In this paper I argue that Kant would have endorsed Clifford’s principle. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I review Kant’s argument for the practical postulates. In the second, I discuss a traditional objection to the style of argument Kant employs. In the third, I explain how Kant would respond to this objection and how this renders the practical postulates consistent with Clifford’s principle. In the fourth, I introduce positive grounds for thinking (...) that Kant would have endorsed this principle. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that in order to secure some of his system’s key commitments, Fichte employs argumentation essentially patterned after the technique of practical postulation in Kant. This is a mode of reasoning that mobilizes a distinctly Kantian notion of nonepistemic justification, which itself is premised upon a broadly Kantian conception of the nature of reason. Succinctly stated, such argumentation proceeds essentially as follows. (1) By the basic nature and operations of rationality, every rational being is, as (...) such, committed to E as an ultimate end (final purpose, highest goal). (2) E can be understood as actually attainable only if descriptive proposition P is assented to. (3) We cannot, in principle, possess genuine evidence for or against P; therefore, (4) while we do not have (and never could have) good epistemic grounds for assenting to P, we do have (and always will have) perfectly sufficient rational grounds for doing so. While this assent has no basis in pertinent evidence, it nonetheless has an unshakeable foundation in the basic operations and requirements of rationality. This is so because this assent (a) sustains a commitment integral to rationality as such, and (b) affirms a proposition that no evidence could ever discredit. I proceed to discuss what I take to be two instances of this sort of argumentation in Fichte: first, The Vocation of Man's unusual argument for belief in the real existence of a world transcendent to human representations, and second, the same work's subsequent depiction of that world as strictly mentalistic (immaterial, intellectual, teleological) in its true constitution. VM portrays both positions as decisive determinants of the overall upshot of the Wissenschaftslehre (WL), and explicitly casts them as articles of “faith” or “belief” (Glaube), grounded in unshakeable ethical conviction, by contrast with items of “knowledge” (Wissen). (shrink)

Kant’s moral theology was a subject of intense debate in the early reception of Kant’s philosophy. At the same time, Kant’s notion of practical postulation held considerable interest for Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. What I seek to show is the systematic connection of these two facts: examination of the ways in which Kant’s postulates of pure practical reason exposed the Kantian system to criticism sheds light, I argue, on some of the fundamental moves made by the German (...) Idealists in their transformation of Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the arc of Kant’s critical stance on the belief in God, beginning with the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and culminating in the final chapter of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). I argue that toward the end of his life, Kant changed his views on two important topics. First, despite his stinging criticism of it in the Critique of Pure Reason, by the time of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to endorse the physico-theological argument. (...) Second, some time around the publication of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to move away from the argument for the practical postulates. (shrink)

The purpose of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of law is generally misunderstood by contemporary philosophers and legal theorists. In this article we explain why various common approaches are mistaken. In their place, we present his legal philosophy as a theory of legal knowledge based on a sequence of practical postulates. Kant is interested above all in how morality reveals the world of human relations to have legal significance. We then turn to consider the relationship between Kant’s legal philosophy and (...) two contemporary legal theorists who have been deeply influenced by Kant: Robert Alexy and Jürgen Habermas. We argue that Alexy offers an elegant synthesis of contemporary misreadings which still overlooks Kant’s core claim about the conditions for the possibility of legal knowledge. Habermas, by contrast, understands the role of practical postulates in our knowledge of law, but re-presents these in a social constructivist mode. Neither ultimately succeeds in defending Kant’s core insight that facts about law can only be known to be law if they are treated as a reflection of an underlying moral idea. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of the historical development of Kant's understanding of belief ( Glaube ) from its early ties to George Friedrich Meier's Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre through various stages of refinement. It will be argued that the Critique of Pure Reason reflects an important but not final stage in Kant's understanding of belief. Its structure is further refined and its scope narrowed in later works, including the Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment . After (...) charting these stages, an analysis of how belief relates to the Fact of Reason will be presented. (shrink)

Peter is secretly in love with his colleague Mary but too shy to disclose his feelings to her. Mary is nice enough to Peter, but never has she given any indication that her feelings for him go beyond those for a colleague and friend. Nevertheless, Peter firmly believes that Mary is in love with him, too. Most people would agree with Kant's contemporary Wizenmann (on whose objection to Kant the example is based) that Peter's belief is irrational. But why is (...) it? A possible answer might be that the fact that one wishes something to be the case in itself is no evidence for its being the case. This is the answer given by Wizenmann: ‘reasons [for a belief] that do not bear at all on the credibility of a thing do not determine anything with respect to its very credibility’; therefore, according to Wizenmann, a belief like Peter's is not ‘rational’ (vernünftig). In order for this answer to work, however, we must presuppose that for a belief to be rational, the subject needs sufficient evidence in favour of its truth (‘reasons’ that bear on the ‘credibility’ of the belief). In Peter's case, no such evidence is available; hence, his belief is irrational. (shrink)

