Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason 0192868195, 9780192868190

Table of contents :
Cover
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: Reason and its Discontents
2 Introduction to Part I
3 Scope of Rational Self-Governance
4 Governing Abilities of Reason
5 Interests of Reason
6 Laws of Reason
7 The Sovereignty of Reason
8 Introduction to Part II
9 Explanation, Unity, Specificity, Affinity, and Harmony
10 Rational Nature
11 Knowledge, Error, and Enlightenment
12 Freedoms
13 Happiness
14 Natural Perfection
15 Respect and Expressions of Respect
16 Solidarity
Postscript
Abbreviations for Kant’s Works
References
Index

Citation preview

Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason Adam Cureton https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191960253.001.0001 Published online: 27 January 2025 Published in print: 17 April 2025

Online ISBN: 9780191960253

Print ISBN: 9780192868190

Search in this book

FRONT MATTER

Copyright Page  Page iv

Published: January 2025

Subject: 17th - 18th Century Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

p. iv

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Adam Cureton 2025 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, used for text and data mining, or used for training arti cial intelligence, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2024946506 ISBN 9780192868190 DOI: 10.1093/9780191960253.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason Adam Cureton https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191960253.001.0001 Published online: 27 January 2025 Published in print: 17 April 2025 Print ISBN: 9780192868190

Search in this book

FRONT MATTER

Dedication  Pages v–vi

Published: January 2025

Subject: 17th - 18th Century Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

p. vi v

For Julie

Online ISBN: 9780191960253

Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason Adam Cureton https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191960253.001.0001 Published online: 27 January 2025 Published in print: 17 April 2025

Online ISBN: 9780191960253

Print ISBN: 9780192868190

Search in this book

FRONT MATTER

Acknowledgments  Published: January 2025

Subject: 17th - 18th Century Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

The following chapters contain some material that is reprinted here with permission of the publishers: (Chapter 11) “Solidarity in Kantian Moral Theory.” In Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, edited by Mark Timmons, 54–80, Vol. 12, 2022, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-studies-in-normative-ethics-volume-129780192868886. (Chapter 14) “Knowledge, Error, and Enlightenment in Kant’s Moral Philosophy.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Van der Rijt, Jan-Willem, and Adam Cureton, 283–309. New York: Routledge, 2021, reprinted with permission of the publisher. During the period in which this book was written, I received nancial and other institutional support from the University of Tennessee, for which I am grateful. The completion of this book has been enriched and informed by the collective wisdom and support of many remarkable people. First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my teacher, mentor, and friend, Thomas E. Hill, Jr. Tom’s guidance and friendship have been invaluable not only in the conceptualization and writing of this book but throughout my academic career and personal life. His profound philosophical insights, along with his sagacious approaches to philosophy and life, have deeply in uenced me and this book’s development. I am also indebted to a number of colleagues, teachers, students, and friends who have generously o ered their support, encouragement, and critical feedback. I am particularly thankful for the guidance I received early in my career from my advisers, especially John Broome, Alexander Kaufman, Derek Par t, Joseph Raz, Alexander Rosenberg, Geo rey Sayre-McCord, J. Clark Wolf, Susan Wolf, and Tom Hill. I extend my gratitude to my current and former colleagues at the University of Tennessee, including Richard Acquila, E. J. Co man, Allen Dunn, Jon Gartho , Kristina Gehrman, Markus Kohl, David Palmer, David Reidy, Mariam Thalos, and Joe Stratmann. Discussions with many friends and colleagues as well as engagement with their

work have been especially helpful to me. These people include Anne Margaret Baxley, Bernard Boxill, Jan Boxill, Kimberley Brownlee, Cheshire Calhoun, Richard Dean, Lara Denis, Robin Dillon, Melissa Seymour Fahmy, Leslie Pickering Francis, Samuel Freeman, Richard Galvin, Sarah Holtman, Brad Hooker, Robert N. Johnson, Eva Feder Kittay, Jordan Mackenzie, Oliver Sensen, Anita Silvers, Martin Sticker, Karen Stohr, Cynthia A. Stark, Thomas Sturm, David Sussman, Jan-Willem Van der Rijt, and David Wasserman. Other p. viii

contemporary

philosophers from whom I have learned much include Henry E. Allison, Karl Americks,

Marcia Baron, Sarah Buss, Andrew Chignell, Stephen Darwall, Stephen Engstrom, Paul Guyer, Barbara Herman, Samuel Kerstein, Pauline Kleingeld, Christine Korsgaard, Onora O’Neill, John Rawls, Andrews Reath, Arthur Ripstein, Thomas M. Scanlon, Michael Smith, Jens Timmermann, Helga Varden, and Allen Wood. Thanks especially to Tom Hill, Mark Timmons, Joe Stratmann, and anonymous readers for providing detailed comments on all or large parts of the manuscript. I am also thankful for editorial guidance and support from April Peake, Aimee Wright, Peter Momtchilo , and wonderful copyeditors at Oxford University Press. To my family—my most steadfast supporters and my greatest source of joy and motivation—thank you. To my children, Caron and Riley, who remind me daily of the wonder and curiosity that underpin philosophical inquiry; to my parents, Steve and Sally, whose love and wisdom have always guided me; to my brother, Scott, whose humor and integrity are a constant inspiration; and especially to my wife, Julie, whose endless patience, understanding, kindness, and cheer enrich my life beyond measure.

1

Introduction Reason and its Discontents

We often invoke broad and substantive ideas of reason in everyday life. We appeal to reason, rationality, reasonableness, reasons, reasoning, and related concepts in common sense and express their apparent authority through ordinary language and social practices. Despite what many philosophers, economists, psychologists, novelists, and others would have us believe, the reason of everyday life is far more expansive and varied than cold logic or calculating self-​interest. Here are some examples of the many ways in which we think and speak about reason and related ideas. We reason through problems, seek reasoned answers to questions, give reasons for our views, and criticize the faulty reasoning of others. We might try to reason with an intoxicated person, implore her to see reason, hope she will recover her reason, and deny that she is entirely impervious to reason. We might think that the terms of a contract are unreasonable, make a reasonable guess, wait a reasonable period, report that we are doing reasonably well, describe someone’s insensitivity to others as unreasonable, and judge that any reasonable person would care about truth and justice. Some legal systems require police to have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred before making an arrest, forbid them from using unreasonable force when doing so, charge prosecutors with proving the guilt of a suspect beyond all reasonable doubt, define negligence in terms of what a reasonable person would have thought, and require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. Someone can become so angry that her “reason fled before rage,” carry a grudge beyond reason, fail to heed the voice of reason, and fly off the handle until her fury eventually yields to reason.1 Many of our beliefs and values are rationally supportable. We strive to make rational choices, seek a rational explanation for vexing events, advise our friends about the most rational ways to save for retirement, assess the rationality of government policies, judge that, in a rational world, women and men would receive equal pay for equal work, admire someone for her rational way of looking at things, chastise ourselves for taking irrational risks with our lives, and value ourselves as rational creatures with a rational nature. We might try to have a rational discussion with people we disagree with, ask them to give reasons or a rationale

1 Caro (1975, 1096).

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0001

2  Sovereign Re ason for their views, admit that there is some reason in what they say, assess which position has the weight of reason behind it, judge that there is room for reasonable disagreement about some issues, strive to reach reasoned agreement, and hope reason will prevail. We criticize people for violating standards of reason, regard maliciousness as contrary to reason, judge that the practice of slavery is against all reason, strive to live a life of reason, admire a reasoned person, and think that there are good reasons to be generous to our neighbors and that it stands to reason that they should reciprocate. We sometimes refer to the age at which children become responsible and capable of discerning right from wrong as the age of reason, allow them to wear whatever they like within reason, and raise them to be guided by the light of reason. In a brutal war, soldiers might find themselves obeying an instinct that transcends all reason and come to think that “hell is the impossibility of reason.”2 The Enlightenment is also known as the Age of Reason, and we sometimes talk of conflict between reason and passion and between reason and faith. We might agree with Thomas Jefferson that a “government of reason is better than one of force,” take solace in a society’s progress “putting itself in the ways of reason and order,” and find inspiration in Justice Jackson’s opening statement from the Nuremberg Trials: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hands of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgement of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”3 The general orientation of this book is to take ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason seriously. These are broad and nuanced fixtures of scientific practice, prudence, moral deliberation, discussions among friends, and many other aspects of ordinary life. They are not easily captured with simple pronouncements about what rationality requires or what it is to have a rational nature. As I will suggest, it is remarkable how different our ordinary ideas of reason are from the ways in which philosophers, economists, psychologists, and others often characterize them. An exceedingly large and complicated task that philosophers and others over generations can pursue is this: First, explore and reflect on the many ordinary ways we think and speak about ideas of reason. Second, develop and study philosophical theories of reason, reasons, rationality, reasoning, reasonableness, and the like. These include historical theories of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Gottfried Leibniz, and Immanuel Kant as well as contemporary views of David Gauthier, John Broome, T. M. Scanlon, Onora O’Neill, Bernard Williams, and John Rawls. Third, evaluate theories of reason by how well they fit with the ways we think and speak about reason and related concepts in reflective common 2 Stone (1986). 3 The first and third quotes are from Jefferson (1813) and Jackson (1945). Massie (1981, 633) quotes the second phrase from Leibniz in a personal letter discussing Peter the Great.

Introduction  3 sense and ordinary language. Hume’s account of reason, for example, is apparently in trouble by this standard because Hume diverges significantly from common sense about whether it is inherently unreasonable for a rationally thinking person to prefer the destruction of the world to the scratching of her finger. Common sense obviously holds that this preference is contrary to reason, whereas according to Hume there is, strictly speaking, nothing unreasonable about a person of this kind allowing nuclear Armageddon to spare herself a paper cut.4 According to what I call the Content Criterion, one basis for assessing theories of reason, rationality, reasons, and other ideas in this family is by how well they, on reflection, capture and explain our commonsense judgments and ordinary ways of speaking about reason. We have an extremely rich set of resources from ordinary language and common sense about what is reasonable and unreasonable, how a person of reason conducts herself, what reasons we have, what reason requires of us, and so on. We also have many sophisticated historical and contemporary theories of reason as well as the potential to supplement them and to develop new ones. The Content Criterion holds that, all else equal, such theories are better the more closely they match how we ordinarily think and speak about reason on reflection.5 The general aim of this book is to work back and forth between commonsense judgments about reason and key assumptions of the philosophical tradition that is associated with Kant to propose a partial theory of the mental power of reason that accords with some features of common sense and ordinary language. I develop this novel but partial theory of reason, which I call the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, by drawing on a wide variety of Kant’s texts and by highlighting themes in our ordinary ways of speaking and thinking that have not been sufficiently investigated. The unifying idea of the book is that of an autonomous person who governs herself by reason in all respects. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason dramatically extends traditional Kantian conceptions of rational self-​governance. We are able to govern our many mental powers by reason, not just our ability to make choices. We can also legislate, execute, and adjudicate in ourselves all kinds of rational standards, not just moral ones. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that our reason includes substantive interests in various things. Part of having a rational nature is to care about knowledge, enlightenment, explanation, happiness, 4 Hume (2000, 267) expresses this claim in his A Treatise on Human Nature, but his views in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals are more difficult to interpret because his account of the language of morals (Hume 1998, 148) might extend to cases of this sort (we might have come to use terms such as “reasonable” in extended senses to express our natural feelings). See also Blackburn (1998, 238–​42). 5 The Content Criterion has affinities with the idea of reflective equilibrium that Nelson Goodman (1983, 62–​6) and John Rawls (1999c, 18–​19, 40–​6) develop and employ. A more specific interpretation of the Content Criterion along these or other lines might eventually be necessary (e.g. one that specifies the nature of considered judgments), but in this book I rely on the general and largely uninterpreted idea that theories of reason should, all else equal, be ones we find plausible in reflective common sense. See Sections 1.4 and 1.9 for a discussion of this general method in Kant’s work.

4  Sovereign Re ason solidarity, and many things for their own sake. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason also holds that our reason includes a principle of justifiability according to which mental acts of all kinds are required by reason if and because they are justifiable to rational people on the basis of their substantive interests of reason. Throughout the book, we will contrast the Sovereignty Conception of Reason with other prominent theories and explore specific rational principles it grounds concerning beneficence, coercion, deception, friendship, respect, happiness, education, self-​development, and many others. To explain this main aim of the book, let’s first examine the Content Criterion in more detail and begin to specify the aspects of it that will occupy us.

1.1  Reason in Reflective Common Sense: Abilities, Motives, and Principles of Reason The Content Criterion presupposes a set of judgments in reflective common sense about reason and related ideas. We will not attempt to characterize and organize most or all of these notions. We will instead focus on ones that concern reason as a power of our minds.6 In common sense and ordinary language, our power of reason includes standard abilities of reasoned thought and action. We use our reason to think logically and to engage in inductive, causal, abductive, and moral reasoning. It allows us to reflect in rational ways, to form reasonable judgments, to deliberate according to rational and reasonable standards, and to act for reasons. Our reason differs from other mental powers we have, such as our powers of imagination, understanding, attention, and judgment. It often guides and constrains these other powers when, for instance, we rationally abandon a belief because it contradicts something we affirm. Rational and reasonable creatures have a rational nature because we possess the mental power of reason, if only as a mere potentiality, and those who are especially rational and reasonable exercise that power well. Our commonsense idea of reason as a power of our minds includes, I suggest, three features that we will mainly explore in this book. Setting aside as best we can theoretical commitments we might have, these features are recognizable ways in which we ordinarily think and speak about the abilities, motives, and principles that are part of our rational nature.

6 As I explain in Chapter 3, mental powers, such as judgment, attention, imagination, and reason, are parts or aspects of our minds with characteristic abilities, principles, dispositions, or other features. Schafer (2023) also focuses on reason as a power of mind. The term “mental faculty” might be preferable to some people (including Kant, see L-​M 29: 824), while others might find it outdated in light of contemporary empirical psychology and neuroscience (McDowell 1998, 200, Blackburn 2013, 97–​ 100). “Mental power” may not be an ideal term either because “power” in a narrow sense can simply mean “ability” or “actualized ability,” whereas mental powers, in the broader sense I am using, can include abilities, principles, and motives or interests that may or may not be fully realized.

Introduction  5

1.1.1  Abilities of Reason There is in common sense a broad idea of a reason-​governed person who governs herself through her mental power of reason. Such a person is self-​possessed and exercises self-​control according to standards of reason that she endorses and imposes on herself. She thinks logically and acts according to rational standards. She keeps her emotions in check when this is rational or reasonable and is not swayed by irrational or unreasonable feelings or desires. Such a person avoids prejudices and thinks and chooses for herself. She assesses herself in rational and reasonable ways. This ordinary idea of an autonomous, rationally self-​governing person suggests that we think of our power of reason as including abilities to govern ourselves.

1.1.2  Motives of Reason Our ordinary ways of speaking and thinking reflect a broad idea of a rational and reasonable person who is disposed to conform to principles of reason and who cares about various other substantive things for their own sakes. A rational and reasonable person as such is moved to think and act in rational ways, to value her rational nature, to want to exercise her powers of reason, to seek explanations, and to strive for community with other rational and reasonable people. We often appeal to widely shared concerns of these kinds when we implore other people to be reasonable, urge them to see reason, and give them reasons that we hope will move them. These commonsense judgments and ordinary ways of speaking suggest that we tend to think our power of reason is an active mental power that can move us in many ways apart from other natural desires and feelings we happen to have.

1.1.3  Principles of Reason We affirm in common sense and ordinary language many formal and substantive principles of reason. We call someone irrational if he holds contradictory beliefs or ends, fails to pursue his goals effectively, believes something without sufficient evidence, or succumbs to logical fallacies. It is reasonable to treat others fairly and to assist them in times of need. We often have sufficient reasons to be loyal and forgiving and to avoid hypocrisy and ingratitude. Reason usually requires us to respect ourselves and others and to refrain from torturing or enslaving anyone. A rational and reasonable person investigates her beliefs, admits her errors, organizes her goals, and regulates her emotions. Our commonsense judgments about what is rational and reasonable, about what we have most reason to do, about what reason

6  Sovereign Re ason requires, and about how a reasonable and rational person conducts herself suggest a wide variety of formal and substantive principles of reason. From a commonsense perspective, our ordinary idea of the mental power of reason is expansive and substantive. This is not the narrow and off-​putting view of reason that is parodied by Charles Dickens and Jonathan Swift, embodied by Dr. Spock from Star Trek, endorsed by economists such as John von Neumann, and derided by psychologists such as Steven Pinker.7 Someone who fully exercises her power of reason or who is living a life of reason, it seems, thinks in a clear and logical manner, is willing to give and listen to reasons and arguments, has control over herself, makes consistent choices based on relevant information, efficiently organizes and pursues her goals, has sound judgment, is wise, judicious, sensible, and fair, treats others with justice, respect, and generosity, and values rational nature in all people. Such a person is reasonable, governs herself by many principles of reason, acts on many kinds of sound reasons, and cares about relating in rational and reasonable ways with other rational and reasonable people. Although we sometimes distinguish between rationality and reasonableness in reflective common sense, we also tend to think of them as species of reason more generally.8 Many of us regard the basic standards of our power of reason as objective, universal, necessary, univocal, and authoritative. We look to our reason and its use as an authoritative alternative to feeling, desire, habit, opinion, custom, and other contingencies of life. Our shared powers of reason provide a basis for people with diverse perspectives, goals, values, histories, and cultures to reach sound agreements on a wide variety of matters that are worthy of our acceptance. Reasonable and rational policies and principles can stand up to reason in everyone. They can secure our reasoned acceptance and provide a sound basis for making reasonable demands on others. We aspire to conduct ourselves and relate with one another in ways that are rationally acceptable to anyone with the power of reason. The many commonsense judgments we make about reason, reasons, reasoning, rationality, and reasonableness along with the common etymologies of these terms suggest rich ways of thinking about our mental power of reason.

7 Dickens often rails against formalist conceptions of reason, in, for example, A Christmas Carol, Hard Times, and Our Mutual Friend, while Swift famously does so in A Modest Proposal. Dr. Spock in Star Trek is usually portrayed as a hyper-​rational and unfeeling utility maximizer. In economics, von Neumann (1944) characterized a formal theory of practical reason as maximal preference satisfaction. In psychology, Pinker (2021) endorses much the same limited view of our rational nature and contrasts it unfavorably with our sentiments and emotions. Others who assume similarly narrow conceptions of reason include Weber (1930), Greene (2007), and Tversky and Kahneman (1974). 8 Sibley (1953) points out some of the differences between what is reasonable and rational in ordinary language and common sense. See also Rawls (1993, 48–​66) and Scanlon (1998, 32–​3).

Introduction  7

1.2  Theories of Reason: Humean, Formalist, Kantian, and Rationalist Philosophers have long wrestled with basic questions about the nature of our power of reason. What mental abilities are part of reason? What, if any, motives arise from our reason? What, if any, principles are part of reason or follow from such requirements? A theory of reason as a power of mind specifies the abilities, motives, and principles (if any) that are included in our rational nature.9 Why should we care about developing philosophical theories of the power of reason? Investigating the abilities, motives, and principles of our reason is a major theme in philosophy that also has significant implications for many other domains and aspects of life. A complete and justified theory of our power of reason would significantly enhance our understanding of the nature and limits of our intellectual powers and the kinds of motives that properly move us. Filling out what it is to be a fully rational and reasonable person would give us an inspiring ideal to aim for and encourage in one another. Specifying the standards of reason would provide us with guidance about how to think and act when we are, for example, advising a friend, choosing a career, conducting a scientific experiment, developing a mathematical proof, or assessing a government policy. If morality as a whole is based on reason, then a justified account of that power would reveal how we morally should regard and treat ourselves and other people, what moral rights we have, which goals are morally good, which traits of character are virtues, what ideals are worth aspiring toward, how we ought to arrange our social institutions, and what gives us a basic moral standing or worth. Investigating the nature of reason is also critically important for other academic disciplines, including mathematics, economics, decision theory, game theory, history, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, political science, law, evolutionary biology, and theology. Scholars in these fields often appeal to the power of reason to reveal abstract truths, to predict and explain human behavior, to claim how we should think or act, to diagnose and rehabilitate patients with certain mental impairments, and to assess religious tenets. Philosophers investigate the abilities, motives, and principles of the power of reason in different ways. These approaches include appealing to a priori arguments or self-​evident truths, conducting empirical inquiries into the structure of the human mind or brain, invoking metaphysical claims about God, universals, or perfections, examining the presuppositions of mental states such as beliefs or intentions, appealing to inescapable features of agency, or employing our powers of

9 A comprehensive theory of the power of reason must address other issues as well, such as ones about the authority of rational principles, the value and excellences of exercising our rational powers, and whether we have the power of reason at all. See, for example, Quinn (1992), O’Neill (1989), and Korsgaard (1996a).

8  Sovereign Re ason reason to “critique” that power itself.10 As important as some of these methods may be, however, we will employ a different approach that is grounded in the Content Criterion. The Content Criterion holds that, all else equal, philosophical theories of the power of reason are better the more closely they match how we ordinarily think and speak about reason on due reflection. This criterion is widely employed for investigating ideas of reason. Nelson Goodman, Broom, Gauthier, von Neumann, and others who formulate formal principles of inductive reasoning or requirements of rationality aim to characterize them in ways that cohere with our ordinary judgments about what counts as sound reasoning and what is rational.11 Rawls, Scanlon, and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. attempt to capture and explain our ordinary ideas about what is reasonable, what reasons we have, and the nature of moral reasoning.12 Even Simon Blackburn, who chastises Kantians and others for what he sees as overly extravagant theories of reason, tries to account for the everyday language of reason within a narrow Humean framework.13 Common sense and ordinary language suggest that our power of reason includes extensive governing abilities, substantive motives, and principles of many kinds. Reflecting on our commonsense ideas of reason gives the general sense that our reason is far richer and more varied than many of the main philosophical attempts at explaining it apparently allow. Leaving aside many details for now, let’s briefly examine the abilities, motives, and principles (if any) that these Humean, formalist, Kantian, and rationalist theories attribute to our power of reason and how well these theories fit with ordinary ways of thinking and speaking.

1.2.1  Humean Theories of Reason Humean theories of reason claim that our reason is simply the ability to discover truth and falsehood about the abstract relations among our ideas and perhaps also the causes and effects of what we experience.14 Humeans deny that our reason includes abilities to govern ourselves. Reason for them is the slave of the passions, whereas common sense and ordinary language suggest that our reason allows us to govern our beliefs, choices, desires, and other mental states.15 A reasonable person, 10 For a variety of approaches to investigating the nature of the power of reason, see Plato (2007), Aquinas (1964), Hume (2000), Leibniz (1952), O’Neill (1989), Pinker (2021), and Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason. 11 Goodman (1983, 238–​42), Broome (2013, 150, 204), Gauthier (1986), and von Neumann (1944). 12 Scanlon (1998, 17, 25), Rawls (1999a, c­ hapter 16) and Hill (2000, 94–​5, 2002, 127–​8). 13 Blackburn (1998, 238–​42). 14 Hume (2000, 121, 265–​8, 298), Blackburn (1998), and Gibbard (1990, especially c­ hapter 8). There is some question of whether probabilistic “reasoning” is, for Hume, a species of reasoning at all or instead the product of imagination and feeling. 15 Hume (2000, 266).

Introduction  9 after all, is someone who often keeps her composure and constrains herself to do what she has most reason to do. Our reason, according to Humean views, does not include and cannot produce on its own feelings, emotions, desires, intentions, or any other motives.16 A rational and reasonable person, simply as such, does not care about anything. Our rational abilities can only be activated by conative states, such as a natural desire to know the truth about some matter. Reason can cause us to have beliefs, and the beliefs that reasoning produces can cause us to have desires, feelings, and other conative mental states. Otherwise, our power of reason is inert.17 Any motives we have to conform to rational standards or to exercise our rational abilities must come from some other source in our minds, such as our natural feelings and desires. Common sense and ordinary language, however, suggest that a rational and reasonable person as such is disposed to follow principles of reason and is moved to care about various things for their own sake. According to Humean theories, the only requirements that are part of our power of reason are principles of deductive reasoning and other formal ones that concern consistency and coherence within and among a person’s ideas or beliefs. It is not unreasonable or contrary to reason, for example, to violate the rights of others, to treat them with malice and cruelty, to affirm contradictory intentions, or to fail to take the necessary means to our ends as long as our own relevant beliefs or other cognitive representations are consistent and coherent with themselves and one another. Common sense and ordinary language suggest, however, that it is irrational for someone to affirm contradictory goals and that it is unreasonable to euthanize people on account of their disabilities and to treat them with ridicule and contempt.

1.2.2  Formalist Theories of Reason Perhaps the dominant theory of the power of reason in contemporary philosophy is that it includes abilities and dispositions to govern ourselves by formal principles of reason that concern the consistency and coherence of a person’s own mental states.18 The requirements of rationality that are part of our reason, according to various formalist views, include not to affirm contradictory beliefs or ends, to 16 Hume (2000, 265–​8). 17 Hume (2000, 121, 266, 298) and Blackburn (1998, 240). 18 Philosophers who, at times, have strong affinities to the formalist tradition include Aristotle (1999), Hobbes (1994, 1991), Broome (2013), Scanlon (1998), Kolodny (2005, 2008), Foot (1978, ­chapter 11), and Bratman (1987). There is some question about whether Hobbes thinks there is a substantive rational requirement to seek to avoid our own death (Gert 2001). Aristotle is well-​known for claiming that there is no rational assessment of final ends, but his theory of reason is difficult to interpret (Granger 1893, Irwin 1975, and O’Neill 2000, 13n). For discussion of formalist conceptions of rationality, see also Davidson (1963), Bennett (1964), Sen (1970, c­ hapters 1 and 1*), and Arrow (1963).

10  Sovereign Re ason take the necessary means to our ends or abandon them, to maximize the satisfaction of our considered and coherent preferences, and to pay attention to or desire whatever we believe we have sufficient reason to notice or want.19 These and other formal principles are specified in different ways. Debates also persist in economics, decision theory, and other areas about, for instance, how to choose rationally in situations of uncertainty or in strategic interactions.20 Principles of reason, according to these formalist theories, are limited to internal mental housekeeping, that is, to ensuring that our beliefs, choices, desires, and other mental states do not contradict themselves and are consistent and coherent with one another. There are no other rational standards for evaluating their content. Final ends, goals, and desires cannot be rationally assessed by principles of reason, which concern only how our mental states relate to one another and whether they contradict themselves. Common sense and ordinary language, however, suggest that it is usually unreasonable and contrary to reason for someone, no matter how consistent and coherent she may be, to murder innocent people or to take unfair advantage of them. Although formalist theories restrict principles of reason to formal ones, they hold that our power of reason includes abilities to govern ourselves by these standards. Our reason allows us to recognize and enforce rational requirements in ourselves and to evaluate ourselves according to them. In common sense and ordinary language, however, the governing abilities of our power of reason also extend to substantive requirements of reason. Formalist theories of reason claim that our power of reason includes constitutive motives that dispose us to comply with and act from formal requirements of reason. They deny, however, that our reason includes substantive concerns for seeking explanations or protecting rational nature, whereas a rational and reasonable person seems to care about these things for their own sake.

1.2.3  Kantian Theories of Reason The power of reason, according to traditional Kantian theories, includes abilities to think and choose from principles that are constitutive of our power of reason or ones that follow from them.21 Like Humean and formalist views, Kantian theories deny that the power of reason includes the ability to acquire insights into metaphysical ideas, religious truths, intrinsic values, moral principles, or anything else

19 On the latter akratic formal requirement of reason, see Scanlon (1998, 19–​20). 20 See, for example, von Neumann and Morgenstern (1953), Savage (1954), Machina (1987), and Buchak (2013). 21 Philosophers in this tradition include Allison (1990), Baron (1995), Guyer (2009), Herman (1993b), Hill (1992, c­ hapter 5), Holtman (2009), Kleingeld (1998a), Korsgaard (1996a, c­ hapter 3), O’Neill (1989), Rawls (1999a, ­chapter 16), Reath (2006, ­chapter 6), Timmons (2017, ­chapters 1, 2, and 4), von der Pfordten (2021), and Wood (2008).

Introduction  11 that might exist apart from its own nature and operation. Our reason allows us to analyze certain ideas and claims, but we lack any rational ability to apply them to things that lie outside our reason in ways that give us knowledge of them. Our reason is not a flashlight into the mysterious recesses of the world or a sixth sense that acquaints us with them—​we can perhaps use our reason to conceive of God, for example, but our reason alone cannot tell us whether God exists. Our reason is limited to reflecting on its own abilities, principles, interests, and ideas without, on its own, putting us in contact with the world outside it. Kantian theories of reason hold that reason includes formal rational standards that concern consistency and coherence within and among our mental states, such as not to affirm self-​contradictory beliefs or to fail to take the necessary means to our ends. In addition to these formal principles of reason, traditional Kantian theories also claim that our reason includes a substantive principle about how to act, what ends to set, what maxims or personal policies to adopt, and otherwise how to choose. The Categorical Imperative is interpreted and formulated in different ways, such as a requirement to act only on maxims we can will as universal law or to treat humanity in everyone as an end in itself. This basic moral principle, Kantians claim, justifies a wide variety of substantive moral requirements of reason, including ones that prohibit various kinds of coercion and disrespect and that require beneficence and self-​development. A longstanding concern about Kantian theories of reason is that, despite Kant’s claims and the many valiant attempts of his allies, the Categorical Imperative cannot ground many of the specific moral principles that we recognize in common sense and ordinary language.22 Traditional Kantian theories of reason maintain that our reason includes abilities to govern ourselves by the Categorical Imperative and the principles of reason that follow from it.23 Our reason allows us to recognize these moral principles about how we should and should not choose and to execute them in ways that lead us to act from them. An autonomous person, Kantians claim, possesses these rational abilities to be an author of the moral principles of reason and to be subject to those moral requirements.24 Common sense and ordinary language suggest, however, that a rational and reasonable person as such can govern herself by rational principles of all kinds, not just the Categorical Imperative and the moral principles that it implies. She can govern herself by theoretical and prudential principles of reason as well as by apparently moral principles of reason that do not seem to concern how she chooses. Such a person, it seems, has the latent capacity and operant ability to recognize and execute in herself principles of reason that prohibit her 22 See, for example, Schopenhauer (2010, appendix), Hegel (1991, section 135), Williams (1981, ­chapter 2, 1985), Scanlon (1998, 2011), Rawls (2000), Wood (1999, 97–​110), and Galvin (2009). 23 For discussions of how Kant understands autonomy, see Reath (2006, ­chapters 4 and 5), Hill (1992, ­chapter 5), Holtman (2009), Wolff (1974), Guyer (2009), O’Neill (2003), Wood (2008, c­ hapter 6), Allison (1990), Johnson (2007), Baxley (2010), Kohl (2023), and Kleingeld and Willaschek (2019). 24 In Chapter 4, we will discuss more fully what it is to be an author of and subject to laws of reason.

12  Sovereign Re ason from holding contradictory beliefs, failing to take the necessary means to her ends, desiring to demean others, fantasizing about their downfall, or ignoring their suffering.25 Traditional Kantian theories claim that our reason includes dispositions to conform to moral requirements of reason and that our power of reason can produce desires and feelings that lead us to act from those requirements. These theories limit the motives that are part of or arise from reason to ones that concern governing ourselves by moral principles. Common sense and ordinary language, however, suggest that our power of reason includes other motives besides these governing ones.26 A rational and reasonable person seems to care about various things for their own sake, such as acquiring knowledge, explaining things, happiness, freedom, and rational nature itself, apart from whether moral principles of reason require her to promote or respect them.

1.2.4  Rationalist Theories of Reason Rationalist theories of the power of reason seem to be in the best position to capture and explain our ordinary judgments about reason.27 These theories hold that our reason includes abilities to recognize substantive and independent values, principles, reasons, or other normative entities that exist apart from the nature and operation of our reason. According to rationalist views, our reason includes formal principles of consistency and coherence as well as one or more substantive principles that require us to conform to the values, principles, reasons, or other normative entities that our reason allows us to recognize. These substantive principles of reason might require us, for example, to promote intrinsic goods, to comply with true moral principles, or to do what we have most reason to do, where the relevant values, principles, and reasons are not entirely grounded in the power of reason itself. On rationalist views, we have rational abilities to govern ourselves by formal and substantive principles of reason. Our reason also includes formal dispositions that move us to comply with principles of reason. These theories deny, however, that our 25 Traditional Kantian theories of reason recognize principles and abilities of theoretical reason, but they do not include these aspects of theoretical reason in the Kantian idea of autonomy, which is restricted to rational self-​governance through moral principles. For discussions of how Kantian autonomy might be interpreted beyond the moral domain, see O’Neill (1989), Kohl (2023), and Schafer (2023, ­chapter 7). 26 One of the ways formalist theories might try to capture and explain ordinary judgments of this sort is by pointing out that we often take for granted certain background facts about our beliefs and desires when applying formal principles of reason (e.g. a formalist might claim that murdering innocent people is unreasonable in the sense that doing so conflicts with the standing commitment, which many of us have and are loath to abandon, not to do so). 27 Philosophers who fit reasonably well in the rationalist tradition include Plato (2007), Aquinas (1964), Spinoza (2018), Leibniz (2020, 1952), Clarke (2010), Locke (1988, 1979), Ross (2002), Baier (1958), Raz (1999), Parfit (2011), Dancy (2004), Nagel (1978), and Quinn (1992).

Introduction  13 power of reason includes substantive concerns for things apart from their relations to rational principles or the normative entities that our reason allows us to recognize. Rationalist theories of reason can plausibly account for the governing abilities, the requirements of reason, and some of the motives that seem to be part of our rational nature. Their main drawback, at least for some philosophers, is that they affirm the existence of independent normative entities that our reason allows us to recognize and moves us to comply with or satisfy.28 This might be a theoretical worry that does not concern the Content Criterion, or it might reflect doubts about whether our commonsense ideas of reason presuppose values, principles, or other normative things that exist apart from our power of reason itself. After all, we call certain facts “reasons” rather than “normative relations,” which suggests that reasons are grounded in our reason and are not, as many rationalists claim, simply independent normative facts.29 These are complicated theories of the power of reason, and there is much more that can be said about them and about how well they satisfy the Content Criterion. This introductory discussion nonetheless calls our attention to some apparent gaps between how philosophers often think about reason and our commonsense ideas about the abilities, motives, and principles that seem to be part of our rational nature.

1.3  Reason in Theory and Practice: The Content Criterion We have a wide variety of commonsense judgments and ordinary ways of speaking about reason. We also have many theories of reason as well as the potential to refine them and to develop novel ones. The Content Criterion holds that theories of reason are properly assessed, at least in part, by how well they match our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason on due reflection. Why does the Content Criterion matter for developing and evaluating theories of reason? Some people might deny or significantly downplay the importance of capturing and explaining commonsense ways of thinking and speaking about the power of reason. Theories of this kind should perhaps be justified and assessed mainly or entirely by other criteria, such as metaphysical, empirical, or 28 For discussion of rationalist theories of reasons, see Baier (1958), Parfit (2011), Nagel (1978), Raz (1999), Scanlon (1998, 2009), and Dancy (2004). 29 As Joe Stratmann pointed out to me, we also tend to call certain principles “norms,” rather than “requirements of reason,” which might cast doubt on whether Kant is right that “ought” claims are best interpreted as claims about what reason requires (G 4: 412–​13). Common sense and ordinary language are likely, at a certain level, mixed about whether norms and normative relations are grounded in reason or not, but further reflection might reveal deeper connections. My main point here is simply that common sense and ordinary language provide some modest support for thinking that reasons are based in reason.

14  Sovereign Re ason theological considerations, a priori arguments, or the results of recursive, shared, and nonarbitrary processes of vindication. Hume, for example, sometimes claims that common sense and ordinary language are unreliable guides to a proper understanding of reason and that these things need to be significantly revised to fit with his empirically grounded theory.30 Kant often emphasizes the importance of a priori arguments, criticizes popular moralists, derides the use of examples, and downplays customary modes of thinking in developing his theory of reason.31 The Content Criterion may not be the only standard by which we should develop and assess theories of reason. It nonetheless reflects the worthy aim of finding a determinate and comprehensive conception of ideas that we affirm in common sense, deeply care about, presuppose in our ordinary practices, and treat as authoritative. A theory of reason that captures and explains our ordinary ideas of reason would significantly enhance our understanding of ourselves and our ordinary beliefs and practices.32 In this book, I assume the Content Criterion is genuine and worth satisfying. Interpreting and applying it requires us to work back and forth between investigating our commonsense ways of thinking and speaking about the power of reason and characterizing and studying philosophical theories of that power of mind.

1.3.1  Refine Common Sense When we look to reflective common sense, we often find ourselves with many views at various levels of generality, such as what it is to have a rational nature, how a rational and reasonable person conducts herself, what is contrary to reason, what we have reason to do, what counts as good reasoning, and so on. Sometimes, however, these initial judgments are based in ignorance, self-​serving biases, distorting emotions, or cultural norms that we accept without much reflection. We may find ourselves with conflicting judgments of this kind or doubtful about our initial reactions. Our own intuitive judgments are sometimes different from those of other people, including people from cultures that are not the same as our own. Interpreting and applying the Content Criterion requires us to filter and refine this rich and complex set of initial judgments through critical reflection and open dialogue with others. There are various ways to make some progress on this extraordinarily complicated and long-​term task of refining our commonsense judgments. We can look to

30 Hume (2000, 267, 296, 343, 1998, 148–​50). See also Blackburn (1998, 240). 31 See, for example, G 4: 406–​12 and MM 6: 214–​18. See also Sticker (2021a). 32 Even for those who are skeptical of the Content Criterion, a theory of reason that satisfies it would at least help us to understand how we, on reflection, conceive of ourselves and our forms of life.

Introduction  15 subtle and wise observers of ordinary ideas of reason that are presupposed or implicitly affirmed in common sense, including how we tend to regard the standards of reason, what we ordinarily think reason requires, and what a reasonable person is like. We can consult literature and films and reflect on the presuppositions of our ordinary beliefs and practices. We can also focus on a narrow set of judgments within a specific domain, such as attempting to characterize principles of inductive reasoning that match our reflective beliefs about legitimate inferences in particular cases or, as we shall do here, investigating the three features of the commonsense understanding of the power of reason we are discussing that concern its abilities, motives, and principles. These investigations into reflective common sense and ordinary language might reveal that some or perhaps most of our usual ways of thinking and speaking about the power of reason are not about reason at all. Williams argues that, when we call people irrational or unreasonable, we often do not strictly mean that they are acting contrary to reason but mean instead that they are acting cruelly or in other ways that have little or nothing to do with reason. The language of reason, according to Williams and Hume, has become overblown.33 We might also discover that there are alternative interpretations of some aspects of our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason that, despite appearances, show that they do not much concern the power of reason itself. Blackburn argues that we often use terms such as reason, reasonable, and reasons in extended senses to express our natural desires, feelings, emotions, or other features of our sensibility. We are usually not making claims about the power of reason or its related ideas but instead simply deploying our own contingent sentiments, emotions, desires, and aims.34 The ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason that survive critical investigation might be much narrower than they seem. We might, on reflection, endorse an error theory for why we so often speak and think in terms of reason in our ordinary lives and find suitable interpretations of these concepts that are not tied to the mental power of reason itself. We might appeal to contingent cultural norms and presupposed background conditions rather than inherent requirements of reason to interpret what we mean when we say that certain things are reasonable or contrary to reason. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason, however, aims to reflect as closely as possible how we ordinarily think and speak about reason and related terms. Theories of reason, according to the Content Criterion, only have to capture and explain our reflective judgments and ways of speaking. 33 Hume (2000, 267–​8), Williams (1981, 110), Blackburn (2010), and Wood (2008, 13–​14). As mentioned in note 4, Hume’s later views about the language of morals (Hume 1998, 148) might be used to capture and explain some of our ordinary ways of speaking about reason as expressions of our natural feelings. 34 Blackburn (1998, 238–​42) calls this a “Hume friendly” conception of reason, but it is not, strictly speaking, a conception of reason at all.

16  Sovereign Re ason Any mismatches between a theory of reason and unreflective common sense do not in themselves matter for applying that criterion.

1.3.2  Develop Theories of Reason Interpreting and applying the Content Criterion also requires us to develop and assess various theories of reason according to provisional understandings of how we ordinarily think and speak about reason and its related ideas. Some people can work on interpreting the theories of reason proposed by Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, or others. They can try to show how these theories can capture and explain a wide variety of commonsense judgments about the power of reason and its related ideas on due reflection. Others can do the same by developing conceptions of reason within those or other traditions or by proposing new theories. Gauthier, for example, develops a formalist theory of reason and argues that, despite appearances, it can generate many substantive commonsense judgments about what is reasonable and required by reason.35

1.3.3  Assess Theories of Reason by Reflective Common Sense As we work to characterize and refine reflective common sense and to develop candidate theories of the power of reason, we also need to make some provisional assessments about how well they fit with one another. Scanlon, for example, argues that Kantian theories of reason cannot capture and explain our ordinary judgments about reasons and, by extension, requirements of reason. He denies that “the idea of rational agency is rich enough to yield all the claims about reasons that seem evidently correct.”36 Others have argued that Kantian theories of reason cannot capture and explain our ordinary ideas about what reason requires because the most basic nonformal principle of reason Kantians affirm is far too thin and 35 According to Gauthier’s formalist theory, the power of reason includes the ability to reflect on and choose our dispositions of deliberation and choice as well as the rational requirement to select dispositions to choose such that, if we were to have them, our choices would bring us no less utility than would the choices we would make with any other disposition to choose (Gauthier 1986, 182–​4). Gauthier uses this partial conception of reason to argue that, in some circumstances, it is rational in his formalist sense to adopt a disposition to comply with certain principles of cooperation and nonexploitation even when doing so on particular occasions fails to maximize one’s own utility. One such principle is that we must not better our own situation through interactions that worsen the situation of those we interact with (Gauthier 1986, c­ hapter 7). Another is that we should abide by rational cooperative agreements we have or would make, where such agreements are ones in which the parties select an outcome only if the largest “relative concession” it involves is as small as possible (Gauthier 1986, ­chapters 5 and 6). 36 Scanlon (2011, 124).

Introduction  17 abstract to generate many of those specific requirements and to adequately explain why they are correct.37 These tasks of refining our ordinary ideas of reason, developing theories of reason, and assessing the latter by the former are all needed to interpret and apply the Content Criterion. We need to explore and reflect on our commonsense judgments about reason to see which ones are genuine and so need to be captured and explained. We need to work out different philosophical theories of reason. And we need to assess these frameworks by how well they capture and explain the ways of thinking and speaking about reason that we reflectively endorse. Philosophers can pursue these tasks over time by using plausible but perhaps incomplete ideas from common sense and ordinary language to develop theories of reason. We can make some provisional assessments about how theories of the power of reason fare against one another. However, until the most promising theories are sufficiently developed and we have a clearer understanding of commonsense ways of thinking and speaking about reason, we cannot definitively say which, if any, of them best fits with reflective common sense. We also need to reflect more generally about the philosophical importance of the Content Criterion itself and its relative priority to other criteria for assessing theories of reason. Humeans, Aristotelians, and others often scoff at “Reason” with a capital “R,” accuse Kantians and rationalists of illegitimately and nefariously attempting to borrow the glowing aura of logic to make ethics rational, demand proof for what they see as extravagances into the domain of reason, and invoke Hobbes’ “Foole” and Hume’s “Sensible Knave” as challenges to Kantian and rationalist theories. Their complaints are often that Kantians and rationalists lack sufficient justification for expanding reason beyond deduction, induction, and perhaps prudence. Setting aside deeper questions about how, if at all, to fully justify any theory of reason allows us to focus on what conceptions of reason fit with reflective common sense. From this perspective, the concerns that Humeans and formalists raise are important and vivid checks against extending reason beyond how we ordinarily think and speak about reason, rationality, reasons, and related terms. They also remind us that there are narrower conceptions of reason that should be evaluated against others in reflective common sense, that our use of these terms might have little or nothing to do with how we think about reason, that there is perhaps no underlying unity to the various features we tend to associate with reason, and that our ordinary understanding of reason might be illusory and so require substantial revision.

37 See Schopenhauer (2010, appendix), Hegel (1991, section 135), Williams (1981, c­ hapter 2, 1985), Scanlon (1998, 2011), Rawls (2000), Wood (1999, 97–​110), and Galvin (2009).

18  Sovereign Re ason

1.4  Methods: Reflective Common Sense and Kant There are many ways to explore our ordinary ideas of reason, and there are many theories of reason to study and assess by the Content Criterion. A wide variety of both approaches is needed to eventually find a conception of reason that closely fits reflective common sense. This is obviously a long-​term, cooperative, and massive project of developing and assessing theories of the power of reason by the Content Criterion. My approach in this book is a limited part of this large endeavor. I investigate some of our commonsense judgments about reason, develop some aspects of a new theory of reason within the Kantian tradition, and suggest that this partial theory stands a decent chance of capturing and explaining many of the ways in which we often think and speak about the power of reason.

1.4.1  Common Sense and Kant When it comes to the commonsense side of the Content Criterion, a distinctive and unusual feature of my approach is that I draw on Kant to explore our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason. I appeal to Kant to continue refining the three commonsense features of our reason that I described above, namely that our power of reason includes an expansive set of governing abilities, substantive motives, and substantive principles. It might be surprising that I look to Kant as a resource for characterizing and refining how we ordinarily think and speak about the power of reason and its related ideas. Kant is often dismissed for giving a central role to ideas that seem removed from ordinary ways of thinking, advocating for a strict and a priori philosophical method, downplaying the role of emotion and personal attachments, proposing overly-​rigoristic moral principles, claiming that we must do the right thing only from the pure idea of duty, and arguing that we are rationally required to believe in God and our own immortality.38 Kant, however, took common sense and ordinary ideas about reason very seriously, wrote and lectured about them extensively, and incorporated some but perhaps not all of them into the monumental philosophical theory that continues to inspire and befuddle his allies and critics. His writings are very extensive, including not just his books, but also lesser-​known essays, lecture notes from his courses, personal letters, and miscellaneous reflections. Throughout these materials, Kant provides many clues and clear statements about how he understands the abilities, motives, and principles that seem to be part of our power of reason, 38 For these and other criticisms of Kant, see, for example, Williams (1973, c­hapter 13, 1981, c­ hapter 1, 1985, ­chapters 2 and 10), Wolf (1982), Blackburn (1998), Friedman (1997), Sedgwick (1997), Firth (1952), and MacIntyre (1988).

Introduction  19 how we commonly understand a fully rational and reasonable person, what reason seems to require of us in specific contexts, and so on. He is an excellent resource for attempting to characterize our ordinary understanding of reason apart from whether his main arguments or conclusions are correct and whether he has adequately characterized connections between reason and other ideas, such as freedom or the noumenal world. While Kant scholars continue to interpret or rationally reconstruct Kant’s overall system, significant parts of it, or specific passages, in admirable and important ways, my approach in this book is different. I explore Kant’s many statements, offhand remarks, examples, and other claims throughout his major and minor works for clues about how to partially characterize our ordinary ideas of reason while mostly abstracting from many of the more extravagant and controversial ways in which he attempts to characterize and justify his conception of reason. Much as we might try to define a list of commonsense virtues by looking through Aristotle’s works without having to endorse his entire framework, one need not be a Kantian or agree with much of Kant’s overall philosophical picture to appreciate many of his subtle observations about how we ordinarily think and speak about reason and related ideas.

1.4.2  The Kantian Tradition When it comes to the theoretical side of the Content Criterion, my approach to developing a partial theory of reason that fits with our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason is to work within the Kantian philosophical tradition. This tradition is vast. It includes Kant’s own theory of reason along with various interpretations of it or aspects of it as well as partial and complete theories of reason that are inspired by Kant’s ideas. As we have seen, Kantian ways of thinking about the power of reason share several basic assumptions. Such theories deny that our reason alone allows us to acquire direct rational insight into the world outside our own power of reason itself. They hold that normativity of all kinds, including values, principles, virtues, and reasons, somehow arises from the nature and operation of our reason itself.39 Kantians claim that our reason includes a basic and substantive principle (the Categorical Imperative) and that our reason can, on its own, move us to act from it. They afford a significant role to autonomy or rational self-​governance by claiming that we are authors and subjects of moral laws of reason, disposed to comply with them, and not subject to any supposed moral authorities outside reason.

39 Normative reasons, for example, can be understood as ordinary facts that are picked out and explained by principles of reason. See Cureton (2016b).

20  Sovereign Re ason These and other assumptions that help to characterize the Kantian tradition can be interpreted in different ways. While others work in Humean, formalist, rationalist, and other philosophical frameworks to develop and assess competing theories of reason, I have opted to work in the Kantian tradition for several reasons. This tradition includes reservations about any supposed power of rational insight, emphasizes autonomy or rational self-​governance, and suggests a common and objective standpoint for cooperative deliberation. Kantian ideas of humanity, dignity, respect, and justifiability to persons are inspiring to many of us. Theories of reason in the Kantian tradition also, I believe, have greater potential than others have recognized to capture and explain our ordinary and commonsense ways of thinking and speaking about reason. I do not here attempt to fully interpret Kant’s own theory of reason but instead to develop some aspects of a broadly Kantian theory that is consistent with central Kantian assumptions. I explore some plausible and new ways of expanding Kantian theories of reason as well as highlighting some promising themes in Kant’s own thinking that have not been sufficiently investigated. I illustrate how the partial theory I develop fits reasonably well with our ordinary ideas about the powers, motives, and principles that are part of reason. I return at the end of this Introduction to say more about the nonstandard approach I take to Kant’s ideas and writings in this book.40

1.5 Aims This book is part of an ongoing project to work out a conception of reason with affinities to Kant and to suggest how it can be developed in some plausible ways, while allowing for later variations that perhaps go beyond or against what Kant himself believed about the nature of reason. The main aim of the book is to work back and forth between commonsense judgments about reason that are informed by Kant and aspects of the Kantian tradition to propose a partial theory of the power of reason that accords with some features of how we ordinarily think and speak about reason and its related ideas. More specifically, my aim is to draw on Kant and common sense to partially characterize four basic, related, and radical features of the power of reason and to show their initial plausibility. This partial theory of reason might eventually be developed into a comprehensive one that more closely satisfies the Content Criterion than other theories within or outside the Kantian tradition.

40 My holistic approach is not circular. We can reflect on our commonsense judgments, develop theories, and work back and forth between theory and practice to find a conception of reason that, on reflection, fits with our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking.

Introduction  21 The book also has several special aims. Three of them are part of the book’s general aim and focus on the powers, motives, and principles that seem to be part of our power of reason. The fourth special aim is orthogonal to these main ones but is nonetheless significant for those with historical or contemporary interests in Kant.

1.5.1  Abilities of Reason One special aim is to characterize an idea of autonomy or rational self-​governance that mitigates some concerns about our abilities to govern ourselves through reason. Humeans, Aristotelians, and others have long ridiculed Kantian ideas of autonomy. They find the supposed ideals of a person who governs herself by reason and a world of such people to be off-​putting, distracting, immoral, exclusionary, dangerous, and undeserving of our allegiance or the priority we might normally give them. Blackburn, for instance, derides what he calls the Kantian Captain.41 Reason in a person, on this model, is like the captain of a ship who stands above and has ultimate authority over a crew, namely our natural feelings, emotions, and desires. The captain himself is above reproach; the crew cannot force him to do anything; and the ship is free when the captain is in control and not free when the crew directs its course. Whether or not this metaphor accurately depicts Kant’s conception of reason, it reveals important concerns about theories that treat reason as supremely authoritative over other parts of our minds. The idea of rational self-​governance might be an unhelpful metaphor that does not shed light on the nature of our power of reason. As Blackburn says, it is “not clear whether these particularly blissful ships travel anywhere” because reason in each of us, by analogy to the Kantian Captain standing apart from his crew, is “immune in all important respects from the gifts or burdens of our internal animal natures, or of our temperaments as they are formed by contingent nature, socialization, and external surrounds.”42 A fully reason-​governed person might be more or less inert and aimless, with nothing to determine how he governs himself.

1.5.2  Motives of Reason A second special aim is to describe an idea of rational self-​governance that fits with our commonsense judgments about what properly motivates someone to act in rational and reasonable ways. The Kantian ideal of a reason-​governed person might be a pernicious ideal that incorporates elements of universality, impartiality, 41 Blackburn (1998, 243–​50). 42 Blackburn (1998, 248).

22  Sovereign Re ason independence, coldness, and self-​control while excluding or downplaying emotion and social connection. Kantian theories of reason are regularly criticized for being cold and unfeeling and for giving absolute priority to the rational concern for duty as such in explaining what properly moves someone to act morally.43 These or other features might imply that such theories are biased against women or those with intellectual disabilities, distort proper deliberation and motivation, denigrate emotion, or exemplify authoritarian impulses.44

1.5.3  Principles of Reason A third special aim is to develop a novel way for theories of reason to capture and explain our ordinary judgments about what reason requires of us. As we discussed earlier, Kantian theories have long been criticized for failing to generate requirements of reason that we recognize in common sense and for offering dubious explanations for why reason requires us to do or not do certain things. Moral requirements in particular, according to Kantian views, are unconditional principles that either are constitutive of the power of reason or derive from such principles. The Categorical Imperative, which is an expression of the supreme principle of morality, cannot derive from or appeal to normative considerations that exist apart from the nature and operation of our reason itself. Nor can it derive from or directly appeal to our natural desires, natural feelings, personal ends, or other contingent features of our psychology. A main concern is that there are insufficient materials left over to formulate and apply the Categorical Imperative in ways that can capture and plausibly explain the many moral requirements we seem to have. It is difficult to show how, for example, the moral principle not to act on maxims we cannot will as universal laws can generate requirements to set the happiness of others as an end, to keep our promises, to forgive other people for minor transgressions against us, and to care for our children. It is also tough to explain how some versions of the Categorical Imperative can justify moral prohibitions on servility, mocking other people, spreading false rumors, and betraying our friends.

1.5.4 Kant The first three special aims of the book are to address these various concerns about Kantian theories of reason. The fourth special aim is to highlight some themes in Kant’s thinking and some passages in his texts that Kant’s commentators and critics 43 See Williams (1973, 1981, ­chapter 2). For replies, see Herman (1993b), and Baron (1995). 44 See Mackenzie and Stoljar (2000), Jaggar (1983), Noddings (2003), Held (2006), Walker (2007), Kittay (2019), Wolf (1982), Williams (1981, ­chapter 8), Habermas (1984), and MacIntyre (1988).

Introduction  23 might find shocking or perhaps pleasantly surprising. These themes include that our power of reason has substantive interests of its own, that these interests help to determine what we could will as universal law or would agree to in the Kingdom of Ends, that our reason allows us to govern ourselves by theoretical, prudential, and moral principles of reason, and that requirements of reason apply to what we imagine, pay attention to, desire, and feel and not just to what we believe and choose. Although these suggestions are likely to meet with significant skepticism among Kantians, I show that there are good textual and structural reasons for attributing them to Kant. Exploring these themes in Kant helps us to understand some of his ideas about reason. Doing so also provides materials for ongoing debates in Kant scholarship, such as how he understands the Categorical Imperative, autonomy, the unity of reason, the distinction between moral and empirical practical reason, virtue, character, dignity, humanity, happiness, freedom, natural perfection, conscience, the Kingdom of Ends, supererogation, and many other ideas.

1.6 Limits The limits of this book will become apparent as we proceed, but here are some of the main ones. I do not attempt to justify or fully specify the Content Criterion as a suitable standard for evaluating theories of the power of reason. I do not try to defend the three features of the power of reason I find in common sense from skeptical challenges, to justify them in any deep way beyond the Content Criterion, or to provide sociological or historical evidence that they are widely affirmed by people from many different backgrounds and cultures. I instead call attention to and explore these features concerning the abilities, motives, and principles of reason in ways that I hope will seem sensible and familiar. I also do not try to vindicate the main assumptions of the Kantian tradition or to convince Humeans, rationalists, or others to become Kantians. The theory of the power of reason that I propose is a partial conception. It leaves for further discussion many elements of our reason and its relations to other ideas. The main features of my proposed conception are also somewhat vague and open to additional interpretation and development. I do not claim that the partial theory I describe is the best conception of reason or that it is better than other ones in the Kantian tradition or in other traditions. Much more work needs to be done developing and studying various theories for us to confidently compare them by the Content Criterion. As I explain in the final section of this Introduction, I also do not intend here to interpret Kant’s considered views about reason but instead highlight and draw on themes in his thinking. Despite these limits, there is much to gain from emphasizing our incredibly rich ideas of reason in common sense and ordinary language, exploring some features of a new theory of reason that expands the boundaries of traditional Kantian ways of

24  Sovereign Re ason thinking, attempting to capture and explain our reflective judgments about reason in ways that are responsive to criticisms from a variety of perspectives, and highlighting themes and texts in Kant that shed light on some of his most influential ideas.

1.7  The Sovereignty Conception of Reason With these preliminaries about aims, methods, and limits in hand, let’s preview the new and partial theory of reason with Kantian roots that I develop in this book. This theory captures and explains several aspects of Kant-​informed ordinary thinking and speaking about the power of reason. I call it the Sovereignty Conception of Reason because its unifying idea is that of an autonomous or reason-​governed person who governs herself by reason in all respects and aspects of life. Such a person legislates principles of reason of all kinds to herself based on substantive interests that are part of her power of reason itself rather than drawn from her natural feelings and desires. She executes those principles in herself with desires and feelings that arise from her reason. She also judges herself according to those principles with internal judicial processes and accompanying feelings of guilt and regret that are also produced by her power of reason. Here is how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason interprets the abilities, motives, and principles that are part of our power of reason. For each of them, I also begin to explain how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason extends traditional Kantian theories of reason and helps to address some standard worries about those views.

1.7.1  Abilities of Reason The Sovereignty Conception of Reason specifies the governing abilities that are part of our power of reason. Our power of reason allows us to govern most or all of our mental powers, including not just how we act and what we believe but also what we imagine, pay attention to, understand, desire, and even feel. Our power of reason allows us to govern ourselves by rational principles of all kinds, not just moral ones. Our reason also includes a wide variety of governing abilities through which we can recognize principles of theoretical, prudential, and moral reason, impose them on our various mental powers, connect incentives to them, execute them through rationally produced desires and feelings, apply them to particular cases, warn ourselves that we might violate them, hold ourselves responsible for breaking them, and impose penalties on ourselves for doing so. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason extends traditional Kantian conceptions of autonomy. We are able to govern our many mental powers by reason, not just our ability to make choices. We can govern ourselves by all kinds of principles

Introduction  25 of reason, not just moral ones. We can also legislate, execute, and adjudicate these principles of theoretical, prudential, and moral reason on ourselves in ways that specify some crucial details of the idea of rational self-​governance. This conception of the governing abilities that are part of our reason helps to address concerns that Kantian autonomy is merely metaphorical. By incorporating substantive interests of reason among the grounds for legislating principles of reason to ourselves, the Sovereignty Conception can also respond to concerns that our reason lacks sufficient materials to allow us to exercise its governing powers in determinate and purposeful ways.

1.7.2  Motives of Reason The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that our power of reason includes substantive final interests in various things.45 Part of having a rational nature is to care about, for example, knowledge, enlightenment, explanation, happiness, the lives of persons, and solidarity, for their own sake. These interests of reason do not depend on our natural desires, natural feelings, personal ends, or other contingent features of our psychology. Nor do they depend on values, principles, or reasons. These motives are instead constitutive of our power of reason itself. Our power of reason is not passive or inert. It does not merely move us to conform to principles of reason. Our reason includes drives, dispositions, desires, and other interests to 45 See, for example, G 4: 460n; MM 6: 212–​13; A462/​B490–​A476/​B504; A741/​B769; CPJ 5: 223; NF 18: 274. In some places, Hill (2000, 139, 150–​1, 2002, 152–​3, 2012, 309, 2021a, 95) gestures towards a more expansive set of interests of reason that help to determine how his ideal legislators deliberate and legislate (but see also note 26 in Chapter 6). For further discussion of Hill’s views, see Chapter 7. A few other Kant scholars, including Ferrarin (2015, 24–​34), Kleingeld (1998a), Yovel (1986), Raedler (2015, 12–​15, 60–​6), Velkley (2014), Engstrom (2009), Ypi (2021), Mudd (2017), Breazeale (1994), Gilead (1985), Neiman (1994), and Schafer (2023, ­chapter 4), have noticed and discussed some of Kant’s claims about reason’s interests. The interests of reason they discuss are mostly limited to ones in explanation and systematic unity, whereas I suggest that our interests of reason are far more expansive than this. Michael Smith (1994) argues that normative reasons are grounded in what we would desire if we were fully rational, where being rational is interpreted procedurally as involving full information, deliberating from standards of rational prudence, and striving for systematic unity among our desires without being subject to “compulsions, addictions, and emotional disturbances, and the like” (158). In this earlier work, Smith seems to allow for but not explicitly endorse desires that are part of or arise from our power of reason itself, but in more recent work, Smith (2020) argues that ideally rational agents as such have generally dominant intrinsic desires to protect, exercise, and develop their own rational capacities and those of others for acquiring knowledge and realizing their intrinsic desires. See also Rawls (1999a, 312–​13) where he claims that rational and reasonable people, as such, have rational interests in forming, revising, and pursuing a conception of the good, in understanding, applying, and acting from principles of justice, and in promoting their own happiness. These interests of reason, according to Rawls, are incorporated into his Original Position by assuming that each party from that standpoint is only motivated to secure her share of “primary goods,” which are the social conditions and means that are usually needed for satisfying their interests of reason. According to the partial conception of reason described in this book, by contrast, there are also other basic interests of reason, including ones in thinking for oneself, knowledge, and respect. For further comparisons to Rawls’ view, see Chapter 7.

26  Sovereign Re ason develop, protect, and exercise our powers of reason, to seek explanations of things, to correct errors in our thinking, to promote the happiness of everyone, and to respect ourselves and others. This feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is a radical expansion of traditional Kantian theories of reason. Traditional Kantian views attribute some motives to our power of reason, but these motives all presuppose principles of reason, such as dispositions and desires to act from such principles and feelings of guilt for culpably breaking moral ones. My unorthodox suggestion is that, in addition to these formal interests of reason, our reason also includes substantive and direct concerns for many things. Kant’s allies and critics have not adequately explored and appreciated this theme in Kant’s own thinking, namely that part of having a rational nature is to have substantive interests in various things for their own sake.46 Including substantive interests in our power of reason helps to address concerns that Kantian ideals of a rational and reasonable person are cold, unfeeling, impartial, and socially disconnected. A rational and reasonable person, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, necessarily cares deeply about many things for their own sake. She has a rich set of values and attachments, including concerns for developing and promoting friendships, communities, and other forms of solidarity with other rational and reasonable people.

1.7.3  Principles of Reason The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that our power of reason includes a principle of justifiability to persons.47 According to this principle, mental acts of all kinds, including choices, beliefs, desires, and even feelings, are required by reason of competent rational people if and because they or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason.48 A wide variety of specific requirements of reason that we affirm in common sense can be derived from this abstract principle because the substantive interests that are part of our reason are themselves extensive and 46 I discuss in Chapters 8 and 9 whether our substantive interests of reason are themselves unified in some ways. 47 This is a common way of understanding the Categorical Imperative, but many of its interpretations or reconstructions share a need to specify criteria that determine whether putative laws or maxims are rationally justifiable to persons. O’Neill (1989, 91–​3), for example, proposes several formal and abstract “Principles of Rational Intending that coherent intending . . . apparently requires agents to observe.” For further comparisons to O’Neill’s view, see Chapter 7. See also Timmons (2017, ­chapter 4), Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapter 3), and Herman (1993b, 121–​2). I suggest that these criteria also include many formal and substantive interests of reason. 48 We will discuss this Partial Principle of Justifiability in Chapters 6 and 7 and explain how it leaves open certain features, including controversies about whether fundamental rational justifiability is a matter of what we “could” or “would” endorse.

Introduction  27 varied. Rational and reasonable people necessarily care about preserving rational nature and acquiring knowledge, for example, so presumptive requirements not to kill or lie to one another are likely justifiable to everyone. This principle of justifiability and the substantive interests of reason that it incorporates also provide plausible explanations for why many commonsense requirements of reason are correct, namely that they could or would be rationally accepted by rational and reasonable people because of final concerns we have simply as rational and reasonable people. Many traditional Kantian theories characterize versions of the principle of justifiability as a constitutive principle of the power of reason. These interpretations of the Categorical Imperative are limited to assessing the morality of our choices, whereas the Sovereignty Conception’s Partial Principle of Justifiability extends to all kinds of mental acts and principles of reason. Traditional Kantian interpretations of the principle of justifiability also limit the grounds of justifiability to formal principles of reason. For example, a maxim of holding slaves is morally unworthy because we supposedly cannot choose to endorse a universal maxim that everyone holds slaves without violating the rational standard against endorsing self-​contradictory maxims. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason expands the grounds of justifiability to include our substantive final interests of reason. A maxim of holding slaves is morally unworthy, on this view, because we could or would not rationally endorse slave ownership of any kind in light of our shared interests of reason in the freedom and happiness of all people, in ensuring that everyone is properly respected, in protecting and developing our own rational abilities and those of others, and in many other things that we care about simply as rational and reasonable people. Apart from whether a universal law requiring certain kinds of slave-​ownership is self-​contradictory, rational and reasonable people could or would reject slavery because of substantive interests of reason they necessarily have as people with the mental power of reason.49 Incorporating interests of reason into the grounds that determine whether something is justifiable to someone helps to address concerns about whether Kantian theories of reason can generate and plausibly explain the wide variety of requirements of reason that we seem to recognize in common sense. Interests of reason are part of our rational nature, so incorporating them into the principle of justifiability is consistent with the Kantian assumption that such principles do not derive from or directly appeal to contingent features of our psychology or to normative entities that exist apart from the nature and operation of our power of reason. These interests of reason are extensive and thick, so many substantive

49 Slavery might be possible in a world in which everyone holds slaves if one can be both a slave and a slave-​owner and the relevant slavery relation is broadly cyclical rather than strictly transitive. Specific kinds of slavery can exist universally, such as holding Romans as chattel slaves or allowing prisoners to choose between the death penalty and enslavement. See Jorati (2023).

28  Sovereign Re ason principles can be derived from them through a principle of justifiability that is also part of our rational nature. These derivations also provide plausible explanations for why reason requires certain things of us. We should help others, for example, not simply because we ourselves might need help but more importantly because we and everyone else have interests of reason in the happiness of all that could or would lead us to endorse a principle of beneficence.

1.8 Structure Along with this Introduction, the book has two parts as well as a Postscript. Part I lays out the main contours of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason by exploring its conception of autonomy or rational self-​governance. Chapter 2 introduces the main ideas of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. Chapter 3 considers what features of ourselves can be governed by our power of reason and suggests that our reason allows us to govern many of our powers of mind, including our powers of imagination, understanding, desire, and choice, through laws of reason. Chapter 4 considers how our power of reason allows us to govern ourselves and suggests that it includes many legislative, executive, and judicial abilities to govern our various mental powers through theoretical, prudential, and moral requirements of reason. Chapter 5 examines what moves us to govern ourselves by reason and suggests that our power of reason includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive desires, dispositions, drives, goals, needs, feelings, and other interests of reason. Chapters 6 and 7 explore what laws of reason we should govern ourselves by and suggest that our power of reason constitutively includes a set of formal and substantive laws of reason. One of the substantive laws is a fundamental principle of justifiability according to which mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. Part II illustrates and applies the Sovereignty Conception of Reason by exploring several substantive interests of reason that we have simply because we have the power of reason and by considering some specific laws of reason that follow from these interests in combination with a principle of justifiability to persons. Chapter 8 describes the general form of argument from the abstract features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason to specific presumptive requirements of reason. Chapter 9 explores our substantive final interests of reason in explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony and the presumptive laws of reason they favor through the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of justifiability. Chapter 10 considers our substantive final interests of reason in the preservation, development, and exercise of rational nature in all people and considers what presumptive laws of reason are justifiable to us on the basis of these interests we all

Introduction  29 necessarily share. Chapter 11 describes our substantive final interests of reason in all people acquiring knowledge, avoiding error, and thinking for themselves and considers various laws of reason that these interests support. Chapter 12 suggests that we have substantive final interests of reason in promoting and protecting several kinds of freedom and that these interests favor many specific laws of reason. Chapter 13 explores our substantive final interests of reason in the happiness of everyone and suggests that these interests help to ground requirements not just to promote happiness but also to desire and feel good about the happiness of others. Chapter 14 considers our substantive final interests of reason in the natural perfection of all people along with some laws of reason that these interests favor, such as to develop our own powers of imagination and agility and to help cultivate them in other people as well. Chapter 15 considers our substantive final interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect and suggests some laws of reason that they favor. And Chapter 16 explores our substantive final interests of reason in social relationships and suggests various laws of reason that are justifiable to all on the basis of these shared concerns that are part of our rational nature itself. In a Postscript, I offer some general remarks about key takeaways of the book and explain how it lays the groundwork for a developing a novel Kantian moral framework along the lines of Thomas E. Hill’s Kingdom of Ends legislative perspective.

1.9  Final Remarks: Further Issues about my Approach to Kant In closing this Introduction, I should say more about how I approach Kant’s ideas and texts. This book is not a standard work in Kant scholarship, and readers need not be Kantians or steeped in Kant’s texts to appreciate its main themes. Yet I include many references to Kant’s works, including to ones that may not be familiar to many readers. I also try to show that the main contours of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason are themes in Kant’s thinking even though they might not be dominant ones, part of the best interpretation of his overall philosophical framework, or fully faithful to all his texts. While exploring these themes, I develop some general ideas and specific claims that Kant’s commentators might find intriguing, worth further study, pertinent to some of our ongoing scholarly debates, and perhaps worth incorporating into interpretation of his philosophical framework. There is so much discussion of Kant in this book that I might be accused of exhibiting and encouraging prejudices that Kant himself warned against: Nothing is more comfortable than to imitate and to draw one’s cognitions from others. From this prejudice [of laziness] arise the various and sundry citations in books, where one cites the judgments of others and their opinions of this or that thing, and presents these citations as proofs . . . One need not think oneself,

30  Sovereign Re ason but instead can rely wholly on the genius, on the understanding of another, and merely imitate others . . . One presents a great, famous learned man to the eye of the learned world and seeks to persuade all others firmly that they will always act in vain, irrespective of all the possible industry, work, and effort they can apply, since they could never be in a position to be equal to this great man, or to come near to him . . . One is afraid oneself, or seeks to make all others afraid, to try to strive ever to become equal to this learned man, just as if it would be a vain undertaking to strive after this.50

A guiding but provisional assumption of this book is that Kant was an exceptionally keen and acute observer of the commonsense and ordinary ways we tend to think and speak about rationality, reasonableness, reasons, reasoning, and other ideas of reason. This claim might seem surprising or incredible in light of Kant’s perhaps deserved reputation in some circles as an advocate of a cold, lifeless, absolute, strict, and demanding moral theory, as hostile to emotion, feeling, and personal connections, as racist and sexist, as self-​righteous, moralistic, and overly influenced by the Protestant ethos of his time and place, as a proponent of metaphysically dubious ideas, and as an obscure and sometimes inconsistent writer. Throughout his main works as well as his essays, lecture notes, correspondence, and reflections, however, Kant offers many interesting but often unsystematic observations about how we ordinarily understand ideas of reason. These claims are sometimes overlooked and often obscured by his more well-​known and controversial attempts to develop a systematically unified conception of reason and to apply it to particular circumstances. Mining this cross-​section in Kant’s thinking is similar to exploring ordinary ideas of the emotions by looking through Hume’s works, the virtues by looking through Aristotle’s texts, and justice by examining John Stuart Mill’s writings. We need not be sentimentalists, virtue ethicists, or utilitarians to appreciate the subtlety with which these philosophers characterized ordinary ideas. Nor must we agree with the conceptions they developed or with how they tried to justify or apply them. We can look to Kant for clues about how to understand our ordinary ideas of what is rational and reasonable, what reason requires, what reasons we have, and how to live a life of reason without having to endorse or even fully understand large parts of his philosophical framework. Kant himself would likely reject some versions of the Content Criterion as a significant basis for evaluating theories of reason. Ordinary ideas and reflective common sense as he understood them, however, influenced the development of his philosophical framework and arguably play roles in why he thinks it is justified.51 50 L-​Log 24: 176–​7. 51 Kant, for example, begins the first two sections of the Groundwork by analyzing ordinary ideas of good will and duty and says in the Preface that his view “would receive a great deal of light from the application of the same principle to the whole system, and of confirmation through the adequacy that it

Introduction  31 For some Kantians, the Content Criterion might simply supplement other grounds for evaluating theories of reason. Others in the Kantian tradition might think that our reflective commonsense judgments about reason might be ones in which our power of reason most clearly reveals itself.52 Some philosophers might think that justifying a theory of reason is simply to show that it satisfies the Content Criterion.53 Still others might contend that pursuing the Content Criterion is a useful and perhaps essential method for discovering mind-​independent normative truths.54 I do not take a position in this book about whether the Content Criterion is the only or most important standard for assessing theories of reason or whether it is one Kant would endorse. I simply assume that there is some value in trying to understand ourselves and our ordinary ideas, beliefs, and practices in a systematically unified way. I have long admired and benefited from many Kant scholars who work to present and explain Kant’s overall framework or crucial parts of it, interpret or rationally reconstruct his arguments, explore his historical influences, uncover his deep ideas, draw out interesting implications, assess his objections to other approaches, and defend him from attacks. I pursue some of this work myself in other contexts. But there are other ways of engaging with historical figures for different purposes, especially when it comes to Kant, who wrote so much, whose framework is extremely complicated and open to radically different interpretations, whose writings are often at key points obscure or incomplete, who might have changed his mind over time, who wrote in a language of which many of us are not native speakers, and whose ideas have generated a vast secondary literature. Themes in someone’s thinking are recurring and more or less stable subjects or ideas that underlie how the person reflects on and investigates a wide set of issues. Themes can be central or ancillary, dominant or subordinate, implicit or overt, prominent at some stages but abandoned later, general or more localized,

would everywhere show” even though “the facility with which a principle can be used and its apparent adequacy furnish no quite certain proof of its correctness” (G 4: 392). The moral catechism at the end of The Metaphysics of Morals appeals to religious texts in the Religion, and the use of examples in the Critique of Practical Reason is apparently meant to draw out latent ideas of, for example, the highest good, a rational prototype, and the authority of reason. See also RevH 8: 129–​30, where Kant says “For in no species of cognition from mere concepts is this kind of experiment more necessary and yet at the same time more feasible than in questions about right, which rest on mere reason; but no one is better capable of setting about such an attempt in a more manifold and complete manner than he who has had the opportunity to put his assumed principle to the test in the case of many conclusions that his whole system, so frequently gone through, has offered.” Kant most often, however, emphasizes the need for a priori methods in philosophy and criticizes attempts to derive principles of reason from examples (G 4: 406–​12). Wood (2008, ­chapter 3) raises important concerns about any appeal to the Content Criterion in interpreting Kant’s considered moral theory. 52 Rawls (1999a, ­chapter 16) gestures at this sort of reflexive view in which our considered judgments about the nature of reason are judgments in which our power of reason is working properly. 53 See Scanlon (2009, 18–​19, 42–​5, lecture 2, 1998, 55–​64) and Rawls (1999c). 54 See Kamm (1993).

32  Sovereign Re ason and consistent or inconsistent with other themes in their thinking. It is often much easier to attribute a theme to someone than it is to show that they endorsed it on careful reflection. Something might be a theme in someone’s thinking but not figure prominently or at all in their considered views. We often can explore some themes while setting aside others. Themes can be independently interesting, insightful, enlightening, and worth further development apart from other themes in someone’s thinking and apart from their fully endorsed views. One of the special aims of this book, as I said earlier, is to show that reason as an expansive governing power of mind with substantive interests that help to determine what principles it legislates reflects themes in Kant’s thinking, as revealed in his main philosophical works, essays, course lectures, offhand remarks, letters, and so on.55 I do not claim that these ideas are part of his considered philosophical theory. I do not take a position on their relative priority and relationship to other themes in Kant’s thinking. I focus instead on identifying and exploring these themes apart from what, if any, implications they might have for understanding Kant’s overall philosophical project or definitively interpreting his texts. While there might be plausible ways of interpreting or rationally reconstructing large parts of Kant’s framework by emphasizing the themes I describe (indeed, I think there are), doing so is beyond the scope of this book and, in any case, requires first clarifying and interpreting those themes themselves in the ways I pursue here. My approach to Kant’s texts in this book is to look through them for what he says or implies about the governing role of reason and our interests of reason with the aim of specifying some features of a conception of reason that fits ordinary ideas about reason on due reflection. I often abstract from various parts of Kant’s philosophical framework, including some controversial ones that have contributed to Kant’s poor reputation among some philosophers. I also usually set aside some of the uses that Kant put these ideas to and their potential tensions with other themes he affirms. I do not attempt to sort out the evidentiary value of Kant’s published versus unpublished writings, of those written at different times of his life or for various purposes or audiences, of sustained passages versus offhand remarks, of apparently conflicting texts, of the reliability of students who took notes in his courses, of the accuracy of the translations I use, or otherwise treat Kant’s texts with the scholarly precision that is appropriate in other contexts.56 These methodological limitations are appropriate for the goals of this book. My frequent citations of Kant’s texts are primarily meant to invite readers to review and think through relevant passages. Although I have learned much from many Kant scholars, I often note 55 In his “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” Rawls (1999a, ­chapter 23) pursues something close to the approach to Kant I describe here. 56 This more or less “interpretive egalitarianism” (von der Pfordten 2021) is not appropriate for scholarly works aimed at interpreting Kant’s considered philosophical views, but it is suitable for identifying themes in his thinking.

Introduction  33 ongoing controversies and relevant literatures in Kant scholarship without fully engaging in those debates. A standard work in the history of philosophy that aimed to interpret or rationally reconstruct Kant’s philosophical framework with full historical accuracy on the basis of the themes I describe would have to address these and other issues as well as compare the result to other sophisticated interpretations of his framework. Doing so, however, is not required by, and would likely distract from, pursuing my more modest aim of drawing from some themes in Kant’s thinking to characterize some features of a conception of reason that fits fairly well with our ordinary ideas of reason. The limitations of my approach to Kant might seem to make the project rather boring to Kant scholars and others interested in Kant by leaving aside many of the issues that have most perplexed us or that have made Kant so famous. My project, however, is still significant for the Kant community because it suggests that Kant’s thinking about reason is far more nuanced, substantive, extensive, and commonsensical than what might appear from studying the structure of his philosophical framework and the most discussed parts of his philosophical corpus. My project also provides materials from a variety of texts that some Kant scholars might have overlooked or not engaged with that are relevant to settling certain scholarly disputes. It encourages those who are skeptical of some of Kant’s larger aims to appreciate some potentially surprising aspects of his thinking. And, as I have suggested, the themes I attribute to Kant might be incorporated into other interpretations or rational reconstructions of Kant’s framework or provide the foundation for new ones. Kant was no oracle. His ideas must be assessed just like those of anyone else. He can help us to reflect on our ordinary understanding of reason and to develop plausible theories of the power of reason. This book and my engagement with Kant in it are only part of an ongoing and cooperative project involving many people from many philosophical traditions to understand our power of reason and ourselves as rational and reasonable persons.

2

Introduction to Part I Common sense and ordinary language suggest that our reason is an embodied mental power that allows us to govern ourselves. Through our reason, we can keep ourselves in check, think and act rationally, overcome unreasonable biases and temptations, assess ourselves by standards of reason, and relate with others in rational and reasonable ways. This basic idea of autonomy or rational self-​ governance is partially reflected in Plato’s charioteer, who guides and properly rules over the other parts of our minds, in Joseph Butler’s idea of an authoritative conscience that governs our self-​love and benevolence, and in Kant’s claim that we are subject only to moral laws that we give to ourselves.1 Our commonsense understanding of reason as a governing power in our minds, however, is more expansive and complicated than philosophers commonly recognize.

2.1  Four Questions: Subjects, Abilities, Motives, and Requirements of Autonomy In this first part of the book, we will develop the basic features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason and show its initial plausibility by exploring four main questions about the idea of autonomy or rational self-​governance. These orienting questions are: (1) What features of ourselves does our power of reason allow us to govern? (2) In what ways does our reason allow us to govern ourselves? (3) What moves us to govern ourselves by reason? (4) What are the requirements of reason through which we govern ourselves? Addressing these questions reveals a rich theory of the power of reason that fits reasonably well with commonsense judgments about the abilities, motives, and principles of reason. Doing so also provides new and appealing ways of answering traditional challenges to Kantian views of reason and autonomy by drawing on common sense and underexplored themes in Kant’s thinking. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason is a substantive but partial way of thinking about the power of reason we share. The six chapters in this part are

1 The charioteer analogy appears in Plato’s (2007) Phaedrus. Butler (2017) mainly discusses his views about reason in his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. See also Darwall (2008, 244–​ 83). We will discuss Kant’s conception of autonomy throughout the book, but see especially G 4: 440–​9. For a philosophical history of the idea of autonomy, see Schneewind (1998).

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0002

38  Sovereign Re ason devoted to explaining its main contours, which are complicated and interrelated, in ways that accord with general aspects of reflective common sense. In Part II, we will interpret and apply the Sovereignty Conception of Reason by explaining how we can govern ourselves by reason in a wide variety of circumstances and areas of life. These specific implications, I suggest, provide further support for the Sovereignty Conception of Reason as a partial account of our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason and related terms.

