Kant, Rational Psychology and Practical Reason
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Joe Saunders
Abstract
In his pre-critical lectures on rational psychology, Kant employs an argument from the I to the transcendental freedom of the soul. In the (A-edition of the) first Critique, he distances himself from rational psychology, and instead offers four paralogisms of this doctrine, insisting that ‘I think’ no longer licenses any inferences about a soul. Kant also comes alive to the possibility that we could be thinking mechanisms - rational beings, but not agents. These developments rob him of his pre-critical rationalist argument for freedom. In the Groundwork, this is a serious problem; if we are not free, morality will be a phantasm for us. In Groundwork III, Kant attempts to overcome this by offering a new argument for our freedom, involving the standpoint of practical reason. In this paper, I detail these developments and present a practical and phenomenological reading of Kant’s approach in Groundwork III. I also venture a defence of this new argument.
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Table of Contents
- Mendelssohn and Kant on Mathematics and Metaphysics
- Our Soul in Place
- Kantian Space, Supersubstantivalism, and the Spirit of Spinoza
- From “Possible Worlds” to “Possible Experience”. Real Possibility in Leibniz and Kant
- Kant’s Criticisms of Ontological and Onto-theological Arguments for the Existence of God
- Kant, Rational Psychology and Practical Reason
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2015 and 2016
- Note to the Studi Kantiani
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Table of Contents
- Mendelssohn and Kant on Mathematics and Metaphysics
- Our Soul in Place
- Kantian Space, Supersubstantivalism, and the Spirit of Spinoza
- From “Possible Worlds” to “Possible Experience”. Real Possibility in Leibniz and Kant
- Kant’s Criticisms of Ontological and Onto-theological Arguments for the Existence of God
- Kant, Rational Psychology and Practical Reason
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2015 and 2016
- Note to the Studi Kantiani
