A core feature of Kant’s Critical account of moral motivation is that pure reason can be practical by itself. I argue that Kant developed this view in the 1770s concerning the principium diiudicationis and principium executionis. These principles indicate the normative and performative aspects of moral motivation. I demonstrate that cognition of the normative principle effects the moral incentive. So, the hallmark of Kant’s Critical account of motivation was contained in his pre-Critical view. This interpretation resolves a controversy about Kant’s apparent eudaimonism in the first Critique and shows that he developed his account of moral autonomy in the 1770s.

Most interpreters hold that Kant rejects actually infinite tota synthetica as conceptually impossible. This view is attributed to Kant to relieve him of the charge that the first antinomy’s thesis argument presupposes transcendental idealism. I argue that important textual evidence speaks against this view, and Kant in fact affirms the conceptual possibility of actually infinite tota synthetica. While this means the first antinomy may not be decisive as an indirect argument for idealism, it gives us a better account of how our ideas of the unconditioned generate the antinomies, and it allows us to see important and often overlooked elements in Kant’s account of the infinite.

In this article, I argue that Kant’s real reason for rejecting a world state in practice is that a world state would be in greater danger of despotism than individual states. Kant hopes that public participation and self-enlightenment of the people in the public sphere could counter the despotic danger in individual states. However, in a world state, state affairs are too distant from the lives of individuals, making it difficult for individuals to maintain enthusiasm for public discourse and political enlightenment. Moreover, the absence of external competition and the risk of war would eliminate the incentive of the ruler to preserve freedom for the development of industry and commerce and, consequently, for the enlightenment of the people. These defects make it more difficult for a world state to resist despotic danger.

I argue that Kant’s Categorical Imperative should be applied to individual maxim tokens rather than abstract maxim types. The article is divided into five sections. In the first, I explain my thesis. In the second, I show that my thesis disagrees with Rawls. In the third, I argue for my thesis on the basis of the wording of the Categorical Imperative and on the basis of considerations about autonomy. In the fourth, I argue for my thesis on the basis of considerations about the ‘ought implies can’ principle. In the fifth, I provide a summary of the main argumentative moves and also explain some of the philosophical advantages of my thesis.

In Kant’s Groundwork II, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) seems to be the argumentative link between the notion of a categorical imperative and later formulae (e.g. of humanity), its function as this link dependent on its equivalence to both. Some commentators have denied this equivalence and read the section as a failure. Others have abandoned its expository development by reading later formulae into the FUL. I argue that we need do neither if we distinguish the universality of the FUL from that of the will of all and read Groundwork II as extracting the latter from common moral cognition.

Kant’s conception of remorse has received little discussion in the literature. I argue that he thinks we ought to experience remorse for both retributivist and forward-looking reasons. This account casts helpful light on his ideas of conversion and the descent into the hell of self-cognition. But while he prescribes a heartbreakingly painful experience of remorse, he acknowledges that excess remorse can threaten rational agency through distraction and suicide, and this raises questions about whether actual human beings ought to cultivate their consciences in such a way as to experience remorse in the way he conceives it.

Kant refers to analytic cognition in several prominent places. The prevailing wisdom, however, denies the possibility of analytic cognition within his theory of cognition. I shall argue that this is mistaken. I show that we can account for analytic cognition’s possibility by appealing to variants of the more familiar conditions on the cognition of objects. I also highlight analytic cognition’s connection to insight and analytic knowledge. In the process, I provide a fuller account of Kant’s view of our mental lives than has been typically acknowledged.