2.2  Sovereign Reason One way of thinking about our mental power of reason as allowing us to govern ourselves is with a political metaphor.2 Kant says that, without an effective power of reason, our other powers of mind would be in a kind of “state of nature” with respect to themselves and one another that is analogous to a state of nature among persons.3 Our powers of sense, imagination, understanding, judgment, attention, signification, choice, feeling, desire, and others sometimes harmonize with one another. They also make up a mere “aggregate” that lacks significant order and coherence because of the many ways in which our mental powers usually conflict with themselves and each other.4 Our powers of sense and understanding, for example, might lead us to believe something that our power of feeling leads us to deny because believing it would be too painful for us despite good evidence we have for its truth. Our powers of attention and imagination can be pulled in one direction when we deliberately choose to attend to or imagine something but pulled in other directions by drugs or distracting noises. Our power of desire might produce conflicting desires; we might affirm self-​contradictory beliefs; and we might make inconsistent choices. When our minds are in this condition, conflicts within and among our mental powers are typically settled by their relative causal strengths. This is, Kant says, a “state of injustice and violence” in which our powers of mind cannot make their “assertions and claims valid or secure them except through war.”5 Like a political sovereign, our power of reason allows us to organize, unify, and adjudicate conflicts within our own minds as a whole by serving as its supreme 2 Versions of this political metaphor, in which reason is regarded as the ruler within our own minds, are common in philosophical conceptions of the human mind, most notably in Plato’s (2007) Republic, in which the human mind or soul is likened to a political state with reason as its head. O’Neill (1989, 1992) emphasizes the political metaphors that Kant sometimes uses to explain his conception of reason. See also Deligiorgi (2002) and Møller (2020). 3 A751/​B779–​80. Kant in this passage says that, without establishing the basic principles and limits of reason, reason itself would be in a state of nature, but he also implies that our minds as a whole would be in a state of nature as well if our reason “cannot make its assertions and claims valid” on our other mental powers. 4 CPJ 20: 206. 5 A751/​B779–​80. See also A851/​B879; CPJ 5: 345.

Introduction to Part I  39 authority. Our reason includes abilities to determine how our other mental powers ought to operate, to set their proper boundaries, to settle conflicts within and among them, to define goals for them, and otherwise to grant us, as Kant puts it, “the peace of a state of law” in our own minds.6 Not only does our reason include abilities to govern our powers of judgment and choice, but also we can use our reason to govern our powers of sense, imagination, understanding, attention, signification, feeling, and desire as well as how these various powers of mind relate to one another. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason provides a way of interpreting and extending this basic idea of autonomy or rational self-​governance. Our reason allows us to direct the operations of our other mental powers by imposing rational requirements that specify, for example, what choices and judgments are contrary to reason, what reason requires us to pay attention to or abstract from, and when it is reasonable to imagine or desire something. Our reason allows us to recognize and enforce in ourselves rational requirements that apply to what judgments we affirm, what choices we make, what we desire, what we imagine, what we pay attention to, and so on.

2.3  Human Reason Specifying and explaining the main features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason require characterizing the nature of the powers of mind that our reason can govern. We cannot simply consider our power of reason in isolation from other parts or aspects of our minds. We must reflect on our human reason, which is the power of reason as it is embodied in human beings. Other kinds of creatures, such as God, angels, aliens, and higher primates, might have reason, but the other mental powers in them that are under the direction of their reason might be different from our own. How, if at all, their reason allows them to govern themselves depends in part on the nature of their other mental powers that it governs. God, for example, might have a radically different kind of understanding from ours, lack feelings and senses, not possess a power of choice that is free in the same ways as ours is, and necessarily judge in accordance with his powers of understanding and reason.7 If these differences exist, then the ways God rationally governs himself might not be the same as the ways we rationally govern ourselves. The idea of human reason, which is the power of reason as it exists in human beings, does not presuppose unacceptable forms of relativism or pluralism about

6 A751/​B779–​80. 7 CPrR 5: 135–​8; G 4: 414; L-​Th 28: 996. For discussions of Kant’s conception of God, including differences in how reason is instantiated in God and in us, see Byrne (2007), Brewer (2022), Winegar (2017), and Chignell (2007a).

40  Sovereign Re ason reason. Various rational abilities, such as to reason deductively, are part of the power of reason in all rational creatures. The most basic requirements of reason, which are constitutive of that power in any creature who has it, are necessary, timeless, a priori, and univocal. The power of reason in different creatures, however, might be instantiated in different ways. Our reason might produce desires and feelings that counteract temptations to irrationality, while God’s reason might not do so because he necessarily conforms to all rational standards. The fundamental requirements of reason might also imply some rational standards for us but not for God because of our disparate natures and circumstances. We might be rationally required to develop our talents, strive for moral perfection, join political arrangements, and show gratitude to those who help us, whereas God might not be required to do these things because he is supposedly a perfect and self-​sufficient being.8 In its most general form, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is a partial account of that power in all rational creatures, but its interpretation and application to us requires examining the mental powers of rationally self-​governing human beings. We cannot fully understand reason as it exists in us without understanding the mental powers that it allows us to govern in ourselves, much as fully specifying the nature of political governance requires examining the nature of the people who are governed.

2.4  Other Features of the Power of Reason Before we address our main questions about autonomy or rational self-​governance in the following chapters, there are some basic assumptions about the power of reason that I should briefly mention. As a broadly Kantian but partial theory, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason includes several background features that are characteristic of the Kantian tradition without specifying or presupposing particular interpretations of them. Our power of reason, I assume, includes abilities to draw mediate logical inferences, to formulate ideas that we cannot experience, such as ideas of virtue, duty, and God, and to comprehend its own nature, operations, and limits.9 Beyond its use in logical inference and self-​reflection, our power of reason cannot tell us anything about the way the world is. It cannot, on its own, acquaint us with physical objects or give us insight into the existence of God, laws of nature, Platonic Forms, souls, or nonnatural values, principles, or reasons outside itself.10 Powers of theoretical reason basically concern acquiring knowledge or understanding, 8 We will discuss some additional features of human reason in Chapter 10, including ways in which our power of reason is an embodied power that can be destroyed, damaged, cultivated, and exercised in ways that depend on our bodies and circumstances. 9 A50–​57/​B74–​82; A299/​B355; A674/​B702; A710/​B738; L-​Anth 25: 550. 10 A711/​B739; TSP 8: 391.

Introduction to Part I  41 often with the assistance of our other cognitive powers, while those of practical reason more or less concern how to bring about things in the world.11 The power of reason operates in accordance with the principle of noncontradiction.12 The principles, ideas, and uses of reason are necessarily consistent with themselves and with one another.13 They are also all universally communicable to other rational creatures.14 Reason is not determined to operate by anything outside of itself, including our other mental powers, nor do its basic principles derive from any other source. Genuine pronouncements of reason are necessary, univocal, certain, and never in error. Beyond these basic Kantian ideas, which can be understood in different ways, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason includes four main features of rational self-​governance that we will now turn to explore.15

11 CPrR 5: 89–​90; CPJ 5: 467. 12 A151/​B190. 13 CPrR 5: 120. 14 Rel 6: 137–​8. 15 For further discussion of these and other features of Kant’s theory of reason, see Neiman (1994), Pollok (2017), Rescher (2000), and Sticker (2021b).

3

Scope of Rational Self-​Governance The aim of this chapter is to consider our first main question, namely: What features of ourselves does our power of reason allow us to govern? Autonomy or rational self-​governance, according to traditional Kantian views, concerns the ways in which our reason governs just one aspect of ourselves, namely our power to make choices.1 This mental power of choice allows us to act, intend, set ends, adopt maxims, make commitments, and otherwise choose. Our reason allows us to govern our power of choice, traditional Kantian views maintain, by allowing us to impose unconditional requirements of reason to choose or not choose in certain ways, such as to treat others fairly and respectfully and to set peace and justice as ends. An autonomous or rationally self-​governing person, on this view, has the ability to govern her own choices, while a fully autonomous person also chooses on every occasion to comply with the requirements of choice that are set through her power of reason. There is, in common sense and ordinary language, a broader idea of an autonomous or rationally self-​governing person who governs herself by reason in many respects. Such a person is not only governed by her reason in the kinds of choices she makes, but she is also governed by her reason in how she thinks, what she believes, what she pays attention to, what she imagines, what she wants, and perhaps even what she feels. It seems that a rational and reasonable person thinks for herself, does not hold contradictory beliefs, notices injustices, imagines herself in the place of others, wants them to flourish, and does not feel pleasure at their misfortunes. Our power of reason is sovereign over our minds as a whole, not simply over how we choose. Many of our mental powers are under the direction of our reason, which specifies how they are rationally required to operate and rationally resolves conflicts among them. We might not always choose, think, believe, pay attention to, imagine, desire, or feel in accordance with the requirements that our own reason imposes on us, but someone who fully governs herself by her reason is fully rational and reasonable in all aspects of her mind.

1 For standard interpretations of Kant’s conception of autonomy, which limit autonomy to legislating and acting from principles of morality (pure practical reason), see Reath (2006, ­chapters 4 and 5), Hill (1992, ­chapter 5), Holtman (2009), Wolff (1974), Guyer (2009), O’Neill (2003), Wood (2008, ­chapter 6), Allison (1990), Baxley (2010), Johnson (2007), Kohl (2023), and Kleingeld and Willaschek (2019).

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0003

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  43 The first of four features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our power of reason allows us to govern many of our powers of mind, including our powers of imagination, understanding, desire, and choice, through laws of reason. This is an expansion of traditional Kantian views of rational self-​governance. An autonomous person, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, governs her power of choice as well as many other aspects of her mind by her own power of reason. Broadening the set of mental powers that are under the direction of reason beyond the power of choice helps Kantian theories of reason to satisfy some aspects of the Content Criterion. In ordinary language and common sense, we seem to affirm various requirements of reason that concern what we believe, desire, notice, and imagine. We sometimes, for example, call someone unreasonable for the jealousy she feels towards her friend, for failing to abstract from the gender and race of job candidates, for fantasizing about smiting her enemies, and for deferring to the judgments of her spouse in important matters. We often think of fully rational and reasonable people as governed by reason in many respects. Kantian moral theories are criticized for their focus on actions, maxims, and other choices, whereas it seems that our power of reason also governs our attitudes, emotions, and other aspects of our minds.2 By embracing a robust conception of autonomy in which our reason allows us to govern many of our mental powers, not just our power of choice, Kantian theories of reason are also more likely to capture and explain the many kinds of rational requirements that seem evidently correct. Interpreting and explaining this first feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason requires us to examine the general idea of a mental power, to specify some of the mental powers that humans typically possess as well as some of their connections to one another, and to explain why it is initially plausible that our reason allows us to govern many powers of our minds besides our power of choice. The powers of the human mind that I discuss are ordinary and easily recognizable ones, but my characterizations of them and their relations to others are provisional, incomplete, sometimes controversial, and revisable. This partial model of the human mind, which has roots in Kant, helps to specify which mental powers, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, are governed by our reason in human beings with our kinds of minds. It also serves as needed background for later chapters, especially those in Part II where we will illustrate how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason can generate and explain many particular requirements of reason on our various mental powers.

2 See Annas (1984), Baier (1995), Blum (1980), and Wolf (2012) for criticisms of this kind, and see Baron (1995), Baxley (2010), and Dillon (1992) for some Kantian responses. Perhaps Kant’s main aims to save morality and religion from causal determinism led him to focus on the power of choice as most clearly governable by reason, even though he was aware of how other powers of mind, such as imagination and attention, can also be governed by reason in perhaps incomplete ways.

44  Sovereign Re ason

3.1  Powers of Mind: Abilities and Principles Powers of mind include abilities to perform characteristic mental acts. Our power of sense, for example, allows us to sense things; our power of attention allows us to notice and abstract from things; our power of imagination allows us to imagine things; and our power of choice allows us to choose things. The acts that our mental powers allow us to perform give rise to mental states. When we assent to a judgment as true, for instance, we have a belief in it, and when we feel something, we have that feeling.3 Our mental powers are exercised when we perform their characteristic acts. Often this happens involuntarily, such as when we believe or get distracted by something, but some mental acts are under our voluntary control, such as when we decide to concentrate on a problem or choose to imagine something. Various factors can interfere with our mental powers or prevent their exercise. A migraine might blur our vision, or a loud noise might distract us from our work. Mental abilities can be realized, unrealized, or entirely absent. A realized mental ability is one that allows us to perform its characteristic mental acts. A mental ability is unrealized when we cannot act in those ways, but we could do so if the ability were sufficiently developed. We can also lack a mental ability altogether when we simply cannot perform the relevant mental acts. For example, someone might have a good memory that becomes significantly impaired as her dementia progresses until she eventually loses even the bare capacity to form new memories. A young child might not have the realized ability to understand complicated logical proofs but nonetheless possess an unrealized capacity that, with adequate training and maturity, will in due course allow her to do so. None of us, it seems, has the realized or unrealized mental ability to directly read the minds of other people or to see the future. Our mental abilities can be realized to varying degrees, but there are usually limits to how discerning our sense of taste can be, how vividly we can imagine things, how much knowledge we can acquire, or otherwise how well our mental abilities can be developed.4 In addition to abilities to perform certain mental acts, mental powers can also include constitutive principles that determine what mental acts they allow us to perform and otherwise how those mental powers operate. Principles of this kind can be, but need not be, part of the nature of a mental power. For example, our power of understanding arguably allows us to apply concepts to our perceptions only in accordance with certain rules or concepts that help to characterize that

3 I mean “belief ” in our contemporary sense, not Kant’s special notion of Belief (Glaube), which is closer to what we sometimes mean by hope. See Chignell (2013), Cureton (2018b), and Stratmann (2023). 4 For more on the nature of abilities and capacities in general, see Johnson (2011, ­chapter 8), Greco (2009), Mele (2003), and Smith (2003).

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  45 mental power and distinguish it from the conceptual powers that other creatures might have.5 Our power of reason allows us to work through logical proofs in accordance with the principle of noncontradiction, which also constrains any other mental acts that our reason allows us to perform. If these rules or principles were different, then we would not have our kind of understanding or any power of reason.6 Some of our mental powers, such as those of sense and feeling, might not include or operate according to principles that are constitutive of those powers. Powers of mind can be classified in various ways. Some of them might be explained in terms of other mental powers, while basic mental powers are ones that cannot be reduced in this way. The power of memory, for example, might just be the power to imagine things we have previously sensed along with the power to be conscious of our mental representations.7 Mental powers can be grouped into composite ones based on their commonalities. The power of judgment might include all mental powers related to judgments or beliefs, such as abilities to form, affirm, revise, reject, assume, reflect on, and investigate them. Our mental powers can also interact with one another when, for instance, our feelings affect our judgments or our fantasies affect our desires. The idea of a mental power need not include controversial claims about whether parts or aspects of our minds are innate modules, have functions, or correspond to specific areas of the brain.8 We often speak and think in ways that presuppose that we and others have mental powers. We might say that someone has a good heart but a weak will, a clear understanding but poor judgment, a sharp wit but a dull sensibility, a knack for languages but a poor head for numbers, or a lively imagination but a short attention span. We sometimes describe conflicts within ourselves as ones between our head and heart or our reason and emotion. Teachers often try to develop the cognitive and emotional powers of their students. Mental-​health professionals are concerned with diagnosing and treating mental impairments, such as depression and attention deficit disorder. And many of us know what it is like when our mental powers are not at their peak because of jetlag or illness.

5 A80/​B106. See Aquila (1989), Kemp Smith (1962), Guyer (1987), Longuenesse (1998), Strawson (1966), and Watkins (2005). 6 See Anth 7: 201, 216, 218; L-​Anth 25: 553 for Kant’s discussion of the mental power of “unreason.” See also Chapters 6 and 10. 7 A649/​B677. 8 For purposes of this book, I assume that the human mind can be understood as including several more or less separate powers with characteristic abilities, principles, dispositions, or other features. Kant uses “power” in a different way and uses “faculty” to more or less refer to mental powers of this kind (L-​M 29: 824). Fodor (1975, 1968) develops a contemporary version of what others, such as McDowell (1998, 200), deride as an outdated “eighteenth century faculty psychology.” See also Blackburn (2013, 97–​100).

46  Sovereign Re ason

3.2  A Partial Model of Human Powers of Mind: Sense, Imagination, Understanding, Judgment, Attention, Signification, Choice, Feeling, and Desire Philosophers, psychologists, and others have long attempted to characterize the powers of the human mind and to explain their relations to one another. There is no settled account, however, of which mental powers we have, the nature of those powers, and how they are organized. We need some model of this sort to explain the nature of our reason as a governing power of our minds. We can make some progress by laying out and assuming a partial and provisional conception of some of our mental powers and some of their connections to one another. My approach to doing so is to draw from common sense as well as from Kant, who presents a cogent overview of our various mental powers and characterizes some of them in intricate and sometimes obscure ways that need not concern us here. Like scientific models of weather systems and voting behavior, the partial model of the human mind that I describe and suppose is incomplete, simplified, likely mistaken in places, and probably not precisely the same as Kant’s model, which is notoriously difficult to interpret.9 This working understanding of some human mental powers and their connections is nonetheless plausible as well as useful for exploring the nature of our power of reason. Any conclusions we reach about the governing abilities of reason in human beings, however, are provisional and subject to revision if they depend on inaccurate features of the model of our other mental powers. Let’s consider some powers of mind that human persons typically possess and begin examining which ones our power of reason might govern, relying for now on an ordinary understanding of governance until we analyze it in the next chapter. Some human persons might lack some of these mental powers, which might also be dormant or impaired in others. I do not mean to make any moral claims about the powers I describe below or about their connections to personhood or our basic moral status. These are simply powers of mind that most human beings have and that, in many cases, seem to be subject to requirements of reason, susceptible to its inducements, and otherwise under its direction even though we do not always succeed at rationally governing them effectively in ourselves. This model not only helps to specify the first feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, namely that our power of reason governs many of our mental powers. It will also help us in Part II to show how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason can plausibly capture and explain a wide variety of rational requirements and reasons that we recognize in reflective common sense. In addition to describing these powers of mind that human beings typically possess, I provide some brief initial grounds for thinking 9 The partial model of the human mind I describe draws on Ameriks (2000), Sorensen and Williamson (2018), Falduto (2014), Kitcher (1990), Kneller (2007), Kraus (2020), Louden (2011), and Waxman (1991).

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  47 that our power of reason perhaps governs many of them. These are only preliminary suggestions, which we will consider in more detail in later chapters.

3.2.1 Sense Our power of sense includes the ability to perceive things by the ways they affect us.10 Outer senses, such as sight and touch, give us sensations of things outside our minds. Inner sense gives us appearances of our own mental states and processes, such as observing the course of our thoughts and noticing fluctuations in our feelings. Senses of both kinds can be dull or discerning, realized to varying degrees, impaired, or entirely absent. There are limits to how well our senses can be sharpened, which prevent human beings from hearing certain sounds or detecting certain mental states in themselves.11 Ordinary language and common sense suggest that our power of sense might be governed by reason in certain ways. A reasonable and rational person, for example, seems to acquire many sense perceptions rather than shut her eyes or close her ears to certain things. She is apparently sensitive to the plight of others and aware of her own mental states. It is in many cases reasonable for us to sharpen our senses for various purposes and unreasonable to destroy them in ourselves or others. These apparent connections between reason and sense can be explained in different ways, and we have not yet specified exactly what it takes for reason to govern a mental power. Our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking nonetheless suggest the possibility that our power of sense might be partially under the direction of our power of reason.

3.2.2 Imagination Our power of imagination includes the ability to form sense representations of things that are not present to our senses.12 Reproductive imagination includes the ability to bring back to mind a perception, such as an image or sound. This can occur by remembering the perception or through patterns of association in which a perception calls to mind another sense representation. Productive imagination includes the ability to produce sense representations that we have not acquired through our senses by combining our sense representations together, such as imagining a centaur. Our imagination can sometimes produce impressions 10 Anth 7: 133, 141–​2, 153, 161, 213; A19/​B33. 11 A226/​B273; L-​Log 24: 87. 12 Anth 7: 153, 167–​9, 176; A118; PMB 15: 944. For contemporary work in psychology with some affinities to this way of conceptualizing the power of imagination, see Hubbard (2010), Abraham (2016), and Pearson and Kosslyn (2015).

48  Sovereign Re ason that are so lively and vivid that they are indistinguishable from our perceptions. Hypochondriacs, for instance, often imagine supposed ailments they do not have. Our imagination can be underdeveloped or impaired in ways that make it difficult or impossible for us to recall or combine our sense representations.13 Common sense and ordinary language suggest that we are subject to some rational standards in the ways our power of imagination operates. A rational and reasonable person, it seems, often imagines herself in the positions of other people. She sometimes imagines what it would be like to be a better person or to live in a better world. Fantasizing about hurting other people or about their downfall seem, from a commonsense perspective, to be in many cases contrary to reason.14 These examples suggest some potential connections between rational self-​governance and how our imagination operates. As we discussed in Chapter 1, we could try to explain away these or other commonsense judgments about what is rational, reasonable, contrary to reason, and so on. We might, for example, appeal to contingent cultural norms rather than inherent requirements of reason to interpret what we mean when we say that daydreaming about shooting up a school or place of work is contrary to reason. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason, however, aims to reflect as closely as possible how we ordinarily think and speak about reason and related terms.

3.2.3 Understanding Our power of understanding gives us the ability to conceptually represent the world, including physical objects and features of our own minds.15 Our understanding allows us to form, learn, clarify, distinguish, and apply concepts of these kinds. This mental power, I assume, includes the ability to apply concepts to perceptions, imaginings, or “forms” of them in ways that allow us to experience the world. We need not concern ourselves with the details of how, in Kant’s view, this happens.16 Our power of understanding can be temporarily or permanently dormant or impaired, such as an intoxicated person who is unable to organize her sense representations under concepts.17 Some of our concepts might not be clear or distinct, while others might be contradictory or otherwise impossible to apply. 13 MH 2: 264–​5; CF 7: 103–​4; Anth 7: 212–​13. 14 During Elizabethan times in England, for example, it was considered immoral and illegal even to imagine the death of the Queen (Ackroyd 2014). 15 A115–​28; Anth 7: 144–​5; CPJ 5: 167–​8; A93–​94/​B126. 16 For discussion of how, according to Kant, our powers of sense, imagination, and understanding combine to give us experience of the world within and outside our minds, see Aquila (1989), Kemp Smith (1962), Guyer (1987), Longuenesse (1998), Strawson (1966), and Watkins (2005). For contemporary work in psychology with some affinities to this way of conceptualizing the power of understanding, see Treisman and Gelade (1980) and Brook (2004). 17 Anth 7: 204–​5, 213; L-​Anth 25–​1298; MH 2: 268–​9.

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  49 We might also have a limited range of concepts or find it difficult to form or understand new ones.18 Our power of understanding seems to be, at least in part, under the direction of our reason. A rational and reasonable person apparently strives to expand her stock of concepts, to clarify the ones she has, to systematize them, and to abandon empty or self-​contradictory ones.

3.2.4 Judgment Our power of judgment includes abilities to form, reflect on, investigate, and revise judgments or beliefs as well as to affirm, suppose, deny, and withhold assent to them. Judgments or beliefs relate representations, such as concepts or other judgments, to other mental states.19 There are two main kinds of judgments, namely cognitive judgments and aesthetic judgments. Cognitive judgments connect a representation, such as ones from our senses, imagination, or understanding, with a cognitive mental state.20 When we affirm a cognitive judgment or belief, such as judging that the ground is wet or that torture is wrong, our power of judgment can be determined to do so by two kinds of mental states, namely those that represent grounds of the truth of the judgment and those that do not. A ground of a judgment is evidence that it has some objective probability of being true.21 Mental states of the first kind that can affect our judgments are ones that represent evidence for those judgments. We can acquire such evidence through experience supplied by our powers of sense and understanding, such as judging that the water is wet on the basis of our experience of it. We can acquire evidence from our power of signification, which allows us to receive testimony from other people.22 Our power of reason itself, as we shall see, can also supply us with evidence concerning its own nature and operation. The other kind of mental states that can affect our judgments are ones that do not represent grounds for their truth. Our feelings, desires, imaginings, and habits might lead us to affirm a judgment without evidence for it, such as judging that God exists because of the comfort this brings us or our fear of eternal damnation.23

18 MH 2: 268–​9; Anth 7: 202–​4; L-​Log 24: 86, 823–​4, 834–​5. 19 L-​Log 24: 101. 20 CPJ 20: 210, 223, A247/​B304. This account of cognitive judgments draws on Chignell (2007a, 2013, 2007b) and Stevenson (2003). See also Guyer (1987) and Longuenesse (1998). We will return to these and other epistemic matters in Chapter 11. 21 L-​Log 24: 194, 145; A293/​B249. 22 CPJ 5: 284, 468–​9; Anth 7: 204; WOT 8: 141; Eth-​C 27: 448; L-​Log 24: 99, 830, 870. Our power of understanding is also involved in receiving credible testimony from others. For attempts at explaining how, according to Kant, we can acquire such testimonial grounds of truth, see Gelfert (2006, 2010) and Shieber (2010). 23 Rel 6: 179; Anth 7: 209–​10; L-​Log 24: 176.

50  Sovereign Re ason These two kinds of mental states, namely ones that represent grounds of truth and ones that do not, can also affect other abilities that are part of our power of judgment, such as whether we assume something or investigate a belief we hold. Besides cognitive judgments, our power of judgment allows us to affirm aesthetic judgments.24 These judgments hold that there is a connection between, on the one hand, a perception, experience, concept, or other representation and, on the other hand, having desires or feelings. When we judge, for example, that a song is enjoyable or a painting is beautiful, we judge that representing these things leads us or others to have certain desires or feelings toward them. Our power of judgment can be impaired or diminished in various ways, such as when we have difficulty connecting representations to one another, applying principles to cases, generalizing cases into principles, or reflecting on judgments we affirm or might affirm. This power of mind seems to be one that we can govern through our power of reason. There are rational standards that concern what we believe, such as to avoid affirming contradictory beliefs and to apportion our beliefs to the evidence we have. A rational and reasonable person also seems to reflect on and investigate her beliefs, thinks for herself, tests her judgments by the views of others, and seeks to expand her knowledge and diminish her errors in judgment.

3.2.5 Attention Our power of attention includes abilities to be conscious of mental states and to abstract from mental states.25 This power allows us to pay attention to what someone is saying, notice features of a building, focus on an idea, and concentrate on our work. It also allows us to abstract from things we are nonetheless aware of, such as not attending to someone’s stutter or crooked teeth when listening to him, not concerning ourselves with the history or usefulness of a building when considering its beauty, leaving aside ideas that are related to the ones we are examining, and turning away from other projects to take up the task at hand. When we are distracted, we merely fail to pay attention to something, while abstraction is a mental act in which we prevent some representation from intruding on our consciousness.26 The power of attention can be impaired or realized to varying

24 CPJ 5: 189–​90, 205–​6, 237–​8, 20: 229–​32. Aesthetic judgments, for Kant, include teleological judgments, but I mean here “aesthetic” in the narrow sense that I describe. For discussions of Kant’s aesthetics, see Guyer (1997, 2006), Ginsborg (2015), and Allison (2001). 25 Anth 7: 131–​2; CF 7: 113; A108; B133. For contemporary work in psychology with some affinities to this way of conceptualizing the power of attention, see Corbetta and Shulman (2002), Tang and Posner (2009), and Treisman and Gelade (1980). 26 Anth 7: 131.

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  51 degrees, exemplified in those who are absentminded or obsessively focused on something. Our power of attention, it seems, can be under the direction of our power of reason.27 We sometimes say that it is unreasonable to focus too much on the faults and imperfections of others, to fail to notice that others are hurt or offended, to not attend to our moral obligations, and to ignore relevant evidence for or against our beliefs.

3.2.6 Signification Our power of signification includes the ability to communicate mental states through meaningful signs, such as language and symbols, and to receive such communications.28 This power allows us to share concepts, ideas, sensations, experiences, judgments, desires, and feelings with other people. We can do so by using words that designate concepts and by using paintings and other images. We can also use our power of signification to express our mental states through, for instance, our gestures, facial expressions, manner of speaking, clothing, and actions. We might declare to others that some theory is true and slam our fist to emphasize how firmly we believe it. We might stand and clap to show how much we enjoyed a performance. Our power of signification also allows us to receive communications from other people, such as their testimony or their expressions of respect or warm feelings toward us. We can even use this power to speak with and listen to ourselves, such as telling ourselves that we believe in God, giving ourselves a pep talk, confessing something to ourselves, or kidding ourselves about our moral culpability. When we speak to ourselves, we sometimes imagine a separate person to whom we are speaking, such as God, or we regard ourselves under different aspects or descriptions, such as I as a devoted worker speaking to myself as a loving father.29 Our power of signification can be impaired in various ways, such as in people with dyslexia or who struggle to interpret images or symbols. This power apparently can be governed by our reason. We are, it seems, sometimes required by reason to be candid with others, to listen to them, not to lie to them, and to express our love and respect for them. A reasonable person also apparently does not tend to mock other people or make light of important matters outwardly to others or even inwardly in her own mind.

27 See, for example, Stohr (2018) for a discussion of the morality of noticing and attending to things. 28 Anth 7: 192–​4; L-​Log 24: 294; CB 8: 110. 29 MPT 8: 266–​7; MM 6: 430; Anth 7: 192.

52  Sovereign Re ason

3.2.7 Choice Our power of choice includes the ability to choose to act, to form intentions, to set goals or ends, to agree to arrangements, to adopt personal policies or maxims, to make plans and commitments, to endorse principles, and otherwise to choose.30 We can choose not to act, not to form an intention, not to adopt a goal, and so on. We can also fail to exercise our power of choice one way or the other and so not choose to do something and not choose not to do it, perhaps because we are distracted, lazy, incapacitated, or indifferent. Our choices typically cause things to happen, such as when choosing to move my arm causes me to do so. We can sometimes voluntarily exercise our other mental powers by choosing, for instance, to pay attention to or imagine something. These causal chains between choices and actions can be broken when our arm is tied down, we are distracted by pain that prevents us from focusing on our work, or our imagination runs wild. When we adopt ends, maxims, principles, commitments, and other purposes, we might maintain them afterward, or we might later abandon them. We might also choose to act in accordance with them or choose not to do so on some occasions. Our chosen purposes can be life-​governing commitments or short-​term plans. Some of them can be more important to us than others, such as an aim to care for our children versus a goal of buying an expensive car. The power of choice in human beings is, I assume, a free mental power in the sense that our choices are not caused by anything, we are their originators, and we could always have chosen otherwise than we did.31 This is obviously a controversial supposition of our partial model of the human mind. I do not mean to take a position on whether we really possess metaphysical freedom of this sort or whether part of being a rational and reasonable person is that we regard ourselves as if our power of choice is negatively free in this way. There might be other ways of reconciling the negative freedom we seem to have with our best understanding of how the world works.32 Our model of the human mind simply includes the assumption that our power of choice is free in the negative sense of an uncaused cause.33 30 MM 6: 213–​14, 383–​4; G 4: 399–​401. 31 G 4: 446–​8; MM 6: 213–​14, 226; CPrR 5: 44, 97–​8; CPJ 5: 404; CB 8: 112; RevS 8: 13–​14; Eth-​V 27: 494, 570; Eth-​C 27: 267, 344. The power of choice is what Kant calls Willkür as opposed to Wille, which is our power of moral reason. Our model of the human mind assumes that these powers might be closely connected but that they are nonetheless separate, so that it is possible for someone, for example, to know that what she is doing is wrong but nonetheless willingly do it. Engstrom (2009), Korsgaard (1996b), and Wolff (1974), by contrast, argue that, for Kant or on Kantian ways of thinking, our power of choice is our power of moral reason, so anytime we choose, we are striving to choose as we should choose. I assume, however, that our powers of choice and reason are different mental powers. See also Hill (1991, ­chapter 9). 32 For discussion of various interpretations of Kant’s theory of freedom, see Allison (1990), Wood (1984), Hill (1992, ­chapter 7), Korsgaard (1996a,1996b), Kohl (2015), Ameriks (2000), and Engstrom (2009). We will return to examine various kinds of freedom in Chapter 12. 33 This robust conception of the freedom of the human power of choice obviously raises some of the most profound questions of philosophy. Some Kantians may also object to introducing this conception of freedom without grounding it on or justifying it as a necessary presupposition of our power of reason

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  53 As free agents, our choices cannot be determined by our desires, aversions, feelings, purposes, or any other factors; they are instead, in all cases, entirely our own. Our power of choice is nonetheless affected by these influences in ways that lead us, but do not determine or cause us, to choose in various ways. Our desires, aversions, feelings, and other mental states can tempt us to choose to act or to take on a commitment, but we have the freedom to stand apart from these influences and choose for ourselves whether to indulge or resist them. None of our other mental powers, according to our model, is free in this way.34 They instead operate according to internal or external processes, principles, or other factors, whereas our power of choice is undetermined, and we are the authors of our choices. Our power of choice can be, in a sense, strong or weak.35 Although this power gives us the ability to choose otherwise than we do, some choices are more difficult for us to make than others because of the desires, feelings, ends, and other mental states that lead us, but do not cause us, to choose in various ways. If, for example, we have resolved to remain at our post, then we can in principle resist all temptations to flee, but our fear often makes choosing to live up to this commitment difficult for us. Those with a strong will tend to overcome such obstacles to carrying out their chosen purposes, while those with a weak will tend to give in to them. People with a weak will also tend to abandon or revise their chosen purposes when the going gets tough, while those with a strong will tend to maintain them. Once a diet becomes difficult to follow, for example, a weak-​willed person is disposed to cheat and eventually to give it up altogether, but a strong-​willed person tends to stick with her diet even when doing so becomes inconvenient or burdensome to her. The character of a person, whether good or bad, depends on how she exercises her power of choice. For someone to have a character of any kind, she must endorse a set of general, long-​term, and basic commitments, goals, or other purposes, and she must have a strong will to maintain and carry them out despite obstacles.36 Those with an evil character endorse and fervently pursue evil purposes; those (e.g. CPJ 5: 468). I simply assume that human persons have this kind of freedom, that it is not necessarily metaphysically demanding or incompatible with our best scientific theories, that human persons with a sufficiently developed power of choice necessarily regard ourselves as free in this way, and that, for purposes of this book, this is enough for us to regard ourselves and other human persons as having the capacity to make our own choices without anything determining us to do so. 34 It is difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to imagine other mental powers as free in this way, such as a power of judgment or imagination in which creatures are necessarily the authors and first causes of their beliefs or imaginings. 35 MM 6: 228; Anth 7: 292; Eth-​C 27: 291–​2; L-​Anth 25: 1175–​6. See also Timmons (1985), Reath (2006, ­chapter 1), Baxley (2005, c­ hapter 2), Engstrom (2002), and Cureton (2016a) for discussions of strength and weakness of will in Kant. We will return to these issues in Chapter 12. 36 G 4: 393; Anth 7: 292–​5; L-​Anth 25: 630–​2; Ped 9: 487. See Baxley (2010), Frierson (2006), Munzel (1998), Cureton (2016a), Allison (1990, especially ­chapter 7), Engstrom (2009, 44–​7), and Timmons (2021b, 126, 219) for discussions of Kant’s conception of character. We will return to and expand on this conception of character in c­ hapter 12.

54  Sovereign Re ason with a good character do so for good purposes; while some people have no character at all because they lack basic commitments, their purposes are constantly in flux, or they regularly fail to realize them.37 Our power of choice can be entirely unrealized or temporarily or permanently impaired in ways that prevent us from making choices. Infants, young children, and people with certain kinds of mental impairments might not be able to choose because their power of choice is underdeveloped. Drugs and alcohol might also, for a time, prevent us from making any choices.38 Our power of reason seems to allow us to govern our power of choice. We seem to be rationally required to not adopt contradictory intentions and to take the necessary means to our ends or give them up. It seems, in many cases, contrary to reason to coerce, harm, disrespect, or kill others. A rational and reasonable person apparently endorses ends of peace and justice, helps others, shows them respect, and apologizes for wronging them. Such a person also seems to be someone with a good character who has good purposes that she maintains and executes despite temptations to the contrary.

3.2.8 Feeling Our power of feeling includes the ability to feel things, such as joy, sadness, disgust, and pain. Unlike sense perceptions, concepts, and judgments, feelings do not, on their own, represent anything.39 They cannot be elements of our concepts, and they are not among the materials that our power of understanding organizes and unifies under concepts. Feelings can nonetheless accompany perceptions, concepts, experiences, judgments, and other representational mental states. They can also be associated with mental processes, such as the enjoyment we might feel as we lose ourselves to a flight of fancy. When we affirm, for example, an aesthetic judgment that the wine is pleasant, we are not judging anything about the wine itself or our concept of it, because feelings themselves lack cognitive content. We are instead basically judging that our sense perceptions of the wine’s taste and color give rise to a feeling of pleasure in us. Our cognitive powers do not allow us to fully understand or explain the nature of our feelings because they are not among the materials that our power of understanding can handle. We can, however, partially characterize and distinguish different kinds of feelings by their causes, their effects on the mind and body, and

37 For discussions of Kant’s conception of evil, see Timmons (1994, 2017, ­chapter 10), Allison (1990), Baxley (2010), Kohl (2017), and Sussman (2005). 38 CPrR 5: 98; Anth 7: 211–​14; Rel 6: 38; Eth-​V 27: 565–​6; Eth-​C 27: 291. 39 MM 6: 211–​12; CPJ 20: 206, 230–​2.

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  55 their felt qualities.40 Some feelings have an object in the extended sense that the representations that lead us to have them are true or accurate, while other feelings lack an object in this indirect way. A feeling of anxiety, for instance, might arise from an experience of sickness and so in this sense have an object, or it might arise from merely imagining that we are sick and so not have an object. Positive feelings, such as pleasure, love, affection, admiration, cheerfulness, and comfort, are ones that tend to cause us to maintain those feelings, the representations that they accompany, or the objects of those representations. Negative feelings, such as anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, shame, and revulsion, tend to cause us to hinder or get rid of them, their accompanying representations, or the objects of those representations. Joy and gratification are practical feelings in which we are satisfied or dissatisfied by whether an object of our representation exists. Admiration and wonder are contemplative feelings in which we are indifferent to whether the object of our representation exists. We often have practical and contemplative feelings toward the same object, such as when we are gratified by the existence of a Picasso painting, find satisfaction in its usefulness for making money for us, and appreciate the painting itself. An especially important distinction that we will discuss later is between natural feelings, which arise from our mental power of feeling, and feelings of reason, which arise from our mental power of reason itself. The mental power of feeling can be impaired in certain ways. Someone might not be capable of feeling physical pain. She might be depressed, or she might have become desensitized to certain negative feelings by repeatedly observing, for example, scenes of cruelty. Our power of feeling can, it seems, be governed by exercising our power of reason. It might appear initially surprising and doubtful that what we feel can be under the direction of reason, but there seem to be cases in ordinary language and common sense in which we regard our feelings as within the purview of reason. A reasonable person, for example, tends not to enjoy the downfall of others, to feel pain at their good fortune, to begrudge their generosity toward her, or to feel jealousy at their superior prospects compared to her own. Such a person is sympathetic toward others, even-​tempered rather than hot-​headed, feels esteem for herself without also feeling conceited, and enjoys time with her friends. It is also, it seems, often unreasonable to have certain feelings that lack objects (in the indirect sense discussed above), such as fearing a snake that is not there or feeling anger at someone for a purely imagined slight.41

40 MM 6: 211–​12; CPJ 20: 232. See Ryle (1951, ­chapter 4) for further discussion of feelings in ordinary language, including how we often differentiate feelings by their likely causes, ways feelings can have fictitious objects, and differences between feelings and desires. 41 Our main discussion of the rationality and reasonableness of feelings comes in Chapter 13.

56  Sovereign Re ason

3.2.9 Desire Our power of desire includes the power to desire things and, more specifically, to produce, maintain, prevent, or destroy things or states of affairs through our representations of them.42 We desire something when we imagine a new painting or think about the future happiness of our loved ones and when our having these representations can causally contribute in a direct way to bringing about or realizing the objects of those representations. We are averse to something when we experience barbarity or judge that the food is undercooked and when our having these representations causally contributes directly to preventing or destroying their objects. We can also be indifferent to something when our representation of it does not have these effects and ambivalent about something when our desires and aversions towards it are more or less evenly matched. Aspirations, ambitions, loyalties, whims, animosities, hatreds, and other kinds of desires and aversions can come in many forms that can be distinguished, in part, by their causes, effects on our mind and body, intensity, and the types of representations they involve. We can have intrinsic desires for or aversions to objects or states of affairs themselves as well as extrinsic desires for and aversions to things or states of affairs that arise, at least in part, from representing their relationships to other things or states of affairs. Thinking about a new car itself may lead us to want to purchase it, while thinking about its maintenance costs or effects on the environment might make us averse to buying it. We may sometimes know that we cannot satisfy our desires or aversions, perhaps because we know that the thing we want is impossible or that we lack the requisite physical abilities to produce it. Inclinations are habitual desires in which repeatedly satisfying a desire acquaints us with something and becomes a habit so that we want more of the same, such as inclinations for power or money. Instincts are desires for something we have not experienced or do not have a concept of but that we still represent through our senses or imagination, such as sexual instincts.43 Another significant distinction, which we will examine in later chapters, is between natural desires, which arise from our mental power of desire, and rationally produced desires, which arise from our mental power of reason itself. Our power of desire can be impaired when we are depressed, listless, or undergoing an identity crisis in which nothing much matters to us.44 We presuppose in common sense and ordinary language that our power of desire can be governed through our power of reason. We are, it seems, required by reason not to want self-​contradictory things, not to have an overall desire for something and an overall aversion to what we know is necessary to bring it about, 42 MM 6: 212–​13; CPJ 5: 177–​8, 20: 206; Anth 7: 251. 43 MM 6: 212; Rel 6: 29n; Anth 7: 165. 44 See Cureton (Forthcoming-​c, ­chapter 4).

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  57 not to have intransitive preferences, and not to want what we know we should not want. A reasonable person, it seems, also does not want others to fail or desire to hurt them herself. She wants what is best for herself and others, desires justice and peace, desires to do the right thing, and wants to get to the bottom of things.

3.3  Some Connections among Human Powers of Mind We will explore many aspects of this partial model of the human mind as we proceed. We will also expand on the merely preliminary suggestions about how our reason might allow us to govern our other powers of mind. Before doing so, it is worth filling out our partial model by noting some of the ways in which our various powers of mind can interact with one another. Their interactions are often complicated and controversial. For purposes of exploring the idea of reason as a governing power of mind, we can examine a few illustrations while leaving various details aside. Doing this will also be helpful in later chapters when we attempt to generate and explain some particular requirements of reason that are implied by the new but partial theory of reason we are developing. Our powers of sense, imagination, and understanding combine to give us experiences or conceptual representations of the world. This is a major theme in Kant’s theoretical philosophy that is interpreted in many ways. Our model, however, abstracts from most of the specifics and simply assumes that, somehow or other, our senses, imagination, and understanding can work together in ways that allow us to understand what goes on in the world around us and in our own minds. Aesthetic judgments, such as judgments of beauty, arise from complicated interactions among our powers of sense, imagination, judgment, and feeling. This is a major theme in Kant’s aesthetics. Our model supposes that the combined exercise of these powers is the source of aesthetic judgments, but the model abstracts from the precise way this can happen in us. Our powers of imagination, feeling, and desire can affect our power of judgment. Our imagination might, for example, concoct images of ghosts, spirits, miracles, or terrors, which can lead us to regard the resulting cognitions as experiences of the world and so to believe that these things exist. Morbid feelings might lead us to judge that we are constantly ill, while feelings of love for someone can prevent us from recognizing or investigating her faults. Our desire to smoke might lead us to believe that it is not bad for us and to ignore conflicting evidence. Bribes and threats that play on our desires for money and safety can sway our judgments about the guilt or innocence of someone. Our powers of understanding and signification can also affect our power of judgment by providing us with evidence for judgments we affirm or might affirm. Our powers of sense, imagination, feeling, and desire can affect our power of attention. Pain and catchy tunes can be distracting. It can be difficult for a

58  Sovereign Re ason hypochondriac to tear herself away from her imagined ailments. Our appreciation, admiration, love, or astonishment toward someone might attract our attention to him. Our desire for social advancement might lead us to notice what a person of high rank says and to ignore our social inferiors. Various mental powers can affect our desires and feelings. Remembering ourselves on a sunny beach or creatively imagining a painting may give rise to feelings of tranquility or appreciation. Imagining ourselves in the position of others who are suffering, grieving, joyous, or angry might cause us to have those same feelings ourselves. Fears or pains can sometimes be diminished by turning our attention to other things, while brooding on such feelings can sometimes strengthen them. Our power of choice can directly or indirectly influence our other mental powers. We can sometimes choose to pay attention to something, imagine something, investigate a judgment, clarify a concept, or consider our options. We cannot affirm a belief simply by choosing to do so, but we can sometimes successfully choose to use our power of judgment to investigate or reflect on our beliefs, to consider their implications, to entertain or assume judgments, and perhaps to withhold judgment about certain matters.45 We can on some occasions successfully choose to exercise our power of signification by communicating our thoughts to others, lying to them, listening to them, or ignoring what they say. We might choose to use our imagination to create art or to understand someone else’s troubles. We can often choose which sense representations, thoughts, feelings, or other mental states or processes to pay attention to, and we often can choose to dismiss certain things from our consciousness by abstracting away from them. Our choices can also indirectly affect other powers of mind when we, for example, read novels to stimulate our imagination, take a walk to distract ourselves from something, drink alcohol to bring on certain feelings, or attend school to improve our knowledge and understanding.

3.4  Final Remarks Human beings typically possess mental powers of sense, imagination, understanding, judgment, attention, signification, choice, feeling, and desire that relate to one another in various ways. These are by no means the only mental powers we have. Properly characterizing many of them along with their connections to one another raises deep philosophical questions about the nature of conceptual representation, knowledge, language, freedom, and other topics. The partial model I have described is meant to be a general and preliminary overview with a Kantian flavor that leaves out many details and fits well enough with how we conceive of

45 L-​Log 24: 83, 104, 156–​9, 162–​4, 859–​61; Rel 6: 89; CPJ 5: 471–​3.

Scope of Rational Self-Governance  59 ourselves and others in reflective common sense. The model gives us a plausible but revisable starting point for continuing to investigate our four questions about what our power of reason allows us to govern in ourselves, how it does so, why we impose certain requirements of reason on ourselves, and what those requirements are.

4

Governing Abilities of Reason Human beings typically possess a wide variety of mental powers, including powers of sense, imagination, understanding, judgment, attention, signification, choice, feeling, and desire. These powers of mind are often unruly, ineffectual, unreliable, and in conflict with one another and with themselves. Our imaginations can run wild; our judgments can be biased by our feelings; our choices can contradict themselves; our desires can pull us in different directions; and maintaining our focus can be difficult. Common sense and ordinary language suggest that our power of reason is, as it were, “in charge” of our other mental powers, which are under its direction. A rational and reasonable person governs herself by exercising her power of reason to guide and constrain the use of her many mental powers in rational and reasonable ways. She not only makes rational and reasonable choices, but she also thinks and judges according to standards of reason, keeps her imagination within reasonable limits, attends to what reason requires, and avoids irrational or unreasonable feelings and desires. As we began in the previous chapter to explore our first main question about what our power of reason allows us to govern, I emphasized this commonsense idea of autonomy or rational self-​governance. The first feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our power of reason allows us to govern many of our powers of mind, not just our power of choice. We will return to this first feature throughout the book, but let’s bring in our second main question: In what ways does our power of reason allow us to govern ourselves? The aim of this chapter is to specify some of the basic governing abilities that are part of our reason. We will consider how these abilities allow us to govern our various mental powers in rational and reasonable ways. Traditional Kantian conceptions of autonomy or rational self-​governance emphasize two governing abilities of reason. First, our power of reason includes the ability to legislate moral requirements about how we act, what ends we set, and otherwise what we choose. As autonomous agents, we are authors and subjects of moral requirements of reason. We cannot simply choose the laws of reason, but our rational legislative abilities allow us to formulate and recognize the authority of the most fundamental rational requirement, which can be expressed as the Categorical Imperative in its various forms. Although we might not always do so, our reason requires us to choose according to moral standards that we rationally legislate to ourselves.

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0004

Governing Abilities of Re ason  61 The second self-​governing ability that Kantians emphasize is our rational ability to enforce in ourselves the moral laws that we rationally legislate to ourselves. Our power of reason, on its own, produces feelings and desires that lead us, but do not determine us, to choose in accordance with moral requirements. As we will see in Chapter 5, these are not natural feelings, which arise from our power of feeling, or natural desires, which arise from our power of desire, but are instead feelings and desires that arise from our power of reason alone. For example, we might legislate to ourselves a rational prohibition on coercing innocent people because our legislative abilities of reason lead us to recognize that doing so is contrary to unconditional rational standards that are part of our power of reason. Our power of reason also produces feelings of respect for moral laws and desires to conform to them. If we nonetheless want to coerce an innocent person despite these rationally produced feelings and desires, we are left to choose whether to follow the law of reason against coercion that we have given to ourselves or to break it by indulging our natural feelings and desires that lead us to coerce the person.1 There is, in common sense and ordinary language, a much broader idea of a rationally self-​governing person whose governing abilities are more extensive than the two that are part of traditional Kantian conceptions of autonomy. Such a person not only legislates and enforces laws of reason in herself, but she adjudicates them in herself as well. She impartially judges herself by laws of reason, holds herself responsible for violating them, and imposes painful feelings of rational guilt or regret on herself for culpably doing so. Someone who is governed by her reason also seems to have other executive abilities besides enforcement ones, such as the ability to interpret and apply rational standards to particular situations and to warn herself against violating them. She seems to govern many of her mental powers in these ways, including not just the choices she makes but also what she believes, imagines, pays attention to, desires, and feels. She also seems to govern herself by standards of prudential, theoretical, and not just moral reason. Common sense and ordinary language suggest that our power of reason makes us sovereign over our own minds by allowing us to legislate many kinds of rational

1 See, for example, Reath (2006, ­chapters 4 and 5), Hill (1992, c­ hapter 5), Holtman (2009), Wolff (1974), Guyer (2009), O’Neill (2003), Wood (2008, c­ hapter 6), Allison (1990), Baxley (2010), Johnson (2007), and Kohl (2023), for discussions of these two features of Kantian autonomy. Baxley (2010, 59) suggests that, for Kant, autonomy (legislating laws of reason) and autocracy (enforcing laws of reason) are separate ideas, whereas my proposal is that both are part of autonomy as rational self-​ governance, at least in human persons. Judicial abilities of reason in the form of conscience are rarely if ever included explicitly in traditional Kantian conceptions of autonomy, which also usually leave out some of the executive abilities I describe in section 4.3 (titled “Executive Abilities: Interpret, Apply, Enforce, and Police Laws”). Kant scholars have begun to discuss Kant’s conception of conscience (Hill 2002, ­chapters 9 and 11, Kahn 2021, Moyar 2008, and Wood 2008, ­chapter 10). No one, as far as I know, has suggested that Kantian autonomy in its fullest form includes legislative, executive, and judicial abilities of reason, involves abilities to govern many of our mental powers, and incorporates abilities to govern ourselves by moral, prudential, and theoretical principles of reason, although O’Neill (1989), Kohl (2023), and Schafer (2023, c­ hapter 7) seem to tend in this direction.

62 Sovereign Re ason requirements to our various mental powers, to rule over our use of them, and to stand in judgment of how we exercise them. The second feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our power of reason includes many legislative, executive, and judicial abilities to govern our various mental powers through rational requirements of all kinds. This feature expands traditional Kantian conceptions of autonomy by incorporating additional governing abilities besides legislation and enforcement, by extending the set of mental powers that we can rationally govern in ourselves beyond the power of choice, and by expanding the set of rational requirements that we impose on ourselves to include moral, prudential, theoretical, and any other kinds of rational requirements. In later chapters, we will consider some specific requirements that our reason allows us to legislate, enforce, and adjudicate on our various mental powers as well as differences among various types of rational requirements. Our focus in this chapter is on exploring several governing abilities of reason. My approach to considering this issue is somewhat unorthodox. I will describe, in the abstract, some abilities that anything paradigmatically must have to govern anything else. I then apply this general idea of governance as such by interpreting each abstract governing ability as an ability that is part of our power of reason. I draw on Kant’s characterizations of sovereignty or governance in several contexts, including his discussions of political systems, families, societies, international federations, and God, as well as his discussions of autonomy of the will, how our power of understanding governs our power of sense, and the ways our power of aesthetic judgment governs itself. I suggest that the abstract idea of full sovereignty requires possessing all these legislative, executive, and judicial abilities and that our power of reason includes versions of each of them. The result is a rich conception of rational self-​governance as a species of governance as such.

4.1  Sovereignty: Governing Abilities One way of investigating the nature of rational self-​governance is to explore the more general issue of what it is for one thing to govern another thing. By abstracting as far as possible from the kinds of things that can govern or be governed, such as whether they are states, citizens, corporations, employees, or God, we can explore whether there are features that anything paradigmatically must have to govern something else. If we discover such generic features, we can go on to consider whether we instantiate them in ways that allow us to govern ourselves through our reason. Rather than directly analogizing souls (or minds) and states, personifying the power of reason, or treating rational self-​governance as mainly metaphorical, we first investigate the governing relation as such in our ordinary beliefs and practices and then interpret and apply this abstract conception to broaden

Governing Abilities of Re ason  63 our understanding of one type of governance, namely rational self-​governance in human persons.2 My more specific aim in this chapter is to focus on one aspect of governance in the abstract, namely the abilities that things paradigmatically must have to govern other things. Having these governing abilities is part of what makes someone or something a king, a boss, a commander, a board of directors, a city council, a state, God, or a rational person. Let’s use the terms “sovereign” and “subject” in abstract senses simply to refer, respectively, to something that governs and something that is governed. Things that govern or are governed can include different parts, aspects, or standpoints. A government that is sovereign over its citizens might be divided into legislative, executive, and judicial branches. An absolute dictator can act in her various capacities of supreme legislator, ruler, and judge. A sovereign can also delegate some of these governing abilities to other people or institutions. The same thing can govern and be governed by itself when some part, aspect, or standpoint of it is sovereign while other parts, aspects, or standpoints are its subjects. A democratic people, for example, can govern itself through its elected representatives. A human person can be both a sovereign and a subject if one part or aspect of her mind can govern other parts or aspects of her mind. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, we are sovereign over ourselves because our own power of reason gives us the ability to govern how we use our own powers of imagination, judgment, attention, choice, and others. We are, in both cases, the one who governs and the one who is governed. Our mental powers are not somehow people inside of us, as if our reason were issuing orders to our powers of judgment or choice, policing them, and punishing them for violations. Personifying our reason as a sovereign and our other powers of mind as subjects can sometimes be useful for expository purposes. Strictly speaking, our reason gives us the ability to organize, unify, and direct the operations of our various other mental powers, such as what beliefs we affirm and what choices we make. A complete conception of the abstract governing relation would address several issues that I, for the most part, do not take up in this chapter, which is focused on the main abilities something must have to govern something else. A full analysis of governance as such would characterize the kinds of things that can be sovereigns or subjects. It would specify the degree, if any, to which a sovereign must effectively exercise her governing abilities over her subjects to govern them. An absentee or universally disobeyed monarch, for example, might not be a monarch at all, while a somewhat ineffectual monarch whose citizens sometimes break her laws can still be their sovereign. A person whose power of reason is severely damaged 2 The soul/​state analogy figures prominently in Plato’s (2007) Republic. For discussions of Kant’s political metaphors in his account of reason, see Waldron (2021), Møller (2020), and O’Neill (1989). See also Schneewind (1998).

64 Sovereign Re ason or who never conforms to its laws might not count as rationally self-​governing, while a few or even many lapses from the laws of reason are apparently compatible with incompletely governing oneself by reason. A full account of governance in the abstract would also address several normative issues, such as the relationship between governance and legitimacy and when, if ever, subjects ought to obey their sovereigns. A mob boss or warlord, for instance, might have the necessary abilities to govern other people but lack the moral legitimacy to do so and have no moral claim to compliance from them. We will, in later chapters, examine some of these issues as they relate to governing oneself by reason, but our aim now is to examine governing abilities in the abstract and to explore how they can be interpreted as abilities that are part of our rational nature.3 I draw on some themes in Kant’s thinking to characterize a partial account of governing abilities in general. Having each of these abilities is, according to Kant, necessary for governance in its fullest sense, although there might be nonparadigmatic forms of governance that do not fully include some of them. This account, I suggest, has some initial plausibility in reflective common sense, but it might need to be supplemented or revised in places. Kant at times suggests that our power of reason includes versions of these same governing abilities, which also fits well with our ordinary ideas of a rational and reasonable person who is rationally self-​governing. These abilities help to interpret and specify the second feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, which is that a rationally self-​governing person governs herself by exercising her many governing abilities that are part of her power of reason. According to the broadly Kantian conception I describe, governing abilities are divided into legislative, executive, and judicial ones. Something must have all three kinds of abilities to govern something as opposed to merely informing it, advising it, affecting it, or controlling it through force or domination.4 We also need versions of these abilities to be fully sovereign over our own minds. Let’s explore governing abilities in the abstract. For each kind, we will also examine them as abilities of reason. In addition, I illustrate our rational self-​ governing abilities with examples of how we govern our power of choice through 3 Our focus in this chapter is on the governing abilities of reason in our own minds. These abilities might extend to our relations with other people by allowing us, for example, to legislate laws of reason to them, to coerce them to comply with those laws, and to judge and impose penalties on them for their misdeeds, as happens in legal systems. I do not here attempt to explain the complicated relationship between rational self-​governance and political or social governance. For discussions of this issue, see Ripstein (2009), Holtman (2018b), and O’Neill (2000). 4 Anth 7: 309–​10; Eth-​V 27: 593. A civil condition or legal order, according to Kant, exists only if one or more people possess legislative, executive, and judicial powers over a group of people. Otherwise, the group is in a state of nature (MM 6: 312, 316). For various interpretations of Kant’s political philosophy, including his account of political governance, see Byrd and Hruschka (2010), Ripstein (2009), Gregor (1963), Holtman (2018b), and Varden (2020, c­ hapter 7). Van der Rijt (2012, 75–​98, 2017) describes legislative, executive, and judicial powers as part of Kant’s idea of lawgiving in the Kingdom of Ends. See also Waldron (2021).

Governing Abilities of Re ason  65 rational laws of morality and rational laws of prudence as well as govern our power of judgment through rational laws of logic. We will examine many more examples of rational self-​governance in Part II.

4.2  Legislative Abilities: Formulate, Issue, and Connect Incentives with Laws The first kind of governing ability that something paradigmatically must have to govern something else is the ability to legislate laws. Laws in this sense are general propositions that say something is required or permitted to act in some way or that something is forbidden from acting or not acting in some way. Examples include that publicly traded companies are required to publish their quarterly earnings, that friends are permitted to favor one another’s interests over those of other people, that citizens are prohibited from murdering each other, and that students are forbidden from cheating.5 Laws must be general in scope.6 A dictator who issues specific orders or decrees to specific people does not seem to govern them in the fullest sense unless he also makes general rules for those who are under his direction. The legislative abilities of a sovereign include, more specifically, abilities to formulate, issue, and connect incentives to laws. Let’s consider these three legislative governing abilities in the abstract and then as ones that are part of our rational nature.

4.2.1  Formulate Laws A sovereign has the ability to formulate laws.7 A monarch, in her capacity as legislator, might come up with a general principle about how her subjects should act. The United States Congress, as the legislative branch of government, might draft a bill. The ability to represent acts as ones that are required or forbidden does not presuppose that these laws are correct or rational. A sovereign might formulate cruel or unjust laws. The ability to formulate laws also leaves open the question of how a legislator formulates them. A sovereign might formulate laws arbitrarily or according to good or bad standards.

5 G 4: 414–​16; MM 6: 218, 222–​3, 225. 6 Laws must be expressed in general terms that exclude proper names of persons and what Rawls (1999c, 113) calls “rigged definite descriptions” in their scope. It is difficult to explain the nature of such descriptions and of proper names for that matter, so I mostly rely on a commonsense idea of general laws. 7 MM 6: 218, 222.

66 Sovereign Re ason Sovereigns can formulate laws of various kinds. Laws can be addressed to individuals, to states, to churches, and to specific kinds of generally defined individuals or corporate entities. They can prohibit, permit, or require acts. Laws can be unconditional or conditional, such as that club members should pay their dues or that they ought to declare their intentions by a certain date if they decide to stand for election.8 Laws might be strict or allow some latitude in how they are fulfilled, such as requiring us to pay our debts in a specified way at a predetermined time or to pay our debts in a manner and at a time of our choosing. Laws can include exceptions and qualifiers, apply only to specified circumstances, or require us to adopt and pursue certain purposes. Second-​order laws refer to other laws, while first-​order laws do not. They can also be ideals rather than strict requirements. Presumptive laws say that something ought, all else equal, to act in some way, while absolute laws say that something ought, all things considered, to act in some way. Imperatives are one type of law that means that something is not only required or forbidden to act in some way but that it also must or must not do so. Laws of this kind are distinguished from others because imperatives presuppose that the things that they are addressed to might not conform to them, whereas laws in general do not presuppose this.9 It is contradictory for something to be under an imperative or duty to act in a way that it necessarily acts, but something can be under laws of other kinds to do something that it necessarily does. Laws of reason, according to Kant, apply to God, but God is not subject to imperatives of reason because he necessarily does what reason requires.10 Imperatives presuppose that incentives are needed to secure compliance with them. If something is under an imperative, then its full compliance on all possible occasions requires constraints or inducements. Almost all kinds of laws that are addressed to human beings can be imperatives because it is possible for us to violate almost any statute, city ordinance, university policy, or other law that might apply to us. If, however, the governing body of track and field, for example, were to formulate a rule against flying unassisted in track

8 That we ought to take the necessary means to our ends or give them up is, according to Kant, an example of a law (the Hypothetical Imperative) that is conditional but not moral (G 4: 414–​16; MM 6: 222–​3). Kant discusses other laws that he says are both conditional and moral, such as: “preventing misfortune to [one’s father] is only a conditional duty (namely, insofar as he has not made himself guilty of a crime against the state)” (TP 8: 301n); “to preserve my life is only a conditional duty (if it can be done without a crime)” (TP 8: 301n); “philanthropy and respect for the rights of the human being are duties: but the former is only conditional duty whereas the latter is unconditional duty” (TPP 8: 385); and “to use [our receptivity to the natural feelings of others] as a means to promoting active and rational benevolence is still a particular, though only a conditional, duty” (MM 6: 456). Another kind of conditional law might be to keep a promise to assist someone if she asks for our help. For discussions of the Hypothetical Imperative, see Hill (1992, ­chapters 1 and 7), Korsgaard (2008, ­chapter 1), Broome (2013), Kolodny (2005), Smith and Harcourt (2004), and Wedgwood (2011), and for discussions of conditional duties, see Timmermann (2013) and Hill (2002, ­chapter 12). 9 G 4: 414–​16; MM 6: 222–​3, 379; CPrR 5: 32–​3. 10 G 4: 414. For discussions of Kant’s conception of God, see Byrne (2007), Brewer (2022), Winegar (2017), and Chignell (2007a).

Governing Abilities of Re ason  67 events, then it would not make sense to formulate this law as an imperative because none of us could break it. There might nonetheless be reasons to make it a rule, perhaps because excluding unassisted flight expresses something about the nature and history of that sport. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, our power of reason includes this first legislative ability to formulate general laws of reason that concern the operations of our various mental powers.11 Laws of reason, such as the principle of noncontradiction or principles of instrumental rationality, specify how all rational agents or ones who satisfy certain general descriptions are required or permitted to exercise their mental powers or how they are forbidden from doing so. Our reason allows us, in involuntary ways, to represent various acts of mind, such as choosing, judging, imagining, or paying attention, as required, permitted, or forbidden by reason. We can often choose to formulate principles of reason, such as when we are teaching or doing philosophy, but we can also do so involuntarily through our reason apart from any such choices we might make. In Chapters 6 and 7, we will discuss how we can formulate these rational requirements, which ones we can formulate, and why, if at all, we should regard them as correct or worthy of our adherence. The main point now is simply that our reason allows us to think about rational standards for ourselves and others. We can recognize that we are forbidden from having contradictory beliefs, that we are required to take the necessary means to our ends or give them up, that we should not demean ourselves or others, and that we must not desire their misery or our own.12 The power of reason as it exists in human beings also includes the ability to formulate laws as imperatives, which are laws that say we must or must not perform some mental act.13 Imperatives of this sort make sense when we do not necessarily choose, believe, imagine, or pay attention in accordance with those laws and so need incentives to ensure our compliance with them.14 We will return in the next section to consider the nature of these incentives that can lead our various powers of mind to comply with the laws we formulate through our reason.

11 A751/​B779–​A752/​B780, A650/​B678–​A651/​B679; CPrR 5: 119–​20; CPJ 5: 433; CPJ 5: 345; WOT 8: 145; PMB 15: 945, 949; Eth-​Mr2 29: 625–​6; Eth-​C 27: 360, 363; L-​Anth 25: 1297, 1482. 12 These are just possible and illustrative examples of laws of reason. They can be formulated in different ways. Some of them likely need exceptions and qualifiers, and some of them might be presumptions rather than absolute requirements. We will discuss versions of these and other specific laws of reason in Part II. 13 WOT 8: 145; CPJ 5: 345. 14 Kant suggests, for example, that human beings cannot be subject to an unconditional imperative to set our own happiness as an end because we, by our nature as humans, necessarily do so already (CPrR 5: 37; Rel 6: 6–​7; MM 6: 386). As we shall see in Chapter 12, we might nonetheless be subject to laws, but not imperatives, of reason that concern promoting our own happiness.

68 Sovereign Re ason

4.2.2  Issue Laws Returning to the idea of governance as such, a sovereign of any kind, such as a monarch or a religious council, possesses the legislative ability to issue laws.15 Legislators not only can come up with general propositions about how their subjects are required to act or must act. They also can give these laws to their subjects in ways that allow the laws to be executed and adjudicated in their subjects. How a law can be enacted, issued, instituted, implemented, or otherwise made genuine or real varies. The captain of a ship might consider several different shore-​leave policies and issue one of them as a standing order to his crew. A legislature might pass one of several proposed carbon emissions bills. A university president might impose a specific vaccine mandate for all faculty and staff after assessing various alternatives. Our power of reason includes the ability not just to formulate laws about how our mental powers should operate but also to issue them to ourselves by endorsing or affirming them.16 Our reason gives us the power to assent, in ways that are not under our voluntary control, to laws that it allows us to represent. This assent is not determined or affected by our choices or by our power of judgment. It is instead a mental act of approval that arises from the operation of our power of reason itself. Someone might simply recognize a principle of instrumental reasoning, for example, without also endorsing it as a law for herself. Representing and assenting to a law are different mental acts, although they almost always occur together.17 Other governing abilities of reason we will discuss, such as ones that concern enforcing rational laws and punishing violations of them, presuppose that we have exercised our rational abilities both to formulate and to affirm laws of reason about what we should choose, believe, desire, and so on.

4.2.3  Connect Incentives with Laws A sovereign, conceived in the abstract, has the legislative ability to connect laws with an authorization to use coercion, inducements, and other incentives to lead its subjects to comply with them.18 Annexing an incentive to a law is pointless if those who are subject to it necessarily conform to it. Doing so for laws formulated as imperatives, however, is necessary to secure full compliance with them because it is part of the nature of an imperative that subjects who are subject to them might

15 MM 6: 218, 227. 16 MM 6: 227. 17 Recognizing that something is a law of reason, on the one hand, and endorsing it, on the other, might be necessarily linked in competent rational agents. It is nonetheless perhaps possible for someone with certain kinds of brain damage or mental illness that affect her power of reason itself to recognize principles of reason as mere intellectual oddities without also affirming them. 18 MM 6: 218, 227–​8, 231, 335; Eth-​V 27: 546. See also Timmons (2017, ­chapter 1).

Governing Abilities of Re ason  69 violate them. The kinds of incentives that a legislator can authorize include forcing or encouraging compliance with her laws. She can issue threats of punishment and offers of reward that she charges the judicial and executive authorities with administering.19 As legislator, a sovereign does not have the ability to employ these incentives herself. A legislator can instead empower another part of the sovereign, such as the executive branch of government or herself in her executive capacity, to enforce duly enacted laws.20 Legislating laws for subjects who can break them involves taking steps to put those laws into effect. There are several ways for a sovereign to connect a law with an authorization to incentivize compliance with it. A law might incorporate this authorization in the content of what it requires. A law might say that subjects are required that, if they want to avoid certain penalties that the executor is authorized to implement for noncompliance, they act in some way.21 A subject can comply with this conditional law either by acting in the required way or by not caring about the penalties. A law might instead incorporate the authorization to incentivize as a second-​order rider. A law of this kind might say that subjects are required to act in some way, while another law might say that if they fail to do so, the executive and judicial authorities are authorized to impose certain penalties on them.22 The only way for a subject to comply with the unconditional first-​order law is to act in the required way, but subjects also face penalties from the second-​order law if they transgress the first-​ order one. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, our reason includes the ability to connect laws of reason that we formulate and impose on ourselves with authorizations to employ incentives that force or lead us to choose, judge, imagine, pay attention, or otherwise perform mental acts that conform to those laws. These authorizations are directed to ourselves and, in particular, to the operations of our executive and judicial powers of reason. When we exercise our legislative abilities to formulate, issue, and connect incentives with requirements of reason, our executive and judicial powers of reason allow us to implement these incentives in ourselves. For example, we might represent and impose on ourselves a law of reason that forbids us from choosing self-​contradictory ends and includes a threat of painful feelings of self-​reproach for doing so. With this law of reason in place in our own minds, our executive abilities of reason allow us to carry out the threat if

19 Incorporating threats of punishment into laws is commonplace, but Kant suggests that a legislator can also try to induce rather than compel compliance with her laws. For example: “to encourage silkworms, the sovereign offers a reward for planting mulberry trees, or some other action, which he cannot expect by means of a coercive law” (Eth-​V 27: 548). See also G 4: 432–​3; MM 6: 227–​8; and note 62. 20 MM 6: 227, 317; TPP 8: 352. 21 G 4: 432–​3. 22 MM 6: 219, 221, 335, 362–​3.

70 Sovereign Re ason we use our judicial abilities of reason to condemn ourselves for culpably breaking this rational standard.23

4.2.4  Illustrations of our Legislative Powers of Reason A sovereign of any kind governs its subjects through general propositions about what they are required or permitted to do (or prohibited from doing) that a sovereign formulates, enacts, and authorizes other parts or aspects of itself to enforce. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, our power of reason includes forms of these three legislative powers. Our reason allows us to represent to ourselves laws about how our various mental powers are supposed to operate, to rationally endorse these laws, and to charge ourselves with executing and adjudicating them through our executive and judicial abilities of reason. These governing mental acts and processes of our reason all take place involuntarily through our reason.24 We have not yet discussed what laws of reason we can rationally legislate in our minds, the forms these laws can take, the grounds on which they can be legislated, or which ones are correct or justified. We can nonetheless briefly illustrate our legislative powers of reason by considering three possible laws of reason, namely a moral law that concerns our power of choice, a prudential law that also concerns our power of choice, and a theoretical law that concerns our power of judgment.25 We will return to these examples in the next two sections to illustrate the executive and judicial abilities of our reason as well.

4.2.4.1  Legislating a Moral Law of Reason I can involuntarily use my legislative abilities of reason to formulate and enact a moral imperative in my own mind that says I and other rational agents must not coerce innocent people.26 My power of reason allows me, let’s suppose, to recognize 23 MM 6: 362–​3. 24 Laws of reason are not ones we simply choose but are instead norms that our power of reason, on its own, allows us to formulate, issue, and incentivize in ourselves. This is an important disanalogy with certain kinds of political governance in which sovereigns can freely choose to exercise their governing powers or not (God’s governance of the world, by contrast, is closer to rational self-​governance in this respect if God necessarily exercises his governing powers in fully rational and reasonable ways). Thanks to Joe Stratmann for pressing me on this point. See, for example, Wood (2008, ­chapter 6) and Anscombe (1958) for alternative interpretations of Kant or of some potentially Kantian ways of thinking. 25 As we will discuss in Chapter 7, distinguishing moral, prudential, and even theoretical laws of reason from one another is more complicated than it might seem. Guyer (2000), Hill (2002, 2012), Reath (2006), Timmons (2017, c­ hapter 5), Wood (2008), Timmermann (2007), Allison (2011), and Wolff (1974) examine several suggestions about how to distinguish moral laws of reason from other rational requirements. For now, I simply rely on commonsense ideas of morality, rational prudence, and rational thought. See also note 8. 26 This is simply an illustration of a possible moral law of reason that we might legislate to ourselves. I do not mean to claim that it is a moral law of reason or that it is an absolute, as opposed to a

Governing Abilities of Re ason  71 this supposed law of reason as one that I and other rational and reasonable people are required to follow even though we might not choose to conform to it. I impose this law of reason on myself by affirming it through my power of reason. This law also authorizes my executive and judicial abilities of reason to compel or induce me to refrain from coercing innocent people. In these ways, I legislate a moral prohibition on certain kinds of coercion to myself by the involuntary exercise of my legislative abilities of reason to represent, implement, and connect incentives with a general principle about how to choose.

4.2.4.2  Legislating a Prudential Law of Reason Our legislative powers of reason are not limited to legislating moral laws. One prudential imperative that my power of reason allows me to legislate to myself is that I and others must not affirm an end without also choosing to take the necessary means to realizing it.27 My legislative powers of reason involuntarily operate in ways that lead me to formulate this version of the Hypothetical Imperative, to affirm it as a law for myself, and to authorize enforcement of it through my executive and judicial powers of reason.28 When my legislative powers of reason operate in these ways, I legislate a law to myself that requires taking necessary means to ends or giving up those ends. 4.2.4.3  Legislating a Theoretical Law of Reason Our legislative abilities of reason also allow us to legislate theoretical laws of reason to ourselves. I can involuntarily employ these abilities to formulate, enact, and authorize the enforcement of a law that forbids affirming contradictory beliefs. The moral and prudential laws we just mentioned are addressed to how we use our power of choice, but this law concerns the operation of our power of judgment. It authorizes my executive and judicial abilities of reason to affect my power of judgment in ways that constrain me from holding contradictory beliefs or that induce me to abandon any beliefs of that sort I might have.

presumptive, requirement. Nor do I fully specify the law, which would require interpreting what “innocent” in this context means. As we shall see in Chapter 12, the ethics of coercion is complicated. 27 This is merely one way the Hypothetical Imperative might be formulated. I use it here for purposes of illustration, but we will return in Chapter 5 to discuss this principle in more detail. 28 G 4: 414–​15; CPrR 5: 20; CPJ 5: 172; Eth-​Mr2 29: 607. For discussions of Kant’s account of prudential reason, including whether he affirms the Hypothetical Imperative (as opposed to particular hypothetical imperatives), whether these principles have a wide or narrow scope, and whether they appeal to means that are necessary or ones we believe or know to be necessary, see Hill (1992, ­chapters 1 and 7), Korsgaard (2008, c­ hapter 1), Broome (2013), Kolodny (2005), Smith and Harcourt (2004), Wedgwood (2011), and Kohl (2018).

72 Sovereign Re ason

4.3  Executive Abilities: Interpret, Apply, Enforce, and Police Laws A sovereign, such as a governing body or a ship’s captain, has the power to execute the laws that it legislates. To govern subjects who might not comply with its laws, a sovereign must be able to put its laws into practice. Simply legislating such laws without also having the executive abilities to specify how the laws apply to particular cases, to back them up with credible threats or inducements to those who might violate them, and to impose consequences on those who culpably break them does not count as governing in the fullest sense. Laws that have merely been legislated are provisional unless they are put into effect or made real.29 Legislating laws is not enough to govern those who might regard such laws with indifference or scorn or who have difficulty figuring out what they require in individual cases. The executive abilities of a sovereign include, more specifically, abilities to interpret and apply laws that are legislated, to enforce those laws, and to police compliance with them. Let’s examine these three executive abilities in the abstract and as governing abilities of reason.

4.3.1  Interpret and Apply Laws An executor or ruler, which is the executive part or aspect of a sovereign, has the executive power to interpret laws that have been legislated and to apply them to specific situations.30 Laws are general propositions about what subjects are required to do or not do. Laws often cannot take account of every circumstance or eventuality. They can include indeterminate or vague concepts as well as allow some latitude in how subjects are required to act.31 Laws in many cases need to be interpreted and applied. A ruler has the ability to do so by formulating and issuing ordinances, decrees, regulations, protocols, administrative rules, edicts, and warnings that are, as Kant says, “directed to decisions in particular cases.”32 These executive abilities allow a ruler to specify what the laws require, to subsume cases under the laws, to direct particular individuals to act or not act in specific ways, and to warn subjects that they might break the law on some occasions.33 Our power of reason, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, includes the executive ability to interpret and apply the laws that are legislated through our legislative abilities of reason by specifying how those laws require our judgment, imagination, choice, and other mental powers to operate in particular situations.34 We might be uncertain what a law of reason requires of us in

29 MM 6: 312–​13. 30 MM 6: 316; TPP 8: 352. 31 TP 8: 275; CPJ 5: 169; Eth-​V 27: 534–​5. 32 MM 6: 316. 33 MM 6: 313, 316, 322; TPP 8: 352; TP 8: 300. 34 Eth-​C 27: 360.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  73 a given context or how to adjudicate apparent conflicts among rational standards. Our reason allows us to reflect on and resolve various casuistical questions by formulating and issuing regulations and decrees that fill in some of the details about what laws of reason require or prohibit.35 These executive directives might tell us, for example, whether suicide is permissible to save one’s country, how to effectively promote our ends in a particular context, how to overcome certain biases in our thinking, or how to show someone respect in a specific situation. Our reason allows us to subsume cases under the laws of reason and to issue corresponding directives to ourselves, such as that I, in particular, must refrain from lying in the specific circumstances in which I find myself. Reason in us also includes the ability to warn ourselves against violating laws of reason that we might be about to violate.36

4.3.2  Enforce Laws A sovereign, understood abstractly, has the power to enforce legislated laws by compelling, inducing, or otherwise leading subjects who might violate them to comply with those laws.37 The legislative and executive powers we have mainly discussed concern making, interpreting, and applying laws. Additionally, when a ruler enforces the laws, she supplies a binding force that helps to make the laws effective.38 The executive branch of government or a dictator in her executive role, for example, can employ coercion, threats, bribes, and other incentives to lead subjects to follow the law and to prevent illegality.39 An executor is strong or weak depending on how effectively she can get her subjects to comply with the law. Some laws, however, are unenforceable if those who are subject to them necessarily conform to those laws. God, for example, has no need to enforce the laws of reason in himself because it is impossible for him to violate them. Other laws are not fully enforceable if the incentives to break them are equal to or greater than the incentives a ruler can produce to comply with those laws. The threat of the death penalty, for example, might be insufficient to dissuade a shipwreck victim from pushing another person off a sinking plank that cannot support them both.40 Most laws that we are subject to, such as legal statutes, employment policies, games, or the rules of a club, can be enforced by police, managers, referees, or others. Our power of reason, according to the Sovereignty Conception, includes the executive ability to enforce, impose, and otherwise make effective in our own minds



35 Rel 6: 186; Eth-​V 27: 617, 619–​20; Eth-​C 27: 356. 36 MM 6: 440; Eth-​V 27: 576, 617–​19; Eth-​C 27: 335, 354–​6. 37 MM 6: 312, 316–​17; TP 8: 291, 299, 302; Eth-​C 27: 362. 38 Eth-​V 27: 530; MM 6: 312; CPrR 5: 133; TP 8: 292; Anth 7: 309–​10. 39 MM 6: 317; Eth-​V 27: 548–​9. 40 MM 6: 235.

74 Sovereign Re ason the laws that we legislate through our legislative powers of reason.41 Our reason includes the ability, not just to legislate, interpret, and apply laws, but also to exert control over ourselves in ways that lead our various mental powers to operate in accordance with laws of reason. According to Kant, our reason, as it were, holds “the reins of government in its own hands” and has the “executive authority” to “compel us, in spite of all impediments, to produce certain effects, and in that case it has might.”42 Our mental powers do not always operate in accordance with the laws of reason. The enforcement ability of our reason can be strong or weak depending on whether exercising that ability allows us to overcome obstacles and opposing influences that lead us to violate rational standards.43 We might, for example, believe something through, as we sometimes say, “the force of argument” despite having biases and prejudices that lead us to reject the well-​grounded belief.44 We might choose to cheat on an exam despite having rational aversions to doing so that arise from the exercise of our enforcement power of reason. The ordinary idea of a rationally self-​ governing person who manages to govern herself by reason, it seems, is someone with significant self-​mastery, self-​possession, self-​command, and strength of mind who wants to live her life by reason, compels herself to do so, battles any countervailing influences she might encounter in herself, and otherwise puts into effect within herself rational requirements of all kinds.

4.3.3  Police Laws A sovereign, in her executive role as ruler, has various policing abilities that closely relate to her judicial abilities in her role as judge.45 As ruler, a sovereign can investigate whether her subjects have violated duly enacted laws and accuse them of having done so. An executor also has abilities to bring her subjects before a court, to serve as prosecutor in judicial proceedings, and to carry out any punishments that are determined by a judge at trial.46 These policing powers might be exercised by, for example, the Crown prosecutor or a Sergeant at Arms. We will return to these policing powers when we discuss judicial governing abilities in the next section. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that our power of reason includes executive policing abilities that supplement our judicial abilities of reason. We can

41 MM 6: 407–​8; A751/​B779; CPJ 5: 261, 433; Anth 7: 202; WOT 8: 134; EAT 8: 329–​30; PMB 15: 949; Eth-​Mr2 29: 626; Eth-​C 27: 356, 362; NF 19: 222. 42 MM 6: 408 and Eth-​C 27: 362, respectively. 43 MM 6: 384; CPJ 20: 262; Eth-​C 27: 362. 44 WOT 8: 134. 45 MM 6: 317, 327. 46 MM 6: 317–​18; Eth-​V 27: 530; Eth-​C 27: 295–​6, 351–​2.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  75 reflect on whether we violated or went beyond a law of reason that we rationally legislated to ourselves, suspect that we did so, and play a key role in internal trials that we can hold in our own minds. Our policing abilities of reason allow us to investigate whether we violated a law of reason by, for example, failing to notice that our child is playing in the street, believing that we are more likely to win a game of chance because we lost several times in a row, breaking a promise, or insulting someone. These abilities that are part of our power of reason also allow us to call ourselves to an internal judicial proceeding, to press the case against ourselves in that deliberative procedure, and to execute punishments or rewards on ourselves that are imputed to us through the exercise of our judicial abilities of reason.

