Rationalizing: Kant on Moral Self-Deception
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Jörg Noller
Abstract
Kant’s moral philosophy is challenged by the so-called “Socratic Paradox”: If free will and pure practical reason are to be identified, as Kant argues, then there seems to be no room for immoral actions that are to be imputed to our individual freedom. The paper argues that Kant’s conception of rationalizing (“Vernünfteln”) helps us to avoid the Socratic Paradox, and to understand how immoral actions can be imputed to our individual freedom and responsibility. In rationalizing, we misuse our capacity of reason in order to construct the illusion according to which we are not bound to the absolute demand of the moral law, but rather subject to exceptions and excuses. Finally, the paper interprets the three rules of “common sense” (sensus communis) in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in terms of an antidote to rationalizing.
Funding source: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Award Identifier / Grant number: NO 1240/6-1
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Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (funder ID: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659, grant number: 411370158).
References
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Cocks on Dunghills – Wollstonecraft and Gouges on the Women’s Revolution
- Affectivity in Media-Based Public Discussions: A Critical Phenomenological Analysis
- Rationalizing: Kant on Moral Self-Deception
- The Stoic Theory of Sign and the Semantic Modulation of Models
- Book Reviews
- Pihlström, Sami: Pragmatic Realism, Religious Truth, and Antitheodicy: On Viewing the World by Acknowledging the Other
- Møller, Sofie: Kant’s Tribunal of Reason: Legal Metaphor and Normativity in the Critique of Pure Reason
- Eriksen, Cecilie: Moral Change: Dynamics, Structure, and Normativity
- Dalia Nassar and Kristin Gjesdal: Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Cocks on Dunghills – Wollstonecraft and Gouges on the Women’s Revolution
- Affectivity in Media-Based Public Discussions: A Critical Phenomenological Analysis
- Rationalizing: Kant on Moral Self-Deception
- The Stoic Theory of Sign and the Semantic Modulation of Models
- Book Reviews
- Pihlström, Sami: Pragmatic Realism, Religious Truth, and Antitheodicy: On Viewing the World by Acknowledging the Other
- Møller, Sofie: Kant’s Tribunal of Reason: Legal Metaphor and Normativity in the Critique of Pure Reason
- Eriksen, Cecilie: Moral Change: Dynamics, Structure, and Normativity
- Dalia Nassar and Kristin Gjesdal: Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition
