Abstract
Over the last two decades, Kant’s name has become closely associated with the “constitutivist” program within metaethics.Footnote1 But is Kant best read as pursuing a constitutivist approach to meta-normative questions? And if so, in what sense?Footnote2 In this essay, I argue that we can best answer these questions by considering them in the context of how Kant understands the proper methodology for philosophy in general. The result of this investigation will be that, while Kant can indeed be read as a sort of constitutivist, his constitutivism is ultimately one instance of a more general approach to philosophy, which treats as fundamental our basic, self-conscious rational capacities. Thus, to truly understand why and how Kant is a constitutivist, we need to consider this question within the context of his more fundamental commitment to “capacities-first philosophy”.
Notes on contributor
Karl Schafer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine.
Notes
1 The association of Kant and constitutivism is due above all to the work of Korsgaard – see for example Korsgaard (Citation1996, Citation2008, Citation2009). A close second in significance in this regard is Velleman (Citation2000, Citation2009). For some of the other (Kantian and anti-Kantian) variants on the constitutivist idea, see Foot (Citation2003), O'Neill (Citation1989), Thomson (Citation2008), Thompson (Citation2008), Smith (Citation2012, Citation2013), James (Citation2012), Walden (Citation2012), Katsafanas (Citation2013), Setiya (Citation2013), and Lavin (Citationforthcoming).
2 I’ve discussed this question previously (with a contemporary focus) in Schafer (Citation2015a, Citation2015b, Citation2018a). See also the discussion of Sensen (Citation2013), which arrives at a somewhat similar conclusion, albeit in a different systematic context.
3 Korsgaard herself is often read this way, although the sense in which this is true of her work is open to dispute.
7 See Schafer (Citation2015a, Citation2015b), and compare Paakkunainen (Citation2018). But note that the “shmagency point” might point to certain explanatory limitations of constitutivism, and these could impact the attractiveness of the view.
8 Here I take the second Critique to provide Kant’s canonical views on this issue. Unfortunately there’s no space here to discuss the relationship between the second Critique and the Groundwork, where Kant may flirt with aims more like those Enoch targets.
11 For a fuller development of this view, see Schafer (Citation2018a; forthcoming a; forthcoming c).
12 Kant uses a variety of terms to refer to mental capacities or faculties – including Vermögen, Fähigkeit, and Kraft. There is considerable debate about the exact relationship between these, but in what follows I will generally use “capacity” and “faculty” interchangeably to refer to what Kant refers to by “Vermögen”.
14 Thus, in some ways, Kant is here closer to Hegel’s holistic picture of the interdependence of the elements of a system than he is to Reinhold or Fichte’s emphasis on locating some absolute first principle.
15 Note that this means that to say that philosophy rests on our capacity for reason is not to say that it rests on the mere concept of this capacity – which, on its own, is inadequate (for Kant) to play the role required here. (6:26)
18 Given these limitations, I’ll mostly leave the hylomorphic dimension of Kant’s conception of our faculties to the side here, although this is absolutely central to the explanatory project once it is fully developed. Compare e.g. Willaschek (Citationforthcoming). For an insightful development of these aspects of Kant in the context of contemporary epistemology, see Kern (Citation2018).
19 Here there are interesting connections with the contemporary literature on the “taking condition”. See Boghossian (Citation2008, Citation2014). Unfortunately I can’t explore these connections in more detail here, but see Neta (Citationforthcoming) a view that share some features with my reading of Kant.
20 This is clearly true of reason’s ends. Whether the ends of other rational faculties – such as the understanding – are internal to those faculties is a complicated question, since these ends do in some sense depend on reason.
21 See: “Nevertheless, teleological judging is rightly drawn into our research into nature, at least problematically, but only in order to bring it under principles of observation and research in analogy with causality according to ends, without presuming thereby to explain it.” (5:360–1, my emphasis, compare 5:375).
22 For discussion, see (e.g.) Guyer (Citation2008), Ginsborg (Citation2015), and Breitenbach (Citation2014) (amongst others). I am most sympathetic to Breitenbach’s treatment of these issues, which focuses on the analogy between natural teleological systems and the teleology of practical reason.
23 Compare the very helpful discussion in Fugate (Citation2014).
24 See Breitenbach (Citation2014). Here it is important to stress that there are real limits, according to Kant, to our ability to achieve anything like genuine cognition (Erkenntnis) of the teleological structure of our faculties. For further discussion, see Schafer (Citationforthcoming d).
25 Thus, to be self-organizing whole something must possess a “a self-propagating formative power” – a power to bring form to itself. (5:374)
27 This point has its sensible manifestation in Kant’s discussion of judgments of beauty within the third Critique – and, in particular, in that discussion’s claim that we take pleasure in the free-play of our basic rational faculties. Such pleasure, I believe, is best understood as the sensible manifestation of the interest that any faculty must have in its own actualization or exercise.
32 As Kant stresses in the Religion, exactly how this sort of “hinderance” occurs is (at least in some cases) “inscrutable” for us – given that it must leave evil actions imputable to us and so traceable to our spontaneous power of choice. (6:21) Here, as in many places, we come up against the limits of our comprehension of the relationship between our sensible and intellectual faculties.
34 In his insightful (if somewhat Sellarsian) discussion, Pollok (Citation2017) claims that such principles are both constitutive and normative, but he does not explain this in the manner I do. As a result, he fails to recognize that this basic framework applies to the principles of logic (insofar as they are realized by a sensibly conditioned subject).
43 Compare Engstrom (Citation2009). Of course, the idea that practical reason is cognitive in this sense is not uncontroversial. For example, contrast Neiman (Citation1994).
44 This focus on comprehension/understanding as the ultimate cognitive aim of reason marks one important difference between my interpretation and Engstrom’s.
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