4.3.4  Illustrations of our Executive Powers of Reason A sovereign, such as a government, a ship’s captain, a mob boss, or God, has executive powers to interpret and apply her laws through ordinances and decrees. She can enforce her laws on her subjects through coercion and inducement. She can also accuse her subjects of violating her laws, prosecute them at trial, and enact punishments or rewards on them that she authorizes in her role as judge. The power of reason in our own minds includes these same executive abilities, which are closely connected with our legislative and judicial abilities of reason. Our executive abilities of reason allow us to reflect on what the laws of reason require or forbid of us in specific circumstances, to produce rational desires and feelings that lead our various mental powers to operate in rational ways, to call ourselves to account for potentially violating or going beyond laws of reason, and to punish ourselves accordingly with, for example, painful feelings of guilt or regret. These executive abilities, like our legislative and judicial ones, operate involuntarily whether we want them to or not. We will return to some of these executive abilities in later chapters, but we can use our three examples to illustrate our executive abilities to interpret, enforce, and police laws of reason in ourselves.

4.3.4.1  Executing a Moral Law of Reason Let’s continue to assume that, through my legislative powers of reason, I have formulated, enacted, and connected incentives with a moral imperative in my own mind that prohibits coercing innocent people. Suppose I am considering whether to blackmail an innocent person. When my executive abilities of reason are active, they lead me to recognize that this law of reason against coercion forbids me, in particular, from blackmailing this person in these circumstances and to warn myself against doing so. I nonetheless find myself with natural desires and contingent purposes, which arise through the operations of my other mental powers, that tempt me to blackmail the person. My executive abilities of reason produce in me rational desires, feelings, and dispositions that lead me to choose not to blackmail

76 Sovereign Re ason the person.47 Virtue, according to Kant, is a strong enforcement power of reason that leads us to conform to the laws of morality despite strong temptations to violate them.48 Someone lacks virtue of this kind if the enforcement power of her reason is weak as compared to opposing natural feelings, desires, ends, and other influences she could face. The choice, however, is mine alone because nothing can determine or cause me to blackmail the person or not. Despite the incentives produced by my power of reason to stay on the straight and narrow, suppose I choose to blackmail the innocent person for the sake of personal gain. Soon after, my policing abilities of reason lead me, in involuntary ways, to accuse myself of violating a law of reason, to conduct a sort of trial of myself in my own mind, and to impose painful feelings of guilt on myself for culpable immorality.

4.3.4.2  Executing a Prudential Law of Reason The executive abilities included in our power of reason, Kant sometimes suggests, are not limited to interpreting, enforcing, and policing moral laws of reason. That pure reason can be practical by, on its own, leading us to choose in accordance with moral laws independent of whatever else we happen to want, feel, or choose is a fundamental claim of Kant’s moral theory and one that occupied much of his attention. Reason, he suggests, also includes the ability to execute laws of prudence. One such law that we legislate to ourselves, we are supposing, is a version of the 47 CPJ 5: 264; Eth-​V 27: 653; Eth-​Mr2 29: 626; Eth-​C 27: 361. For example, Kant says that moral feeling is the “autocracy of reason, to determine the will in accordance with moral laws” and “is the basis for their execution” in which reason “has the force of an incentive” and “executive power” (Eth-​Mr2 29: 626). See also Timmons (1985), Reath (2006, ­chapter 1), and Baxley (2005, c­ hapter 2). 48 MM 6: 205–​21, 380, 405–​8, 477. For discussions of Kant’s account of virtue as moral strength of will, see Allison (1990, 162–​79), Guyer (2000, 303–​23), Wood (2008, c­ hapter 8), Cureton and Hill (2018b, 2014), Cureton (2016a), Baxley (2010), Betzler (2008), Denis (2006), Johnson (1996b), and Engstrom (2002). Kant’s theory of virtue is notoriously difficult to interpret. The main concepts Kant uses to describe this power, such as “make effective,” “control,” “compel,” and “strength,” are naturally understood as causal notions. Together they suggest that reason can cause our mental powers to operate in ways that conform to its laws (or at least causally contribute to this) and that this causal power can be strong or weak as compared to competing causes that affect our mental powers. One difficulty with interpreting the enforcement ability of reason mechanistically is that we might not be able to understand rational nature entirely in the empirical or scientific terms that are required to make sense of it as a cause. A related difficulty is that, because our power of choice is supposedly free in the negative sense of an uncaused cause, neither reason nor anything else can cause us to make or not make a choice. Our other mental powers, such as those of judgment, attention, desire, and feeling, are supposedly not free and so operate in accordance with efficient causes, but neither reason nor anything else can cause us to choose in accordance with the laws of reason. Although these difficulties might be insoluble and so prevent us from ever fully grasping exactly how reason moves our mental powers, we do not need a complete explanation of reason’s enforcement ability to recognize that, however it happens, our power of reason can influence our minds in ways that make its laws effective. Perhaps Kant’s idea of radical evil as a free choice to prioritize self-​love over morality can help to explain the idea of virtue as strength of will. On this view, the monsters we battle are not natural feelings and desires directly but instead our own chosen ends and commitments to self-​interest (Timmons 1994, Allison 1990, Baxley 2010, Kohl 2017, Sussman 2005). Baxley (2010, 64–​7) also suggests a set of ways in which our reason might allow us to enforce its laws on ourselves by extirpating, suppressing, and silencing natural desires, although she argues that, for Kant, the real enemy is our tendency to radical evil rather than our natural desires themselves. We will return to some of these issues in Chapter 12.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  77 Hypothetical Imperative, which says that we must not affirm an end without also choosing to take the necessary means to realizing it. Suppose I have an end of getting to London by tonight and I am considering whether to board what I know is the last train of the day to London.49 I have various contingent feelings, desires, and purposes that lead me not to board the train as well as ones that lead me to maintain my end of getting to London by tonight. Assuming that my executive abilities of reason are active, I also recognize that a law of prudential reason that I have legislated to myself requires me, in my situation, to choose in one of three ways: To get on the train, to abandon my end of getting to London tonight, or to do both things. In addition to my contingent interests, I find myself with feelings, desires, and dispositions produced by my executive abilities of reason that lead me to comply with this prudential requirement.50 I would violate the Hypothetical Imperative by choosing both to maintain my end of getting to London by tonight and to not get on the train. It is up to me to decide which, if any, choices to make. That Kant sometimes thinks our power of reason includes the ability to enforce prudential, and not just moral, laws of reason in ourselves might be surprising to some of his allies and critics. “Self-​control according to the rules of prudence,” Kant says, “is an analogue of self-​mastery” in which someone has a strong and effectively exercised power of reason to enforce prudential laws of reason in herself.51 According to Kant: “One must coerce oneself to prudent . . . actions”; “[t]‌he more one can coerce oneself through pragmatic coercion, the freer one is”; and “[r]eason . . . gives the resolute man strength that nature sometimes denies him.”52 When Kant argues that the Hypothetical Imperative is analytic, he appeals to the executive power of reason to explain what he means: “Whoever wills the end also wills (insofar as reason has decisive influence on his actions) the indispensably necessary means to it that are within his power.”53 Kant also describes examples in which people are rationally moved to comply with the Hypothetical Imperative despite having natural feelings and desires that lead them not to do so: Man must have discipline, and he disciplines himself according to the rules of prudence; he often, for example, has the desire to sleep late, but compels himself to get up, because he sees that it is necessary; he often has the desire to go on eating or drinking, but sees that it is harmful to him. This discipline is the executive authority of reason’s prescription over the actions that proceed from sensibility. It is the discipline of prudence, or the pragmatic discipline.54

49 This example is adapted from Foot (1978, ­chapter 4). See also Broome (2013, 156). 50 Anth 7: 242, 256–​7; CB 8: 112–​13; Eth-​C 27: 353; CPrR 5: 24; CPJ 5: 262–​3. 51 Eth-​C 27: 363. 52 NF 19: 222 and Anth 7: 256–​7, respectively. 53 G 4: 417, my emphasis. 54 Eth-​C 27: 360. Here are some additional passages: The “capacity to master oneself, to possess oneself, to be sufficient to oneself ” includes the capacity to “overcome all hindrances and inconveniences

78 Sovereign Re ason Often our contingent feelings, desires, and purposes are enough to motivate us to conform to the rational laws of prudence. Once we understand that a choice or combination of choices is imprudent, this knowledge often leads to revisions in these contingent interests without the involvement of reason’s enforcement power. For example, we might lose our natural desire to drink a clear liquid when we discover that it is gasoline.55 When our executive abilities of reason are active, they also produce feelings and desires that lead us to conform to prudential rational requirements. These rationally produced motivations often complement our contingent ones, but they can also conflict with them, such as having natural desires that lead me to remain on the platform and natural desires to get to London tonight. My enforcement ability of reason leads me to avoid that set of choices. Let’s say I nonetheless make these choices together. My executive abilities of reason then allow me, involuntarily, to call myself to account for failing to choose rationally. After my internal trial, which we will discuss in the next section, these executive abilities of my reason lead to rational self-​punishment by producing painful feelings of regret or self-​reproach for having culpably violated a prudential law of reason that I have rationally legislated to myself.

4.3.4.3  Executing a Theoretical Law of Reason Our power of reason, Kant sometimes suggests, also includes abilities to execute laws that concern what we should or should not believe. One law of reason we legislate to ourselves, let’s continue to assume, is that we should not have contradictory beliefs. Suppose I believe at the same time that God exists and that God does not exist.56 Various natural feelings and desires lead me to maintain my belief in God, while my reflections on the problem of evil lead me to deny God’s existence. When my executive abilities of reason are active, I interpret and apply the law of noncontradiction to myself and so recognize that this law forbids me from affirming both

of life, insofar as they run counter to the end of what is to our benefit” (Eth-​V 27: 653). Reason includes “a capacity to overcome impressions on our sensory faculty of desire by representations of that which is useful or injurious” (A802/​B830). A deceiver who “wants, for example, by his testimony or his actions, to gain advantages . . . has need of much prudence and foresight, in order not to be unmasked . . . [and] employs much strength and freedom of mind in his relation to the honest man” (Eth-​V 27: 559). A foolish person can be subject to a strong passion, such as ambition, that “is able of fettering reason” by leading her to act imprudently (MH 2: 262). Someone who “asserts of his lustful inclination that, when the desired object and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible to him; ask him whether, if a gallows were erected in front of the house where he finds this opportunity and he would be hanged on it immediately after gratifying his lust, he would not then control his inclination” (CPrR 5: 30). 55 This example is from Williams (1981, c­ hapter 8). 56 It might not be possible for us to have some pairs of inconsistent beliefs when, for example, we fully recognize that we have both of them and that they contradict one another. Many of our inconsistent beliefs involve either implicit beliefs or ones that we do not realize contradict one another. For purposes of illustration, I assume that my belief that God exists and my belief that God does not exist are far enough removed in my web of beliefs that the inconsistency of these beliefs is not blatantly obvious to me. Thanks to Thomas E. Hill, Jr. for pressing me on this point.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  79 beliefs simultaneously. I cannot, according to our model of the human mind from Chapter 3, exercise direct control over what I believe, but I nonetheless find myself with dispositions of reason that arise through my executive abilities of reason to abandon one or both of those beliefs. Reason, Kant says, has the “commanding authority” to “direct, stop, or impel the course of [our] thoughts” in ways that lead our power of judgment to operate in conformity to its laws.57 Reason can, as it were, “use force” to “compel the mind” to judge rationally and to “overpower” prejudices that lead us to affirm irrational beliefs or sets of beliefs.58 We show great “strength of mind” if this power is strong enough to overcome opposing influences, such as feelings of anger or the influences of our imagination, that often lead our power of judgment to operate in ways that violate laws of reason.59 When our executive power of reason is weak, we lack a kind of courage to conform our judgments and ways of judging to the laws of reason.60 In people with certain mental impairments, reason might also become “dethroned” in such a way that reasoning with such a person is unlikely to succeed because his ability to enforce laws that concern beliefs in himself is significantly diminished or entirely absent.61 Supposing I nonetheless continue both to affirm and to deny God’s existence despite the constraints that my reason imposes on my power of judgment, I can involuntarily exercise my executive abilities of reason to accuse myself of irrational thinking. However, unlike in the previous two examples that involve violating moral and prudential laws that concern how we ought to choose, my power of reason does not, for reasons we will discuss in the next section, allow me to hold myself directly responsible for violating standards of theoretical rationality.

4.4  Judicial Abilities: Establish Courts, Attribute and Impute Acts, Apply Laws, and Assign Consequences The third kind of ability that something must have to govern something else is to adjudicate the laws that it legislates and executes. For example, the United States federal government includes a judicial branch; an absolute monarch can take on 57 WOT 8: 134 and Anth 7: 202, respectively. See also WOT 8: 140n, 145–​6; A751/​B779–​A751/​B780; CF 7: 103. 58 Eth-​C 27: 362 and L-​Log 24: 162, respectively. 59 Eth-​C 27: 365–​6. See also L-​Log 24: 860. 60 WIE 8: 35; Anth 7: 260. 61 PMB 15: 942, 945, 949. It is difficult or impossible to explain the specific psychological mechanisms through which our power of reason can affect our power of judgment. This influence is nonetheless recognizable in reflective common sense and ordinary language when we say, for example, that we are torn about what to believe, pulled in different directions, and swayed by the force of an argument. See also note 48.

80 Sovereign Re ason the role of supreme judge; a ship’s captain can serve as the head of a maritime tribunal; a military commander can establish a court martial; a student honor court can try accused cheaters; and God is supposedly the final judge of us all. Judicial abilities help to ensure that some of the threats and inducements connected with the laws by the legislator are credible and so help to promote compliance with them. The executive abilities to inform subjects about what the law requires and to lead them to act accordingly are forward-​looking. The governing relation also seems to include a backward-​looking element of assessing whether subjects broke the law and punishing them accordingly if they did so. A state or organization that makes no provisions for judging the conduct of its members who might break the law or for settling disputes among them according to its laws does not seem to govern them in the fullest sense. The judicial abilities of a sovereign include, more specifically, powers to establish courts, to interpret duly enacted laws, to apply them to specific cases, and to assign punishments.62 Let’s examine these four abilities in the abstract and as governing abilities of reason.

4.4.1  Establish Courts A sovereign can conduct trials to determine whether a subject violated laws that have been legislated.63 In trials of this kind, the subject who has been accused by the ruler of violating a law is afforded at least a minimum degree of due process. 62 Eth-​V 27: 573. It is worth noting that sovereigns, in their capacity as judges, have corresponding abilities to determine rewards, and not just punishments, for their subjects. When legislators connect incentives to laws, they might attempt to induce rather than coerce compliance by employing, for example, promises of reward. Legislators might also specify ways of going beyond the law without strictly requiring their subjects to do so. If this happens, judges have judicial abilities that correspond to the ones we discuss in this section: They can establish meritocratic tribunals, such as decorations boards, in which they attribute acts to subjects, impute acts to them as ones they are responsible for, apply the laws to determine whether subjects are responsible for complying with or going beyond the law, and reward them accordingly if they acted in praiseworthy ways. Our power of reason might include these same abilities to reward ourselves with pleasant feelings of contentment or self-​satisfaction for complying with or going beyond certain laws of reason (e.g. G 4: 432–​3; MM 6: 227–​8; Eth-​V 27: 548–​50, 559; Eth-​ C 27: 289–​90; L-​Th 28: 1074–​6). There are significant problems, however, with attributing such a view to Kant and even to regarding it as a theme in his thinking (Timmons 2021b, 183–​92). Our conscience, according to Kant, only condemns or acquits us. The enforcement of moral laws, Kant suggests, proceeds through constraint rather than inducement (MM 6: 219). Kant is concerned about self-​conceit, which he sees as one of the most significant obstacles to becoming virtuous. And it is controversial and difficult to explain whether, in Kant’s view, supererogatory acts are possible in which we somehow go above and beyond the laws of moral reason (Hill 1992, c­ hapter 8, Cureton and Hill 2023, Baron 1995, Baron and Falmy 2009, Johnson 1996a, Heyd 1980, and Guevara 1999). Common sense and ordinary language also suggest that there is something untoward or less than ideal about someone, even a saint or a hero, praising and feeling moral satisfaction in herself for her good deeds. These various difficulties might be overcome, but I set them aside for a future occasion and instead focus mainly on judicial abilities that concern enforcing the law through constraint. See also note 19. We will return, however, to the issue of supererogation in Chapter 13. 63 MM 6: 227, 235, 296–​7, 440, 438; Eth-​C 27: 296–​8.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  81 The prosecutor in the case is the executive part of the sovereign or the sovereign in her executive capacity, such as the US Attorney General or an absolute monarch in her executive role as ruler. The defendant in the case is the subject, who can be represented by defense counsel. The judge is the judicial part of the sovereign or the sovereign in her judicial capacity, such as a US federal judge or a club’s conduct board. The prosecution argues one side of the case, while the defense argues the other.64 The judge has the ability, in minimally scrupulous and impartial ways, to consider the relevant laws and evidence, to render verdicts, and to sentence defendants.65 Judges lack the ability to carry out these punishments themselves, but they can order the executor of the laws to do so. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, our power of reason allows us to conduct trials of ourselves in our own minds.66 We often look back and suspect that we, for example, acted foolishly or immorally on some occasion, drew a conclusion too hastily, failed to notice that someone was in danger, or fantasized about telling off our boss. Oftentimes, however, our feelings of pride and conceit, our desire to be respectable and amenable to others, our fear of guilt or regret, our habits of judging ourselves well and dismissing disconfirming evidence, or other factors lead us to deny these charges of irrationality or unreasonableness against ourselves. Our judicial abilities of reason allow us to settle disputes of this sort, as Kant says, “with the force of law” through a deliberative mental process in which we argue with ourselves about whether we culpably violated a law of reason, condemn or acquit ourselves according to the relevant laws and evidence, and potentially sentence ourselves to painful feelings of guilt or self-​reproach.67 The judicial proceedings that our abilities of reason allow us to conduct in our own minds are, like the exercise of our other governing abilities, involuntary.68 We cannot directly control whether we call ourselves to account for a supposed violation of a rational principle. Nor can we directly choose how or when to exercise our judicial abilities of reason by, for example, simply finding ourselves innocent or avoiding an internal trial altogether. Although we can sometimes choose to reflect on our past conduct or to put off such assessments in ways that might prompt or defer our conscience for a time, when our judicial abilities of reason are active, we cannot help but eventually take stock of ourselves.69 Our deliberations in our internal judicial proceedings are structured according to procedural norms like those in ordinary criminal trials. We ourselves play all three roles. Different parts or aspects of ourselves serve as prosecutor, defendant, 64 MM 6: 438; Eth-​V 27: 618. 65 MM 6: 440; Eth-​V 27: 566–​7; Eth-​C 27: 296. 66 MM 6: 438–​40; A751/​B779–​A752/​B780, A851/​B879; Rel 6: 186; Ped 9: 495; Eth-​V 27: 618; Eth-​ C 27: 354–​6. For discussions of self-​scrutiny and self-​knowledge, see Kraus (2020), Sticker (2021a), Mackenzie (2018), and Timmons (2021b, 192–​3), Wood (2008, 189–​92). 67 Eth-​C 27: 296–​7. See also CF 7: 33; MM 6: 440. 68 MM 6: 401, 438; Eth-​C 27: 297. 69 Thanks to Mark Timmons for pressing me on this point.

82 Sovereign Re ason and judge, which are standpoints that we can variously occupy. Our executive power of reason, as we have seen, allows us to accuse ourselves of violating rational standards that we have imposed on ourselves and to prosecute the case. Our nonrational mental powers, such as those of feeling, desire, choice, and judgment, allow us to defend ourselves by, for example, calling to mind exculpatory evidence, claiming that we were incapacitated or unaware of relevant facts, and pressing for a favorable interpretation of the law of reason at issue. Our judicial powers of reason allow us to preside over these internal debates by affording both aspects of ourselves adequate time to make their case, keeping our thought processes focused on the issues at hand, abstracting from prejudicial claims, and otherwise ensuring that rational norms of due process are followed in our deliberations. Our judicial abilities also allow us, in thorough and unbiased ways, to examine the dispute, render a verdict, and assign punishments to ourselves in the form of painful feelings of regret, guilt, or self-​reproach.70 This deliberative process is recognizable to many of us when we find ourselves thinking back on some choice, judgment, desire, or other mental act, accuse ourselves of irrationality, defend ourselves against the charge, vacillate between the two perspectives, reach a final judgment, and, if we find ourselves guilty, come to experience painful feelings of self-​reproach as a result.

4.4.2  Attribute and Impute Acts A judge, which might be part of the sovereign, the sovereign herself in her judicial capacity, or a delegate of the sovereign, has several judicial abilities in judicial proceedings in which subjects are tried for alleged violations of duly enacted laws. We will discuss some of them in this and the following two subsections as abilities of judges in the abstract and as abilities of our power of reason. Two of the abilities that a judge, considered simply as such, has are to attribute acts to subjects and to impute acts to them.71 These determinations do not depend on whether the acts, if they occurred, violated the relevant laws. A judge can simply decide whether the subject shot someone, took something, remained silent, or otherwise acted in the alleged way without yet deciding whether the act is illegal.72 A judge can also decide whether the subject is responsible for the act. Attribution 70 A751/​B779; Eth-​V 27: 619; Eth-​C 27: 354. Our judicial abilities of reason often depend on the exercise of some of our other mental powers, such as those of understanding and judgment, to gather relevant empirical evidence. 71 The account of this judicial ability and, in particular, of the distinction between attributing and imputing an act draws from Hruschka (1986). 72 Attributing and imputing an act to someone might in some cases require judges to consult relevant legal statutes that define what it is to act in some way, such as embezzlement, but they need not yet consider whether such acts are illegal. See Hruschka’s (1986) and Rawls’ (1999a, ­chapter 2) discussion of acts that are defined by practices (e.g. balking in baseball).

Governing Abilities of Re ason  83 and imputation are different. Attributing an act to a subject is judging that she performed the act.73 Imputing an act to a subject is judging that she performed the act freely.74 A subject freely does something, in the relevant sense, when she is or must be regarded as the “originator,” “complete first cause,” and “author” of the act.75 Acts are not free if they are or must be regarded as “under the law of natural necessity” and “determined by . . . external causes.” We briefly discussed this kind of negative freedom in Chapter 3, and we will return to it in Chapter 12. A judge might attribute an act to a subject as the one who did it but not impute the act to him as something he did freely. For example, a subject might have stumbled into someone, knocking her into a pool where she drowned. A judge might attribute the physical act to the subject by judging that a stumble occurred and that he, rather than someone else, was the one who stumbled. The judge might not, however, impute the act to him because, at the time, the defendant was very intoxicated, suffered a dizzy spell, acted on reflex, had a significant mental impairment, or otherwise did not freely choose to knock into the person.76 As we shall see, whether a judge imputes or merely attributes an act to a defendant affects the other judicial abilities a judge has to hold subjects responsible for violating the law and to assign them punishments for culpably doing so. Our power of reason includes the judicial ability to attribute mental acts to ourselves as ones that we did. As we discussed in Chapter 3, mental acts include the many ways our various powers of mind can operate. Desiring, feeling, imagining, understanding, and choosing are all mental acts. Mental acts also include mental omissions, such as failing to notice or listen to something. In an internal trial in which we have accused ourselves of violating a law of reason, our judicial power of reason allows us, in scrupulous and impartial ways, to examine and render a judgment about whether we did what we accuse ourselves of doing while setting aside whether the supposed act is inconsistent with the laws of reason and whether we are blameworthy for doing it. We might, on reflection, judge that we desired the misfortune of others or failed to notice that someone was being harassed. We might also judge that we did not, despite appearances, fantasize about hurting ourselves or choose to offend someone. These judgments of attribution concern whether we did the thing, apart from whether we did it freely or whether the mental act violates a law of reason. We also have the judicial ability of reason to impute mental acts to ourselves as ones that we freely performed.77 Our mental acts are free, in the relevant sense, when we were not determined by anything to do them. According to our working and partial conception of the human mind from Chapter 3, the only mental power

73 MM 6: 321; Eth-​V 27: 557, 564–​5; Eth-​C 27: 288. 74 MM 6: 223, 227; Eth-​V 27: 561–​2; Eth-​C 27: 289. 75 Eth-​V 27: 503 and MM 6: 223, respectively. 76 Eth-​V 27: 566, 633; Eth-​C 27: 288. 77 Eth-​V 27: 616.

84 Sovereign Re ason we have that allows us to act freely in this way is our power of choice. Our other mental powers, such as those of judgment and feeling, are not free because their exercise is determined by factors that are inside or outside of themselves. Mental acts that we perform through these mental powers, such as believing or feeling something, can be attributed to us, but they cannot be imputed to us because we cannot freely perform them, at least directly. What we believe, for example, is determined by the various influences on our power of judgment, such as those from our powers of understanding and feeling, as well as on features of that power itself, such as our habits of judgment. When our power of choice is sufficiently realized and free, however, what we choose is up to us even if we were nonetheless tempted in various ways by our natural feelings and desires. Our choices, including failures to choose, are the only mental acts that can be both attributed and imputed to us. As we discussed in Chapter 3, however, our choices can sometimes indirectly affect the operation of our other mental powers. Believing something, for example, can be attributed but not imputed to someone, but choosing not to investigate the grounds of a belief can be attributed and imputed to her. Someone can exercise his judicial ability of reason to attribute but not impute to himself various mental acts that result in drunkenly stumbling into someone, but he can also exercise this ability to attribute and impute to himself his choice to get drunk.

4.4.3  Apply Laws to Cases A sovereign as such has judicial abilities to interpret duly enacted laws and to apply them to acts that she attributes or imputes to her subjects.78 A judge can consider what the law requires, bring the act of a defendant under the law as she interprets it, and so decide whether the defendant violated or conformed to the law.79 A judge can also exercise these abilities with regard to acts that she attributes to a defendant as something he did but did not do freely. Such acts can be assessed by a judge as legal or illegal. A judge can also interpret and apply the law to an act that she imputes to the defendant as something he chose to do. A judge has further abilities to assign responsibility to defendants who violated the law by acting freely.80 A mafia boss, for example, who sits in judgment of an underling might conclude that the lieutenant broke their law against cooperating with the police and that he is responsible for freely doing so. If, however, the boss has determined that the cooperation was coerced, resulted from a serious mental illness, or was otherwise not freely done, then the boss can still judge 78 Eth-​V 27: 563, 572. 79 MM 6: 227–​8; Eth-​V 27: 548. 80 MM 6: 227–​8; Eth-​C 27: 289–​90.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  85 that the lieutenant broke their law, but he cannot assign responsibility to him for doing so. A judge can consider a variety of factors when deciding the degree to which a defendant is responsible for freely breaking the law. The considerations that can affect our degree of responsibility are controversial, but the following are examples that Kant mentions. Someone is not responsible for transgressing a law that she was unaware of at the time of her act or when she did not know what she was doing.81 Someone is less responsible for violating a law that she failed to apply accurately to her situation than if she knew at the time that her act would violate the law.82 The consequences of violating the law can affect the degree to which we are responsible for acting in those ways.83 Our level of responsibility can vary depending on whether an act was premediated or not.84 It can also vary based on the kinds of incentives that we faced when we acted. For instance, a subject is less blameworthy for a transgression the weaker the incentives that the sovereign, in her executive capacity, imposed on her to follow it and the stronger the incentives of other kinds she had to break it, such as a starving person who breaks the law by stealing food from an unoccupied cabin.85 Our power of reason, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, includes judicial abilities to interpret laws and to apply them to our various mental acts, such as our judgments, choices, imaginings, and other operations of our mental powers. These abilities allow us, in involuntary ways, to determine whether we violated or conformed to laws of reason on particular occasions.86 Our reason also includes the judicial ability to determine whether we are responsible for violating the laws of reason.87 The only mental acts that we can freely perform are making choices. Only they can be imputed to us, so we are responsible for only them. The operations of our powers of judgment, imagination, attention, and feeling can violate laws of reason, but our judicial abilities of reason do not allow us to decide that we are directly responsible for these violations. Our judicial abilities of reason allow us, however, to assign ourselves responsibility for choosing in ways that affect mental powers that are not free. For example, we might judge that we violated various supposed laws of reason by affirming contradictory beliefs, failing to notice someone under duress, feeling belligerent, and expressing disdain for morality itself. We can rationally determine that we are responsible, not for these transgressions because they were unfree mental acts, but for freely

81 MM 6: 223; Eth-​V 27: 565–​6; Eth-​C 27: 288, 291, 354–​5. 82 MM 6: 224; Eth-​V 27: 568–​9. 83 MM 6: 227; Eth-​V 27: 560, 563. For a discussion of Kant’s account of how we can be responsible for the consequences of our actions, see Hill (2000, ­chapter 6) and Reath (2006, c­ hapter 9). 84 Eth-​V 27: 564, 569–​70. 85 MM 6: 228; Eth-​V 27: 567–​70; Eth-​C 27: 291–​3. 86 Eth-​V 27: 558, 616. 87 MM 6: 223–​4, 227–​8; Eth-​V 27: 548, 562.

86 Sovereign Re ason choosing to put ourselves in a position in which we knew these violations were likely consequences of our doing so, such as deciding to get very drunk. Our judicial abilities of reason allow us to judge that we are responsible to varying degrees for freely choosing in ways that violate laws of reason. The factors that can affect our level of responsibility for transgressing rational laws are debatable, but we can illustrate some of the ones that Kant suggests. We are not responsible for breaking a law of reason if we did not do so freely or if we were not previously acquainted with it.88 We are less responsible than we otherwise would be for breaking a law of reason if we were not aware that our act would violate the law. For instance, our legislative or executive abilities of reason might not have been operating effectively at the time we acted, such as when we were young children, had a mental illness, or faced a complicated situation without sufficient time for, as Kant says, “slow and ponderous reason” to tell us how the law applies to our situation.89 A law of reason might also require us to obey the statutes of our political system even though, at the time, we were unfamiliar with some of those laws and did not know that we were breaking them. Our responsibility for transgressing laws of reason varies depending on the incentives we faced when we made our choice. If, for example, our enforcement ability of reason operated weakly while our countervailing natural desires and feelings were strong, then we are less responsible for a violation than if our enforcement ability of reason had been strong and the natural desires and feelings that lead us to break the law had been weak.

4.4.4  Assign Consequences A sovereign, considered in the abstract, has judicial abilities to assign “rightful consequences” to subjects according to their level of responsibility for violating a duly enacted law.90 According to Kant, a judge “determines with legal authority that the action shall have the consequences that are linked to it by the law,” such as the 88 MM 6: 223. Rational and reasonable people are perhaps necessarily familiar with basic laws of reason, but we might not be fully aware of more specific ones that follow from them. For Kant, such specific laws include potentially complicated legal statutes of the political system in which we live because, according to him, citizens have a moral duty to comply with the law of their land (as long as their society has a minimally functioning legal system). 89 WOT 8: 145. 90 MM 6: 227, 439–​40. See also Eth-​C 27: 290, 295–​6. I leave aside questions about whether Kant was a retributivist about punishment, whether he believed that punishment is justified merely as a useful deterrent, or endorsed a mixed view of the grounds of punishment. My suggestion is that the ability to impose consequences is constitutive of governance as such, which leaves open this question along with others, such as how much subjects should be punished for their culpable violations of the law. For discussions of Kant’s conception of the nature, grounds, and limits of punishment, see Hill (2000, ­chapter 7), Murphy (1987), Sussman (2008), Wood (2008), and Ripstein (2009). Punishment might not be essential to all forms of governance because, as discussed in notes 19 and 62, some sovereigns might instead govern through promises of reward that judicial authorities can assign to those who freely conform to or go beyond what the law requires.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  87 threats of punishment that the legislator connected with it.91 Judges can also assign punishments that are not explicitly stated in the law. The more a judge thinks a defendant is responsible for a violation, the greater the penalties the judge can assign him. A judge also has the ability to require subjects to compensate victims, restore their rights, and apologize to those they wronged.92 A judge cannot enforce these punishments and orders herself but can authorize the sovereign in its executive capacity to implement them.93 Our power of reason includes the judicial ability to assign consequences to ourselves for culpably violating the laws of reason according to our degree of responsibility for choosing in those ways.94 Reason, as it were, “gives effect to [its] laws.”95 When we have used our reason to find ourselves responsible for violating a rational standard, our judicial abilities of reason allow us to authorize our executive abilities of reason to produce painful feelings of remorse, guilt, regret, self-​reproach, blame, anguish, abhorrence, and despair according to how condemnable we think we are for the violation.96 Our judicial abilities of reason also allow us to authorize our executive powers of reason to produce rational desires to repent, to correct our mistakes, to apologize to other people, to make amends, to acknowledge our culpable transgression to them, and to seek their forgiveness.97

4.4.5  Illustrations of our Judicial Powers of Reason A sovereign, understood abstractly, has judicial abilities to establish courts in which she attributes and imputes acts to subjects, interprets and applies laws to those acts, and assigns consequences to her subjects for culpably violating them. Our power of reason includes these same abilities to assess ourselves by the laws of reason. We can attribute or impute beliefs, desires, choices, or other mental acts to ourselves, pass judgment on whether we violated rational standards and were responsible for doing so, and assign corresponding punishments to ourselves. We cannot simply choose to avoid reflecting on ourselves in these ways. Nor can we condemn or acquit ourselves at will or directly choose to forestall feelings of regret or guilt that are produced by our reason for violating a law that we have rationally legislated for ourselves. Let’s illustrate our judicial abilities of reason using our same three examples as before.

91 Eth-​V 27: 572. See also Eth-​V 27: 548; L-​Th 28: 1074–​6. 92 MM 6: 332–​3; Eth-​V 27: 688–​9. 93 Eth-​C 27: 296. 94 MM 6: 438; Eth-​V 27: 616–​18; Eth-​C 27: 354. 95 MM 6: 439. 96 MM 6: 400–​1; Eth-​V 27: 576, 618–​19; Eth-​C 27: 296, 352–​7. 97 MM 6: 332–​3; Eth-​V 27: 618–​19, 688; Eth-​C 27: 353–​4. See Satne (2018), Kotkas (2011), and Timmons (2021b, 235–​6).

88 Sovereign Re ason

4.4.5.1  Adjudicating a Moral Law of Reason Let’s continue to suppose that I have rationally legislated to myself a moral law against coercing innocent people. Through my executive powers of reason, I am aware that blackmailing a particular innocent person is wrong, and I find in myself rationally produced desires not to do so. I nonetheless choose to blackmail her. Later, I rationally accuse myself of violating a moral law against coercion, which prompts me to assess the morality of my choice through my judicial abilities of reason. In this internal court of conscience, I argue with myself about, for example, whether I blackmailed the person and did so freely, whether blackmail is a form of coercion, whether I violated the relevant law, and whether there are any factors that diminish my responsibility if I did so.98 Using my judicial abilities of reason, I eventually come to judge that I am responsible for violating the law against coercing innocent people and to assign myself a punishment according to the degree of my responsibility.99 These punishments, which I carry out on myself through my executive abilities of reason, are rationally produced feelings of guilt and a “sense of dislike about” myself.100 I also find myself with rationally produced desires to do better next time and to apologize to and seek forgiveness from the person I blackmailed.101 If, however, I acquit myself of the charge or find that I am not responsible for violating the law, perhaps because what I did was not technically coercion or the person was not innocent, then I will likely feel, as Kant says, “relief from preceding anxiety” and “rejoicing at having escaped the danger of being found punishable.”102 These rational processes of moral self-​scrutiny and self-​judgment all take place involuntarily and often unwillingly. 4.4.5.2  Adjudicating a Prudential Law of Reason Our judicial abilities of reason, Kant sometimes suggests, are not limited to adjudicating moral laws. These abilities also allow us to judge ourselves by prudential laws of reason that we enact in our own minds. Kant’s allies and critics will likely be startled that, according to some texts, our judicial abilities of reason extend beyond our conscience in ways that suggest a more expansive conception of rational self-​governance than is usually attributed to Kant. Let’s continue to suppose that I have legislated a prudential law to myself, namely a version of the Hypothetical Imperative, and that my executive abilities of reason operate in ways that lead me to want to follow this law and that make me aware of what I need to do to satisfy it. I recognize that the Hypothetical Imperative 98 MM 6: 438. For discussions of Kant’s theory of conscience, see Hill (2002, c­ hapters 9 and 11), Kahn (2021), Moyar (2008), and Wood (2008, c­ hapter 10). I am referring in this section to our “judging conscience” (Eth-​V 27: 617). Our “warning” conscience (MM 6: 440) and our “examining conscience” (Eth-​V 27: 616) are, I suggest, part of our executive abilities of reason. 99 MM 6: 440; Eth-​C 27: 296–​7. 100 Rel 6: 45–​6n. 101 MM 6: 400, 438; Ped 9: 495; Eth-​V 27: 576; Eth-​C 27: 296–​7. 102 MM 6: 440. See also MM 6: 400, 438; Rel 6: 70n, 145–​6n; Eth-​C 27: 296–​7.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  89 forbids me from both retaining my end of getting to London tonight and choosing not to get on what I know is the last train of the day to London. I decide, however, to make these two choices together, leaving me on the platform as the train departs. Afterwards, I involuntarily accuse myself of imprudence through my executive abilities of reason and establish what Kant calls a “tribunal of prudence” in my own mind through my judicial abilities of reason.103 This internal deliberative procedure, in which I rationally consider the charge of imprudence against myself, is an “analogue of conscience.”104 In it, I rationally assess whether I “commit[ed] a fault . . . by doing . . . less than prudence prescribes.”105 I rationally assess whether I am responsible for making an imprudent choice and, if so, assign myself painful feelings of self-​reproach and regret.106 Someone in my situation who “apportions blame . . . to himself ” and “levels . . . reproaches at himself ” for imprudence “beats himself over the head,” “rages against himself,” and feels “agitated” and “chagrined with himself and his imprudence.”107 These are rational “torments” that I impose on myself through my judicial abilities of reason in proportion to my degree of responsibility for violating one of its prudential laws.108 They are separate from any natural feelings or desires that might arise in me, such as natural feelings of disappointment with myself or natural aversions to the financial consequences I might suffer because of my imprudence. In some cases, we might also confuse the self-​imposed rational penalties from our tribunal of prudence with pangs of conscience. We might not be sure, for example, whether the rational self-​reproach we experience for offending someone at a party or landing ourselves in prison is self-​ punishment for our imprudence, self-​punishment for our immorality, or both.109

4.4.5.3  Adjudicating a Theoretical Law of Reason Our judicial abilities of reason, Kant also suggests at times, allow us to pass judgment on ourselves according to laws of reason that concern the operation of other mental powers besides our power of choice. We can, in particular, judge our power of judgment by laws of reason that concern our beliefs. There is, however, a significant difference between how we can assess the operation of our power of judgment and that of our power of choice. Unlike our power of choice, our power of judgment is not a free mental power but is instead determined by factors inside and outside itself, such as experiences of the world and habits of thought. We cannot, in any direct way, use our judicial abilities of reason to impute beliefs to ourselves, to hold ourselves responsible for what we believe, or to punish ourselves accordingly.

103 Eth-​C 27: 251. 104 Eth-​C 27: 352–​3. 105 MM 6: 434n. 106 Eth-​C 27: 352–​3; Anth 7: 260. 107 Eth-​C 27: 352–​3 and CPrR 5: 37, respectively. 108 Eth-​C 27: 352. 109 Eth-​C 27: 251–​2, 352; Eth-​V 27: 576.

90 Sovereign Re ason We can, however, use these abilities to attribute mental acts of judgment to ourselves and to decide whether our power of judgment operated in ways that violate laws of reason. Let’s continue to assume that I legislate to myself a law of reason against affirming contradictory beliefs. I rationally execute this law in myself in ways that lead my power of judgment to conform to it and that tell me that, in my current situation, I am rationally prohibited from simultaneously believing both that God exists and that God does not exist. Despite these dispositions of reason and my recognition of how the law applies to me, I nonetheless continue to affirm both beliefs. According to Kant, my power of reason is, as it were, the “highest court of appeals for all rights and claims of our speculation.”110 In its “office of censor,” reason allows us to judge “what is lawful in reason in general in accordance with the principles of its primary institution,” using procedures of “due process” that result in a “verdict” “according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws.”111 My judicial abilities of reason lead me to attribute my beliefs for and against God’s existence to myself and to judge that holding them together violates the rational law of noncontradiction. My judicial abilities of reason do not, however, allow me to judge that I am directly responsible for this violation or to assign corresponding punishments to myself. According to our model of the human mind, my power of judgment is not free, so I am not directly responsible or punishable for believing both that God does and does not exist. Assessing the operation of my power of judgment by laws of reason nonetheless tells me whether that power is working rationally or not, which can help to improve my judging powers in rational and reasonable ways. Although we cannot hold ourselves directly responsible for the operations of our power of judgment, we can hold ourselves responsible for choices we make that affect our power of judgment in ways that lead us to violate the laws of reason. As we discussed in Chapter 3, our choices can indirectly influence how our power of judgment operates. For example, we cannot simply choose to believe something, but we can sometimes choose to investigate the truth of propositions, choose to consider and reflect on them, choose to withhold our assent to them, and choose to put ourselves “into a condition most unsuitable for judging.”112 When we use our judicial abilities of reason to assess our choices, we might decide 110 A669/​B697. 111 A851/​B879, A751/​B779–​A752/​B780, Axii respectively. Other passages include: We can subject our thinking to “a higher and judicial reason” (A739/​B767); our reason “recognizes no other judge than universal human reason itself, in which everyone has a voice” (A752/​B 780); we can “regard the critique of pure reason as the true court of justice for all controversies of pure reason” (A751/​B779); “Individual errors can be remedied through censure and their causes through critique” (A711/​B759); and conflicts in our thinking “should not be settled by an amicable accommodation (amicabilis compositio), but (as a lawsuit) [call] for a verdict, that is, the decision of a judge (reason) which has the force of law” (CF 7: 33). 112 L-​Log 24: 842.

Governing Abilities of Re ason  91 that we are indirectly “to blame for [our] lack of foresight” when our hastiness and refusal to “apply enough of the requisite industry” to examining a topic led us to make erroneous judgments that the laws of reason forbid.113 If our power of judgment, as it were, “becomes dogmatic . . . and boldly denies” something without sufficient evidence, then we can be “blamable” for lacking “the intention not to settle anything, to decide anything” about the matter and for not choosing to be more cautious and modest when making the judgment.114 We might be to blame for choosing to remain ignorant about something that reason requires us to know or for choosing to allow our prejudices to grow rather than taking steps to identify and correct them.115 It can also be “punishable” to choose to investigate certain matters when doing so is contrary to the laws of reason.116 Assuming that I want to be a rational person, negative verdicts on my power of judgment might help me to take indirect steps to cultivate and improve that power, such as by choosing to investigate my beliefs and to communicate with others. We will return to these ways of rationally developing and improving our power of judgment in Chapters 11 and 14.

4.5  Final Remarks “Reason,” Hume famously said, “is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”117 The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds instead that, without the power of reason, our minds would be in a sort of state of nature in which our various powers of choice, judgment, imagination, feeling, and others would often operate in conflicting and irrational ways and affect one another through force.118 What is needed to prevent or extricate ourselves from this state of nature is the same as what a group of people needs to do so. We both need a sovereign to govern us. As a people, our sovereign might be a democratically elected government or an absolute monarch. As individuals, our power of reason makes us sovereign over ourselves. A rational and reasonable person, Kant says, brings “all his capacities and inclinations under his (reason’s) control” in order to “rule over himself.”119 According to the Sovereignty Conception, our reason allows us to establish a state of law in our own minds.120 Sovereignty, in its fullest sense, paradigmatically involves

113 L-​Log 24: 121 and Eth-​C 27: 371, respectively. See also L-​Log 24: 88. 114 A471/​B499 and L-​Log 24: 104, respectively. See also L-​Log 24: 832. 115 L-​Log 24: 67, 825, 832. 116 MM 6: 339–​40. 117 Hume (2000, 266). 118 A751/​B779. 119 MM 6: 408. See also L-​NR 27: 1384. 120 A751/​B779.

92 Sovereign Re ason possessing legislative, executive, and judicial abilities. Through our reason, we can legislate rational requirements of all kinds to ourselves, execute them in ourselves, and judge ourselves by them. Having all three abilities makes us a sovereign, while our powers of choice, judgment, imagination, and others make us a subject who is required to live up to the rational and reasonable standards through which we can govern ourselves.

5

Interests of Reason A rational and reasonable person governs herself through her power of reason. She formulates and enacts rational standards of all kinds for how to act and think, for what to notice or ignore, and for what not to imagine and desire. She interprets, applies, and enforces these norms in herself. She also evaluates herself by her self-​ imposed rational standards and reproaches herself for culpably violating them. Common sense and ordinary language suggest this idea of autonomy in which our power of reason gives us the ability to legislate, execute, and adjudicate principles of theoretical, moral, and prudential reason throughout our minds. We might happen to dislike some laws of reason, wish to avoid their constraints, choose to flout them, and fear the painful feelings that might result. Our governing abilities of reason nonetheless allow us to govern our various mental powers in involuntary ways that do not depend on contingent features of ourselves. These aspects of rational self-​governance emerged in the discussions we have so far had of our first two main questions, namely: What aspects of ourselves does our power of reason allow us to govern and how does our power of reason allow us to govern ourselves? The first feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our reason allows us to govern many of our powers of mind, including our powers of judgment, imagination, attention, desire, feeling, and choice. The second feature is that our reason includes specific legislative, executive, and judicial abilities to govern our various other mental powers through rational requirements of all kinds. As we continue to explore and refine these features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, let’s turn to our third main question: What moves us to govern ourselves by reason? Let’s explore the motives that lead a rational and reasonable person to exercise her governing abilities of reason, to comply with requirements of reason, to legislate laws of reason, and otherwise to live as an autonomous, rationally self-​governing person. The third feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our power of reason includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive desires, dispositions, drives, goals, needs, feelings, and other interests of reason.1 Part of having a 1 See Ferrarin (2015, 24–​34), Kleingeld (1998a), Yovel (1986), Raedler (2015, 12–​15, 60–​6), Velkley (2014), Engstrom (2009), Ypi (2021), Mudd (2017) Breazeale (1994), Gilead (1985), Neiman (1994), and Schafer (2023, c­ hapter 4) as well as Hill (2000, 139, 150–​1, 2002, 152–​3, 2012, 309, 2021a, 95), Smith (2020), and Rawls (1999a, 312–​13) who all discuss the idea that our power of reason includes desires, feelings, needs, and other interests. In several essays (Cureton 2013b, 2015, 2016b, 2018b, 2021, 2022, and Forthcoming-​c, ­chapter 12) and in this book, I significantly expand the number of interests

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0005

94  Sovereign Re ason rational nature is that we care about certain things for their own sake, are disposed to act in various ways, have certain needs, and possess desires and feelings simply because we are rational. Our power of reason is not inert, passive, or otherwise dependent on our natural desires, natural feelings, or choices. It includes its own active elements that are different from and perhaps conflict with our natural desires, natural feelings, and personal ends. From a commonsense perspective, a rational and reasonable person, simply as such, seems to value certain things apart from her contingent interests and apart from whether she thinks the things she cares about are intrinsically valuable or otherwise favored by normative facts that exist apart from her power of reason. Even those who are minimally rational or quite irrational have certain drives, dispositions, concerns, and other interests that are part of their rational nature itself. Traditional Kantian theories of reason contend that our reason includes some limited interests in governing ourselves by moral laws. The third feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason expands these interests significantly. We have interests of reason in exercising our many governing abilities to legislate, execute, and adjudicate rational requirements of all kinds, including standards of theoretical, prudential, moral reason. An even more radical feature of the Sovereignty Conception is that our power of reason includes substantive interests as well. A rational and reasonable person cares about various things for their own sake. Her rational nature leads her to value, for example, explanations, knowledge, freedom, happiness, solidarity, and the power of reason itself. Part of being a rational and reasonable person is that we strive to govern ourselves by reason in all ways and in all aspects of life. We are also driven by our reason to get to the bottom of things, moved to understand the world around us, led to care about the happiness of other people, and disposed to form relationships of solidarity with them. Both kinds of interests of reason are different from and often conflict with our natural desires, natural feelings, personal ends, and other contingent interests we have. Various formal and substantive interests of reason, according to the Sovereignty Conception, are “built in” to our rational nature. Our focus in this chapter is on the idea that our reason includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive interests of reason. We will explore connections between this idea and common sense as well as highlight its potentially surprising roots in Kant’s thinking. In the following two chapters, we will consider how our interests of reason help to determine what laws our reason moves us to legislate, enforce, and adjudicate in our own minds. In Part II, we will explore some specific interests of reason in knowledge, freedom, happiness, and others, along with some specific laws of reason that they favor. Our present task is to explore the idea of an of reason we have, emphasize substantive and not just formal interests of reason, explain what it is for something to be an interest of reason, and appeal to them in a version of the Categorical Imperative itself.

Interests of Re ason  95 interest of reason, to characterize two types of them, and to suggest that our reason includes a wide variety of these formal and substantive interests.

5.1  Interests: Desires, Emotions, Feelings, Ends, and all Other Motives An interest, in one sense, is a conative mental state or motive of any kind.2 Desires, emotions, feelings, wishes, cravings, dispositions, approvals, aversions, needs, values, impulses, intentions, instincts, inclinations, loyalties, and ends are all interests we can have. Someone’s interests might include his love for his children, his desire for a decent night’s sleep, his fear of spiders, his goal of learning a new language, his tendency to make rash judgments, his chagrin at the state of public discourse, and his willingness to follow the rules of his neighborhood association. Our interests are active elements in our minds. They tend to be extensive and varied, and many of our interests shift and change throughout our lives. An interest is a generic term for the elements in what Williams calls our “subjective motivational set.”3 They are what lead us to act, in the broad sense of “act” from Chapter 3 that includes all kinds of mental acts, not just choices. These acts can be outward acts of body, such as when our desire to help someone leads us to do so and our startle reflex leads us to jump when frightened. Our interests can also lead to inward acts of mind. Our aim to concentrate on a problem, our desire to escape into a world of fantasy, our tendency to accept commonly held opinions, and our need for rest might lead to these acts of attention, imagination, judgment, and choice. The acts that are prompted by our interests can be voluntary acts that we chose to perform, or they can be involuntary acts that we did not choose to do. Our fear of eternal damnation might lead us involuntarily to believe that God exists and voluntarily to refuse to investigate the matter any further. Our desire for relaxation might move us involuntarily to notice vacation deals and voluntarily to choose to book a trip. A sharp pain might lead us reflexively to cringe and intentionally to rub our stubbed toe. A positive interest, such as a wish or commitment, is satisfied when its object is realized. A negative interest, such as an aversion, is satisfied when its object is unrealized. Positive interests conflict if they cannot be jointly satisfied or when the satisfaction of one of them would inhibit the satisfaction of one or more of the 2 See Perry (1930) and Williams (1981, ­chapter 8). Kant sometimes seems to use “interest” in this broad sense (e.g. CPJ 5: 210) as well as in several narrow senses, such as incentives that lead us to choose (CPrR 5: 79) and being pleased that something exists (L-​Th 28: 1065). God, according to Kant, does not possess interests of some kinds because he is supposedly self-​sufficient, feels no pleasure or pain, and is not tempted to violate the laws of reason (CPrR 5: 79; L-​Th 28: 1065). He presumably, however, has some of the dispositions and other interests of reason I describe below, or at least, as Kant says, God possesses an “analogue of interest” (L-​Th 28: 1065). See note 13. 3 Williams (1981, 102).

96  Sovereign Re ason others.4 Negative interests conflict if they cannot be jointly unsatisfied or when the frustration of one of them would inhibit the frustration of one or more of the others. Our interests can also support one another if satisfying one of them would promote the satisfaction of other interests we have. Although the term “interest” is sometimes used in different ways, the idea of an interest as simply a conative mental state does not entail that satisfying our interests is necessarily or always good, good for us, rational, or reasonable.5 We can distinguish among our many interests in various standard ways. We can classify them by the kind of conative state they are, such as a desire, commitment, feeling, compulsion, intention, end, or disposition. We can distinguish interests by who has them, such as a human being, a nonhuman animal, a church, or a people. Our interests can vary in their strength, in their stability, and in the priority they have for us.6 We can distinguish them by their objects. Self-​regarding interests are interests in oneself, and other-​regarding interests are interests in other people. Someone might have a self-​regarding desire to be famous and an other-​ regarding tendency to give money to those in need.7 A final interest is an interest in something for its own sake, such as our appreciation of Mahler’s fifth symphony, while a derivative interest is an interest in something for the sake of satisfying a different interest we have, such as intending to exercise regularly to further our health goals. We can also distinguish our interests by whether they are forbidden, required, or permitted by principles of reason. An envious desire for the downfall of others and a self-​contradictory intention might be irrational interests. A goal of pursuing justice might be a rational interest. A preference for coffee over tea might be a rationally indifferent interest that is neither required nor forbidden by laws of reason.

5.2  Interests of a Mental Power: Interests that Arise from or are Part of a Power of Mind There is a further important and nonstandard way to differentiate among the many wishes, needs, tendencies, and other interests we have. We can classify our interests by their source or provenance in our minds. Recall our partial model of the human 4 Rawls (1999c, 113, 115, 167, 249, 393, 416–​17, 472), Cureton (2018a). 5 Sometimes “interest” is used in normative ways, such as that something is in your best interests, but I am using “interest” to mean a conative state of any kind whether or not it or its satisfaction is good, moral, or otherwise normative. The relationships, if any, between the satisfaction of a person’s interests and her wellbeing, what she has reason to do, what it is rational for her to do, or what she ought to do are separate from (but sometimes related to) what her interests are and what it takes to satisfy them. 6 Cureton (2016a). The stability of an interest someone has is basically the likelihood that she will lose the interest and the likelihood that she would regain it if she were to lose it. 7 Self-​regarding interests are ones in which the person who has them figures essentially in the object of the interest. See Scanlon (1998, 134, 219, 229–​32, 263).

Interests of Re ason  97 mind from Chapter 3, which includes mental powers of sense, imagination, understanding, judgment, attention, signification, choice, feeling, desire, and reason. These powers of mind include characteristic abilities, and some of them also include constitutive principles by which they operate. A desire, feeling, disposition, or other interest we have might have been produced by the operation of one of our mental powers, or it might have been produced by a different power of mind in us. It might also be part of one of our powers of mind itself. Our desires, dispositions, cravings, and other interests can be, in this sense, interests of one or more of our powers of mind because of their source in our minds. This does not mean that our mental powers of understanding, choice, desire, or reason literally have interests, as if they were persons who want or choose things. We are the ones who have interests. An interest of a mental power is an interest that arises from or is part of that power of mind in us. Let’s consider these two ways in which an interest can have its seat or origin in one or more of our mental powers.

5.2.1  Interests that Arise from a Mental Power An interest of a mental power can arise from the operation of that mental power. Some of our mental powers include abilities to produce desires, feelings, intentions, goals, and other conative states. For example, our interests might include an intention to do something and an end we affirm. We can consider what mental power gave rise to these interests. In these cases, the answer is obvious because our power of choice is the only power of mind we have that allows us to form intentions and set ends. We can call our intention and our end interests of choice because they arose from exercising our power of choice. Our enjoyment of a good meal and our relief that the semester has ended are interests of feeling when they arose from the operation of our mental power of feeling. Our desires to attend a concert and to switch shampoos are interests of desire when they were produced by our mental power of desire. Some of our interests, such as ends we have adopted and intentions and commitments we made, can arise only from a single mental power. Two or more separate mental powers, however, might produce interests that are otherwise of the same kind. These interests might be indistinguishable in all other respects because they have the same object, motivational efficacy, stability, phenomenal quality, and so on. One of them might have nonetheless come from one power of mind while the other might have come from a different mental power. Our power of feeling, for example, is not the only mental power we have that can produce feelings in us. Our power of reason can also give rise to its own feelings. As we have discussed in the previous chapter, our enforcement abilities of reason can produce feelings of respect for principles of reason that lead us to follow

98  Sovereign Re ason them as well as feelings of self-​reproach for culpably violating those laws of reason. A feeling we have might be an interest of feeling, or it might be an interest of reason, depending on which of these two mental powers produced it. Natural feelings, as we called them in Chapter 3, result from our power of feeling, while rationally produced feelings arise from our power of reason. The self-​reproach we feel might have come from a rational assessment of ourselves according to laws of reason, or it might have arisen from contingent psychological processes of our power of feeling. We might not know whether our feeling is an interest of feeling or an interest of reason until we investigate its provenance in our mind, and even then, making a definitive determination can be difficult. Some of our interests can arise from only one mental power. Other interests can be separately produced by more than one power of mind, operating independently. Still others might arise from the combined operations of two or more mental powers.8 We can catalog our feelings, desires, ends, dispositions, hopes, wishes, and other interests based on the mental powers that produced them and refer to ones that were produced by a mental power as interests of that mental power.

5.2.2  Interests that are Part of a Mental Power In addition to arising from a mental power, an interest of a mental power can be part of that power. We have so far been thinking of mental powers mainly as sets of abilities to perform various kinds of mental acts, such as to form desires, affirm judgments, adopt ends, conceptually represent the world, and govern ourselves. We also said that some mental powers can include constitutive principles, such as basic conceptual rules that are part of our power of understanding and principles that are part of our power of reason. Mental powers, however, can also include dispositions, tendencies, or other interests that are not produced by them but are instead part of their nature. These interests might be essential or contingent features of a mental power itself. In that sense, they are also interests of that mental power. Kant suggests, for instance, that our mental power of understanding is not simply a set of abilities that concern conceptual representation along with some principles that are built in to it. This power of mind also includes, as constitutive parts of its nature, dispositions to apply concepts to our sense perceptions or imaginings.9 Having our power of understanding includes being disposed to exercise the conceptual abilities that are part of that mental power. Without these 8 A chosen end, for example, is still an interest of choice even if our power of choice was affected by natural desires and natural feelings that arose from those other powers of mind. Certain feelings of aesthetic appreciation might arise from complicated interactions among several mental powers. In such cases, we cannot assign them to just one power of mind but must instead regard them as arising from a combination of such powers (Guyer 1997, 2006, Ginsborg 2015, and Allison 2001). 9 A294/​B350; G 4: 452; Anth 7: 144; CPJ 20: 210.

Interests of Re ason  99 dispositions, we would not have our kind of understanding but at most would have a cognitive power of some other kind. We might not always exercise our conceptual abilities, but nor do they sit idly until a natural desire, natural feeling, chosen end, or some other external interest leads us to apply concepts to sense representations. Our power of understanding essentially includes its own active elements. These dispositions are interests of understanding that differ from other desires or other interests we might have in making sense of what we perceive or imagine. Let’s supplement our partial model of the human mind from Chapter 3 by including within our power of understanding these interests of understanding to exercise our conceptual abilities. This mental power includes as part of its nature characteristic abilities, principles, and interests. Other powers of mind, such as those of feeling and desire, only include abilities. They do not include any interests of their own even though they can produce feelings or desires. Our power of judgment, Kant suggests, can acquire various interests of its own. Someone’s power of judgment might come to include, for example, tendencies and habits to affirm judgments without sufficient evidence, to believe what most people think, to refrain from investigating her beliefs, and to doubt almost everything.10 Unlike the interests that are constitutive of our power of understanding, these interests are not essential to our power of judgment even though they can become contingent parts of it. Some people acquire tendencies and habits of judgment from their upbringing or other social influences, while other people manage to overcome or avoid them. We have our kind of power of judgment whether or not it includes these tendencies and habits that can nonetheless help to characterize the power of judgment as it exists in particular people. Let’s expand our partial model of the human mind again so that our power of judgment can, but might not, come to include various interests in exercising the mental abilities of judgment that are also part of that power.11 Interests of a mental power are conative states that are produced by that mental power or that are essentially or contingently part of it. We sometimes talk this way when we say that our interests of head and heart are in conflict. Interests of a mental power can be strong or weak, latent or active, and effective or ineffectual. For any desire, disposition, goal, or other interest we have, we can investigate its provenance in our minds and classify it as an interest of whatever set of mental powers produced or includes it. It is sometimes difficult to know whether an interest has its source in one mental power or another, but philosophical reflection and self-​ examination can sometimes help us to do so.

10 A260/​B316–​A261/​B317; L-​Log 24: 50, 78, 177; WIE 8: 35. See also Chapter 11. 11 Our power of judgment might also include its own constitutive interests, while our power of understanding might come to acquire interests that become part of that power in a particular person.

100  Sovereign Re ason

5.3  Interests of Reason: Interests that Arise From or Are Part of the Power of Reason Interests of reason are desires, needs, goals, impulses, dispositions, or other conative states that arise from or are part of our mental power of reason. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, our rational nature includes a set of abilities, such as to draw logical inferences and to legislate, execute, and adjudicate rational principles. Our rational nature also includes constitutive principles, such as the principle of noncontradiction and principles of instrumental reasoning. In addition to these abilities and principles, our human reason also includes and produces its own desires, feelings, dispositions, and other interests of reason. Some of our interests have their origin in our rational nature itself rather than in our other powers of mind. Interests that arise from our powers of desire, feeling, choice, and judgment are contingent interests that tend to vary widely among people according to our tastes, genetics, upbringing, and other natural factors.12 Our interests of reason, by contrast, do not depend on contingent and nonrational features of our psychology or vary according to what we happen to like, want, or choose. They are more or less the same for all rational agents.13 When someone cares about something, we can ask whether this interest arose from her power of desire or whether it arose from her power of reason. Her interest might be a natural desire that she happens to have, or her interest might be a desire that is grounded in her rational nature itself. A tendency to believe in some way might be part of our power of reason, or it might be part of our power of judgment. A feeling of respect might have been produced by our power of feeling, or it might have arisen from our power of reason. A desire, goal, impulse, tendency, or other interest is an interest of reason if it arises from or is part of our reason. Let’s consider these two ways in which an interest can have its seat or origin in our rational nature.

12 Our own happiness is, according to Kant, a subjectively necessary interest for human beings because setting that end is part of our best understanding of what it is to be a human being (G 4: 415). See also Chapter 13 and Paton (1967, 85–​7, 92, 105–​7, 126–​7), Gregor (1963, 78, 177), Johnson (2013), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 2), and Kahn (2022). 13 As we discussed in Chapter 3 and in note 2, some rational creatures, such as God, might lack certain interests of reason because they are perfect and face no temptations to irrationality. God likely has no interest of reason in self-​development, for example, because he has no need to develop himself. Our focus in this book is on the power of human reason. For us, our basic interests of reason are the same, while our derivative interests of reason can perhaps vary depending on our differing circumstances. We will discuss below how, for example, reason in some people can acquire propensities that are not constitutive of human reason. For further discussion of how Kant conceives of God, see Byrne (2007), Brewer (2022), Winegar (2017), and Chignell (2007a).

Interests of Re ason  101

5.3.1  Interests that Arise from the Power of Reason Our power of human reason, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, includes abilities to produce desires, feelings, and other interests. One of Kant’s most famous claims is that “pure reason can be practical,” which means in part that our power of reason can, on its own, produce desires to conform to moral laws and produce feelings of respect for those principles of pure practical reason.14 These interests of reason can conflict with natural desires and feelings that arose from our powers of desire and feeling. Our interests of reason in conforming to moral requirements can also conflict with our interests of choice, such as intentions and ends that we happen to affirm through our power of choice. Our natural fear of punishment and feelings of sympathy, on the other hand, might cooperate with reason by leading us to act as we should. In addition to any interests of desire, feeling, and choice we might have to act or not act as morality requires, our power of reason produces its own desires and feelings that lead us to act morally. A fully rational person, according to Kant, chooses to do her duty from duty by conforming to moral laws on the basis of desires, feelings, and other interests of reason that are produced through her executive abilities of reason.15 These abilities lead us to enforce and make effective the laws of reason that we formulate and affirm through our legislative abilities of reason. According to the second feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason that we discussed in the previous chapter, a fully rationally self-​governing person also thinks, imagines, notices, desires, chooses, and otherwise voluntarily or involuntarily acts in accordance with laws of reason because of desires, feelings, or other interests that are produced through her executive abilities of reason. She affirms certain rationally mandated beliefs, for example, through the force of rational argument rather than because of the solace those beliefs bring her.

5.3.2  Interests that are Part of the Power of Reason Some interests, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, are constitutive parts of our power of reason itself. These interests are essential features of our rational nature. If we lacked them, then we would not have our embodied kind of human reason. For example, as we shall see below, Kant claims that our power of reason includes as part of its nature dispositions to exercise our various governing abilities of reason. Our reason is not inert. Our governing abilities of reason do not 14 CPrR 5: 15. See also CPrR 5: 42. 15 G 4: 397–​9; CPrR 5: 24–​5; CPJ 5: 452. For discussion of Kant’s idea of doing one’s duty from duty, see Johnson (2009), Henson (1979), Herman (1993b, c­ hapter 1), Baron (1984), Wood (2008, c­ hapter 2), and Timmons (2017, ­chapter 5).

102  Sovereign Re ason depend for their exercise on inclinations or other contingent interests from our other powers of mind. A rational person, simply as such, is disposed to legislate moral principles to herself, to enforce them in herself, and to judge herself by them. These tendencies might be latent, as in young children, or weak, as in some evil people, but having them is nonetheless part of what it is to have a rational nature. Our power of reason can also acquire interests that are not part of its nature but that nonetheless help to characterize the power of reason as it exists in some, but perhaps not all, people. The idea that our human reason can include contingent interests is strange and somewhat disconcerting because we usually think of our reason as a necessary, a priori, objective, and univocal power that is the same in all rational agents. Our power of reason, it seems, is independent of mere happenstance except for ways in which it can develop, degrade, or cease to exist. If our reason includes a disposition or other interest, then we would expect that all rational people have that interest. Kant, however, claims that our human reason can acquire interests that are contingent but not necessary parts of it. For example, the power of reason in many of us includes a propensity that leads us to affirm the existence of souls, God, and other things on the basis of supposed rational proofs that cannot actually provide us with such grounds.16 This tendency is not based in our powers of judgment, desire, feeling, or choice, so it is not in that sense contingent on our nonrational psychology even though, as we will discuss in Chapter 10, contingent psychological processes can affect whether we come to acquire it or any other aspect of reason. This tendency is instead a feature that our power of reason can acquire and lose. If God or fully rational human beings exist, then, according to Kant, they presumably lack this tendency of reason to affirm the existence of things that they cannot know. For the rest of us, a “critique” of pure theoretical reason, in which we establish limits on what we can know and understand, is needed to extricate or overcome this acquired interest that has in many of us become part of our power of reason.17

5.3.3  Rational Interests and Interests of Reason The idea of an interest of reason, whether the interest arises from or is part of our power of reason, is different from the idea of an interest that conforms to or is required by principles of reason. Ends or commitment we have chosen to adopt are interests of choice, while natural inclinations and preferences are interests of desire. None of them is an interest of reason because their source or origin is some other mental power besides our power of reason. These and other interests can nonetheless conform to or violate laws of reason. An envious desire for the 16 A298/​B354. We will return to discuss this strange propensity of reason in Chapter 11. 17 A298/​B354, A642/​B670, A797/​B825; CPrR 5: 107.

Interests of Re ason  103 downfall of others and a feeling of satisfaction at their demise might be contrary to the laws of reason, while a desire to make others happy and a feeling of satisfaction at their prosperity might be permitted or required by rational standards. Unless otherwise indicated, I will use “interest of reason” to emphasize the provenance or source of an interest in our minds and “rational interest” to refer to interests that are required by laws of reason. Our goal to make others happy, for instance, is an interest of choice because it arose from our power of choice, and it is also a rational interest if reason requires us to set the happiness of others as one of our ends. I will also sometimes use metaphorical expressions, such as that our reason approves of something or that it is disposed to do something. Our power of reason is obviously not a person with desires, dispositions, feelings, or other interests. Saying that reason has an interest strictly means that the interest is part of or arises from the power of reason in us. Personifying our power of reason as having needs and drives can nonetheless help us to think about its active elements and its relations to our other powers of mind. Interests of reason are conative states that arise from or are part of our power of reason. Regardless of whatever other desires, feelings, tendencies, and other interests we happen to have, our power of reason produces and includes its own desires, feelings, needs, goals, dispositions, or other interests. As rational persons, we necessarily care about certain things, find ourselves moved to act in certain ways, want to bring about certain outcomes, and regret our own irrationality. Our interests of reason might coincide or conflict with other contingent interests we have, but all rational people have concerns that are grounded in our rational nature itself.

5.4  Formal Interests of Reason: Interests in Governing Ourselves by Reason We have so far explored the general idea of an interest of reason as any desire, need, feeling, or other conative state that is part of or arises from our power of reason. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that we have such interests. Our power of reason itself leads us to care about or to do certain things apart from whatever other natural desires, natural feelings, dispositions, and personal ends we might have. Humeans will balk at the suggestion that we have any interests of reason.18 Our power of reason, according to them, is the slave of the passions. It cannot produce desires or feelings of its own, and it does not include any dispositions or other active elements as part of its nature. Our reason operates only at the behest of our

18 Hume (2000, 265–​8). See also Chapter 1.

104  Sovereign Re ason natural desires, natural feelings, and other contingent conative states, which it also cannot oppose. Without these external interests, our reason would remain completely passive. A rational person, simply as such, has no desires, needs, concerns, or feelings. She does not necessarily value anything, nor does she necessarily tend to do anything. For Humeans, our reason is entirely devoid of interests. Several of the other main theories of the power of reason, however, include some formal interests that are grounded in our rational nature. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason expands on these formal interests. It also ascribes to our reason interests of a different and substantive kind that none of these other theories countenance. The third feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our reason includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive interests of reason. In this and the next section, we will distinguish formal and substantive interests of reason, begin to characterize some interests of both kinds that are included in the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, and highlight some significant contrasts between this partial conception and some other prominent theories of reason. Let’s first consider formal interests of reason. According to the Sovereignty Conception, our rational nature includes various abilities to govern ourselves through laws of reason. We can formulate, impose, and connect incentives with rational standards, interpret, apply, and enforce them, and judge ourselves by them. These legislative, executive, and judicial abilities make it possible for us to govern ourselves. Like any mental ability, however, they must be activated by some desires, dispositions, needs, or other interests. Without some conative states that move us to exercise our rational governing abilities, they would remain inert. Formal interests of reason are interests in governing ourselves by the laws of reason. These interests presuppose governing abilities of reason because they are interests in the exercise of those abilities or interests that are produced by their operation. More specifically, formal interests of reason include dispositions to exercise our various governing abilities of reason. We need not wait for our natural desires, natural feelings, or choices to lead us to legislate, execute, and adjudicate laws of reason in our own minds. For each governing ability of reason we have, we also have a corresponding formal interest of reason in exercising that ability. These formal interests are constitutive parts of our power of reason itself that lead our governing abilities to operate whether we happen to want or choose this. They dispose us to formulate laws of reason, enforce them in ourselves, assess ourselves by them, and otherwise exercise our rational abilities to govern ourselves by rational standards. Formal interests of reason also include conative states that are produced by the exercise of our governing abilities of reason. When some of our executive and judicial abilities of rational self-​governance are operational, they give rise to various desires and feelings. Our enforcement power of reason, for example, produces desires and feelings that lead us to choose, judge, imagine, attend, and otherwise act

Interests of Re ason  105 in accordance with the laws of reason. Our policing powers of reason produce feelings of self-​reproach and desires to do better when we judge ourselves guilty of violating a law of reason. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that we have many governing abilities of reason that allow us to govern our various mental powers by all kinds of rational principles. We also have formal interests of reason in governing ourselves in each of these ways. We are disposed to recognize requirements of moral, prudential, and theoretical reason, to ensure that we think, believe, pay attention, desire, and choose in accordance with these requirements, and to judge ourselves by them. The formal interests that are included in the Sovereignty Conception of Reason are significantly broader than ones that tend to be included in formalist, rationalist, and traditional Kantian theories of reason. Formalist theories of reason hold that our reason includes constitutive principles that concern consistency and coherence within and among the mental states of an individual, such as the principle of noncontradiction and the Hypothetical Imperative. In addition to specifying what the laws of reason require, a theory of this sort might hold that our reason also includes governing abilities to formulate these requirements and to enforce them in ourselves. It might also add that our reason includes formal interests in exercising these abilities and so in understanding and complying with formal principles of reason.19 Rationalist theories also usually ascribe formal interests to our power of reason. Such theories hold that our rational nature includes substantive principles of reason that do not simply concern consistency and coherence. Principles of reason might require us, for example, to do good and avoid evil, to promote perfections, 19 Scanlon (1998, ­chapters 1, 4, and 5) might also endorse formal interests of reason. He suggests that a basic akratic requirement of reason is to have whatever judgment-​sensitive attitudes we think we have sufficient reason to have. This requirement concerns a kind of coherence among, on the one hand, the reasons we think we have to do, intend, believe, or desire something and, on the other hand, having those attitudes. As rational agents, according to Scanlon, we have the ability to comply with this requirement. In addition, part of being a rational agent is that we are also disposed to comply with it. This formalist conception of reason figures prominently in Scanlon’s account of moral motivation. Suppose someone has sufficient moral reasons to do something and believes this is the case. Her power of reason itself does not determine what her moral reasons are or allow her to form this belief. Scanlon does not think moral reasons derive from requirements of reason or that our power of reason allows us rational insight into such reasons. So far, the person’s power of reason has not done much. Nonetheless, in whatever way it happened that she came to believe that she has sufficient moral reasons to do something, once she has this belief, she is required by reason either to drop the belief or to conform her actions to it by doing what she thinks she has sufficient reasons to do. Her power of reason allows her to comply with this formal requirement. And her power of reason includes a disposition to do so. Assuming she retains her belief, she is moved to act in the requisite way by her formal interest of reason in conforming to a formal rational requirement to have the attitudes that she thinks she has sufficient reason to have. A potential difficulty with this view as an account of moral motivation is that we can satisfy the formal akratic principle of reason by either doing what we think we have most reason to do or by successfully changing that belief itself—​there is always an escape hatch, so to speak, that allows us to avoid having certain moral motives by changing our beliefs about reasons, whereas what properly moves us to many moral actions does not seem conditional in this way. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, our interests of reason do not fundamentally depend on anything we happen to believe.

106  Sovereign Re ason to do what we have most reason to do, or otherwise to respond in certain ways to external normative facts. Our reason, according to many rationalist views, includes abilities to discern these rational requirements and to recognize the intrinsic values, perfections, principles, reasons, or other normative considerations to which those principles refer. Our rational nature includes governing abilities to enforce these requirements of reason in ourselves. Beyond the constitutive principles and governing abilities of reason, our rational nature, according to many rationalist views, also includes formal interests in governing ourselves accordingly. We are disposed by our reason itself to recognize what reason requires of us and to follow those principles.20 Traditional Kantian theories of reason contend that there are formal requirements of reason as well as a substantive and basic principle of morality that is also a constitutive principle of our power of reason. Our governing abilities of reason, on these views, are limited to governing ourselves by this moral principle. These abilities mainly concern legislating the supreme moral principle and the duties that follow from it as well as enforcing these moral standards in ourselves. Our power of reason includes formal interests in exercising our abilities of moral self-​governance as well as formal interests that are produced by the operation of those powers, such as desires to do what morality requires and feelings of respect for the moral law. An autonomous or rationally self-​governing person, simply as such, tends to formulate moral laws, to accept them, to recognize their authority, and to compel herself to follow them. She also cares about and respects the moral law for its own sake. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason expands on the formal interests of reason that formalist, rationalist, and traditional Kantian views ascribe to our power of reason. According to the Sovereignty Conception, we have abilities and accompanying formal interests to govern ourselves by formal and substantive rational standards of all kinds, to govern our powers of attention, imagination, feeling, and other powers of mind we have, and to interpret, apply, police, and adjudicate the laws of reason in our own minds.21 A rational and reasonable person, as such, tends to govern herself in all respects by principles of theoretical, prudential, and moral reason. Her reason includes dispositions to think, judge, and infer in accordance with standards of theoretical reason, to organize and pursue her ends efficiently, and to act, desire, imagine, or pay attention in ways that conform to moral requirements. She is also disposed to interpret and apply these requirements 20 Clarke (2010) and Ross (2002) affirm formal interests of reason. Rawls (2000, 37, 77–​8) calls them “principle-​dependent” desires, which are desires “the content of which is given by a principle of practical reason.” 21 Rawls (1999a, 306, 312–​13, 1999c, 362, 2001, 191) claims that our power of reason includes formal interests in governing ourselves by prudential and moral standards, but he does not include in our power of reason formal interests in governing ourselves by principles of theoretical reason or formal interests in policing and judging ourselves by rational principles. He also does not, it seems, include substantive interests in our power of reason. For further discussion of Rawls’ theory of reason, see Chapter 7.

Interests of Re ason  107 to her own circumstances, to warn herself against violating them, to assess whether she conforms to them, and to punish herself for culpably failing to do so. When her rational governing abilities are operative, she produces in herself desires of reason to comply with rational standards, to avoid the self-​reproach that comes with violating them, to redouble her efforts to follow them when she judges that she culpably failed to do so, and to apologize and make amends to others when she determines that she is responsible for treating those people in unreasonable ways. Autonomy or rational self-​governance, according to the Sovereignty Conception, includes having many formal interests in governing oneself in all respects by all kinds of rational standards.

5.5  Substantive Interests of Reason: Interests in Things Apart From Governing Ourselves by Reason The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that we have substantive interests of reason in addition to the constitutive principles, governing abilities, and corresponding formal interests that are also part of our rational nature. Substantive interests of reason are not simply formal. They are interests of reason in objects, states of affairs, or other things that do not only concern recognizing requirements of reason, conforming to those laws, or otherwise governing ourselves by laws of reason. Substantive interests of reason might include a disposition to acquire knowledge for its own sake, a final aim to form relationships with others, an intrinsic concern for their happiness, and a final desire to protect one’s own existence as a rational person. A rational and reasonable person, simply as such, cares about knowledge, solidarity, the happiness of others, her own life, and other things in themselves.22 Substantive interests of reason can be final or derivative. We might have a substantive final interest in acquiring knowledge, for example, and a derivative substantive interest in communicating with others to increase what we know. These interests can also be self-​regarding, other-​regarding, or both, such as a substantive final interest in our own happiness and one in the happiness of other people. Substantive interests of reason are not merely natural or contingent features of us. They are not natural desires, natural feelings, or personal ends. Nor are they dispositions that are part of our powers of understanding or judgment. Substantive interests of reason are part of or arise from our power of reason itself. To have a rational nature is in part to care about, value, or otherwise have interests in certain things for their own sake apart from any concern we might have in governing 22 I explore the suggestion that various substantive interests are part of our power of reason in Cureton (2013b, 2015, 2016b, 2018b, 2021, 2022, and Forthcoming-​c, c­ hapter 12). The particular substantive interests I mention here are illustrative examples that we will discuss more fully in Part II.

108  Sovereign Re ason ourselves by reason. These substantive interests have their seat or origin in our reason rather than in our powers of natural desire, natural feeling, choice, understanding, or judgment. We have them simply because we are rational, and without them, we would not have our power of reason. We all have substantive final interests in knowledge, explanation, life, happiness, or other things. These interests might be dormant or realized to varying degrees, but they are all necessary features of ourselves as rational persons. We might, for example, dislike someone, hope for his misfortune, and intend to harm him. We might also like the person, wish him well, and seek to assist him. Regardless of these or other natural feelings, natural desires, and choices, if we have a substantive interest of reason in the happiness of all people, then we care about this person for his own sake simply because we are rational. Our power of reason, as I will explain in Chapter 13, includes or gives rise to its own desires and dispositions that concern the happiness of everyone. These substantive interests of reason might conflict or harmonize with interests we have that come from our other powers of mind, but our power of reason ensures that we also take an interest in the happiness of all people. Substantive interests of reason are different from formal interests of reason. Formal interests of reason are interests in exercising our governing abilities, such as dispositions to enforce laws of reason in ourselves, as well as interests that are produced by those governing abilities, such as feelings of respect for rational principles. Substantive interests, by contrast, do not only depend on our governing powers of reason but are instead interests in other things, such as respecting ourselves and others, developing our natural powers, protecting our freedom, and relating with others. Suppose, for example, that we have a formal interest of reason in conforming to moral laws in general and that one of those principles requires us to help someone in duress. We have formal interests of reason in conforming to this specific law, such as a desire to help the person, because we want to comply with moral laws and know that moral laws require us to render him aid. In addition to these formal concerns to govern ourselves by moral laws of reason, we might also have a separate, substantive interest of reason in helping the person for his own sake apart from whether doing so is required by the moral laws that we aim to satisfy. This is a substantive rather than a formal interest of reason because our desire to help the person does not only depend on our concerns to govern ourselves by rational standards. Even if we lacked any formal dispositions or other interests to exercise our governing abilities of reason, and apart from any natural desires, natural feelings, personal ends, or other contingent features of our psychology, our rational nature itself would still lead us to care about this person’s happiness for its own sake. We simply want to help him whether or not we are required by reason to do so. This distinction between formal and substantive interests is common in everyday life. I might be averse to assaulting you either because I am averse to

Interests of Re ason  109 violating legal statutes that I endorse or simply because I value your happiness in itself. I might respect you as someone who holds a position in a system of rules that I value, and I might respect you just as a person. I might bring you coffee because I am committed to obeying your commands or because I want you to be comfortable. According to the Sovereignty Conception, if reason prohibits us from coercing innocent people because such maxims cannot be willed as universal laws, then a rational person is disposed to recognize and follow these principles, to apply them to particular cases that come up in her life, to enforce them in herself through desires and feelings that arise from her reason, to judge herself harshly for violating them, and otherwise to govern herself by these self-​imposed rational standards. Such a person also has a substantive final interest of reason in preserving the freedom of all people. She necessarily cares about not coercing innocent people both for its own sake and also through her formal interests in governing herself by rational standards that prohibit such coercion. Some substantive interests of reason might refer to requirements or governing powers of reason without being formal interests of reason. For example, we might have a substantive interest in forming relationships of solidarity that are based on laws of reason that we jointly endorse. We might also have interests of reason in developing and protecting our governing abilities of reason. These interests in solidarity, self-​development, and self-​protection partially concern rational self-​ governance, but they are not only about legislating, executing, and adjudicating laws of reason in ourselves.23 According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, we have many substantive interests of reason. As rational and reasonable people, we value many things apart from whatever inclinations, personal ends, natural feelings, or other contingent interests we might have and apart from our formal interests in governing ourselves by reason. We might, for example, have multiple concerns to protect our own life. One might be a substantive final interest of reason in doing so for its own sake. Another might be an interest of desire, such as a natural inclination to continue living. A third might be a formal interest of reason that is based on our commitment to comply with a rational requirement of self-​preservation. Our substantive interests of reason are not merely natural features of us, such as our inclinations, or under our direct control, such as our personal ends or commitments. Nor do they simply derive from our interests in governing ourselves by laws of reason. Substantive interests of reason are grounded in our power of reason itself alongside the other principles, abilities, and formal interests that make up our rational nature. Few, if any, theories of reason attribute substantive interests to our power of reason. Humeans are not the only ones who deny that reason includes interests in 23 We will slightly revise this distinction between formal and substantive interests of reason in Chapter 10 once we have explored the main elements of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason.

110  Sovereign Re ason things such as knowledge, solidarity, happiness, or self-​preservation.24 Formalist theories of reason do not countenance such substantive interests but at most allow for formal interests of reason to recognize, comply with, and otherwise govern ourselves by principles that concern consistency and coherence within and among our own mental states.25 Rationalist and traditional Kantian theories of reason hold that we have interests of reason in, for example, the highest good, perfection, the happiness of others, or self-​respect. Despite how these interests might appear, however, they are formal rather than substantive because they are interests in conforming to principles of reason that require us, for instance, to promote the highest good, to seek perfection, to set the happiness of others as an end, or to respect ourselves. Beyond our formal interests of reason, rationalist and traditional Kantian theories contend that our power of reason is inert. A rational person does not necessarily care about acquiring knowledge, forming relationships of solidarity, perfecting herself, or promoting the happiness of others for their own sake.26 Many of us have concerns for these things, but on rationalist and traditional Kantian views these interests either contingently arise from our other mental powers or derive from our formal interests of reason in governing ourselves by rational requirements. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason, by contrast, holds that we have many substantive interests of reason along with our formal interests in governing ourselves by all kinds of rational standards. Our substantive interests of reason can conflict with other interests we have. They can conflict with interests that are part of or arise from our other mental powers. We might, for instance, dislike school and want to withdraw but also have competing substantive interest of reason in broadening our knowledge and finishing our education. These substantive interests of reason might be weaker than the interests of desire and choice that lead us to leave school, but part of being a rational person is that we at least value knowledge and self-​development for their own sake. Substantive interests of reason might conflict with our formal interests 24 Hobbes (1994, 1991) might be an exception because he sometimes appears to suggest that part of being a rational person is to have at least one substantive final interest, namely to seek to avoid one’s own death. See Gert (2001). 25 See, for example, the formalist theories of Broome (2013), Kolodny (2005, 2008), Foot (1978, ­chapter 11). 26 Hill at times denies that our power of reason, as he interprets and reconstructs Kant’s view, includes these and other substantive interests of reason. Hill says, for example, that “knowledge, and even Stoic peace of mind are at best contingently rational ends” (1992, 89, see also 91), that it is not “irrational to prefer superficial popularity to deep personal relationships” (2002, 72), and that “reason, so construed (as ‘theoretical reason’), is not by itself a source of motivation” (2002, 35). Hill denies that “rational agents count the welfare of each person as of equal weight in their deliberations as their own” (1992, 142, see also 144–​5). He says that “Hume was right to criticize the previous rationalistic tradition that too readily pronounced all its favorite substantive values ‘self-​evidently rational’ ” (2002, 153–​4), and he worries that introducing “further substantive moral principles as intuitive rational standards” beyond what is implied by the Categorical Imperative seems at odds with basic Kantian ideas of autonomy and pure practical reason (2002, 72). See also Hill (2002, 72–​3n, 2012, 43n, 44). In some places, however, Hill suggests that there might be a larger set of rational interests that help to determine how his ideal legislators deliberate and legislate (Hill 2000, 139, 150–​1, 2002, 152–​3, 2012, 309, 2021a, 95).

Interests of Re ason  111 of reason, such as when our substantive interest in the happiness of others tempts us to lie to someone for her own good even though we also do not want to violate a law of reason that, let’s suppose, prohibits lying in these circumstances.27 Our substantive interests of reason can also conflict with one another. For example, our substantive final interest of reason in knowledge can conflict with our substantive final interest of reason in happiness when learning a hard truth would make us unhappy. Our substantive final interest of reason in freedom can conflict with our substantive final interest of reason in solidarity when forming such relationships imposes constraints on our choices.

5.6  Final Remarks: Kant on Substantive Interests of Reason The third feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our power of reason includes or gives rise to a wide variety of governing and substantive interests of reason. My aim in this chapter has been to characterize and explain this basic idea. A rational and reasonable person not only has abilities to govern herself by principles of reason and corresponding formal interests in doing so, but she also necessarily has final desires and concerns for many other things. She favors unity and harmony, seeks explanations of things, wants to learn as much as she can, values enlightened thought, cares about the lives of other rational people, aims for the development of their rational and natural abilities, and seeks friendships, loving relationships, and other kinds of solidarity with them. The suggestion that rational nature itself includes substantive interests is radical. The plausibility of attributing substantive final interests to the power of reason depends in part on what those interests are and what implications, if any, they have for specifying the laws of reason themselves. After all, substantive interests of reason are not formal interests that necessarily presuppose the laws of reason through which we govern ourselves. Substantive interests of reason can thus help to determine the nature and content of those laws. We will continue exploring these issues in the next two chapters and in Part II, where I propose some substantive interests of reason and suggest how they might play a significant role in generating and explaining a wide variety of specific requirements of reason. When we look to ordinary language and reflective common sense, the claim that we have formal and substantive interests of reason is not as dubious as it might initially seem. Part of being a rational person is caring about living a life of reason, wanting to govern ourselves by the requirements of reason in how we think, what we want, what we notice, how we choose, and how we otherwise conduct ourselves. 27 See Shieber (2010), Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapters 5, 12), Buss (2005), Wood (2008, ­chapter 14), O’Neill (1989, ­chapter 2), and Hill (1991, ­chapter 3) as well as Chapters 11 and 12 for discussions of lying.

112  Sovereign Re ason A rational person is disposed to keep herself within her own bounds, to master herself, to control herself, and to be self-​possessed. She is moved to reflect on what reason requires of her, constrains herself to be rational, and imposes penalties on herself for failing to do so. A rational and reasonable person also appears to care about particular things for their own sakes. She wants explanations for things and does not rest content with mere appeals to authority or fate. She values her own existence and the lives of others and values living in community with rational and reasonable people. We typically call someone unreasonable if she is indifferent to the suffering of others and regard inquisitiveness and open-​mindedness as reasonable and rational. Attributing substantive interests of reason to us helps to make sense of what scientists are doing as they press “why” questions, what poets are doing as they try to express the sublimity of nature, what political leaders are doing when they attempt to resolve disagreements among people, and what many of us are doing when we try to live with and relate with others as rational, autonomous people. Kant was sensitive to this commonsense idea that a rational and reasonable person, simply as such, has various substantive final interests that are part of her rational nature. In addition to our formal interests in governing ourselves by reason, he says that many things are a “need of reason,” an “end of reason,” an “aim” of reason, a “concern of pure reason,” “demanded by the commonest reason,” “against the wish of his reason,” and an “interest of reason.”28 The “restless reason” of someone, as it were, “seeks to bring about . . . the systematic in cognition,” “inexorably pushes on, driven by its own need to such questions that cannot be answered by any experiential use of reason and of principles,” “drives him irresistibly toward the development of the capacities placed in him,” “wants grounds,” “necessarily takes a moral interest,” “effects the feeling of a need,” and can be “satisfied” or “conscious of its impotence to satisfy its moral needs.”29 Instead of explaining all our desires, feelings, dispositions, and other interests as merely natural or dependent on rational principles, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason follows Kant’s lead by incorporating them into our rational nature itself. Doing so not only gives us a direct way of explaining these and other aspects of reflective common sense according to the Content Criterion from Chapter 1. As we shall now see, attributing substantive and not just formal interests to our power of reason also offers a new way of thinking about the grounds and content of the laws of reason themselves.

28 CPrR 5: 143n, Rel 6: 7, A336/​B393, WOT 8: 136, CPJ 5: 268, Anth 7: 300, and A475/​B503, respectively. See also A833/​B861, A462/​B490–​A476/​B504, which is a section titled “On the interest of reason in these conflicts”; CPJ 5: 223, 415; G 4: 460n; MM 6: 376; WOT 138n, 141–​2; CF 7: 102; PMG 20: 341; NF 18: 172, 274, 681. 29 CB 8: 115, A645/​B673, B21; L-​Anth 25: 546, MM 6: 467, WOT 8: 140n, WOT 8: 136, and Rel 6: 52, respectively.

6

Laws of Reason Our commonsense ways of thinking and speaking about reason and related terms suggest that our power of reason has several features. A rational and reasonable person can govern her mental powers of choice, judgment, attention, desire, and others through moral, prudential, and theoretical laws of reason that she legislates, executes, and adjudicates in herself. In addition to her powers of rational self-​governance, a rational and reasonable person also has various desires, feelings, concerns, dispositions, and other interests that are part of her rational nature itself. Her interests of reason include formal interests that lead her to exercise her governing abilities as well as substantive interests in knowledge, freedom, self-​ preservation, and other things for their own sake. The first feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR), as we have discussed, is that our power of reason allows us to govern many of our powers of mind, including our powers of judgment, imagination, attention, desire, feeling, and choice. The second feature of the SCR is that our power of reason includes specific legislative, executive, and judicial abilities to govern our various other mental powers through rational requirements of all kinds. The third feature of the SCR is that our power of reason includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive desires, dispositions, drives, goals, needs, feelings, and other interests of reason. Let’s turn to our fourth and final question: What are the laws of reason through which we govern ourselves? Requirements or laws of reason determine what it takes for our various mental powers to operate in rational and reasonable ways. Our power of reason allows us to legislate these laws by formulating, imposing, and often connecting incentives with them. A standard of rationality or reason might require us, for example, to avoid holding contradictory beliefs, to take the necessary means to our ends or abandon them, to pay attention to the needs of others, and to refrain from wanting to coerce them. Common sense and ordinary language suggest that the requirements of reason are quite extensive and varied. It seems in many cases irrational or unreasonable to fly off the handle at a slight provocation, to ignore the pleas of suffering people, to ridicule those with speech impediments, to be taken in by conspiracy theories, to want to hoard massive amounts of wealth, and to fantasize about hurting others.

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0006

114  Sovereign Re ason Capturing and explaining the requirements of reason that we affirm in reflective common sense are notoriously difficult for Kantian theories of reason.1 The laws of reason that we impose on ourselves, Kantian theories claim, must somehow be based only in our rational nature. Theories of this kind, including the SCR, cannot directly appeal to our natural desires and feelings or to values, principles, reasons, or other supposed normative entities that exist apart from the nature and operation of our reason itself. We cannot explain a law of reason to help others in need, for example, by appealing to our natural feelings of sympathy, the intrinsic and nonnatural value of happiness, a divine command, or an independent moral principle. Kantians can only invoke elements of our reason to explain the content and grounds of the laws that it legislates. The fourth and final feature of the SCR, which unifies the other three, is that our power of reason constitutively includes a set of formal and substantive principles of reason and that one of the substantive laws is a fundamental principle of justifiability that says mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. A rational and reasonable person imposes on herself formal requirements of reason, such as the principle of noncontradiction and principles of instrumental rationality. She also legislates to herself a substantive law of justifiability to persons that appeals to our extensive and substantive interests of reason. Through this fundamental law, she legislates additional substantive requirements of reason. A rational and reasonable person executes and adjudicates in herself formal and substantive standards of moral, prudential, and theoretical reason that concern how she chooses, judges, imagines, desires, or otherwise exercises her various mental powers. We are sovereign over ourselves by governing our minds as a whole according to laws of reason that are grounded in the abilities, interests, and principles of our rational nature itself. The substantive principle of justifiability that is included in the SCR is a novel and promising way of interpreting the idea of justifiability to persons. It is also a new way of extending Kant’s Categorical Imperative as it is often understood. The Sovereignty Conception’s principle of justifiability, as we will illustrate in Part II, connects the main features of the SCR in ways that plausibly capture and explain many laws of reason that we recognize in reflective common sense. This principle of justifiability is grounded in the nature and operation of our power of reason because our interests of reason, rather than our natural desires or external normative facts, provide extensive and substantive criteria for determining whether something is justifiable to us. The fourth feature of the SCR is complicated and stated in a condensed way. We will spend this and the next chapter exploring its main elements. 1 These concerns are discussed in Schopenhauer (2010, appendix), Hegel (1991, section 135), Williams (1981, ­chapter 2, 1985), Scanlon (1998, 2011), Rawls (2000), Wood (1999, 97–​110), and Galvin (2009).

L aws of Re ason  115 In this chapter, we will consider the general idea of a constitutive principle of reason by examining a special restriction that Kantian theories place on the kinds of things that can ground or explain such principles. According to the Autonomy Restriction, the laws of reason that we legislate to ourselves must be part of or arise from our power of reason itself. We will discuss the nature of formal principles of reason and explore a few of them as laws that we necessarily legislate to ourselves. The specific formal principles that are part of our reason are, according to the Sovereignty Conception, mostly left open for further interpretation. We will next consider the nature of substantive principles of reason and suggest some limitations on their grounds and content that follow from the Autonomy Restriction. Finally, we will explore the idea that one of the fundamental substantive principles that are an essential part of our power of reason has to do with ensuring that our mental acts are justifiable to persons. We will note some merits of this idea and characterize it initially as an abstract principle that can be interpreted in many ways. We will develop a schema for interpreting principles of justifiability and use that schema to describe the novel but partial principle of justifiability that is part of the SCR. In the next chapter, we will examine in more detail the Sovereignty Conception’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ). We will explore its three distinctive elements, the ways this principle connects the other three features of the SCR with one another, and the promise it has of capturing and explaining commonsense ideas about what reason requires of us. We will end Part I by summarizing the Sovereignty Conception of Reason before turning in Part II to exploring in more detail its potential to satisfy the Content Criterion by generating and explaining plausible requirements of reason that concern acquiring knowledge, thinking for oneself, happiness, freedom, respect, friendship, and many other topics.

6.1  The Autonomy Restriction: Laws of Reason Must Be Based Only in the Power of Reason Autonomy or rational self-​governance, according to Kantian views, includes several features. We discussed two of them in previous chapters. First, an autonomous person has abilities of reason to govern herself through laws of reason. Second, an autonomous person has formal interests of reason in exercising her various abilities of rational self-​governance. A third feature of autonomy, according to Kantian theories, is that the laws through which an autonomous person governs herself are somehow based only in her power of reason itself.2 When our reason allows us to legislate laws, it operates 2 See Hill (1992, c­ hapters 5 and 7, 2002, c­ hapters 1 and 3), Wood (2008, ­chapter 6), Rawls (1999a, ­chapters 16 and 23), Waldron (2021), Reath (2006, ­chapters 4 and 5), Holtman (2009), Wolff (1974), Guyer (2009), O’Neill (2003), Allison (1990), Baxley (2010), Johnson (2007), Kohl (2023), and

116  Sovereign Re ason on its own, much as an autonomous state makes its own laws according to its own internal constitution and interests.3 Laws of reason must all be kept, as it were, within reason. The Autonomy Restriction can be interpreted in different ways, but two basic points are central to it. First, when we exercise our ability of reason to legislate laws, we cannot appeal to any values, perfections, virtues, principles, reasons, or other normative entities that might exist independently of the nature and operation of our power of reason itself.4 A law of reason cannot require us, for example, to promote nonnatural goods of the sort G. E. Moore proposed, to seek perfections of the kind that Leibniz described, to follow Clark’s principles of fittingness or Locke’s natural laws, to abide by Ross’s prima facie duties, to fulfill our Aristotelian telos, or to respond to the kinds of reasons that Parfit, Nagel, Raz, Scanlon, and Dancy think exist.5 The grounds on which we impose principles of reason on ourselves also cannot include considerations of these kinds. Our reason is entirely blind to anything normative outside itself and cannot take account of such things even if we had insight into them. In short, our power of reason legislates laws independently of external normative facts. Second, natural desires, natural feelings, personal ends, or other interests that arise from mental powers besides our power of reason cannot directly ground laws of reason.6 We cannot make something a principle of reason simply by happening to desire or choose it. Our contingent interests do not directly figure in any explanations for why something is a law of reason. These interests, however, can indirectly help to explain derivative laws of reason when those interests are picked out as relevant by features of our reason. For example, that people happen to like or want something is not in itself a ground for legislating to ourselves a law of reason to help them. If, however, a law of reason requires us to promote the happiness of others, then combining this principle with facts about the contingent desires or feelings of people might yield a more specific law of reason to assist them in some specific way. Put simply, our power of reason legislates fundamental laws independently of our contingent interests, but it can indirectly appeal to such interests when legislating derivative rational requirements.

Kleingeld and Willaschek (2019). As Wood especially emphasizes, natural desires, natural feelings, choices, and other contingent interests are arbitrary and are not based in our power of reason, so they cannot play essential roles in explaining laws of reason. 3 A colony, it seems, is not fully autonomous because, even though it might have legislative, executive, and judicial abilities, it largely exercises these governing abilities under the direction of a colonial power. 4 See Hill (1992, 142n, 2002, 48) and Rawls (1999a, ­chapters 16 and 23). 5 See Moore (1993), Ross (2002), Leibniz (2020, 1952), Clarke (2010), Locke (1988), Quinn (1992), Parfit (2011), Nagel (1978), Raz (1999), Scanlon (1998), and Dancy (2004). 6 See Wood (2008, 81, 106–​14).

L aws of Re ason  117 According to the Autonomy Restriction, laws of reason are based only in our power of reason itself. Beyond specifying these two basic points about what sorts of considerations cannot figure in the grounds or content of laws of reason, a complete interpretation of the Autonomy Restriction would also specify what it is for something to be part of or arise from the nature and operation of our power of reason.7 Kantians disagree about this.8 The SCR includes an unorthodox but partial answer, namely that our power of reason includes the abilities, principles, and interests we have been discussing throughout Part I. We might wonder why those in the Kantian tradition think the Autonomy Restriction is part of a proper theory of our power of reason. This restriction might be a deep presupposition of our ordinary beliefs and practices, an implication of the necessary and a priori nature of fundamental laws of reason, a necessary feature of governance as such, a wariness about the existence of external normative facts or our ability to know them, a reluctance to base principles of reason on arbitrary psychological characteristics, or some combination of these considerations.9 Whatever the reasons for and against the Autonomy Restriction, the SCR follows the Kantian tradition of imposing it on the laws of reason through which we govern ourselves. The Autonomy Restriction has led many philosophers to doubt that Kantian theories of reason can capture and explain the wide variety of rational requirements and reasons that apparently exist.10 Slavery, murder, mockery, and ingratitude seem to be contrary to reason in many or all cases, while self-​respect, generosity, fidelity, and candor often seem to be quite reasonable. It is difficult to explain how our supposedly self-​contained power of reason can independently generate these substantive laws and other requirements of reason if all it has to go on are features of our rational nature itself. The only ways we might be able to do so, it seems, are to invoke external normative facts, such as intuited values or principles, or to appeal to contingent interests, such as sympathetic feelings or enlightened self-​interest. For Kantians, the Categorical Imperative in its various formulations is central to justifying and specifying many requirements of reason beyond those that are strictly formal. Even so, the concern is that if this principle is to have any chance of generating and explaining a wide variety of substantive rational requirements, including many of the ones that Kant himself discusses, the Categorical Imperative must be interpreted in ways that violate the Autonomy Restriction. The Universal 7 See O’Neill (1989, ­chapters 1-​4). 8 See Hill (1992, ­chapters 5 and 7, 2002, c­ hapters 1 and 3), Wood (2008, ­chapter 6), Rawls (1999a, ­chapters 16 and 23), Waldron (2021), Reath (2006, ­chapters 4 and 5), Holtman (2009), Wolff (1974), Guyer (2009), O’Neill (2003), Allison (1990), Baxley (2010), Johnson (2007), Kohl (2023), and Kleingeld and Willaschek (2019). 9 See O’Neill (1989, 2000), Wood (2008), and Sensen (2011b, 2022). 10 See Schopenhauer (2010, appendix), Hegel (1991, section 135), Williams (1981, c­ hapter 2, 1985), Scanlon (1998, 2011), Rawls (2000), Wood (1999, 97–​110), and Galvin (2009).

118  Sovereign Re ason Law Formula of the Categorical Imperative, for example, might appeal to contingent choices about what people can will as universal laws, such as that we happen to affirm a conception of happiness that depends on receiving help from others.11 The Formula of Humanity might be grounded on an objective and intrinsic value of humanity that is not itself based in our power of reason.12 The Formula of the Kingdom of Ends might invoke external normative facts and contingent choices.13 Many Kantians, of course, resist these interpretations of the Categorical Imperative. The lingering suspicion is nonetheless that, by excluding direct appeals to our natural needs, natural feelings, and contingent goals and commitments, and by disallowing appeals to external normative considerations of any kind, the Autonomy Restriction seems to prevent Kantian theories from appealing to the kinds of considerations that are needed to generate and explain the many substantive laws of reason that seem evidently correct.

6.2  Laws of Reason: Principles that Are Constitutive of the Power of Reason What features of our power of reason can ground laws of reason without violating the Autonomy Restriction? We have seen that, according to the SCR, our reason includes various self-​governing abilities and many formal and substantive interests. Our rational nature also includes principles that are constitutive of our reason itself. As we saw in Chapter 3, powers of mind, such as those of understanding and judgment, include a characteristic set of abilities to perform mental acts, such as to understand or believe. In Chapter 5, we discussed how powers of mind also can, but might not, include interests as part of their nature, such as dispositions that are part of our power of understanding to conceptualize input from our senses. In addition to abilities and interests, powers of mind can also include constitutive principles that determine how they operate. Principles help to characterize the nature of some mental powers and to make sense of how and why they perform various mental acts. Not all mental powers include their own principles, but ones that do would cease to exist if they somehow no longer operated by those principles. According to Kant, for example, our power of understanding includes a set of basic categories that serve as rules for how we conceptually represent the 11 See O’Neill (1989, ­chapter 5) and Chapter 7. 12 Sensen (2011b, c­ hapters 3-​4, 2022) criticizes Korsgaard (1996a, c­ hapter 4, 1996b, 122–​4), Wood (2008, ­chapter 5), Dean (2006), Kerstein (2002) and Guyer (2000, ­chapters 3 and 4) for apparently invoking a conception of intrinsic value that is incompatible with Kant’s conception of autonomy. 13 Wood (2008, ­chapter 6) objects to any interpretation of the Categorical Imperative that appeals to contingent choices.

L aws of Re ason  119 world.14 If a cognitively impaired person began organizing her sensations under a radically different set of categories from this one, then she might no longer have the kind of understanding that typically exists in human persons.15 Let’s once again supplement our partial model of the human mind by including within our power of understanding these constitutive principles along with the constitutive abilities we discussed in Chapter 3 and the constitutive interests in exercising those abilities that we added in Chapter 5. The SCR follows the Kantian tradition of claiming that our power of reason constitutively includes a set of principles.16 Our reason, when it can do so, necessarily legislates these standards that are part of its nature and necessarily operates according to them.17 Constitutive laws of reason can be basic, or they can derive from other constitutive laws of reason, but they are all essential parts of our rational nature. These principles satisfy at least part of the Autonomy Restriction because they are not directly grounded in contingent features of our psychology or in any way grounded in external normative facts. Constitutive laws of reason are integral to our power of reason itself. Without this system of principles that our reason operates by, we would not have our kind of human reason or perhaps any power of reason at all. According to Kant, some people might lose their power of reason and even come to have what he paradoxically calls the mental power of “unreason.” When this happens in a person, their “reason . . . has become reversed” and comes to constitutively include “its own (subjective) rule” that is universal but nonetheless “upside down,” arbitrary, and contrary to the constitutive laws of reason.18

14 A80/​B106. See Aquila (1989), Kemp Smith (1962), Guyer (1987), Longuenesse (1998), Strawson (1966), and Watkins (2005). 15 Anth 7: 214. 16 Constitutive principles of reason are integral to our power of reason. Kant often describes some principles of reason as “constitutive” in another sense, namely that they guarantee knowledge of the world, as opposed to “regulative” principles that do not do so (Friedman 1992, Guyer 2000, ­chapter 2, and Mudd 2017). 17 Our power of reason might be undeveloped or impaired in ways that prevent it from legislating any laws. When it can do so, our reason necessarily legislates certain laws even though we might not conform to all of them in how we choose, judge, imagine, and so on. For further discussion of how our power of reason can be impaired, see Chapter 10. 18 Anth 7: 218, MH 2: 264, Anth 7: 201, L-​Anth 25: 554, respectively. See also Anth 7: 216; L-​Anth 25: 553. Kantians must have thought about Kant’s extraordinarily puzzling account of unreason, which in some ways threatens his philosophical system because of concerns about why standards of reason rather than those of unreason have authority over us, but I have not been able to find any discussions of unreason. Unreason of this kind is far more radical than the failures of rationality that Pettit and Smith (1993) discuss, for the power of unreason may constitutively include something like a prohibition on taking the necessary means to our ends or a requirement to affirm contradictory ends. As Mark Timmons helpfully suggested to me, unreason might be related to Kant’s conception of a diabolical person who chooses evil for the sake of evil (e.g. she acts only on maxims she cannot will as universal laws, and does this for its own sake). For further discussion of diabolical evil, see Timmons (2017, ­chapter 10).

120  Sovereign Re ason

6.3  Formal Laws of Reason: Laws that Concern Consistency and Coherence within a Person According to the fourth and final feature of the SCR we are exploring in this chapter, our power of reason constitutively includes principles of reason. Some of these principles that are integral to our rational nature are formal laws of reason. Formal requirements of reason concern consistency and coherence within and among the mental states of an individual but otherwise abstract from the content of those mental states.19 These principles do not, for example, assess the rationality of ends or beliefs apart from their consistency and coherence with themselves or other of our mental states.20 One formal law that is constitutive of our power of reason is the principle of noncontradiction, which can be interpreted as a prohibition on ascribing a predicate to something that contradicts the thing.21 Our reason legislates this principle to our various cognitive powers. We violate it by, for example, affirming beliefs that contradict one another or that contradict themselves. Our reason itself also necessarily operates according to this constitutive law of its nature, such as when we use our reason to do logical proofs or to govern ourselves. A “condition of having reason at all,” Kant says, is that “its principles and affirmations must not contradict one another.”22 Someone with a significant cognitive impairment, for example, whose cognitive powers lead her to draw contradictory conclusions and to legislate to herself contradictory requirements might lack the power of reason or come to have the previously mentioned and mysterious mental power of unreason. Our power of reason also constitutively includes the Hypothetical Imperative, which in one version requires us to take the necessary means to our ends or to abandon them.23 Our reason legislates this formal principle of prudence to our power of choice. The Hypothetical Imperative forbids a kind of incoherence within our own minds in which we choose not to do things that are needed to satisfy ends we endorse. A cognitively impaired person who does not legislate this principle to herself also might not possess the power of reason. The principle of noncontradiction and the Hypothetical Imperative can be formulated in different ways.24 There are also significant disagreements about what 19 See the discussion of formalist theories of reason in Chapter 1, such as those developed by Davidson (1963), Bennett (1964), Sen (1970, ­chapters 1 and 1*), and Arrow (1963). 20 Hume has no theory of practical reason at all because reasoning, in his view, cannot conclude in practical states and no requirements of reason apply to practical states. Reason can indirectly affect our choices and desires through our beliefs and other representational mental states. See Hampton (1995). 21 A151/​B190; L-​Log 24: 123. 22 CPrR 5: 120. See also CPJ: 5: 387, 341. 23 G 4: 414–​15; CPrR 5: 20; CPJ 5: 172; Eth-​Mr2 29: 607. See Hill (1992, ­chapters 1 and 7), Korsgaard (2008, ­chapter 1), Broome (2013), Kolodny (2005), Smith and Harcourt (2004), and Wedgwood (2011). 24 See, for example, how Aristotle (1991, book 4) formulates the principle of noncontradiction. See also different versions of the Hypothetical Imperative proposed by Hill (1992, ­chapters 1 and 7), Korsgaard (2008, ­chapter 1), Broome (2013), Kolodny (2005), Smith and Harcourt (2004), and

L aws of Re ason  121 other formal principles are constitutive of our power of reason. John Broome, for example, proposes a variety of formal requirements of rationality.25 Onora O’Neill suggests several “Principles of Rational Intending,” including a controversial one that that says “the foreseeable results of the specific intentions adopted in acting on a given underlying intention be consistent with the underlying intention.”26 Rawls proposes several “counting principles” of rational choice, such as that “one (short-​ term) plan is to be preferred to another if its execution would achieve all of the desired aims of the other plan and one or more further aims in addition.”27 Korsgaard emphasizes a formal rational prohibition on intending to act in ways that undermine the realization of our ends. Scanlon endorses an akratic principle that requires us to do what we believe we have sufficient reason to do.28 Decision theorists differ widely about how to make rational choices under conditions of uncertainty or in strategic interactions.29 Logicians and epistemologists disagree about some principles of deductive logic, the rationality of inductive and abductive inferences, and how to apportion our beliefs to evidence in rational ways.30 The SCR leaves for further development what set of formal principles are constitutive of our power of reason. These laws include some version of the principle of noncontradiction and of the Hypothetical Imperative. The SCR is nonetheless a partial theory that allows for different ways of interpreting what formal requirements that concern consistency and coherence of our mental states are essential to our reason and how to properly formulate them. Formal principles that are constitutive of our power of reason satisfy the Autonomy Restriction. They are part of our reason itself rather than grounded in external normative facts or contingent features of our psychology. Formal constitutive principles of reason do not derive from intrinsic values of truth or happiness or from any natural desires but are instead integral principles of our rational nature. Principles of this kind also do not refer to external normative facts. They simply specify what it takes for us to be consistent and coherent with ourselves. Formalist theories of reason claim that all principles of reason are formal. Common sense and ordinary language, however, suggest that there is a wide Wedgwood (2011). These interpretations of the Hypothetical Imperative differ, for example, about whether that principle has a “wide” or “narrow” scope and about whether it applies to means that we believe to be necessary or to ones that are necessary. Kohl (2018) argues that Kant does not affirm the Hypothetical Imperative (as opposed to particular hypothetical imperatives). 25 Broome (2013). 26 O’Neill (1989, 89–​92). 27 Rawls (1999c, 361–​4). 28 Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapter 3), Scanlon (1998, section 1.4, 2007). In his (2007), Scanlon limits these reasons we have beliefs about to ones that are based on the object or content of the relevant judgment-​ sensitive attitude rather than based on that attitude itself. 29 See, for example, von Neumann and Morgenstern (1953), Savage (1954), Machina (1987), and Buchak (2013). 30 See, for example, Bovens and Hartmann (2003), Goodman (1983), Haack (1976), Russell and Restall (2010), and Fraassen (1989).

122  Sovereign Re ason variety of requirements of reason that are not formal.31 Mockery and slavery, for example, seem in many cases to be unreasonable or contrary to reason even among people who are maximally consistent and coherent with themselves. As we discussed in Chapter 1, there are various strategies for reconciling the apparent mismatch between formal principles of reason and the many requirements of reason that seem evidently correct on reflection. Some philosophers attempt to explain away many of our ordinary judgments about what reason requires.32 Others try to explain how formal principles of reason can generate and explain a wide variety of requirements of reason that we affirm in reflective common sense.33 A main difficulty with this latter project is not just that formal principles can require us only to be consistent and coherent with ourselves, whereas many requirements of reason seem to require us to do more than this. The explanations that formalist theories can give for why various mental acts are contrary to reason also do not seem to accord with our ordinary judgments. For example, holding slaves is contrary to reason even when done by a consistent and coherent person. Holding slaves is also contrary to reason, not just or even mainly because practicing it is sometimes imprudent for slaveholders, but primarily because of the ways it harms, disrespects, excludes, and infringes on the freedom of the slaves.

6.4  Substantive Laws of Reason: Laws that Do Not Only Concern Consistency and Coherence within a Person The fourth feature of the SCR we are considering holds that, in addition to formal requirements, our power of reason constitutively includes a set of substantive laws of reason. Substantive principles of reason are not formal because they do not just concern consistency and coherence in our own minds. They can unconditionally require or forbid specific mental acts.34 Principles of this sort might be general requirements to do good and avoid evil. They might be specific principles that forbid us from lying, demeaning ourselves, hurting others, or holding biased beliefs. These principles might be fundamental ones that require us to act only on maxims we can will as universal law, to treat humanity as an end in itself, or to act according to standards that would be acceptable to ideally rational legislators. They can also 31 See Chapter 1 as well as discussions of formalist theories of reason by Aristotle (1999), Hobbes (1994, 1991), Broome (2013), Scanlon (1998), Kolodny (2005, 2008), Foot (1978, c­ hapter 11), Bratman (1987), Davidson (1963), Bennett (1964), Sen (1970, c­ hapters 1 and 1*), and Arrow (1963). 32 This is a common Humean strategy that formalists can also employ. See Williams (1981, 110), Blackburn (2010). 33 Gauthier (1986) develops a sophisticated moral theory that is grounded in formal features of our power of reason. 34 Most formal principles of reason are conditional, but some of them can be unconditional by requiring us, for example, not to have self-​contradictory mental states, such as not to believe that there are square circles.

L aws of Re ason  123 derive from principles of this basic sort. When our power of reason is sufficiently developed, it necessarily legislates a set of substantive standards that, like formal laws of reason, are valid for everyone with the power of reason. Substantive principles that are constitutive of our reason can satisfy the Autonomy Restriction because they are not themselves grounded in external normative facts or directly based on natural desires, natural feelings, or other contingent interests. A principle of this kind is not a law of reason because it is independently true, because the principle is part of an independently valuable kind of relationship among persons, or because we happen to like the principle.35 These principles are simply part of our rational nature itself.36 The Autonomy Restriction nonetheless significantly limits the content of substantive principles of reason. Such principles of reason cannot appeal in any way to external normative facts, such as values, reasons, principles, or virtues that exist apart from the nature and operation of our reason. They cannot require us, for example, to promote nonnatural values, to do what we have most reason to do, to follow God’s laws, or to emulate a wise sage.37 Depending on their content, substantive principles of reason can make it easier to capture and explain the wide variety of requirements of reason we recognize in reflective common sense than attempting to do so with only formal laws of reason. We might say, for example, that prohibitions on lying or ridicule are basic and

35 Scanlon (1998, 150–​1, 153–​4, 162, 204, 219, 222–​3, 2011) argues that we should abide by his principle of justifiability because of the independent value of living in an ideal kind of solidary relationship that is characterized by his principle of justifiability along with the more specific principles that follow from it. Scanlon does not think, however, that his principle of justifiability is a constitutive principle of reason. 36 This aspect of autonomy is similar to that in the view developed by Kleingeld and Willaschek (2019), who try to explain how we can “give laws to ourselves” while avoiding dual worries about, on the one hand, the arbitrariness of such laws if they are simply up to us and, on the other hand, the redundancy of autonomy when we could just appeal directly to laws of reason without needing the idea of rational self-​legislation. 37 Scanlon’s (1998, 204–​5, 229–​30, 241) contractors assess candidate principles with independently existing reasons that they have in virtue of taking up their generally described standpoints. The reasons contractors have to reject candidate principles are “based on what each individual has reason to want for him or herself ” (Scanlon 2011, 133). Scanlon attributes to each contractor the final aim that she lives by principles that no one could reasonably reject. Whether a contractor could reasonably reject a candidate principle depends on whether her reasons decisively support rejecting the principle. These reasons include those that ground her first-​order complaints, such as that the principle would diminish her wellbeing, as well as independent reasons grounded in her self-​regarding aim to live her life on terms that others similarly motivated could not reasonably reject. Because I as a contractor aim to be in this kind of solidary relationship with others, I have reasons to take into account the first-​order complaints of other contractors, to give them weight, and sometimes to temper my own first-​order complaints. The same is true for the other contractors who have reasons, based on their justifiability aim, to give weight to my complaints that, for example, a principle they favor would lead others to treat me unfairly. According to Scanlon, by characterizing the interests of his contractors in terms of these independently existing reasons that are not grounded in our power of reason itself, there is a plausible set of principles of right and wrong that none of them has sufficient reason to reject relative to the self-​regarding reasons they each have.

124  Sovereign Re ason constitutive principle of reason or that they derive from a more fundamental substantive law that is integral to our rational nature.

6.5  The Abstract Principle of Justifiability: Generalizing the Categorical Imperative There is a long history of people dogmatically announcing their favored principles as substantive principles of reason.38 Although Kantian theories affirm substantive principles that are constitutive of our reason, such theories at least limit the grounds and content of such principles by the Autonomy Restriction. Kantians also aim to systematically unify principles of reason into as few principles as possible by looking for commonalities among the content and underlying grounds of seemingly disparate ones.39 Kantians hope to show how one or a few fundamental principles of reason that apply in all times and places to rational creatures of all kinds can generate and explain a wide variety of requirements of reason that offer plausible guidance for the many particularities of life.40 We will return in Chapter 9 to how we might justify claims about what features are part of our power of reason. For now, let’s continue exploring the fourth feature of the SCR by examining a candidate substantive law of reason. According to the fourth feature of the SCR, in addition to formal principles of reason, our power of reason constitutively includes a substantive principle from which many other substantive laws of reason derive. This principle is one way of interpreting what I call the Abstract Principle of Justifiability (APJ). The APJ says that something has (or lacks) a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is (or is not) justifiable to a set of persons. This principle is substantive rather than formal because it concerns the mental states of different people, not just consistency and coherence among a person’s own mental states. Various formulations of Kant’s Categorical Imperative can be understood as versions of the APJ. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason includes a novel interpretation of this abstract principle as a substantive, basic, and constitutive law of reason that we necessarily legislate, enforce, and adjudicate in ourselves.41 38 Plato (2007), Aquinas (1964), Leibniz (2020, 1952), Clarke (2010), and Locke (1988) have, fairly or not, been accused of this by, for example, Williams (1981, c­ hapter 8), Foot (1978, c­ hapter 11), Blackburn (1998) and perhaps Anscombe (1958). 39 See Chapter 9 for a discussion of systematic unity. 40 See Cureton (2016b). Some Kantians, such as O’Neill (1989) and Wood (2008), also think that Kant provides persuasive a priori arguments that the supreme substantive principle of morality is constitutive of our reason, while others, such as Bittner (1989) and Hill (1992, ­chapter 6), are dubious about this. 41 The formulations of the Categorical Imperative need not be interpreted as versions of the APJ. Wood (2008), for example, interprets the Formula of Humanity as requiring us to respect the objective, intrinsic value of humanity. Wood’s version of the Formula of Humanity generates more specific requirements without having to appeal to the idea of justifiability as the ultimate basis of morality.

L aws of Re ason  125 The idea of justifiability to persons figures prominently in several traditions in political and moral philosophy as a basis for specifying and explaining how we should organize our societies and conduct ourselves. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, and other social contract theorists argue that political arrangements should be guided and constrained by principles that are justifiable to everyone who is bound by those institutions.42 Contemporary moral theorists, such as Gauthier, Scanlon, Darwall, and Parfit, afford a central role to the idea of justifiability to persons as a way of generating and explaining moral requirements on the conduct of individuals.43 O’Neill, Korsgaard, Herman, Hill, and other Kantians interpret Kant’s Categorical Imperative as requiring us to treat ourselves and others only in ways that we can will as universal laws, that could be endorsed by those who are affected by our actions, that we all would endorse if we were fully rational and reasonable, or that are otherwise justifiable to persons.44 Common sense and some Kantian ways of thinking suggest that the idea of justifiability to persons is a promising basis for a fundamental and substantive principle of reason. This idea captures the ways in which rational and reasonable people take up the points of view of others and conduct themselves only in a manner that can stand up to reason in everyone. Our rational nature seems to ground a basic status that requires everyone to respect us by treating us only in ways that are justifiable to us. As we will discuss in Chapter 16, joint commitments to treating one another in mutually justifiable ways might also ground an admirable kind of solidarity that rational and reasonable people aim to develop and maintain.

6.6  An Interpretive Schema: The Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability The Abstract Principle of Justifiability holds that something has (or lacks) a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is (or is not) justifiable to a set of persons. Many interpretations of the APJ are possible. Some of them have been developed, while others have not yet been explored. A complete interpretation of the APJ fully specifies its many features. Rawls’ theory of justice, Gauthier’s account of moral cooperation, O’Neill’s interpretation of Kant’s Formula of Universal Law, and Scanlon’s contractualist moral theory are complete or nearly complete interpretations of this principle.45 Nearly every aspect of the APJ is open to interpretation and potentially connected to other aspects of that principle. Developing complete conceptions of it is exceedingly complicated



42 Hobbes (1994), Locke (1988), Rousseau (1994), and Rawls (1999c). 43 Gauthier (1986), Scanlon (1998), Darwall (2006), and Parfit (2011). 44 O’Neill (1989), Herman (1993b), Korsgaard (1996a), and Hill (1992, ­chapter 3). 45 O’Neill (1989), Rawls (1999c), and Scanlon (1998).

126  Sovereign Re ason because of the many features that need to be interpreted, the many options that are available for specifying them, and the many relations among the features. A schema for interpreting the APJ can help us to understand that principle and to explore what aspects of it need to be specified, what our options are, and how they are related to one another.46 A significant advantage of using a schema is that doing so allows us to develop partial interpretations of the APJ that specify some of its elements to some extent but that leave other of its elements mostly uninterpreted. Partial interpretations of the APJ are consistent with different ways of specifying that principle. Partial interpretations do not have to compete with existing principles of justifiability, such as O’Neill’s or Scanlon’s, and might be incorporated as modules into them. Formulating and examining partial interpretations of the APJ also allow us to explore new ways of specifying some elements of the APJ and to focus on particular issues while provisionally setting aside various controversies surrounding other elements. We do not have to work out every detail of the APJ or claim that all other interpretations of it are mistaken. We can instead, in a cooperative and respectful spirit, specify a few elements of the APJ and emphasize various paths for future development, which might include incorporating them as friendly amendments to prominent views. Kantians have developed many intricate and sophisticated accounts of Kant’s Categorical Imperative.47 They often vehemently disagree with one another about which, if any, of them is correct. While we carefully study these Kantian views, we can also specify a few elements of a different basic principle of justifiability without needing to settle every controversy or propose fully specified alternatives to existing conceptions. Partial interpretations of the APJ are incomplete and subject to revision and further specification. Developing and studying them might nonetheless reveal promising approaches that, over time, can be combined in ways that most fully express the basic idea that we should conduct ourselves in ways that are justifiable to persons. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason includes a partial interpretation of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability. This Partial Principle of Justifiability includes three distinctive elements but otherwise interprets other elements of the APJ in broadly Kantian terms while remaining mostly agnostic about how to further specify them. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ), mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related 46 Rawls (1999c, 126–​7) presents a similar but more limited schema for interpreting the standpoint from which a set of people evaluate principles of justice. This schema shows how alternatives to Rawls’ own Original Position might be developed. 47 See, for example, O’Neill (1989), Wood (2008), Hill (1992), Engstrom (2009), Guyer (2000), Herman (1993b), Korsgaard (1996a), Paton (1967), Dean (2006), Reath (2006), Pogge (1998), Sensen (2011b), Timmons (2017, ­chapter 4), Galvin (1991), and Kleingeld (2017).

L aws of Re ason  127 to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. The Sovereignty Conception holds that this principle is a constitutive principle of our power of reason alongside formal principles, such as the principle of noncontradiction and the Hypothetical Imperative. Let’s explore the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability through a schema for interpreting the Abstract Principle of Justifiability. This schema itself is not complete, but it allows us to trace the Kantian roots of the SCR-​PPJ, to highlight its novel elements and their importance, to understand where it is incomplete, to examine how it might be included in other principles of justifiability, and to see how it might be further developed and specified. For each part of the schema, I explain whether the SCR-​PPJ interprets it in standard Kantian ways or whether it provides an unorthodox interpretation of that element. In the next chapter, we will consider in more detail the three novel elements of the SCR-​PPJ and how this principle might be incorporated into several existing theories of justifiability within and outside of the Kantian tradition.

6.6.1  Nature, Grounds, and Relation to Other Principles The Abstract Principle of Justifiability holds that something has (or lacks) a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is (or is not) justifiable to a set of persons. One set of issues that an interpretation of this principle must address concerns the nature of that principle, its justification, and its relation to other principles. The APJ might be interpreted as a basic or derivative principle, as an overriding or merely presumptive principle, as a constitutive principle of reason, as correct or true in virtue of external normative facts, or as an expression of sentiment. Following the Kantian tradition, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that its Partial Principle of Justifiability is one among several basic, constitutive, and absolute principles of reason. Like the principle of noncontradiction, the Hypothetical Imperative, and other formal rational standards, the SCR-​PPJ is a substantive principle that is an integral and fundamental part of our mental power of reason itself. The Sovereignty Conception, however, leaves mostly open how we can justify this or any principle as a constitutive element of our rational nature beyond how well it captures and explains our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason and related ideas (see Chapters 1 and 9 for further discussion of this Content Criterion for assessing theories of reason).

6.6.2  Logical Form The APJ says that something has (or lacks) a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is (or is not) justifiable to a set of persons. In its positive logical

128  Sovereign Re ason form, the APJ holds that something has a normative status, such as being morally right, if it or something else is justifiable to a set of people. In its negative form, the APJ holds that something lacks a normative status, such as not being morally right, if it or something else is not justifiable to a set of people. There are also mixed logical forms, namely: Something has a normative status, such as being wrong, if it or something else is not justifiable to a set of people, and something lacks a normative status, such as not being wrong, if it or something else is justifiable to a set of people.48 The Sovereignty Conception is agnostic about which of these logical forms its Partial Principle of Justifiability takes. For convenience, I will usually use positive forms of the SCR-​PPJ and the APJ and omit the parentheticals, but both principles can also be interpreted in negative or mixed logical ways.

6.6.3 Domain According to the APJ, something has a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people. The kinds of things that are ascribed a normative status might be acts, choices, acting on maxims, political institutions, social practices, character traits, states of affairs, or other things. These things can be further restricted to, for example, the actions of rational people or the arrangements of basic political institutions.49 This is one of the three main elements of the APJ that the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability interprets in an unorthodox way. The SCR-​PPJ follows the Kantian tradition of ascribing a normative status to the mental acts of competent rational persons. People of this sort have minimally realized abilities and interests that, according to the Sovereignty Conception, are part of their power of reason. Standard Kantian interpretations of justifiability to persons ascribe a normative status, more specifically, to the choices of competent rational persons, such as choosing to act, to adopt a maxim, to act on a maxim, or to set an end. As we have been discussing, the first feature of the SCR is that our power of reason allows us to govern our various mental acts, not just our choices. The SCR-​PPJ reflects this feature by expanding the set of acts that are ascribed a normative status to mental

48 Rawls’ (1999c) theory of justice and Hill’s interpretation of the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (1992, ­chapter 3) are expressed in positive form; O’Neill’s (1989) interpretation of the Formula of Universal Law is expressed in negative form; and Scanlon’s (1998) contractualist theory is expressed in the first mixed form. 49 Basic domestic social, political, and economic institutions are ascribed a normative status by Rawls’ (1999c) principle of justifiability. Scanlon’s (1998) principle ascribes a normative status to the actions of individuals. O’Neill’s (1989) principle ascribes a normative status to the maxims of rational agents.

L aws of Re ason  129 acts of all kinds.50 The SCR-​PPJ holds that believing, imagining, understanding, desiring, feeling, paying attention, choosing, and all other mental acts of competent rational persons have a normative status if they or things suitably related to them are justifiable to a set of people. We will return in the next chapter to explore this first distinctive element of the SCR-​PPJ and its connection to the first feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. For now, we will continue describing our schema for interpreting principles of justifiability to persons and using it to characterize the SCR-​PPJ.

6.6.4  Normative Status The APJ says that something has a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people. The normative status that is ascribed to something might be that it ought to be done, that it is right, just, a duty, morally worthy, valuable, morally permissible, rationally prohibited, morally wrong, or vicious.51 This is the second element of the APJ that the SCR-​PPJ interprets differently from standard Kantian views of justifiability to persons. The SCR-​PPJ holds that the normative status ascribed to the acts of rational persons is the general one of being required (or permitted or prohibited) by reason.52 Traditional Kantian interpretations of the APJ claim that the normative status ascribed to the choices of competent rational persons is a moral status, such as that the relevant people morally ought to choose in some way, that they are required by moral reason to choose in some way, that they have a moral duty to do so, or that it is morally worthy of them to do so. The SCR-​PPJ, by contrast, is agnostic about whether the normative status ascribed to the mental acts of competent rational persons is a moral status. Recall that the second feature of the SCR is that our power of reason includes many legislative, executive, and judicial abilities to govern our various other mental powers through rational requirements of all kinds. The SCR-​PPJ reflects this feature. According to the SCR-​PPJ, judging, imagining, understanding, desiring, feeling, and other mental acts simply have the

50 The SCR thus postpones or perhaps avoids difficult problems in Kantian moral theory for how to identify the maxims on which someone acts. See Herman (1993b, ­chapters 3, 4, and 6) and O’Neill (1989, ­chapters 5 and 6). 51 Rawls’ (1999c) principle of justifiability ascribes the normative status of being just. Scanlon’s (1998) principle ascribes the normative status of being wrong. O’Neill’s (1989) principle regards acting on certain maxims as morally unworthy. 52 The SCR-​PPJ leaves open whether this status is one of objective rational requirement based on the nonnormative facts of the situation or one of subjective rational requirement based on the nonnormative beliefs of the person who might perform the act. It also allows for but does not insist on rational permissions in addition to rational requirements and prohibitions (see MM 6: 223; TPP 8: 347n and 373n). Thanks to Mark Timmons for discussions of this latter issue.

130  Sovereign Re ason unqualified status of being required (or permitted) by reason if they or things suitably related to them are justifiable to a set of people. We will return to this second distinctive element of the SCR-​PPJ and its connection to the second feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason in the following chapter.

6.6.5  Connection Between Normative Status and Justifiability The next several elements of the APJ are interpreted in standard Kantian ways but are otherwise left open for further specification. Examining them is nonetheless important for explaining the SCR-​PPJ and emphasizing its agnosticism about many controversies about how to formulate principles of justifiability to persons. The APJ holds that something has a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people. The connection between the normative status of something and its justifiability to a set of people might be interpreted simply as logical implication. It might also be understood as a conceptual or explanatory relation. For example, ascribing something a normative status of some kind might mean in part that the thing or something else is justifiable to a set of people. The justifiability of something might ground or explain the normative status ascribed to it. This connection can also be interpreted as a biconditional in which something has a normative status just in case it or something else is justifiable to a set of people. The SCR-​PPJ follows the Kantian tradition of holding that something has a normative status if and because it or something else is justifiable to a set of people. A sufficient normative explanation for why a competent rational person is required (or permitted) by reason to act in some way is that the act or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people. The SCR-​PPJ does not interpret this connection as a biconditional because other basic and constitutive principles of reason, such as formal principles of noncontradiction and instrumental reasoning, hold that certain mental acts are required by reason. There might also be additional substantive principles of reason that do not derive from the SCR-​PPJ.

6.6.6  Object of Justifiability The APJ holds that something has a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people. The object of justifiability might just be the thing that is ascribed a normative status. A principle of justifiability might say that an action is right or not morally unworthy if that action itself is justifiable to a set of persons. The object of justifiability can also be different from but suitably related to what is ascribed a normative status. What counts as a suitable relation in this context can

L aws of Re ason  131 be interpreted in different ways. If the thing that is ascribed a normative status is an action, then the thing suitably related to the action might be a principle or system of principles requiring or permitting the action, a law of nature that leads everyone to perform the action, a world in which everyone is free to act in that way, or a choice that everyone acts in that way.53 These other things that potentially must be justifiable to a set of persons can also be further specified. Principles might be interpreted simply as abstract propositions or as universally accepted public standards. They might be understood as requirements, prohibitions, or permissions, or as absolute or presumptive.54 A principle of justifiability might say that an action is morally required if a universally acknowledged and publicly known principle requiring the action is justifiable to a set of people. Laws of nature can also be interpreted in different ways, such as by whether they necessitate or allow everyone to act in some way and whether they are known or knowable by all. A principle of justifiability might hold that an action is morally permissible if a world in which, as if by a law of nature, everyone accepts and complies with principles allowing the act and knows this about everyone else is justifiable to a set of people.55 The SCR-​PPJ does not take a position on what is supposed to be justifiable to a set of people as long as it is either the mental act that is ascribed a normative status or something suitably related to that act, such as a principle requiring, permitting, or forbidding it, a law of nature that leads everyone to act in that way, or a world in which everyone acts in that way. Otherwise, the SCR-​PPJ leaves open longstanding controversies among Kantians about the proper objects of justifiability.

6.6.7  Scope of Justifiability According to the APJ, something has a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people. The relevant notion of personhood can be variously specified. In addition, the set of people might be one person, some people, or all people. This set might include actual people or possible people as well as those in the past or (actual or possible) future (or futures). An interpretation of the APJ can also include conditions on which people are among those to whom something must be justifiable, such as restricting the set to the person

53 Rawls (2000, 167–​71) suggests that applying the Categorical Imperative requires assessing whether we could will an entire world in which everyone acts in some way as if by a law of nature. See also Herman (1993b) and O’Neill (1989). 54 Pogge (1998) proposes that the relevant universal laws in Kant’s Universal Law Formula of the Categorical Imperative are normative permissions, such as “anyone may make a lying promise,” rather than a normative requirement, such as “anyone must make a lying promise.” Scanlon also used this interpretation in his courses. 55 See Wood (1999, ­chapter 3).

132  Sovereign Re ason herself who is required to act in some way, to everyone bound by a principle, to trustees who represent the interests of people or nonhuman animals who are affected by the principle, or to everyone who aims to find principles that are justifiable to all.56 A principle of justifiability might say, for example, that someone has a duty to act on a maxim if everyone acting on that maxim is justifiable to the person herself. A principle of justifiability might also say that acting in some way is morally permitted if a system of principles requiring the action is justifiable to everyone. The SCR-​PPJ follows the Kantian tradition of restricting the set of people to whom something must be justifiable to include only people with the power of reason. People of this sort have abilities and interests that, according to the Sovereignty Conception, are part of their rational nature, although these elements of their power of reason might be unrealized or dormant. Young children with the power of reason, for example, are not subject to rational requirements because their reason is undeveloped. They are, however, among those to whom actions, principles, laws of nature, or other things must be justifiable, perhaps through trustees who represent them. The SCR-​PPJ is otherwise agnostic about which people are in the set of those to whom an act or something suitably related to it must be justifiable.57

6.6.8  Modality of Justifiability The APJ holds that something has a normative status if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people. In this and the remaining subsections, let’s examine four elements of this justifiability relation. One of them is interpreted by the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability in a distinctive way, while the others are left mostly unspecified. The first element is the modality of the justifiability relation. The logical modality of the justifiability relation is whether it is possible, necessary, or contingent that something is justified to a set of people. A principle of justifiability might hold that acting on a maxim is morally required if a principle requiring the act could be justified to everyone, that is, if it is possible for the principle to be justified to each person.58 The relevant notions of possibility, necessity, and contingency can in turn be understood logically, conceptually, metaphysically, nomologically, and in other ways.

56 See the contrasting views of Rawls (1999c) and Scanlon (1998). 57 We will return in Chapter 10 to questions about what it takes for someone to have a rational nature and so to be a rational person. We will consider, in particular, worries about excluding human beings who lack the power of reason from the set of people to whom things must be justifiable according to the Sovereignty Conception’s Partial Principle of Justifiability. 58 Herman (1993b), Korsgaard (1996a), and O’Neill (1989) interpret Kant’s Formula of Universal Law in terms of what someone could, in this sense, will as universal law.

L aws of Re ason  133 The counterfactual modality of the justifiability relation is whether something would or could be justified to a set of people if certain specified conditions were to obtain.59 The relevant counterfactual conditions might include certain circumstances or features of the set of people to whom something must be justified. A principle of justifiability might say that an action is morally required if a system of principles requiring it would be justified to all rational people if they were to abstract from their personal differences, respect each other as ends in themselves, and exist in an ideal moral world in which everyone accepts and follows the shared principles that they legislate.60 The Sovereignty Conception of Reason is agnostic about whether the modality of the justifiability relation is logical, counterfactual, or both. It leaves open whether the relation is one in which something is justifiable to a set of people in the sense that it is possible that the thing is justified to them, in the sense that it would be justified to them if specified conditions were to hold, or in other, more complicated senses, such as: It would be possible for the thing to be justified to them if specified conditions were to obtain.

6.6.9  Responses Required for Justifiability A necessary condition for something to be justifiable to someone is that the person could or would respond to it in some way. The kind of response might be endorsement, willing, agreement, acceptance, rejection, commitment, desire, preference, value, belief, or other mental acts. The content of the response is typically the object of justifiability, which we have seen might be the act in question or a principle requiring the act. The priority of the relevant response can also be understood in different ways, such as wholeheartedly endorsing the thing or desiring it above all else. Someone might have a duty to do something if a principle requiring her to do so is one that she could agree to without any reservations or if that principle is one that everyone would most prefer among a set of options if certain conditions were to obtain.61 The SCR follows the Kantian tradition of interpreting justifiability to persons as requiring that each person in the set could or would choose the object of

59 Hill (2012, ­chapters 9 and 10) and Rawls (1999c) interpret justifiability in terms of what certain people would agree to under certain conditions. Scanlon (1998) employs logical and counterfactual modalities in his contractualist principle. 60 Logical modality and counterfactual modality are connected in various ways, but they are also separate ideas. For example, claiming that it is possible for something to be justified to someone entails that it would be justified to her if certain circumstances were to obtain. Fully interpreting counterfactual modality, however, requires specifying the relevant counterfactual conditions, whereas fully interpreting logical modality does not require specifying the conditions in which something is possible, necessary, or contingent. 61 Rawls (1999c, 109) affords his hypothetical contractors a predetermined list of alternative families of principles from which to choose (e.g. utilitarian, perfectionist, and liberal views).

134  Sovereign Re ason justifiability. The SCR-​PPJ otherwise leaves open what kind of choice is required and what priority it must have. Paying attention to the needs of others, for example, might be required by reason if and because all people could endorse a principle requiring us to do so.

6.6.10  Factors that Influence Responses Something is justifiable to someone only if she could or would respond to it in some way. Whether a person could or would endorse, accept, prefer, or otherwise respond to something depends on underlying psychological factors that affect whether she could or would do so. The factors that explain why, for example, someone could or would endorse a principle, agree to a political arrangement, will a law of nature, or want to bring about a world of some kind can be interpreted in different ways. They might include what information is available to the person, what assumptions she makes, what desires, goals, commitments, and other motivations she has, the degree to which she employs mental abilities of imagination and understanding, whether she is open-​minded or prejudiced, whether she deliberates with others, and what circumstances she is in. We often need to know these underlying factors to know how someone could or would respond to something. A principle of justifiability might not include any assumptions about these underlying factors. It might hold that someone ought to act in some way if it is possible that her beliefs, motivations, and other aspects of her actual standpoint and circumstances, whatever they might be, lead her to endorse a universal principle requiring the action. A principle of justifiability might instead include these factors among its counterfactual conditions by holding, for example, that someone ought to act in some way if, were she to have certain beliefs and motivations and were she to occupy some hypothetical standpoint, then she would endorse a universal principle requiring the action.62 This is the third and final main element of the APJ that the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability interprets in an unorthodox way. The SCR-​PPJ leaves open some of the factors, such as what beliefs they have, that could or would affect whether a person chooses acts, principles,

62 A principle of justifiability might specify, for example, what information is available to the set of people who are supposed to respond to something in some way, such as that they “abstract from the personal differences of rational beings” (G 4: 433), are behind Rawls’ veil of ignorance, have reasonable beliefs, or possess full information. A principle of justifiability might also say that the set of people assumes that the candidate principles they are evaluating are fully complied with or potentially violated. Principles of reason can, within the bounds of the Autonomy Restriction, take account of empirical facts and assumptions as long as these considerations are picked out as relevant by the nature and operation of our power of reason itself. See Hill (1992, c­ hapter 3) and Rawls (1999c).

L aws of Re ason  135 laws of nature, or other things in ways that make them justifiable to her. The SCR-​ PPJ is agnostic about, for example, what information and mental abilities might affect whether people could or would endorse a principle or law of nature. The SCR-​PPJ nonetheless specifies the motivations that could or would lead someone to choose an object of justifiability. These motivations are simply our interests of reason. All other aims, ends, plans, desires, feelings, or other interests are excluded when it comes to whether someone could or would endorse something in ways that make it justifiable to her in this context. A version of the SCR-​ PPJ might say that someone has a duty to do something if and because it is possible that her interests of reason alone lead her to endorse a universal principle requiring the action. A different version of the SCR-​PPJ might hold that someone has a duty to do something if and because, were all rational people only moved by their interests of reason, all of them would endorse a universal principle requiring the action. Recall that the third feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason is that our power of reason includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive desires, dispositions, drives, goals, needs, feelings, and other interests of reason. The SCR-​PPJ reflects this feature by holding that a person’s interests of reason are the only motives that are relevant to whether something is justifiable to her. We will return to this third distinctive element of the SCR-​PPJ and its connection to the third feature of the SCR in the next chapter.

6.6.11  Criteria of Justifiability As we just discussed, a necessary condition for something to be justifiable to someone is that the person could or would respond to it in some way. This in turn depends on her beliefs, abilities, interests, circumstances, and other factors. Justifiability to persons might also be interpreted as including another necessary condition, namely that someone’s response to something must satisfy certain criteria. On these interpretations of the APJ, something is justifiable to someone only if she could or would respond to it in ways that are compatible with standards of various kinds. Criteria of justifiability can be interpreted in different ways. They might be requirements of rationality or moral requirements. They might also be values, ideals, reasons, or other external normative facts. If, for example, someone could or would endorse a rule even though the rule is self-​contradictory or affirming it conflicts with her other commitments, then that rule still might not be justifiable to her because her endorsement of it conflicts with formal standards of rational choice. Such a person could or would respond to the rule in the requisite way given her beliefs and motives. Her response, however, violates rational prohibitions against making contradictory and self-​contradictory choices. On some ways of interpreting the APJ, the rule is not, all things considered, justifiable to her

136  Sovereign Re ason because, even though she could or would endorse it, her endorsement of the rule is irrational.63 The criteria of justifiability that our responses must satisfy for something to be justifiable to us might be moral standards. For example, even if someone could or would endorse a permission never to help other people, that principle might not be justifiable to her if she could or would violate a moral requirement to consider the interests of other people when deciding whether to endorse principles of that kind. The criteria of justifiability can also appeal to reasons that are not based in the power of reason itself. For instance, a principle of justifiability might say that acts are wrong if and because at least one person could reasonably reject principles allowing the act, where reasonable rejection is interpreted in terms of the independent and external reasons someone in fact has and their relative strengths.64 Caution is obviously needed when incorporating criteria of justifiability into an interpretation of the APJ so as to avoid making the resulting principle circular. The standards that help to determine whether some principle is justifiable to someone, for instance, cannot include that same principle. The Sovereignty Conception’s Partial Principle of Justifiability follows the Kantian tradition of interpreting justifiability to persons as requiring that people could or would rationally choose something, that is, choose something in accordance with laws of reason. The Autonomy Restriction prevents Kantian views from incorporating criteria of justifiability that arise from external normative facts, because laws of reason cannot refer to facts of that kind. The criteria of rational justifiability include formal laws of reason we discussed above, such as to take the necessary means to our ends or give them up. These are standards that are part of our power of reason itself and help to supplement the principle of justifiability that is also constitutive of our reason. A principle of nonbeneficence, for example, might be wrong because a set of people could not endorse it without violating the Hypothetical Imperative. The criteria of justifiability that are included in the SCR might also include other principles that derive from the SCR-​PPJ itself. If, for instance, a duty of beneficence derives from the SCR-​PPJ, then that principle might serve as a standard of justifiability when assessing other things, such as whether someone could or would rationally choose to endorse a prohibition on killing others. Following standard Kantian views, the SCR-​PPJ holds that no other standards besides ones that are constitutive of our reason or that follow from them help to make something justifiable to a set of people. The SCR-​PPJ otherwise leaves these standards unspecified. As we will discuss more thoroughly in the next chapter, whether something is justifiable to someone depends both on (1) her interests of reason that lead her to make certain choices and on (2) whether these choices satisfy other constitutive standards of reason. 63 See Herman (1993b), Korsgaard (1996a), and O’Neill (1989). 64 See Scanlon (1998, c­ hapter 5).

L aws of Re ason  137 Many interpretations of the idea of justifiability to persons can be developed from this schema. Some of them have been studied and discussed, but others have not yet been fully specified and assessed. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason includes a new way of partially interpreting the Abstract Principle of Justifiability. This principle is broadly Kantian. It is agnostic about many controversies among Kantians and others. And it includes three distinctive elements that distinguish it from other principles of justifiability to persons. The SCR-​PPJ is novel because it applies to mental acts of all kinds, ascribes the unqualified normative status of being required (or permitted or prohibited) by reason, and holds that the motives that help to make things justifiable to us are restricted to our interests of reason. To state the SCR-​PPJ again, mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. The SCR-​PPJ can be expressed negatively or in mixed logical forms as well as further specified in various ways. A version of the SCR-​PPJ with affinities to O’Neill’s interpretation of Kant’s Formula of Universal Law might say that the mental acts of a competent rational person are morally unworthy if and because it is not possible for her to rationally choose for everyone to act in that way on the basis of her interests of reason. A version of the SCR-​PPJ with affinities to Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kant’s Formula of Humanity might say that the mental acts of a competent rational person are not morally allowed if and because those who are affected by the acts could not rationally choose to be treated in those ways on the basis of their interests of reason. A version of the SCR-​PPJ with affinities to Hill’s interpretation of the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends might say that mental acts of all kinds are morally required of competent rational persons if and because universal and public principles requiring those acts would be rationally chosen by all rational people if those people were to abstract from their personal differences and if they were moved only by their interests of reason. A version of the SCR-​PPJ with affinities to Scanlon’s non-​K antian contractualist principle might say that mental acts of all kinds are wrong if a set of principles permitting them could be reasonably rejected by someone who is moved only by her interests of reason.

6.7  Final Remarks Many of the issues we have discussed in this chapter are familiar in Kantian ways of thinking and to common sense as well. The fourth feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that our power of reason includes constitutive principles that are part of its nature. These principles are not grounded in external normative facts or directly based on contingent interests but are instead part of our reason itself. Our reason essentially includes formal laws of reason that concern

138  Sovereign Re ason consistency and coherence among our mental states. The SCR allows these formal principles to be interpreted and specified in many ways. Our reason also includes a set of substantive principles that are not formal in this sense, including a substantive principle of justifiability. According to the SCR, our reason constitutively includes these formal and substantive laws of reason, abilities to govern ourselves by them, formal interests in doing so, as well as substantive interests in various things for their own sake. Many of the substantive laws of reason by which we govern ourselves derive from a more basic and substantive principle of justifiability that appeals to our interests of reason as grounds for what is justifiable to us and others. Some Kantians and others have discussed interests that are part of our reason, but the SCR is the first view to suggest incorporating substantive interests of reason into principles of justifiability themselves.65 Let’s continue to examine this fourth feature of the SCR by exploring the three distinctive elements of its new but partial principle of justifiability to persons.

65 Ferrarin (2015, 24–​34), Kleingeld (1998a), Yovel (1986), Raedler (2015, 12–​15, 60–​6), Velkley (2014), Engstrom (2009), Ypi (2021), and Mudd (2017) discuss some substantive interests of reason that appear in Kant’s work. Rawls (1999a, 312–​13) incorporates procedural interests of reason into his principle of justifiability. No one, from what I can tell, has suggested including substantive interests of reason into the Categorical Imperative or other principles of justifiability.

7

The Sovereignty of Reason A theory of the power of reason specifies what, if any, abilities, interests, and principles are part of that mental power. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) holds that our reason includes abilities to govern ourselves through principles of reason. In the previous chapter, we began exploring our fourth question about the nature and grounds of these laws of reason that we legislate, enforce, and adjudicate in ourselves. According to the fourth feature of the SCR, our reason includes formal and substantive laws that are part of its nature. The formal principles of reason that we impose on ourselves, such as the principle of noncontradiction and other principles of consistency and coherence, are mostly left for further interpretation and development. The substantive principles of reason that we impose on ourselves, such as requirements to help others and not to enslave or demean them, are in many or all cases systematically unified by a fundamental and substantive principle of justifiability to persons. This principle is a significant expansion of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. One of the main parts of the Content Criterion for evaluating theories of reason is how well they can capture and explain our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about what reason requires, permits, or forbids of us. These judgments include ones that are explained by formal principles of logic and prudence, but they also include judgments that presuppose substantive requirements of reason. It often seems inherently unreasonable or contrary to reason, for example, to betray a friend, wallow in self-​pity, make ourselves into a laughingstock, take pleasure in the downfall of others, and deceive them. Capturing and explaining the wide variety of substantive principles of reason that we affirm in reflective common sense is especially difficult for Kantians. The Autonomy Restriction prevents us from directly appealing to external normative facts and contingent features of our psychology to explain why certain principles are principles of reason. We can only appeal directly to the nature and operation of our power of reason itself to do so. Traditional Kantian views invoke some version of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability (APJ) as a fundamental and substantive principle that is part of our power of reason. In its traditional Kantian forms, the principle of justifiability to persons says that competent rational people are rationally required or permitted to choose in some way if and because a set of rational people could or would rationally choose that act or something suitably related to it.

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0007

140  Sovereign Re ason The partial schema we developed for interpreting the Abstract Principle of Justifiability suggests that there are ways of understanding this principle that have not yet been developed and studied. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ), mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. The SCR-​PPJ is a broadly Kantian principle. It does not appeal to external normative facts or directly invoke contingent features of our psychology. Instead, it is a constitutive part of our reason that grounds the substantive requirements of reason that follow from it in features of our power of reason itself. This partial version of the APJ leaves several features open for further specification, which allows it to be incorporated into many contemporary Kantian frameworks. What is distinctive about the SCR-​PPJ is how it interprets three significant parts of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability. These three elements of the SCR-​PPJ reflect and connect the main features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason that we have been exploring. The first feature of the SCR, recall, is that our power of reason allows us to govern our various mental powers of judgment, understanding, desire, choice, and so on through laws of reason. The SCR-​PPJ incorporates this feature by assessing mental acts of all kinds, not just our choices, as required by or contrary to reason. The second feature of the SCR holds that our power of reason includes many abilities to govern ourselves by all kinds of rational standards. The SCR-​PPJ correspondingly ascribes to mental acts the general normative status of being required (or permitted or prohibited) by reason while leaving open whether this is in all cases a moral status. The third feature of the SCR holds that our power of reason includes formal and substantive interests of reason. The SCR-​PPJ also reflects this feature: Mental acts of competent rational persons or things suitably related to those acts, such as principles requiring them, are justifiable to a set of rational people on the basis of interests that arise from or are part of their power of reason itself. The aim of this chapter is to continue exploring the partial principle of justifiability that is included in the Sovereignty Conception of Reason by considering these three distinctive elements. I will next summarize the SCR as a conception of autonomy or rational self-​governance. I will then suggest that this conception of the power of reason stands a decent chance of satisfying the Content Criterion by capturing and explaining a wide variety of ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about what reason requires and the nature of a rational and reasonable person. This will prepare us for Part II of the book, where I will illustrate and apply the SCR by examining some substantive interests of reason and some laws of reason that they favor through its partial principle of justifiability.

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  141

7.1  Autonomy: Governing All of our Mental Powers The first distinctive element of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability expresses the basic idea of an autonomous person who governs herself in all respects through laws of reason. These laws are requirements of reason that concern not just what choices we make but also how we exercise our imagination, understanding, judgment, attention, desire, feeling, and other powers of our minds. A fully rational and reasonable person chooses, judges, imagines, desires, and otherwise exercises her mental powers only in rational ways. These kinds of mental acts are often outside our direct control. We cannot simply choose, for example, to believe or feel something. Our involuntary mental acts are still subject to rational assessment by laws of reason that might require us, for instance, not to believe contradictions or to feel pleasure at the misfortunes of others. Our power of reason allows and disposes us to enforce these laws in ourselves through psychological processes that affect our various powers of mind. We can also rationally assess ourselves by these standards. Capturing and explaining the vast array of ordinary judgments we have about the rationality or reasonableness of many kinds of mental acts is a daunting task, to say the least. Various formal requirements of rationality, such as not to believe contradictions and to take some sufficient means to our ends or give them up, help to capture and explain why certain beliefs, choices, and combinations of them are contrary to reason. Many additional, often substantive, judgments we ordinarily make about the rationality or reasonableness of our desires, feelings, imaginings, choices, and other kinds of mental acts cannot be grounded in these formal rational requirements. Additional principles of reason are needed to do so. The idea of justifiability to persons suggests a strategy for specifying a wide variety of rational requirements by appealing only to features of our power of reason itself. The Abstract Principle of Justifiability is almost always interpreted as ascribing a normative status to actions or choices but not to judgments, imaginings, feelings, or mental acts of other kinds. According to many Kantian views, the most fundamental substantive principle of reason requires that our actions and choices are somehow justifiable to a set of persons. For example, Kant’s Universal Law Formula of the Categorical Imperative is often interpreted to say that acting on a maxim is contrary to reason if and because we cannot rationally will a principle requiring us to do so as a universal law for everyone.1 The Sovereignty Conception of Reason extends the idea of justifiability to persons so that it applies to mental acts of all kinds that competent rational persons might perform. Our actions and choices are not the only mental acts that must 1 For discussions of Kant’s Formula of Universal Law, see O’Neill (1989), Wood (2008), Hill (1992), Engstrom (2009), Guyer (2000), Herman (1993b), Korsgaard (1996a), Paton (1967), Dean (2006), Reath (2006), Pogge (1998), Sensen (2011b), Timmons 2017, ­chapter 4, and Galvin (1991, 2009).

142  Sovereign Re ason stand up to reason in ourselves and others. Our judgments, imaginings, feelings, desires, and other ways we exercise our various powers of mind must also be somehow rationally justifiable to rational persons. As our schema for interpreting the APJ shows, there are many ways of interpreting this idea so that it applies to mental acts of all kinds. These specifications might generate specific and substantive requirements of reason that can be assessed by our ordinary judgments about, for instance, how a rational and reasonable person thinks and what she desires, feels, pays attention to, and chooses. Extending the principle of justifiability in this way has some basis in Kant’s own views. Kant sometimes suggests principles of justifiability that concern the rationality of other mental acts besides choices. Our power of judgment, for example, includes the ability to make assumptions, such as when judging the trustworthiness of other people, working through logical proofs, evaluating arguments, or conducting scientific research. It is rational for someone to assume something, Kant says, if “one could find it feasible to make the ground or the rule on which one assumes it into a universal principle for the use of reason.”2 Our thinking more generally is not irrational if it is not based on any other accepted rules of thought except ones in which “the most universal use of reason is possible, and whereby its use is facilitated.”3 O’Neill emphasizes and develops this theme in Kant’s thinking by arguing that, for Kant, the most basic substantive principle of reason is “to base action and thought only on maxims through which one can at the same time will that they be universal laws.”4 The SCR-​PPJ expands the principle of justifiability so that it ascribes a normative status, not just to choices or even just to choices and judgments, but to all mental acts, including desires, imaginings, understanding, attention, and feeling. Our power of reason might sometimes require us, for example, to want others to be happy, to imagine ourselves in their situation, to notice injustice, and to acquire concepts because these mental acts are justifiable to rational people. Our reason might also sometimes forbid us from fixating on the minor imperfections of others and feeling envious toward them because these mental acts are not justifiable to rational people. Expanding the principle of justifiability to apply to mental acts of all kinds helps to capture and explain ordinary ways of thinking and speaking of the desires, feelings, imaginings, and other mental states as reasonable or unreasonable, compatible with or contrary to reason, and so on. Whether particular mental acts are required, permitted, or prohibited by reason depends on many details, including how the idea of justifiability to persons is otherwise interpreted. Part of the aim of Part II is to explore some specific laws of reason that apply to a wide variety of mental acts beyond our choices. 2 WOT 8: 146. 3 L-​Anth 25: 549. 4 O’Neill (1989, 23).

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  143

7.2  Autonomy: Governing Ourselves by All Laws of Reason The idea of justifiability to persons is usually interpreted as a moral idea. Morality, according to many views, requires us to treat others only in ways that are somehow justifiable to them. We respect them, properly respond to their dignity, or live up to morally valuable relationships with them by conforming with this principle. Kant’s formulations of the Categorical Imperative are usually interpreted as basic moral principles of reason that determine the morality of our choices. These various principles of justifiability typically characterize actions as morally required, as morally right, as moral duties, as not morally unworthy, or as what we morally ought to do if those actions or things suitably related to them are justifiable to a set of people.5 What makes something a moral principle and how such principles differ from ones of prudence, theoretical rationality, etiquette, and other kinds are notoriously difficult issues.6 There are also significant disagreements about how to understand different kinds of moral statuses, such as the nature of moral duty, moral rightness, moral worthiness, and moral oughts, and about which, if any, of them are properly ascribed by principles of justifiability. The second distinctive element of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability is that it simply ascribes to mental acts the unqualified status of being required (or forbidden or permitted) by reason. The SCR-​ PPJ is agnostic about whether this status is itself a moral status or whether more specific versions of the SCR-​PPJ say that certain mental acts are required by moral reason while other specific versions of the SCR-​PPJ say that some mental acts are required by theoretical or prudential reason. More specifically, the SCR-​PPJ might be interpreted as a moral principle so that any mental acts that are justifiable to a set of people are morally required. A different way of interpreting the SCR-​PPJ is through a consistent family of more specific justifiability principles with the same general form as the SCR-​PPJ. These subsidiary principles might apply to different kinds of mental acts and specify some features of the SCR-​PPJ in different ways. The SCR-​PPJ, on this view, is like the constitution of a society that is progressively interpreted in different legal domains. One midlevel principle might apply to the choices of competent rational agents; another might apply to our judgments; yet another might say that certain desires are required by reason if and because they are somehow justifiable to persons. These principles might also differ in how they interpret, for example, what

5 The Categorical Imperative can also be expressed negatively, such as that it is not morally unworthy to act on a maxim if a universalized form of that maxim is justifiable to a set of people. For discussions of the Categorical Imperative as a moral principle, see Guyer (2000), Hill (2002, 2012), Reath (2006), Wood (2008), Timmons (2017, c­ hapter 5, 2021a), Timmermann (2007), Allison (2011), and Wolff (1974). 6 See, for example, Foot (1978, ­chapter 11) and Hill (1992, ­chapter 1).

144  Sovereign Re ason things are suitably related to the relevant mental acts and which interests of reason are relevant to those assessments. The SCR leaves for further interpretation and development how to distinguish moral principles of reason from other kinds of rational requirements, such as those of theoretical and prudential reason. The SCR-​PPJ merely says that mental acts are required by reason. This fits with Kant’s claims about the unity of reason, such as his assertion that “ultimately there can only be one reason which has to be differentiated solely in its application.”7 Although the SCR-​PPJ is agnostic about how to differentiate moral reason from reason of other kinds, doing so is a more difficult task than it might initially appear for Kantians.8 It is worth briefly considering how Kantians might distinguish morality from other normative domains. We might begin with the distinction we discussed in Chapter 1 between formal and substantive principles of reason. Formal principles of reason, which concern consistency and coherence within or among our mental states, are not, in Kant’s view, moral principles.9 Simply being consistent and coherent with oneself by, for example, avoiding contradictory judgments and taking the necessary means to our ends or abandoning them, are not moral demands. Moral requirements are unconditionally binding whereas formal principles supposedly leave us with multiple options (we can either take the necessary means, abandon the end, or do both, whereas there is only one way to fulfill an unconditional demand not to murder someone, namely not doing so). One difficulty with this way of distinguishing moral principles of reason from others is that some formal principles of reason seem to be unconditionally binding and give us only one option. The only way to satisfy the requirement not to affirm self-​contradictory ends, such as aiming to square the circle, is not to affirm those ends. This requirement does not seem, in Kant’s view and from a commonsense perspective, to be a moral principle, even though it is unconditional. Another difficulty is that moral principles sometimes give us multiple options in much the way many formal principles of reason do. I might promise you that if one of my ends is 7 G 4: 392. See also Axx; CPrR, 5: 91, 121. 8 Some commentators argue that Kant does not provide a fully coherent account of the “unity of reason” (Guyer 1989). Others argue that theoretical and practical reason are to some extent unified because they share a teleological view of nature (Guyer 2000, Kleingeld 1998b), they have common structural features (Neiman 1994), or all reasoning is ultimately practical (Mudd 2016). For additional discussion of the nature of theoretical and practical reason, see Rescher (2000), Wood (1970), and Schafer (2023). 9 This conception of formal principles might not fit with Kant’s every use of the term “formal.” Kant describes the Categorical Imperative, for example, as “formal” at CPrR 5: 39, but it is difficult to determine what he means. If the Formula of Universal Law concerns the consistency and coherence of a person’s own mental states (what we ourselves can will as universal law), then that principle is in this respect formal in my sense, but it would also be partially substantive because it concerns consistency and coherence among mental states we might not actually have (what matters is whether we could will something as a universal law, not whether there is in fact any inconsistency or incoherence in our own minds). Thanks to Joe Stratman for discussion of this point.

