noexcluye el contexto práctico en el que se quiere realizar laacción, así como tampoco la situación específica del agenteque la pretende realizar. (shrink)

En este trabajo se presenta un aspecto de las posibles relaciones entre “historia” y “acción” en la obra de Kant. Contra lo que usualmente es sostenido en la literatura, la obra de Kant parece mostrar, a partir del aspecto que se analiza aquí, una conexión íntima con algunos de los presupuestos básicos de la concepción hegeliana de la acción, que fundan la sensible concepción social que éste tiene de ella.