Law and Obligation: Outlines of a Kantian Argument

Abstract

In this paper I lay the groundwork for a Kantian argument for the foundation of the obligatoriness of law. I will do so by fleshing out a notion of action derived from the notion of human agency, in turn understood, along the lines of Kant’s own treatment, as the source of the normativity of practical reason. While in defending this foundation of the obligatoriness of law I hope to achieve something that is Kantian in spirit, I do not mean this to be simply a restatement of his view. And so this will not be a study on Kant, since I am more interested in a theoretical approach attentive and sympathetic to Kant’s practical philosophy - and in particular to his treatment of obligation - than in an exegesis of his work. Which in turn makes my interest in Kant’s practical philosophy systematic, rather than hermeneutical or exegetical, the reason for it being that while I believe there are some deep insights in Kant’s account of obligation, it is not an account we can use in its original version, since it comes bundled with a disputable metaphysics serving as the basis on which the connection is established between normativity and humanity. Instead of defending the metaphysical view, I will defend the connection by offering a pragmatic, or action-centred, reinterpretation of Kant’s notion of humanity. The view resulting from this shift in perspective amounts to a kind of revisionary Kantian approach: Kantian because it preserves the key insights central to Kant’s foundation of the normativity of practical reason; revisionary because it recasts in pragmatic terms the concept of humanity that Kant posits as the notion grounding practical normativity - we no longer have a metaphysical attempt to define the essence of humanity, but a pragmatic one to single out the conceptual features of human agency.