My dissertation develops a novel account of Kants moral philosophy by focusing on his conception of pure reason. As is well known, Kant contends that morality has its source in pure reason, and that the authority of moral considerations derives from this source. Yet recent commentators have shied away from Kants account of reason, emphasizing instead aspects of his view that seem to make it more accessible. In particular, influential constructivist readings have stressed the role of rational agents as autonomous subjects that construct the principles or values they commit themselves to. I argue that to properly grasp Kants distinctive conception of moral constraints, and his conception of rational agency, we must look to his underlying account of reason.
My dissertation divides into two parts. In the first part, I reconstruct Kants account of the practicality of pure reason, i.e. reasons capacity to determine the will a priori, and show how all norms of practical reason are systematically derived from this capacity. In particular, I show: (1) that all possible moral constraints derive from pure reasons determination of the will and that each such constraint must be systematically related to all the others; and (2) that the norms of instrumental rationality equally depend on reasons capacity to determine the will a priori. In the second part, I broaden the focus to consider the relations between the theoretical and practical exercises of reason. I develop the formal parallels between the two exercises of reason and show how each exercise is governed by a corresponding rational interest. I then elaborate Kants notion of a rational interest to show that for Kant reason is fundamentally practicalin the sense that reasons theoretical exercise is in important respects shaped by its practical concerns. A key upshot of this argument is that we cannot fully grasp Kants account of practical reason unless we consider the relation between theoretical and practical reason. Once we consider this relation, however, we see that Kant takes morality, i.e. reasons legislation of the moral law, to be the grounding principle of all rational activity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-11182010-235914 |
| Date | 30 January 2011 |
| Creators | Siyar, Jamsheed A |
| Contributors | Stephen Engstrom, Sebastian Roedl, Kieran Setiya, Barbara Herman, Michael Thompson, Nicholas Rescher |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11182010-235914/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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