For many political theorists, including both ethos theorists and realists, Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative exemplifies several troubling features of moralized and rationalistic approaches to politics. They argue that the categorical imperative, which purports to bind unconditionally, universally, and apodictically, focuses on what could be demanded of purely rational beings; neglects the unscripted, contingent, contestable character of human affairs; and demeans the affective dimensions of human life. They say that fidelity to the categorical imperative amounts to a refusal to respond thoughtfully to the world in which human action arises and unpredictably unfolds. In their view, Kant's categorical imperative has little that is salutary to offer politics. Most of these critics of the categorical imperative tend to view it epistemologically. That is, they view the categorical imperative, which in its first formulation says “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law (Gesetz)” (4:402), as a test or procedure promising more certain knowledge of our duties. And they often assume that the categorical imperative can present itself to politics only as a test or procedure. But, as I shall argue, there is more to the categorical imperative than such critics acknowledge or emphasize. The categorical imperative is also a principle that discloses our ontological condition.

In his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant seeks to establish the categorical imperative as a universal and binding claim on human beings. As I shall show, Kant's primary goal in the book is not to provide a test for resolving a moral dilemma or a procedure for deriving a system of duties – goals very much consonant with a calculable view of responsibility. Rather, his task is ontological. Kant seeks what it is to be human such that obligation is possible at all. In this chapter I explore and elaborate the ontological aspect of the categorical imperative through a new reading of the Groundwork as a conversion narrative. The Groundwork describes how I might turn away from “common practical reason,” which is disposed to quibble with duties, and encounter the categorical imperative as a principle that reveals my (ordinarily concealed) ontological condition. My encounter with the ontological categorical imperative transforms me and opens up a new mode of being characterized by the attunement of “awe” (Achtung).