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  145 to go on vacation, then I will invite you to accompany me. There are multiple ways I can comply with this duty of fidelity: I can refrain from setting an end to go on vacation; or I can adopt that end and invite you to come with me. Perhaps these difficulties can be overcome, but they suggest that we cannot easily rely on the distinction between formal and substantive principles of reason to characterize the nature of moral requirements. Another approach, which might complement the first, is to emphasize that, for Kant, the only requirements of reason that can be moral are apparently ones that concern our choices. Morality is, in Kant’s view, inextricably linked to the idea of freedom as an uncaused cause that we discussed in Chapter 3. Our power of choice is our only free mental power in this sense, so it seems that moral requirements can apply only to our choices and not to our judgments, imaginings, feelings, or other mental acts that are not free.10 On this way of thinking, the SCR-​PPJ is not itself a moral principle of reason, but one of its more specific versions that applies only to our choices could be a moral principle. Common sense and Kant himself, however, seem to be somewhat ambivalent about whether moral requirements apply only to our choices. Kant sometimes describes what are apparently principles of theoretical reason as moral duties when he says, for example, that the “nature of our reason lays on us the duty of first reflecting on general laws and then, as far as possible, of grasping every individual and then every species under them, and in such a way of forming some sketch of the whole”; that “on account of the importance that the study of nature in accordance with the principle of mechanism has for our theoretical use of reason” we have an “obligation to give a mechanical explanation of all products and events in nature, even the most purposive, as far as it is in our capacity”; that philosophers have “not only the title but also the duty, if not to state the whole truth in public, at least to see to it that everything put forward in public as a principle is true”; and that “it is a duty first to show whence this or that incorrectness of human cognition has come, i.e. I must discover the source of the error.”11 In his moral writings, Kant describes various duties that seem to apply to our power of judgment rather than our power of choice. He claims, for example, that those in a rightful political condition have a duty not to investigate the origins of their state, that we have a duty to scrutinize our motives, that we morally should develop and learn a 10 See Allison (1990) and Guyer (2000). If “ought implies can” is true and interpreted as entailing that someone ought to X only if she can freely do X in the sense of being the originator or first cause of that action, and if our other mental powers besides our power of choice are not free in this negative sense, then it is not true that we ought to exercise these powers in any way—​our power of choice would then be the only power we have that is subject to normative requirements. Kant and common sense, however, suggest that rational standards apply directly to how we exercise our unfree mental powers (e.g. we ought not to believe contradictions). If this is true, then “ought implies can” must be interpreted differently, such as saying that, if we ought to X, it is logically or metaphysically possible for us to X, whether or not we can freely X. 11 L-​Th 28: 1115, CPJ 5: 415, CF 7: 33, and L-​Log 24: 833, respectively.

146  Sovereign Re ason metaphysics of morals, and that our duties to respect ourselves and others include duties to judge that they have inner worth.12 Kant claims that we have moral rights to acquire true representations, correct errors, and think for ourselves, as well as duties not to deceive or manipulate others and to help them to acquire knowledge.13 He also apparently condemns attitudes of Schadenfreude and arrogance and commends ones of gratitude and love even though these attitudes seem to include emotional and cognitive components that do not simply concern choice.14 We will return in Part II to consider these and other supposed requirements of reason that Kant discusses. Although we might not, on reflection, accept that they are all moral requirements, we sometimes speak and think as if we fail to live up to the demands of morality if we have envious desires, have racist or sexist biases that affect our judgments, fantasize about hurting people, fail to notice that someone is offended, take pleasure in someone’s mistreatment, or believe that someone is entirely worthless. It might be that these passages from Kant as well as our reflective judgments can be interpreted as moral claims about our choices rather than as moral claims that directly concern our judgments, feelings, desires, or other mental states. We might have duties, for example, to choose in ways that indirectly lead us to satisfy principles of theoretical reason. We and Kant might also be using “duty” and related terms in loose, nonmoral senses. It is nonetheless far from simple to show that, for Kant and common sense, moral standards apply only to our choices and not to our attitudes and other mental acts directly. We might have to resort to classifying moral requirements pragmatically by, for example, enforcing some requirements of reason more strictly than others, giving some kinds of rational requirements greater priority than others in cases of apparent conflict, and calling principles of the latter kinds moral and the others nonmoral. We might also return to the idea that the SCR-​PPJ or a similar principle of justifiability is, on reflection, the most fundamental principle of morality and so regard it and any of its deliverances as, after all, moral requirements. In any case, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason leaves these complicated matters for further reflection. The SCR-​PPJ simply holds that mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason, in an unqualified sense, if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. 12 MM 6: 371, MM 6: 441, MM 6: 216, and MM 6: 462, respectively. On the last point, see Cureton (Forthcoming-​c, ­chapter 12) as well as Chapter 15. 13 MM 6: 328; Anth 7: 229; 744/​B772; CF 7: 29; Eth-​V 27: 700. For further discussion of these presumptive laws of reason, see Chapter 11. 14 MM 6: 402, 458–​61, 465–​6; Anth 7: 237. For further discussion of these attitudes, see Chapters 13 and 15.

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  147

7.3  Autonomy: Governing Ourselves through Interests of Reason The third distinctive element of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability is its novel interpretation of the interests that help to determine whether something is justifiable to a set of people. According to our schema for interpreting the Abstract Principle of Justifiability, whether something is justifiable to someone depends on whether the person could or would respond to it in some manner, such as whether she could endorse the thing or whether she would most prefer it if certain conditions were to obtain. Whether someone could or would respond to something in these ways depends, in turn, on her interests, such as her values and desires. For example, whether I would accept a political arrangement from some hypothetical perspective depends on what I would value and want in those circumstances. Whether I could accept the terms of a contract depends on how doing so relates to other ends and commitments I have. Our choices, Kantian views presuppose, are free and so not determined by our interests, which nonetheless lead us to choose in various ways and help to explain why we do so. The SCR-​PPJ interprets in a nonstandard way the procedural interests that help to determine whether something is justifiable to us. Procedural interests are the motives of persons that help to determine what they could or would endorse when our concern is with what is justifiable to them according to a principle of justifiability. Interpretations of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability might fully or partially specify the procedural interests that affect whether people could or would properly respond to something. For example, Hobbes assumes that his hypothetical contractors are moved by their predominantly selfish concerns for their own lives, safety, power, and glory. Locke’s contractors are moved by their concerns for their own lives, liberty, and property. Rousseau’s contractors are assumed to have procedural interests in two kinds of self-​respect as well as in their own lives, freedom, and natural perfection. Rawls stipulates that the parties in his Original Position are mutually disinterested and concerned to promote their own shares of primary goods, namely rights, liberties, opportunities, income, wealth, and the social bases of self-​respect. Roderick Firth’s ideal agent is moved by her perfect sympathy with all people. The parties in Gauthier’s hypothetical bargaining standpoint are moved by their own self-​interest. Scanlon’s contractors are united by their concern to find principles that no one could reasonably reject. Parfit’s moral agents are moved by their recognition of independently existing reasons. O’Neill claims that whether someone could rationally will a maxim as a universal law depends in part on whatever set of goals and other interests that the person actually has. And Hill’s ideal moral legislators do not take account of any contingent desires, feelings, ends, or other interests they might have but are instead moved to treat everyone as an

148  Sovereign Re ason end in themselves.15 The procedural interests that these and other interpretations of the APJ invoke or exclude help to specify what things are justifiable to people and so help to generate and explain determinate conclusions about the normative status of certain things. Kantian interpretations of the APJ are limited by the Autonomy Restriction, which restricts how they can interpret the procedural interests that affect whether a set of people could or would rationally choose something. These interests cannot include natural feelings, natural desires, personal ends, or any other contingent interests unless the interests are somehow based in features of our power of reason itself. We cannot say, for example, that an act is rationally required simply because it would be rationally chosen by selfish people, by those who happen to care about freedom or self-​development, or by those who are naturally kind and generous. Procedural interests also cannot in any way presuppose external normative facts, such as intrinsic values, principles, or reasons that exist apart from the nature and operation of reason itself. Kantian views cannot say that something is justifiable to someone if she endorses it because she recognizes and is moved to act from independently existing reasons. Any procedural interests that Kantian Principles of Justifiability invoke must somehow be grounded in or picked out by our power of reason itself. A perennial worry with Kantian Principles of Justifiability is that they are empty formalisms that cannot generate or adequately explain without circularity a wide variety of ordinary judgments about reason.16 Kantians seem to have few materials available to us when we interpret and apply the principle of justifiability. We cannot appeal to contingent motivations directly, and we cannot appeal at all to external normative facts. The materials we have left, the worry goes, are insufficient to generate and explain a wide variety of outcomes that, on reflection, accord with our ordinary judgments about what is rational and reasonable. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability includes an underexplored way to interpret the procedural interests or motives that affect whether a set of people could or would rationally choose something. The main point of the Autonomy Restriction is that laws of reason must be based only in features of the power of reason itself. The Autonomy Restriction prevents contingent motivations from directly figuring in explanations for why something is a law of reason. Contingent motivations, such as natural feelings, natural desires, and personal ends, are not part of and do not arise from our power of reason, although they can figure at later stages of application when they are picked out as relevant by 15 See Hobbes (1994), Locke (1988), Rousseau (1994), Rawls (1999c), Firth (1952), Gauthier (1986), Scanlon (1998), Parfit (2011), O’Neill (1989), and Hill (1992, ­chapter 3, 2012, ­chapter 9, 2021a, ­chapter 7). 16 For discussions of this worry against Kantian theories, see, for example, Schopenhauer (2010, appendix), Hegel (1991, section 135), Williams (1981, c­ hapter 2, 1985), Scanlon (1998, 2011), Rawls (2000), Wood (1999, 97–​110), and Galvin (2009).

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  149 rational standards.17 Interests of reason, however, are motivations that are based in our reason itself. They are part of or arise from our rational nature independently of our other powers of mind. The Autonomy Restriction does not exclude them from helping to explain why something is a law of reason because they are part of our rational nature. According to the third feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, we have a wide variety of formal and substantive interests of reason in governing ourselves by rational laws, in protecting and exercising our powers of reason as well as those of others, in the happiness and freedom of all people, in acquiring knowledge and correcting errors in our thinking, and in having and showing respect to everyone. These interests are essential to our rational nature. The substantive ones do not depend on what reason requires but are instead aims, desires, goals, and other interests of our power of reason itself that can, without circularity, help to determine whether things are justifiable to us. The SCR-​PPJ holds that mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. Whether we could or would choose something depends on our interests of reason rather than on our contingent likes and ends. Our basic interests of reason are universally shared among competent rational agents. They do not vary with our genetics, upbringing, psychological peculiarities, or other contingencies. We all care about the same things simply as people with our power of reason. The SCR-​PPJ is a partial principle that can be further specified in a variety of ways. A version of the SCR-​PPJ might hold, for example, that acting in some way is rationally required if and because all rational people would rationally endorse a universal and public principle requiring it if they were ignorant of their personal differences and moved only by their interests of reason. From this counterfactual standpoint, rational people set aside their contingent interests and assess candidate principles by consulting their shared interests of reason in knowledge, enlightenment, solidarity, freedom, and others. Their interests of reason would lead them to reject any proposed principles that are incompatible with their interests of reason, such as ones that allow widespread deception, prohibit some people from thinking for themselves, permit people to betray or undermine friendships, and allow people to be enslaved. From this perspective, the parties would be moved to accept only principles that are compatible with their interests of reason. A different version of the SCR-​PPJ might hold that it is rationally prohibited for someone to act on a maxim if and because she could not, on the basis of her

17 For discussions and illustrations of the circumscribed roles that contingent interests can play in generating and explaining specific laws of reason, see the first section of Chapter 6 and Part II.

150  Sovereign Re ason interests of reason, rationally choose that everyone acts on that maxim. Whether we could rationally choose for everyone to act on a maxim, according to this principle, depends on our interests of reason. If endorsing a universal law would contradict or undermine interests of reason we have, then we cannot rationally do so. Using one of Kant’s own examples in which he seems to employ this line of reasoning, a rational person “cannot possibly will” a universal law of nature not to develop our natural talents because “as a rational being he necessarily wills that all the capacities in him be developed.”18 We all have a substantive final interest of reason in developing our natural talents simply because we are competent rational people. Universal neglect of our talents would undermine this interest of reason we all share. We thus cannot rationally endorse such a law, which implies that neglecting our talents is contrary to reason because a universal law of that kind is not justifiable to us on the basis of our interests of reason.19 There are several advantages to incorporating interests of reason into Kantian interpretations of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability. Interests of reason provide additional resources that Kantians can use to supplement well-​developed versions of those principles or to explore new interpretations of them. Including interests of reason, as we will explore in Part II, increases the likelihood that such principles generate a wide variety of plausible outcomes that accord with reflective common sense. For example, all of us would likely endorse a principle of beneficence if we abstract from our contingent interests and simply consult our shared interests of reason in the happiness of all. Interests of reason also increase the plausibility of the explanations these principles give for why things are rationally required. Although, for example, it is perhaps impossible to rationally choose that everyone always lies because communication and so lying could not exist in such a world, this is not for many of us a fully satisfying explanation for why lying is often unreasonable. If, however, we have interests of reason in acquiring knowledge and protecting freedom, then a Kantian version of the APJ might imply that lying is wrong because it is incompatible with our interests of reason in learning about the world and freely interacting with one another.20 These are just brief illustrations of how a Kantian form of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability might benefit from incorporating interests of reason. Whether doing so allows the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability to eventually capture and explain many of our ordinary judgments about what reason requires depends on the nature and extent of our interests of reason as well as on how other features of the SCR-​PPJ are interpreted. Questions 18 G 4: 423. 19 We will return to discuss interests and requirements of reason that concern natural perfection in Chapter 14. 20 We will discuss rational prohibitions on lying in Chapters 11 and 12. For discussions of Kant’s account of why lying is wrong, see Shieber (2010), Korsgaard (1996a, c­ hapters 5, 12), Buss (2005), Wood (2008, ­chapter 14), O’Neill (1989, c­ hapter 2), and Hill (1991, ­chapter 3).

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  151 remain about how, if at all, to deeply justify including substantive interests, or any other feature for that matter, in our rational nature itself. In Part II, we will keep with the Content Criterion for evaluating theories of reason by examining several substantive interests of reason and showing how they might be used in conjunction with the SCR-​PPJ to capture and explain many of our ordinary judgments about what reason requires.

7.4  Comparisons: O’Neill, Hill, and Rawls Perhaps the most radical element of the SCR-​PPJ is its third one, namely that it incorporates interests of reason into the grounds that determine whether things are justifiable to us. One way of highlighting what is novel and promising about this aspect of the SCR-​PPJ is to compare it to other Kantian approaches to specifying what it takes for something to be justifiable to someone. Kantian principles of justifiability hold that, for purposes of ascribing a normative status to a mental act, something is justifiable to someone just in case two conditions are satisfied: First, the person could or would choose the thing, which, as we have been discussing, depends on what motives she has. Second, the choice the person makes to endorse the thing must also be a rational choice. According to this second condition, things are justifiable to us only if our endorsement of them satisfies standards of rationality. Even if we could or would choose to accept something based on our own ends and other interests, our choice to endorse the thing must also be rational for the thing to be justifiable to us. Kantian interpretations of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability specify what rational standards our choices must satisfy to make things justifiable to us. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason leaves these standards mostly open for further interpretation. Other Kantian views, however, place significant emphasis on these standards as crucial for specifying what it takes for something to be justifiable to persons. Whereas these Kantian views focus on the second condition of justifiability, namely the standards that determine whether such choices are rational, the SCR focuses on the first condition of justifiability, namely the motivations that could or would lead people to endorse something. Both conditions are part of the SCR-​PPJ, but one of its most distinctive elements is the importance it places on the first one. The Autonomy Restriction has long seemed to prevent Kantians from focusing on procedural interests, which are the main focus of social contract theorists who often appeal to contingent desires and aims, such as our fear of death or our love of liberty. Once we recognize that our reason itself includes its own substantive interests that are not arbitrary or contingent, new possibilities arise for developing Kantians’ interpretations of the APJ that include substantive interests of reason alongside rational standards of justifiability.

152  Sovereign Re ason Kantians have nonetheless mostly focused on standards of justifiability rather than on procedural interests. The standards of reason that our choices must satisfy for things to be justifiable to us can be interpreted in different ways. They obviously cannot include the same principle of justifiability in which they figure and must otherwise avoid making Kantian principles of justifiability circular. The Autonomy Restriction also prevents the standards of justifiability from appealing to or presupposing external normative facts. These supplementary standards, according to Kantian views, have to be based in our power of reason itself. Let’s consider three Kantian approaches to specifying what it takes for things to be justifiable to us. These are complicated theories, but we can use the partial schema we developed in the previous chapter to focus on a few key elements of them while abstracting from many other of their features.

7.4.1  Onora O’Neill According to O’Neill, the standards of reason that are relevant to whether something is justifiable to us are formal principles of reason. Recall that such standards, which include the principle of noncontradiction and the Hypothetical Imperative, concern consistency and coherence within or among the mental states of an individual.21 They stand alongside the Abstract Principle of Justifiability as constitutive principles of our power of reason. These formal laws of reason do not presuppose external normative facts, and they are not grounded in our contingent feelings, desires, or goals. Formal standards of reason, according to O’Neill’s interpretation of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability, are what mainly determine whether something is justifiable to someone. If a person would necessarily violate formal standards of reason by endorsing something, then that thing is not justifiable to her. For example, a universal law of slave ownership is not justifiable to someone because endorsing a law requiring everyone to hold slaves violates the formal rational standard against making self-​contradictory choices. Assuming it is impossible for everyone to hold slaves, for then there presumably would be no slaves, a universal law of slave ownership is not justifiable to anyone because it is irrational for any of us to choose what is impossible.22 According to O’Neill’s principle of justifiability, it is morally unworthy for someone to hold slaves if and because a universal law of slave ownership is not justifiable to that person herself—​the person considering whether or not to hold slaves cannot will that everyone hold slaves without violating a formal rational standard against contradicting herself, so it is morally unworthy of her to hold slaves (and the same goes for everyone else who considers slave ownership). 21 O’Neill (1989, 83, 98, 103). 22 O’Neill (1989, 89).

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  153 The rational prohibition on making self-​contradictory choices is one among several formal laws of reason that we must satisfy for something to be justifiable to us. According to O’Neill, these standards also include ones that concern consistency and coherence among, and not just within, our own mental states.23 If affirming something violates any of these rational standards, then it is not justifiable to us. For example, consider a universal law of nonbeneficence that says: No one will help another person for their own sake out of their indifference to the happiness of others. Whether this law is justifiable to me, according to O’Neill, depends on whether it is possible for me to endorse it without violating formal principles of reason. Endorsing such a universal law does not violate the previously mentioned formal rational prohibition against making self-​contradictory choices because it is possible that no one ever helps anyone. The intention that everyone acts selfishly is not self-​contradictory, whereas the intention that everyone holds slaves supposedly contradicts itself. Is it possible for me to endorse a universal law of nonbeneficence without violating another formal principle of reason, namely the Hypothetical Imperative, which requires us to take the necessary means to our ends or to abandon those ends? Answering this question is not straightforward because of the nature of the Hypothetical Imperative and other formal rational standards that concern consistency and coherence among our mental states.24 Formal principles of this kind do not apply to particular mental states in isolation from other mental states. These standards assess two or more mental states by whether they are consistent and coherent with one another. The Hypothetical Imperative assesses whether pairs of choices fit together in such a way that choosing a means is necessary to achieving a chosen end. Just as a single belief alone cannot violate the rational prohibition against affirming contradictory pairs of beliefs, no single choice can violate the Hypothetical Imperative or any other formal principle of reason that concerns consistency and coherence among mental states. A self-​contradictory choice, by contrast, is irrational on its own because a formal law of reason prohibits us from making choices that contradict themselves. Whether I violate the Hypothetical Imperative by endorsing a universal law of nonbeneficence thus depends on how this choice fits with my ends. These ends and other interests can be specified in different ways by different interpretations of the 23 A maxim is internally consistent, according to O’Neill, if it does not contain incompatible aims that cannot be jointly achieved (O’Neill 1989, 89). Volitional consistency, which can hold between a life-​governing maxim and the specific intentions we adopt in pursuit of it or between the specific intentions themselves, is determined by further principles of consistency and coherence (O’Neill 1989, 91). O’Neill discusses five such “Principles of Rational Intending” (O’Neill 1989, 90–​3), such as if we will a maxim, then we are rationally required to adopt a specific intention to pursue all necessary and available means to the aim that is contained in the maxim. Another such standard is that if we will a maxim, then it is rationally required of us that the “foreseeable results of the specific intentions adopted in acting on a given underlying intention be consistent with the underlying intention” (O’Neill 1989, 92). 24 Some formal requirements of rationality apply to individual mental states, such as the requirement not to believe a self-​contradictory proposition or to endorse a self-​contradictory end.

154  Sovereign Re ason Abstract Principle of Justifiability. O’Neill does not restrict, idealize, or otherwise specify the procedural interests that help to determine whether a universal law is justifiable to persons. The ends I have are simply my ends, whatever they might be. Assessing whether I can endorse a universal law of nonbeneficence without violating the Hypothetical Imperative thus depends on whether making this choice fits with whatever ends I happen to affirm. Does willing that no one helps another person conflict with endorsing some of my personal ends, whatever they might be, such that these choices together violate the formal rational requirement to choose the necessary means to my ends or abandon them? According to O’Neill, the answer is yes, because a necessary means to satisfying many of our ends is that others help us. Willing that no one help anyone and at the same time maintaining my personal ends that depend for their fulfillment on help from others together violate the Hypothetical Imperative. Making this set of choices is prohibited by a formal law of reason. A universal law of nonbeneficence is thus not justifiable to me even though it is conceptually possible, though irrational, that I both endorse personal ends that depend on help from others and endorse a law that no one helps anyone. Therefore, according to O’Neill’s principle of justifiability, it is morally unworthy of me to act on a maxim of nonbeneficence because I cannot rationally will both my dependent ends and a universal law of nonbeneficence. A difficulty that arises at this stage is whether, by allowing the personal ends and other contingent interests of persons to affect whether things are justifiable to them, O’Neill’s principle of justifiability violates the Autonomy Restriction on Kantian conceptions of reason. Laws of reason, according to this constraint, must be based only on the nature and operation of our power of reason itself. They cannot directly appeal to our natural feelings, natural desires, and personal ends, just as they cannot appeal to independently existing values and reasons. Yet whether it is morally unworthy of me to act on a personal policy of nonbeneficence, according to O’Neill, eventually depends on whether endorsing a universal law of nonbeneficence coheres with whatever personal ends I contingently have.25 It is true that, within the boundaries of the Autonomy Restriction, laws of reason can indirectly appeal to contingent interests when such laws are applied to particular contexts. O’Neill’s principle of justifiability, however, allows contingent interests to help explain why certain laws are laws of reason in the first place, which seems to conflict with the Kantian idea that laws of reason must be grounded entirely within the power of reason itself. That, as it happens, I affirm ends that would be undermined by a universal law of nonbeneficence is a central part of the explanation for why it is morally unworthy of me to act on a maxim of nonbeneficence. The Autonomy Restriction can be interpreted in various ways, but its spirit seems

25 Herman (1993b, 45) raises a version of this objection.

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  155 to favor abstracting entirely from what people happen to want or care about when specifying at least basic requirements of reason. Perhaps this difficulty can be overcome with a more modest interpretation of the Autonomy Restriction. A further concern is that some people might not have ends that are incompatible with a universal law of nonbeneficence, while others who have such ends might choose to abandon them. In such cases, O’Neill’s principle of justifiability does not imply that acting on a maxim of nonbeneficence is morally unworthy for these people. Like all formal standards of reason that concern consistency and coherence among our mental states, there are multiple ways to satisfy the Hypothetical Imperative. Endorsing a universal law of nonbeneficence might be consistent and coherent with the ends that, as it happens, I endorse. Perhaps my ends are such that I do not need help from others to achieve them. I might also, however, abandon or change any of my ends that are not consistent or coherent with affirming a universal law of nonbeneficence. Perhaps when I see what I would otherwise be morally required to do according to O’Neill’s principle, I avoid the relevant kind of inconsistency by contenting myself with personal ends that I can satisfy entirely on my own.26 In either case, I would not violate the Hypothetical Imperative or any other formal standard of consistency and coherence among mental states by endorsing a law that no one help others. I can affirm this law without violating formal standards of reason as long as I make enough changes to my personal ends and other contingent mental states so that I remain consistent and coherent with myself. A universal law of nonbeneficence is justifiable to us if we lack certain personal ends or we are willing to change the ones we have. According to O’Neill’s principle of justifiability, acting on a personal policy of never helping others is not morally unworthy in such cases. Common sense and ordinary language suggest, however, that refusing to help others is often still contrary to reason even if the person does not need help herself or alters her contingent ends in various ways to avoid helping or needing help from others. Common sense and ordinary language also suggest that a full explanation of why nonbeneficence is contrary to reason does not often depend on what contingent ends potential benefactors happen to have or on their willingness to adjust them. These difficulties for O’Neill’s version of the principle of justifiability extend beyond beneficence and the Hypothetical Imperative. Anything that is internally consistent and coherent is, on her view, justifiable to anyone as long as endorsing it coheres with the mental states we actually have. Some of us might simply lack mental states that are incompatible with various universal laws, while others might choose to revise our mental states so that we can endorse certain universal laws

26 As we shall discuss in Chapter 13, Kantians think that we are entirely free to choose our own conception of happiness. It is somewhat difficult to imagine a human person who affirms only ends that do not require help from others, but our negative freedom of choice ensures that this is nonetheless possible. Even people of this sort, it seems, should at least sometimes assist other people.

156  Sovereign Re ason without violating formal standards of reason. According to O’Neill’s principle of justifiability, people of both kinds are then free to act on almost any maxim they choose, including ones that seem to be morally unworthy or contrary to reason. Incorporating interests of reason into O’Neill’s principle of justifiability would help to avoid these difficulties. A revised version of O’Neill’s principle as an interpretation of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability might hold that whether someone can rationally endorse a universal law depends on whether she can rationally do so on the basis of her interests of reason and apart from whatever personal ends or contingent interests she might have. Unlike contingent interests, interests of reason are present in all competent rational people, and we cannot freely choose to abandon or revise them. They are simply part of our rational nature. If endorsing a universal law is inconsistent with, undermines, or otherwise fails to cohere with our interests of reason according to formal rational standards, then we lack the “escape hatch” of abandoning or changing those interests. Affirming a universal law of nonbeneficence is irrational, for example, if we have an interest of reason in the happiness of all and if this interest fails to cohere with choosing that no one help other people. On this view, I cannot rationally endorse a universal law of nonbeneficence because doing so would undermine my interest of reason in the happiness of everyone. The details matter, and O’Neill’s view is far more complicated than I have described, but at an abstract level we can say that the interests and formal rational standards that are part of our rational nature can, in combination with a version of O’Neill’s justifiability principle, together generate unconditional conclusions that accord with reflective common sense.

7.4.2  Thomas E. Hill, Jr. Hill describes a different way of interpreting the standards of reason that our choices must satisfy for things to be justifiable to us. In addition to formal laws of reason that concern consistency and coherence within and among our mental states, Hill suggests that the rational standards of justifiability include substantive laws of reason.27 The principle of justifiability, in Hill’s view, is not the only substantive principle that is part of our power of reason. These supplemental substantive principles of reason do not derive from the principle of justifiability but are instead independent principles of reason that stand alongside it and formal principles of reason, such as the principle of noncontradiction and the Hypothetical Imperative. They also satisfy the Autonomy Restriction because the substantive principles of reason are, according to Hill, constitutive of our power of reason itself.

27 Hill (2002, 71–​3, 2012, 43–​4, 218, 259).

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  157 Whether we could or would rationally choose in some way depends on whether we satisfy certain supplemental substantive principles of reason as well as on whether we comply with the formal standards of reason that O’Neill emphasizes. One of the main supplemental principles of reason that, according to Hill, exists independently of the principle of justifiability is Kant’s Humanity Formulation of the Categorical Imperative. This principle of reason requires us to treat humanity as an end in itself, never merely as a means. Our choice to endorse something, according to Hill, must satisfy this principle for it to be justifiable to us. Affirming a universal law of nonbeneficence, for example, is irrational and so unjustifiable to us because endorsing that law conflicts with the requirement of reason to treat humanity as an end in itself. Apart from whether endorsing this law fits with contingent ends we affirm in ways that violate the Hypothetical Imperative or other formal requirements of reason, treating humanity as an end in itself prohibits us from neglecting the ends of all other people. Refusing to help others is thus contrary to reason because we could or would not rationally endorse a universal law of nonbeneficence without also violating the substantive requirement of reason to treat humanity as an end in itself. Supplementing Hill’s principle of justifiability with substantive requirements of reason, such as the Formula of Humanity, is a promising approach. Such principles, if they exist independently of his version of the principle of justifiability, provide additional materials for showing how it can capture and explain a wide variety of our commonsense judgments about what reason requires of us. Working out the details of Hill’s theory requires specifying the supplemental principles of reason and explaining why they are principles of reason. One difficulty with doing so is that that the Formula of Humanity, on some interpretations of Kant, is simply a different way of expressing the principle of justifiability that it is, according to Hill, supposed to independently figure.28 We treat humanity as an end in itself, on this view, basically by treating people in ways that are justifiable to them. Supplementing Kantian Principles of Justifiability with the Formula of Humanity thus risks circularity and might otherwise add nothing to the content or application of that principle. Another difficulty for Hill’s view is that, if the Formula of Humanity is an independent principle of reason, then perhaps we should dispense with the Abstract Principle of Justifiability altogether and instead apply the Formula of Humanity directly to determine what reason requires of us.29 After all, if treating others as ends in themselves prohibits us from refusing to help others, then we might not need to show that a set of people could or would not rationally endorse a universal law of nonbeneficence. In short, the thinner the Formula of Humanity becomes, the more it seems to be a restatement of a principle of 28 O’Neill (1989, ­chapter 7). 29 Wood (2008) raises this and other problems for principles of justifiability and argues instead for an independent version of the Formula of Humanity as the supreme principle of morality.

158  Sovereign Re ason justifiability, but the thicker the Formula of Humanity becomes, the more it seems to replace the principle of justifiability as a fundamental requirement of reason.30 Incorporating interests of reason into Hill’s principle of justifiability can help to overcome these difficulties.31 According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, we have interests that are part of our power of reason itself. These interests include interests in ourselves as well as interests in all other rational people. We have substantive interests in, for example, the lives, freedom, happiness, and enlightenment of everyone. Our self-​regarding and other-​regarding interests of reason can figure in principles of justifiability by helping to determine whether we could or would rationally endorse a thing or something suitably related to it. A more specific interpretation of the SCR along the lines of Hill’s theory, however, might hold that our self-​regarding interests of reason are basic while our interests of reason in other people derive from our self-​regarding ones. In his discussion of the Formula of Humanity, Kant suggests that this principle helps to bridge the gap between rational self-​regard and rational regard for others. By analogy to Mill’s proof of the Principle of Utility, Kant might be understood as suggesting that we all have self-​regarding interests of reason and that reason requires us to treat others as ends in themselves by, in part, taking an interest in the self-​regarding interests of reason that others have.32 Our power of reason thus includes basic self-​regarding interests of reason as well as other-​regarding interests of reason that derive from our self-​regarding interests along with the Formula of Humanity. The Formula of Humanity, however, does not tell us how to adjudicate conflicts within or among the interests of reason that different people have, which is where a principle of justifiability might come in to settle such disputes. Hill’s principle of justifiability, on this view, would incorporate substantive interests of reason as well as the Formula of Humanity as an independent rational standard. It might say that a mental act is required by reason if and because a set of people could or would rationally endorse it or something suitably related to it on the basis of their interests of reason, which include basic self-​regarding interests as well as other-​regarding interests that derive from them through the Formula of Humanity. This interpretation of the SCR-​PPJ might help us to adjudicate conflicts 30 This same worry does not arise for the SCR-​PPJ because, unlike a thick interpretation of the value of humanity that would plausibly generate moral requirements without a principle of justifiability, it is not clear how interests of reason could on their own yield moral standards without a principle of reason, such as the SCR-​PPJ, that picks them out as relevant to what we ought to do, think, etc. In addition, the SCR-​PPJ offers a plausible kind of moral explanation for specific principles of reason that incorporates the importance of justifiability and interests of reason, namely that such principles are correct because they are justifiable to a set of people on the basis of things they necessarily care about as rational people. For further discussion of the redundancy objection to contractualist moral theories, see Ridge (2003), Stratton-​Lake (2003), and Suikkanen (2005). 31 Hill (1992, 89, 91, 142–​5, 2002, 35, 72, 153–​4) expresses reservations about incorporating substantive interests into the power of reason but also sometimes gestures toward including such interests (Hill 2000, 139, 150–​1, 2002, 152–​3, 2012, 309, 2021a, 95). 32 I suggest a strategy of this sort for interpreting Kant’s argument for the Formula of Humanity in Cureton (2013a).

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  159 within and among the interests of different people by ensuring that the laws of reason it generates are justifiable to everyone.

7.4.3  John Rawls O’Neill and Hill focus on the standards of reason that our choices must satisfy for things to be justifiable to us. That we could or would endorse something makes it justifiable to us only if our endorsement of it is rational, that is, in accordance with other standards of reason. Rawls also incorporates standards of rational choice into his interpretation of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability. In addition to these standards, however, he specifies and emphasizes various desires and other motives that help to determine whether we could or would endorse something in ways that make it justifiable to us. Whether something is justifiable to someone, Rawls suggests, depends on the interests that could or would move her to endorse it. O’Neill does not restrict these procedural interests at all, while Hill supposes that we must abstract from any contingent feelings, desires, ends, or other interests we might have. Like the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, Rawls at times specifies some procedural interests of reason that properly move us to endorse or reject things in ways that help to make them justifiable to us. Whether something is justifiable to someone, according to Rawls, depends on whether certain interests of reason she has could or would lead her to endorse that thing. In his original version of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability, Rawls claims that something (namely a set of principles of justice for the basic institutions of society) is justifiable to us if and because we would, from a certain standpoint, rationally endorse it on the basis of our interests in maximizing our own share of “primary goods.” These are instrumental goods that “rational persons want whatever else they want” and include our own rights, liberties, opportunities, income, wealth, and the social bases of self-​respect.33 Our interests in primary goods help to determine whether we could or would endorse candidate principles of justice. These procedural interests are Rawls’ alternative to the motivations that Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau afford to their hypothetical social contractors. In Rawls’ original formulation of his theory, he explains our interests in the primary goods partly on contingent psychological grounds. Whatever else we might want in life, Rawls claims, a rational person in our world wants all-​purpose goods, such as rights, liberties, opportunities, and so on, as necessary means to pursue whatever aims she happens to have.34 Rawls’ conception of rational prudence combined with facts about human psychology and the natural world afford our interests in primary goods a special status in determining whether we could or 33 Rawls (1999c, xiii, 380–​5). 34 Rawls (1971, 93).

160  Sovereign Re ason would rationally endorse principles of justice.35 Rawls later recognized, however, that this explanation of our interests in primary goods is not compatible with the Autonomy Restriction.36 Whether some good is a primary good depends on generalizing over the contingent ends that people have or might have and over the kinds of goods that happen to be useful in achieving them. Our contingent motivations help to determine what is justifiable to us by grounding the interests that partially determine whether we would endorse them or things suitably related to them. In later work, Rawls offers a different explanation for our interests in the primary goods. This Kantian account appeals to some basic interests that, according to Rawls, are part of our power of reason itself.37 These interests are no longer treated as contingent features of our psychology but are instead characterized as constitutive of our rational nature. What properly moves us to accept or reject things in the context of Rawls’ principle of justifiability are our interests of reason. Two of the fundamental interests of reason that Rawls defines are interests in governing ourselves by laws of reason and in exercising our rational powers. The first interest is in understanding, applying, and acting from moral principles. The other interest is in forming, revising, and rationally pursuing a conception of the good. The only other interest of reason that Rawls defines is an interest in promoting and protecting our own conception of the good.38 Primary goods, according to Rawls, are all-​purpose means that are generally necessary for advancing these three fundamental interests of reason we all share.39 Rawls’ basic idea that something is justifiable to us if we could or would endorse it on the basis of our interests of reason is a central feature of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. The SCR, however, significantly expands these interests in several ways. Rawls proposes a small set of mostly formal interests of reason that properly move us, whereas the Sovereignty includes many substantive interests of reason in, for example, solidarity, enlightenment, respect, and freedom. Rawls proposes interests of moral reason and prudential reason, but he does not include interests of theoretical reason that are part of the SCR. According to the SCR, we have interests of reason in thinking rationally, thinking for ourselves, acquiring knowledge, and avoiding errors in judgment. Rawls’ three basic interests of reason are also entirely self-​regarding. According to him, our power of reason includes concerns in governing ourselves by laws of reason and in achieving our own happiness, whereas the SCR holds that we have formal and substantive interests of reason in ourselves and in other people. According to the SCR, for example, we

35 Rawls (1971, 253). 36 Rawls (1999c, xiii, 1999a, 314–​15, 345–​6). 37 Rawls, as far as I know, does not explicitly say that these fundamental interests are part of reason itself, but he strongly implies this idea in his discussion of Kantian autonomy (Rawls 1999a, 256, 313–​15, 345–​6). 38 This interest, according to Rawls, is likely a formal interest in living up to laws of prudential reason. 39 Rawls (1999a, 313–​14).

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  161 have direct interests of reason in ensuring that we and others think for ourselves, achieve happiness, develop our natural powers, and govern ourselves by laws of reason. Rawls’ interpretation of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability might be expanded to incorporate the many substantive and other-​regarding interests of reason that are part of the SCR. Parties in a revised version of his Original Position, for example, might be moved to protect their interests of reason in everyone thinking for themselves. They might favor political arrangements that protect freedom of conscience apart from the role that freedom of this kind has in allowing them to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good, which is how Rawls tries to justify this liberty.40 As with the views of O’Neill and Hill, significant changes to other parts of Rawls’ theory will likely be required. If our power of reason includes a large set of formal and substantive interests, then it seems that, on Kantian ways of thinking, all of them should count when determining whether things are justifiable to us. The principle of justifiability that is part of the SCR is a partial interpretation of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability. It leaves many details open in ways that allow it to fit with a variety of more specific principles of justifiability that others have developed. The three distinctive elements of the SCR-​PPJ are its focus on mental acts of all kinds, its status as a principle of what reason in general requires, and its inclusion of interests of reason. This principle reflects and brings together the main features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. If the SCR-​PPJ meets with some success, then a next step would be to work out a specific interpretation of it and compare it in a more sustained way to the fully specified principles that O’Neill, Hill, Rawls, and others have developed.41 We might also explore new versions of the APJ that, for instance, include the formal principles of reason that O’Neill describes, the substantive principles of reason that Hill proposes, the formal interests of reason that Rawls emphasizes, and the substantive interests of reason that I suggest.

7.5  Final Remarks: Summary of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason The Sovereignty Conception of Reason offers a unified but partial account of the abilities, motives, and principles that are part of our power of reason. It tells us 40 Rawls (1999c, 181–​3) argues for freedom of thought on the basis of our interests of prudential reason, whereas appealing to our interests of theoretical reason provides an additional explanation for why we should protect this freedom. 41 We might also incorporate aspects of the SCR-​PPJ into Scanlon’s (1998) contractualist principle by, for instance, replacing his appeals to independent reasons with interests that are part of our power of reason itself. See Cureton (2015, 2016b).

162  Sovereign Re ason some of what our power of reason allows us to do, what it moves us to do, and what it requires of us. We express our autonomy by governing ourselves in ways that are justifiable to rational and reasonable persons on the basis of our interests of reason. In sum, the four main features of the SCR are: (1) Our power of reason allows us to govern many of our powers of mind, such as our powers of imagination, understanding, desire, and choice. (2) Our power of reason includes many legislative, executive, and judicial abilities to govern our mental powers through laws of reason of all kinds. (3) Our power of reason includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive desires, dispositions, drives, goals, needs, feelings, and other interests of reason. (4) Our power of reason includes a set of formal and substantive laws of reason, and one of these substantive laws is a fundamental principle of justifiability that says mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. These features of the SCR partially address the four questions that have guided our inquiry in Part I: (1) What features of ourselves does our power of reason allow us to govern? (2) In what ways does our power of reason allow us to govern ourselves? (3) What moves us to govern ourselves by reason? (4) What are the requirements of reason through which we govern ourselves? According to the SCR: We govern ourselves through our reason by legislating executing, and adjudicating in our own minds laws of reason that might be moral, prudential, theoretical, or of some other type. As rational people, we necessarily care about governing ourselves by reason. We also have substantive interests of reason in knowledge, enlightenment, freedom, and other things. The laws of reason, which are based in the nature and operation of our power of reason itself, include the principle of noncontradiction, the Hypothetical Imperative, and other formal laws of reason. They also include a substantive principle that requires (or permits) us to believe, desire, choose, and otherwise conduct ourselves in ways that are justifiable to everyone on the basis of our interests of reason. This partial theory of reason mainly differs from Humean theories by including abilities of rational self-​governance, laws of practical and not just theoretical reason, and interests of reason. It differs from formalist theories mainly by including substantive laws of reason. It differs from rationalist theories mainly by excluding any appeals to normative facts that might exist apart from the nature and operation of our power of reason. And it differs from traditional Kantian theories mainly by assessing many kinds of mental acts by our substantive interests of reason.

The Sovereignt y of Re ason  163 The Sovereignty Conception of Reason is far from a complete theory of reason, but it provides new ways of thinking about reason that are worth further investigation. My focus has been on describing the main features of the view and connecting them with commonsense ideas of reasonableness, what reason requires, the nature of a reasonable person, and other ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason. Whether the SCR can eventually satisfy the Content Criterion by capturing and explaining a wide variety of our reflective judgments about reason and related ideas depends on how the details of this theory are specified.42 We need to know, for example, exactly which of our mental powers can be governed by reason, what specific governing powers of reason we have, what it precisely takes for something to be justifiable to us, and, perhaps most importantly, what substantive interests are part of or arise from our power of reason and what laws of reason they help to justify. The proof, as it were, is in the pudding. Let’s now turn to illustrate and apply the SCR by describing some substantive interests of reason and by exploring some specific laws of reason that might be justifiable to us on the basis of these interests. Examining some interests and corresponding laws of reason in Part II helps us to understand the main contours of the SCR and to explore different ways of developing it. Doing so also allows us to appreciate its significant potential to capture and explain many of our commonsense ways of thinking and speaking about what reason requires of us.

42 See Chapters 1 and 9 for discussions of the Content Criterion and other potential ways of justifying the Sovereignty Conception of Reason.

8

Introduction to Part II A theory of reason specifies what abilities, motives, and principles are part of our mental power of reason. One way of assessing theories of reason is by the Content Criterion, which holds that such theories are in one respect better the more closely they capture and explain the wide variety of commonsense and ordinary judgments we make about reason, reasons, reasonableness, and related ideas. These judgments include ones about what our power of reason allows us to do, what moves a rational and reasonable person, and what reason requires of us. This is a huge and complicated project that requires us to reflect on our ordinary and commonsense judgments about reason, develop many different theories of reason, and assess the theories by those reflective judgments.1 One way to proceed is to construct a complete theory of reason with its details and underlying arguments worked out and then determine how well it captures and explains our ordinary judgments by comparison to other comprehensive theories of reason. A more pragmatic and cooperative approach, which I take in this book, is to work back and forth between theory and practice. We began in Part I by partially and provisionally characterizing some basic features of a new theory of reason. These features are sufficiently abstract that they can be incorporated into some well-​developed theories or specified into new ones. We explored four general features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR), namely that our power of reason allows us to govern many of our mental powers, that it includes various governing abilities, that it includes many formal and substantive interests, and that formal laws as well as a substantive principle of justifiability are part of our rational nature. Rather than continuing mainly with theory development, we will instead turn back to common sense and ordinary language. Holding the basic features of the SCR as provisionally fixed, we will begin to assess its promise to capture and explain our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason in a wide variety of contexts. We will not try to fully demonstrate that the SCR has any particular implications or to conclusively show that it accords better with common sense than other theories of reason. We are instead stopping and checking, at an intermediate 1 As I explain in Chapter 1, I rely on the general and largely uninterpreted idea that theories of reason should, all else equal, be ones we find plausible in reflective common sense. More determinate versions of this Content Criterion are proposed by Goodman (1983, 62–​6), Rawls (1999c, 18–​19, 40–​6), and perhaps by Kant himself (G 4: 392, 406–​12; RevH 8: 129–​30). See the more detailed discussion of the Content Criterion in Chapter 1.

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0008

168  Sovereign Re ason stage of theory development, whether we are on a plausible track and whether this theory deserves continued interest and effort. Applying the SCR as best we can to a wide variety of domains helps us to understand the basic features of the theory. Doing so might also reveal avenues for its future improvement. If we find that this partial theory of reason is plausible in a wide variety of contexts, then a next step, which I do not pursue in this book, is to return to its theoretical refinement. The aims of Part II are to illustrate some practical implications of the SCR in two related ways. First, we will explore many substantive interests of reason that we all plausibly have simply because we have the power of reason. Second, we will explore some specific requirements of reason that plausibly follow from these substantive interests in combination with the Sovereignty Conception’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ). The substantive interests of reason and the specific requirements of reason that they favor help in interpreting the main features of the SCR. They also suggest that, with further development, the SCR has significant potential to fit well with reflective common sense and ordinary language about the nature of a rational and reasonable person and what reason requires of us. This introductory chapter provides some background and context for the chapters of this part that follow. Here we will discuss the two main aims of Part II, describe the approach we will take to them as well as some of its limits, and characterize the general argumentative strategy we will employ for moving from substantive interests of reason through the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability to specific requirements of reason.

8.1  Substantive Interests of Reason: Illustrations, Methods, and Limits The first main aim of Part II is to propose and explain some substantive final interests of reason that can plausibly be incorporated into the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. An interest of reason is a conative state, such as a drive, desire, feeling, or need, that arises from or is part of our rational nature itself. A substantive interest of reason is an interest of reason in things that do not simply concern governing ourselves by laws of reason. A final interest of reason is an interest of reason in something for its own sake. Substantive final interests of reason are things a competent rational person, simply as such, cares about for their own sake apart from her natural desires and contingent interests and apart from her formal interests of reason in rational self-​governance.2 Our reason is not passive but instead includes 2 See, for example, B21, A336/​B393, A462/​B490–​A476/​B504, A475/​B503, A645/​B673; A833/​B861; G 4: 460n; CPrR 5: 143n; CPJ 5: 223, 268, 415; MM 6: 376, 467; Rel 6: 7, 52; Anth 7: 300; WOT 8: 136, 138n, 140n, 141–​2; CF 7: 102; CB 8: 115; PMG 20: 341; NF 18: 172, 274, 681; L-​Anth 25: 546. For scholarly discussions of interests of reason in Kant, see Ferrarin (2015, 24–​34), Kleingeld (1998a), Yovel (1986), Raedler (2015, 12–​15, 60–​6), Velkley (2014), Engstrom (2009), Ypi (2021), and Mudd (2017).

Introduction to Part II  169 its own active elements that might not always be immediately evident to us. Our natural desires and feelings as well as the personal ends and goals we happen to choose might conflict or harmonize with our substantive final interests of reason. Our substantive final interests of reason can also conflict or harmonize among themselves. Some of these interests are perhaps defeasible or outweighed by other substantive final interests of reason we have. We are nonetheless concerned to some extent with various substantive things in themselves because of our rational nature.

8.1.1  The Interests of Reason We Will Explore The substantive final interests of reason we will explore are the following: Substantive final interests of reason in explanation, unity, specificity, and harmony (Chapter 9); substantive final interests of reason in knowledge, avoiding error, and enlightenment (Chapter 10); substantive final interests of reason in rational nature itself (Chapter 11); substantive final interests of reason in several kinds of freedom (Chapter 12); substantive final interests of reason in happiness (Chapter 13); substantive final interests of reason in natural perfection (Chapter 14); substantive final interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect (Chapter 15); and substantive final interests of reason in friendship, community, and other forms of solidarity (Chapter 16). We will consider each of these basic interests of reason. This includes examining the things we take an interest in, such as the nature of knowledge, happiness, natural perfection, and solidarity. We will also examine the kinds of interests we take in them, such as to promote the acquisition of knowledge in everyone, to further the happiness of all, to ensure that everyone’s natural talents are developed, and to maintain our relationships of solidarity. A key feature of these substantive final interests of reason is that they are interests in things for all rational people, not just interests in ourselves. The set of substantive final interests of reason I propose is incomplete and revisable. I put it forward as provisional. Relative to the aim of capturing and explaining how we ordinarily think and speak about reason, almost any list of this sort can be amended on further investigation.

8.1.2 Methods My approach to exploring our substantive final interests of reason is to draw from themes in Kant and from our commonsense ways of thinking and speaking about reason. Despite appearances, Kant was an astute observer of ordinary ideas of reason. His lectures, reflections, minor works, and famous writings, which were

170  Sovereign Re ason produced for different purposes, provide many clues and some explicit statements about how we commonly understand what sorts of things a rational and reasonable person cares about and what moves her. Kant is sometimes explicit about some substantive final interests of reason we have. At other times, he seems to imply that having our power of reason includes having such interests because of specific rational requirements that they support. This largely overlooked theme of substantive interests of reason in Kant’s thinking might be somewhat jarring to his allies and critics. Looking to Kant is nonetheless a useful starting point for exploring the substantive final interests that might be part of or arise from our rational nature.

8.1.3 Limits I do not argue directly that any of the interests I describe are substantive final interests of reason. That various substantive interests of reason figure as themes in Kant’s own thinking is not in itself a reason to think they are included in our power of reason. According to the Content Criterion, whether something is an interest of reason depends instead on whether, by including it, theories of reason as a whole are more likely than otherwise to capture and explain the wide variety of commonsense ways we think and speak about reason, requirements of reason, reasonableness, and so on. I propose some promising ones and explore some of their implications, while recognizing that the list might need to be adjusted in various ways. Some traditional Kantians might be put off by my appeal to the Content Criterion and my agnosticism about whether the substantive interests I discuss can be justified in other, deeper ways as part of our rational nature. The credentials of reason, Kant often claims, are supposed to have been established by a priori arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason, the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, and other of his major works. Yet Kant also affirms substantive interests of reason in explanation, natural perfection, and other things without offering synthetic a priori arguments for them as things rational people necessarily value. Even if ordinary beliefs and practices presuppose that rational nature includes substantive interests, Kant’s strict method, which he employs in logic, metaphysics, and ethics, seems to require a deeper justification for these necessity claims. There might be, however, two Kants, the one who insisted on the purest of pure reason and the one who tried to cleanse our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason of empirical, messy, and contingent details of human beings in our world and to draw on presuppositions of these ideas to propose and defend his conception of what reason requires and what it is to be a rational and reasonable person. On this latter way of thinking, Kant is investigating a thick conception of reason that mirrors much of the ordinary use of that term, which sets the background framework from which he assumes we understand and consider philosophical questions about, for example, the rational justification of morality. Other

Introduction to Part II  171 philosophers might have concerns from their own theoretical perspectives that are not addressed by this assumed framework that Kant purports to find in common sense, such as why reason requires us to do anything, what authority it has over us, why we should think it can move us on its own, or why we should regard it as authoritative. If philosophical questions about reason and morality begin with and are shaped by common thinking, however, then we must pay attention to how we ordinarily think and speak about reason and related terms. When we do so, I, and apparently Kant at times, suggest that we will find rational requirements that we implicitly regard as authoritative already along with many substantive interests that are part of our ordinary idea of reason.3 We will sometimes discuss but not resolve other issues that will eventually need to be addressed by a complete account of our interests of reason. Developing a systematically unified theory of anything, whether of plant species or our interests of reason, includes rational pressure to explain things in terms of fewer things and to resolve apparent conflicts among them (in Chapter 9, I will suggest that our power of reason itself includes a substantive final interest in unifying things).4 We will consider substantive interests of reason that are best explained as deriving from final interests of reason in combination with facts about human nature and the natural world. I will suggest, for example, that our substantive interest of reason in communicating with others derives in part from its usefulness in furthering our substantive final interest of reason in acquiring knowledge.5 We will also explore conflicts among our substantive final interests of reason. I will discuss, for instance, how our interest in freedom conflicts with our interest in preserving our rational nature when we can attempt a life-​threatening escape from captivity.6 The aim of this part of the book is not to resolve these issues but, in part, to explain and illustrate some substantive final interests of reason themselves. If the list of these interests that I propose is plausible, then a next step would be to consider in earnest how to properly organize and prioritize them.

8.2  Laws of Reason and The Qualified Justifiability Argument: Illustrations, Methods, and Limits The second main aim of Part II is to explore some requirements of reason that might arise from the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ) in combination with each of the substantive final interests of reason that we will discuss. Our substantive final interests of reason, according 3 I am grateful to Thomas E. Hill, Jr. for long discussions about these vexing issues in Kant. 4 See, for example, A305/​B361–​2; A798/​B826; CPJ 20: 214–​15, 5: 456; L-​Log 24: 824. 5 See, for example, CPJ 5: 294; Anth 7: 129, 228; WOT 8: 144; L-​Log 24: 151, 874; L-​Anth 25: 1480. See also O’Neill (1989, 34). 6 See, for example, MM 6: 424; CPrR 5: 158; G 4: 429; Eth-​C 27: 376-​7; Eth-​V 27: 603.

172  Sovereign Re ason to that principle, help to determine whether things are justifiable to us and so what reason requires of us. Once we have provisionally specified some of these substantive interests, such as interests of reason in enlightenment and respect, we can incorporate them into the SCR-​PPJ and provisionally generate some specific requirements of reason that are justifiable to persons on the basis of our shared interests of reason. A reason-​governed person not only cares about various things for their own sake, but she also governs herself through laws of reason that are justifiable to rational people who necessarily have those same interests of reason.

8.2.1  The Qualified Justifiability Argument In each of the following chapters, I will employ a qualified argument that moves from specific interests of reason through the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability to some presumptive laws of reason. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument (SCR-​QJA): (1) Rational people have a substantive final interest of reason in X. (2) Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability—​ Mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. (3) Presumptive Form of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability—​Mental act A is presumptively required by reason if and because A or something suitably related to it, such as a principle requiring or permitting A, could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people only on the basis of their substantive final interest of reason in X.7 (4) Mental act A or something suitably related to it could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people only on the basis of their substantive final interest of reason in X. (5) Therefore, mental act A is presumptively required by reason, that is, there is a presumptive law of reason to A. The first premise specifies a particular substantive final interest of reason, such as in happiness or freedom. The second premise is the SCR-​PPJ that we developed 7 For ease of exposition, I focus on requirements and prohibitions rather than permissions of reason, but the SCR-​PPJ and its presumptive counterpart can also be interpreted as generating permissions or presumptive permissions. Thanks to Mark Timmons for discussions about this issue.

Introduction to Part II  173 in Part I. This principle is agnostic about many details. We can, if we like, think about whether a person herself or all rational people could or would, in light of their interests of reason and in keeping with various formal principles of rationality, endorse the specified mental act itself, laws of nature in which everyone acts in that way, normative laws that require everyone to act in some way or permit them to do so, worlds in which everyone acts or is permitted to act in some way, or some combination of these. The third premise is a qualified version of the SCR-​PPJ that basically says a particular mental act is, all else equal, required by reason if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people only on the basis of the particular interest of reason specified in the first premise. This presumptive form of the SCR-​PPJ does not take account of all our interests of reason, only one of them at a time, which is why the resulting laws are presumptions rather than absolute requirements. The fourth premise holds that the antecedent of the third premise is true, that is, the specified mental act or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people according to one of her interests of reason. The conclusion is that reason presumptively requires the specified mental act. For each of the substantive final interests of reason described in Part II, we will apply this Qualified Justifiability Argument to suggest some presumptive laws of reason that are implied by that interest through the SCR-​PPJ. For example, in Chapter 13, I suggest that we have a substantive final interest of reason in the happiness of all people.8 The SCR-​PPJ says that reason requires a mental act if a specified condition is satisfied. The qualified application of the SCR-​PPJ says that reason presumptively requires a mental act if it or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of people on the basis of a single interest of reason. I explain how the particular interest of reason we have in the happiness of all people could or would lead us to endorse helping others or something suitably related to doing so, such as a universal requirement of beneficence. I conclude that there is a presumptive law of reason to help others that is grounded in our interest of reason in the happiness of all. The SCR’s Qualified Justifiability Argument is a novel argumentative strategy for Kantians. Traditional Kantian views move from requirements of reason through formal interests of reason to substantive cares and concerns. They say that we are subject to a law of reason to help others; we have formal interests of reason in governing ourselves by laws of reason; so, we are moved by our formal interests in rational self-​governance to care about the happiness of other people.9 The Sovereignty Conception of Reason, by contrast, moves in the opposite direction from substantive cares and concerns of reason through a principle of justifiability

8 See, for example, CPrR 5: 61; G 4: 430; MM 6: 451–​2; CPJ 5: 388, 450; Ped 9: 499; NF 16: 159; Eth-​ V 27: 673–​4. 9 See Allison (1990), Guyer (2009), Herman (1993b), Hill (1992, ­chapter 5), Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapter 3), O’Neill (1989), Reath (2006), Timmons (2017, ­chapter 4), and von der Pfordten (2021).

174  Sovereign Re ason to specific requirements of reason. It holds that we have a substantive final interest of reason in the happiness of all; that reason requires us to act in ways that are justifiable to persons according to our interests of reason; and that we are thus under a presumptive law of reason to help others and have formal interests of reason in doing so. I usually express the many applications of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument in condensed ways, such as by saying that an interest of reason favors or supports some presumptive law of reason. I even sometimes personify reason by claiming, for example, that reason takes an interest in something and so legislates some presumptive requirement of reason accordingly. Rather than repeatedly state the full argument, I mainly focus on the first and fourth premises by explaining how certain presumptive laws of reason are justifiable to us on the basis of certain substantive interests of reason that I propose and describe. What I mean in these discussions is that substituting a substantive final interest of reason and a mental act of some kind into the SCR-​QJA yields a presumptive law of reason that requires (or forbids or permits) that mental act.

8.2.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Applications of the SCR-​QJA purport to generate presumptive laws of reason rather than absolute laws of reason. Presumptive requirements of reason say that something is, all else equal, required by reason, while absolute requirements of reason say that something is, all things considered, required by reason.10 Different presumptive laws of reason can require the same mental act, in which case there are multiple rational grounds for acting in that way. Presumptive requirements of reason can also conflict with one another, such as when one of them presumptively requires something that another one of them presumptively forbids. These laws might not be strictly inconsistent because presumptive requirements implicitly include ceteris paribus or “other things equal” clauses. Presumptive requirements of reason hold that reason requires us to act in some way unless there are other requirements of reason that forbid us from so doing. When other things are not equal because there are such conflicting requirements, presumptive laws of reason do not say how we are required to act. If, however, there are no conflicting requirements of reason, then presumptive requirements become absolute requirements. We might, for example, have presumptive requirements of reason to promote the happiness of others and to increase their knowledge. If these presumptive requirements conflict, such as when telling someone about their cheating spouse would devastate them, then neither presumptive requirement tells us what we are, 10 Ross (2002) calls these prima facie requirements, while I call them presumptive requirements. They can also be referred to as pro tanto requirements.

Introduction to Part II  175 all things considered, required by reason to do in this situation. We sometimes say in such conflict cases that we have a reason to share the information and a reason not to do so without saying what we have most reason to do overall.11 If, however, there are no presumptive requirements of reason against sharing some information with someone and we are presumptively required to increase the knowledge of others, then we are absolutely required by reason in this case to tell them what we know. The presumptive form of the SCR-​PPJ formulates that principle in terms of presumptive laws of reason that can be generated from a specific interest of reason rather than all our interests of reason. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason is in this sense a pluralist theory. Each of our interests of reason, taken individually, might yield a wide variety of presumptive laws that potentially conflict with one another or with presumptive laws that are generated by other interests of reason. Our interest of reason in something, apart from other interests of reason we have, might support various presumptive laws, while other interests of reason might each favor their own presumptive laws of reason. The SCR-​QJA does not say what we are absolutely required by reason to do when presumptive laws of reason conflict. This limitation of the argument might be somewhat unsatisfying, but it allows us to identify relevant normative considerations while also avoiding some of the most difficult questions in normative philosophy about how to adjudicate among competing grounds or reasons. A further advantage to thinking in terms of presumptive laws is that doing so alerts us to possibilities that certain mental acts may be, on reflection, presumptively required by reason even though they do not seem to be requirements of reason at all. We might be doubtful about certain of my proposed requirements of reason because, in most or all cases we encounter, they are overridden by competing presumptions in ways that hide their normative significance from us. Some of the presumptive laws that I discuss might seem dubious as absolute requirements of reason but somewhat more plausible as presumptive laws or reasons that are at least relevant to what reason requires us to do. A complete Kantian theory along the lines of the SCR must explain what reason absolutely requires by considering what is justifiable to us in light of all of our interests of reason together and by formulating and explaining laws of reason with exceptions and qualifications, with higher-​order laws of reason that resolve conflicts among presumptive ones, or that include imperfect requirements and even ideals.12 In this sense, the SCR aims

11 Reasons or grounds of this kind are based in features of our rational nature itself rather than in external normative facts of the kind Parfit (2011), Nagel (1978), Raz (1999), Scanlon (1998, 2009), and Dancy (2004) assume exist. 12 As we discussed in Chapter 4, laws of reason, even presumptive ones, might be formulated as ideals rather than strict requirements. We might be induced rather than constrained by our reason to pursue them, subject to rational self-​praise for doing so rather than rational self-​reproach for doing other things instead, and not need any excuse for not pursuing such ideals. We nonetheless ought to incorporate such ideals into our conceptions of happiness, show them proper respect, and pursue them

176  Sovereign Re ason eventually to systematically unify the plurality of interests of reason we have and the laws of reason they favor.13 Appealing to presumptive requirements nonetheless helps us to identify considerations that matter from the point of view of reason. Explaining how the SCR can generate and explain a wide variety of presumptive requirements is an important first step to explaining what is at stake in these conflicts and so to satisfying the Content Criterion. Kantians and others might object to appealing to presumptive requirements of reason. This idea, they might claim, does not make sense within a Kantian system in which requirements of reason are necessarily absolute. They might also worry that presumptive requirements of reason presuppose an objectionable “weight and balance” model in which such requirements have a sort of force that persists even when counteracted by other presumptive requirements of reason.14 A central theme in Kant’s thinking, on some Kantian views, is that we are not required by reason at all, for example, to make others happy through theft, deception, mockery, or other immoral means. The SCR-​QJA is consistent with both of these Kantian points. The final statement of what reason requires might not include any appeal to presumptive requirements of reason but instead only include absolute requirements of that sort. Presumptive requirements of reason, however, are useful methodological tools for developing and assessing competing theories of what reason absolutely requires. They might even figure themselves into a broadly Kantian system of rational requirements that includes priority rules for adjudicating conflicts among presumptive laws of reason.15 We also need not think of presumptive requirements of reason as analogous to forces in physics. They might instead be normative considerations that can be combined in more sophisticated ways, such as when one presumptive law of reason entirely defeats or undermines a competing presumptive law of reason. Perhaps the presumptive law of beneficence has no normative significance when we can make someone happy only through deception. Although my aim is not to explain how competing presumptions of reason are properly resolved or applied, we will often discuss ways in which such presumptions can conflict with one another and how

sometimes and to some extent even though we may never achieve them and are not at fault for failing to do so. Thanks to Mark Timmons for discussions of this point. 13 Some people might be skeptical that bringing about such unity among the many disparate requirements of reason (including moral ones) is possible, but as we will discuss in Chapter 9, we have substantive interests of reason that at least lead us to try. 14 These two kinds of concerns are discussed in Engstrom (2009), O’Neill (1989), Paton (1967), Reath (2006), Timmermann (2013), and Timmons (2021b). 15 Kant’s system of moral principles includes imperfect duties that might be interpreted as presumptive requirements of reason (Baron 1995, Baron and Falmy 2009, Timmermann 2005, Hill 2002, ­chapters 6 and 7). Kant also discusses conflicts among grounds of duty or obligation at MM 6: 224; Eth-​ V 27: 493, 537. See Timmermann (2013).

Introduction to Part II  177 they might be further specified in light of various empirical facts. These illustrations help us to understand the nature and grounds of these presumptive laws and their close connection to the substantive final interests of reason that we share.

8.2.3 Methods My approach to employing the Sovereignty Conception’s Qualified Justifiability Argument is to draw on Kant and common sense. Many of the presumptive laws of reason I discuss are also ones Kant mentions. Throughout Kant’s writings and lectures, we can find a wide variety of specific requirements that Kant claims are laws of reason. Again, Kant was a keen observer of common sense, so it is worth considering these requirements as ones we might endorse on reflection. The SCR-​QJA might not be a fully faithful interpretation of Kant’s considered views about why various requirements are laws of reason. In some cases, he explicitly ties such laws to substantive interests of reason in ways that apparently express that argument.16 At other times, Kant argues for specific rational requirements in different ways or does not say why he thinks they are laws of reason. Nonetheless, Kant’s discussions of various laws of reason and their grounds provide useful materials for us to use in exploring the plausibility of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. These reflections might also lead us to revise some of our ordinary views, once we see the kind of justification certain laws of reason might have when they are grounded in our substantive interests of reason and the idea of justifiability to persons.

8.2.4 Limits The Sovereignty Conception’s Qualified Justifiability Argument is incomplete in many ways. This is largely because the SCR-​PPJ is not a complete principle of justifiability. The SCR-​PPJ, as well as its qualified applications, do not fully specify, for example, the relevant set of people things must be justifiable to, the rational standards that their choices must satisfy, the things they are supposed to be choosing, and whether the laws of reason that result are imperatives, duties of various types, moral principles, or rational laws of other kinds. I leave these features mostly unanalyzed and instead appeal to broadly Kantian understandings of what sorts of things are likely justifiable to us on the basis of various substantive final interests of reason we have. 16 See, for example, G 4: 423 in the context of a duty of natural perfection based on our interest of reason in natural perfection and WIE 8: 39 in the context of a right to freedom of thought that is grounded in our interest of reason in enlightenment.

178  Sovereign Re ason An advantage to leaving the SCR-​ PPJ largely indeterminate is that the Sovereignty Conception’s Qualified Justifiability Argument remains compatible with many different Kantian theories of reason. O’Neill, for instance, might incorporate a version of her principle of justifiability into the argument by claiming, for example, that reason presumptively forbids someone from acting in some way if and because, in light of some interest of reason the person has, he could not rationally choose a universal law requiring everyone to act in that way.17 Hill might incorporate into the argument a principle of justifiability that says some mental act is presumptively required by reason if and because all rational people would rationally endorse a universal public law requiring them to act in that way if they were to abstract from their personal differences and choose only on the basis of some interest of reason they all have.18 Rawls or his followers might claim that some mental act is presumptively required by reason if and because a principle requiring it would be endorsed by mutually disinterested people behind a veil of ignorance who were moved by a self-​regarding interest of reason they each share.19 Scanlon might argue that a mental act is presumptively required by reason if and because no one could reasonably reject a principle requiring it on the basis of an interest of reason we all have.20 Although the exact roles that interests of reason might play in these and other justifiability principles differ, the Qualified Justifiability Argument highlights underlying ways in which our interests of reason can help to determine what is justifiable to us. Readers are welcome to substitute these or other interpretations of the SCR-​PPJ into the argument or, as I mainly do, rely on informal reflections about what is justifiable to persons according to their substantive final interests of reason. Despite its indeterminacies, there is enough detail in the Sovereignty Conception’s Qualified Justifiability Argument for us to get a good sense of how substantive final interests of reason can translate into rational requirements through the SCR-​PPJ. Although the conclusions we draw are provisional and await further investigation according to more specific versions of the SCR-​PPJ, the Qualified Justifiability Argument is a useful methodological tool for assessing the promise of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason to eventually capture and explain the wide variety of requirements of reason that we seem to recognize in common sense and ordinary language. My analyses in Part II usually end with loosely stated presumptive laws of reason that arise from the SCR-​PPJ and a particular substantive interest of reason. Recall that the overarching goal of this part is to provisionally assess the promise of the SCR to capture and explain the wide variety of requirements of reason that we



17 O’Neill (1989, c­ hapter 5, 2000). 18 Hill (1992, ­chapters 3 and 10, 2012, ­chapters 9 and 10, 2021a, c­ hapter 7). 19 Rawls (1999c, 1999a, ­chapter 16). 20 Scanlon (1998, 2009). Scanlon (2011), however, does not consider himself a Kantian.

Introduction to Part II  179 seem to recognize in reflective common sense and ordinary language. Abstracting as far as we can from other requirements and interests of reason also helps us to focus on specific kinds of laws that might be justifiable to us and to recognize ones we might have missed if we attempted to specify absolute requirements of reason directly with all their built-​in exceptions and qualifiers. Formulating the SCR-​PPJ to accommodate such issues is likely to be controversial and make it more difficult to incorporate the SCR into various contemporary and well-​developed Kantian theories of reason. By exploring, one by one, what various substantive final interests of reason imply about what reason presumptively requires of us, we can postpone discussion of many prominent controversies in normative theory and Kantian philosophy and focus instead on how substantive interests of reason help to breathe new life, as it were, into Kantian principles of justifiability.

8.3  Final Remarks In sum, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason gives us a novel way to think about the abilities, motives, and requirements of our power of reason. Kantians for too long have tried to make do with a narrow set of resources to explain what it is to be a rational and reasonable person and what our reason requires of us. In the chapters that follow, we will explore a wide variety of substantive final interests that might be part of our rational nature along with a large number of requirements that these interests favor. Many of the issues we will discuss are complicated and warrant further investigation. There are also many quotes from Kant and controversial discussions of happiness, freedom, natural perfection, solidarity, and other ideas that might be independently interesting to Kantians and moral philosophers more generally. Aiming for breadth rather than depth reveals that the Sovereignty Conception of Reason has significant potential to capture and explain our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason.

9

Explanation, Unity, Specificity, Affinity, and Harmony What sorts of things does a rational and reasonable person as such care about? Let’s begin in this chapter with some especially general and abstract substantive interests of reason. As rational and reasonable people, I suggest, we necessarily care about explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony for their own sake. We want explanations and cannot rest content with appeals to fate, luck, or “just-​ so” stories. We want systematicity and are unsatisfied with outliers, overgeneralizations, gaps, and heterogeneity. We want harmony and are disturbed by conflict and dissonance. Our curiosity about why things happen, our need to order things, and our discomfort with discord are not simply natural desires or contingent goals that vary from person to person. Some people are less naturally curious than others and embrace disorder and conflict while others devote their lives to science or diplomacy. Apart from whatever contingent interests we might have, our power of reason itself leads us to care to some extent about explaining, systematizing, and harmonizing things. Our interests of reason in explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony concern abstract, general, and formal features of all things. These are substantive final interests of reason that apply to everything. As rational and reasonable people, we necessarily care for its own sake about explaining, systematizing, and harmonizing things we encounter and ideally everything there is. We obviously cannot fully realize these substantive final interests of reason because of our limited cognitive capacities, limited time and energy, and the nature of certain things. We typically have many other natural desires, natural feelings, contingent goals, and other interests that often pull us in different directions. These substantive final interests of reason are often calm interests that we may not much notice or indulge. Part of being a rational and reasonable person is nonetheless to have innate and final drives to ask “why” questions about everything, to organize all things into systems, and to resolve any conflicts among them. It is difficult to think about explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony simply as such apart from examples. These are also controversial concepts that can be interpreted in different ways. In this chapter, we will explore our substantive final interests of reason in each of them by drawing on themes in Kant’s work and on reflective common sense. We will consider some presumptive laws of reason that are justifiable to rational persons on the basis of our interests of reason in Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0009

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  181 explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony. As a reminder, the interests of reason we will consider and the presumptive laws of reason they favor are provisional suggestions that help us to assess the explanatory power and promise of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR).

9.1  Explanation: Interests and Laws of Reason 9.1.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in explanation. As rational and reasonable people, we want to explain things in terms of more basic things and ultimately in terms of fundamental things.1 This is a theme in how Kant thinks about reason that is also reflected in common sense. For any object, event, law of nature, judgment, principle, or anything else, he says that our reason “unremittingly demands” and “restlessly seeks” to explain why it exists, why it occurred, why it is true, or otherwise what (if anything) grounds it.2 The “satisfaction” of our reason, Kant claims, “is only further and further postponed” until we reach a complete explanation of the thing in terms of something absolutely basic.3 A rational and reasonable person is not content with mere occurrences or assertions. Her reason itself pushes her to ask and answer “why” questions and to keep doing so until she has completely explained things. She wants to fully understand why her garden is riddled with weeds, what caused the economic recession, why people choose to own guns, how artificial intelligence works, and why slavery is morally wrong. Her natural desires and other contingent interests, along with her resources and opportunities, often affect what explanatory questions she takes up and how far she pursues them, but the innate need of her rational nature to explain everything is always there leading her to question things and to follow her investigations where they lead. The idea of explanation can be interpreted in different ways, but here are some examples of the kinds of explanations that our power of reason has interests in discovering. For a given event, our reason leads us to seek its cause, the cause of that cause, and so on until we arrive at a first cause or a complete series of causes. For a given composite substance, we have a substantive final interest of reason in understanding its constituent parts, the parts of those parts, and so on until we arrive at simple substances. For any area of bounded space, our reason seeks to 1 A307/​B364; A322–​3/​B379–​80; CPrR 5: 107; CPJ 5: 388, 402; L-​NR 27: 1321. Ferrarin (2015, 24–​ 34), Kleingeld (1998a), Yovel (1986), Raedler (2015, 12–​15, 60–​6), Velkley (2014), Engstrom (2009), Ypi (2021), Mudd (2017), Abela (2006), Breazeale (1994), Gilead (1985), and Neiman (1994) discuss our supposed interest of reason in explanation and its roles in Kant’s theoretical projects. 2 CPJ 5: 345 and G 4: 463, respectively. 3 G 4: 463.

182  Sovereign Re ason explain what bounds it until it reaches a boundary of space itself or a complete series of bounds. For a given object whose existence is contingent, our reason wants to determine the conditions it is contingent on until we reach a condition that is itself unconditioned.4 For a given argument or conditional proposition, reason seeks to explain why (if at all) the premises or antecedent are true. For a given principle, reason seeks to derive it from a more basic principle until we reach a single, unconditional principle.5 For a given maxim that someone endorses, our reason includes a substantive final interest in explaining why she endorses it until we arrive at a basic life-​governing maxim that she affirms.6 And for a given belief that someone holds, our reason aims to explain why she has that belief. Our power of reason includes substantive final interests in discovering answers to these and all other explanatory questions. This interest is frustrated if we do not raise and attempt to answer such questions. For example, we might attribute our loss in a sporting event to blind chance, the death of a friend to fate, our failing crops to the positions of the stars, or the success of an adversary to his birthmarks. These kinds of putative explanations are often easily available and do not require much effort to discover and affirm. Some people, according to Kant, “greatly welcome it if they are able to thrust the causes and bases of an event onto a universally accepted opinion, and thereby give up the use of reason.”7 Our own power of reason, however, leaves us unsatisfied with arbitrarily ending these and other inquiries early and instead pushes us, despite potential difficulties and burdens, to continue seeking fundamental explanations of things. Part of what drives philosophers, scientists, historians, and others to seek progressively deeper explanations is not something special to us but is instead a universal desire among all rational and reasonable people as such. We not only want to explain things ourselves, but our interest of reason in explanation extends to other people as well. Cooperative efforts are often useful and sometimes indispensable for us to explain various things. Apart from these benefits to us, our reason leads us to care that other people seek and acquire explanations of things for themselves. Whether we learn or study their work, for example, we want psychologists to explain how parts of the mind work, biologists to explain how life began, accident victims to explain what happened to them, and criminals to explain why they acted as they did. There is much more to be said about the nature of explanation, including what counts as a complete explanation and what types of explanations are possible for various things. Rather than pursue these important issues further, let’s examine



4 A408–​16/​B435–​43. 5 MM 6: 215. 6 Rel 6: 21. See Cureton (2016a). 7 L-​Anth 25: 547–​8.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  183 how an interest of reason in explanation might help to make certain things justifiable to us and so help to generate some presumptive requirements of reason.

9.1.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason The interest that reason has in seeking explanations provides grounds for legislating laws of various kinds to itself and other mental powers. This might be surprising because our substantive final interest in explanation might seem unrelated to what is justifiable to persons. The basic way to apply the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument (SCR-​QJA) is to suppose that we are only moved by a particular interest of reason, in this case our interest of reason in explanation. We consider what sorts of mental acts or things suitably related to them, such as principles requiring those acts, we could or would rationally endorse on the basis of our concern for explaining things. We might examine, for example, what universal laws of nature a rational person could rationally accept on the basis of her interest of reason in explanation, or we might consider what public laws all rational people would accept if they were to abstract from their personal differences and were moved only by their interest in explanation. If a mental act or something suitably related to it is justifiable to a set of rational people in this way, then there is a presumptive law of reason to act accordingly. The mental acts we examine might be choices, but they also might be acts of other mental powers, such as judgments, imaginings, or desires. The resulting laws of reason are presumptive or ceteris paribus requirements because other interests of reason might favor conflicting presumptive laws of reason. Let’s suppose that we are only moved by our substantive final interest in explanation. What kinds of mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would we rationally endorse? It seems plausible that we could or would rationally endorse mental acts, or things suitably related to them, of reflecting on and investigating why things are true or real and continuing to raise and answer these questions until we arrive at fundamental and complete explanations of them. Reflection and investigation are, according to our partial model of the human mind from Chapter 3, mental acts of our power of judgment. Our substantive interest of reason in explanation leads us to favor these mental acts in which we reflect on and investigate why things we encounter exist, why they are real or true, and so on. Kant says that it is “rational, indeed meritorious” and “an obligation,” for example, “to give a mechanical explanation of all products and events in nature, even the most purposive, as far as it is in our capacity.”8 Even when it seems

8 CPJ 5: 418 and CPJ 5: 415, respectively.

184  Sovereign Re ason that we have fully explained the causes of an event, the parts of a composite substance, the grounds of a proposition or principle, or anything else, our interest of reason in explanation leads us to favor continued mental acts of reflection and investigation until we know that we have explained the thing completely. As Kant says, “it is an essential principle of every use of reason to push its cognition to consciousness of its necessity.”9 Mental acts of investigation and reflection or things suitably related to them, such as a law of nature in which we all reflect on and investigate things or a public law requiring us to do so, are justifiable to us on the basis of our interest of reason in explanation. According to the SCR-​QJA, there is thus a presumptive law of reason that requires us to reflect on and investigate all things. This law does not require us always to be reflecting on and investigating things, but it does require us, all else equal, to do so. It is not necessarily a moral requirement. Like some other standard requirements of reason, such as the requirement not to affirm contradictory beliefs, this law is mainly directed to our power of judgment rather than our power of choice. We can sometimes successfully choose to reflect on and investigate things, but compliance with this law depends mainly on involuntary acts of our power of judgment itself, such as thinking through issues, turning them over in our minds, bringing to bear relevant evidence, assessing our beliefs and why we hold them, and so on. Using the shorthand we discussed in the previous chapter, we can say that our substantive final interest of reason in explanation favors a presumptive law of reason to reflect on and investigate everything and that this presumptive law is justifiable to rational and reasonable people on the basis of that interest. I will normally use abbreviated claims of this kind to stand in for applications of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument rather than rehearsing the full argument each time. Let’s explore a few other presumptive laws of reason that are supported by our interest of reason in explanation. Our substantive final interest of reason in explanation favors laws that presumptively require us, in some cases, to assume that explanations of things exist even though our cognitive powers prevent us from ever discovering them.10 Along with abilities to reflect and investigate, our power of judgment includes the ability to make assumptions without affirming them as true. We can sometimes control the assumptions we make with our power of choice, but in many cases the suppositions we affirm are involuntary acts of our power of judgment. There are limits to what human persons can know about the natural world because, according to our partial model of the human mind from Chapter 3, our empirical knowledge is constrained by what our senses can provide to our power of understanding. Our 9 G 4: 463. 10 WOT 8: 141–​2.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  185 interest of reason in explanation, however, leaves us unsatisfied at ending our inquiries into the natural world too early. This interest favors laws that presumptively require us to posit certain judgments. These assumptions might include that there is a first cause or a complete series of causes and that “things in themselves” exist apart from the ways they can appear to us.11 By presumptively requiring us to make these assumptions, Kant claims that our reason leads us to discover more and better explanations that are accessible to us than we otherwise would. These kinds of suppositions do not count as beliefs or knowledge, but he says they are “for the benefit of reason”12 in fulfilling its interest in explaining things as well as we can. Our power of reason legislates laws that presumptively require us to reflect, investigate, and assume in various ways. Whether or not we can control these mental acts of our power of judgment with our power of choice, our power of judgment itself must operate according to them. A fully rational and reasonable person would not only avoid affirming contradictory beliefs, but she would also reflect, investigate, and assume in rational ways. Our power of reason also allows us, in involuntary ways, to execute and adjudicate laws that are directed to our power of judgment by producing incentives that lead us to search for explanations and by assessing whether we have done so. We can also consider presumptive laws of reason that are directed to our choices. Our interest of reason in explanation favors presumptive requirements to study science and philosophy, to perform experiments, to make inquiries, and to otherwise choose in ways that help us to explain various things. This interest extends to other people and so supports presumptive requirements to educate children, to afford them opportunities for reflection and investigation, not to deceive others, and not to destroy or damage their cognitive powers or our own. We will return to some of these presumptive laws in later chapters, where we will provide additional grounds for them based on our interests of reason in rational nature, knowledge, and natural perfection. In sum, our power of reason includes a substantive final interest of reason in explaining everything as far as we can. This rather staid interest, when combined with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability, has important and direct implications for how we are rationally required to reflect, investigate, and assume, as well as for how we are rationally required to treat ourselves and other people.

11 Bxx; CPJ 5: 268. For discussion of “regulative” principles of reason and ideas of reason in Kant, see Mudd (2016), Buchdahl (1992), Friedman (1992), and Guyer (1989, 2006). 12 A649/​B678; A409–​10/​B436–​7; CPJ 5: 254.