It is widely claimed that the second Critique’s argument for the postulate of immortality is relevantly different from the first Critique’s argument for the postulate. It is also widely claimed that after the second Critique, Kant distances himself from its particular version of the argument, and even the postulate altogether. It is the purpose of this article to challenge these claims, arguing instead that (a) there is overwhelming textual evidence showing that Kant did not abandon the postulate; (b) the second (...) Critique does not contain a substantially different argument for the postulate than how it is argued for in the first Critique; and (c) the philosophical objections levied against the second Critique’s argument, including its putative substitution of holiness for virtue, become moot once its argument is better understood. (shrink)

This chapter presents Kant’s resolution of practical reason’s antinomy and sets up the additional postulates by establishing practical reason’s primacy, which explains how it is able to provide objective grounds for affirming the existence of the immortal soul and God through their metaphysical connection to the real possibility of the highest good. It argues that practical reason’s primacy is grounded through its real use, which is enabled by the moral law and the constitutive use it reveals (...) for the idea of freedom. Because practical reason can find a real, constitutive use for this idea, it can extend the boundaries of pure reason beyond the limits established by speculative reason in the first Critique. The chapter also provides a detailed discussion of the general concept of a practical postulate and determines the role that the categories must play in the context of Kant’s practical metaphysics. (shrink)

We are self-conscious creatures thrown into a world which is not of our making. What is the connection between being self-conscious and being related to an objective world? Descartes and Kant, in different ways and with different emphases, argued that self-conscious subjects must be related to an objective world. But many have worried about their starting points. ‘One should say it is thinking, just as one says, it is lightning’, the eighteenth-century philosopher, physicist, and aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg writes. ‘To (...) say cogito is already too much as soon as one translates it as I am thinking. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical requirement.’ Lichtenberg raises a question here about our entitlement to think of ourselves as the agent of our thinking. Sometimes thoughts strike us like lightning. When this happens, we are their patient. It is central to our self-conscious lives that this is the exception: we are first and foremost the agents of our thinking. What right do we have to think of ourselves as such? The Practical Self argues that self-consciousness requires faith in ourselves as the agents of our thinking. But faith can be undermined and it can be sustained. And this provides us with a connection to the world since our faith in ourselves as the agents of our thinking is sustained by practices which relate us to other thinkers. Self-conscious subjects must have faith in themselves as thinking agents and it is our relations to the others which sustain this faith. Self-consciousness connects us to a world of others. (shrink)

It was Heine who cynically suggested that Kant introduced the postulates of practical reason to comfort his manservant Lampe. Kant's view of morality is teleological, in that it sees obedience to the moral law as, at the same time, the fulfilment of human perfection. The legislation of the moral law which man himself creates is the true expression of man's autonomy and superiority over the sensuous bounds nature has set him. It is in such legislation that he begins (...) to realise his transcendentally free nature and fulfil himself as a distinctively human person. The law of duty is thus known, practically, as supremely authoritative. An intelligible ethical theory can certainly be extracted from the Kantian metaphysical context. Indeed, his doctrine is so complex that a number of alternative methods of demythologisation present themselves, depending largely upon the interests of the interpreter. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of Kant's postulate of immortality from the Critique of Practical Reason, arguing that immortality should be understood as an atemporal state in which the moral agent, freed from sensibility, is purely rational. Drawing on Kant's discussion in “The End of All Things,” I contend that the eschatological depiction Kant presents in this text is consistent with the postulate's aspirations for establishing the possibility of moral perfection, rather than signaling a change in (...) his view. This account addresses both a philosophical and historical gap, providing content to the postulate of immortality that coheres with its moral aims and demonstrates Kant's consistent understanding of the afterlife across his works. (shrink)

This essay argues that Johannes von Kries analysis of the status in the criminal law of the rationally intending subject and the doctrine of _mens rea_ so closely associated with it (cf. Kries, 1886 ; 1888 ) was well known to Max Weber, who had initially trained in law, and highly significant both for the development of his sociology of subjective understanding and his parallel view that the social sciences must be jointly committed to combining a generalizing objective with an (...) individualizing method in their research. It also sees many indications that Weber believed that social scientific investigations could and should go further toward franchising the subject of such social research by encouraging active, even critical responses in his/her testimony in the interests of better achieving both causal and meaning adequacy. From this it would have been only a short step to what I call the practical activation of Alfred Schutz’s postulate of adequacy, which requires that intellectual type constructs in the social sciences not only make sense to research subjects but accord with their perceptions, observations and views. The essay discusses the obstacles provided by the environing authoritarian social and political framework, including the trajectories of those professions on which the social sciences had little choice but to model themselves, as reasons explaining why practical activation of the postulate of adequacy has not yet fully come to pass. It concludes by addressing new Weber scholarship which sees him as a complex and dynamic probabilist whose constructivist and interpretivist theory of human social action is based much more on _Chance_ and orientation than we thought, even to the point of being a model for practical activation of the postulate of adequacy as well as a new and revised basis for the analysis of social interaction itself (see Weber, [ 1913 ] ( 1981 ). (shrink)

