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Dutifully Wishing: Kant’s Re-evaluation of a Strange Species of Desire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2017

Alexander T. Englert
Alexander T. Englert*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

For Kant, ‘wish’ is a technical term denoting a strange species of desire. It is an instance in which someone wills something that she simultaneously knows she cannot bring about. As a result, it is, in one sense, antithetical to morality, which deals with ‘ought implies can’. I will argue that Kant re-evaluated wishing as (to some extent) causally efficacious and, further, of moral relevance. This re-evaluation has not been discussed in the literature, yet has been lurking in plain sight in a subtle shift in two versions of a footnote from the Critique of the Power of Judgement.

Keywords

wishinghighest goodCritique of the Power of Judgementwillmoralityactionreligion
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 373 - 394
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2017 

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