186  Sovereign Re ason

9.2  Unity: Interests and Laws of Reason 9.2.1  Interests of Reason A second substantive final interest of reason we have, I suggest, is in unity. Our power of reason includes abstract and general interests in discovering, creating, and maintaining unity among all things as well as in diminishing and avoiding disunity among them.13 Two different things are unified if they are the same kind of thing or one is part of the other, if one of them explains the other, or if they are reducible to something more basic that explains them both. Our interests of reason in unity and explanation are closely related, but unity is a broader concept than explanation. Our interest of reason in unity takes two or more things that our reason leads us to unify, while our interest in explanation takes a given thing that our reason leads us to explain. Perhaps further reflection might reveal ways of unifying these two substantive final interests into a single interest, but let’s provisionally explore them as separate interests of reason. Here are some examples of how things might be unified. The many powers of the human mind, such as our powers of sense, imagination, memory, understanding, and desire, may at first seem to be a mere aggregate, but there might be hidden identities among some of these powers that unify them. Kant wonders, for example, whether the mental power of wit, which is the power to distinguish among things, is simply “imagination combined with consciousness . . . or perhaps even understanding and reason.”14 We might discover that there are only a few fundamental powers of our minds where there initially appeared to be many of them. Particular mental powers themselves might be unified in various ways by, for example, reducing the concepts and rules of our power of understanding to their smallest number.15 The great variety of natural events that occur in the world can be unified by explaining them with causal or teleological laws of nature.16 The diversity among laws of both kinds might in turn be unified by explaining them by more basic scientific laws or metaphysical principles.17,18 Legal scholars, according to Kant, often endeavor “to reduce the multitude of indefinite and constantly self-​restricting laws to principia.”19 Medical researchers attempt to classify diseases into more and more general categories.20 Moralists often try to connect 13 A305/​B361–​2; A798/​B826; CPJ 20: 214–​15, 5: 456; L-​Log 24: 824. See also Ferrarin (2015, 24–​ 34), Kleingeld (1998a), Yovel (1986), Raedler (2015, 12–​15, 60–​6), Velkley (2014), Engstrom (2009), Ypi (2021), Mudd (2017), Breazeale (1994), Gilead (1985), Neiman (1994), and Guyer (1989) for discussions of our interests of reason in systematic unity. 14 A648–​9/​B676–​7. 15 A305/​B361. 16 CPJ 5: 415, 20: 203; CHR 8: 96; L-​Th 28: 1114. 17 CPJ 5: 386. 18 CPJ 5: 386–​8. 19 Eth-​C 27: 361, Kant’s emphasis. 20 MM 6: 207.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  187 all moral duties with a single fundamental principle.21 We might even attempt to derive many or all requirements of reason, both formal and substantive ones, from one constitutive principle of reason, such as a version of the Abstract Principle of Justifiability.22 Our own mental acts can be unified in various ways. Two judgments that a person has are unified if their contents are the same or part of one another, if she affirms one of the beliefs on the basis of the other, or if she affirms both of them on the same grounds. A Marxist, for example, might affirm various judgments ultimately because of her belief in historical materialism. Two of a person’s ends are unified if their objects are the same or one is included in the other, if she affirms one for the sake of the other, or if the grounds that explain why she affirms one of them also explain why she affirms the other. Someone might have a few basic values or commitments that explain many of his other choices, such as an egoistic hedonist who chooses to pursue various apparently unrelated projects because they each promise to bring him significant pleasure. Someone’s conception of happiness is significantly unified if she has a few basic desires or personal ends that explain why she has many of her other desires and personal ends.23 The mental acts of different people can also be unified. Two judgments that different people affirm are unified if the contents of those judgments are the same; and these judgments are maximally unified if the grounds that the two people have for affirming them are the same as well.24 A group of people with different religious convictions, for instance, might be united in their agreement on some of the same moral principles, but their unity would be greater still if they also affirmed these principles on the same grounds as one another.25 Friends might share the same beliefs about various matters, but they are more closely united if, in addition, the “thoughts of the parties are derived from the same principia.”26 The ends, maxims, commitments, or other choices of separate people are unified if the contents of these choices are the same; and these people are even more unified if they affirm or made those choices on the basis of the same considerations.27 If someone, for example, has his own welfare as his main end, then many of his particular purposes might happen to accord with those of someone else who is fundamentally committed to her own happiness. They might agree on some of the same ends, such as that their team succeeds, but they are not fully unified because, as Kant says, “the will of all has not one and the same object but each has his own (his own welfare).”28 They would be more unified if they each

21 MM 6: 207. 22 CPrR 5: 90–​1. See also A797–​8/​B825–​6. 23 We will discuss the idea of a conception of happiness in Chapter 13. 24 P 4: 298. 25 Rel 6: 62–​3. 26 Eth-​V 27: 683. 27 G 4: 433; NF 19: 114–​15; L-​Anth 25: 725. 28 CPrR 5: 28.

188  Sovereign Re ason endorse the happiness of others for its own sake.29 People might be united in their endorsement of certain principles of justice but nonetheless affirm these principles on different grounds.30 They might be united in what Kant calls a “Kingdom of Ends” in which they, in part, affirm the same moral laws for their own sake and endorse the personal ends of one another.31 A group of people might also be united in what Kant calls an “ethical commonwealth” by their shared ends of preventing evil and promoting the good and by their joint commitments to the laws of virtue for their own sake.32 We will return to various ways people can be unified with one another when we consider in Chapter 16 our substantive final interest of reason in solidarity. The feelings of two or more people can also be unified when they are the same, such as someone who sympathizes with the pain or pleasure of her friend.33 These feelings are even more unified if, in addition, they are produced in the same way, such as moral feelings that result from their shared recognition of their moral duties or feelings of beauty that result from the same kind of interplay among their cognitive powers.34 More can be said about the nature of unity, but it seems plausible that a rational and reasonable person necessarily wants to unify things as well as she can. Apart from our natural desires and chosen goals, our reason drives us to find commonalities among things, to classify them into basic categories, to see if we can reduce them to one another, to organize our conception of happiness, to find common ground with other people, and to seek comity with them. Our power of reason itself leaves us somewhat disturbed by apparent coincidences, a seemingly unconnected multitude of moral principles, different sets of scientific laws for very small and very large things, and disunity among our colleagues.

9.2.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Our interest of reason in unity as such provides grounds for legislating various presumptive laws of reason. The basic approach we are employing is to consider what kinds of mental acts we could or would rationally endorse if we were moved only by our interest of reason in unifying things. There is no need to rehearse the full 29 G 4: 430. 30 MM 6: 313–​14. 31 G 4: 433. For discussions of Kant’s idea of a Kingdom of Ends, see Hill (1992, c­ hapter 3), Reath (2006, ­chapter 6), Waldron (2021), Timmons (2021a), Holtman (2022), von der Pfordten (2021), and Sensen (2021). 32 Rel 6: 94–​6. 33 For discussions of Kant’s views on sympathy, see Holtman (2018a, 2022), Baxley (2010), Vilhauer (2021), and Fahmy (2009). 34 Eth-​V 27: 679–​81; CPJ 5: 264. See also Guyer (1997, 2006), Ginsborg (2015), and Allison (2001).

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  189 Qualified Justifiability Argument again. We can instead reflect on what sorts of presumptive laws might be justifiable to rational people who care about unity. Our interest of reason in unity favors laws that are addressed to our cognitive powers. These laws presumptively require our power of understanding, for example, to strive for “collective unity as the goal of the understanding’s actions, which are otherwise concerned only with distributive unity.”35 Our power of understanding allows us to cognize aspects of the natural world, but our reason imposes a presumptive requirement on it to unify our experiences according to progressively more general concepts and principles. As Kant says, “reason, in inferring, seeks to bring the greatest manifold of cognition of the understanding to the smallest number of principles (universal conditions), and thereby to effect the highest unity of that manifold.”36 Our power of judgment is presumptively required to search for unities and disunities among things, investigate whether apparent disunities are genuine, categorize things under fewer and fewer classes, and “always avoid as far as possible the unnecessary multiplication of principles.”37 This latter principle of parsimony, Kant says, “is not merely a principle of economy for reason, but becomes an inner law of its nature.”38 Even when it seems that two or more things are not unified, such as ends we affirm, the judgments of different people, animal species, or scientific theories, these presumptive laws that are addressed to our power of judgment require us to continue searching for ways of showing that they are the same, reducing them to one another, or explaining them by something more basic until we know that they are unified or not. Physicists, for example, are presumptively required to continue searching for a grand unified theory of the physical world; moral philosophers are presumptively required to attempt to unify the various reasons, principles, values, and ideals that apparently exist; physiatrists presumptively should look for underlying explanations of apparently disparate mental disorders; and zoologists are presumptively required to classify animals into fewer and fewer categories.39 In some cases, we are also presumptively required to assume that certain apparently different things are unified even if our cognitive limitations prevent us from knowing what, if anything, unifies them.40 In addition to supporting laws that concern discovering unities among things, our interest of reason in unity also favors laws that presumptively require us to create and maintain unity among certain things and to eliminate and prevent

35 A644/​B672. 36 A305. 37 CPJ 5: 348. See also CHR 8: 96. 38 A650/​B678. 39 CPJ 5: 404. 40 A649–​50/​B678–​9. See A666–​7/​B694–​5, A678/​B706; P 349–​50. See also Mudd (2016), Buchdahl (1992), Friedman (1992), and Guyer (1989, 2006).

190  Sovereign Re ason disunities among them. Rather than simply leading us to find unities in the world that are already there, such as among different animal species, our interest of reason in unity also favors laws that presumptively require us to make certain things more unified and to maintain any unity that exists among them. These laws presumptively require us to reach consensus among our own judgments and with the judgments of other people about various matters. We presumptively should reflect on whether our judgments are, despite appearances, the same, investigate the grounds of our judgments, or revise or eliminate some of them so that they are unified with those of other people. We are also presumptively required by reason, Kant claims, to “think in the position of everyone else” by setting oneself “apart from the subjective private conditions of the judgment” and “taking up a universal stand-​point (which he can only determine by putting himself into the stand-​point of others).”41 Our interests of reason in unity favor laws that presumptively require us to bring our judgments in line with themselves and with those of other people. If we discover that we are not in thoroughgoing agreement with ourselves or others, then these laws presumptively require us to find ways of unifying our judgments. Our interests of reason in unity also favor laws that presumptively require us to unify our desires, feelings, personal ends, and other interests that do not arise from our power of reason into a conception of happiness and to unify this and all of our interests into a conception of the good.42 There are several ways for us to do so. Self-​reflection might reveal, for example, that the objects of various ends or desires we have can be derived from a more basic value or principle that we do not actually affirm, perhaps because we were unaware of it or had not considered it. We can make our ends, desires, and choices more unified by endorsing the basic value or principle and these other interests on that basis, which then would explain why we affirm many of our current commitments and values. We might affirm a set of basic values that explain many of our choices but also have some outlier commitments and inclinations that are not explained by them. We can eliminate this disunity by dropping the other commitments or inclinations, by adjusting or replacing our basic values, or by endorsing even more basic principles that would explain both the values and the outlier commitments and inclinations. And we might already affirm a more or less unified framework of desires, values, commitments, and principles, but consider adopting a new value that is not unified with the conception of happiness or of the good we affirm. We can avoid introducing disunity into these conceptions by not adopting the new value, revising it to make it a better fit, or adjusting our frameworks to accommodate it. Through combined processes of self-​discovery and self-​creation, the presumptive laws that are justifiable to us on the basis of our interest of reason in unity require us to develop and affirm a unified 41 CPJ 5: 294–​5. See also Anth 7: 200, 228; L-​Anth 25: 1480. 42 A800/​B828; G 4: 416–​19; CPJ 20: 200; Rel 6: 21; Eth-​C 27: 246; L-​Log 24: 250; NF 19: 114. See Chapter 13.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  191 conception of happiness and a unified conception of the overall good. They also presumptively require us to unify our choices with those of other people by, for example, committing to the same principles, conforming our behavior to the judgments and taste of others, endorsing the same ends, making the ends of others our own, and making these choices on the same grounds as they do. It is worth reiterating that these are presumptive laws of reason that can, and often are, overridden by other presumptive requirements that free us from having to seek unity with one another. Nonetheless, in the ideal, there is something compelling about the thought of all rational and reasonable people in thoroughgoing agreement with one another on many things.43 This is far from a complete list of the presumptive laws of reason that might be grounded in our interest of reason in unity. Several of the presumptive laws warrant further discussion. The ones we have mentioned nonetheless give us a good and potentially surprising sense of how an abstract interest of reason in unity can generate a variety of substantive implications for how our powers of understanding and judgment should operate, how we should strive to organize our ends and commitments, and even how we should relate with other people.

9.3  Specificity: Interests and Laws of Reason 9.3.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes a substantive final interest in specifying things. As rational and reasonable people, not only are we moved to unify things, but we also have a competing interest in discovering, creating, and maintaining specificity.44 Something is specified if it or things of its kind are divided into more and more specific things until they cannot be further divided. Consider the following examples of how we might specify things. Physical objects, moral duties, cognitions, or ends might be divisible into smaller species. Two things of a kind might appear to be the same but have subtle differences we have not noticed that distinguish them from one another. A machine might be divisible into simpler and simpler parts; two plants of the same genus might be specified into different species; an end might be composed of other ends; a principle might be indeterminate about the kinds of actions it requires in various circumstances; 43 CPrR 5: 28; G 4: 433; MM 6: 313–​14; Rel 6: 94; Ped 9: 494; OFBS 2: 227; NF 18: 496–​7, 19: 114–​ 15; L-​Anth 25: 630. In Chapter 3 of Utilitarianism, Mill (1998) also emphasizes our desire to be in unity with others, but for Mill this is a natural desire rather than an interest of reason. See also Urmson (1953), Hill (1992, ­chapter 3), Reath (2006, ­chapter 6), Waldron (2021), Timmons (2021a), Holtman (2022), von der Pfordten (2021), and Sensen (2021). 44 A656/​B684; CPJ 20: 214.

192  Sovereign Re ason and our own conception of happiness might be vague and inchoate. Our reason leads us to distinguish apparently similar things from one another. When we are presented with things that seem to be identical, we cannot help but feel some desire to search out differences among them until we have noted all their dissimilarities or concluded that they are the same. We might have given two essays the same grade, regard two of our kitchen knives as equally good, plan to meet someone at around 3 p.m., or present some general features of a philosophical theory of reason. We might nonetheless find ourselves wanting to further specify these things. This is our reason itself, apart from our natural desires and personal goals, moving us to be as precise as we can be in all areas of life.

9.3.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Our interest of reason in specificity helps to make various presumptive laws justifiable to us as rational persons. This interest favors laws that presumptively require our power of judgment to seek to divide every species of thing we encounter into subspecies.45 For example, Kant says that the “nature of our reason lays on us the duty of first reflecting on general laws [of nature] and then, as far as possible, of grasping every individual and then every species under them, and in such a way of forming some sketch of the whole.”46 We “are obliged . . . to isolate cognitions that differ from one another in their species and origin,”47 and philosophers especially have “a duty” to resolve “all our transcendental cognition into its elements.”48 These laws, according to Kant, also make it “a duty to have a . . . metaphysics of morals,” which includes basic duties as well as specific principles for “applying ... [the] highest universal principles” of morality to “the particular nature of human beings.”49 As with the laws that are favored by our interests of reason in explanation and unity, our interest of reason in specificity grounds presumptive requirements to assume in some cases that further varieties of things exist even when they are not immediately apparent to us.50 Things may not always be resolvable into more specific categories or parts, but assuming that they are divisible, according to Kant, often leads us to discover more specificity than we otherwise would.51 45 A656/​B684. 46 L-​Th 28: 1115. 47 A842/​B870. 48 A703/​B731. 49 MM 6: 216–​17. 50 A657/​B685. 51 A666–​7/​B694–​5. An objection to this and other presumptive laws of reason discussed in this chapter is that it seems implausible that reason requires us to clutter our minds with many beliefs about trivial matters and to search out all the many disunities, indeterminacies, and disharmonies we might harbor among our beliefs, ends, and other mental states (Harman 1986, 12). Regarding these as presumptive requirements of reason, however, helps to ameliorate this concern because, in practice, we will often be free to take a break from mental housekeeping because of other interests of reason we have and the presumptive laws that they favor.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  193 Our interest of reason in specificity also favors laws that concern creating and maintaining divisions among things. Rather than simply leading us to find differences that are already there, such as among minerals, our interest of reason in specificity also supports presumptive requirements to make some things more specific or determinate. These laws presumptively require political legislators, for example, to legislate more and more specific statutes to account for cases that are relevantly, but perhaps only slightly, different from other cases that are treated as the same under more general statutes. They presumptively require us to specify our general ends and commitments by making them more determinate or by making more specific choices that interpret and apply them. If we are planning a trip, for example, we presumptively should specify our plan in great detail by describing where exactly we will go, how we will get there, when we will leave and return, what we will do, etc. If we have a general commitment to the environment, we presumptively should specify what exactly we are committed to, what if any priority we give to some parts of the environment over others, how we plan to promote environmental causes, and so on. These laws also presumptively require us to specify our conceptions of happiness and the overall good by, for instance, choosing more and more specific ends to include in it and prioritizing them relative to one another. Our substantive final interests of reason in unity and specificity, along with the presumptive laws that they favor, often conflict with one another. We tend to feel both pulls to unify things into fewer and fewer categories and to specify them into more and more varieties. A further interest of reason in affinity connects these two interests into an overall substantive interest of reason in systematic unity.

9.4  Affinity: Interests and Laws of Reason 9.4.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in discovering, creating, and maintaining affinity among things. Affinity is a continuum of divisions from higher species to lower species through every degree and kind of distinction. Between any variety of something and any subvariety of it, there might be a gradual transition from one to the other through an intervening variety that is less different from each of the two species than they are from each other.52 Our reason itself leads us to care about, as far as possible, discovering or creating continuous connections among specific cognitions, objects, properties, laws of nature, moral duties, or other things. Mammals, for example, lie between dogs and animals in a 52 A659–​60/​B687–​8; See also P 4: 349–​50.

194  Sovereign Re ason system for classifying organisms; and basic duties of justice lie between a duty not to steal and duties in general. Systematic unity consists of unity, specificity, and affinity. Kant says that this idea is “the school and even the ground of the possibility of the greatest use of human reason,” is “legislative for us,” is “inseparably bound up with the essence of our reason,”53 and is “the highest end of its speculative use.”54 Our reason leads us to seek unity through “comparison with each other of several classes, each of which stands under a determinate concept, and, if they are complete with regard to the common characteristic, their subsumption under higher classes (genera), until one reaches the concept that contains the principle of the entire classification (and which constitutes the highest genus).” Our reason also leads us to seek specificity by starting with “the general concept, in order to descend to the particular.” And our reason leads us to seek affinity by filling in every stage of these progressions.55

9.4.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason The interests of reason we have in affinity provide grounds for legislating laws of various kinds. These laws presumptively require us to continually look for intervening classifications of things and, in some cases, to assume that they exist.56 As Kant says, our reason “quite uniquely prescribes and seeks to bring about . . . the systematic in cognition, i.e., its interconnection based on one principle . . . through which this cognition comes to be not merely a contingent aggregate but a system interconnected in accordance with necessary laws.”57 Legislators are presumptively required to enact midlevel laws between very specific and very general ones, and we are presumptively required to affirm progressively more specific ends to create a systematically unified conceptions of happiness.

9.5  Harmony: Interests and Laws of Reason 9.5.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes a fifth general and abstract substantive interest, namely one in harmony. Our reason leads us to care about discovering, promoting, and maintaining harmony among things and in discovering, eliminating, and preventing disharmony among them. Positive harmony is a kind



53 A694–​5/​B722–​3. 54 P 4: 350. See also L-​Log 24: 831 and Schafer (2023). 55 CPJ 20: 215–​6. 56 A666–​7/​B694–​5. 57 A645/​B673.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  195 of abstract relation in which something promotes, enlivens, strengthens, or otherwise supports something else. Positive disharmony exists when something frustrates, dampens, weakens, or otherwise undermines something else. And negative harmony is a kind of relation in which something does not support or undermine something else. Like unity, specificity, and affinity, positive harmony and positive disharmony can come in degrees, in this case depending on the extent (if any) to which things support or undermine one another.58 Let’s consider some examples in which things stand in harmony or disharmony with one another. Our mental powers can harmonize with one another when, for example, our powers of sense and understanding “harmonize to form experiential knowledge” by operating in ways that support one another (i.e. our power of sense provides sensations for our power of understanding to organize under concepts).59 The “reciprocally expeditious” and “harmonious play” among our powers of imagination and understanding “animate” and strengthen one another in ways that give rise to judgments and feelings of beauty.60 Our mental powers can also harmonize with those of other people, such as when the realized abilities of musicians complement one another in an orchestra.61 Possible objects of choice, including acts, maxims, commitments, or ends, can be harmonious or disharmonious with one another to the extent that the partial or full realization of one or more of them would promote or frustrate one or more of the others. Ends of wealth and influence, for example, are in positive harmony if more wealth results in greater influence and greater influence results in more wealth. Ends of ambition and being loved by others are in positive disharmony if a person’s success would lead others to hate him and if maintaining their love for him would undermine his success.62 A choice to act positively harmonizes with an end if it would promote the end.63 For example, certain actions harmonize with the end of constructing a geometric figure, curing a patient, killing an adversary, or acquiring wealth, because they are effective means for doing so.64 Developing our natural capacities and promoting the ends of other people, Kant says, “harmonizes with” the end of “humanity in our own person as an end in itself ” if doing these things leads to “the furtherance of that end.”65 Two or more people can work harmoniously toward an end by acting 58 Some things also mutually support or undermine one another, while something might support or undermine something else that does not also support or undermine it. Rationalists such as Plato (2007) and Leibniz (1952, 2020) also emphasize the idea of harmony and seem to think that our reason leads us to care about harmony as such. 59 Corr 11: 52. See Aquila (1989), Kemp Smith (1962), Guyer (1987), Longuenesse (1998), Strawson (1966), and Watkins (2005) as well as discussions of these powers in Chapters 3 and 6. 60 CPJ 20: 244 and Anth 7: 225, respectively. See also CPrR 5: 160; CPJ 5: 258–​9. And see Guyer (1997, 2006), Ginsborg (2015), and Allison (2001). 61 L-​Anth 25: 702. 62 Anth 7: 266. 63 A800/​B828; CPrR 5: 63; G 4: 416; MM 6: 389; Anth 7: 210; Eth-​V 27: 540. 64 G 4: 417; Rel 6: 45-​6; Eth-​C 27: 245; L-​Log 24: 250. 65 G 4: 430, Kant’s emphasis.

196  Sovereign Re ason in ways that jointly promote it through, for example, cooperative or coordinated arrangements.66 A choice to act and an end are positively disharmonious if the act would frustrate the end and, in some cases, also bring about its opposite.67 Demands or commands that “others attach little value to themselves in comparison with me,” for example, often “arouse no respect for [me] on their part,” but instead often bring them to “play tricks with me,” laugh at me, “reproach” me for my pretensions, and otherwise harbor disrespect or contempt toward me.68 Engaging in wars of conquest might lead to poverty rather than wealth.69 Using force to acquire domination over others often arouses the opposition of those we are attempting to dominate.70 Some choices to act might undermine an end in some ways or at some times but also promote it overall. War and oppression, for example, might for a time frustrate ends of perpetual peace and just political arrangements, but Kant claims that these actions might also be “indispensable means” for bringing about those ends in the long run.71 The properties and powers of physical objects, laws of nature, and other things besides choices can also harmonize or disharmonize with an end. Skills of various kinds positively harmonize with an end if they allow us to act in ways that promote the end.72 Some skills, such as seeing, hearing, reading, and writing, harmonize with a wide variety of ends we or others might have.73 Other skills, such as playing a musical instrument or diagnosing diseases, are useful for certain purposes.74 The concept of perfection, according to Kant, “is taken to mean the harmony of a thing’s properties with an end,” for example the perfection of a watch whose features combine to promote the end of accurately telling time, the natural perfection of a person with the “aptitude and skill for all sorts of ends for which he can use nature,” or the moral perfection of a person, which “consists in the harmony of a human being’s will with its final end” of having an effective commitment to morality above all else.75

66 Rel 6: 95; Anth 7: 278; Eth-​C 27: 461. 67 EAT 8: 336. 68 Anth 7: 211, Eth-​C 27: 457, Anth 7: 211, and OFBS 2: 233, respectively. See also MM 6: 465; Anth 7: 203, 272; MH 2: 262; Eth-​V 27: 708; Eth-​C 27: 409. 69 MH 2: 262. 70 Anth 7: 183, 186, 273. 71 CB 8: 121. See also TPP 8: 363, 365–​6, 374; CB 8: 27–​8, 120–​1; CF 7: 85; Rel 6: 35; IUH 8: 24; TP 8: 310; L-​Anth 25:1425. And see Cureton (2018b). 72 CPrR 5: 20, 37; MM 6: 391–​2; G 4: 416; Anth 7: 201; Ped 9: 449; CPJ 5: 430. 73 MM 6: 387, 392; G 4: 416; Ped 9: 449; L-​Th 28: 1056–​7. General-​purpose skills, according to Kant, also include skills of concealing our thoughts and feelings (Ped 9: 486; Anth 7: 322), scrutinizing those of others (Ped 9: 486), and minding our manners (Ped 9: 455). See also Rawls (1999c, xiii, 380–​5), Foot (1978, c­ hapter 8), Nagel (1997), and Daniels (2008). 74 Ped 9: 450; MM 6: 392. 75 MM 6: 387, CPJ 5: 430, and MM 6: 441, respectively. See also CPJ 20: 228; L-​Th 28: 1060 and Johnson (2011), Denis (1999), Hill (2021a, c­ hapter 2), and Chance (2021). We will return to the idea of perfection in Chapter 14.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  197 Other circumstances that are more or less outside our control can also harmonize or disharmonize with an end we or others have. Lack of resources or opportunity, for example, might affect whether we can successfully act in ways that would promote some ends. Other people might undermine an end we have or promote it without our involvement. Our ends might be satisfied or frustrated by fortunate or unfortunate natural circumstances.76 A person’s level of overall happiness, according to Kant, “harmonizes with the highest good” when it promotes or does not undermine that end of happiness apportioned to virtue.77 As rational and reasonable persons, we necessarily care about harmony in these and all other domains. We want our powers of mind to support and not work against one another. We want choices and ends to fit together rather than clash with one another. We want people to cooperate for common purposes rather than to undermine one another. Apart from our natural desires and commitments, discord of all forms disturbs us to some extent because of our rational nature, which leads us to seek harmony among all things.

9.5.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Our interest of reason in harmony as such provides grounds for legislating presumptive laws of various kinds. These laws presumptively require our power of judgment to reflect on and investigate harmonies and disharmonies of all kinds, such as among our own ends and the ends of other people, possible choices to act and possible ends, the properties and powers of objects, and laws of nature. If we come across apparent harmonies or disharmonies, we are presumptively required to determine whether they are genuine. For example, there appears to be a dissonance between the end of virtue and the end of happiness in proportion to virtue because, as Kant claims, “a life led with crying injustice” often contributes to making the scoundrel “happy to the end,” while suffering often “seems to have occurred to the virtuous . . . because [their virtue] was pure.”78 The appearance of this apparent disharmony might persist despite our best efforts at explaining it away.79 In some cases, we are presumptively required by reason to assume that apparently dissonant things are harmonious because doing so makes it more likely that we will discover the truth of the matter. In the case of virtue and happiness apportioned to virtue, Kant claims that we presumptively should assume that this disharmony is illusory and continue to search for an explanation of how



76 CPJ 5: 430; G 4: 438–​9; CPrR 5: 124–​5. 77 CPrR 5: 130. 78 MPT 8: 261. See also CPJ 5: 450–​1; Rel 6: 5; G 4: 438–​9. 79 MPT 8: 261.

198  Sovereign Re ason vicious people will get their just deserts and virtuous people will get their just rewards.80 Some presumptive laws of reason favored by our interest of reason in harmony concern promoting and maintaining harmony among things. These laws presumptively require us to bring about harmony among our own powers of mind so that they strengthen, enliven, and do not weaken one another. As we discussed in Part I, our reason itself helps us to achieve this kind of autonomy or rational self-​ governance in our own minds by allowing us, as Kant claims, to govern ourselves with “compulsion, through self-​control in accordance with certain rules.”81 Our interest of reason in harmony favors laws that presumptively require us to eliminate any disharmonies among our personal ends and natural desires by dropping or revising some or all of them “so that they will not wear each other out but will instead be harmonized into a whole called happiness.”82 We are presumptively required to bring about harmony between our actions and our own ends and among our ends themselves.83 These laws apply not just to how we pursue and revise our own purposes. They also presumptively require us to achieve, among all people, “harmony of the will of one with that of another”84 so that, ideally, the choices of everyone support and do not frustrate the choices of everyone else. We are presumptively required to promote harmony and eliminate disharmony among the ends of different people so that each person’s ends “stand together with the idea of a whole of all ends”85 in such a way that none of them, if realized, would undermine any of the others and in such a way that many or all of them, if realized, would promote the ends of other people.86 If someone actively seeks to harm another person by undermining or preventing the realization of her ends, then these laws require that the first person not act in those ways or that the second person abandon or revise her ends.87 We are presumptively required not to hate other people in ways that involve affirming their unhappiness or ruin.88 These laws also presumptively require us, in some cases, to engage in shared activities and cooperative ventures, as well as to establish and maintain relationships of solidarity that involve mutually supporting commitments and intentions among different people.89 80 CPrR 5: 125, 142. Our interest of reason in harmony might presumptively require us to assume, for example, that there is some mechanism (such as God) for realizing the highest good, in which reward is perfectly matched to merit. See Guyer (2011), Wood (2008, 268–​9), and Beiser (2006). 81 L-​Anth 25: 476. See also L-​Anth 25: 630. 82 Rel 6: 58. See also Rel 6: 45; Anth 7: 266; G 4: 406–​7; MH 2: 261. We will return to discuss happiness in Chapter 13. 83 G 4: 414–​15; A800/​B828; CPrR 5: 28; Anth 7: 183; Eth-​V 27: 540. 84 MM 6: 488. 85 L-​Th 28: 1057. 86 CPrR 5: 28; G 4: 433; TPP 8: 386; Eth-​V 27: 673; NF 19: 114–​15. 87 Anth 7: 270. 88 Anth 7: 270. See also Chapter 13. 89 Anth 7: 270-​1; MM 6: 453, 459. See also Chapter 16.

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  199 The laws of reason that concern harmony presumptively require us to diminish disharmony between, on the one hand, the ends, commitments, or other purposes we or others have and, on the other hand, any factors that promote or undermine those purposes. The kinds of things that can promote or undermine our purposes include other choices we or others might make, our talents, skills, income, wealth, and opportunities, as well as those of other people, the structure of our political system, and various natural circumstances, such as the laws of nature and the powers and properties of physical objects. The interest reason has in harmony favors laws that presumptively require us to choose in ways that achieve, as far as possible, a perfect fit between these factors and the purposes that anyone affirms or should affirm. One way to achieve this fit is to choose to act in ways that most effectively and efficiently promote the purposes that we or others have. Developing skills of various kinds and securing resources, for example, can be ways of adapting our circumstances to our own ends or to the ends of others. Another way to achieve this fit, however, is to revise or abandon certain purposes themselves.90 Often achieving maximal harmony among our purposes and the factors that promote or undermine them requires a combination of doing our best to promote our purposes as well as revising those purposes in light of our skills, social circumstances, the likelihood that other people will assist us, and other natural and social circumstances we face. Our conceptions of happiness and the overall good, as well as those of other people, might be indeterminate, vague, contain contradictions, or be constantly in flux. Whether a choice frustrates these ends often depends on complicated empirical information that we might not have access to. It is often difficult or impossible for us to determine whether our choices to act harmonize or disharmonize with those ends.91 If the interest reason has in promoting harmony and eliminating disharmony were to be fully realized, the result would nonetheless be that all of us would work together in various ways to promote the purposes of one and all and so each stand in “the greatest harmony of a human being with himself and with others.”92 In such a Kingdom of Ends, “every rational creature stands in connection with every other as reciprocal end and means.”93 In sum, our interest of reason in harmony as such has far-​reaching implications for how we presumptively should conduct ourselves and relate with other people. 90 See Chapter 13 as well as see Rawls (1999c, 80–​1, 1993, 33–​4, 72, 184–​6), and Johnson (2011, 89–​ 90) for discussion of taking responsibility for one’s ends. 91 G 4: 418; CPJ 5: 430; Rel 6: 36–​7; L-​Th 28: 1057; Eth-​C 27: 246. 92 NF 19: 114–​15. See also G 4: 433; TPP 8: 386; L-​Th 28: 1058; NF 16: 159. 93 L-​Th 28: 1102–​3, 1075. See Hill (1992, c­ hapter 3), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 6), Waldron (2021), Timmons (2021a), Holtman (2022), von der Pfordten (2021), and Sensen (2021) for discussions of Kant’s idea of a Kingdom of Ends. Mieth and Williams (2021) emphasize ways in which, for Kant, rational and reasonable people would ideally serve as means for and ends of one another in a harmonious Kingdom of Ends.

200  Sovereign Re ason Our preference for things that support rather than undermine one another, which arises from our power of reason itself, leads us to endorse laws of reason to tamp down on internal conflict within our own minds, to bring our ends into alignment with one another, to support and complement other people, and ultimately to unite with all rational people in mutually supportive cooperative arrangements free from conflict and strife.

9.6  Final Remarks: Systematic Unity and Harmony in an Ideally Rational World Many of us find ourselves wanting to explain, systematize, or harmonize certain things that matter to us in our lives. Some people pursue these aims for ulterior purposes, such as wealth or power, while others devote themselves to philosophy, science, history, or conflict mediation for their own sake. My suggestion in this chapter is that all of us, as rational and reasonable people, care to some extent about explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony in themselves. We are not indifferent to these notions, and we seek to realize them in ourselves and others. Life is complicated, and we rarely have the time and energy to fully pursue our interests in explanation, systematicity, and harmony. In our idle moments, however, we cannot help but feel mildly curious about even trivial matters, such as why our doctor’s office changed their sign-​in sheet, whether the bickering people next to us are simply talking past each other, whether the chairs in the waiting room are the same, and whether switching the children’s area and the television would be more convenient for people. We often manage to ignore these calm desires that arise from our power of reason or to distract ourselves from them, but they are always there, subtly pushing us to explain, systematize, and harmonize things as best we can. That we have such abstract and general interests of reason might seem strange enough, but what is perhaps more surprising is that these interests translate into presumptive requirements of reason that go well beyond logic and rational prudence. When we consider what sorts of things rational and reasonable people could or would endorse, whether as strict requirements or ideals to aspire to, if we were only moved by our interests in explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, our harmony, we find that we would likely support a wide variety of substantive laws. We could or would support laws that presumptively require us to (or to aspire to) reflect and investigate in various ways, to make certain assumptions, to develop a systematically unified conception of happiness, to resolve disagreements among people, to cooperate with them, and much else. The kinds of reflecting and investigating that are presumptively required to satisfy these interests tend to be improved by communicating with other people. Lying and intimidation tend to undermine these interests, such as using fear to discourage people from raising or

E xpl anation, Unit y, Specificit y, etc.  201 pursuing “why” questions about religious matters. We need information and certain sufficiently developed mental powers to pursue these interests. We also need time and energy to develop systematically unified conceptions of things, such as our own happiness, as well as to resolve disagreements with other people. These considerations suggest that our interests of reason in explanation, systematic unity, and harmony also favor presumptive laws that concern freedom of communication and thought, deception, educating children, and affording people opportunities for careful reflection. Our interests of reason in explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony, along with the presumptive laws of reason that they favor, can combine or stand in conflict. For example, our interests of reason in unity and specificity, Kant says, “conflict with each other: on the one side, an interest in the domain (universality) in regard to genera, on the other an interest in content (determinacy) in respect of the manifoldness of species.”94 Because of limited time and energy, the presumptive laws to seek out explanations, systematic unity, and harmony of all kinds often conflict with ones that presumptively allow us to pursue our own happiness or that presumptively require us to promote the happiness of others. Our interest of reason in respect for persons, when combined with our interest of reason in unity, might together favor presumptive requirements to assume that our apparent disagreements with other people are not genuine and to search for hidden consistency among them.95 When we disagree with others, Kant says, “I must first of all be occupied with searching for an agreement of my judgment with the judgment of others” and assume that “in our non-​agreeing judgments there is really more agreement present than we suppose.”96 What the laws of reason require, all things considered, depends on the various interests of reason that determine what all people could or would rationally accept or reject, as well as the relative priority of those interests. Kant’s conception of a perfect world, namely the Kingdom of Ends, is partially constituted by its realization of our interests of reason in explanation, unity, specificity, affinity, and harmony, and of full compliance with the laws of reason that they favor. Such a world is a “universal system of all ends” in which each “rational creature stands in connection with every other as reciprocal end and means”97 and affirms the same moral principles as the others on the same grounds. This ideal world “constitute[s]‌a whole with all rational beings in the realm of morality, just as all and each are connected to one another in the realm of nature.”98 It is a “systematic union of rational beings through common objective laws” that “have



94 A657/​B685, A666/​B694. 95 MM 6: 463; L-​Log 24: 85, 105–​6. 96 L-​Log 24: 95. 97 L-​Th 28: 1102–​3. 98 L-​Th 28: 1100–​3.

202  Sovereign Re ason as their purpose . . . just the relation of these beings to one another as ends and means.”99 There are complicated questions about how to interpret Kant’s idea of a Kingdom of Ends, but he characterizes it in a way that accords with ideas in reflective common sense that a world of fully rational and reasonable people would be one of thoroughgoing unity and harmony.

99 G 4: 433. For discussions of Kant’s conception of a Kingdom of Ends, see Hill (1992, c­ hapter 3), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 6), Waldron (2021), Timmons (2021a), Holtman (2022), von der Pfordten (2021), and Sensen (2021).

10

Rational Nature Whatever else rational and reasonable people might care about, it seems that we are at least concerned with our rational nature itself. We often call people irrational or unreasonable for taking excessive risks with their lives, for allowing their rational abilities to degrade, for stunning themselves with alcohol, or for letting others do their reasoning for them. Damaging or destroying the rational nature of other people or discouraging them from using their rational abilities are apparently contrary to reason, while helping our children or students hone these abilities seems quite reasonable. When someone loses a rational ability through brain damage or disease, rational and reasonable people seem to feel a special sense of loss that is magnified if the person dies or otherwise loses her power of reason entirely. Reflective common sense and ordinary language thus lend some support to the idea that a rational and reasonable person as such values her own rational nature and the rational nature of other people for their own sake. Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in rational nature as such in all people. Having a rational nature involves caring to some extent about the preservation, development, and exercise of reason in ourselves and in everyone else for its own sake. As rational and reasonable people, we necessarily want to protect the existence and integrity of reason in ourselves and others. We also want to develop and use our reason and for others to do the same. Apart from the various purposes that our power of reason might serve, we simply have interests of reason in rational nature for its own sake. Our interests of reason in preserving, protecting, and exercising the power of reason in everyone are partially substantive and partially formal. Recall that, in Chapter 5, we characterized formal interests of reason as interests of reason in rational self-​governance. Interests of this kind include dispositions to legislate, execute, and adjudicate laws of reason along with desires and feelings that our reason produces to comply with its laws. Substantive interests of reason, we said, are interests in things that do not only concern recognizing requirements of reason, conforming to those laws, or otherwise governing ourselves by rational requirements. Our interests of reason in rational nature itself include interests in protecting, perfecting, and exercising our own powers of rational self-​governance, but they include interests in other people doing so as well. These interests in rational nature

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0010

204  Sovereign Re ason also concern all aspects of our power of reason, not just our abilities to legislate, execute, and adjudicate moral laws.1 Our initial distinction between formal and substantive interests of reason helped to explain some features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) and to distinguish it from other views. Now that we have explored the main contours of that partial theory, we can think of substantive interests of reason as ones that can figure in the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument (SCR-​QJA) as grounds that could or would lead rational people to endorse relevant mental states or things suitably related to them. Formal interests of reason, by contrast, cannot help to make laws of reason justifiable to people because they presuppose those laws. It would not make sense, for example, for a law of reason that prohibits murder to be justifiable to someone on the basis of her desire to comply with a law of reason prohibiting murder. This law, however, might be justifiable to her based on her interests of reason in protecting her own abilities to legislate, enforce, and adjudicate laws of reason as well as in preserving those abilities in other people. The substantive final interests in rational nature itself that we apparently have might be illusory or explained as derivative from other interests or requirements of reason. Phillipa Foot, for example, denies that a rational and reasonable person as such cares about her own power of reason, let alone the power of reason of others, for its own sake.2 Kantians often claim that we should care about our own power of moral reason and that of others because we are required by reason to treat humanity as an end in itself, never merely as a means.3 Many rationalists claim that we should value our rational nature because we should be moved by the independently existing reasons we have to do so.4 My aim in this chapter is to explore the idea that we have substantive final interests in preserving, developing, and exercising the power of reason in its entirety in ourselves and others. I also aim to consider some presumptive laws of reason that these interests might favor when combined with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability. Our focus will be on explaining our interests of reason in rational nature as such and on interpreting and applying these interests to our human power of reason, which is an embodied mental power that can be destroyed, damaged, cultivated, and exercised in ways that depend on our bodies and circumstances.5 The power 1 The perfection of rational nature as a whole encompasses more than what Kant calls moral perfection, which concerns only abilities and interests of moral reason. The perfection of human nature also includes some of the mental powers that Kant includes in his idea of natural perfection (MM 6: 445–​6). We will discuss our substantive final interests of reason in natural perfection in Chapter 14. 2 Foot (1978, c­ hapter 11). 3 See Wood (2008, ­chapter 5) and Kerstein (2002, c­ hapter 2). 4 See Parfit and Broome (1997) and Nagel (1978, c­ hapters 5-​8). 5 We discussed some aspects of our power of human reason, as compared to the power of reason as it might exist in other creatures such as God, in the third section of Chapter 2.

Rational Nature  205 of reason, at least as it exists in us, is not an ethereal or disembodied mental power. Some Kantian and rationalists’ theories of reason might give this impression. These theories do not usually give sufficient attention to the natural underpinnings and constitution of human reason or to the implications these have for how we should regard and treat one another. Our power of reason is in many ways like our other powers of mind that are susceptible to disease and mental illness, that can be impaired by significant brain damage, that depend on adequate nourishment of our bodies, and that can be affected by fatigue. Considering the nature of our interests in rational nature itself and the kinds of presumptive laws of reason that they favor is needed to eventually assess whether these interests are genuine. Doing so is also needed to evaluate the promise of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason to capture and explain our ordinary judgments about what it is to be a rational and reasonable person.

10.1  Rational Nature: Abilities, Interests, and Principles of the Power of Reason Our power of reason, as we discussed in Part I, is a power of mind that includes characteristic abilities, interests, and principles. Let’s briefly review some of these features that, according to the SCR, are part of our rational nature. Our power of reason includes several main abilities. It includes standard capacities to think logically and grasp rational arguments. We can use our reason, for instance, to infer logical conclusions from premises and to understand these transitions. As we discussed in Chapters 2 and 9, Kantian theories of reason, including the Sovereignty Conception, hold that our power of reason includes several additional abilities. Our reason allows us to formulate certain ideas on its own. We can use our reason to conceive of moral ideas, such as moral duty, perfect virtue, good will, God, and the highest good in which reward is supposedly apportioned to moral merit, as well as other ideas, such as complete systematic unity and harmony. Although we can conceptualize these ideals, as we might call them, using our reason, we cannot fully attribute them to things in the natural world because our senses cannot supply us with adequate grounds for doing so. Our senses and understanding alone can never tell us, for example, what our moral duties are or whether someone is perfectly virtuous. On Kantian ways of thinking, these notions would never occur to us without our rational ability to conceive of them. Kantian theories of reason also hold that our reason includes the ability to reflect on and understand its own nature. This is the basic idea of a critique of reason, in which we can use our reason to investigate the nature and limits of our reason itself. One of these primary limits, Kantian theories maintain, is that our reason cannot on its own allow us to understand or acquire knowledge of the natural

206  Sovereign Re ason world. We lack the ability to gain rational insight into the world around us, although we can use our reason to formulate ideas and discover the nature of our reason and what it requires of us.6 The Sovereignty Conception of Reason holds that our power of reason, in addition, includes various abilities to govern ourselves by laws of reason of all kinds. As we discussed in Chapter 4, our reason allows us to legislate laws to ourselves by formulating, issuing, and connecting incentives with them. We can enforce laws of reason in ourselves by interpreting, enforcing, and policing them. We can also adjudicate laws of reason in ourselves by interpreting them, attributing and imputing mental acts to ourselves, judging ourselves accordingly, and assigning punishments to ourselves in the form of, for example, negative feelings of guilt or regret. Our reason allows us to govern our judgments, choices, desires, and other mental acts by requirements of moral, prudential, and theoretical rationality. These various rational abilities and perhaps others that are part of our rational nature are often beyond our direct control and instead operate involuntarily in us. Our rational abilities might be latent, such as in young children, dormant, such as in someone in a long-​term coma, or destroyed, such as in someone who has suffered significant brain trauma. They might be realized to varying degrees. The logical abilities of professional logicians and those of first-​year undergraduate students usually differ drastically, for example. And we might exercise some of our rational abilities well, as many brilliant philosophers do, or poorly, as when we are excessively drunk or exhausted. In addition to various rational abilities, the SCR holds that our power of reason includes dispositions, desires, feelings, and other interests of reason. Reason in us is an active mental power that includes dispositions to exercise our various rational abilities along with interests in explanation, systematic unity, rational nature itself, and other substantive things we will discuss in subsequent chapters. Like our rational abilities, our interests of reason can be realized to varying degrees or entirely absent due to injury or disease. They can also be stronger or weaker in different people and at different times. Our disposition of reason to hold ourselves accountable for our actions, for example, might be mostly dormant when we are under the influence of certain drugs but forcefully return once we become sober. Our power of reason also includes constitutive principles. Some of them are formal principles that concern consistency and coherence within or among our mental states, such as the principle of noncontradiction and the Hypothetical Imperative. Others are substantive principles, which prominently include the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability along with any laws of reason that follow from it. Our reason operates according to these formal and substantive principles and governs our other powers of mind through them. 6 For discussions of Kant’s conception of reason, including ideas of reason and our lack of rational insight, see Neiman (1994), Pollok (2017), Rescher (2000), and Sticker (2021b).

Rational Nature  207 The abilities, interests, and principles that are part of our power of reason need not be fully or even minimally realized for someone to have a rational nature. A rational and reasonable person might have latent or dormant abilities and interests of reason that could be developed even if they never are. On Kantian ways of thinking, virtually all newborn infants and comatose people have a rational nature but are nowhere close to being able to work through logical proofs or conceive of virtue. Virtually everyone with Fragile X Syndrome, severe classic autism, Down Syndrome, and almost every other kind of intellectual disability also has the power of reason. It is nonetheless conceptually possible that extreme brain damage, genetic mutations, disease, or other causes might destroy or prevent the existence of the power of reason in a human being. According to Kantian views, cases in which we can legitimately question whether someone has a rational nature are extremely rare. They do not include almost everyone in assisted living facilities, self-​contained classrooms for disabled students, or the disabled people many of us interact with in daily life, but they might include people in a persistent vegetative state. For all we know and perhaps can know, however, some of these people might still have a rational nature that is simply undeveloped, or their power of reason might be intact but hampered in its expression by impairments to other parts or aspects of their minds. Identifying concrete cases of this is exceedingly difficult because of complexities in distinguishing a latent ability or an inactive disposition from its complete absence. The long history of biased and sometimes malicious mistakes about who has a rational nature should also temper any judgments we might make that certain human beings lack the power of reason.7 We should assume, unless we have very strong evidence to the contrary, that all human beings have the abilities, interests, and principles that characterize the power of reason, even though these might in some cases be mere potentialities.8 In sum, we have substantive final interests in protecting our power of reason in its entirety, in sharpening and using our rational abilities, and in cultivating our dispositions of reason and other interests of reason. Our interests in rational nature as such extend to all other people as well—​we have interests of reason that their powers of reason are preserved, developed, and exercised. Let’s examine

7 Kosch (2023) and Jorati (2023) suggest that Fichte and Leibniz offer similar pragmatic grounds for assuming that, unless we have very strong evidence to the contrary, all human beings have a rational nature. 8 All human beings who have a rational nature, which is basically all of us, are among those to whom mental states must be justifiable according to the SCR-​PPJ. Some or all such people might be represented through trustees. Even if we were to encounter human beings who we know lack a rational nature, they still merit our respect and concern on other grounds that a comprehensive moral theory must capture and explain in ways that may not entirely depend on the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. Other moral frameworks face problems of their own when it comes to explaining the fundamental moral status of those with profound cognitive disabilities, and more work is needed (Vorhaus 2020, Kittay 2019, McMahan 2005, Barclay 2020, and Buss and Theunissen 2023). See also Cureton (Forthcoming-​b).

208  Sovereign Re ason these interests and the kinds of presumptive laws they might favor for how human beings in our world should regard and treat ourselves and others.

10.2  Protecting Rational Nature: Interests and Laws of Reason 10.2.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes a substantive final interest in preserving rational nature in ourselves and others. We have interests of reason in the continued existence of rational nature in everyone and in protecting all features of the power of reason from destruction. Kant at times seems to attribute this interest of reason to us when he says that “reason preserves itself,” that “reason also maintains itself,” and that reason leads us to want “reason’s self-​preservation.”9 Many of the basic presumptive laws favored by our interest of reason in preserving rational nature are straightforward. When we imagine ourselves deliberating about mental acts or universal laws on the basis of our interest of reason in preserving rational nature in all people, we could or would rationally oppose destroying rational nature or any part of it in anyone and rationally endorse protecting it in all people. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument (SCR-​QJA), reason thus presumptively forbids us from destroying or seriously damaging rational nature and presumptively requires us to protect the power of reason from destruction or serious damage. This way of explaining presumptive laws of reason in preserving rational nature does not presuppose that rational nature itself is intrinsically valuable. Nor does it necessarily rely only on formal principles of reason that forbid us from willing certain universalized maxims. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, we are presumptively required to preserve rational nature in ourselves and others because such laws are justifiable to rational people who care about preserving rational nature as such in everyone. We can give further content to our interest of reason in preserving rational nature and to the laws that it favors by examining how the existence of our power of human reason, which is the kind of reason that is embodied in human beings, depends on our bodies and other features of the natural world. As far as we can know, a living body is a necessary condition for the power of reason to exist in us. As Kant says, “we have no other concept of our existence save that mediated by our body.”10 Setting aside Kant’s controversial claims about the immortality of the soul, which we are assuming we can never know but perhaps must assume for certain purposes, our physical death destroys our 9 L-​Anth 25: 549 and WOT 8: 146n, respectively. See also MM 6: 442; CF 7: 99. 10 Eth-​C 27: 369. See also Eth-​C 27: 387.

Rational Nature  209 power of reason. Our lives in turn depend on the satisfaction of our basic biological needs and otherwise on the conditions that are necessary for our physical survival. Terminal diseases and mortal wounds kill us and so destroy our rational nature, which will eventually cease to exist in all of us at the end of our lives. Our substantive final interest of reason in preserving rational nature thus includes an interest in protecting the lives of everyone with the power of reason by, for example, not physically killing people and ensuring that everyone’s basic needs are met. The various features of our rational nature depend in other ways for their existence on our bodies and circumstances. Significant injury, disease, mental illness, and poison apparently can destroy some of our rational abilities while leaving others intact. For example, traumatic brain damage or other causes might, as Kant claims, leave someone with “no capacity of reason” to “grasp . . . rational arguments.”11 We might also be seriously injured in ways that eliminate our rational abilities to draw logical inferences, understand moral ideas, formulate laws of reason, or judge ourselves by them. Our injuries might be so severe that, according to Kant, we end up with a “lack of reason.”12 It also seems plausible that we can lose some of our interests of reason through brain damage or mental illness. The concussion waves and shrapnel from a bomb blast, for instance, might cause significant damage to someone’s brain that leave him without any disposition of reason to enforce laws of reason that he nonetheless can still understand. Perhaps a person in the late stages of dementia might lose her substantive final interests of reason in explanation, which no longer concerns her apart from her natural desires and personal ends. Our power of reason might also be significantly damaged in ways that alter its constitutive principles. Instead of operating according to the principle of noncontradiction and other rational standards, Kant puzzlingly suggests that mental illness or brain trauma might cause what was once someone’s power of reason to constitutively include irrational principles that lead her to make “false inferences” and to embrace contradiction and absurdity.13 Such a person’s rational nature itself, Kant says, has become “reversed with respect to . . . universal judgments” by operating according to “another rule, a totally different standpoint into which the soul is transferred, so to speak, and from which it sees all objects differently.”14 Kant does not explain how the constitutive principles of our reason can change, but he cryptically notes that other aspects of our rational nature might remain more or less the same. Our rational abilities might still arrange themselves systematically; our interest of reason in unity might persist; and the



11 L-​Anth 25: 553 and MH 2: 270, respectively. 12 Anth 7: 218. 13 L-​Anth 25: 554 and MH 2: 270, respectively. 14 MH 2: 264 and Anth 7: 216, respectively.

210  Sovereign Re ason replacement principles, despite their absurdity, might still be universal in form.15 Our substantive final interest of reason in preserving rational nature includes an interest in protecting ourselves and others from significant injuries and diseases that destroy any of the abilities, interests, and principles that are part of our power of reason. We know quite well what sorts of things tend to kill human beings, but more philosophical and scientific research is needed to determine how the various abilities, interests, and principles of our rational nature can be dismantled. It might be difficult to know whether injury or disease has destroyed some rational ability in a person or just impaired it. Someone might still have a latent disposition of reason after a serious accident, or that interest of reason might no longer exist in her. It might seem that a person’s power of reason is operating according to absurd principles when in fact her odd behavior and ways of thinking result instead from damage to her other mental powers, such as her understanding and judgment. We also need to reflect on how significant the damage to our reason must be for that power to no longer exist in us. A person may still have the power of reason even if she loses some of her logical abilities, for instance, but Kant suggests that if the constitutive principles of her reason themselves are upended and replaced, then she no longer has the power of reason but instead has what he calls the power of “unreason.”16

10.2.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Various presumptive laws of reason are justifiable to rational people who deliberate on the basis of their substantive final interest of reason in preserving rational nature and who know basic facts about the biological, psychological, and other underpinnings of our power of reason. Our interest of reason in protecting embodied rational nature in us favors laws that presumptively forbid us from killing anyone with the power of reason, including ourselves. They also presumptively forbid us from destroying parts of someone’s power of reason by, for example, damaging their brains. For the same reasons, rational human beings who care about preserving rational nature as such could or would rationally endorse a presumptive prohibition on allowing ourselves or others to die or to suffer significant injury to our reason. Our interest in preserving embodied rational nature favors laws that, more generally, presumptively require us to prevent the deaths of all rational persons, including ourselves, and to prevent significant injury to parts of our power of 15 Anth 7: 201, 216, 218; L-​Anth 25: 553. I have not been able to find discussions among Kantians about the nature of what Kant calls “unreason,” which is more radical than the kinds of irrationality that Pettit and Smith (1993) analyze. 16 Anth 7: 216–​18; L-​Log 24: 139.

Rational Nature  211 reason.17 These laws presumptively require us to give lifesaving aid and to provide assistance that prevents significant brain damage. They also presumptively require us to support medical research into diseases that destroy parts of reason itself and to provide treatment for mental illnesses that are likely to result in such damage to anyone’s power of reason. Further presumptive laws concern the risks we can take with our lives and our rational nature. Whether the relevant risks are interpreted objectively or subjectively, rational persons who value the existence of the power of reason as such in all human beings could or would endorse laws that presumptively require us to take due care with our own rational nature and that of others. These laws might, for example, presumptively forbid taking our young children on a dangerous whitewater rafting trip and presumptively require us to mitigate our chances of having a serious stroke by adopting a healthy diet.

10.2.3  Conflicting Presumptions The laws favored by our interests of reason in preserving rational nature are presumptions that can conflict with and be overridden by other presumptive laws of reason. Although my aim is not to resolve these tensions, highlighting some of them helps us to explore the presumptive laws themselves while postponing difficult questions about whether reason, all things considered, sometimes requires or permits extreme violence, suicide, and perhaps even murder. Kant’s most famous example of a conflict involving the preservation of rational nature is that of a murderer who asks us whether his intended victim is inside our home when we know that he is and that the only way to save him is by lying about his whereabouts.18 Our substantive final interest in preserving rational nature in everyone favors a presumptive requirement to do what we can to protect the person’s life. As we will discuss in Chapters 11 and 12, however, our substantive final interests of reason in knowledge and in freedom both favor presumptive laws against lying. Kant himself notoriously resolves this tension in favor of not lying. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason does not take a position on what reason requires of us, all things considered, in these kinds of cases. This partial theory of reason nonetheless helps us to analyze the apparent conflict by identifying relevant interests of reason that could or would lead rational people to endorse certain presumptive laws about what we should do when lying is the only way to save someone’s life. Many other kinds of conflicts can occur between presumptive laws favored by our interest in preserving rational nature and ones favored by our other interests of 17 For further discussions of other ways in which Kantians explain moral requirements to protect human life, see Herman (1993b, ­chapters 3 and 6), Engstrom (1986), O’Neill (2000, c­ hapter 2), Hill (2002, ­chapter 7), Cummiskey (1996), and Baron (1995). 18 RL 8: 425–​30.

212  Sovereign Re ason reason. We might deliberately kill ourselves or someone else to protect our country or to save the life of a friend.19 We might allow ourselves to die rather than sacrifice our freedom, rather than become contemptible in the eyes of others, or instead of continuing in our misery.20 The only way to preserve our lives or avoid significant injury to our power of reason might be to kill someone in self-​defense, to act criminally, to give ourselves up to bondage, or to kill someone when both of us would otherwise perish.21 The presumptive law against taking significant risks with our life might conflict with many other presumptive laws of reason. It is “a very subtle question,” Kant says, “how far we ought to treasure our life, and how far to risk it.”22 We can reflect on whether the laws of reason, all things considered, permit a slave to make a perilous attempt at freedom, a lumberjack to risk her life in dangerous work for the benefit of her family, a member of the Coast Guard to risk her life to rescue people from a shipwreck, someone to take a vaccine that carries some risk of death for the sake of prolonging his life, or a soldier to run away to save his own life while leaving his fellow soldiers in the lurch.23 Kant wonders whether reason allows someone who has been “bitten by a mad dog” to kill himself if he feels “quite plainly the effects of madness,” knows that parts of his power of reason will soon be destroyed or become useless to him, and is aware of the high risk that he will soon harm other people as the disease progresses.24 A first step to resolving these conflicts, according to the SCR, is to examine what presumptive laws of reason are at stake in them and why those presumptions are justifiable to rational persons on the basis of their various interests of reason. We will discuss many other presumptive laws and the interests of reason that underlie them as we proceed. Rational and reasonable people care about the preservation of rational nature as such and so could or would rationally support laws of reason that at least presumptively require us to protect the power of reason in all people, even if these presumptions (which might be strict requirements or simply ideals) are sometimes overridden by competing laws of reason.

10.3  Developing Rational Nature: Interests and Laws of Reason 10.3.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes a substantive final interest in the development of rational nature. As rational and reasonable people, we care about

19 MM 6: 423; CPrR 5: 158; Eth-​V 27: 629; Eth-​C 27: 371. 20 CF 7: 99; Eth-​C 27: 376; Eth-​V 27: 630. 21 MM 6: 235; Rel 6: 33n; CPrR 5: 30; Eth-​V 27: 629; Eth-​C 27: 372–​8. 22 Eth-​C 27: 377. See also Eth-​V 27: 630; Anth 7: 239. 23 MM 6: 424; CPrR 5: 158; G 4: 429; Eth-​C 27: 376–​7; Eth-​V 27: 603; Eth-​C 27: 371. 24 Eth-​V 27: 603. See also MM 6: 424.

Rational Nature  213 perfecting our own rational abilities to think logically, develop rational ideas, scrutinize our rational nature, and govern ourselves by reason. We also care for its own sake about developing our formal and substantive interests of reason. We value, in itself, the growth of the power of reason in other people as well and hope that reason will continue progressing in human beings over generations and perhaps reach its perfection in us sometime in the far future.25 Beyond the uses that our realized rational abilities and interests might have, we have interests of reason in the growth and maintenance of reason for its own sake. Kant appears to ascribe to us this interest of reason in the development of rational nature when he says that “restless reason . . . drives [us] irresistibly toward the development of the capacities placed in [us]” and that “a rational being . . . necessarily wills that all the capacities in him be developed.”26 At an abstract level, our interest of reason in perfecting rational nature favors laws that presumptively require us to develop our own power of reason, to promote the development of reason in other people, and not to undermine the power of reason in anyone. Rational and reasonable people who care about perfecting rational nature in everyone could or would favor laws that presumptively require us, for example, to set the rational perfection of ourselves and others as an end, to cultivate our own rational nature and to help others do so as well, not to do things that are incompatible with or thwart our own rational development and that of others, and to ensure the continued development of rational nature over generations.27 How, more specifically, we presumptively should go about promoting and not frustrating the rational development of ourselves and others depends on what sorts of things tend to further or undermine the development of reason in human beings. The power of reason in us is mostly latent in newborns, tends to develop through childhood, and usually declines with old age.28 At times in our life, Kant suggests that our abilities to grasp rational arguments might not be as sharp as they once were, and we might find ourselves in a position in which our “reason does not have its proper strength” to enforce laws of reason in us.29 We might have not yet acquired “mature reason” because we have not “accustomed oneself to acting in accordance with principles.”30 The level of rational perfection that different people can achieve also varies, sometimes drastically because of mental illness, cognitive impairment, brain damage, or other causes. As with the ways in which our human reason can be destroyed or irretrievably damaged, further investigation is needed to determine how to develop our embodied rational nature at different times of life

25 IUH 8: 22. See also Cureton (2018b). 26 CB 8: 115 and G 4: 423, respectively. See also MM 6: 441; Ped 9: 444–​5; IUH 8: 22; L-​Log 24: 298, 301. 27 For discussion of Kant’s account of rational self-​perfection, see Johnson (2011), Denis (1999), Hill (2021a, ­chapter 2), and Chance (2021). 28 L-​Anth 25: 1298. 29 L-​Log 24: 851. 30 L-​Anth 25: 633.

214  Sovereign Re ason and in those with different abilities and circumstances. Studying biology, psychology, anthropology, history, and other fields can help us, Kant says, “when one considers learnedness in relation to human reason” by looking “to its growth or to the causes by which it is held back.”31 Let’s draw on common sense and some largely unsystematic remarks from Kant to explore how we presumptively should go about promoting and not undermining the development of human reason in ourselves and others.

10.3.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Cultivating our rational abilities to think logically, reflect on rational ideas, scrutinize our power of reason, and govern ourselves by reason takes practice. According to Kant, “reason itself does not operate instinctively, but rather needs attempts, practice and instruction.”32 He suggests that “to cultivate reason, one must always seek out the principles,” namely necessary, a priori, and universal principles, such as those found in logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and rational prudence.33 Thinking through casuistical moral questions, doing logic and math problems, and considering philosophical issues, Kant thinks, helps us to develop our rational abilities.34 Reflecting on and responding to objections against reason itself, such as those from Humeans, is also a way of developing our rational abilities.35 By searching for fundamental rational principles that systematically unify various domains, practicing rational thought and reflection, “contemplating the dignity of the pure rational law in us,” and reflecting on the nature and authority of reason itself, we not only sharpen our rational abilities but also cultivate our formal interests of reason in legislating, enforcing, and adjudicating laws of reason.36 Practice conforming to the laws of reason and overcoming obstacles to doing so, such as doing Stoic exercises, also tends to help us develop our governing abilities and interests of reason.37 We might make mistakes, but the more we practice, the better we tend to get. Scrutinizing our own minds and comparing our conduct to the laws of reason helps us to recognize areas for improvement in our rational abilities and dispositions.38 Discussing philosophical issues with others, arguing about metaphysics or morality, pointing out logical errors, and cooperatively pursuing fundamental explanations of things also aid in the cultivation of our reason.39

31 L-​Log 24: 297. See also Anth 7: 122. 32 IUH 8: 18–​19. 33 L-​Anth 25: 1301. 34 MM 6: 483–​4; A838/​B866; Eth-​V 27: 619. 35 A777/​B805. 36 MM 6: 397. See also MM 6: 483–​4. 37 WIE 8: 36. 38 MM 6: 441; CPJ 5: 264; L-​Anth 25: 1302. 39 A744/​B772.

Rational Nature  215 Although “reason,” according to Kant, “cannot be learned,” education and instruction promote the development of rational abilities and dispositions.40 Accustoming children to think rationally and to ask “why” questions, using catechistic and Socratic methods to elicit ideas and principles of reason from them, setting good examples for them, providing opportunities for mistakes, and pointing out their errors encourage the development of their rational nature.41 Inadequate forms of education, which focus on mere memorization and often implant prejudices and habits of imitation in children, or no educational provisions at all, undermines the rational development of children.42 We are presumptively required, Kant says, “not to hide the universal commandments of reason but instead to promulgate them.”43 Natural feelings and desires of various kinds, which we can cultivate in ourselves and encourage in others, help to promote our rational development. According to Kant, “cheerfulness, friendliness, and sociability” prepare us for an “approximation to the virtue of benevolence.”44 Feelings of beauty tend to lead to “the development of moral ideas and the cultivation of the moral feeling” and “prepare humans for a sovereignty in which reason alone shall have power.”45 Feelings of sublimity “elevate the strength of our soul above its usual level, and allow us to discover within ourselves a capacity for resistance of quite another kind, which gives us the courage to measure ourselves against the apparent all-​powerfulness of nature.”46 And feelings and desires of emulating envy often lead us “to be active in enlarging and cultivating our powers.”47 Various social conditions, according to Kant, promote the development of our rational capacities and dispositions, while other social conditions tend to undermine them or promote their opposites. A perfectly just civil constitution, for example, that includes freedom of thought, speech, and assembly, as well as a just international order, promotes “the development of all the predispositions in humanity” now and over generations.48 For example, “all improvement of which our condition is capable,” Kant claims, depends on the “freedom to exhibit the thoughts and doubts which one cannot resolve oneself for public judgment.”49 Freedom of expression, according to Kant, “is a means of animating reason, of cultivating knowledge, and therefore of producing ratiocinating human beings,” 40 L-​Anth 25: 1297. See also A838/​B866; MM 6: 281. 41 WOT 8: 146n; MM 6: 281, 411, 483–​4; IUH 8: 18–​19; WIE 8: 36; Ped 9: 475; Eth-​V 27: 732; L-​ Anth 25: 546–​7. 42 IUH 8: 26; L-​Anth 25: 547. 43 L-​Log 24: 869. 44 Anth 7: 265. See also MM 6: 473. 45 CPJ 5: 356 and CPJ 5: 433, respectively. 46 CPJ 5: 261. 47 Eth-​V 27: 678. See also IUH 8: 22. Emulating envy is envy that leads us to bring ourselves up to the level of others, while corrosive envy leads us to bring them down to our level. 48 IUH 8: 28. See also CF 7: 89; Ped 9: 444. 49 A752/​B780.

216  Sovereign Re ason while its “prohibition produces just the opposite” and undermines “the progress of humanity toward improvement.”50 Determining whether these or other supposed ways of developing rational nature in ourselves and others are effective means for doing so and, if they are, explaining how they help to cultivate reason in us are especially difficult issues. Further research and reflection are obviously needed, but these ways in which Kant thinks we can develop our rational powers and dispositions helps to illustrate the sorts of more specific laws that reason might favor in virtue of its interests in the development of reason. We presumptively should, for example, engage in rational reflection and dialogue with others, practice conforming to the laws of reason and encourage others to do so, scrutinize ourselves, provide a suitable education to children, give opportunities for others to experience beauty and sublimity of various kinds, and protect freedom of thought and expression in everyone so as to promote the rational development of one and all. There are also various things that can undermine the development of our rational capacities and dispositions that we presumptively should prevent or counteract. Certain mental illnesses or cognitive impairments can interfere with the development of our rational capacities and dispositions. Someone, Kant claims, might have “a great impotency of . . . reason.”51 His power of reason might have been “brought into disorder, insofar as it errs in a nonsensical manner in imagined more subtle judgments concerning universal concepts.”52 His “slow reason is no longer able to accompany the excited wit” because “his sensation is so intoxicated” by “the novelty and number of consequences presented to him” that he “no longer pays attention to the correctness of the connection of these judgments.”53 His “reason has insufficient control over itself to direct, stop, or impel the course of his thoughts.”54 These ailments might or might not be curable, but we presumptively should investigate and attempt to ameliorate them for the sake of promoting the development of the person’s rational nature. Our power of reason can be disturbed by fever, drugs, severe pain, or sleep deprivation in ways that impede our rational development or lead to our rational deterioration.55 Some people might have “a falsely instructed reason” that needs to be corrected and disabused before they can continue to develop their power of reason.56 For example, a person may have been raised to think that lying and stealing are not contrary to reason. Her upbringing might have distorted her power

50 A752/​B780, L-​Anth 25: 546, and WIE 8: 39, respectively. See also A739/​B767; Rel 6: 134; MM 6: 328–​9. 51 MH 2: 263. See also Anth 7: 200. 52 MH 2: 269. See also Anth 7: 202. 53 Anth 7: 268. 54 Anth 7: 202. 55 L-​Anth 25: 554. 56 A166/​B206.

Rational Nature  217 of reason itself in ways that need to be corrected for her to make significant progress toward rational perfection.57 Our interest of reason in rational development favors laws of reason that presumptively require us to remove and not to create obstacles to the development of reason in ourselves and others. We presumptively should provide treatments for mental illness, cognitive impairments, and physical ailments that interfere with rational development. We presumptively should not cause various kinds of sickness, pain, violence, and fatigue that make it difficult for people to cultivate their rational abilities and interests. Reason also presumptively requires us to combat adverse social circumstances that might distort the power of reason in people by, for example, demonstrating to children how to live as a rational and reasonable person and not using threats or intimidation to prevent people from cultivating their reason.58

10.3.3  Doubts about Perfecting Other People Our substantive final interest of reason in developing rational nature favors laws that presumptively require us to promote and not undermine the development of rational nature in ourselves and in others. Kant at times, however, seems to claim that we must only promote our own rational perfection.59 On other occasions, however, Kant also claims that we should promote the rational perfection of other people. He says, for example, that “we have to promote [a person’s] improvement,” that relationships of various kinds that we have interests of reason in pursuing include a mutual concern to perfect one another, that we should educate children, and that we should set a good example for other people.60 Kant’s main reason for sometimes doubting that our reason requires us to promote the rational perfection of others concerns whether it is possible for us to do so in certain ways. Let’s explore this worry and consider whether it undercuts the claim that we have interests of reason in the rational development of others and the claim that these interests favor laws of reason that presumptively require us to promote and not thwart their rational perfection. 57 Eth-​C 27: 393. 58 Rawls (1999a, 339–​40) contrasts the social elements of his theory of justice with the apparent individualism of Kant’s moral theory. According to Rawls, Kant regards our power of reason as a “germ” or seed that, through the natural course of things, will typically develop in human persons in ways that realize our rational abilities and develop our interests of reason. Rawls argues instead that our power of reason can develop in us only against the background of various social conditions, which is part of why he thinks political philosophy must come first so that we can establish the background political circumstances in which reason can flourish. As I have suggested in this section, however, Kant and Rawls might not be far apart in their views about how other people, social institutions, and natural facts can impede or promote the development of our power of reason. 59 MM 6: 386–​7. 60 Eth-​V 27: 676. See also Rel 6: 63, 93–​6; Eth-​V 27: 679–​80, 681, 705; Eth-​C 27: 428; L-​Anth 25: 1347.

218  Sovereign Re ason According to our partial model of our powers of mind, specifically our discussion of our power of choice in Chapter 3, it is impossible for us literally to make choices for other people. We can only make our own choices.61 I cannot strictly make something one of your ends or cause you to intend something. This is because of the presumed negative freedom you have to choose without being determined or caused to do so by anything. A law of reason requiring us to adopt someone else’s perfection as one of her ends or otherwise to cause other people to adopt their own perfection as an end is inconsistent with the negative freedom of their power of choice and so cannot be a law of reason.62 In addition, if there are certain ways of pursuing rational perfection that only we can do for ourselves, such as contemplating the constitutive principles of reason or putting ourselves through Stoic exercises, then we cannot be required by reason to do these specific kinds of things for other people or to literally make other people do them (for that is impossible).63 There are, however, other things we can do to promote or undermine the rational perfection of other people that are consistent with the negative freedom of their power of choice. We can help educate them in various ways, model rational deliberation and choice for them, point out errors in their reasoning, and expose them to rational concepts and ideas. We can afford them opportunities for rational contemplation, encourage them to practice overcoming temptations and obstacles, elicit emulating envy of our greater perfections, and provide for their health and basic needs. Perhaps medical technology will someday allow us to alter the genetic endowments of our offspring in ways that enhance their rational abilities or make it easier for them to develop those capacities. We can interfere with the rational development of other people by killing them, causing certain kinds of brain damage, using threats and incentives to dissuade them from cultivating their rational powers, or denying them freedom of thought and speech. And we can, without contradiction, set as one of our ends that others freely aim for and pursue their own perfection, just as we can consistently adopt as ends perpetual peace, ideal friendship, a morally perfect world, and the highest good, all of which include other people freely setting various ends. These ways of affecting the rational development of other people are compatible with the presumed negative freedom we each have to make our own choices without being causally determined to do so.64 61 G 4: 446–​8; MM 6: 213–​14, 226; CPrR 5: 44, 97–​8; CPJ 5: 404; CB 8: 112; RevS 8: 13–​14; Eth-​V 27: 494, 570; Eth-​C 27: 267, 344. See Allison (1990), Wood (1984), Hill (1992, c­ hapter 7), Korsgaard (1996a,1996b), Kohl (2015), Ameriks (2000), and Engstrom (2009) as well as Chapter 12. 62 MM 6: 386. 63 MM 6: 386–​7. 64 Ross (2002, 26) offers a similar response to Kant’s claims about the internality of virtue. See also O’Neill (1975, 91), Korsgaard (1996a, 36), and Denis (1999). Johnson (2011, ­chapter 7) argues that, for Kant, it is impossible to perfect the rational agency of another person because someone’s capacity for rational agency counts as being improved only if the person herself chose to develop it. We can help people to cultivate their logical abilities, for example, but real improvement in their rational agency

Rational Nature  219 In sum, rational and reasonable people as such care about the development of rational nature in ourselves and others for its own sake. These interests of reason could or would lead us to endorse various presumptive laws to promote and not undermine rational development in everyone. Difficult issues remain about how exactly we can sharpen the rational abilities of human beings and cultivate our interests of reason, but practice and instruction likely help us to do so, while some mental illnesses and severe deprivation probably thwart these goals. The resulting presumptions that are justifiable to us in light of our interest of reason in rational development can conflict with one another and with other presumptions of reason. Limited time and energy often force us to choose between developing ourselves and helping others to perfect their rational abilities. Reading philosophy can be dull; Stoic exercises are annoying; teaching children takes patience many of us do not have; instructing college students sometimes hurts their feelings; and reflecting on how far we are from rational perfection can be dispiriting. Achieving complete rational perfection might not be possible for us, but we nonetheless presumptively should do what we can to help rational nature flourish in ourselves and others even if we are not, all things considered, required to do so on every occasion.

10.4  Exercising Rational Nature: Interests and Laws of Reason 10.4.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes a substantive final interest in the exercise of rational nature. As rational and reasonable people, we value the exercise of our own power of reason as well as the exercise of reason by other people. We care about thinking rationally, reflecting on rational ideas, governing ourselves by reason, and others doing the same. As Kant says, we oppose obstacles that interfere with the exercise of our reason, especially ones “whereby its use is nullified.”65 We have an interest of reason that our own reason and that of others operate as well as they can. To be exercised, our rational abilities must be sufficiently developed, but they need not be perfect. These abilities can also lie fallow and largely unused even when they are sufficiently realized. Someone who excels at logic or moral reflection

requires them to will the development of those abilities. One might wonder about young children, however, who have not yet become full rational agents but who, it seems, can benefit from instruction and discipline in ways that promote the development of their rational agency. Johnson’s proposed necessary condition on rational development, namely that the person herself must will the cultivation of her own capacities, is nonetheless compatible with having interests of reason in the rational development of all people (they just have to cooperate with us when we seek to improve their rational abilities). 65 L-​Anth 25: 549. See also CB 8: 115; Anth 7: 144.

220  Sovereign Re ason may not regularly use these rational abilities. We can choose to exercise some of our realized rational capacities, such as to think through a logic problem and reflect on difficult moral questions, but our rational abilities can also operate or fail to operate in ways that are outside the limits of our voluntary control, such as our rational abilities to formulate the laws of reason and to judge ourselves by them.

10.4.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason When we apply the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument to our substantive final interest of reason in the exercise of reason, we find various presumptive laws that we could or would rationally endorse on the basis of this interest. One such law that is justifiable to us presumptively requires us to use our reason whenever we can and to help others do so as well.66 As Kant says, the “maxim of sound reason” requires us “not to accept as valid any other rule in its use than this, [the one] whereby the most universal use of reason is possible, and whereby its use is facilitated.”67 We presumptively must not, Kant claims, “renounce completely all use of [our] own reason” by, for example, submitting passively to sayings, formulas, laziness, or the opinions of others.68 We presumptively should use our own power of reason rather than allow others to reason for us. And reason presumptively requires us to help others use their rational abilities and not to undermine or interfere with the exercise of anyone’s reason. As with our interests of reason in preserving and developing rational nature, our interest in the exercise of reason and the presumptive laws it favors receives further specification from facts about human beings and the circumstances we typically inhabit. Death can deprive us of the use of our rational abilities, while various things can hinder the development of those abilities.69 Our interests in exercising rational nature thus favor presumptive laws against killing people and against otherwise thwarting the realization of their rational abilities. These presumptive laws are supported by multiple interests of reason, in the former case by our interests in preserving, developing, and exercising the power of reason and in the latter case by our interests in developing and exercising that power. The state of our bodies can affect whether and how well we exercise our rational abilities. When our basic needs are met, when we are satiated, when we are not greatly distracted, and when we are well-​rested, we tend to be better at reasoning through certain problems and more willing to take them up than when we are



66 MM 6: 463; A477/​B505, A481/​B509. 67 L-​Anth 25: 549. 68 Anth 7: 200. See also L-​Anth 25: 553. 69 Eth-​C 27: 346.

Rational Nature  221 miserable or fatigued. Kant cites a good night’s sleep as rejuvenating to our power of reason so that we can use it effectively.70 Drugs and alcohol can interfere with the exercise of our rational abilities, for instance opium, which Kant suggests dulls our judicial abilities to assess ourselves by laws of reason.71 Mental impairments of various kinds, he says, can “take away the use of reason” by making people “not sufficiently aware of the rules of a sound mind.”72 They can also lead to “disorder and deviation from the rule of the use of reason,” such as in someone who imagines that he “conceives the inconceivable” and believes that “invention of the squaring of the circle, of perpetual motion, the unveiling of the supersensible forces of nature, and the comprehension of the mystery of the Trinity are in his power.”73 Our interests in the exercise of reason favor laws that presumptively require us to take care of our bodies and those of others so that they are conducive to the use of reason. We presumptively should avoid plying ourselves or others with drugs that interfere with the exercise of reason. And we presumptively ought to investigate and treat mental illnesses that make it difficult or impossible for people to exercise their rational abilities. Carelessness, laziness, fear, and prejudice can interfere with employing our abilities of reason. Our “[c]‌arelessness in the use of reason” might lead to mistakes when doing a logical proof or thinking through a tough moral problem.74 Laziness, especially when “the use of reason is difficult,” might lead us to mistakenly think that our investigation of something is “absolutely complete, so that reason can take a rest.”75 Our “lazy reason,” for example, leads us to “thrust the causes and bases of an event onto a universally accepted opinion,” such as fate or blind chance. In doing so, Kant says, we “thereby give up the use of reason.”76 We might fear using our own reason to question religious tenets or orders from our boss because of where these investigations might lead us or what others might do to us for pursuing them.77 We might find it annoying and troublesome to use our reason on some occasions and prefer the comforts that come from adopting the views of others about matters of religion, politics, metaphysics, or morality.78 We might find ourselves with prejudices of thought, such as habits or superstitions, that tend to “nullify the use of reason.”79 For instance, Kant claims that if we were to habitually believe, without further questioning or investigation, that “spirits, as beings whose nature we do not at all know, carry on their play in this world and had an influence on us,

70 L-​Anth 25: 553–​4. 71 Rel 6: 78; MM 6: 427, 438; Eth-​V 27: 633; Eth-​C 27: 346. 72 PMB 15: 947 and PMB 15: 945, respectively. 73 Anth 7: 215–​16. See also PMB 15: 942. 74 A680/​B708; Rel 6: 186; L-​Anth 25: 546. 75 L-​Anth 25: 547 and A689/​B717, respectively. 76 A689/​B717 and L-​Anth 25: 547, respectively. See also WIE 8: 35; L-​Anth 25: 549. 77 WIE 8: 35. 78 WIE 8: 35. 79 L-​Anth 25: 549. See also WIE 8: 36, 41; L-​Anth 25: 546.

222  Sovereign Re ason then the use of reason would cease.”80 Our interests of reason in exercising our rational abilities and in helping others do so favor laws that presumptively require us to overcome these and other obstacles as well as to avoid creating them for ourselves and others. We presumptively should not indulge carelessness and laziness in our children and students when it comes to thinking rationally. Nor should we make them afraid to use their own powers of reason or insist that they let us do their reasoning for them. In addition, we presumptively should establish freedom of thought so that we and others can exercise our reason without fear or other influences that tend to interfere with our reasoning. It is “an unjust demand,” Kant says, to require or demand that “a so-​called layman (Laicus) should not use his own reason in matters of religion . . . but instead should follow the appointed clergyman (Clericus), thus someone else’s reason.”81 Exercising our rational abilities well takes practice and instruction, while threats of violence can interfere with doing so. An “organized, rational being,” Kant says, “must retain the freedom to learn to use its powers.”82 Arguing with, reasoning with, and in other ways communicating with other people often help us to exercise our rational abilities.83 Freedom of expression, Kant argues, is often crucial for human beings to exercise our reason. Freedom of this kind, he says, is “a means of animating reason” and of “producing ratiocinating human beings.”84 We presumptively must have the “freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters.”85

10.4.3  Conflicting Interests and Laws Our interests of reason in the exercise of our rational abilities favor these and other presumptive laws that can conflict with themselves and ones grounded in other interests of reason. Some laws of reason might, strangely enough, presumptively forbid us from fully using some of our rational abilities.86 In some cases, there is not enough time to employ “slow and ponderous reason” to think through a problem that requires immediate action.87 Although we are presumptively required to reason through what we should do on every occasion, a soldier in the heat of the battle or a doctor in a natural disaster might be rationally

80 L-​Anth 25: 549. 81 Anth 7: 200. This passage seems to echo eighteenth-​century Northern German Protestant complaints against Catholics. 82 Ped 9: 464. 83 Anth 7: 280. 84 L-​Anth 25: 546. 85 WIE 8: 36. 86 WIE 8: 35–​42. 87 WOT 8: 145.

