Moral consciousness and the ‘fact of reason’

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the meaning and the importance of the 'fact of reason' in the second Critique of Practical Reason. When he introduces the 'fact of reason', he refers to an alleged consciousness of the fundamental law of pure practical reason, which he also calls consciousness of the moral law. The chapter situates the occurrence of the terminology of a Factum der Vernunft in its argumentative context and provides an interpretation. By the end of the eighteenth century, then, 'factum' could mean either 'deed' or 'fact'. The proper way of reading the expression 'fact of reason' does not yet tells one how successful Kant's use of it is in his argument. Virtually all authors who discuss the fact of reason do so in terms of morality. They introduce the 'consciousness' that Kant calls a fact of reason as the 'consciousness of the moral law' or 'moral consciousness'.