According to the prevailing opinion of the Kantian scholars, Kants critique of the traditional philosophical theology in the chapter of his Critique of Pure Reason dedicated to the ideal of reason motivated his rejection of transcendental theology in favor of a construction foundeв on postulates of reason. An examination of Kants sistematics of philosophical-theological disciplines reveals nonetheless some changeability of the borderlines of transcendental theology. This means that Kants critical arguments do not necessarily affect all kinds of trancendental theology, (...) and allows us to investigate Kants reflection of the transcendental ideal if reason as a foundation for an alternative version of philosophical ethico-theology which does not need practical postulates. In the first Critique there is no ground for such a construction, because Kant's concept of virtue remains partly naturalistic at that time. The idea of a pure aprioristic ethics of duty as expounded by Kant later furnished the needed conceptual foundation for a concept already prepared in the theory of the ideal, asserting the reality of a transcendental-practical ideal as a prototype of moral will, as humanity in its comprehensively determined moral perfection, as the realm of ethical ends, and lastly, in an anticipation of the prototypical Christology of Kant's late treatise on religion, as the divine human person within us. Compared with this version of transcendental philosophical theology Kants ethico-theology of postulates should be legitimately determined as a form of natural theology. (shrink)

The received view of Martin Heidegger’s work is that he leaves little room for reason in the practice of philosophy or the conduct of life. Citing his much-scorned remark that reason is the “stiff-necked adversary of thought”, critics argue that Heidegger’s philosophy effectively severs the tie between reason and normativity, leaving anyone who adheres to his position without recourse to justifying reasons for their beliefs and actions. Transcending Reason is a collection of essays by leading Heidegger scholars that challenges this (...) view by exploring new ways to understand Heidegger’s approach to the relationship between reason, normativity, and the philosophical methodology that gives us access to these issues. The volume points to Heidegger’s novel approach to reason understood in terms of what he calls Dasein’s ‘transcendence’—the ability to occupy the world as a space of normatively structured meanings in which we navigate our striving to be. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of this new and innovative take on Heidegger’s philosophy, this collection considers the possibility that he does not sever but rather reconceives the relation between reason and normativity. -/- . (shrink)

We analyze axioms and postulates as speech acts. After a brief historical appraisal of the concept of axiom in Euclid, Frege, and Hilbert, we evaluate contemporary axiomatics from a linguistic perspective. Our reading is inspired by Hilbert and is meant to account for the assertive, directive, and declarative components of modern axiomatics. We will do this by describing the constitutive and regulative roles that axioms possess with respect to the linguistic practice of mathematics.

Kant's noncognitive argument based on practical reason claims that moral considerations alone suffice to justify the idea of personal immortality as a postulate. Some recent objections are considered here that have charged him with overstepping his own distinction between phenomenon and noumenon. After examining the arguments, Kant is exonerated of having violated his own principles. More troubling, however, is the peculiarity involved in postulating an infinite progression toward a goal whose attainment, by hypothesis, would undermine the very foundations of (...) morality (which for Kant always requires the agonistic condition of struggling to improve one's lower nature). It is argued that this paradox necessitates a reexamination of some tacit cultural presuppositions underlying Kant's conception of the soul. Finally, an examination is made of the thought of Kitarō Nishida, whose Zen Buddhist–inspired dialectic of the basho (logical "place") provides an alternative perspective from which to reconsider the postulate of immortality. Nishida, like Kant, rigorously maintains the phenomenonnoumenon distinction, yet his examination of ethics leads him to postulate an eventual sublation of the "soul" principle. It is concluded that Kant's postulate of immortality, while plausible enough on its own terms, is limited by a Western cultural bias and therefore fails in the end to be compelling. (shrink)

The device of setting forth an argument in the form of a postulate set, while not unknown to jurisprudence, is nevertheless sufficiently novel to justify a brief account of the process. At one time human thought took axioms and postulates for avowals of unalterable truth, but the nineteenth century made common the practice of speculating with alternative presuppositional systems, so that deeper insight into the nature of this scientific device revealed it as merely a method among many for clarifying (...) and fecundating thought. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant grounds his postulate for the immortality of the soul on the presupposed practical necessity of the will’s endless progress toward complete conformity with the moral law. Given the important role that this postulate plays in Kant’s ethical and political philosophy, it is hard to understand why it has received relatively little attention. It is even more surprising considering the attention given to his other postulates of practical reason: the existence (...) of God and freedom. The project of this paper is to examine Kant’s postulate of the immortality of the soul, examine critiques of this argument, and show why the argument succeeds in showing that belief in the moral law also obligates one to believe in the soul’s immortality. (shrink)

Kant’s moral proof of the postulate of immortality in the Critique of Practical Reason is often dismissed as a failed argument that trades on illicit conceptual shifts. I argue that Kant’s argument is more interesting and less problematic than is usually thought. I first examine its role in the second Critique’s Dialectic. I then point out that the standard interpretation, according to which the argument presupposes God’s intuitive grasp of the moral equivalence between the disposition to pursue holiness and (...) its attainment, faces a number of philosophical and textual problems. I offer an alternative reading that avoids these problems. In particular, I stress the importance of Kant’s mathematized conception of the relationship between infinite progress towards an ideal goal and its attainment and argue that appealing to this conception allows Kant to meet a well-known criticism that his proof illegitimately substitutes the endless progress towards holiness for holiness itself. (shrink)

Problems and Postulates: Kant on Reason and Understanding ALISON LAYWINE THE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER is to think anew Kant's conception of reason and understanding, the relation between these two faculties and the principles that govern them. I am chiefly interested in the contributions of reason and under- standing to the advancement of knowledge. Hence the focus of my paper, so far as reason itself is concerned, is the theoretical rather than the practical employment of this faculty. On (...) the other hand, I think it is useful and fair to say, on Kant's account, that theoretical reason is itself practical -- at least to the extent that we regard scientific enquiry as some kind of activity, namely a research activity, involving practices such as proof and experimentation, under- taken for the sake of a certain end, namely, the acquisition of knowledge. One of Kant's concerns in the Critique of Pure Reason is to explain how this activity can be profitably pursued. To meet this concern, Kant must explain first of all how we set research goals for scientific enquiry. For without any such goals, Susan Neiman's book, The Unity of Reason , was the original stimulation for this paper. . I am more indebted to Susan.. (shrink)

The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Kant's three Critiques, and his second work in moral theory after the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Its systematic account of the authority of moral principles grounded in human autonomy unfolds Kant's considered views on morality and provides the keystone to his philosophical system. The essays in this volume shed light on the principal arguments of the second Critique and explore their relation to Kant's critical philosophy as a whole. (...) They examine the genesis of the Critique, Kant's approach to the authority of the moral law given as a 'fact of reason', the metaphysics of free agency, the account of respect for morality as the moral motive, and questions raised by the 'primacy of practical reason' and the idea of the 'postulates'. Engaging and critical, this volume will be invaluable to advanced students and scholars of Kant and to moral theorists alike. (shrink)

O postulado prático da existência de Deus é problemático por várias razões: primeiro, Kant nega que ele proporciona qualquer cognição da natureza ou existência de Deus como um ser em si; segundo, ele salienta a natureza prática do postulado contribuindo para o desempenho de nossos deveres; e, terceiro, Kant parece mesmo algumas vezes indicar que nosso postulado de Deus não corresponde a nenhuma realidade, mas é um mero pensamento. No meu trabalho, eu sustento o argumento que o postulado de Kant (...) de Deus pode ser melhor entendido como um conceito sem extensão que serve para unificar vários outros conceitos e obrigações morais mas que ele próprio não tem referência. Eu sustento esse argumento apontando para a relação do postulado para o propósito da filosofia prática, em oposição à teórica e pelo exame da função regulativa da razão em geral e invocando a teologia construtivista contemporânea. A fim de mostrar este ponto eu primeiro analiso a natureza de um postulado comparando postulados a hipóteses transcendentais e crenças da Crítica da Razão Pura. Em segundo lugar, eu examino o uso que Kant faz do postulado da existência de Deus como sendo “imanente... para propósitos práticos” e “somente em referência à lei moral e em função dela” na Crítica da Razão Prática. Terceiro, eu procuro pela função que o postulado de Deus desempenha no Opus Postumum e em outros textos de 1790 para mostrar que Kant chegou mais e mais a argumentar pelo papel funcional ao invés do referencial desse postulado. Ao longo do trabalho, eu discuto a natureza da filosofia prática – direcionada ao uso livre das nossas vontades – como sendo distinta da filosofia teórica – dirigida ao conhecimento dos objetos. Eu mostro como essa solução pode fazer Kant um naturalista metafísico. Eu também entro em questões contemporâneas da teologia relacionadas com o papel humano na construção de sistemas conceituais para ajudá-los a fazer sentido ao mundo que eles experienciam no contexto de um mistério maior que desafia a conceitualização.Kant’s practical postulate for the existence of God is puzzling for several reasons: first, he denies that it provides any cognition of the existence or nature of God as a being in itself, second, Kant stresses the practical nature of the postulate as contributing to performance of our duties, and third, Kant even seems on occasion to indicate that our postulate of God does not correspond to any reality but is a merely a thought. In my paper I advance the argument that Kant’s postulate of God is best understood as an extensionless concept that serves to unify various other moral concepts and moral obligations but that has no referent itself. I make this argument by noting the relation of the postulate to the purpose of practical, as opposed to theoretical, philosophy, and by examination of the regulative role of reason in general, and by invoking contemporary constructivist theology. In order to show this point I first examine the nature of a postulate by comparing postulates to transcendental hypotheses and to beliefs from the Critique of Pure Reason. I second examine the use to which Kant puts the postulate of the existence of God as “immanent . . . for practical purposes” and “only in reference to the moral law and for the sake of it” in the Critique of Practical Reason. Third, I look at the role that the postulate of God plays in Kant’s Opus Postumum and other texts from the 1790s to show that Kant came more and more to argue that the postulates have this functional rather than referential role. Throughout the paper I discuss the nature of practical philosophy – directed toward the free use of our wills – as distingushed from theoretical philosophy – directed toward knowledge of objects. I note how this solution could make Kant a metaphysical naturalist. I also touch on contemporary issues in theology related to the role of human construction of systems of concepts to help them make sense of the world they experience in the context of a greater mystery that defies conceptualization. (shrink)