Rational Nature  223 required, all things considered, to resort to habit and trained instinct for the sake of furthering our shared interests of reason in protecting human life. We can also acquire obligations that presumptively require us not to fully use our reason in some ways or to express our own rational judgments in certain situations. We might have signed an employment contract that requires us to provide pastoral religious services in accordance with the values and principles of a religious denomination or to obey the chain of command.88 The proper functioning of certain institutions, such as political systems and armies, that are themselves supported by various interests of reason we have in freedom and preservation of life might presumptively forbid us from using our reason to raise basic questions about their history and legitimacy or to investigate and point out certain of their imperfections. Interests of reason in natural perfection, happiness, and respect might favor laws that sometimes presumptively require us, in educational settings, not to fully use our reason to criticize certain assumptions of a course we are taking or to question the methods of our instructors when doing so is likely to distract us or others from learning the material or to show disrespect for the instructor. These interests of reason might also favor presumptive laws that sometimes forbid teachers from fully exercising our powers of reason when we are lecturing and grading if these limits on the use of reason help us to teach the material more effectively to students who are still developing their rational abilities.89 These are complicated issues about how, if at all, the use of reason might be justifiably restricted by other presumptive laws of reason. Perhaps there should be opportunities to use our reason to question laws or orders in at least some situations and to reflect on how we should act when time is short. We might perhaps develop mechanisms for people to clarify when we are thinking and speaking in accordance with prescribed rules and responsibilities, such as in our capacity as a religious leader or soldier, and when we are using our reason in an unrestricted way. It might be that reason, all things considered, forbids merely mercenary uses of reason when we do not ourselves believe the premises or doctrines we are being asked to espouse, such as a salesperson who doubts the effectiveness of a medication but employs her rational abilities to peddle it.

10.5  Final Remarks: Creating Rational Nature Rational and reasonable people as such value rational nature for its own sake. Our power of reason is a reflexive power of mind that leads us to take substantive final 88 Anth 7: 200. 89 WIE 8: 37. See also Chapter 13 on happiness, Chapter 14 on natural perfection, and Chapter 15 on respect and expressions of respect.

224  Sovereign Re ason interests in the preservation, development, and exercise of reason in ourselves and all other people. These interests of reason, when combined with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability, ground presumptive laws that presumptively require us to preserve, perfect, and use our own power of reason and, as far as possible, help others do so as well. These simple applications of the SCR-​QJA highlight the explanatory role that interests of reason play in grounding a wide variety of presumptive laws of reason that concern our power of reason itself. These interests and laws are given additional content by various supposed facts about the kinds of things that tend to promote and undermine the embodied rational nature of human beings in our world. Some of the empirical or quasi-​empirical considerations we have discussed are fairly well-​established, such as that our reason ceases to exist when we die, while others are conjectures that merit further scientific and philosophical investigation. Our interests and accompanying presumptive laws in the protection, perfection, and employment of the power of reason in everyone can help to orient these investigations about how to promote and not undermine the rational nature of all people. Conflicts within and among these and other presumptive laws of reason are inevitable, but these investigations put us in a better position to analyze, resolve, or perhaps avoid some of the tensions. An important set of issues I have not discussed in this chapter concerns whether we have substantive final interests of reason in not only protecting, developing, and exercising the power of reason but also in creating rational nature. In human beings, we can bring rational and reasonable people into existence through reproduction. Common sense suggests that reason does not generally require us, presumptively or otherwise, to have children simply for the sake of creating rational beings. On the other hand, the prospect of a distant future, perhaps one brought about by climate change, in which human beings with the power of reason no longer exist seems quite unsettling because of the loss of reason itself from the world (assuming we are the only rational and reasonable beings in the universe).90 Perhaps our interests of reason in protecting, developing, and exercising rational nature extend to ensuring the continued existence of rational beings without directly favoring presumptive requirements to produce as many children as possible. Or maybe there is a substantive final interest of reason in creating (but perhaps not maximizing the number of ) beings with the power of reason that favors presumptive laws that are almost always overridden by other laws of reason, such as those that favor freedom of action. I will leave these difficult questions aside and instead mention a further intriguing kind of law that is favored by our interests of reason in protecting, developing, and exercising rational nature. In addition to presumptive requirements 90 See Rawls’ (2000, 16, 319–​21, 1999b, 8, 16–​20) discussion of reasonable hope as well as Cureton (2018b) and Sussman (2005, 2010).

Rational Nature  225 about the choices we should make regarding our own rational nature and those of others, these interests also favor laws that are directed to our powers of natural desire and feeling. We will return to this idea in Chapter 13. Although we cannot directly control what we want or how we feel, our power of reason presumptively requires us not to, as Kant claims, “despise those who have this capacity” to reason especially well.91 We presumptively should not hate people for their superior rational abilities but instead cherish their power of reason and the rational nature of everyone else as well.

91 L-​Anth 25: 553.

11

Knowledge, Error, and Enlightenment Rational and reasonable people seem to value the truth for its own sake.1 We care about understanding ourselves and the world around us, knowing how things are, facing reality, and getting to the heart of things. We are not content with illusions, fantasies, ideologies, mere appearances, and “just-​so” stories. Biases and prejudices in ourselves and others disturb us. We want to know all we can, to correct misconceptions, to look for the grain of truth in what others say, and to disabuse them of their errors of judgment. As the mathematician David Hilbert famously said: “We must know. We will know.”2 Someone who shows little or no curiosity about history or science, who remains willfully ignorant about various matters, who cannot be bothered to reflect on her own convictions, or who is content to go along with common opinions without further investigation does not seem to be fully living a life of reason. Lying to others or withholding the truth from them often appears to be contrary to reason, while sharing with them what we know often seems to accord with reason. It appears in many cases unreasonable to manipulate or brainwash people and to instill prejudices and habits of thought in them that interfere with their abilities to grasp the truth. A rational and reasonable person, it seems, would presumptively not use fear and intimidation to influence how others think about morality, religion, politics, or climate change, but instead approach them with reason and argument and encourage them to think for themselves.3 Reflective common sense thus suggests that, apart from the purposes that recognizing truths and falsehoods might serve, rational and reasonable people care about truth simply as such. Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in all people representing the truth, avoiding errors of judgment, and thinking for themselves. Without any ulterior motives, our rational nature itself drives us to expand our knowledge and understanding of all kinds, to discover and correct any mistaken beliefs we might have, and to employ our own cognitive powers of reflection and investigation. Our rational nature also leads us to want all other people to know and understand as much as they can, to avoid errors in belief, and to achieve enlightenment. Ignorance is sometimes blissful, and knowledge is often useful, but 1 This chapter draws on and extends Cureton (2021). 2 Quoted in Reid (1996, 192) from Hilbert’s retirement address at the Society of German Scientists and Physicians in 1930. 3 For a discussion of the differences between goading someone in their thinking, as the Spanish Inquisitors often tried to do, and guiding someone in their thinking, see Falk (1986).

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0011

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  227 our reason drives us to seek truth and enlightenment for their own sake in all people.4 Ascribing these substantive final interests in theoretical cognition to our power of reason allows for novel and promising ways of justifying some plausible requirements that concern not only how our cognitive capacities should operate but also how we should regard and treat one another. Rational and reasonable people who care about truth in everyone likely could or would rationally oppose lying and deception because of their concern for promoting knowledge as such. Rather than attempting to explain a prohibition on lying only by appeal to freedom, autonomy, happiness, or justice, lying is also presumptively contrary to reason because rational and reasonable people with intrinsic interests in knowledge could or would oppose stating what we believe is false with the intention of getting others to believe it is true. Our interests of reason in diminishing errors in judgment likely could or would also rationally lead us to support openness in scientific inquiry, educating children, taking the views of others seriously, and helping them to correct their mistakes. Rational and reasonable people likely could or would rationally support freedom of thought and speech out of our concern for ensuring that everyone thinks for themselves. These and other mental acts are presumptively required or prohibited by reason, according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument (SCR-​QJA), because rational and reasonable people could or would rationally endorse or reject them on the basis of their interests that all people acquire true representations, avoid errors in judgment, and achieve enlightenment. The main aim of this chapter is to explore the suggestion that we have epistemic interests of reason concerning truth, error, and enlightenment and to consider some presumptive laws of reason that they favor. Interpreting these interests of reason and applying them through the SCR-​QJA require us to consider deep and controversial philosophical issues about the nature of knowledge and how we can acquire it, what we can understand, the potential sources of error in our beliefs, what it is to think for oneself, and other epistemic matters. Different epistemological frameworks can interpret our epistemic interests of reason in different ways depending on how they conceptualize human cognition. For purposes of illustrating these epistemic interests of reason and the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) more generally, we will utilize and supplement the partial theory 4 Hill (1992, 88–​9) denies that, for Kant, we have epistemic interests of reason. Although I provide some evidence that Kant at times affirms such interests, he also sometimes denies that we have them (e.g. Eth-​C 27: 410–​11). Kant also sometimes claims that our epistemic interests of reason are conditional on, subordinate to, or means to moral interests of reason (Bxxxviii; A840/​B868; CPrR 5: 121; CPJ 5: 206, 442; G 4: 460n; Rel 6:43–​4, 185; Anth 7: 281n; L-​Log 24: 798; Eth-​C 27: 462). There might be ways of interpreting some of these passages and the contexts in which they appear so that they are consistent with the intrinsic interests I describe. Whether or not these substantive final interests of reason figure into the final and best interpretation of Kant’s entire philosophical system (if even such an interpretation is possible), they are at least a theme in Kant’s thinking.

228  Sovereign Re ason of the human mind that we discussed in Chapter 3. This conception of our mental powers is broadly Kantian, but leaves many details for further investigation. It nonetheless offers a plausible model for illustrating how interests of reason concerning truth, error, and knowledge might be specified for human persons and what kinds of specific laws of reason they might favor for us.

11.1  Representing the Truth: Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes a substantive final interest that all people acquire representations of what is true or real. Kant often suggests that this interest in expanding our knowledge and understanding is part of our rational nature. “[T]‌hrough the drive for cognition,” Kant says that our power of reason “effects the feeling of a need.”5 He also claims that our reason aims for “the systematic completeness of all cognitions,” that we have “a common interest in the investigation of truth,” and that scientific inquiry “is not merely allowed, but we are also summoned to it by reason.”6 We have interests of reason in extending and acquiring knowledge up to the point of full knowledge, including knowledge of things in the world, our own mental states, laws of nature, metaphysical principles, the nature and limits of our cognitive capacities, and the abilities, interests, and principles that are part of our rational nature.7 According to our partial theory of the human mind, human persons can acquire representations of what is true or real through our cognitive powers of sense, imagination, understanding, reason, and judgment. These mental powers allow us, in specific ways, to understand, have insight into, and know certain things. The nature of our cognitive powers places limits on what epistemic mental states we can come to have. Other creatures with different cognitive powers, such as nonhuman animals or God, might have different ways of coming to represent truth or reality.8 Our cognitive powers might also be different from how they are characterized by our partial Kantian theory of mind. Assuming that this general and incomplete model of human mental powers is nonetheless basically correct, our substantive final interest of reason in representing what is true or real can be interpreted as a substantive final interest in promoting what all human persons with our cognitive powers understand, have insight into, and know.9 Let’s consider these three forms 5 WOT 8: 140n. 6 A655/​B683, L-​Log 24: 828, and CPJ 5: 429, respectively. See also A644/​B672; A666/​B694; CPrR 5: 36, 120; Anth 7: 297; Ped 9: 449; L-​Log 24: 59. 7 A851/​B879, A643/​B671–​A644/​B672; A655/​B683; A798/​B826; A804/​B832; CPrR 5: 107; CPJ 5: 429; MM 6: 441; Eth-​V 27: 613–​14; L-​Anth 25: 551, 1301. 8 For discussions of Kant’s conception of God, see Byrne (2007), Brewer (2022), Winegar (2017), and Chignell (2007a). 9 A470/​B498; A643/​B671–​A 644/​B672; A655/​B683; CPrR 5: 120; Anth 7: 281n, 297; WIE 8: 39; L-​ Log 24: 55, 59, 73, 133, 828, 833, 835; Ped 9: 449.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  229 of human cognition, keeping in mind that our aim is not fully to interpret Kant’s exceedingly complicated epistemic framework but instead to illustrate our general interest of reason in representing truth and reality and to consider some presumptive laws of reason that it favors.

11.1.1 Understanding Human persons, according to our partial model of the human mind, can understand something in the world in two ways. One way is basically when something directly or indirectly affects our senses and our power of understanding organizes that data or the “forms” of sense themselves under a concept.10 A second way for us to understand something is for other people to provide us with credible testimony about their experiences of it.11 Cognitions of both kinds represent grounds for the truth of propositions. Seeing the hands on my watch and hearing the train conductor announce the time are both grounds I have for believing that it is 5 p.m.

11.1.2 Insight To have a kind of insight into something is to cognize it through our power of reason alone.12 Human persons lack the ability to have rational insight of this kind into the natural world or anything else besides the nature and operation of our power of reason itself. We cannot, for example, have rational insight into the existence of God or souls, but our reason allows us insight into its own abilities, interests, principles, and ideas. We can use our reason, for instance, to reflect on what reason requires of us and to conceive of ideas of God, freedom, and virtue.13 These insights represent grounds for the truth of propositions, such as that certain choices are morally wrong. Testimony from other people about insights they claim to have cannot provide us with rational insights, which can arise only within our own power of reason itself.14

10 See Aquila (1989), Kemp Smith (1962), Guyer (1987), Longuenesse (1998), Strawson (1966), and Watkins (2005). 11 CPJ 5: 284, 468–​9; Anth 7: 204; WOT 8: 141; Eth-​C 27: 448; L-​Log 24: 99, 830, 870. See Gelfert (2006, 2010) and Shieber (2010). 12 L-​Log 24: 133–​5; MM 6: 328. 13 L-​Anth 25: 549–​50. We cannot, however, fully apply these ideas to the natural world in ways that allow us to have experience of them. 14 L-​Log 24: 244, 870, 897.

230  Sovereign Re ason

11.1.3 Knowledge To explain in general terms how Kant conceives of knowledge, we must recall and supplement our assumed way of characterizing the human power of judgment from Chapter 3. Our power of judgment includes abilities to form, revise, assess, reflect on, investigate, infer, suppose, affirm, deny, and withhold assent to judgments or, as we tend to say, beliefs. Cognitive judgments connect a representation, such as ones from our senses, imagination, or understanding, with a concept, cognition, or other cognitive mental state.15 These are ordinary judgments in which we believe, for example, that the ground is wet, that triangles have three sides, that something cannot be in two places at once, and that murder is wrong. When we affirm a cognitive judgment, our power of judgment can be determined to do so by two kinds of mental states, namely those that represent grounds of truth and those that do not. Whether a belief we have counts as knowledge depends on which kind of mental state led us to affirm it. First, some mental states represent grounds for the truth of the proposition we affirm. A ground of a proposition is something that indicates that the proposition has some objective probability of being true.16 Grounds of propositions do not depend on our attitudes toward them but instead are “based on the constitution of a thing, or on a true property.”17 They include, for example, objects in the world, natural facts, laws of nature, mathematical postulates, logical principles, or anything else that makes a proposition more or less likely to be true. For example, Kant says that “a tree is connected with its fruit[;]‌the tree is the ground, the fruit the consequence” and “the ground for the dampness of the west wind, [is] the fact that it comes over the sea.”18 The grounds of a proposition determine “what ought to be held concerning it.”19 Human persons, according to Kant, can acquire mental states that represent grounds of truth only in the three ways we have discussed above. We can represent a ground of truth through our power of understanding by experiencing something. We can do so by receiving testimony from other people. We can also represent a ground of truth by having rational insight into it, although we can only represent grounds of this kind about the nature and operation of our power of reason itself. The understandings we come to have about the natural world through direct experience and reliable testimony and the rational insights we acquire about our 15 CPJ 20: 223–​4. 16 L-​Log 24: 194, 145; A293/​B249. Kant also discusses grounds of obligations at MM 6: 224, which are in part presumptive requirements of reason that underlie all things considered ones. 17 L-​Log 24: 143. 18 L-​Log 24: 43 and L-​Log 24: 145, respectively. 19 L-​Log 24: 145.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  231 rational nature itself through our reason represent veridical considerations that can affect whether or not we believe something. Second, our power of judgment can also be affected by mental states that do not represent grounds for the truth of the propositions we affirm. As we discussed in Chapter 3, some of these mental states are “subjective” in the sense that they depend on “the nature and the interest of the subject” who has them rather than simply represent grounds of truth.20 In human persons, our power of judgment can be affected by mental states that are not understandings or insights representing grounds for believing that something is true. We might be led to affirm a judgment as true, not by experiences, testimony, or rational insight, but instead by our feelings, desires, imaginings, and habits. Someone might judge that God exists, for example, because of the comfort this brings and her fear of eternal damnation.21 Our arrogance and vanity can lead us to falsely believe that other people know very little and that we know far more than we do.22 Our “falsely inventive power of imagination” might lead some people to “believe they are surrounded by enemies everywhere” and to “consider all glances, words, and otherwise indifferent actions of others as aimed against them personally and as traps set for them.”23 Repeatedly exposing children to religious dogmas can instill habits that lead them unreflectively to affirm these judgments in later life.24 And we might believe that a philosophical theory is true simply because people we admire have affirmed it.25 Our power of judgment stands at a kind of crossroads in which our veridical experiences, testimony, and insights lead us to believe certain true things, while our subjective desires, feelings, imaginings, and habits lead us not to do so. Unlike our power of choice, which is also often beset by opposing temptations from our power of reason to act rationally and from our powers of desire and feeling not to do so, our power of judgment is not free and is not for the most part under our direct voluntary control. Whether we believe something or not depends on the relative strengths of the mental states that affect our power of judgment, not directly on what we choose to believe. The two kinds of mental states that lead us to affirm or deny various judgments, namely ones that represent grounds of their truth and those that do not, also determine our degree of confidence in a judgment we make. We are convinced of a judgment if we are sure of it, we do not waver in affirming it, and we are disposed not to give it up. Otherwise, we are not convinced of the proposition that we instead

20 L-​Log 24: 70. See also L-​Log 24: 162; CPJ 5: 293; WIE 8: 36. 21 Rel 6: 179; Anth 7: 209–​10; L-​Log 24: 176. 22 L-​Log 24: 86, 94, 176. 23 Anth 7: 215. 24 WOT 8: 145; TP 8: 281. 25 L-​Log 24: 50, 78, 177; WIE 8: 35; A836/​B864.

232  Sovereign Re ason tenuously and weakly assent to. If we learn and understand a mathematical demonstration of a proposition, for example, then these mental states, which represent grounds for that proposition, might be so convincing to us that they lead us to affirm that judgment with great confidence. If we would suffer greatly by thinking that our child committed a heinous crime, then our love for him, which does not represent grounds for or against his culpability, might be so strong that we believe he is innocent “with more tenacity than one who knows it,” despite evidence we have to the contrary.26 Combining these ideas, someone knows a proposition, according to Kant, just in case there are grounds that indicate that the proposition is probably true; the person holds that proposition as true on the basis of mental states that represent grounds of its truth, namely experiences, testimony, or insight; and she affirms the proposition with conviction on the basis of mental states that represent grounds of its truth.27 A judgment we affirm might be true but not count as knowledge because we assent to it on the basis of feelings or habits of thought that do not represent grounds of its truth.28 Such a judgment is “false formaliter” but “correct materialiter.”29 We might also believe a true proposition on the basis of evidence but not know the proposition because our opposing natural desires and feelings lead us to affirm it tentatively rather than with conviction. Our cognitive powers can cooperate to give us knowledge of ordinary objects, mathematics, metaphysics, morality, and much else, but there are also limits on what we can know that arise from the nature of these powers in us. As we will discuss in the next section, errors in judgment result from the influence of nonveridical and often subjective mental states on our power of judgment. Biases, prejudices, wishful thinking, customs, habits, and much else can prevent us from believing and knowing the truth. In sum, our power of reason includes substantive final interests in all human persons with our cognitive powers coming to understand, have insight into, and know all that we can. Our reason drives us to expand our cognitions and experiences of the world, to seek testimony from other people, to reflect on the nature of our reason and what it requires of us, and to acquire beliefs that are not only true but well-​grounded in our experiences, acquired testimony, and insights. Before examining some presumptive laws of reason that are justifiable to us on the basis of this interest of reason, let’s consider our other interests in avoiding errors of judgment and in thinking for ourselves. 26 L-​Log 24: 852. 27 For further discussion of Kant’s epistemology, see Chignell (2007a, 2013, 2007b), Stevenson (2003), Guyer (1987), and Longuenesse (1998). My discussion of Kant’s conception of knowledge is especially indebted to Chignell’s work. 28 L-​Log 24: 170; CPJ 5: 294–​5; L-​Anth 25: 547–​8. 29 L-​Log 24: 170.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  233

11.2  Minimizing Error: Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes a substantive final interest in minimizing errors of judgment in all human persons. Kant at times suggests that our rational nature leads us to seek out mistaken beliefs that we or others affirm, to correct those errors, and to prevent ourselves and others from making them in the first place.30 How it is that human persons can err in our judgments depends on the nature of our cognitive powers and especially on the ways our power of judgment can be swayed by our desires, imaginings, habits, and other subjective and nonevidentiary mental states. Let’s continue examining our mental powers of understanding, reason, and judgment by considering two kinds of errors we can make in the beliefs we affirm. These might not be the only kinds of mistakes in belief that we are capable of, but they help us to characterize a more specific interest of reason that human persons have in all of us finding, correcting, and avoiding errors of these types. According to Kant, there are two main kinds of errors in judgment. One kind of error is affirming as true a proposition that is false or probably false. These errors, in Kant’s view, mostly occur because of the influence that nonevidential mental states, which do not represent grounds of truth, have on our power of judgment. For example, a hypochondriac imagines she has many symptoms and so erroneously judges herself to be sick. Our fondness for smoking leads us to judge that it is not unhealthy. Bribery and threats sway the judgments of a building inspector through her desire for money and security. Someone raised in an isolated religious environment erroneously believes that abortion and homosexuality are immoral because of a tendency to imitate the views that most people around her hold or that have been passed down through traditions, rituals, percepts, proverbs, and formulas. Feelings of anger lead us to falsely judge that someone harmed us, while feelings of love lead us to go along with someone’s far-​fetched conspiracy theories. Our desire not to do something leads us to mistakenly think that we cannot do it. Our goal to win the amateur tennis match leads us to think that our opponent’s last shot landed out of bounds. And feelings of despondency or shame lead us to judge that we are worthless or that we lack the same basic moral rights as others have. A second kind of error in judgment occurs when we mistakenly think that we know a proposition that we in fact affirm on the basis of nonevidentiary mental states, such as our desires or feelings. We may think we know that spirits exist because we mistake a hallucination or dream for an experience from our powers of sense and understanding. We may claim to know we will find gold on our trip when our judgment was actually determined by our desire to find gold rather than by any evidence we have that we will find it.

30 CPrR 5: 120; Anth 7: 281n, 297; Ped 9: 449; L-​Log 24: 828.

234  Sovereign Re ason The power of understanding in human persons supplies our power of judgment with mental states that represent grounds for the truth or falsity of propositions, in the form of either experiences or acquaintance with testimony. Our power of reason also supplies mental states that represent grounds of truth for propositions about the nature and operation of reason itself. If these three kinds of evidentiary mental states were the only ones that affected our power of judgment and “if there were no power active, if no power interfered,” then, according to Kant, “we would actually never err” in our judgments (L-​Log 24: 102). Our power of judgment, however, is often affected by mental states that do not represent grounds of truth, such as our feelings, desires, imaginings, and habits of thought. Kant endorses what we might call a “guise of the truth” thesis in which erroneous judgments almost always occur because mental states that do not represent grounds of their truth join with ones that represent such grounds “and make the latter deviate from their destination (Bestimmung) just as a moved body would of itself always stay in a straight line in the same direction, but starts off on a curved line if at the same time another force influences it in another direction.”31 As Kant says: “Since our understanding and reason judge objective, there are other subjective grounds of our judgment, which, however, do not agree with the understanding and reason,” so “error arises when we hold subjective grounds of our judgment to be objective ones.”32 In most errors in which our power of judgment runs together mental states that represent and do not represent grounds of truth, there is usually, according to Kant, still a “partial truth . . . , however hidden it is.”33 Our powers of understanding and reason are, Kant says, “in fact active in every error.”34 The experiences, acquaintances with testimony, and rational insights that arise from our powers of understanding and reason lead our power of judgment to judge truly, while our desires and other nonevidentiary mental states are almost always the sources of error in our beliefs. For example, if we discover some evidence that our child committed a crime but nonetheless judge that he is innocent because of our love for him, we at least “have used [our] understanding” or reason in some way to arrive at the judgment even though our power of judgment was misled by other influences.35 There is thus, in almost all cases, “no total error” in judgment.36 This is an important point that we will return to in the next section and in Section 11.4.2. 31 A294/​B350–​A295/​B351. 32 L-​Log 24: 103. There is room for disagreement about whether our minds include a kind of inertia toward truth, but as we shall see below and in Chapter 15, this supposed feature of us helps to capture and explain some commonsense ways of respecting and showing respect to people in how they think and what they believe. 33 L-​Log 24: 94. 34 L-​Log 24: 825. 35 L-​Log 24: 825. 36 L-​Log 24: 85. Kant admits the possibility of utterly absurd or false judgments but attributes them mostly to people with significant cognitive impairments or those who simply want to be contrarian. In most cases of error, our powers of understanding or reason led our power of judgment to judge truly, even though other mental states, such as feelings or imaginings, ultimately led us to affirm a mistaken judgment.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  235 As we discussed in Chapters 3 and 10, our cognitive powers themselves can be damaged by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and blows to the head. Some errors in judgment arise from impairments to our powers of understanding, reason, and judgment. When these powers are undamaged, the mistakes we make are largely or only the result of interference from our desires, feelings, habits, and other mental states that do not represent grounds of truth. In sum, human persons can err in what we believe by affirming false propositions and by mistakenly thinking we know things that we do not know. The source of these errors is usually not our powers of understanding and reason, which reliably supply us with evidence when they are unimpaired. These errors instead usually arise from biases and prejudices that affect our power of judgment. Without the interference of our desires, feelings, imaginings, habits, and other nonevidentiary mental states, we would almost always judge correctly, in Kant’s view. In light of this expanded conception of our human cognitive powers, our substantive final interest of reason in minimizing errors of judgment includes more specific interests in discovering, eliminating, counteracting, and avoiding these sources of error.

11.3  Thinking for Oneself: Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in each of us thinking for ourselves. We think for ourselves or think in an enlightened way when what we believe is not partially or wholly determined by mental states that do not represent grounds of the truth of the judgments we affirm and when, in addition, these nonevidentiary mental states do not influence whether or how we reflect on or investigate the truth of judgements we have or might have.37 Our interest of reason in enlightenment has some overlap with our interests of reason in representing what is true or real and in avoiding errors in judgment. Thinking for oneself, however, extends beyond what we believe to whether and how we reflect on and investigate our beliefs. Desires for ease and comfort, for example, might lead someone not to think much about whether climate change is real. Fear of what we might find can lead us to rest content with believing that our spouse is faithful. Overbearing colleagues might lead us to go along with what they say without taking the trouble to think the matter over ourselves. Kant describes failing to think for oneself as “passive” and “heteronomous” thinking.38 He suggests at times that we have an interest of reason in enlightened thinking, free from subjective influences on forming, denying, withholding, maintaining, reflecting on, and investigating judgements about what is true or 37 WIE 8: 36; CPJ 5: 294–​5; Anth 7: 200, 228–​9; L-​Anth 25: 1480–​1. 38 CPJ 5: 294.

236  Sovereign Re ason false.39 Combined with Kant’s “guise of the truth” thesis, in which our unimpaired powers of understanding and reason inevitably supply mental states that represent grounds of truth, the power of judgment in someone who thinks for herself operates according to veridical mental states instead of ones that do not represent grounds of truth. Given this way of characterizing enlightenment in human persons, our substantive final interest of reason in everyone thinking for ourselves can be interpreted as an interest in minimizing nonevidentiary influences on how we reflect, investigate, and judge.

11.4  Truth, Error, and Enlightenment: Laws of Reason The Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability holds that mental acts of competent rational persons are required (or permitted) by reason if and because those mental acts or things suitably related to them could or would be rationally endorsed by a set of rational people on the basis of their interests of reason. Our interests of reason in all people having true representations, avoiding errors, and thinking for ourselves provide some of the criteria for whether we could or would rationally endorse certain mental acts or things suitably related to them, such as universal laws of nature in which everyone acts in some way or universal normative principles that require or permit everyone to do so. Certain principles are laws of reason because they are in this way justifiable to rational people with interests of reason in truth, avoiding error, and enlightenment.40 Kant himself apparently utilizes something like this Qualified Justifiability Argument when he says, for example, that rational people could not agree to a universal law that hinders them or subsequent generations from “correcting old errors” in their thinking because such a law conflicts with their interests of reason in promoting “the vocation and end of humanity,” which includes enlarging cognition, diminishing errors in judgment, and thinking for oneself.41 Let’s consider what kinds of presumptive laws might be justifiable to rational and reasonable people in light of our interests of reason in acquiring true representations, correcting errors, and thinking for ourselves.

39 RevS 8: 14; WIE 8: 36. For interpretations of Kant’s conception of enlightenment, which tend to be somewhat narrower than what I present here, see Deligiorgi (2002), Schmidt (1992), and Merritt (2009). 40 As a reminder, principles of logic and prudence are laws of reason independently of what is justifiable to persons. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability itself is assumed to be a constitutive and higher-​order principle of reason according to which other principles, such as the ones we are discussing here about lying, disseminating knowledge, and so on, are laws of reason if and because they are justifiable to rational persons on the basis of our interests of reason. 41 TP 8: 305.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  237

11.4.1  Presumptive Laws Concerning Ourselves The first class of presumptive laws of reason we will consider are mainly directed to our own representations, errors, and enlightenment. Some of these presumptive laws that are favored by our epistemic interests of reason concern acquiring cognitions or experiences for ourselves. According to Kant, “one must always strive to broaden his learned cognition,”42 and “human understanding . . . has a natural law to extend its cognitions just as much as possible.”43 More specifically, we presumptively must not damage our cognitive powers and instead aim to cultivate them so that we can expand our understanding and knowledge, correct errors in our thinking, and pursue enlightenment. The laws favored by these interests presumptively require us to provide as much sensory input as possible to our power of understanding for it to organize under concepts by, for example, sharpening our senses and gathering, organizing, paying attention to, and remembering perceptions.44 They also presumptively require our power of understanding to develop and acquire as many concepts as possible, to remove any contradictions within them, to apply them to sensory inputs as clearly, distinctly, and exactly as we can, and to eliminate empty concepts that cannot apply to our sense perceptions or imaginings.45 These presumptive laws are, in the first instance, directed to our cognitive powers themselves and help to characterize how the mind of a fully rational and reasonable human person operates. We usually lack voluntary control over our powers of sense and understanding, but as we will discuss shortly, we can sometimes choose to act in ways that indirectly affect these cognitive powers. Apart from these ways of influencing our powers of sense and understanding, our reason legislates laws that directly concern how those powers presumptively should operate. These laws, and the others we will discuss, are merely presumptions that can be overridden by other such laws (pragmatic considerations, for example, might limit how many concepts people in various positions should acquire). They might also be ideals we should aspire toward without needing any excuse not to pursue them on various occasions. Other presumptive laws favored by our epistemic interests of reason concern acquiring credible testimony from other people about their experiences. These laws presumptively require us to seek out such testimony by, for example, reading books and communicating with others. They presumptively require us to assess the 42 L-​Log 24: 73. 43 L-​Log 24: 92. 44 A226/​B273; Anth 7: 168–​9, 214; L-​Log 24: 87. 45 A150/​B189–​A151/​B190, A220/​B267–​A221/​B268; Anth 7: 137–​8; L-​Log 24: 29–​31, 41, 56, 823. According to Kant, our power of understanding, by its nature, tends to perform these mental operations to some extent, but by legislating, enforcing, and adjudicating laws of these kinds, the power of reason spurs it to cognize the world as completely as it can.

238  Sovereign Re ason credibility of those who provide such testimony but also to trust them by assuming, unless we have good evidence to the contrary, that they can have experiences and that they are “honorable and upright until the opposite has been proved.”46 Some presumptive laws of reason have to do with acquiring rational insights. These laws presumptively require us to use our power of reason itself to analyze its own ideas, such as those of duty and virtue, to examine its own abilities and limits, to clarify its laws and principles, and to defend it from attacks.47 Our substantive final interests of reason in representing what is true or real, in minimizing errors in judgment, and in thinking for ourselves help to ground laws of reason that concern acquiring knowledge. Our power of judgment presumptively should gather knowledge, form judgments for our consideration that do not contradict themselves, and look for and assess any grounds that possible judgments may have. We presumptively should also affirm judgments whose grounds indicate that they are probably true, moderate our judgments by the strength of our available evidence, be “cautious enough in venturing a judgment,” and investigate whether judgments we already affirm are true or count as knowledge.48 As Kant says, “it is a duty first to show whence this or that incorrectness of human cognition has come, i.e., I must discover the source of the error” (L-​Log 24: 833). Reason presumptively forbids us from remaining willfully ignorant about any matter or succumbing to the “punishable prejudice . . . not to undertake any closer investigation concerning the whole thing.”49 We are presumptively required by reason to look for any hidden errors in our judgments, to reflect on what mental states and powers led us to affirm and maintain them, which in some cases is “a duty no one can escape if he would judge anything about things a priori,” and to abandon judgments that are probably false or that we do not have sufficient grounds to affirm.50 For example, if we believe that someone committed a crime, we presumptively should reflect on whether we concluded this “from objective evidence, or from the personal characteristics of the accused, demeanour, clothing, his other actions, etc.”51 Finally, some of these laws have to do with thinking for ourselves. Even when our judgments are true or probably true, “reason . . . wants grounds” and so favors laws that require us to think for ourselves by reflecting on whether we affirm them on the basis of mental states that represent or do not represent grounds for their truth and to search for any represented grounds from our own powers of understanding and reason that might make them true or false.52 We presumptively should not 46 L-​Log 24: 246. See also L-​Log 24: 244. For discussion of Kant’s account of credible testimony and our apparent obligations to trust others, see Gelfert (2006, 2010) and Shieber (2010). 47 WOT 8: 134; A777/​B805–​A778/​B806; CPrR 5: 107. 48 L-​Log 24: 832. See also A260/​B316–​A262/​B319; L-​Log 24: 83, 143, 160, 163; Rel 6: 89; Ped 9: 474. 49 L-​Log 24: 164. See also L-​Log 24: 67; MM 6: 387. 50 A262/​B319. See also L-​Log 24: 87, 105, 833. 51 Eth-​V 27: 567. For contemporary discussions of intellectual virtues and virtue epistemology, see Zagzebski (1996), Greco (2010), and Fricker (2007). 52 L-​Anth 25: 546. See also CF 7: 32–​3; L-​Th 28: 1115.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  239 make the “judgements of others into the determining grounds of one’s own” when it comes to claims about the nature of reason and what it requires of us.53 Reason also presumptively requires us to consider various matters “indifferently and impartially from both sides, to weigh grounds for it on one side and the grounds for its opposite on the other side, to hold the importance of all these various grounds up against one another properly, and to pronounce on their advantage.”54 Our interest of reason in thinking for ourselves favors these and other ways of pursuing enlightenment in which our judgments as well as our reflections and investigations are not determined by subjective mental states, such as our feelings or desires, that do not represent grounds of truth.

11.4.2  Presumptive Laws Concerning Others Our interests of reason in everyone acquiring true representations, correcting and avoiding errors, and thinking for ourselves also favor many presumptive laws of reason that mainly concern how we regard and treat other people. Our interests of reason that all people expand our understanding and knowledge, correct errors in our thinking, and pursue enlightenment favor laws that presumptively prohibit us from impairing the cognitive powers of others with, for example, drugs and violence. We presumptively should help them develop their cognitive abilities and provide opportunities to exercise those abilities. These interests of reason, according to Kant, favor “a duty to respect a human being even in the logical use of his reason.”55 Respecting people in this way presumptively requires us to judge, unless we have good evidence to the contrary, that we and other people possess cognitive powers of understanding, reason, and judgment. Reason presumptively requires us to believe that the power of judgment in ourselves and others is not necessarily determined by biases and prejudices but can be determined by evidential mental states.56 We presumptively must also, in most cases, refrain from believing that the erroneous judgments of others are utterly false or absurd but instead suppose that their “judgment must yet contain some truth and [to] seek this out.”57 After all, in light of the “guise of the truth” thesis we discussed earlier, someone’s powers of understanding or reason most likely supplied veridical mental states that had some influence even on their mistaken beliefs.



53 CPJ 5: 282. 54 L-​Log 24: 158–​9. 55 MM 6: 463. 56 RevS 8: 14. 57 MM 6: 463. See also L-​Log 24: 833.

240  Sovereign Re ason

11.4.3  Presumptive Laws Concerning Freedom of Thought Our epistemic interests favor laws that establish a presumptive right to freedom of thought in which we are forbidden from occasioning errors in the thinking of one another and from discouraging or preventing anyone from acquiring understanding, insight, or knowledge, correcting errors in their thinking, or reflecting on or investigating judgments they have or are considering.58 Rawls, by contrast, argues that freedom of thought is justifiable to rational and reasonable people as a social condition that enables us to develop and exercise our abilities of reason to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good.59 Our shared interests of reason in everyone thinking for themselves provide further grounds for rational and reasonable people to insist on a right to freedom of thought. It is, Kant says, “objectionable,” “illegal by reason of its form,” and “against . . . conscience” to violate this right.60 Attempting to “compel the judgement of others to our own view” through subjective mental states that do not represent grounds of truth, such as bribery, intimidation, threats, flattery, withdrawal of “certain civil advantages otherwise available to everyone,” or social pressure of other kinds is presumptively forbidden by reason because these actions are not justifiable to people who are concerned with expanding knowledge, correcting errors, and enlightenment in all people.61 We might, for example, instill in people an aversion to reflecting on or investigating certain judgments by telling them that God or the state will punish them for “the slightest deviation from certain propositions” and for “any investigation” into those judgments so that “they will not trust themselves to allow a doubt to arise even in thought alone regarding these propositions imposed on them.”62 In a metaphysical or religious dispute, we might “cry high treason . . . [and] call together the public . . . as if they were to put out a fire.”63 We might implant in someone “false representations which are repugnant to reason” by, for example, telling “stories about the appearances of spirits and ghosts” or plying him with hallucinogens in ways that make him “incapable of ordering his sense representations according to laws of experience.”64 We might try to produce in others strong feelings of awe, beauty, love, anger, or fear that put them “into a condition most unsuitable for judging,” as for example a preacher who rouses feelings of sublimity in order to secure the assent of his flock or a defendant who attempts to corrupt a judge by his tears.65 We might attempt to encourage habits of 58 MM 6: 328; Anth 7: 229; 744/​B772. 59 Rawls (1999c, 181–​3). 60 CF 7: 29, L-​Log 24: 170, and Rel 6: 188, respectively. 61 Eth-​C 27: 409 and Rel 6: 133–​4, respectively. See also A746/​B774–​A747/​B775; CF 7: 29; Anth 7: 210, 272; L-​Log 24: 59. 62 Rel 6: 133. 63 A746/​B774–​A747/​B775. 64 L-​Anth 25: 546 and Anth 7: 170, respectively. 65 L-​Log 24: 842. See also L-​Log 24: 808.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  241 judgment in other people, especially in children, that lead them to merely imitate the judgments of others, such as educators who “know how to ban every examination of reason by their early influence on people’s minds, through prescribed formulas of belief accompanied by the anxious fear of the dangers of one’s own investigation.”66 And “the judge is forbidden to accept any kind of presents, because he will thereby be tempted, quite involuntarily, in the case before him, to pay close attention to all the grounds that tell in the donor’s favour, and to discount the evidence against him.”67 It is, Kant says, also “unjust” and “contradictory to the worth of humanity” to demand that someone affirm our judgment about a moral or other nonempirical matter simply because we affirm it.68 It would be a “crime against human nature” for one age to “conspire to put the following one into such a condition that it would be impossible for it to enlarge its cognitions.”69 Human cognition “must not be forbidden the means by which alone it can distinguish the true from the false, and by which it cannot just enrich but also correct its cognitions.”70 These and other kinds of infringements to a presumptive right to freedom of thought, which is grounded in the interests of reason we all share in acquiring knowledge, correcting errors, and enlightenment, “violate the sacred right of humanity and trample it underfoot,” are “opposed to the humanity in [our] own persons and so to the highest right of the people,” and “[are] really theft of the first rights and of the greatest advantages, of the human race, and especially of the human understanding.”71

11.4.4  Presumptive Laws Concerning Communication In human persons, “a great means” and perhaps “the only means” of gathering testimony from others, “testing the correctness of our own judgments,” “uncovering, becoming aware of, and correcting” our errors, and clarifying our insights and concepts is to communicate with other people.72 Communicating with others often gives us new materials and stimulates our cognitive powers.73 Our interests of reason in acquiring true representations, correcting errors, and thinking for ourselves, combined with these supposed facts, favor presumptive laws that concern communication.74 66 WOT 8: 145. See also TP 8: 281; CF 7: 34. 67 Eth-​V 27: 567. 68 Anth 7: 200 and Eth-​V 27: 706, respectively. 69 WIE 8: 39. 70 L-​Log 24: 93. 71 WIE 8: 29, MM 6: 328–​9, and L-​Log 24: 151, respectively. 72 Anth 7: 129, L-​Log 24: 874, Anth 7: 129, and L-​Log 24: 151, respectively. See also WOT 8: 144. 73 Anth 7: 280. 74 Deligiorgi (2002) argues for a closer connection between enlightenment and communication, namely that the former is constitutive of or a necessary condition for the latter.

242  Sovereign Re ason An especially effective way for human persons to acquire understanding and knowledge, to identify and correct errors in our judgments, and to pursue enlightenment is, Kant claims, to “think oneself (in communication with human beings) into the place of every other person.”75 Putting “oneself in the place of another” and thinking “the matter over from another point of view” is often an effective way of “abstracting from the limitations that contingently attach to our own judging,” namely nonevidentiary mental states such as feelings, desires, habits, and other peculiarities of our own minds.76 From this perspective, we can “see if the grounds that are valid for us have the same effect on the reason of others.”77 Reflecting on our own judgments from many such standpoints in dialogue with others helps to “protect oneself well against false judgments,” identify errors in our judgments, and determine whether we know something.78 Other people, however, might be in the grip of biases and prejudices themselves, so taking up the standpoints of others is not always an effective means of correcting our own errors. Ideally, our epistemic interests of reason favor laws that presumptively require us to take up a “universal standpoint (which [we] can only determine by putting [ourselves] into the stand-​point of others)” in which we abstract completely from nonrepresentational mental states and reflect on and affirm judgments accordingly on the basis of our evidentiary mental states of experience, testimony, and insight.79 We presumptively should test our judgments by the judgments of other people to see whether they agree with us or not, which “is a subjectively-​necessary touchstone of the correctness of our judgments generally.”80 When we compare our judgments to those of others, we are often more likely to recognize when we are mistakenly taking “something merely subjective (for instance, habit or inclination)” for a ground of truth.81 Our epistemic interests of reason favor laws that presumptively require us not to hide our experiences, insights, and knowledge from other people, not to “conceal the weak points” in our judgments or arguments, and to “openly [admit] one’s doubts” about them.82 They presumptively forbid us from intentionally causing errors in the beliefs of others by lying to or deceiving them.83 “If a man 75 Anth 7: 228. O’Neill (1989, 34) argues that any full exercise of reason must be publicizable even if not always publicly known or understood by others. 76 L-​Anth 25: 1480 and CPJ 5: 294, respectively. 77 CPJ 5: 294. 78 L-​Anth 25: 1480. 79 CPJ 5: 295. See also WOT 8: 146; A738/​B766; A752/​780. 80 Anth 7: 219. See also Eth-​C 27: 411. 81 Anth 7: 219. 82 Eth-​C 27: 462 and MPT 8: 266, respectively. 83 Eth-​V 27: 700; A749/​B777–​A750/​B778. Shieber (2010) notes a similar line of argument, which is focused on the purposes of language, for why, in Kant’s view, some kinds of lying and deception are immoral. Shieber’s argument, along with the ones I provide, is consistent with other arguments Kant gives against lying, such as ones that focus on freedom or respect for persons as such. See also Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapters 5, 12), Buss (2005) Wood (2008, c­ hapter 14), O’Neill (1989, c­ hapter 2), and Hill (1991,

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  243 publishes a false report,” for example, Kant claims that he “offends against mankind, for if that were to become general, the human craving for knowledge would be thwarted.”84 We also, Kant says, have “natural obligations” to be sincere and candid: “everyone must frame only such utterances as can coexist and agree with the greatest consciousness of truth and the total absence of any consciousness of the opposite.”85 Our epistemic interests of reason favor laws that presumptively require us to instruct other people, including children, in what we understand, have insight into, and know and to persuade them of what we know by adducing grounds for or against the truth of those propositions.86 We presumptively should uncover any errors in the judgments of others.87 If we discover that someone affirms a false judgment, we are presumptively required to investigate what led him to commit that error, to “make distinct enough . . . the means by which he has been misled into holding this or that to be true,” “to prove to him the falsehood,” and to refute his judgment to others for whom its falsity is not obvious.88 We presumptively should do all of this “to help one another mutually and in friendship [and] to support each other.”89 Finally, our epistemic interests of reason favor laws that establish a presumptive right to freedom of communication, which is the liberty to “think as it were in community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts, and who communicate theirs with us” without hindrance.90 Infringements of this right include certain uses of force and “being decried as a malcontent and a dangerous citizen” for speaking one’s mind.91 According to Kant, someone who violates this “sacred right of humanity” is “to be regarded as the worst enemy of the extension of human cognition, indeed, of men themselves.”92

c­ hapter 3). Wood, for example, focuses on the ways in which lying expresses disrespect for the humanity of others as well as our own humanity. Hill argues that lying often disrespects the autonomy or freedom of others. O’Neill argues that lying is incompatible with the full use of our rational capacities. Korsgaard points out ways in which lying undermines political systems of various kinds. My argument against lying is more straightforward than these because it appeals to epistemic considerations directly: We have interests of reason in knowledge as such, which makes a presumptive prohibition on lying something that all of us could or would rationally endorse. 84 Eth-​C 27: 447. 85 Eth-​V 27: 699. 86 L-​Log 24: 86, 151, 869. 87 L-​Log 24: 869. 88 L-​Log 24: 833–​4. See also MM 6: 463; L-​Log 24: 869. 89 L-​Log 24: 85. 90 WOT 8: 144. See also A752/​B780; TP 8: 304; Anth 7: 128–​9; WIE 8: 39; WOT 8: 144; L-​Log 24: 93; CF 7: 20; Rel 6: 133–​4. 91 A752/​780; See also WOT 8: 144. 92 WIE 8: 39 and L-​Log 24: 150–​1, respectively. See also L-​Log 24: 874.

244  Sovereign Re ason

11.5  Final Remarks: Conflicts Our interests of reason in all people representing what is true or real, in minimizing errors in judgment, and in enlightenment favor a wide range of presumptive rational requirements. Complete explanations for why lying and manipulation are contrary to reason, why freedom of thought and speech accord with reason, and why the other laws we discussed are rational and reasonable might include other considerations than the ones we have adduced in this chapter. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason, however, offers a plausible and direct route to explaining these presumptive requirements by appealing to substantive final interests of reason in truth as such. Our epistemic interests of reason and the presumptive requirements that they favor can conflict with themselves, one another, and other interests or laws of reason. Striving after knowledge might expose us to errors in judgment, while purifying ourselves of errors might prevent us from acquiring knowledge.93 Some kinds of knowledge might significantly diminish our happiness, make it difficult for us to form close personal attachments, diminish the self-​respect of others, or undermine the stability of governments. Errors of certain kinds can promote sociability when we, for example, overlook the faults of others. Looking too closely at the origins of a state or the land it occupies might undermine the stability of a just or nearly just society.94 Pursuing enlightenment and studying science, math, and history can be arduous and interfere with our other pursuits, such as those of helping others or promoting justice.95 Other ways of enlarging our cognitions, correcting errors, and seeking enlightenment, such as experiencing far-​flung parts of the world, reading the phone book, correcting our mistaken judgments about world capitals, and imparting our knowledge of early twentieth-​century baseball statistics, might sometimes seem pointless. These pursuits nonetheless serve our epistemic interests of reason to some extent even though presumptions requiring us to do these things (or presumptive ideals favoring them) are almost always defeated (or counteracted) by laws favored by other interests of reason that presumptively require us to “use our capacities economically, so that we can apply them to important things.”96 Another kind of conflict that can arise between our epistemic interests and our other interests of reason concerns whether or how we should point out and attempt to correct the errors in judgment of other people. Doing so might diminish a person’s sense of self-​worth, offend him, cause him shame or embarrassment, and undermine central values or convictions that give a point or purpose to his 93 L-​Log 24: 817. See also Williams (1985, 57–​8). 94 MM 6: 371. 95 L-​Log 24: 70. Keller (2004) and Stroud (2006), for example, note apparent conflicts between norms of friendship and some of the presumptive laws I have described. 96 L-​Log 24: 80.

Knowledge, Error , and Enlightenment  245 life, or damage our relationships with him. If so, then our interests of reason in respect, happiness, and solidarity might favor laws that presumptively require us to ignore, tolerate, moderate our judgments about, or avoid mentioning errors we find in someone’s beliefs even though we are also presumptively required to point out and help him to correct his mistakes. We might instead be required by reason, all things considered, to focus on “where he is right” and look for the grain of truth in what he says.97 Kant even claims that our interests of reason themselves can directly affect our power of judgment and lead to mistakes in judgment. Insights from our power of reason about, for example, duty and virtue are always veridical, but our interests of reason themselves do not represent grounds of truth. Our interests of reason in explanation, for example, might lead us to believe that there is a first cause even though we cannot know that such a cause exists. Our formal interests of reason and our substantive interests of reason in happiness might lead us to think that God exists so that a perfect world of happiness matched to merit is possible. These and other interests of reason, according to Kant, are significant sources of error that can lead us to overstep the boundaries of experience through supposed inferences or rational insight that are meant to provide us with empirical knowledge that we cannot possibly have.98 As we discussed in Chapter 9, one way of resolving this tension is through laws of reason that presumptively require us to assume or suppose certain things, such as that there is a first cause and that God exists, without believing them. A more complete theory of reason would address these and other conflicts among our epistemic and nonepistemic interests of reason. In its current form, the SCR merely holds that the presumptions we have discussed in this chapter are relevant considerations in determining what reason, all things considered, requires of us in various situations. There are inevitable limitations to our cognitive powers, which can be seriously impaired, tend to mature with age, but also to decline after a certain point, vary in how well they function across different people, and encounter obstacles from our other mental powers. We cannot understand, have insight into, or know everything. Nor can we avoid or prevent all errors in our judgments or perhaps even think entirely for ourselves on all matters. I have suggested that the power of reason in each of us nonetheless includes interests in acquiring knowledge of all kinds, correcting errors in our thinking, and seeking enlightenment. Our reason leads us to care about these things for their own sake, independently of what we might otherwise desire or choose. We examined these interests in terms of Kantian

97 L-​Log 24: 828. See also L-​Log 24: 85; Eth-​V 27: 645; Eth-​C 27: 314). For further discussion of Kant’s social epistemology, see Gelfert (2010) and O’Neill (2002). 98 A642/​B670, A797/​B825. For further discussion of Kant’s conception of faith or Belief and the practical postulates, see Chignell (2007a, 2013).

246  Sovereign Re ason conceptions of knowledge, error, and enlightenment. We explored how they can combine with a principle of justifiability to generate a wide variety of principles that presumptively require us, for example, to respect freedom of thought and communication, to avoid deceiving and manipulating other people, to acquire and carefully consider facts, and to think for ourselves.

12

Freedoms Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in promoting and protecting five distinct kinds of freedom that relate to our power of choice. According to our partial and provisional model of the human mind from Chapter 3, our power of choice is what allows us to intend to do things, to set ends, to adopt maxims, to form loyalties, to affirm principles, and otherwise to choose. Our choices can be simple intentions, or they can be part of complicated systems of loyalties, principles, purposes, values, and other commitments that we choose to endorse and pursue. Our power of choice is special because, we are assuming, it is the only negatively free mental power we have. Unlike our other powers of mind, our power of choice is not caused or determined to its characteristic mental acts. We are the sole originators and authors of our intentions, ends, maxims, and other choices, and we could always have chosen otherwise than we did. Choices are necessarily uncaused causes that might have been influenced by our feelings and desires but are never determined by them or anything else.1 Choosing occurs entirely within our own minds, while our choices often make things happen in the world by causing us to do what we chose to do. The negative freedom of our power of choice as an uncaused cause can be interpreted as a metaphysical claim, a practical assumption we must make about ourselves and others as rational and reasonable people, or in other ways, but we will continue to leave aside this longstanding controversy in Kantian philosophy and instead simply assume that our power of choice is negatively free.2 A significant drawback of regarding our power of choice as negatively free is that doing so seems to conflict with several plausible kinds of freedom that we affirm and value in reflective common sense. If our choices are necessarily free in the negative sense that they are undetermined, it appears impossible to force or coerce anyone to choose anything.3 No matter how much violence or torture we employ, 1 G 4: 446–​8; MM 6: 213–​14, 226; CPrR 5: 44, 97–​8; CPJ 5: 404; CB 8: 112; RevS 8: 13–​14; Eth-​V 27: 494, 570; Eth-​C 27: 267, 344. Kant mentions a different mental power of choice that some nonhuman animals have. Choices made with this mental power are not negatively free but are instead “determined only by inclination (sensible impulse, stimulus)” (MM 6: 213, Kant’s italics). The mental power of choice in human persons, by contrast, “is a choice that can indeed be affected but not determined by impulses, and is therefore of itself (apart from an acquired proficiency of reason) not pure but can still be determined to actions by pure will” (MM 6: 213, Kant’s italics). Any choice we make is a negatively free choice (Eth-​C 27: 267). 2 See CPJ 5: 468. See also Chapter 3 as well as Allison (1990), Wood (1984), Hill (1992, c­ hapter 7), Korsgaard (1996a,1996b), Kohl (2015), Ameriks (2000), and Engstrom (2009) for discussions of Kant’s conception of negative freedom. 3 See Albritton (1985).

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0012

248  Sovereign Re ason how far we go in threatening or bribing, or how extensively we defraud, deceive, or manipulate, we can never cause anyone to make any choice. Whether someone chooses to give in is entirely up to them because nothing, not even the most extreme pain, can take away their negative freedom to choose one way or the other.4 From the perspective of reflective common sense, however, torture, threats, fraud, and severe pain make us less free than we would be without them. In addition, when we are shackled or shoved, our freedom seems to be diminished, yet our freedom to make any choices whatsoever in these circumstances remains entirely intact if our power of choice is free in the negative sense of an uncaused cause. We often think of some choices as less than fully free because they were made unwillingly, according to misinformation, out of compulsions, addictions, or habits, or in a state of extreme drunkenness or distress. All of these choices, however, were free in the negative sense because nothing caused us to make them. It also seems that someone is not fully free if she endorses a value or principle simply because other people affirm it. Reflective common sense suggests that such a person is not choosing for herself even though, according to our assumed model of the human mind, every choice we make is necessarily our own. The aim of this chapter is to explore five kinds of freedom that relate to our power of choice, to examine corresponding interests of reason we have in promoting and protecting these freedoms in everyone, and to explore some presumptive laws of reason favored by these interests. Each type of freedom, despite appearances, is compatible with our negative freedom to make choices without being caused or determined to do so. The interests of reason we have in promoting these freedoms support presumptive laws that fit well with ordinary ideas about the importance of promoting and protecting the freedom of everyone. Rational human persons who care about these freedoms in themselves and others could or would endorse laws of reason that presumptively prohibit various kinds of coercion, violence, deception, and manipulation, as well as ones that presumptively require us to break any habits we have, to exercise self-​control, to choose for ourselves, and to develop and maintain our own character. The interests and laws of reason that concern our own freedom and that of others can conflict with themselves and with other interests and laws of reason, such as when one person’s actions interfere with those of another or when someone freely chooses to violate a presumptive law of reason favored by other interests of reason. We will not try to adjudicate these conflicts or to fully characterize all interests of reason we have in freedom. We will instead highlight several distinct kinds of freedom, explore some interests of reason we have in them, consider some plausible presumptive laws of reason that they favor, and so suggest how negative freedom of choice is compatible with our ordinary ways

4 We cannot take away anyone’s negative freedom at least, as we shall see, when the person’s power of choice exists and is not substantially impaired.

Freedoms  249 of thinking and speaking about the reasonableness of promoting and protecting freedom of various kinds in ourselves and others.

12.1  Negative Freedom: Interests and Laws of Reason 12.1.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in promoting and protecting the negative freedom of choice of all people. Negative freedom of choice is the ability we have been discussing to make choices without being determined or caused to do so by anything. Choices we make, such as intending to do or not do something or endorsing or rejecting a principle, are necessarily free in this negative sense. Nothing can cause us to make a choice, and we are the authors and first causes of our own choices. It might seem incoherent or at least odd to claim that our power of reason includes interests in promoting and protecting negative freedom of this kind. Our power of choice simply includes the power to make negatively free choices. There is no point, it might seem, in promoting or protecting our negative freedom of choice because every choice we make is, by necessity, negatively free, and it is not possible for our power of choice to be caused or determined by anything. Our negative freedom of choice, however, is not guaranteed, because the power of choice in human persons, like our other powers of mind, can be unrealized, destroyed, or unexercised. We might not develop the ability to make choices at all. We can lose this ability. And we can also fail to use it. Any choice we succeed in making is necessarily a negatively free choice that was not determined by anything. However, we might lack the ability to make choices in the first place, or we might just let certain things happen without using our power of choice one way or the other. In light of the ways our mental power of choice can be impaired, destroyed, or unutilized, our interest of reason in negative freedom of choice includes more specific interests in developing the power of choice in everyone so that we can all make choices, in not damaging or impairing anyone’s power of choice in ways that prevent them from making choices, and in exercising our own power of choice. Let’s explore these three specific interests of reason in promoting and protecting negative freedom of choice in human persons.

12.1.2  Developing the Power of Choice Our power of choice can be undeveloped. It might be just a latent capacity in some people who lack the realized ability to make choices of any kind. Infants, for example, do not have a sufficiently developed power to make choices. According to

250  Sovereign Re ason our partial model of the human mind, they lack the realized ability to form intentions, set ends, adopt maxims, or otherwise choose in any way.5 When our power to make choices is realized, we can make choices in a negatively free way without being caused to do so by anything. Otherwise, we cannot make any choices at all and so lack negative freedom of choice. We might still act in various ways, but these acts are not voluntary acts. They are instead caused by desires, feelings, instincts, or other factors apart from any choices we made. The physical and mental acts of infants, such as crying or moving, result from natural causes rather than from their own choices, which they cannot make. Most infants will eventually develop the realized power to make choices and so become negatively free, but until then, infants cannot be the authors or first causes of their own physical and mental acts. Some people might have certain kinds of mental impairments that interfere with the development of their power of choice, while others with severe mental disabilities might never acquire the realized ability to choose and so might never become negatively free. Using our terminology from Chapter 4, involuntary physical and mental acts can be attributed to us as things we did, but these acts cannot be imputed to us as things we freely chose to do when we lack the realized power to choose at all. Our power of reason includes interests in developing each person’s power to make choices and in not interfering with the realization of this power. Interpreting and applying these interests of reason requires further investigation into the conditions that promote or undermine the development of the power of choice in human persons as well as into the mysterious transition from being determined by causal forces in early childhood to being authors of our own choices in adulthood. We might find, for instance, that certain kinds of disease, psychological disorder, physical abnormality, malnutrition, or abuse might interfere with or prevent people from acquiring the realized ability to choose. If so, then our interest of reason in developing negative freedom in everyone favors presumptive laws in favor of preventing or ameliorating these conditions as well as ones that perhaps favor, for example, certain parenting and educational strategies that encourage the development of the power of choice in those who do not yet have it.

12.1.3  Impairing the Power of Choice Our power of choice can be destroyed or impaired in ways that prevent us from making choices. Someone lacks “the use of his freedom,”6 Kant says, if he is very intoxicated, feverish, dizzy, mentally impaired, or brain-​damaged.7 We might 5 CB 8: 112; Rel 6: 38. 6 CPrR 5: 98. 7 CPrR 5: 98; Anth 7: 213–​14; Eth-​V 27: 559; Eth-​C 27: 288, 291.

Freedoms  251 also be unable to make choices when we are sleeping, in a coma, stunned by electric shock, having a severe seizure, or panicking. According to Kant, “a physical oddity of the soul’s organs” might even be “the cause of an unnatural transgression of the law of duty.”8 In these circumstances, we lack negative freedom of choice because we are incapable, for a time or permanently, of making choices at all. We might also lack other realized mental abilities, such as to understand or focus on our situation, but our power of choice itself is sometimes incapacitated or entirely destroyed. Any physical or mental acts we perform in these conditions, such as yelling out in pain or knocking over a lamp, are not our own doing. These involuntary acts do not arise from free choice but are instead causally determined.9 Our interest of reason in negative freedom includes more specific interests in not destroying or impairing anyone’s power of choice. These interests favor presumptive laws against using drugs that take away our realized ability to choose. They favor presumptive prohibitions against killing other people or harming them in ways that damage their power of choice.10 Rational people who value negative freedom in human persons could or would also favor presumptive requirements to ameliorate physical or mental conditions that damage the power of choice in anyone. Specifying how drunk someone must be for her to lose the ability to make choices at all, what sorts of brain damage destroy our power of choice, which psychiatric or neurological conditions substantially impair that ability, and otherwise what factors take away our power of choice requires additional investigation. For example, if someone with a significant psychological disorder kills several people, Kant says that “physicians and physiologists in general are still not advanced enough to see deeply into the mechanical element in the human being so that they could explain, in terms of it, the attack that led to the atrocity,” while “forensic medicine (medicina forensis)—​when it depends on the question of whether the mental condition of the agent was madness or a decision made with sound understanding—​is meddling with alien affairs.”11 Philosophical and psychological reflection are both needed to determine whether certain people had the realized power to make choices when they acted in some way or whether they instead lacked that ability due to intoxication, mental disorder, debilitating duress, brain trauma, or other factors.

8 Anth 7: 213–​14. In such cases, we violate laws of reason without being responsible for doing so, for we were not the originating cause of our offending mental act. As we discussed in Chapter 11, laws of reason can apply to mental acts, such as judgments or beliefs, that are not under our voluntary control. 9 Eth-​C 27: 288; Eth-​V 27: 559. 10 Eth-​C 27: 346. 11 Anth 7: 214.

252  Sovereign Re ason

12.1.4  Using the Power of Choice When our power of choice is sufficiently developed and unimpaired, human persons are, according to our model of the human mind, negatively free to choose in any way whatsoever without being determined to do so. It is possible for us, however, not to exercise this realized power on some occasions.12 Sometimes we make no choices at all. If, for instance, I am asked to teach a new course, I might choose to do so or I might choose not to do so. I might also fail to choose one way or the other, perhaps because I forgot about the request, I got distracted, I am ambivalent, or time ran out before I got around to deciding. Not choosing to do something is different from choosing not to do it. Failing to choose is the passive absence of choice, while choosing for or against something is a mental act of our power of choice itself. We exercise our power of choice by choosing to set an end or not to set an end, choosing to adopt a maxim or to reject it, choosing to do something or not to do it, or choosing to stop something from occurring or to allow it to happen. Our power of choice is inactive when we do not make choices. When we are daydreaming or depressed, for example, we might simply allow various things to happen without choosing to impede, allow, or encourage them. Our power of choice can simply remain idle while events occur around us. When we do not exercise our power of choice, we might still act in various ways. These physical or mental acts are involuntary because they result from other causes besides our choice to do them (we will return to the nature of voluntary and involuntary acts in Section 12.4 ).13 I might involuntarily startle at a loud and unexpected crescendo without making any choice at all about whether to move my body in that way. Our involuntary physical and mental acts are sometimes beyond our control because we could not stop them anyway by choosing not to do them. In other cases, we might act in involuntary ways that we did not choose to do or choose not to do even though we could have voluntarily refrained from such acts if we had exercised our power of choice. Our cardiac function and respiration, for example, usually occur involuntarily apart from any choices we make concerning them.14 We cannot stop our heart just by choosing to do so, but we often can stop our breathing for a short period until we cannot help but take in air. Many of our physical and mental acts, including some that are commonly described as compulsions, addictions, reflexes, and tics, occur without involvement from our power of choice, even though we could stop many of them from happening by choosing to do so. Habits are an interesting and illustrative case of failing to exercise our power of choice. 12 CB 8: 112; Eth-​V 27: 657. 13 Eth-​V 27: 626. 14 L-​Anth 25: 1284.

Freedoms  253 A habit of one kind is a causal tendency in us to act in some nonvoluntary way without any input from our power of choice. Habits of this kind arise from having repeatedly performed physical or mental acts of that type in the past.15 These causal habits, as I will call them, might include morning routines, offering pleasantries, using the same series of clicks to navigate a website, fastening our seat belt when we get into a car, compulsively stealing, and using filler phrases in our speech.16 When we act out of a causal habit, we do not exercise our power of choice—​we do not choose to act in that way or choose not to act in that way. Our involuntary act is, Kant says, the “natural consequence” of a “physical inner necessitation,” rather than the result of a choice we made.17 The idea of a habitual choice is incoherent because choices, according to our model of the human mind, are never caused by anything. Some physical and mental acts, however, can become causally habitual. They can be entirely caused by mechanisms in us without any exercise of our power of choice. The original acts that caused us to develop a habit might have been intentional. We might have chosen to allow ourselves to repeatedly act in nonvoluntary ways through neglect of attention. We might have even intended to inculcate a habit in ourselves.18 In many cases, however, we acquire causal habits without choosing to do so or not to do so. Allowing causal habits to take root in us and acting out of such habits are in many cases failures to exercise our power of choice. As Kant says, any causal habit we might have “impairs the freedom of the mind,” and the “more habits someone has, the less he is free”19 because such habits often cause us to act in ways that we could but do not control with our negatively free power of choice. Our power of reason includes interests in all people exercising our power of choice and in not impeding the exercise of this power in anyone. Further investigation is needed to determine when people fail to make choices, why they do so, and what kinds of involuntary acts they might nonetheless perform. These interests of reason in exercising negative freedom favor presumptive laws that require each of us to use our power of choice. We presumptively should make decisions on various matters, overcome laziness and ambivalence, pick sides, not put off decisions, 15 Anth 7: 149; Eth-​V 27: 569, 657; Eth-​C 27: 292, 378–​9; L-​Anth 25: 1238; Ped 9: 463; L-​Log 24: 166. Kant describes habits of other kinds at, for example, MM 6: 479; Anth 7: 147; Eth-​V 27: 522; Eth-​C 27: 293; L-​Anth 25: 1238; Ped 9: 463. See also Aquinas (1964, I–​II 50.5). Causal habits, as I describe them here, might not fit with or fully capture all of our commonsense ideas of habits. Other kinds of habits might be ones in which we chose and continually reaffirm a pattern of response that we put into “autopilot” while nonetheless standing ready to act differently if necessary (e.g. playing a familiar piano piece by rote while standing ready to run out of the door in case of fire). Further reflection is needed to determine whether these are, after all, causal habits in my sense, whether they are habits at all, or whether they need to be explained in some other way. Thanks to Thomas E. Hill, Jr. for discussion of this point. 16 L-​Anth 25: 1366 and Anth 7: 149, respectively. See also Anth 7: 149; Eth-​C 27: 292; L-​Anth 25: 1238. 17 CPrR 5: 98 and Anth 7: 149, respectively. See also Eth-​C 27: 292; L-​Anth 25: 1238. 18 CPrR 5: 98; Anth 7: 149; Eth-​V 27: 569; Eth-​C 27: 292. 19 Anth 7: 149 and 9: 463, respectively.

254  Sovereign Re ason and otherwise take an active role in our lives rather than passively allow things to happen in and around us while our power of choice sits idle.20 What we choose to do or not do does not matter for these interests of reason. We might regularly choose to go with the flow and to let things happen, but at least we are using our power of choice rather than passively allowing things to occur. These presumptive laws require us to identify and eliminate any causal habits we might have and to choose on every occasion whether or not to act out of any habits we find in ourselves. We might be fine with our morning routine, for example, but we presumptively should choose each morning whether and when we wash our hair, brush our teeth, measure the coffee beans, and so on, rather than simply doing these things on “autopilot” apart from our power of choice. Otherwise, Kant says, “the animal in the human being jumps out far too much, and because here one is led instinctively by the rule of habituation, exactly like another (non-​human) nature, and so runs the risk of falling into one and the same class with the beast.”21 Our interest of reason in exercising our power of choice also favors presumptive requirements not to distract other people so that they do not make choices about certain matters and not to encourage causal habits in them. And we presumptively should help people overcome certain kinds of depression in which they mostly refrain from making choices and otherwise support and not interfere with the exercise of their power to make choices. In sum, we are the sole originators of any choice we make, but this ability to make negatively free choices can be unrealized, destroyed, and unutilized in human persons. Rational and reasonable people, simply as such, care about promoting and protecting negative freedom in everyone, so we all could or would endorse various presumptive laws that promote and protect our ability to choose.

12.2  Motivational Freedom: Interests and Laws of Reason 12.2.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in promoting and protecting a second kind of freedom in all people, namely the motivational freedom to choose without hindrance from our desires, feelings, and other internal incentives.22 20 Eth-​V 27: 626. 21 Anth 7: 149. 22 MM 6: 298; Eth-​V 27: 522, 568–​9; Eth-​C 27: 266–​7, 291–​2. There is significant disagreement among Kant scholars about whether our natural desires and feelings affect our power of choice directly or through a basic choice we make to indulge them (Timmons 1994, Allison 1990, Baxley 2010, and Kohl 2017). The textual evidence is mixed. It is at least a theme in Kant’s thinking that our natural

Freedoms  255 Negative freedom, as we have been discussing, is the ability to make choices independently of any causes or determining factors. When our power of choice is developed and unimpaired, nothing can cause us to choose. Any choice we make is a negatively free choice because we are its sole author. Reflective common sense as well as Kant suggests, however, that some choices are more difficult for us to make than others because of differences in the desires and feelings we face while making them.23 We tend to regard this ease or difficulty as a kind of freedom. Our motivational freedom is the degree (if any) to which our desires and feelings make it easy or difficult for us to make choices.24 If someone in a fit of passion wants to kill somebody, then choosing not to kill the person is difficult for him, Kant says, because he must “overcome” these “impediments” to his motivational freedom.25 He is more motivationally free to kill the person, on the other hand, because his strong desires make it relatively easy for him to choose to do so.26 We sometimes think of certain desires and feelings we have as obstacles and fetters to our freedom. We force ourselves to do things we do not want to do, feel compelled by our desires and feelings, resist temptations, and describe some choices as unwilling ones that we made with reluctance. Kant offers some examples that accord with how we often think and speak about this kind of freedom. A “miser, for example, forgoes a small advantage if he thereby secures a greater; but unwillingly, since he would sooner have both.”27 No one “willingly gives away his possessions, but if he can save his children no otherwise than by the loss of what he has, then he does it.”28 A starving person who steals food is less motivationally free than he otherwise would be because he “would have had to restrain himself severely” to refrain from taking the food.29 If someone’s “tendency to drunkenness . . . has its source in a bad upbringing by parents, who taught him the use of strong drink in early life, then the affection on the part of sensory urges is so great that it costs him a high degree of freedom to break his drunken habit.”30 And someone with “a choleric temperament” is less motivationally free to restrain himself “in face of

desires and feelings themselves render some choices more difficult for us to make than others. A well-​ known difficulty for the other view is to explain how and when we are supposed to have made a life-​ governing choice in favor of our natural desires and feelings. Both accounts must make sense of how coercion and other forms of constraint can make us, in a sense, less free in ways that are compatible with our negative freedom. Most of what I say in this section can perhaps be recast in terms of radical evil and timeless adoptions of life-​governing maxims.

23 MM 6: 228; Eth-​V 27: 598; Eth-​C 27: 267–​9. 24 Anth 7: 267; Eth-​V 27: 568–​9; Eth-​C 27: 267, 291. 25 Eth-​C 27: 291. 26 Eth-​V 27: 568–​9. 27 Eth-​C 27: 267. 28 Eth-​C 27: 268. 29 Eth-​C 27: 291. See also Eth-​V 27: 568. 30 Eth-​V 27: 569–​70.

256  Sovereign Re ason an insult” than “a cold-​blooded man, who did not have to overcome the physical hindrance.”31 Our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking of motivational freedom are also apparent in our treatment of other people. We can, it seems, compel people to make choices using threats that enliven their fears. We can also induce them with bribery or flattery that plays on their greed or vanity.32 As Kant says, by getting “other human beings’ inclinations into one’s power,” we can “direct and determine them according to one’s intentions,” which is “almost the same as possessing others as mere tools of one’s will.”33 When we compel people through their desires and other interests, we make it easier for them to choose in some way and more difficult for them to choose in other ways.34 If we have threatened someone with death, caused her significant pain, promised her a handsome reward, flattered her with high praise, or charmed her with pretensions of love, then we have diminished her motivational freedom by making it easier for her to go along with what we want and more difficult for her to choose not to do so. For example, if a profit-​seeking wine-​dealer “finds it expedient to mix in sugar of lead and other sweeteners,” then a “constraint will be needed to counterbalance his maxim of selfishness,” namely putting “him in fear of the strictest controls, and of punishment.”35 The negative feelings and aversions we have instilled in him coerce him to stop adulterating the wine by making it more difficult for him to continue choosing to do so. It might seem that motivational freedom of this kind that we recognize and value in reflective common sense is incompatible with negative freedom. If we are negatively free to make uncaused choices, then making one choice is apparently no more easy or difficult for us than making any other choice. Our power of choice might seem to allow us to stand entirely apart from our desires, feelings, and other interests, treat them merely as facts or intellectual oddities, and seamlessly decide whether to indulge them or not.36 According to our assumed conception of the power of choice in human persons from Chapter 3, our interests cannot cause us to make choices. They can, however, tempt, lead, induce, and otherwise incentivize us to make certain choices and not others.37 When our power of choice is operational, we have the negative freedom to choose whether to indulge or resist any incentive we might face, no matter how strong or tempting it might be, but such incentives still make it more easy or difficult for us to make certain choices over others. 31 Eth-​V 27: 567. 32 Anth 7: 273–​4; Eth-​C 27: 266–​7. 33 Anth 7: 271. For additional discussion of coercion in Kant, see O’Neill (2000, 81–​96), Ripstein (2009), Gregor (1963), Varden (2020), and Holtman (2018b). 34 Eth-​V 27: 521, 628. 35 Eth-​V 27: 522. See also MM 6: 430; Eth-​V 27: 521. 36 This is in part how Blackburn (1998, 243–​50) describes the “Kantian Captain” in his interpretation of Kant. 37 Eth-​V 27: 565.

Freedoms  257 A key feature of our conception of the human power of choice is that the relation between our interests and our choices, whatever it might be, is not a causal one. A strong desire to do something does not cause or causally contribute to our choosing to do it, but a desire of that kind does tempt or lead us to make that choice. We sometimes use causal language to express how easy or difficult it is for us to make a choice. We talk about the strength of our desires and feelings and describe them as obstacles or hindrances to making choices. The ease or difficulty of making certain choices is itself naturally interpreted in causal terms. These ways of speaking and thinking, however, can also be understood metaphorically or in other noncausal ways that make motivational freedom compatible with negative freedom. It is tough, perhaps impossible, to positively explain how our desires and feelings can lead but not cause us to make choices in ways that make it more or less difficult to choose this or that. As long as this relation is not interpreted causally, we can be negatively free to make a choice but also have a low degree of motivational freedom to do so because of our strong desires and feelings that led us to choose in incompatible ways. We can make uncaused choices even though our desires and feelings somehow make certain choices easier for us to make than others. A deeper philosophical explanation of these relations between our desires and feelings and the ease or difficulty of choosing would be preferrable to leaving them mostly unexplained.38 In the meantime, we can consult our ordinary experiences of struggling against our temper, of overcoming our fears, of resisting temptations, and otherwise of making some choices gladly and others reluctantly even when we can, in principle, make any choice whatsoever because of our negative freedom. If someone has strong desires and feelings that lead her to choose in some way and no desires and feelings that lead her to choose in conflicting ways, then she has a high degree of motivational freedom to choose in that way. If someone has many strong desires and feelings that lead her to make a choice as well as many strong desires and feelings that lead her to make an incompatible choice, then she has a low degree of motivational freedom to make either choice. Both people have the same negative freedom to choose without being caused or determined to do so, but the first person can make her choice more easily than the second person because she faces fewer obstacles from her desires and feelings. For example, Kant claims that someone might be “forced to an action by numerous and cruel tortures.” He cannot “be pathologically compelled, because of freewill,” so he has the negative 38 Motivational freedom is, as it were, at the mysterious crossroads between nature and negative freedom. Kant himself struggled to explain how we can make negatively free choices reluctantly or gladly, how our power of reason can enforce its laws through desires and feelings that affect but do not determine our power of choice, how we can overcome obstacles to immorality, and why virtue must never become a causal habit. These issues and motivational freedom more generally are perhaps mysteries that we cannot fully understand, although reflecting on various notions of causation might help to some extent. See Timmons (1985), Reath (2006, ­chapter 1), Baxley (2005, c­ hapter 2), Allison (1990), Engstrom (2002), Guyer (2000), and Cureton (2016a).

258  Sovereign Re ason freedom, in principle, to choose to “withstand the torture.” The desires and feelings that result from the torture, however, make him “comparatively speaking” less motivationally free than he otherwise would have been because they make it very difficult for him to choose not to do what his tormenters want him to do.39 Someone has full motivational freedom when she lacks any desires and feelings that lead her to choose in some way or other. Achieving full motivational freedom is not possible for human persons, according to our assumed model of the human mind. We inevitably have some and usually many natural desires and feelings that tempt us to choose in various ways. Our power of reason also includes or gives rise to many formal and substantive interests of its own that affect but do not determine how we choose. When our desires, feelings, and other interests lead us to choose in some way, then they make that choice easy for us, but they also make choosing not to act in that way somewhat difficult for us. If I want to have a coffee, for example, and I have no conflicting incentives, then choosing to have the coffee is easy for me while choosing not to have it is somewhat hard. Even the mildest inclination to do something is an obstacle to choosing not to do it. Strong incentives diminish our motivational freedom even more than this because they make it very difficult to choose not to indulge them. Conflicting interests also diminish our motivational freedom because they make it tough for us to choose to do something and tough for us to choose not to do it. Our motivational freedom to make choices gladly rather than reluctantly is enhanced when we have fewer conflicting incentives that lead us to choose in incompatible ways, when our incentives are weak, and when we have few of them overall. Motivational freedom is agnostic about the contents of our choices and makes no distinctions among the desires, feelings, and other interests that affect us beyond how easy or difficult they make our choices. Negative incentives include aversions and negative feelings, such as fear or pain. Positive incentives include desires and positive feelings, such as inclination and pleasure. Both kinds of interests can diminish our motivational freedom by making it more difficult for us to make certain choices. Motivational freedom is not simply freedom from negative incentives. Fear of our own death might make it tough for us to intend to save someone from drowning, while our love for her might make it difficult for us to choose not to do so. Whichever choice we make, we will do so reluctantly rather than gladly because of our competing negative and positive interests. Our motivational freedom is affected by all kinds of desires, feelings, and other interests we might have, including ones that arise from or are part of our power of reason itself. Motivational freedom is not simply freedom from natural desires and feelings that make certain choices difficult for us. Interests that have their source in our power of reason itself also diminish our motivational freedom.40 If our power of reason, for example, produces aversions to lying or cheating and produces 39 Eth-​C 27: 267. 40 Eth-​C 27: 268–​9.

Freedoms  259 feelings of respect for laws prohibiting them, then we are less motivationally free to lie or cheat than if we lacked these interests. Our motivational freedom is also lessened if we have natural desires and feelings that lead us to break the laws of reason because any choice we make to follow or not follow those laws will be made with some reluctance, whether from opposing natural incentives or from our interests of reason.41 One way of diminishing our own motivational freedom is thus by voluntarily acquiring genuine obligations, such as making promises, signing contracts, incurring debts, taking a job, having children, and accepting favors that require us to show gratitude in return.42 Taking on these responsibilities not only may expose us to compulsion from others; doing so also activates our formal interests of reason in rational self-​governance. These rationally produced feelings and desires that lead us to live up to our acquired obligations constrain us in ways that make us less motivationally free than if we had not acquired these obligations.43 Kant puts the point this way: The less obligation a man has, the freer he is. So far as anyone is under obligation, he is not free; but if it ceases, he becomes so. Our freedom is therefore diminished by obligation.44

12.2.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Our power of reason includes interests in protecting and promoting the motivational freedom of all people. In the case of human persons, our interest in motivational freedom includes more specific interests in diminishing incentives that make it more difficult for us to make choices. As we have noted, this interest of reason cannot be fully satisfied in us because we inevitably have some natural desires and feelings as well as interests that are grounded in our power of reason. Rational people who care about the motivational freedom of human persons could or would nonetheless favor some presumptive laws of reason that promote and protect motivational freedom of this kind in everyone. In our own case, our interests of reason in motivational freedom favor laws that presumptively forbid us from exposing ourselves to circumstances that create or strengthen especially strong incentives that are quite difficult for us to overcome when we are making choices.45 We presumptively should not, for example, choose to attend a crowded event that will cause us significant agitation, read a book review that will enrage us, watch a documentary that will overwhelm us with sadness, drink to excess in ways that make us especially mean, or make promises, incur

41 Eth-​C 27: 268. 42 MM 6: 471–​3; TP 8: 295; Eth-​V 27: 605; Eth-​C 27: 261, 268–​9, 341. 43 Eth-​C 27: 269. 44 Eth-​C 27: 268. 45 MM 6: 228.

