Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Translations and abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The origin and aim of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason
- 2 Formal principles and the form of a law
- 3 Moral consciousness and the ‘fact of reason’
- 4 Reversal or retreat? Kant's deductions of freedom and morality
- 5 The Triebfeder of pure practical reason
- 6 Two conceptions of compatibilism in the Critical Elucidation
- 7 The Antinomy of Practical Reason: reason, the unconditioned and the highest good
- 8 The primacy of practical reason and the idea of a practical postulate
- 9 The meaning of the Critique of Practical Reason for moral beings: the Doctrine of Method of Pure Practical Reason
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Moral consciousness and the ‘fact of reason’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Translations and abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The origin and aim of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason
- 2 Formal principles and the form of a law
- 3 Moral consciousness and the ‘fact of reason’
- 4 Reversal or retreat? Kant's deductions of freedom and morality
- 5 The Triebfeder of pure practical reason
- 6 Two conceptions of compatibilism in the Critical Elucidation
- 7 The Antinomy of Practical Reason: reason, the unconditioned and the highest good
- 8 The primacy of practical reason and the idea of a practical postulate
- 9 The meaning of the Critique of Practical Reason for moral beings: the Doctrine of Method of Pure Practical Reason
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
At the very heart of the argument of the Critique of Practical Reason, one finds Kant's puzzling discussion of the ‘fact of reason’. Kant introduces the notion in the course of arguing that pure reason is practical, which is the main task of the first chapter of the Analytic. Having claimed that ‘we’ have a ‘consciousness of the moral law’, and that this leads us to the concept of the freedom of the will (CpV 5:29–30), Kant argues that the consciousness of the moral law can be called a ‘fact of reason’. This passage is found in the brief remark between the two most important conclusions of the second Critique. It is located between the formulation of the ‘Fundamental Law of Pure Practical Reason’, ‘so act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle in a giving of universal law’ (CpV 5:30), and the ‘Conclusion’ that ‘Pure reason is practical of itself alone and provides (the human being) with a universal law which we call the moral law’ (CpV 5:31). Even if the exact role of the notion of a ‘fact of reason’ is not immediately clear, there is no doubt that the argument in which it plays a role is central to Kant's moral theory.
Ever since it saw the light of day, however, Kant's argument regarding the fact of reason has met with strong criticism, although the critics disagree fundamentally as to what exactly is wrong with it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Kant's 'Critique of Practical Reason'A Critical Guide, pp. 55 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
- 32
- Cited by