The indispensability of the ‘postulate of practical reason with regard to Right’ to Kant's property argument in the Rechtslehre is now widely recognized. However, most commentators continue to focus their attention on the relation between the postulate and the deduction of the concept of intelligible possession. The nature of this relation remains a matter of dispute in part because the precise position of the postulate within chapter one of the Rechtslehre remains undecided. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising (...) that the related question has been neglected, as to why Kant should characterize the postulate of Right as a postulate of practical reason. Yet the fact that he does so is of some significance – especially if one recalls the definition in the Critique of Practical Reason of postulates of practical reason as practically necessary but theoretically indemonstrable propositions. What is of interest about this definition is not just the fact that it designates postulates as practically necessary and as theoretically indemonstrable at the same time – even more intriguing is the intimated relation between practical necessity and theoretical indemonstrability. Kant does not think the postulates' theoretical indemonstrability morally insignificant. To the contrary, their moral significance for us appears to be a function, in part, of their theoretical indemonstrability. (shrink)

The indispensability of the ‘postulate of practical reason with regard to Right’ to Kant's property argument in the Rechtslehre is now widely recognized. However, most commentators continue to focus their attention on the relation between the postulate and the deduction of the concept of intelligible possession. The nature of this relation remains a matter of dispute in part because the precise position of the postulate within chapter one of the Rechtslehre remains undecided. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising (...) that the related question has been neglected, as to why Kant should characterize the postulate of Right as a postulate of practical reason. Yet the fact that he does so is of some significance – especially if one recalls the definition in the Critique of Practical Reason of postulates of practical reason as practically necessary but theoretically indemonstrable propositions. What is of interest about this definition is not just the fact that it designates postulates as practically necessary and as theoretically indemonstrable at the same time – even more intriguing is the intimated relation between practical necessity and theoretical indemonstrability. Kant does not think the postulates' theoretical indemonstrability morally insignificant. To the contrary, their moral significance for us appears to be a function, in part, of their theoretical indemonstrability. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper presents Husserl’s concept of Europe as a postulate of phenomenological reason. I begin by showing that a certain interpretation of history is necessary in order for phenomenology to be possible as science. I then show how Husserl’s concept of Europe enables this interpretation. Working with a general definition of postulation that brings Husserl into conversation with Kant, I examine the motives and truth conditions for asserting that Europe is what Husserl claims it to be. I highlight the critical (...) import of Husserl’s concept by identifying three criteria it establishes for authentically European history: denationalization, renaissance and Europeanization. I conclude by considering the inherently controversial nature of “Europe” and outline the space for a contest of concepts that would serve the same theoretical–practical function. (shrink)

The Critique of Pure Reason was originally conceived as a critique of reason in both its theoretical and practical applications. As such, the book was also meant to serve as the philosophical foundation for future metaphysical systems of both natural and moral philosophy. Kant therefore did not initially plan on writing the Critique of Practical Reason, nor the Critique of Judgement, let alone the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. As we now know, however, Kant changed his plans (...) radically over the course of just a few years. In the case of the Critique of Practical Reason in particular, which is my focus in this chapter, the idea for it was first conceived and brought to completion in a very short amount of time, namely within less than two years. This naturally leads one to ask: what happened after the publication of the first Critique that led to Kant deciding to write the second? In this chapter I construct a narrative out of some important events that occurred in the years leading up to the publication of the second Critique in order to help clarify both why Kant decided to write this text at all and why it deals with the topics that it does. (shrink)

The present article argues that a single logic underlies Kant’s deduction of nature’s purposiveness in the Critique of Judgment and the deduction of the highest good in the Critique of Practical Reason. Both deductions are, as I would term it, transcendental deductions of success: a “success” deduction establishes the conditions for the realizability of a goal or an activity. Kant’s first developed “success” deduction is the deduction of the highest good: if the promotion of the highest good is practically (...) necessary, then the conditions for its possibility (the existence of God) must be postulated. In the third Critique, however, the same logic is applied to theoretical cognition of empirical nature: if cognition of nature’s forms is to be possible, then nature must be assumed as purposively designed (for human cognition). Thus, I argue that in the third Critique Kant treats theoretical cognition as a practical activity, or, pari passu, Kant employs the “success” deduction model in both practical and theoretical contexts. Finally, I consider Kant’s transcendental deduction of success against the backdrop of his transcendental deduction of the categories. (shrink)

It is largely agreed that if constructivism contributes anything to meta-ethics it is by proposing that we understand ethical objectivity “in terms of a suitably constructed point of view that all can accept” (Rawls 1980/1999: 307). Constructivists defend this “practical” conception of objectivity in contrast to the realist or “ontological” conception of objectivity, understood as an accurate representation of an independent metaphysical order. Because of their objectivist but not realist commitments, Kantian constructivists place their theory “somewhere in the space (...) between realist and relativist accounts of ethics” (O’Neill 1988: 1). Furthermore, they argue that their practical conception of objectivity succeeds in making sense of certain features of morality, such as its categorical authority and its relation to rational agency, which escape rival theories (Korsgaard 1996b, Korsgaard 2003b). To this extent, constructivism claims a privileged place in meta-ethics. The legitimacy of this claim is widely challenged. Precisely because of its practical conception of objectivity, many – including some constructivists — regard constructivism as a first-order normative theory, rather than as a meta-ethical position, hence not on a par with realism. Some critics object that constructivism fails to offer a distinct meta-ethics because it is structurally incomplete and thus must be combined with a fully-fledged meta-ethics (Hussain and Shah 2006); others argue that it tacitly relies on realism (Timmons 2003; Shafer-Landau 2003; Larmore 2008). Thus far, the debate about the prospects of constructivism as a meta-ethical theory has been driven by the conviction that the case for or against constructivism depends on its ontological commitments. In this chapter, I propose a change in perspective. My aim is to defend constructivism as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. Its defining feature is the claim that practical knowledge is knowledge by principles. Its task is to establish a constitutive relation between knowledge of oneself as a practical subject and knowledge about what one ought to do. By focusing on the issue of practical knowledge I hope to show that the difficulty in situating Kantian constructivism firmly on the meta-ethical map, along with other meta-ethical theories, reflects ambiguities and oscillations about the practical significance of ethics. Even though the term is ambiguous, I retain the qualification “Kantian” for the constructivist theory I outline, and for two reasons. First, while the theory I outline differs from current agnostic or anti-realist variants, it is closer to its origins, since Kant treats practical reason as a cognitive capacity and takes moral judgments to be objective moral cognitions, which importantly differ from other sorts of rational cognitions because they bind us in the first person. Practical cognitions are common knowledge because they are such that all subjects endowed with rationality can arrive at them by reasoning and find them authoritative. Thus understood, Kantian constructivism carves a distinct logical space in the meta-ethical debate that other sorts of constructivism fail to identify. This is the second reason for keeping the qualification “Kantian”. On this formulation, constructivism is antagonistic to non-cognitivist theories denying that moral judgments have cognitive contents, because they deny that there is something to be known; but it is also a rival to cognitivist theories denying that knowledge can be practical in itself. How constructivism differs over the realist theories of practical reason is the least understood aspect of this debate. This essay aims to make the case that practical reason is both discursive and emotional. In contrast to foundational and anti-realist accounts of practical reasoning, it attempts to show that the moral feeling of respect plays a cognitive but non-evidential role in the account of the cognitive and practical powers of reason. The argument proceeds as follows. In section 1, I consider some prominent constructivist arguments against the model of applied knowledge and show that they are driven by non-cognitivist assumptions about the practicality of ethics and the legitimacy of epistemological claims. In section 2, I argue that these arguments do not succeed in disposing of the idea of practical knowledge as incoherent, because they trade on an ambiguity regarding the proper object of practical knowledge. To solve this ambiguity, I turn to Anscombe’s contrast between “practical” and “speculative” knowledge as models for understanding action. I thus suggest that Anscombe’s account of practical knowledge as knowledge of oneself as an agent is an important resource for Kantian constructivism. This finding prompts us to reset the current dispute about the ontological and epistemological commitments of Kantian constructivism, as illustrated in section 3. While constructivism does not postulate any moral ontology prior to reasoning, it attributes to reasoning the cognitive powers to establish a distinctive relation between the agent and her action. The task of sections 4-7 is to account for the distinctive features of Kantian constructivism understood as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. In section 4, I argue that in order for reasoning to accomplish its normative tasks, it should be conceived as a self-legislating activity. I respond to some objections to the idea of self-legislation as the form of rational willing by offering a dialogical view of practical reason. In section 5, I propose a non-standard interpretation of Kant’s argument of “the fact of reason” to show that the constructivist account of self-legislation does not build on realism about value, as its detractors claim. The “basis of construction” is the subjective experience of respect for the self-legislative capacity itself. This moral feeling conveys our awareness of rational agency and shows our responsiveness to the demands of practical reason. It is an emotional mode of practical knowledge of oneself as an agent (in the sense specified in section 2), but not as a mode of moral discernment. In section 6, I show how practical knowledge of oneself as an agent relates to practical knowledge about what one ought to do. I thus account for the relation between respect as emotional moral consciousness and respect as a deliberative constraint. Finally, in section 7, I reply to the objection of subjectivism. I explain how the complex sort of objectivity that Kantian constructivism affords is at the same time more ambitious and more modest than is generally assumed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper aims at examining the way in which Rahel Jaeggi’s conception of forms of life as inert bundles of practices is connected to the problem of the possibility of an immanent critique of life forms, that is, of a kind of analysis that is both internal and transformative. In the first part, my contention will be that understanding practices in terms of conventions makes it difficult to admit of internal criticisms of them. Jaeggi’s account of immanent critique, as (...) argued in the second part, tries to differentiate practices from social conventions by maintaining that transformations of life forms can be seen as the result of episodes of crises ignited by the inability to cope with “second order” problems. I maintain that, unless one is willing to postulate something like an absolute telos dictating the historical sequence that forms of life must follow, the way in which forms of life solve second order problems displays some conventional features preventing any quick assimilation to the paradigm of immanent critique. This circumstance, as argued in the third section of my presentation, poses an obstacle to Jaeggi’s project of an immanent critique of life forms. (shrink)

