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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
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Unintended thought and nonconscious inferences exist
- James S. Uleman, Jennifer K. Uleman
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- Behavioral and Brain Sciences / Volume 13 / Issue 4 / December 1990
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- 19 May 2011, pp. 627-628
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4 - A sketch completed: freedom
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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- An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy
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- 21 January 2010, pp 63-74
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AN OVERVIEW OF THE FREE KANTIAN WILL
The third and final stage in this initial sketch of Kantian will is focused on the will's freedom. For Kant, freedom in the most central sense consists in being self-determining, that is, in being a kind of causality whose determining ground is internal and not external (see, e.g., A444–6/B472–4). Given the ground we have already covered, we can easily see that, for Kant, a will determinable by reason itself, that is, a will that can give itself an end and a corresponding law of action, is also for this reason and at the same time a free will. The aim of this short final chapter on the will is to say this again, in greater detail, and to show how it is related to some of Kant's more famous discussions of freedom and the good will.
Despite the brief gloss just given, freedom is a complicated business for Kant. Just as there is for Kant a sense of rationality according to which rationality pervades all action and a sense of rationality according to which rationality is something to achieve, and can be achieved more or less, so there is a sense of freedom according to which freedom pervades all choice and all action, and a sense of freedom according to which freedom is something to achieve, and can be achieved more or less.
An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy
- Jennifer K. Uleman
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Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy is one of the most distinctive achievements of the European Enlightenment. At its heart lies what Kant called the 'strange thing': the free, rational, human will. This introduction explores the basis of Kant's anti-naturalist, secular, humanist vision of the human good. Moving from a sketch of the Kantian will, with all its component parts and attributes, to Kant's canonical arguments for his categorical imperative, this introduction shows why Kant thought his moral law the best summary expression of both his own philosophical work on morality and his readers' deepest shared convictions about the good. Kant's central tenets, key arguments, and core values are presented in an accessible and engaging way, making this book ideal for anyone eager to explore the fundamentals of Kant's moral philosophy.
3 - A sketch continued: the structure of practical reason
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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- 21 January 2010, pp 39-62
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In this second stage of a three-stage effort to sketch the Kantian will, we turn to the structure of practical rationality, that is, to the structure of the will insofar as will is, for Kant, reason in its practical employment. This stage of the effort will take us through the architecture of Kantian practical reason. We will look at the kinds of representations and propositions, and at the kinds of possible relations between them that, taken together, constitute practical reason's basic structure and internal logic.
WILL AS PRACTICAL REASON: PRACTICAL RULES, LAWS, AND PRINCIPLES
A first thing to do is to clarify the many terms that figure in Kant's descriptions of practice, or action. Practice (or action), properly speaking, consists for Kant in movement according to rules we represent to ourselves – we saw this in Chapter 2. But what does Kant mean by ‘rule’? ‘Rule’ is, for Kant, a fairly all-purpose term. Rules, or, in German, Regeln, either describe or prescribe regularities. Plants grow toward the sun; the first word of a sentence is capitalized; parking after 6 p.m. is by permit only. Each of these is a kind of rule. Now rules, as both we and Kant use the term, can admit of exceptions. Fungi, though plants, spurn sunlight; sentences in many non-Latin alphabets, in some other character sets, and in many people's emails, do not begin with capitalized letters; parking regulations may be suspended during special events. We might say that rules can apply contingently or locally.
Acknowledgements
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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Index
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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5 - Against nature: Kant's argumentative strategy
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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THE PROBLEM
The problem is a problem of long standing. In the Presidential Address to the December 2001 Eastern Division American Philosophical Association Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, for instance, Virginia Held raised doubts about research programs in ethics that insist on naturalism. Held targeted recent efforts in sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to ground ethics in natural facts about human beings, and argued against philosophical projects – like those of Daniel Dennett, Paul Churchland, and Allan Gibbard – that seek to give ethics psychobiological foundations. She cautioned fellow feminist thinkers against embracing naturalism, congenial as embracing nature might seem, especially to thinkers – Held names Annette Baier – eager to revalue the ‘natural’ moral practices of care, and to generally reclaim the denigrated natural sphere – home to bodies, emotions, and the mundane, messy, as well as ‘sinful’ facts of reproduction – to which women have often been consigned. Held's argument, roughly, was that nature, by its very nature, cannot be turned to for answers about what is morally good, what evil, what called for, what forbidden. We rebel, as we should, against systems of gender hierarchy, no matter how rooted in ‘nature.’ We reject, as we should, callous selfishness, again no matter how natural. The normative, Held argued, cannot come from the natural; we should not try to ground moral oughts, her thought goes, in what ‘by nature’ is.
Contents
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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1 - Introduction: the strange thing
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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THE STRANGE THING
“The thing is strange enough and has no parallel in the remainder of practical knowledge” (KpV 5:31). So writes Kant about the activity of human will. According to Kant, human will authors an ultimate action-guiding principle – a moral law – that tells what matters most and how to act accordingly. It binds itself to this law, experiencing the law's commands as absolute and expecting as reward neither happiness nor heaven, eschewing both sensuous and divine incentives. According to Kant, human will understands the moral law it has authored as holding not only for itself but universally. The strange activity of this strange thing is strange for many reasons. It is free in a determined world; it subjects itself to itself, despite the seeming paradox of this; in the end, and strangest of all, the will that authors and can bind itself to moral law is itself what matters most, is itself the aim of morality. The strange will is thus its own object: at the heart of Kant's moral theory is, to use Hegel's words, “the free will which wills the free will.” The moral law that Kantian free will authors is, to put it another way, strangely and ingeniously self-serving. This book is about all these strange things, and especially about why, for Kant, the strange, free, law-giving will is its own ultimate aim.
