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Is the Categorical Imperative the Highest Principle of Both Pure Practical and Theoretical Reason?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2014

Heiner F. Klemme
Heiner F. Klemme*
Affiliation:
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In her new book, Patricia Kitcher supports Onora O'Neill's view that the categorical imperative is the highest principle of both practical and theoretical reason. I claim that neither O'Neill's original interpretation nor Kitcher's additional evidence in favour of it are convincing. At its core, this misconception of Kant's position consists in the identification of self-referential critique of reason with the concept of autonomy. It will be shown that the ‘common principle’ (Kant) of both practical and theoretical reason is not the categorical imperative, but the reflective power of judgement, as Kant claims in the Critique of the Power of Judgement.

Keywords

reasoncategorical imperativeautonomydutypower of judgement
Type
Symposium on Patricia Kitcher's Kant's Thinker
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 119 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2014 

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References

Kitcher, Patricia (2011) Kant's Thinker. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Klemme, Heiner F. (2013) ‘Moralized Nature, Naturalized Autonomy: Kant's Way of Bridging the Gap in the Third Critique (and in the Groundwork)’. In Oliver Sensen (ed.), Kant on Moral Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 193–211.Google Scholar
O'Neill, Onora (1989) ‘Reason and Autonomy in Grundlegung III’. Repr. in O. O'Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 51–65.Google Scholar