Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T17:06:29.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Practical Reason and Respect for Persons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2017

Melissa McBay Merritt
Melissa McBay Merritt*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales
*
Email: m.merritt@unsw.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

My project is to reconsider the Kantian conception of practical reason. Some Kantians take practical reasoning to be more active than theoretical reasoning, on the grounds that it need not contend with what is there anyway, independently of its exercise. Behind that claim stands the thesis that practical reason is essentially efficacious. I accept the efficacy principle, but deny that it underwrites this conception of practical reason. My inquiry takes place against the background of recent Kantian metaethical debate — each side of which, I argue, points to issues that need to be jointly accommodated in the account of practical reason. From the constructivist, I accept the essential efficacy of practical reason; from the realist, I accept that any genuinely cognitive exercise of practical reason owes allegiance to what is there anyway, independently of its exercise. I conclude that a Kantian account of recognition respect enables us to accommodate both claims.

Keywords

Practical reasonKantian ethicsKantian metaethicsconstructivism
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 53 - 79
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bojanowski, Jochen (2012) ‘Is Kant a Moral Realist?’ Kant Yearbook, 4, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brewer, Talbot (2010) ‘Two Pictures of Practical Thinking’. In Lawrence Jost and Julian Wuerth (eds), Perfecting Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 116–146.Google Scholar
Church, Jennifer (2013) Possibilities of Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, Stephen (1977) ‘Two Kinds of Respect’. Ethics, 88, 36–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwall, Stephen (2008) ‘Kant on Respect, Dignity, and the Duty of Respect’. In Monika Betzler (ed.), Kant’s Ethics of Virtue (Berlin: de Gruyter), pp. 175–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elizondo, E. Sonny (2013) ‘Reason in its Practical Application’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 13, 1–17.Google Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (2009) The Form of Practical Knowledge: A Study of the Categorical Imperative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (2012) ‘Bringing Practical Knowledge into View: Response to Bagnoli, Hill and Reath’. Analytic Philosophy, 53, 89–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (2013) ‘Constructivism and Practical Knowledge’. In Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Constructivism in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 133–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Formosa, Paul (2013) ‘Is Kant a Moral Constructivist or a Moral Realist?’ European Journal of Philosophy, 21, 170–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galvin, Richard (2011) ‘Rounding up the Usual Suspects: Varieties of Kantian Constructivism in Ethics’. Philosophical Quarterly, 61, 16–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaut, Berys (1997) ‘The Structure of Practical Reason’. In Garrett Cullity and Berys Gaut (eds), Ethics and Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 161–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geiger, Ido (2011) ‘Rational Feelings and Moral Agency’. Kantian Review, 16, 283–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (1998) ‘The Value of Reason and the Value of Freedom’. Ethics, 109, 22–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul (2000) ‘Kant’s Morality of Law and Morality of Freedom’. In Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 129–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, Barbara (1993) The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Herman, Barbara (2007) Moral Literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Thomas E. (1989) ‘Kant’s Theory of Practical Reason’. Monist, 72, 363–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hills, Allison (2008) ‘Kantian Value Realism’. Ratio, 21, 182–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Robert N. (2007) ‘Value and Autonomy in Kantian Ethics’. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 2, 133–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kain, Patrick (2006) ‘Realism and Anti-Realism in Kant’s Second Critique ’. Philosophy Compass, 1, 449–465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1900–) Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (and predecessors).Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996) Practical Philosophy. Trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (1996a) Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (1996b) Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (2008) The Constitution of Agency. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine (2009) Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, Integrity. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langton, Rae (2007) ‘Objective and Unconditioned Value’. Philosophical Review, 116, 157–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rauscher, Frederick (2002) ‘Kant’s Moral Anti-Realism’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 40, 477–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John (2005) Political Liberalism (expanded edition). New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Regan, Donald (2002) ‘The Value of Rational Nature’. Ethics, 112, 267–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey (1988) ‘Introduction: The Many Moral Realisms’. In Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (ed.), Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), pp. 1–26.Google Scholar
Stern, Robert (2012) Understanding Moral Obligation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Timmerman, Jens (2006) ‘Value without Regress: Kant’s “Formula of Humanity” Revisited’. European Journal of Philosophy, 14, 69–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, Eric, and William, FitzPatrick (2002) ‘O’Neill and Korsgaard on the Construction of Normativity’. Journal of Value Inquiry, 36, 349–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Eric (2013) ‘Kant on Autonomy and the Value of Persons’. Kantian Review, 18, 241–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen (2008) Kantian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar