Abstract
Kant uses ‘wish’ as a technical term to denote a strange species of desire. It is
an instance in which someone wills an object that she simultaneously knows
she cannot bring about. Or in more Kantian garb: it is an instance of the
faculty of desire’s (or will’s) failing insofar as a desire (representation) cannot
be the cause of the realization of its corresponding object in reality. As a
result, Kant originally maintained it to be antithetical to morality, which
deals with ‘ought implies can’. However, Kant’s notion of wish is not static.
On the contrary, I argue in this article that Kant re-evaluated the capacity to
wish as (to some extent) causally efficacious and, further, of moral relevance.
This re-evaluation has not been discussed in the literature, yet has been
lurking in plain sight in a subtle but decisive shift evident in two versions
of a footnote from the *Critique of the Power of Judgement* (KU).