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KANT's CONCEPTION of PRACTICAL REASON By KANT’S CONCEPTION OF PRACTICAL REASON by Jamsheed Alam Siyar B.A., Tufts University, 1999 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2010 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jamsheed Alam Siyar It was defended on September 30, 2010 and approved by Barbara Herman, Professor, Philosophy and Law, University of California Los Angeles Nicholas Rescher, Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Sebastian Roedl, Professor, Philosophy, University of Basel Kieran Setiya, Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Michael Thompson, Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Director: Stephen Engstrom, Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh ii Copyright © by Jamsheed Alam Siyar 2010 iii KANT’S CONCEPTION OF PRACTICAL REASON Jamsheed Alam Siyar, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2010 My dissertation develops a novel account of Kant’s 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 Kant’s 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 Kant’s 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 Kant’s account of the practicality of pure reason, i.e. reason’s 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 reason’s 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 reason’s 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 Kant’s iv notion of a rational interest to show that for Kant reason is fundamentally practical—in the sense that reason’s theoretical exercise is in important respects shaped by its practical concerns. A key upshot of this argument is that we cannot fully grasp Kant’s 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. reason’s legislation of the moral law, to be the grounding principle of all rational activity. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................ VII NOTE ON SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................... X 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 THE FACT AS ACT: A READING OF THE FACT OF REASON ..................... 11 3.0 THE REALM OF ENDS ........................................................................................... 55 4.0 THE WHOLE OF KNOWLEDGE: REASON IN THEORETICAL COGNITION ............................................................................................................................... 95 5.0 THE INTERESTS OF REASON AND THE PRIMACY OF PRACTICAL REASON .................................................................................................................................... 137 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 176 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is quite severely indebted to my adviser, Steve Engstrom. Since Steve was my dissertation director, it is of course to be expected that I am most intellectually indebted and most grateful to him. But the point has a certain further relevance in my case. When I started graduate school, I would have laughed off the suggestion that I would write a dissertation on Kant’s ethics. It is really a testament to Steve, as a philosopher and as a mentor, that I have come to appreciate Kant as perhaps the richest source of philosophical insight and inspiration. Steve, quite simply, opened up philosophical worlds for me that I did not know existed. I am also extremely grateful to my other mentors. I perhaps did not take as much advantage of their wisdom as I could have. Nevertheless, Sebastian Roedl, Kieran Setiya, and Michael Thompson all patiently read through multiple drafts of several chapters and unfailingly helped me clarify my thinking. They also, through the respective examples they set, helped me understand what it means to be a good philosopher. Barbara Herman asked me the questions at my defense that I wish my dissertation had answered, and that I hope to someday answer. Karl Schafer came to Pittsburgh when my dissertation project was already well under way. Nevertheless, I (and my dissertation) owe him a great debt of gratitude. Karl has been a constant source of support and inspiration—he read numerous chapter drafts, posed exactly the right challenges, offered extremely helpful suggestions, and helped dispel acute anxieties. vii The friends who have helped and supported me through graduate school—without whom I quite literally cannot imagine these years of my life—are far too numerous to list. I will limit myself here to mentioning Evgenia Mylonaki and Graham Hubbs, without either of whom my life and my philosophy would be immeasurably poorer. Graham and I started graduate school together, and our first few years of graduate school were a deeply shared experience. I learnt as much philosophy in long—indeed interminable—conversations with Graham as I did in any seminar room. Graham was also a constant source of support in all matters non-philosophical, and while I may have gotten through graduate school without him, it would have been an incomparably poorer experience. I got to Evgenia a little later, but her effect on my thought and my life has if anything been even more profound. Looking back, I don’t think I had ever properly understood what a philosophical question is—that is, what philosophy is—until I had the good fortune to talk philosophy with Evgenia. She also—sometimes—convinced me to change my mind. Her profound effect on my life is I hope as evident to her as it is to me. In addition to the people already mentioned, Matthew Boyle, Matthew Chrisman, and James Shaw provided invaluable help with Chapter 2 in its guise as a writing sample. What is good and right about this dissertation is largely thanks to one or more of the people mentioned here. What is bad and wrong rests squarely on my shoulders. I got to know Brittany during my last years of graduate school. Brittany changed everything, in ways that it would be neither possible nor proper to explain here. Finally, I am most grateful to my parents, Rashida and Farrukh, who have supported me and believed in me through everything in life. My success in any endeavor reflects as much on them as it does on me. viii Just as I completed my dissertation, I lost someone very dear to me—someone with whom I had hoped, expected, and wanted very much to share this. This is for him. * Portions of this dissertation were written with the support of an Andrew Mellon Dissertation Year Fellowship and a Provost’s Development Fund Dissertation Year Fellowship, both administered by the University of Pittsburgh. I am very grateful for these sources of funding, as well as for the teaching support I regularly received through the Department of Philosophy. ix NOTE ON SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS References to the works of Kant, with the exception of the Critique of Pure Reason, are according to the German Academy edition pagination: Kant’s gessamelte Schriften, edited by the Koeniglichen Preussischen (later Deutschen) Akademie der Wissenschaften. 29 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1900-). References to the Critique of Pure Reason are given, as per standard practice, by the pagination of the first (“A”) and second (“B”) editions of 1781 and 1787, respectively. Where both A and B page numbers are provided, the passage cited is included in both editions; otherwise the passage occurs only in the edition cited. References to the Critique of Pure Reason include just the A and B page numbers, and no reference to the title. For all other texts, full citations include the title of the work (in abbreviation) and the Academy edition page number (though not the volume of the Academy edition, which is provided below). For all quotations, emphasis is as in the original, unless otherwise noted. I have used the following abbreviations in referring to Kant’s works. The translations I have used are also provided below. G Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. (Ak. 4) Edited and translated by Mary Gregor as Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge: Cambridge
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