At the beginning of the third Section of the Groundwork, Kant appears to state the synthetic a priori proposition which it is the business of that Section to justify. It is: “An absolutely good will is one whose maxim can always have as its content itself considered as a universal law.” I shall contend that a consideration of Kant's use of analytic method shows that he is committed to regard this proposition not as synthetic, but rather as analytic. Hence, I (...) shall contend that his statement of the proposition to be justified in the third Section is a slip, which hinders the study of the third Section and which, therefore, requires a textual emendation. Kant, I claim, does not attempt to justify this proposition but another. (shrink)

This paper is divided into three major sections. In section 1, I explain why it is that kant's theory of moral motivation is crucial in developing a certain sort of moral theory in opposition to both the ethical empiricist and the rationalist--A theory of moral reasons I characterize as a "rationalist internalism." in section 2, I present some of the detail of kant's theory of moral motivation, And in particular, The reasons why kant was led to a special a priori (...) feeling which he calls respect ("achtung"). Finally, Once I have worked out my interpretation of kant's moral psychological views, I turn to a critique of those views in section 3. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of practical reason often refer vaguely to the Kantian conception of reasons as an alternative to various means-ends theories, but it is rarely clear what this is supposed to be, except that somehow moral concerns are supposed to fare better under the Kantian conception. The theories of Nagel, Gewirth, Darwall, and Donagan have been labeled “Kantian” because they deviate strikingly from standard preference models, but their roots in Kant have not been traced in detail and important differences may (...) go unnoticed. All this is not surprising, of course, because Kant’s conception of practical reason is inseparable from his ideas of freedom, which are notoriously difficult and controversial. It is hard enough to characterize these ideas accurately in Kantian terminology, harder still to explain them in terms of contemporary debates about reasons for action. (shrink)