The week we’ll finish our discussion of Groundwork III and Kant’s two ’standpoints’. We then close out the semester by looking at one “big picture” issue in Kant’s critical philosophy—namely, how theoretical and practical reason are related. To what extent can we see theoretical inference and practical willing as exercises of a single faculty of reason? We’ll discuss this issue as it plays out in one of his most famous popular essays – “What is Enlightenment.” We’ll also discuss what it means to say that practical reason has “primacy” over theoretical reason.
Readings
- Groundwork III, especially 4:447-8, 4:450-453
- What is Enlightenment? in Practical Philosophy, 11-22
- CPrR: “On the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason” 5:119-121 (In Practical Philosophy, 236-8)
- Optional: SEP: “Kant’s Account of Reason”, especially “The unity of practical and theoretical reason”
- Optional: Korsgaard, ’Morality as Freedom’, ch. 6 in Creating the Kingdom of Ends
- Optional: O’Neill, ’Reason and Politics in the Kantian Enterprise’
- Optional: Johnson, ’The Moral Law as Causal Law’
Questions
- In what ways might we think of practical and theoretical reason as stemming from a “common principle”?
- What does Kant argue it means to have “enlightenment”?
- What is it to think for oneself?