Bibliography
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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8 - Conclusion: Kant and the goodness of the good will
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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- 21 January 2010, pp 175-179
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Summary
There are times in philosophy, as in life, when the way a problem is framed, the way the alternatives are formulated, makes you feel like your head is going to explode. This was the case for me when, in college, I first encountered John Rawls' effort to separate the political from the moral, and found others echoing, as though it were unproblematic and even helpful, a distinction between ‘the right’ and ‘the good.’ The former was meant to be impersonal and somehow suited for public institutions, a matter of ground rules and shared principles, and of duties to which there could not be exceptions, while the latter was best articulated and pursued in ways that were personal and private, an ideal suited to, say, intimate relationships where sensitivity and particularity were called for. What were these people talking about? Connections were drawn to ‘liberal neutrality,’ to the attractions of a conception of right able to accommodate ‘competing conceptions of the good’; those critical of abstract descriptions of right championed Habermas' ‘more grounded’ approach. But, I thought, isn't the right only right because it is in some important sense good? How could there be a political (public, juridical, institutional) vision that isn't based on (designed to accommodate, realize, and/or protect) some moral conception of human flourishing?
I realize that blame for mapping the terrain of practical philosophy in ways that segregated ‘good’ and ‘right’ probably should not all be heaped on Rawls.
2 - A sketch of Kantian will: desire and the human subject
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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Reason, in practice, has to do with a subject and especially with its faculty of desire.
KpV 5:20Like many people I know, I often try to draw abstract, non-spatio-temporal things on blackboards. When I start trying to draw the Kantian will, students become particularly hopeful. Having a clear picture of this unwieldy faculty would make life a lot easier – but after the first few circles and arrows, we all end up discouraged. There are too many different parts and pieces, interacting in too many different ways. These early chapters represent my efforts at offering, instead, a sketch in writing of the complicated Kantian will.
Kantian will is complicated because it is at once a faculty that desires, makes choices, and issues action-guiding rules. To say it desires is to say that it wants and wishes, that it has inclinations and interests. To say it makes choices is to say that it decides between possible ends or aims of action, picking which desires we act upon. To say it issues action-guiding rules is to say that it is a faculty that formulates maxims, as well as rules for deciding among possible maxims; it is to say that will authors, and represents to itself, and determines itself according to, principles.
To further complicate matters, Kantian will – encompassing desire, choice, and rule-making – is also at once thoroughly rational and thoroughly free, and also often incompletely rational and incompletely free.
7 - What's so good about the good Kantian will? The appeals of the strange thing
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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- An Introduction to Kant's Moral Philosophy
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INTRODUCTION
Why ask about the good of free rational willing?
We have seen arguments that, for Kant, free rational willing is the good at which practice ought ultimately to aim – that free rational willing is, for Kant, the moral good. We have seen, that is, that the value of free rational willing grounds, for Kant, the commands of morality, and that our interest in free rational willing is what moves us to follow these commands. Here, we need to ask another question, namely, what allows free rational willing to play all these roles? What, that is, is so appealing about it? Kant thinks an interest in free rational willing is strong enough to compete with sensuous desire in moving our wills. Why? How? Wherein lies the pull of free rational willing?
These questions will seem distinctly unKantian to some. For some, insistence that morality eschew incentives, interests, or motives is a hallmark of Kantian thought. However, as we have seen, Kant's real claim is that morality must eschew empirical and external incentives, interests, and motives. The answers I offer here to these questions will also seem distinctly unKantian to some. I address the question of what pulls us toward free rational will in terms of appealing experiences and lived self-awarenesses. But this can seem all wrong, since free rational willing is noumenal if anything is: how could it appeal, attract, be experienced, be something like a ‘phenomenon’ with pull, at all?
Frontmatter
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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6 - The categorical imperative: free will willing itself
- Jennifer K. Uleman, State University of New York, Purchase
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- 21 January 2010, pp 111-144
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This chapter aims to defend an alternative to a widespread formalist interpretation of Kant's moral theory. It does so via a close reading of Kant's canonical arguments for his moral law in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. On the interpretation I defend here, Kant's famous categorical imperative urges the ‘free will to will itself.’ This is of course how Hegel put it. To put Kant's moral imperative this way is not, in my view, nor was it in itself for Hegel, a criticism of Kant, though Hegel of course did criticize Kant. Rather, it is to argue that Kant's moral law, expressed in the categorical imperative, has as its specific end the free rational activity of the will itself.
The first part of this chapter traces the roots of the formalist reading, and shows what Kant's formalism (really) demands, and what it doesn't. My aim is to loosen the grip of a formalist ban on asking what Kant cares about, or what his moral theory aims at, by showing that Kant didn't want to silence those inquiries. Having carved out permission to ask, directly, what Kant cares about, what he values, what his moral theory aims at, I turn to Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason discussions of the moral law (the categorical imperative) and read them with these questions in mind.