Perez-Rodriguez and de la Fuente (2017) assume that although human races do not exist in a biological sense (“geneticists and evolutionary biologists generally agree that the division of humans into races/subspecies has no defensible scientific basis,” they exist only as “sociocultural constructions” and because of that maintain an illusory reality, for example, through “racialized” practices in medicine. Agreeing with the main postulates formulated in the article, we believe that the authors treat this problem in a superficial manner and have (...) failed to capture the current state of the field of knowledge in science and the humanities. In our commentary, we want to highlight two main omissions, and to notice three important implications for “a postracial medicine.”. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues that morality obliges us to believe in the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. I argue, however, that in two late essays – “The End of All Things” and “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” – Kant provides moral counterarguments to that position: these beliefs undermine moral agency by giving rise to fanaticism or fatalism. Thus, I propose, the Kantian position on the justification of religious (...) belief is ultimately antinomial. One ought, moreover, to understand Kant’s considered position concerning the immortality of the soul and the existence of God to be similar to that he proposes concerning the theoretical ideas of reason in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason: they are necessary as regulative ideas guiding moral action, not endorsed or even postulated as propositions. In other words, they are subject matters not of belief, but of hope. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars is usually read as claiming that only the unobservable, theoretical objects which science would postulate at the ideal end of inquiry are real. Against this, Willem deVries has suggested that we can develop a notion of practical reality in the context of Sellars's philosophy which would pertain primarily to commonsense objects. I use deVries's suggestion as a foil to clarify Sellars's own commitments about the practical. I show that the notion of practical reality is not (...) necessary to secure the ultimate legitimacy of practical concepts. We can retreat to the less committed notion of practical truth. I argue that the notion of practical truth may not be sufficient to ensure that ultimately legitimate practical concepts are commonsense concepts in Sellars's framework. Nevertheless, deVries's suggestion highlights that Sellars's vision of an ultimate conceptual system may have been richer than is often thought. (shrink)

In Chap. 1, we saw that the fundamental problem in the geometrical theory of equivalence is to guarantee that plane polygons can be totally or linearly ordered with respect to their areas. In other words, a crucial task in the rigorous development of this theory is to secure the comparability of (simple) polygons based on an adequate geometrical relation of ‘equality of area’ or equivalence. In the Elements, the first systematic exposition in Greek mathematics of the theory of equivalence, Euclid (...) proved an array of propositions (I.42–I.45) that put forward a method to compare any two given polygonal figures, making operational the comparison of plane areas. The central idea of Euclid’s method was the following well-known result: any polygon can be transformed into an equivalent parallelogram with a given angle and side. Then, any two polygons can always be transformed into two equivalent rectangles of equal altitudes, which can be “juxtaposed” and ordered by comparing their bases. It should be noted that Euclid never explicitly defined when a polygon P\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\textbf{P}$$\end{document} is greater (or lesser) in area than a polygon Q\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\textbf{Q}$$\end{document}, but his geometrical practice suggested that he grounded the relation of order of polygonal areas on the relation of inclusion or, better, on the mereological relation of parthood. Accordingly, a polygon P\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\textbf{P}$$\end{document} is said to be greater in area than another polygon Q\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\textbf{Q}$$\end{document} if there is a polygon P′\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {P'}$$\end{document}, properly contained in P\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\textbf{P}$$\end{document}, such that P′\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {P'}$$\end{document} is equal in area to Q\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\textbf{Q}$$\end{document}. (shrink)

