Kant’s Rational Constitutivism

Abstract

Abstract This chapter builds on the last two to continue to explore the sort of self-consciousness that Kant takes to characterize reason (and other rational powers), focusing on his willingness to use both normative and descriptive terminology to describe such power’s internal principles. This leads into the broadly meta-ethical dimensions of Kant’s account of the “sources of normativity”. Here the chapter argues that for Kant any rational power, be it practical or theoretical, is governed by an internal principle that can be characterized in either descriptive or normative terms. This supports a version of the idea of Kant as a “meta-normative constitutivist”. But the version of this view it supports focuses, not on our nature as agents, but rather on the nature of reason as a unified faculty for both theoretical and practical understanding. Thus, the chapter will argue that by viewing Kant’s “constitutivism” through the lens of his general commitment to a powers-first approach, we can better understand the sense in which Kant both is and is not a constitutivist—and see why his form of constitutivism remains attractive today.