Kant on Practical Justification

Abstract

The literature on Kantian accounts of practical justification has been growing of late. This is not surprising given that Kant’s approach seems so promising: he claims to be able to justify unconditional normative claims without recourse to assumptions, views or doctrines, which are not in their turn justifiable. Within the context of modern pluralism, this is exactly what we seem to need: an approach which can demonstrably show why certain normative claims are valid, and why the grounds of these claims are valid in their turn, and why the freedom to question should not be stifled. Although this has been a growth area in philosophy, no systematic and sustained study of the topic of practical justification in Kantian philosophy has been undertaken so far. The aim of this volume is to provide a comprehensive and structured examination of this topic, as a starting point for a focused investigation of the Kantian approach to justification in practical disciplines (ethics, legal and political philosophy or philosophy of religion). The book consists of 14 chapters and an introduction from leading researchers in the field. All contributions were written especially for this volume, which is well reflected by the unity of the volume and the unique combination between the complementariness of the chapters and the broad spectrum of themes and positions discussed. The starting point for the project has been the still-dominant view that a successful account of the justification of practical normativity has to be non-metaphysical. Contributions engage directly with this issue, arguing for a metaphysical, anti-metaphysical or non-metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s account, and with related issues concerning the implications of such construals for Kant’s ethics, political and legal philosophy or philosophy of religion.