According to the ‘rigorist’ interpretation, the imperfect duty of (e.g.) beneficence does not permit agents to fail to perform any beneficent act that is available to the agent in order to pursue some nonmoral interest, whereas on the latitudinal interpretation, agents are permitted to fail to do so. I defend the latitudinal interpretation by criticising recent defences of rigorism offered by Jens Timmermann and Pauline Kleingeld, arguing that they conflict with important features of Kant’s moral theory, and that the latitudinal interpretation better coheres with Kant’s overall view.

The focus of my argument is whether, and in what sense, freedom is ‘revealed’ by the fact of reason in Kant’s second Critique. I examine the passages in which Kant refers to the fact of reason and conclude that he uses the term to refer to our taking morality as authoritative, and to our apprehending the content of the moral law. I then point out how various commentators have claimed each to be the fact of reason. Next I address how each is claimed by Kant to reveal ‘freedom’ to us and argue that our taking morality as authoritative is best understood as referring to our conception of ourselves as autonomous beings, and that our apprehending the moral law’s content reveals only the idea of freedom as a coherent one. Neither would demonstrate that we actually are autonomous, nor would their conjunction, despite what some commentators have claimed. In closing I defend the deflationary position that the fact of reason entitles us to postulate our freedom, but only from the practical point of view, and that it demonstrates that freedom is a coherent idea.

My aim in this paper is to examine the role of legal moralism in the reasoning that underlies some high profile cases decided by the Supreme Court. In so doing, I provide a sketch of a version of legal moralism that arguably addresses the most serious concerns of some of its critics. My thesis is roughly that the decisions in Bowers and Barnes are ultimately indefensible and the decisions in Loving and Lawrence are indeed correct. But despite appearances to the contrary, legal moralism is not the culprit in Bowers and Barnes, because what might appear to be instances of legal-moralist arguments in the prevailing opinions in those cases are either variants of other types of argument or applications of untenable versions of legal moralism. Further, the arguments employed by the Court in the prevailing opinions in Loving and Lawrence are at least consistent with the most plausible version of legal moralism and would have entailed that Bowers and Barnes be decided differently. Indeed, Justice Stevens's dissent in Bowers contains important parallels with the most plausible versions of legal moralism, and Justice Scalia's dissent in Lawrence relies on an implausible version of legal moralism.

Our aim is to draw a set of distinctions among types of goods which has significant implications for theories of distributive justice. We begin by providing a general account of two sets of properties—fungibility and nonfungibility, divisibility and indivisibility—and argue that goods can be distinguished according to these criteria. Further, we contend that these distinctions entail complications for structural principles of distributive justice (i.e., principles such as maximin that distribute payoffs to positions). As an example we consider James Fishkin's discussion of structural principles, arguing that Fishkin's view that (i) value, structure, and assignment are independent holds only to the degree that the goods considered are fungible and divisible, (ii) structural principles face difficulties beyond those which Fishkin identifies and addresses with his principle of nontyranny, since structural principles cannot accommodate highly nonfungible, indivisible goods, and (iii) these difficulties can be managed through the application of a value-sensitive proviso. We then show that two important goods, medical care and advanced education, are highly nonfungible and indivisible and thus support the distinctions drawn earlier. Finally, we specify the nature of complementary contributions as well as coordination problems between structural principles and the value-sensitive proviso in their application to distributive justice issues.