Abstract
The perennial appeal of Kantian ethics surely lies in its conception of autonomy. Kantianism tells us that the good life is fundamentally about acting in accordance with an internal rather than an external authority: a good will is simply a will in agreement with its own rational, self-constituting law. In this paper, I argue against Kantian autonomy, on the grounds that it excessively narrows our concept of the good, it confuses the difference between practical and theoretical modes of knowing the good, and it cannot respect the essential efficacy of the principles of practical reason.
Highlights
Against Autonomy: Why Practical Reason Cannot be Pure paper, I argue against Kantian autonomy, on the grounds that it excessively narrows our concept of the good, it confuses the difference between practical and theoretical modes of knowing the good, and it cannot respect the essential efficacy of the principles of practical reason
Kantianism purports to give us an account of the good life as fully autonomous--i.e., in accordance with norms that are in principle accessible to all finite agents with the capacity to act from sources found in pure practical reason
Kantianism tells us that the good life does not consist in our obedience to any external authority; the Kantian imperative of morality tells us that we must act in accordance with the principle that constitutes our very own capacity to reflect, deliberate, and judge practically in the first place
Summary
Let us get clearer about the target. In this paper I am not engaged in the project of understanding Kant’s texts, but rather, how Kant’s texts have been put to use and interpreted by contemporary theorists who seek to move the Kantian project forward. According to Kantians, we are autonomous when we are fully self-determined agents; we are fully self-determined agents when we act in conformity with the formal principle that constitutes an exercise of the capacity to will (or practical reason); in so determining ourselves through our conception of the good, we are self-consciously aware of ourselves as the efficacious cause of what is objectively good for all finite rational beings who bear the same capacity. Kantian autonomy rests on the idea that the first person singular “I” of free choice is grounded in the first person plural or “we” of pure practical reason This shared perspective amongst finite rational beings is supposed to be genuinely practical; it is supposed to set for us a formal end and good we must value supremely and can never (reasonably) act against or impede: the end of acting autonomously or freely or the value of rational nature as such.. As Korsgaard puts it, “the human is precisely the form of the animal that must create its own form” (2009), p. 130
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