Kant developed a distinctive method of philosophical argumentation, the method of transcendental argumentation, which continues to have contemporary philosophical promise. Yet there is considerable disagreement among Kant's interpreters concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. On ambitious interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to establish certain necessary features of the world from the conditions of our thinking about or experiencing the world; they are world-directed. On modest interpretations, transcendental arguments aim to show that certain beliefs have a special status that renders them invulnerable (...) to skeptical doubts; they are belief-directed. This paper brings Kierkegaard's thesis of the “subjectivity of truth” to bear on these questions concerning the aim of transcendental arguments. I focus on Kant's argument for the postulate of God's existence in his Critique of Practical Reason and show that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us construe the argument as both belief and world directed. Yet I also argue that Kierkegaard's thesis of the subjectivity of truth can help us understand the source of our dissatisfaction with Kant's transcendental arguments: It can help us understand that dissatisfaction as an expression of what Stanley Cavell calls the “cover of skepticism,” the conversion of metaphysical finitude into intellectual lack. (shrink)

This paper shows how Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit criticizes Kant for positing a realm beyond the scope of finite cognition, a “supersensible” realm of things in-themselves. Hegel not only rejects Kant’s attempt to ground the supersensible through his theoretical philosophy, but also criticizes Kant’s attempt to provide a practical basis for the sensible-supersensible divide. In the second Critique, Kant claims that practical reason extends theoretical reason by showing that the supersensible is more than a “merely problematic thought” since (...) we can populate this realm with the moral postulates of God and the immortality of the soul. Hegel rejects Kant’s attempt to posit a realm beyond theoretical cognition. The moral postulates, Hegel claims, are an “unnecessary hypothesis.” Kant imagines [vorstellt] supersensible realm populated with moral postulates, yet Hegel argues this is a dissemblance [Verstellung] that hides a whole “nest of contradictions” by shifting thoughtlessly between a finite and infinite perspective. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical study of rationalism in ethics: the view that acting morally is a requirement of rationality, and that all agents consequently have reason to be moral. The study attempts first to reconstruct the essential elements of the rationalist approach in ethics, and then to identify the most critical obstacles in the way of that approach. By way of reconstruction, it is argued that the rationalist in ethics needs to construe rationality as a set of ideal principles (...) or norms, and to affirm a connection between one's having a practical reason and the capacity of rationality to lead one to be motivated to act on the reason. This latter claim amounts to a version of internalism, and some time is devoted to the task--hitherto neglected by philosophers--of clarifying and defending the connection which it postulates between practical reasons and the motivation to act on them. Given internalism, the burden on the rationalist is to show that rational reflection can by itself lead to the motivation to act on moral reasons. Opponents of rationalism have characteristically challenged the very possibility of such purely rational motivations, and the dissertation considers next the arguments that have been offered for this broadly Humean position. The conclusion is reached that there are no plausible a priori arguments against the very possibility of a rationalist explanation of motivation. This does not however represent a vindication of the rationalist approach: there is room for a pragmatic argument against purely rational explanations of motivation, and the dissertation concludes by offering such an argument, focussing in particular on the case of prudence and prudential reasons. (shrink)

I demonstrate that the two major ethical traditions agree that there are given desires which provide extra-rational practical reasons. Empiricist theories ground ethics in such desires, but the extra-rationality of this foundation appears to lead to stultifying subjectivism. Rationalist theories justify the appeal to an independent Kantian Reason as necessary to gain control over such desires. But the status of these desires as providing motivating reasons guarantees that such independent Reason can never be more than one among competing sources (...) of practical rational motivation. ;I then argue that the generalization and extension of the epistemological argument against the given provides compelling evidence that there can be no such given desires. This argument demonstrates that episodes which can provide reasons cannot be extra-rational, indeed must be constituted through rational endorsement. This critical argument is applied to the work of Dennis Stampe and Thomas Hobbes , and extended from desires to preferences . ;In order to provide rational warrant, a desire must itself be rationally endorsed in a context of other endorsed episodes within which its own warrant is secured. There are no given desires, no extra-rational practical reasons in which the crude empiricist can ground practical reasoning. But there is also no need to postulate Reason independent of desire to gain rational control over such desires. I close by suggesting that this critical argument provides a framework for the construction of a middle ground between the two traditions which incorporates their central insights while avoiding their chronic failings. (shrink)

Although an examination of Kant's justification of various (especially practical) norms is under way in the literature and most of the Kantians have something to say about this topic, yet not much has been written on Kant's view of justification [_Rechtfertigung_]. Moreover, what has been written on Kant's _Rechtfertigung_ suggests that it is a non-epistemic notion and, hence, a notion that cannot be placed within an account of Kant's moral or practical epistemology. Furthermore, Kant makes use of the (...) notion of _Rechtfertigung_ in many ways and many contexts, so much so that it sometimes looks like we are dealing with more than one concept under the same name. This chapter argues that Kant's view of practical justification is unitary and coherent, that it is significant for practical epistemology and that it overlaps with the contemporary notion of justification in a way which makes it relevant for the numerous current debates. (shrink)