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Practical Reason and Respect for Persons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2017

Melissa McBay Merritt
Melissa McBay Merritt*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales
*
Email: m.merritt@unsw.edu.au
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Abstract

My project is to reconsider the Kantian conception of practical reason. SomeKantians take practical reasoning to be more active than theoretical reasoning,on the grounds that it need not contend with what is there anyway, independentlyof its exercise. Behind that claim stands the thesis that practical reason isessentially efficacious. I accept the efficacy principle, but deny that itunderwrites this conception of practical reason. My inquiry takes place againstthe background of recent Kantian metaethical debate — each side of which,I argue, points to issues that need to be jointly accommodated in the account ofpractical reason. From the constructivist, I accept the essential efficacy ofpractical reason; from the realist, I accept that any genuinely cognitiveexercise of practical reason owes allegiance to what is there anyway,independently of its exercise. I conclude that a Kantian account of recognitionrespect enables us to accommodate both claims.

Keywords

Practical reasonKantian ethicsKantian metaethicsconstructivism

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Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 53 - 79
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2017 

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