THE WILL AS REASON

Abstract

I hope here to defend an account of the will as practical reason—or, using Kant’s phrase, as “reason in its practical employment”—as against a view according to which practical reason issues in judgments, and the will, as a capacity in addition to reason, executes those judgments in action. The opposing view gains credibility largely because certain commonplaces (such as so-called “Buridan’s ass” cases and certain cases of weakness of the will) show distance between judgment and action; they thus seem to reveal the need for a capacity, in addition to reason, by which we execute judgment in action. However, another ordinary fact pushes in the other direction: the activities of the will are activities for which the person is answerable in a very distinctive sort of way. This answerability is hard to understand unless willing is itself an activity of our capacity for reasoning. I will suggest that we can accommodate the troublesome commonplaces while understanding willing as an exercise of our capacity to reason if we abandon the