The Unity of Reason: A Subversive Reinterpretation of Kant

Abstract

Infidelity to the text is not a traditional virtue of interpretation. It is, however, essential to the present commentary, which addresses certain of Kant's remarks to Theorems II and III in the Critique of Practical Reason.1 For my aim is to achieve a subversive reinterpretation of Kant's account of the nature and role of practical reason. A subversive reinterpretation exploits elements and ideas present in a text to lead the reader in a direction manifestly different from and even opposed to that in which the author seeks to go. But this new direction is not randomly selected. On the one hand, it must reveal something about the author's own journey. Success as reinterpretation requires that the author create the opportunity for the violence done his text. On the other hand, it must lead the reader to some new understanding. Interpretation is a public act. Fidelity to the text is sacrificed, not for the commentator's mere delectation, but in a philosophic cause. I want then to lead you to a truer understanding of the role of reason in ethics. Kant is to serve as an unwilling recruit in this task. And yet he points the direction in which we shall travel, not only in the particular remarks in the Critique of Practical Reason from which we begin, but more surprisingly in his account of the speculative employment of reason. For I shall argue that there is a plausible practical parallel to much of the, core of that account, which may be exploited to give a more unified view of the role of reason than Kant himself offers. What Kant denies reason in its speculative employment, he permits it, and indeed requires of it, in its practical employment.2 We are warned