Kant’s deductions of morality and freedom

Abstract

It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works.

Kant's Ethics

“…There, he reiterates the reciprocity thesis that "freedom and unconditional practical law reciprocally imply one 48 Alternatively, the scoundrel passage might suggest that elements of Kant's later argument are already present in the Groundwork (see also the remark in footnote 46). For discussion of whether Kant's argument changes significantly between the two texts, see Timmermann, 2010 andWare, 2017. another" (KpV, 5:29). Now, however, he explicitly denies that the previous strategyof trying to show that we are bound by the unconditional practical law because we are freeis at all possible (KpV, 5:30).…”

Spontaneity and Self-Consciousness in theGroundworkand the B-Critique

“…For a dissenting view that takes ‘reason’ to be pure practical reason, cf. Tenenbaum (2012) and Ware (2017). But again, I think that Kant might be thinking of reason as a single faculty (albeit one with an ultimately practical use).…”

“…1. Owen Ware makes the interesting observation that there is no indication that Kant's earliest readers saw an inconsistency between the two texts (Ware 2017, 117–119). Ware traces the debate back to the 1960 publication of now-seminal studies of the Second Critique by Dieter Henrich (1994) and Beck (1960).…”

“…2. For readings that find continuity between the two texts, see Onora O’Neill (2002) and cf. Sergio Tenenbaum (2012) and Ware (2017). …”

The Moral Law as a Fact of Reason and Correctness Conditions for the Moral Law

“…But there exists an alternative interpretation according to which Kant’s approach to moral justification is continuous between his two works. For this non-standard view, see, e.g., Ware 2017. The main goal of this paper is to defend the claim that the moral law is justified as a fact of reason, and fortunately this goal does not depend on which interpretation is correct between the reversal reading and the continuity reading.…”