260  Sovereign Re ason debts, accept favors, or otherwise undertake obligations that inevitably come with internal constraints. Our interests of reason in motivational freedom favor a presumptive law of Stoic self-​mastery, which Kant describes as a law “of making ourselves as independent as possible of external things, and of contenting ourselves in this condition, and of not accumulating needs that nature does not insist upon as necessary” so that we are not “subordinated to them” in ways that make it difficult for us to choose against them.46 We presumptively should eradicate certain strong incentives and not allow them to take root in us, such as avarice and lust.47 We are presumptively supposed to strive for a kind of self-​mastery in which, according to Kant, our “freedom” has “unrestricted play” without having to contend with “hindrances” from our desires, feelings, and other incentives.48 These laws, I hasten to add, are mere presumptions that can be overridden by other laws of reason. Our strong affection for our children, for example, might contribute significantly to our happiness even though our power of reason prevents us from being fully contented with how our love for them interferes with our motivational freedom. This kind of worry is perhaps vivid to people who resist having children in the first place because they fear that their parental love will make it very difficult for them to choose to pursue other aims. Concerns for motivational freedom are also apparent to those who prefer to avoid making promises or accepting favors because of the constraining feelings and desires from their power of reason that come with doing so. Our interest of reason in the motivational freedom of all human persons favors presumptive laws against lessening the motivational freedom of other people. These laws presumptively forbid us from threatening people as a way of getting them to do things. Doing so makes it more difficult for them to choose not to do what we want. We also presumptively should not use violence, torture, intimidation, and other forms of coercion to create or strengthen negative incentives in others that decrease their motivational freedom.49 Employing bribery, promises of reward, flattery, and other positive incentives should also presumptively be avoided because they decrease the motivational freedom of people by inducing them to choose in the way we want and so make it more difficult for them to choose otherwise.50 Offering an obscene amount of money for someone’s ordinary house, groveling to a judge, flattering our boss, or emotionally manipulating someone to fall in love with us are ways of controlling people by making it more difficult for them to choose not to do things we want them to do.51 We also presumptively should not instill strong incentives in children and others that are difficult for them

46 Eth-​V 27: 648. See also Eth-​C 27: 394. 47 Anth 7: 272–​4; Eth-​C 27: 291. 48 Eth-​V 27: 568. See also CPJ 5: 262, 432; Eth-​V 27: 569. 49 Anth 7: 272–​3. 50 Anth 7: 273. 51 Anth 7: 271–​2.

Freedoms  261 to overcome, such as exposing them to narcotics.52 As before, these are merely presumptive laws that must be eventually combined with opposing ones that presumptively allow or require, for example, offering overtime pay to encourage productivity or threatening legal punishment to discourage criminality.53 Our interests of reason in motivational freedom also have some general and perhaps surprising implications for rational self-​governance itself. An underlying concern with Kantian theories of reason is that they are too demanding by imposing a wide variety of burdensome rational requirements on us across most every facet of life. It might seem that there is always something we should be doing, especially if our power of reason legislates the numerous kinds of laws we are discussing in this part of the book.54 A radical suggestion, however, is that our interests of reason in motivational freedom can help to partially allay this concern because they presumptively oppose any constraints on our motivational freedom. These interests favor a default position of freedom from desires, feelings, and other interests that make it more difficult for us to make any choice.55 This includes freedom from governing interests of reason. Rational self-​governance itself diminishes the motivational freedom of human persons. Rational autonomy, as we discussed in Chapter 4, includes exercising legislative abilities not only to formulate and endorse laws of reason but also to authorize ourselves to employ motivational incentives that move us to comply with them. Executing laws in ourselves that require us to or prohibit us from choosing in various ways involves dispositions, desires, and feelings that make it easier for us to follow those laws of reason and more difficult for us not to do so. Adjudicating in ourselves laws of reason that are addressed to our power of choice often involves imposing painful feelings of guilt or regret for culpably breaking them as well as additional desires to apologize and make amends. The laws of reason concerning our power of choice that we human persons impose on ourselves are almost always accompanied by formal interests that arise from our power of reason (assuming

52 Eth-​V 27: 569–​70. 53 Negative and positive incentives both constrain our motivational freedom, but an advantage of positive incentives is that they often contribute to the happiness of those we are attempting to sway, whereas negative incentives tend to diminish their happiness. If, as I will suggest in Chapter 13, we are presumptively required to promote the happiness of others, then this presumptive law aligns with the presumption against using negative incentives to constrain others but conflicts with the presumption against using positive incentives to do so. In the latter case, a full theory of reason must adjudicate the conflict between, for example, making a generous offer that constrains someone’s motivational freedom even though accepting the offer would significantly promote the person’s happiness. 54 These concerns are forcefully pressed by Wolf (1982). Baron (1995), Fahmy (2019), Timmermann (2005) and Cummiskey (1996) embrace interpretations of Kant in which the moral law is quite demanding, while Hill (1992, ­chapter 8, 2002, c­ hapter 7) and Formosa and Sticker (2019) interpret Kant as allowing significant room for free choice within the bounds of duty. 55 Urmson (1958, 214) highlights ways in which internal moral constraints infringe on our motivational freedom. See also Darwall (2008).

262  Sovereign Re ason this power is not damaged or impaired).56 Once we legislate such laws to ourselves through our legislative abilities, it becomes more difficult for us to choose to act against them because of our rationally produced desires to follow laws of reason, our rationally produced aversions to breaking such laws, our rationally produced feelings of respect for the laws of reason, and the guilt we will feel in culpably violating them. These rational incentives ensure that, even when we choose to break a law of reason, we will do so reluctantly, whereas if we did not impose that law on ourselves, then we could gladly choose to act in those ways. We have some compunction about breaking laws of reason because of formal interests that arise from our power of reason itself. This is perhaps most clear when, as we have discussed, we are considering whether voluntarily to undertake an obligation that will activate various governing rational incentives in us. We might be reluctant to promise to pick up a colleague from an early morning flight, for example, because we want to avoid rationally produced feelings of anxiety about oversleeping.57 According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason, many laws of reason derive from a principle of justifiability in combination with our interests of reason. As we have seen, these interests include many substantive ones that could or would lead rational people to endorse a wide variety of laws, including ones that presumptively require many things of us. Our interests in explanation and knowledge, for example, presumptively require us to read books, conduct scientific investigations, converse with others, and otherwise learn as much as we can about the world. Our interest in developing rational nature in everyone presumptively requires us to educate children and find cures for certain diseases. These and other presumptive laws of reason are well-​grounded in interests we have as rational and reasonable people, but they are also potentially onerous. Our interests of reason in motivational freedom provide a check against the excesses of the laws favored by our other interests of reason. Whether a set of rational people could or would endorse a complete system of rational laws depends in part on whether each part of that system is sufficiently appealing to us that it can overcome our interests of reason in motivational freedom, which oppose the legislation of any laws of reason because of the motivational constraints that such laws bring. In short, there is a part of all rational and reasonable people that would rather be free of the tyranny of reason. Any laws that we could or would endorse have to be based on sufficiently strong interests of reason to overcome this initial reluctance to imposing laws of reason on ourselves. By analogy, if enacting a criminal statute in a legal system will carry threats of punishment, then we should be sure

56 As we will discuss in Chapter 13, some laws of reason that concern our choices might be ones that we necessarily follow, such as a presumptive requirement to set our own happiness as an end. We cannot be constrained to follow such laws by our reason or anything else. See Paton (1967, 85–​7, 92, 105–​7, 126–​7), Gregor (1963, 78, 177), Johnson (2013), Reath (2006, ­chapter 2), and Kahn (2022). 57 MM 6: 298.

Freedoms  263 that the statute is not pointless or trivial so that we do not unnecessarily constrain the freedom of citizens through their fears of legal reprisal. Many laws of reason, of course, are likely justifiable to rational and reasonable people despite our partial opposition to constraining ourselves in any way. Rational and reasonable people nonetheless could or would reject certain laws that are especially onerous or trivial because of our interests of reason in remaining as free as possible from the hindrances that such laws would bring us. For example, our interest of reason in the happiness of all, as we shall see, favors laws that require us to help others in many potentially arduous ways. This interest conflicts with our interests in motivational freedom because of the constraints that come with a law of reason to help people at every turn –​under such a law, we will find it more difficult to pursue our own aims than to assist others and constantly feel guilty for not doing more to help them. Our interest in motivational freedom, however, might sometimes outweigh our interest in the happiness of all. Taken together, these interests might favor a less demanding law that places limits on how much we are required to help other people. These limits would be justified, not because they allow us to favor our own happiness over that of others, but because they promote our motivational freedom to make choices free from the constraints that accompany the laws of reason through which we govern ourselves.

12.3  Deliberative Freedom: Interests and Laws of Reason 12.3.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in promoting and protecting a third kind of freedom. Deliberative freedom is our freedom to make choices on the basis of a complete, accurate, and unified understanding of ourselves and our situation.58 When we choose, we are influenced by two kinds of factors. Our desires, feelings, and other conative mental states lead us, but do not determine us, to choose in various ways and make some choices more difficult for us than others. Our beliefs, perceptions, experiences, and other representational mental states provide the contexts for our choices as we see them. They represent what it is we are choosing, what options we have, what our motives are, the circumstances of our choice, what we can do, the consequences of various choices we might make, their likelihood of success, what reasons we have to make certain choices, their relationships to values, laws, and principles, and connections among possible choices and other choices we have made or might make.59

58 CPrR 5: 98; Anth 7: 254; Eth-​V 27: 563, 565, 568–​9; Eth-​C 27: 291; L-​Anth 25: 546, 1386. 59 MM 6: 224; Eth-​V 27: 563, 566, 569; Eth-​C 27: 291; L-​Anth 25: 1238.

264  Sovereign Re ason Deliberative freedom is the extent, if any, to which we can make choices with full awareness of what pertains to them.60 Our power of reason includes interests in ensuring that, as far as possible, we have the freedom to make choices in fully informed and deliberate ways. Our choices are not fully free in this sense if we make them based on mistaken or biased beliefs, failed to understand what exactly we were choosing to do, chose hastily without investigating our options and their implications, chose in ignorance or on the basis of obscure representations, did not recognize that our choice is irrational, immoral, or illegal, or failed to notice that our choice conflicts with other ends or maxims we endorse.61 Deliberative freedom is a kind of freedom of choice because the choices we make depend on how we represent relevant aspects of ourselves and the world. It differs from motivational freedom, which concerns how easy or difficult it is for us to make choices given the desires, feelings, and other interests that pull is in different directions. Deliberative freedom also differs from negative freedom, which is our ability to make any choices without being caused or determined to do so by anything. For example, choosing to drink a clear liquid is not a fully deliberatively free choice if we mistakenly think it is water when it is actually gasoline.62 Assuming our power of choice is developed and unimpaired, we are negatively free to choose to drink the stuff because nothing can cause us to choose to do so or not. We might also have a high degree of motivational freedom to do so because we are very thirsty and think it is water. Our deliberative freedom to choose to drink the liquid, however, is quite low because we are mistaken about what is in the container. If, on the other hand, we know that the liquid is gasoline, and we have considered our options, investigated their likely effects, applied relevant principles of prudence and morality to our situation, and otherwise carefully deliberated about what to do, then we have a high degree of deliberative freedom to choose to drink the liquid or to choose not to do so. Various factors can diminish our deliberative freedom. We discussed many of them in Chapter 11 where we examined how we might misunderstand things, hold mistaken beliefs, or fail to investigate or reflect on our representational states. We might, for example, be intoxicated, distracted, prejudiced, or overcome by emotion in ways that prevent us from understanding what options we have to choose from and what their consequences will be.63 Kant gives the example of some people who “had smeared themselves with salve and narcotic things, e.g., henbane, and its application on the temples in particular had taken away their understanding and set their power of imagination into such an unruled 60 Eth-​V 27: 568; Eth-​C 27: 291. Kant calls this a subjective condition of freedom (Eth-​C 27: 291), but we can also think of it as a kind of freedom itself that is perhaps part of an overall ideal of freedom of choice that includes negative freedom, motivational freedom, and deliberative freedom. 61 Anth 7: 149; Eth-​V 27: 563, 566, 568–​9; Eth-​C 27: 291; NF 17: 319–​20. 62 This is Williams’ (1981, 102) example. 63 Anth 7: 253–​4; Eth-​V 27: 568–​9; Eth-​C 27: 291.

Freedoms  265 and unreined fanaticism” that they voluntarily but mistakenly confessed to being witches.64 Our anxieties and fears might prevent us from investigating the grounds of beliefs we have that inform many of our choices. Our arrogance might lead us to choose as if we know far more than we do, while our servility might lead us to choose not to do certain things because we mistakenly think we lack the capacity to do them. We might not have enough time to make an informed and deliberate choice. Our representational powers might not be fully developed, such as when, as Kant says, “children destroy something useful” but “know not what they do.”65 Our cognitive powers might also be impaired, such as a hypochondriac who often visits her doctor because she mistakes her imagined ailments for experiences of them. In these and other cases, we retain our negative freedom to make uncaused choices, and our motivational freedom might vary, but we are less deliberatively free to choose than if we had a better understanding of ourselves and our situation. We can also diminish the deliberative freedom of other people by, for instance, lying to or deceiving them, defrauding them, hiding information from them, or preventing them from thinking for themselves. Kant offers several examples of this: “Just as children can be compelled by [stories of ] ghosts, in the same way people can also be compelled by false representations.”66 Governments and other organizations might attempt to discourage people from acquiring knowledge or thinking for themselves “in order to be able to rule them better.”67 We coerce or manipulate people in this sense, not simply by encouraging or instilling incentives that make it difficult for them to choose in certain ways, but by preventing or discouraging them from acquiring an accurate, complete, and unified understanding of themselves and their circumstances.

12.3.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Our power of reason includes interests in promoting and protecting the deliberative freedom of all people. We discussed in Chapter 11 our general interests of reason in acquiring knowledge of all kinds, correcting errors in our thinking, and thinking for ourselves. Our power of reason also includes special interests in ensuring that, as far as possible, we have the freedom to make choices on the basis of full information and careful consideration. Full deliberative freedom is not possible for us because of our limited cognitive capacities, limitations on the time and energy we can devote to deliberating about our choices, the need to make some



64 L-​Anth 25: 1367. 65 Eth-​C 27: 291. 66 L-​Anth 25: 546. 67 L-​Anth 25: 546.

266  Sovereign Re ason decisions quickly, and other factors. These interests of reason also conflict among different people and with other interests of reason we have. Deliberation takes time and effort, for example, that might be better spent helping other people, and careful deliberation might lead some people to commit evil deeds. Our power of reason nonetheless includes interests in ensuring that we are all as deliberatively free as possible. Our interests of reason in promoting and protecting deliberative freedom in everyone favors various presumptive laws. These include presumptive requirements to gather relevant information, deliberate about our choices, and assess the rationality and morality of our options before deciding.68 They favor specific presumptive laws about what we should know or be able to know when making certain choices, such as ones that forbid us from blundering through, as Kant says, “ignorance of a law, which it was necessary to know for the business in hand” or choosing to get drunk in ways that diminish our ability to foresee the effects of our actions.69 Our interests of reason in deliberative freedom also favor laws that, according to Kant, punish certain actions “not because of their inner criminality, but for the sake of example, so that others may be brought thereby to greater foresight and reflection.”70 We presumptively should also develop our cognitive and perceptual powers and identify and overcome any prejudices we have in our thinking. These laws forbid us from making rash decisions, adopting ends or maxims that we do not understand, and choosing to follow the advice or orders of other people without thinking through the matters ourselves. In the case of other people, our interests of reason in deliberative freedom favor laws against lying and employing propaganda.71 We presumptively should not play on the emotions of people or damage their cognitive capacities in ways that make it difficult for them to deliberate about what to do.72 We presumptively should help other people to develop their representational powers and share information with them so that they have a better understanding of their choices and the likely consequences of their actions. Our interests of reason in deliberative freedom also favor laws about what we or others should know when making certain choices, such as presumptively requiring doctors to understand relevant medical information before prescribing drugs to their patients. Many of the same presumptive laws we discussed in Chapter 11 are also supported by our interests of reason in promoting and protecting deliberative freedom in everyone.

68 Eth-​V 27: 568. 69 Eth-​V 27: 566. See also MM 6: 427; Eth-​V 27: 563, 565, 569. 70 Eth-​V 27: 569. 71 For a discussion of the nature of propaganda, see Falk (1986). For some other Kantian grounds for duties not to lie, see Shieber (2010), Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapters 5, 12), Buss (2005), Wood (2008, ­chapter 14), O’Neill (1989, c­ hapter 2), and Hill (1991, ­chapter 3). 72 Eth-​V 27: 569–​70. See also Stark (2021).

Freedoms  267

12.4  Freedom of Action: Interests and Laws of Reason 12.4.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in promoting and protecting our freedom of action, which is our freedom to act in the ways we choose to act by choosing to do them and not to act in ways we choose not to act by choosing not to do them. Reason has interests that we, as Kant says, “determine all actions by way of a free choice,” that is, we do what we choose to do because we choose to do it, and we do not do what we choose not to do because we choose not to do it.73 A key assumption of our partial model of the human mind from Chapter 3 is that choosing to do something and doing it are separate things. Any voluntary act (except for our choices themselves) can be decomposed into a choice to do something and the doing of that thing, such as the choice to raise our arm and the physical act of raising our arm.74 Our choices occur entirely in our own minds. They include intending to act, setting an end, adopting a maxim, making a commitment, choosing not to do something, rejecting a principle, and so on. The choices we make are necessarily free in the negative sense that we are their authors and we cannot be caused or determined by anything to choose. Our other physical and mental acts, on the other hand, include acts of body and mind. We might take a stroll or pull a trigger, or we might imagine or pay attention to something. Choosing is itself a mental act, but I will mainly focus on these other kinds of physical and mental acts. Although this sharp distinction between choosing to do something and doing the thing is controversial, it helps us to characterize a plausible kind of freedom of action that seems, in reflective common sense, to be worthy of support and protection.75 A voluntary act is a physical or mental act that was directly caused by a choice we made to act in that way.76 If our choice to pull the trigger directly caused us to pull the trigger, then pulling the trigger was a voluntary act. We can do many things simply by choosing to do them. If I choose to focus on a problem, to imagine a unicorn, to stand, or to hold my breath, my choice is usually sufficient to cause me to do these things. A voluntary omission is a physical or mental act that we do not perform directly because we chose not to act in that way.77 If my choice not to turn

73 Eth-​V 27: 626. See also Eth-​V 27: 594. 74 CPJ 5: 424; Eth-​V 27: 565; Eth-​C 27: 433–​4. Choices, however, are themselves mental acts, so they obviously cannot be decomposed in this way. 75 Anscombe (2000) forcefully objects to this sharp distinction between choices and other physical and mental acts. For further discussion, see Davidson (1978) and Bratman (1987). 76 Anth 7: 147. 77 CPrR 5: 98; Eth-​V 27: 626.

268  Sovereign Re ason my head directly caused me not to do so, then not turning my head was a voluntary omission. Involuntary acts are physical or mental acts that are not directly caused by our choices to do them, while involuntary omissions are omissions that are not directly caused by our choices to refrain from doing them.78 Startling at a loud sound is an involuntary act, and not noticing a friend waving from across the street is usually an involuntary omission. These ideas of voluntary and involuntary acts and omissions appeal to a direct causal link between a choice and a physical or mental act or omission. If, for example, a choice to do something causes us to do that thing, but only does so indirectly, then the act is involuntary. I might have involuntarily knocked someone into a pool while drunk even though I voluntarily got drunk in ways that indirectly caused the accident. The relevant notions of direct and indirect causation need interpretation and can be specified in different ways. I will mostly pass over this complicated issue. The direct cause of something is at least a proximate cause of it that is sufficient for the thing to occur.79 Ordinary reflection often allows us to distinguish between the direct and indirect causes of things. An explosion, for instance, seems to be what directly caused someone’s injuries, while poor maintenance on the gas line indirectly contributed to her misfortune. Identifying the direct cause of something is sometimes difficult and perhaps impossible, so we might not always know or be able to know whether some physical or mental acts or omissions are voluntary or not. We have full freedom of action if we can do whatever we choose to do directly by choosing to do it and if we can avoid doing whatever we choose not to do directly by choosing not to act in that way.80 Our power of reason has interests in promoting and protecting this kind of freedom in everyone. When we exercise our power of choice to act or not act in some way, our choices are necessarily free in the negative sense, but these choices might or might not directly cause us to do what we choose to do or not do. We might not successfully accomplish our intentions. Freedom of action is the degree to which we can voluntarily act or refrain from acting. Our freedom of action can be undermined in various ways. Let’s consider some of the reasons why choosing to do something would not directly cause us to do it and why choosing not to do something would not directly cause us not to do it. A physical or mental act might be impossible for us to do because it is self-​ contradictory, conflicts with metaphysical principles, or violates laws of nature. We can perhaps choose to square the circle, to be in two places at once, or to 78 Anth 7: 301; Eth-​V 27: 626. 79 Eth-​V 27: 565. 80 Freedom of action is similar to compatibilist conceptions of free will that Hobbes (1994) and Hume (2000) endorse, except that they think choices and other acts of will are themselves causally determined, whereas, according to Kantian views, choices are (or must be regarded as) uncaused.

Freedoms  269 move faster than the speed of light, but logical, metaphysical, and nomological necessities might make it impossible for us to fulfill these intentions. Our choices to do these things do not directly cause us to do them because the acts themselves are impossible. Our freedom of action is limited by these necessities, while beings of other kinds might be able voluntarily to do things that violate some of them. Efficient causes can interfere with what would otherwise be a direct causal link between choosing to do something and doing it or between choosing not to do something and not doing it. We might, for example, die just as we chose to say our last goodbyes, slip as we are about to pirouette, hear a loud noise that distracts us from focusing on the task at hand, or encounter a strong wind that forces us to move from our chosen position. Other people can interfere with the causal connections between our choices and our acts and omissions. We might choose to throw a ball just as someone bumps into us, intend to take a stroll but be stopped by shackles, fail to recollect a fond memory because of drugs that were forcibly injected into us, yelp in pain when we had chosen to remain silent, intend to eat an apple as someone snatches it from our hand, or choose to stay where we are as the guards drag us away.81 Our freedom of action is diminished when these or other causes would prevent us from doing what we choose to do or cause us to do what we choose not to do.82 We might lack realized abilities to act in certain ways that we nonetheless choose to do.83 We can choose to swim but fail to do so because we never learned to swim, intend to dunk a basketball but not come close because our muscles have atrophied with age, choose to move our arm when it is paralyzed, or intend to hold on to someone as we lose our grip. Someone with cerebral palsy might have used his power of choice to decide to change his bodily position in some way, but twitchy movements that are associated with his condition nonetheless hindered him from moving as he chose to do.84 We might also be unable to refrain from acting in certain ways. Reflexive acts, such as startling when surprised, shuddering in fear, panicking while drowning, sneezing, and kicking our leg when tapped on the knee, are ones that we might be caused to perform in certain situations even if we choose not to do them. Our freedom of action is diminished when we lack the realized ability to do things that we might choose to do and when we lack the ability to refrain from doing what we might choose not to do. We might have the realized ability to do something but lack direct control over the use of that ability. We have direct control over an ability if, were we to choose to exercise it, this choice would be the direct cause of our exercising the ability and,



81 MM 6: 235, 247–​8; Eth-​V 27: 521. 82 Eth-​V 27: 628. 83 Anth 7: 267. 84 Anth 7: 269n.

270  Sovereign Re ason were we to choose not to exercise the ability, this choice would be the direct cause of our not exercising it. The extent, if any, to which we can directly control our various physical and mental powers is complicated and requires further investigation. As we discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 11, our model of the human mind implies that we can have some direct control over our power of judgment. We cannot believe things simply by choosing to believe them, so affirming a judgment is, on our model, always an involuntary mental act even though we can sometimes voluntarily act in ways that indirectly affect what we believe. Kant suggests, however, that we can sometimes withhold belief in something just by choosing not to believe it.85 When this happens, not believing something is a voluntary omission, but in other cases we cannot help but withhold our assent to certain judgments, such as ones that strike us as utterly preposterous. We can also, according to Kant, exert some direct control over whether and how we use our power of judgment to investigate the grounds and evidence for judgments we consider, but sometimes we simply find ourselves involuntarily considering whether they are well-​founded. As we discussed in Chapter 3, we also have some direct control over our powers of imagination and attention, such as when an artist voluntarily imagines a bucolic scene or a teacher voluntarily directs her attention to her students. There are limits, however, to how much control we can have over our imagination and attention. As Kant says: “the human being cannot have ingenious inspirations when he wants, but must wait” and an “individual attends in an involuntary way to an offense inflicted upon him in a social gathering, it keeps running through his head, and he cannot rid himself of it.”86 Most of us sometimes find ourselves involuntarily daydreaming or fantasizing, but some people might be better than others at intentionally stopping these flights of fancy. Some people can intently focus on things for long periods simply by choosing to do so, while other people are easily distracted despite their intention to stay attentive. Professional dancers have significant control over the movement of their bodies, while many people in the later stages of multiple sclerosis often cannot control how parts of their bodies move. We have little or no direct control over our powers of desire and feeling because, according to our model, we cannot desire or feel something just by choosing to do so, and we cannot banish our desires or feelings just by choosing not to have them. In our discussion of negative freedom, we considered causal habits, which are physical or mental acts that we are caused to perform because of some mechanism that arose in us by repeatedly acting in that way in the past. We can often exert some control over habits we find in ourselves. In many cases, we can, Kant claims, “countermand this natural necessity” just by choosing in ways that directly cause us to 85 L-​Log 24: 83, 104, 156–​9, 162–​4, 859–​61; Rel 6: 89; CPJ 5: 471–​3. 86 L-​Anth 25: 486 and L-​Anth 25: 487, respectively. See also Anth 7: 158, 161; CF 7: 109–​12; Ped 9: 476; Eth-​C 27: 362, 364.

Freedoms  271 refrain from doing what is otherwise habitual.87 We might, for instance, habitually use filler words in our conversations and continue to do so involuntarily unless we choose on particular occasions not to use them. In other cases, however, we might not have direct control over whether we act in habitual ways, such as someone who cannot directly control physical ticks that she has acquired through her drug addiction. She has the negative freedom to choose not to act in these ways, but she lacks the freedom of action to make her choices directly effective.

12.4.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Our interests of reason in promoting and protecting freedom of action in everyone favors presumptive laws that concern not interfering with the voluntary acts and omissions of others, developing the realized physical and mental abilities to act or not act as we choose, and acquiring and exercising direct control over those abilities. These laws presumptively prohibit us from killing people, restraining them, shoving them, pulling them by the hair, imprisoning them, and otherwise causally interfering with them in ways that make them act or refrain from acting contrary to their choices.88 These interests also favor laws that presumptively require us to guard against impediments that prevent people from directly doing what they choose to do, such as violent weather and natural disasters, loud noises and other distractions, slippery sidewalks, and many other things that can interfere with doing what we choose to do and not doing what we choose not to do. Our interests of reason in freedom of action favor laws that presumptively require us to develop our physical and mental abilities and those of others so that we can successfully do the things we might choose to do.89 We also presumptively should not impair these abilities in ourselves and others, such as someone who “through excessive drinking . . . suffers from gout, and this makes him unfit to hold office” or someone who “cut[s]‌off his thumbs, as the ancients did, to make himself incapable of drawing the bow-​string.”90 Our interests of reason in freedom of action also favor laws that presumptively require us to develop and maintain self-​control, which Kant describes as “subjecting all [our] powers and capacities solely to [our] free choice, and employing them accordingly.”91 Kant says that someone who “cannot exert such control over himself . . . acts without reflection or freedom,” is a “plaything of other forces and impressions, against his choice,” and “is dependent on chance and the arbitrary

87 Eth-​V 27: 626. 88 MM 6: 235, 454; TP 8: 290–​1; Eth-​V 27: 521. 89 We will discuss a separate interest of reason in natural perfection in Chapter 14. 90 Eth-​V 27: 565–​6 and Eth-​V 27: 593, respectively. 91 Eth-​V 27: 626. See also MM 6: 408; Eth-​C 27: 362; L-​Anth 25: 486.

272  Sovereign Re ason course of circumstances.”92 For example, Kant claims that when someone is “stuffed with food,” he is “in a condition in which he is incapacitated, for a time, for actions that would require him to use his powers with skill and deliberation.”93 Further investigation is needed to determine how we can develop self-​control in ourselves and encourage it in others. Stoic exercises and other forms of practice, discipline of various kinds that we impose on ourselves or that others impose on us, attentiveness to how our imagination and other powers of mind are operating, and affording others opportunities to learn to use their physical and mental powers might help us do so.94 Other kinds of presumptive laws are supported by our interests of reason in freedom of action. Property rights, according to Kant, enhance our freedom of action by allowing us to intentionally use resources without certain kinds of interference from others.95 A legal system of torts and contracts that includes a prohibition on certain kinds of lying and double-​dealing increases our freedom of action by allowing us to give and receive credible assurances.96 Conflicts among the freedom of action of different people favor laws that presumptively ensure that everyone has equal rights to freedom of action and that presumptively permit physical force to prevent or deter violations of these rights.97 Presumptive laws favored by our interests in freedom of action can also conflict with other laws of reason, as when a charlatan is dexterous at getting others under her spell or a firefighter paternalistically stops us from running into a burning building to save our life.

12.5  Character Freedom: Interests and Laws of Reason 12.5.1  Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive interests in promoting and protecting a fifth kind of freedom. Character freedom is the freedom of choosing according to one’s own character.98 Whether someone has an honest, upright, or brave character, a selfish, arrogant, or mean character, or a character of some other kind, she chooses freely in this sense by choosing in accordance with her character out of her commitment to it. Her character freedom is diminished by failing to

92 Eth-​V 27: 626 and Eth-​C 27: 362, respectively. 93 MM 6: 427. 94 Ped 9: 463. 95 MM 6: 250. See also Ripstein (2009), Gregor (1963), Williams (1977), and Varden (2024) for more detailed discussions of property rights in Kant. 96 RL 8: 426. See also Ripstein (2009), Byrd (2002), and Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapter 5), as well as Chapter 11. 97 MM 6: 230. Sussman (2008), Murphy (1987), Holtman (1997, 2011), and Byrd (1980) discuss Kant’s theory of punishment. 98 L-​Anth 25: 632.

Freedoms  273 execute her commitments, by choosing out of character, or by losing her character without replacing it with a different one. The idea of character freedom presupposes a conception of character. There are many ways of interpreting what it is to have a character, but let’s expand our discussion of this idea from Chapter 3 and examine the corresponding idea of character freedom by drawing on some of Kant’s remarks.99 There are three main conditions, Kant suggests, to having a character. First, to have a character, a person must have a set of basic commitments that she chooses to adopt and maintain.100 These chosen commitments might be personal policies she endorses or principles she accepts. They might also be values, ends, loyalties, or other kinds of purposes she affirms. These basic commitments must be chosen for their own sakes. They must be relatively general, determinate, long-​ term, encompassing, and stable commitments that we are unlikely to abandon or substantially change.101 They must be relatively consistent with one another.102 We must choose these commitments for ourselves in the sense that we do not endorse them only or primarily because of the opinions, values, desires, or feelings of other people. The contents of these commitments cannot assign a high priority to these things either.103 Someone who chooses merely to imitate the commitments of others or whose main commitment is staying in fashion or in the good graces of others does not have a character, in Kant’s view.104 We must also afford the highest priority to our set of basic commitments over our other ends, values, maxims, or other of our purposes. Someone who lacks basic commitments, whose commitments constantly shift and change, who chooses merely to imitate the commitments of others, or whose main commitment is staying in fashion lacks a character.105 Second, to have a character, Kant suggests, a person must regularly choose to act from her basic commitments despite temptations she might face not to do so.106 Such a person is not content with unfulfilled resolutions when it comes to her basic commitments.107 If someone with a character endorses a basic commitment, 99 For accounts of Kant’s conception of character, see Baxley (2010), Frierson (2006), Munzel (1998), Cureton (2016a), Allison (1990, especially ­chapter 7), Engstrom (2009, 44–​7), and Timmons (2021b, 126, 219). Allison and Engstrom, for example, regard character as just a basic commitment, while Baxley regards character as a basic commitment plus strength of will. The passages cited in this subsection, however, suggest that character, in Kant’s view, includes much more than this. 100 G 4: 393; Anth 7: 292, 294; L-​Anth 25: 630, 1175–​6, 1386. 101 CPrR 5: 153; L-​Anth 25: 631, 1170, 1175–​6. See also Cureton (2016a). 102 Anth 7: 294–​5; L-​Anth 25: 1388. 103 MM 6: 479; Anth 7: 245; L-​Anth 25: 1171, 1386. 104 Common sense might depart from Kant on this claim, for perhaps from a commonsense perspective we think such a person has a flawed character but has a character nonetheless. Part of Kant’s idea of character seems to be that for something to be my character, it must be something I choose for myself and not something I simply endorse because it is fashionable or affirmed by others. Thanks to Thomas E. Hill, Jr. for raising this issue. 105 CPrR 5: 153; L-​Anth 25: 1386. 106 Eth-​V 27: 657; Ped 9: 487; L-​Anth 25: 630–​1, 1386. 107 Eth-​V 27: 657.

274  Sovereign Re ason then she is very likely to choose to comply with it even if doing so conflicts with other desires, feelings, values, or ends that she has. Her grounds for choosing to act in these ways also usually include her basic commitments themselves. If she were to face strong incentives to act out of character, she most likely would not do so. Having a character includes having significant strength to carry out our commitments for their own sakes despite obstacles. As Kant claims: “That the human being has a steadfast will and acts according to it: this is the main work of character.”108 Someone who often fails to execute her basic commitments or would often choose not to fulfill them if doing so were difficult for her lacks a character.109 Third, for us to have a character, in Kant’s view, our choices to endorse and maintain our basic commitments as well as our choices to act from them must be made with a high degree of deliberative freedom.110 We must have a good understanding of our available options, the content of our commitments, how they apply to particular cases, our motives for choosing them, and other relevant features of ourselves and our situation. We must also be honest with ourselves about what basic commitments we have and about our resolve to act in accordance with them.111 Someone who endorses basic commitments hastily without reflection, who has little understanding of what they imply, or who regularly deceives herself about what basic commitments she has lacks a character. These three paradigmatic features of Kant’s conception of character are somewhat vague or indeterminate, which allows for borderline cases in which it is not clear whether someone has a character or not. In its ideal form, having a character involves endorsing for oneself a single, all-​encompassing, and specific life-​governing commitment of the highest priority that we will never choose to abandon or alter, having perfect strength of will to choose to act from this commitment despite obstacles, and possessing full deliberative freedom in endorsing and choosing from this commitment with a full understanding of ourselves and our circumstances. Our character is entirely our own choosing.112 When our power of choice is developed and unimpaired, we are free in the negative sense to choose any basic commitments no matter what our upbringing, education, genetics, temperament, desires, feelings, or circumstances might be. We are also free in this sense to change or abandon our basic commitments as well as to choose on particular occasions whether to violate or act from them. These various choices are often influenced by our desires and feelings, including natural ones and those that are grounded in our power of reason itself, but nothing can cause us to acquire, maintain, lose, or act out of character.

108 L-​Anth 25: 1386. 109 Eth-​C 27: 365. 110 L-​Anth 25: 631–​5, 1173–​6, 1386. 111 Ped 9: 484. 112 Anth 7: 294; L-​Anth 25: 633.

Freedoms  275 The character of different people can come in many forms, while some people have no character at all.113 As long as someone satisfies the three relatively formal conditions we characterized, the content of her basic commitments and other choices does not affect whether or not she has a character. Some characters are morally good characters, such as one of committing oneself to morality, while others are especially morally good, such as one of, in addition, committing oneself to alleviating poverty or fighting for social justice in ways that go beyond what morality strictly requires.114 Some characters are morally bad, such as those of people who are primarily committed to their own self-​interest or to dominating others.115 Some people have an honest character, while others have a deceitful one. The characters of some people are rather mundane because their main concerns are with relatively trivial matters, while the characters of other people are focused on issues that are more serious, such as the success of their children or the appreciation of art. Some people do not have a character at all because they lack any basic commitments, these commitments regularly shift and change in dramatic ways, or they usually fail to act on them.116 Character freedom is a kind of freedom in which we choose to act from the basic commitments that are part of our character. When we choose to act in character, we are, in a way, fully ourselves. We express who we really are by choosing in accordance with maxims, principles, values, or other basic commitments that we have intentionally adopted.117 We also express our identity by acting from these commitments. Whereas negative freedom concerns our ability to make uncaused choices, motivational freedom concerns the ease or difficulty of making choices, deliberative freedom concerns our awareness of relevant facts when we choose, and freedom of action concerns doing what we choose to do, character freedom concerns the content of our choices and, in particular, the ways we can form and act on a conception of ourselves.

12.5.2  Presumptive Laws of Reason Our interests of reason in promoting and protecting character freedom in everyone favor laws that presumptively require us to adopt and act from a character of some kind. We presumptively should also help other people to acquire a character by, for example, encouraging children to keep their resolutions and by 113 L-​Anth 25: 630–​1. 114 L-​Anth 25: 1171. For discussions of supererogation in Kant, including whether he allows for acts that are morally good to do but not morally required, see Hill (1992, ­chapter 8), Cureton and Hill (2023), Baron (1995), Baron and Falmy (2009), and Johnson (1996a). 115 CPrR 5: 100; Anth 7: 292; L-​Anth 25: 636, 1386. 116 L-​Anth 25: 630–​1. 117 For discussions of this notion of practical identity, see Zagzebski (2010), Velleman (2006), Korsgaard (2009), and Cureton (Forthcoming-​c, ­chapters 4 and 5).

276  Sovereign Re ason exposing them to a wide variety of values and principles. Coercing or inducing other people to abandon their character or to act out of character is presumptively forbidden. These interests of reason do not presuppose that the character we or others adopt is rational or reasonable. Reason simply includes interests that we each have and act from a character of some kind and favors corresponding laws that presumptively require us to do so and to assist others in doing so. Other laws of reason, however, presumptively require us to adopt and execute basic commitments that are rational and reasonable.

12.6  Final Remarks: Sovereign Freedom In this chapter, we have discussed five kinds of freedom that relate to our power of choice along with corresponding interests of reason in promoting and protecting them in everyone. These interests and the presumptive laws of reason that they favor are compatible with our negative freedom to make choices without being caused or determined to do so. They also fit well with commonsense views about the importance of promoting our own freedoms and those of other people. Protecting these freedoms presumptively forbids us from damaging or impairing anyone’s ability to make choices, from threatening or bullying people in ways that make it more difficult for them not to do what we want, from deceiving or manipulating people in ways that undermine their ability to make deliberate and informed choices, from using physical violence and force to make them do things that they choose not to do, and from interfering with the development and execution of their character. These presumptive laws of reason, the interests of reason that favor them, along with the kinds of freedom they promote and protect, all raise deep and important philosophical issues that we have not addressed. I have only indicated briefly, for instance, how conflicts among the freedoms of different people might be resolved and how these interests in freedom might relate to other interests of reason we have. Certain causal habits in ourselves or others, for example, might not be all bad when they save us time and effort for other rational and reasonable pursuits, serve as accommodations for our declining mental powers, help us to raise our children, or prevent us from committing evil actions that we otherwise would voluntarily do.118 Our interests of reason in our own freedom of action and happiness might favor laws that presumptively require us to become adept at getting other people to do what we want by catering to their inclinations.119 We also have not discussed much in this chapter how these ideas of freedom connect to issues of responsibility and culpability. 118 Anth 7: 149; Ped 9: 480; L-​Anth 25: 1386. 119 Anth 7: 272.

Freedoms  277 Distinguishing negative freedom, motivational freedom, deliberative freedom, freedom of action, and character freedom from one another and characterizing some general interests of reason in promoting and protecting them nonetheless provide a framework for investigating and specifying principles that protect and promote the freedom of all. These five kinds of freedom together point toward a sixth kind of freedom that is perhaps the most important kind of freedom we can have. As we discussed in Part I, autonomy or rational self-​governance includes a basic chosen commitment to the laws of reason themselves.120 Our choices are most fully free in this additional sense when we willingly, deliberately, and successfully endorse and act from the laws of reason of all kinds that we legislate, execute, and adjudicate to ourselves through our own power of reason.

120 MM 6: 382n.

13

Happiness Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in the happiness or well-​being of all people. Rational and reasonable people, simply as such, care about the happiness of everyone. We want ourselves and others to be happy and are averse to the unhappiness and misery of all. As Kant says, the happiness and misery of people “count for a very great deal in the appraisal of our practical reason.”1 He claims that “[i]‌n our soul there is something that makes us take an interest 1) in our own self, 2) in others with whom we have grown up, and then also 3) an interest in [sic] the best for the world must come to pass.”2 He says that “[e] ach ought to be as happy as he can be.”3 He also suggests that “beauty and utility are a joy and an end for the senses and reason.”4 Our interests of reason in the happiness of all could or would lead rational and reasonable people to endorse a variety of laws that concern the happiness of persons. There are several surprising features of these interests and presumptive laws that expand our understanding of Kantian conceptions of happiness, self-​mastery, beneficence, supererogation, self-​interest, hatred, and love. I suggest that rational and reasonable people as such are concerned to determine our own conception of happiness for ourselves, that our reason itself leads us to care about the happiness of all people, including ourselves, apart from any requirements of reason to do so, that these interests favor laws that presumptively require us to maximize the happiness of each person without committing us to any form of utilitarianism, that these laws allow for some kinds of supererogation, that we sometimes should adjust our own conceptions of happiness rather than rely on beneficence from others, and that our reason moves us to legislate presumptive laws that concern the feelings and desires that we have toward the happiness of others, not just what choices we make concerning their happiness. Let’s explore this interest of reason in happiness, some presumptive laws of reason that it grounds, and a few ways in which these presumptions can conflict with other presumptive laws of reason.

1 CPrR 5: 61. 2 Ped 9: 499. 3 L-​NR 27: 1383. 4 NF 16: 159. See also G 4: 430; MM 6: 451–​2; CPJ 5: 388, 450; Eth-​V 27: 673–​4. Rawls (1999c, 181–​ 3) also implies that we have interests of reason in our own happiness, but this interest is likely explained by our formal interest in governing ourselves by laws of prudential reason. Hill (1992, 142), on the other hand, denies that we have interests of reason in the happiness of all.

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0013

Happiness  279

13.1 Happiness To explain and specify our interest of reason in happiness, we need to explore what happiness is for human persons. There are different philosophical conceptions of the abstract idea of happiness.5 Rather than examine each of them, we will continue to employ our approach of drawing on Kant and our model of the human mind to explain one way of thinking about the nature of happiness. Kant is in some ways trying to capture ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about happiness and our interests in it. The account of happiness we will discuss is controversial among Kantians, who are not settled on how he understands happiness, but it combines several themes from his thinking in plausible ways.6 Whether or not this idea of happiness is correct, its main purpose is to help us illustrate how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) can capture and explain a wide variety of commonsense judgments about what reason requires.

13.1.1  Choosing our Conception of Happiness The happiness or well-​being of a person, I suggest, is the degree to which a certain end that the person defines and adopts for herself is realized. Someone is fully happy just in case her conception of happiness, as we might call this special end, is completely satisfied. She is fully unhappy just in case her conception of happiness is completely unsatisfied. She is fully miserable just in case the real opposite of her conception of happiness is completely realized. Unlike standard hedonistic, desire-​satisfaction, and objective list theories of well-​being, this broadly Kantian view holds that how well someone’s life goes for her is relative to a conception of happiness, which is an end that she specifies and chooses for herself.

13.1.2  Ingredients of our Conception of Happiness A conception of happiness that someone determines and adopts is a higher-​order and composite end for how she would like her life to go. This end is an overarching goal that various other practical mental states she has are realized.7 The 5 For discussions of hedonistic, desire-​satisfaction, and objective list theories of well-​being, see Griffin (1986) and Sumner (1996). 6 Grenberg (2022), Pinheiro Walla (2022), Hill (2002, ­chapter 6), Wood (1999, ­chapter 8), Guyer (2000, ­chapter 11), and other Kantians disagree about whether happiness, for Kant, is the realization of our personal ends, pleasure and the absence of pain, the satisfaction of our desires, or some combination of these. My expansive suggestion is that happiness at times for Kant includes all our interests that do not arise from our power of reason as possible ingredients of our happiness as we specify that end for ourselves. 7 MM 6: 387–​8; Rel 6: 67–​8; Anth 7: 277; Eth-​V 27: 643–​4.

280 Sovereign Re ason ingredients that someone chooses to include in her conception of happiness can be any interests she has other than ones that are part of or arise from her power of reason. They can include natural feelings and desires, dispositions of judgment or imagination, personal commitments and loyalties, and any other active elements in her mind besides her interests of reason.8 The conception of happiness someone affirms might include enjoyment, the satisfaction of her natural desires, the fulfillment of her ends, or some combination of these and other of her conative mental states. Like standard Kantian views of the abstract idea of happiness, the conception of happiness we hold excludes any conative states that are part of or ultimately grounded in our power of reason itself. Our formal interests of reason in governing ourselves by rational requirements and our substantive interests of reason in acquiring knowledge, explaining things, protecting our freedom, and so on cannot contribute to our happiness one way or the other. If, however, we also have natural desires to act in ways that accord with principles of reason or to acquire knowledge, then the satisfaction of these natural interests can increase our happiness. A conception of happiness is narrower than a conception of our overall good. Happiness is limited to our contingent interests, while our overall good includes all of our interests, whether or not they are interests of reason.9 The various ingredients of our conception of happiness must be consistent and organized to a minimal extent. Some conflicts within and among the desires, ends, commitments, values, and other interests that might make up our conception of happiness are possible, but an end we endorse does not count as a conception of happiness if it is radically self-​contradictory or disjointed. Besides these minimal formal requirements and the exclusion of interests of reason, there are no restrictions on the interests that can figure into our conception of happiness, which can include immoral goals, sleazy desires, foolish ends, seemingly pointless pursuits, and feelings many of us would find repugnant. Our conception of happiness can include noble desires and feelings as well as trivial or morally indifferent goals. It can also become intertwined with those of other

8 G 4: 406–​7, 418; Rel 6: 45, 58, 67; CPJ 5: 208–​9, 434, 20: 196; MM 6: 387, 480–​1; A806/​B834; Anth 7: 325; Eth-​V 27: 643–​5. Kant sometimes emphasizes one of these aspects in his discussions of happiness, but there seems to be a theme in his thinking that happiness includes all three of them. See Paton (1967, 85–​7, 92, 105–​7, 126–​7) and Guyer (2000, c­ hapter 11). 9 A difficulty with limiting happiness to our natural interests is that painful feelings of guilt and regret that arise from our judicial powers of reason cannot, in themselves, diminish our happiness. Perhaps, on reflection, we might accept that a successful scoundrel is no less happy, in this narrow sense, because of his guilty feelings. As we shall discuss later in Section 13.5.1, such feelings might indirectly affect his happiness by diminishing his natural feelings of pleasure and enjoyment and by interfering with his pursuits. Another possibility is that happiness includes all our interests, not just our natural ones, although collapsing the distinction between them makes it difficult to capture and explain the apparent conflicts between happiness and morality (G 4: 442–​3).

Happiness  281 people, such as when we include our love for someone as part of our idea of what makes for a happy life for us.10

13.1.3  Defining our Conception of Happiness Within these broad constraints, it is entirely up to each of us to specify our own conception of happiness in whatever way we please. As Kant says, we “[determine] that which constitutes this end (happiness)” and “decide what [we] count as belonging to [our] happiness.”11 Determining our conception of happiness is partly an epistemic matter. We can reflect on what it is we really enjoy or want. We can seek relevant information about our circumstances and the likely effects of our natural interests if they were realized.12 We can imagine alternatives to some of our natural interests and ways of combining them together.13 And we can reflect on the source of an interest in our own minds, whether it arose from our power of reason itself or from our other powers of mind. Specifying our conception of happiness is also partly a matter of choice. We can decide which of our desires, feelings, ends, and other natural interests to include in our idea of what makes for a happy life for us. We can exclude some of the interests we have from our conception of happiness by placing them, as it were, “in the shade or in a dark corner.”14 We can prioritize the ingredients of our conception of happiness, adjudicate conflicts among them, and otherwise organize them in whatever ways we choose. We can specify the objects of our natural desires and ends, try to curb or cultivate certain natural feelings, and adopt or abandon particular commitments or loyalties.15 Forming and affirming a conception of happiness can be conscious and intentional, but doing so can also be inchoate and implicit.16 We might discover, for instance, that the best explanation for various choices we have made in the past is that we affirm a particular conception of what makes for a happy life for us. We are not tied to a particular conception of happiness but can shift and change this conception however we choose throughout our lives. Some parts of our conception of happiness might be deeply held and stable while others might be superficial and 10 Eth-​H 27: 53. Love for someone that arises from our power of reason itself cannot figure in our conception of happiness, but our natural affections and contingent desires for their well-​being can become part of our idea of happiness. 11 CPJ 20: 200 and MM 6: 388, respectively. See also MM 6: 393; CPJ 5: 430; Eth-​C 27: 246. 12 CPJ 5: 430; G 4: 418–​19; Eth-​V 27: 645. 13 G 4: 418–​19. 14 Anth 7: 166. 15 CPJ 5: 432; MM 6: 393; Rel 6: 58; Eth-​C 27: 392. 16 See Hill (2012, c­ hapter 4) for a more detailed account of how we can, on Kantian ways of thinking, discover our values.

282 Sovereign Re ason fleeting. Our choice of what conception of happiness to affirm is, like all of our choices, entirely free in the negative sense that it is not caused or determined by anything. As we discussed in the previous chapter, however, our interests tempt us to include various ingredients into our conception of happiness and to arrange it in certain ways. Our interests also make it difficult for us to choose not to specify our idea of happiness in accordance with them. Some desires and ends, such as love for our families or aversion to severe pain, are so compelling to us that it is very difficult for us not to make them part of what happiness is for us. We retain the freedom, however, to exclude these or any other ingredients from our conception of happiness.

13.1.4  Happiness of Human Beings Although happiness is a radically subjective idea that can be specified in an infinite number of ways, there are some empirical regularities among the conceptions of happiness that human persons tend to affirm. Few, if any, of us have a complete and determinate conception of happiness. Our conception of happiness does not come fully formed as part of our nature. For the most part, we tend to have only a broad outline of this end. Many aspects of our conception of happiness are vague, unsettled, indeterminate, or inconsistent with one another. Our natural feelings, desires, feelings, and purposes tend to shift and grow throughout our lives.17 We often do not know what we really want. We are regularly conflicted or ambivalent about including certain feelings, desires, and purposes into our conception of happiness. We are in many cases unsure whether we want something for its own sake or for the sake of something else. We do not always know whether our concern for something arises from our reason or from some other source in our minds. We are not always aware of relevant alternatives to our desires and purposes, and we may not have imaginatively reflected on many of them individually or as a whole. These and other factors often affect what conception of happiness we affirm. Our idea of what happiness is for us is usually an indeterminate and unstable end that we might never be able to specify fully and conclusively.18 Most of us nonetheless share similar desires, feelings, ends, and other interests, such as for food, water, and shelter, love for our families, aversion to pain, and much else.19 Despite these overlaps, there tends to be significant variation among the conceptions of happiness that different people affirm.20 Nothing prevents a human person, however, from finding her happiness mainly in exceedingly



17 G 4: 418–​19; CPJ 5: 429–​30. 18 G 4: 418–​19; CPJ 5: 429–​30; Rel 6: 36–​7; L-​Th 28: 1057. 19 MM 6: 454; CPJ 5: 430; Anth 7: 267; Eth-​V 27: 647–​8, 652–​3; Eth-​C 27: 393–​4. 20 CPJ 5: 429–​30.

Happiness  283 strange or worthless pursuits, such as counting blades of grass, even though it is quite unlikely that creatures with our typical psychologies would choose to restrict their conception of happiness in such a severe way.21 Human beings who can use our power of choice, according to Kant, necessarily set our own conception of happiness as an end.22 Adopting this end is an essential feature of what it is to be a competent human person. Some people, such as young children or those with significant cognitive disabilities, might not have the realized abilities to formulate and choose to adopt a conception of happiness.23 Others might only be able to do so with a minimal level of specificity that likely includes basic human needs, pleasures of various kinds, and aversions to pain and suffering.24 Otherwise, let’s again expand our model of the human mind from Chapter 3 by assuming that it is part of being a competent human being that we choose to endorse some conception of happiness as one of our ends. This supposition will be important for addressing several issues in the final section of this chapter. In sum, happiness for each of us is achieving what we make our idea of happiness to be. We specify our end of happiness by formulating a conception of it that includes natural feelings, desires, and ends that we select, organize, and prioritize, and we are happy to the extent that our conception of happiness, whatever it is, is realized. Our various contingent interests that are not part of or arise from our power of reason are the possible ingredients of our conception of happiness. They lead us to include various interests into our notion of what makes our life go well. Our interests, however, cannot cause us to specify our conception of happiness in any particular way. We do not have to make such decisions by the strength or intensity of our desires and feelings. There are also no objective standards that determine what our conception of happiness should be beyond the thin formal standards that any such conception must satisfy. As Kant says, we “[determine] that which constitutes this end (happiness),” which is an “end that each arbitrarily 21 The blade-​counting example is from Rawls (1999c, 379–​80). Hill (1991, c­ hapter 12) makes a similar point that our conceptions of happiness can be quite unorthodox and focused on seemingly pointless pursuits but that ordinary human psychology makes this quite unlikely. It is possible, for example, that some autistic people might find significant meaning in watching trains, solving Rubik’s Cubes, and perhaps even counting blades of grass. 22 G 4: 415; Rel 6: 6n; CPrR 5: 37; CPJ 20: 200n; Eth-​V 27: 577. For a discussion of how to reconcile this claim with our negative freedom to set any ends whatsoever, see Johnson (2013). 23 MM 6: 454; Anth 7: 202. 24 An apparently strange implication of this idea of happiness as an end we specify and set for ourselves is that infants, some people with severe disabilities, and others whose power of choice is unrealized or destroyed cannot, strictly speaking, be happy because they cannot specify or set any ends for themselves. There are obviously ways things can go well or poorly for such people and requirements we are under to help and not harm them. A more comprehensive theory of reason would have to explain these commonsense ideas, but perhaps, on reflection, we might find that they are best understood without appealing to the idea of happiness (a cooing infant might be joyful or satisfied but not, strictly speaking, happy).

284 Sovereign Re ason sets for himself.”25 Our level of happiness or well-​being is the degree to which our conception of happiness, whatever it may be, is realized. This abstract idea of happiness, which is controversial and incomplete, nonetheless fits with our assumed model of the human mind, with some features of common sense, and with some themes in Kant’s thinking. Conceiving of happiness as the realization of an overarching end that we each define and choose for ourselves allows us to specify our abstract interest of reason in the happiness of all human persons in more detail and to illustrate some substantive laws of reason that this interest favors. Some of these presumptive requirements are obvious, such as to promote the happiness of others, while others depend on understanding happiness as the realization of an end we define and set for ourselves. Let’s examine these specific interests of reason in happiness and the presumptive laws of reason that they favor.

13.2  Specifying our Conceptions of Happiness: Interests and Laws of Reason Our interest of reason in the happiness of all, I suggest, includes a more specific interest in each of us defining our own conception of happiness as concretely as we can. What happiness is for us depends on how we specify that end for ourselves and on achieving this freely specified end. When our conception of happiness is vague, indeterminate, internally conflicted, and disorganized, there is often no fact of the matter about whether certain things that we might do for ourselves or that others might do for us will contribute to our happiness or theirs. Rational and reasonable people who, as such, care about the happiness of all human persons care that we each specify the standard that determines how happy, unhappy, or miserable we and others are in the first place. Several laws of reason are justifiable to rational and reasonable people on the basis of our interest of reason in ensuring that we each define our own conception of happiness for ourselves. One straightforward law of reason that rational and reasonable people could or would endorse out of this interest presumptively requires us to formulate and endorse a conception of happiness for ourselves that is as specific as possible.26 We presumptively should not leave our conception of happiness vague or indeterminate but instead take an active role in defining what happiness is for us. This law presumptively requires us to specify the possible interests that we might include within our conception of happiness by, for instance, reflecting on our desires to see what it is we really want and imagining different goals we might choose to pursue. Because of changing circumstances and opportunities that we will likely encounter 25 CPJ 20: 200 and CPJ 5: 429–​30, respectively. 26 A800/​B828; G 4: 395, 406–​7; Rel 6: 58; CPJ 5: 426–​7; Anth 7: 254, 266; MH 2: 261; L-​Log 24: 250.

Happiness  285 over time, we are also presumptively required to incorporate some flexibility in our conception of happiness to accommodate these eventualities. Another law that is justifiable to rational and reasonable people with interests of reason in determining what happiness is for them presumptively requires us, as far as possible, to organize the ingredients of our conception of happiness into a consistent, coherent, and unified system of interests. We presumptively should avoid incorporating contradictory interests into our conception of happiness as well as identify and eliminate any conflicting interests that are already part of our conception of happiness. We presumptively must make our conception of happiness unified. We can do so by looking for hidden commonalities among our desires, affirming more basic ends that explain apparently disparate ones, prioritizing our interests, or abandoning some or all of them in ways that enhance the unity of our conception of happiness. A third presumptive law of reason favored by our interests of reason in determining our conceptions of happiness presumptively requires us to fill in intermediate purposes between our general and specific ones. These three laws combine into a composite law of reason to define a systematically unified conception of happiness for ourselves.27 This law of reason does not tell us what particular things should go into our conception of happiness or how we should organize them.28 In the ideal, our conception of happiness would be completely specific, consistent, and structured. For many of us, it would include one or a few basic interests along with intermediate and specific ones that progressively interpret and apply our basic desires, goals, and other interests. It may not be possible for human persons to achieve this, but our power of reason nonetheless presumptively requires us to do so as best we can. Our interest of reason in defining our own conceptions of happiness also favors a presumptive right to formulate and choose a conception of happiness for ourselves free from certain kinds of interference from other people.29 We infringe on this presumptive right by restricting freedom of speech and access to information in ways that undermine the deliberative freedom of people to choose a conception of happiness on the basis of an accurate understanding of themselves and their situation. Some governments, Kant says, unjustly deny their subjects freedom of 27 Our substantive final interests in unity, specificity, and affinity from Chapter 9 favor presumptive laws to systematically unify everything, including our conception of happiness. Our substantive final interest in happiness also favors presumptive laws to organize our conception of happiness so that there is a fact of the matter about what it is we care about when we care about our own happiness and the happiness of others. 28 Many interesting philosophical issues remain about this process of determining what happiness is for us, including how it is supposed to work, what counts as success, how we can tell whether an interest is natural or produced by our power of reason, how we are supposed to deal with drastic changes to our feelings and desires over the course of our lives, and how we should adjudicate conflicts among interests at different times of life. For further discussion of these issues, see Wiggins (1998) and Cureton (Forthcoming-​c, ­chapter 4). 29 MM 6: 388, 454; TP 8: 290; CPJ 5: 278.

286 Sovereign Re ason thought and speech to keep them in “permanent immaturity with regard to their own best interest.”30 We might use inducements or fear on our friends or students to pressure them to adjust their conception of happiness.31 Such infringements of their motivational freedom make it more difficult for them to choose a conception of happiness that conflicts with ones we want them to affirm. According to Kant, someone who submits to a patron who “looks after him paternalistically in accordance with his own concepts of happiness” seems to commit “the greatest rejection of his own humanity” by renouncing his presumptive right to determine his own conception of happiness for himself.32 Many questions remain about the nature and limits of paternalism and about how we can affect the conceptions of happiness that others hold. Rational and reasonable people who care that we each specify our own conception of happiness nonetheless could or would endorse presumptive rights to do so free from infringements by others on their deliberative and motivational freedom.33

13.3  Promoting the Happiness of Everyone: Interests and Laws of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes interests in promoting and not undermining the happiness of all people. Rational and reasonable people as such want each person, without exception, to be as happy as she can be according to whatever conception of happiness she affirms for herself. This interest of reason is not an interest in maximizing the total amount of happiness in the world as such or in balancing or trading off the degrees of happiness of different people.34 It can also conflict with other interests of reason we have. Our power of reason simply leads us to value to some extent the full realization of each person’s conception of happiness, taken one by one, including our own. Rational and reasonable people who are moved by only this interest of reason in the happiness of everyone could or would rationally endorse several presumptive laws that concern promoting our own happiness and the happiness of other people. Some of these laws might seem initially dubious to Kantians or others, while other laws might seem inadequately responsive to persistent philosophical controversies about, for example, beneficence and its relation to self-​interest. In this section, we will explain some obvious and not so obvious presumptive laws that are favored by our interest of reason in furthering the happiness of all. In the next section, we will explore how these laws 30 Anth 7: 209. 31 Eth-​C 27: 282; Anth 7: 202; TP 8: 290. 32 MM 6: 454. 33 Our substantive final interests of reason in deliberative and motivational freedom from Chapter 12 also favor presumptive rights to formulate and freely endorse our own conceptions of happiness. 34 We will return to this issue in the next section.

Happiness  287 provide a plausible but incomplete framework for addressing further questions we will not try to settle here about what reason requires of us, all things considered, when it comes to promoting our own happiness and the happiness of others.

13.3.1  Ends of Happiness Our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of all favors a law that presumptively requires us to make the happiness of all people, including ourselves, our own end.35 Rational and reasonable people necessarily have interests of reason in the happiness of all, but for each person, we presumptively should also use our power of choice to make it one of our goals that her conception of happiness is fully realized. This law presumptively forbids us from choosing not to adopt the happiness of some people as an end, no matter how much we might otherwise dislike or feel ambivalent toward them on the basis of our natural interests. Our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of everyone also favors a presumptive prohibition on setting the unhappiness or misery of anyone as an end.36 Setting an end is choosing to adopt it as a purpose that we, at least sometimes and to some extent, choose to promote when opportunities to do so arise. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument, a presumptive requirement or prohibition on some mental act is a law of reason if it or something suitably related to it could or would be rationally endorsed or rejected by a set of rational and reasonable people on the basis of an interest of reason they have. Rational and reasonable people who care only about satisfying each person’s conception of happiness could or would rationally endorse choosing to set the happiness of each person as an end and could or would rationally reject choosing to set the unhappiness or misery of any person as an end. Thus, the Qualified Justifiability Argument implies that reason presumptively requires us to set the happiness of everyone as an end and presumptively forbids us from setting the unhappiness or misery of anyone as an end. Fully adopting the happiness of everyone as ends is more difficult than it might seem because we do not know most other people, we often do not know what specific conceptions of happiness they affirm, their conceptions of happiness tend to shift and change throughout their lives, and many people endorse vague and disorganized views of what happiness is for them. At a minimum, we are presumptively required to endorse the happiness of everyone and oppose the unhappiness and misery of anyone in the abstract sense that their conceptions of happiness, whatever they might be, are fully realized.

35 G 4: 430; MM 6: 388, 452; EAT 8: 337–​8; Eth-​V 27: 541. 36 MM 6: 458–​60; G 4: 430; Eth-​V 27: 686–​7. See Fahmy (2023b).

288 Sovereign Re ason We presumptively should also strive to make the happiness of each person, in all its specificity, into our own end. This is likely an impossible task, but pursuing it as best we can requires us to gather information about how other people conceive of their own happiness.37 Investigation and experience can help us to do so, as can cultivating our sensitivity to the feelings of others. For example, Kant claims that we have “a duty” to develop our ability “to recognize what pertains to the agreeable or disagreeable, in regard both to myself and others” and to “possess such delicate feeling as is necessary in order to judge their sensation” so that we are aware of the sorts of feelings others have that likely figure into their conceptions of happiness.38 Whatever other attitudes we might have toward the conceptions of happiness that people endorse, which we might regard as base or repugnant, we are presumptively required to understand the ideas of happiness they endorse for themselves and to affirm the realization of these ends as goals of our own. The laws of reason to set the happiness of everyone as ends and to avoid setting anyone’s unhappiness or misery as an end applies to ourselves as well. We presumptively should set our own happiness as an end and avoid setting our own unhappiness and misery as ends. This might seem dubious or strange until we recall that the laws of reason we are discussing might not be moral laws and that reason can require things of us even if we necessarily do them already. We will return to these concerns in the next section, but for now let’s consider another set of presumptions that are justifiable to rational and reasonable people who value the happiness of everyone.

13.3.2  Promoting Happiness Our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of all favors laws that presumptively require us to further the happiness of all people and not to further their unhappiness or misery. For each person, we presumptively should not only set her happiness as an end. We also presumptively should do what we can to make her as happy as she can be according to her conception of happiness and avoid acting in ways that make her unhappy or miserable according to her idea of what happiness is for her. Rational and reasonable people could or would endorse this presumptive law because our rational nature includes an interest that all people are as well-​off as possible. In many cases, other presumptive laws of reason likely defeat these presumptions, which also do not tell us what to do when we can only promote the happiness of one person at the expense of our own happiness or the happiness of someone else. Reason nonetheless presumptively requires us, as Kant says, to 37 TP 8: 290. 38 Eth-​V 27: 645 and Anth 7: 236, respectively. See also Eth-​V 27: 634; L-​Anth 25: 1320.

Happiness  289 “promote, in fact, the universal end of all men, namely, happiness.”39 According to him, someone who “abolishes the possibility of promoting his own and others’ welfare . . . violates humanity in his own person” by undermining his interest of reason in happiness.40 In the case of other people, we presumptively should assist them in times of distress, do favors for them, act in ways that they find agreeable, provide conditions that are amenable to their happiness, and otherwise do things that benefit them according to their conception of happiness. We also presumptively should not make others suffer, treat them harshly or meanly, burden them, destroy their good fortune, abolish the possibility of their happiness, or otherwise harm them according to what happiness is for them.41 In our own case, we presumptively should promote our own happiness and not undermine it or bring about our own misery. We are presumptively required to act in whatever ways most fully promote our own self-​interest so that, as Kant says, “what is consistent with the greatest and most abiding well-​being is chosen, and that also the most apt means for . . . happiness are chosen.”42 Our reason, according to Kant, “certainly has a commission from the side of his sensibility which it cannot refuse . . . to form practical maxims with a view to happiness.”43 We are presumptively forbidden from intending not to pursue our own happiness, from depriving ourselves of things that are necessary for us to achieve a basic level of happiness, and from doing things that eliminate all hope of our own happiness.44 We are also presumptively forbidden from actively sabotaging or hurting ourselves, from sacrificing our happiness, from foolishly promoting one part of our conception of happiness at the expense of the whole, or from otherwise harming ourselves.45 As Kant says, “lawgiving reason, which includes the whole species (and so myself as well) in its idea of humanity as such . . . permits you to be

39 Eth-​V 27: 544. See also MM 6: 393, 450–​1, 453; Eth-​V 27: 541, 675. A presumptive law of reason to maximize the happiness of all is in some ways much more demanding than how Kant’s duty of beneficence is usually interpreted (Baron 1995, ­chapters 1, 2, and 3, Herman 1993b, ­chapter 3, Hill 2002, ­chapters 4 and 5, O’Neill 1989, ­chapter 5, Timmermann 2005, and Stohr 2011). In another respect, however, this law is potentially less demanding than standard Kantian views because it is a mere presumption that can be defeated by other presumptive laws of reason to, for example, promote our own happiness, protect our own motivational freedom, perfect our own rational nature, and acquire knowledge for ourselves. 40 Eth-​V 27: 613. 41 MM 6: 458–​9; Eth-​V 27: 613, 645, 684, 686–​7, 698. 42 Rel 6: 45. See also G 4: 406, 415–​16; A800/​B828; Eth-​C 27: 424. 43 CPrR 5: 61. See also MM 6: 216. Nagel (1978, ­chapters 5–​8) suggests that a rationally prudent person is concerned for her own happiness. This law of reason to promote our own happiness is a direct rather than an indirect requirement. Other interests of reason, such as our formal interests in rational self-​governance, might favor a law to promote our happiness as a means of diminishing obstacles to choosing in rational and reasonable ways. Our substantive interests of reason in happiness, in addition, favor furthering our own happiness for its own sake. 44 MM 6: 432; G 4: 423, 432; Eth-​C 27: 442. 45 MM 6: 432–​3; G 4: 423, 432; Anth 7: 210; Eth-​C 27: 442.

290 Sovereign Re ason benevolent to yourself on the condition of your being benevolent to every other as well.”46 That we are presumptively required by reason to promote the happiness of everyone, to maximize the happiness of all, and to do so for ourselves as well as other people are controversial claims that seem to conflict with some basic Kantian themes and perhaps with some features of reflective common sense. As we will discuss in the next section, these presumptive laws of reason I am proposing are more moderate and open-​ended than they might initially appear, in part because they might not be moral requirements. Before we examine these issues, we will explore some other presumptive laws of reason that are favored by our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of everyone.

13.3.3  Right to Pursue Happiness Our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of all favors a presumptive right to pursue our own happiness in whatever ways we choose free from certain kinds of interference from others. This presumptive right, as Kant says, affords each person the “freedom to make himself happy in accordance with his own choices” and allows him to “seek his happiness in the way that seems good to him.”47 We violate someone’s presumptive right to promote her own happiness by paternalistically preventing her from acting in ways that she thinks are good for her but we think are bad for her. We also infringe on this presumptive right by forcing favors or gifts on someone, compelling her to do things that will contribute to her happiness, lying to her for her own good, and otherwise trying to make her happy against her will. Even when someone is mistaken about what will further or frustrate her own conception of happiness, she has a presumptive right to pursue this end free from compulsion, deception, or force from other people.48 This is only a presumptive right, of course, that might be overridden when, for example, pursuing our own happiness infringes on this right in other people or when saving someone from serious injury or emotional distress necessitates telling them a small lie.49 Exceptions might also be needed for children, those with certain kinds of cognitive disabilities, and others who, as Kant says, “must still, with regard to the smallest matters of life, be kept orderly through someone else’s reason.”50 Combining these and other presumptive requirements of reason is exceedingly difficult, but our presumptive 46 MM 6: 451. See also A800/​B828; MM 6: 395, 216; G 4: 396; Rel 6: 47n; CPJ 5: 216. There is at least one context, however, in which Kant reportedly said, “my advantage is not an object of reason” (Eth-​C 27: 279). 47 TP 8: 290. See also MM 6: 388, 454; CPJ 5: 278. 48 MM 6: 454; Anth 7: 209; Eth-​C 27: 282. 49 See Hill (1991, ­chapter 3, 1992, ­chapter 10) and Donagan (1977, c­ hapter 6) for Kantian perspectives on benevolent lies and other forms of paternalism. 50 Anth 7: 202. See also Anth 7: 210.

Happiness  291 right to pursue our own happiness is at least one defeasible ground for opposing paternalistic interventions of any kind.

13.3.4  Avoiding Needs Our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of everyone favors a different kind of presumptive law from the ones we have so far been discussing in this section. The happiness of a person, we are assuming, is the degree to which her conception of happiness is satisfied. On this view, there are two main ways to promote someone’s happiness. The first is to further the conception of happiness she affirms. The second is for her to revise her conception of happiness itself. We can either adjust the world to fit someone’s conception of happiness, or she can adjust her conception of happiness to fit the world. Both approaches increase her level of happiness. Suppose, for example, that one of the main aims that someone includes in her conception of happiness is to be a concert pianist, but she is not quite good enough to make the cut. Although we could try to help her with mentoring and training, she would be much happier overall if she were to adjust her conception of happiness to prioritize other pursuits she cares about, such as teaching. Her desire and goal to be a concert pianist might remain and even still be part of her idea of happiness, but changing their priority in this way would increase the degree to which her overarching end of happiness is satisfied. Adjusting her conception of happiness in favor of teaching might be very difficult for her because of how much she wants to be a concert pianist, but she has the negative freedom to assign less priority to this desire in her conception of happiness or even to exclude it entirely. We normally think of promoting the happiness of people as a matter of realizing a fixed goal, but if this goal itself is under their control, then they can affect their own level of happiness simply by revising their conception of what happiness is for them. Our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of everyone, including ourselves, favors a presumptive law to adjust our own conception of happiness in ways that make us as happy as we can be.51 In the extreme, we would simply match our conception of happiness exactly to how things actually are for us and so, much like the Stoics, want nothing more than what we have. As we discussed in the previous section, however, we also have a presumptive right to fashion our conception of happiness however we choose. A more modest implication of a presumptive law to fit our conception of happiness to the world is to avoid as far as possible 51 For more on the idea of taking some responsibility for one’s conception of happiness in light of one’s characteristics and circumstances, see Rawls (1999c, 80–​1, 1993, 33–​4, 72, 184–​6) and Johnson (2011, 89–​90), as well as our discussion of harmony in Chapter 9.

292 Sovereign Re ason incorporating interests into our conception of happiness that must be satisfied for us to be even minimally happy, especially ones that are difficult or impossible for us to fulfill. Apart from basic human needs, such as food and water, we presumptively should not make desires, feelings, ends, or other interests into necessities that are essential to our happiness, because affording them such a prominent role makes achieving happiness precarious if not impossible.52 As Kant says, it is “a duty” that we do not “let anything become a need, which nature does not necessarily require to be such,” because in doing so we make ourselves “dependent on a multitude of things, which we afterwards cannot procure, and whereby we are subsequently thrown into all kinds of distress.”53 We presumptively should instead include in our conception of happiness only interests that we can do without and still remain somewhat happy.54 We also presumptively should tailor our conception of happiness so that we can tolerate discomforts and misfortunes without becoming exceedingly unhappy or miserable and, as Kant claims, “[t]‌r y to maintain [our] state so that [we] dispense with as much as is needed to establish [our] contentment on the fewest conditions possible.”55

13.3.5  Harmonize our Happiness with the Happiness of Others Our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of all also favors laws that presumptively require us to specify our own conception of happiness so that it is consistent with, unified with, and harmonized with the conceptions of happiness others affirm. We presumptively should, as Kant says, strive to ensure that “our ends coincide with those of others in such a way that they are able to co-​exist together according to the universal rule of duty.”56 We presumptively should select purposes that are compatible with those of others and avoid including desires and ends that, if satisfied, would undermine the satisfaction of the desires and ends that others include in their conceptions of happiness. We presumptively should strive for a consistent, systematically unified, and harmonious system of everyone’s ideas of what happiness is for them. This is a far-​off ideal, but rational and reasonable people who value the happiness of all could or would to some extent want everyone to adjust our own conceptions of happiness so that they fit with those of others.57

52 Eth-​V 27: 613, 647–​8; Eth-​C 27: 393. 53 Eth-​V 27: 648 and Eth-​C 27: 394, respectively. 54 Eth-​V 27: 653; Eth-​C 27: 393. 55 Eth-​V 27: 649. See also Eth-​V 27: 648, 652, 655, 684; Eth-​C 27: 379, 392–​4. 56 Eth-​V 27: 672–​3. 57 See Hill (1992, c­ hapter 3), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 6), Waldron (2021), Timmons (2021a), Holtman (2022), von der Pfordten (2021), and Sensen (2021).

Happiness  293

13.3.6  Other Presumptive Laws of Reason Conforming to these various presumptive laws that are favored by our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of all often depends on knowing what conceptions of happiness we and others affirm, what we can do to make people happy, what is needed to avoid interfering with their pursuit of happiness, and much else. Our interest of reason in promoting happiness thus also favors presumptive requirements to reflect on and investigate these matters and to take due care in how we go about promoting our own happiness and the happiness of other people. When time is short, however, or someone has an especially indeterminate conception of happiness, then we are presumptively required to appeal, as Kant says, to “genuine natural need concerning which our species is in thoroughgoing self-​ consensus” and perhaps some features of our own conception of happiness.58 This interest of reason in promoting happiness also favors second-​order laws that concern how we and others comply with other presumptive requirements that concern promoting the happiness of people. For instance, we presumptively should avoid acting in ways that tend to deter people from helping one another, such as with ingratitude, and presumptively should do things that tend to encourage beneficence and generosity in others, such as by being affable and practicing good manners.59

13.4  Further Issues about Promoting the Happiness of Everyone In the previous section, we discussed how our power of reason includes an interest in promoting the happiness of all and that rational and reasonable people could or would, on the basis of this interest, endorse presumptive laws to set the happiness of everyone as an end, to promote the happiness of all, to respect everyone’s right to promote their own happiness, to adjust our own conception of happiness to match our circumstances, to harmonize our own happiness with that of others, to take due care in applying these laws, and to encourage and not discourage others from following them. It might seem that these proposed requirements amount to rather strong and controversial positions on a variety of philosophical issues about promoting our own happiness and that of others. Considering some of these worries will help to further explain the presumptive nature and grounds of the proposed laws, highlight their compatibility with a wide variety of positions, and suggest how they might eventually help us to resolve some of these disputes. Although it is unsatisfying to leave many of the main philosophical questions 58 CPJ 5: 430. See also MM 6: 388, 454; Anth 7: 202, 210; Eth-​C 27: 282. In addition, see Fahmy (2023b). 59 MM 6: 459; Anth 7: 152, 278; Eth-​C 27: 339, 443.

294 Sovereign Re ason about beneficence and other topics unresolved, our main aim is to show how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason can generate and explain a wide variety of considerations that might eventually be combined in ways that accord with how we ordinarily think and speak about what reason requires in reflective common sense.

13.4.1 Utilitarianism One concern might be that the presumptive requirements to set the happiness of all people as an end and to promote the happiness of everyone seem vaguely utilitarian, as if we are required by reason to strive to maximize overall happiness in the world. Kantian theories of morality, at least, are supposed to provide a check on this sort of thinking, while others might welcome ways of incorporating utilitarian concerns into broadly Kantian views.60 The interest of reason in promoting happiness that I have proposed, however, does not entail any resolution to such controversies. This interest is in promoting the happiness of each person, taken individually, not in promoting the sum total of happiness. If our interest in promoting the happiness of all were fully realized, then overall happiness would be maximized, but there is no claim about what this interest implies when the happiness of different people come into conflict other than that we would like all of them to be fully happy even when this is impossible. A central feature of utilitarianism is that the unhappiness or misery of some people can be compensated for by greater overall happiness in others, whereas many nonteleological views hold that such trade-​offs are sometimes or always prohibited.61 When the presumptive requirements we discussed to promote the happiness of two or more persons come into conflict, they do not tell us what we are required by reason to do. These presumptions, however, help us to understand what is at stake in the conflict. If all else is equal, then we are required to promote the happiness of any person. In most and perhaps all situations we are likely to encounter, however, there will be competing presumptions of reason that favor competing acts. These opposing presumptions might concern, for example, promoting our own happiness or the happiness of someone else. Helping other people, as Kant says, often “costs [us] some sacrifice” and in extreme cases even puts us in a position in which we “need the beneficence of others.”62 We might also respect the freedoms of others and maintain our own freedoms rather than help others, or we might use our time and energy instead to develop or protect the rational powers of other people or to gather and disseminate knowledge. Further development of the SCR is needed to determine whether, for 60 Cummiskey (1996) and Parfit (2011) try to reconcile Kantian and consequentialist ways of thinking. 61 Scanlon (1998) and Rawls (1999c) emphasize this distinction between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist moral theories. 62 Eth-​C 27: 453 and MM 6: 393, respectively. See also MM 6: 393, 453; Eth-​C 27: 424, 455.

Happiness  295 instance, we should help the person who is most needy, favor our kith and kin, prioritize our own happiness, maximize overall happiness, or do something else. Although my aim is not to specify what reason requires, all things considered, when the happiness of two or more people conflict, there are many forms such laws might take that are consistent with the presumptive laws we have been discussing. These alternatives vary in how demanding they are. We might just be required, all things considered, to help other people sometimes and to some extent according to our own choices about whether, how, who, and how much to help other people.63 We might be required to be courteous to others and to assist them in times of emergency but otherwise be permitted to pursue our own happiness.64 We might be required to help those in need so long as we do not put ourselves in need by doing so.65 Kant at times seems to endorse each of these alternatives. In line with the less demanding options, he says, for example, that there are “actions which are not accompanied by any obligation, for example, whether I decide to walk about in my yard, or sit still” and that “I pay no heed to a case of distress that I had no obligation to relieve.”66 If we nonetheless were to help other people when we are not required by reason to do so, then we would apparently act in a supererogatory way.67 Kindness toward someone, Kant says, is “opus supererogationis . . . , a thing superadded . . . which involves something meritorious,” and beneficent actions “contain in themselves more moral goodness than is determined as necessary by the law.”68 Presumptive laws of reason that concern promoting the happiness of others might thus take the form of ideals that we should aspire to realize but that we are not strictly required to fulfill. In line with the more demanding options for how much we are supposed to promote the happiness of others, Kant says that “no surplus of observance to duty can accrue to us over and above what is due.”69 This suggests that we are required by reason to promote the happiness of others as much as we can and that it is not possible for us to act in supererogatory ways.70 A further complicating factor for adjudicating conflicts among the happiness of different people is that, as we have discussed, what happiness is for someone depends on what conception of happiness she freely chooses for herself.71 Appealing to the needs of people is a common strategy for determining how much we are required to help them, such as claiming that we have a duty of mutual aid to satisfy 63 Eth-​V 27: 560, 578. See Hill (2002, c­ hapters 4 and 5). 64 MM 6: 393; Eth-​H 27: 67; Eth-​C 27: 424. 65 MM 6: 453; Eth-​C 27: 455. 66 Eth-​V 27: 512 and Eth-​V 27: 561, respectively. See also Eth-​V 27: 512; Eth-​Mr2 29: 615. 67 MM 6: 227. 68 Eth-​V 27: 670 and Eth-​V 27: 600, respectively. See also Rel 6: 61–​2; MM 6: 453, 459; Eth-​V 27: 622–​3; Eth-​Mr2 29: 619–​20; Eth-​C 27: 410, 422; Eth-​H 27: 67, 72; L-​Anth 25: 1171. 69 Rel 6: 146n. See also Rel 146n; Eth-​V 27: 621–​2, 655, 668; Eth-​Mr2 29: 620. 70 For discussions of supererogation in Kant’s ethics, including his account of merit, see Hill (1992, ­chapter 8), Cureton and Hill (2023), Baron (1995), Baron and Falmy (2009), and Johnson (1996a). 71 MM 6: 393.

296 Sovereign Re ason the needs of other people when we can do so at little cost to ourselves and that we are not required to help other people when this would put us in need. Yet what we need to be even minimally happy is entirely up to each of us and can be changed at will. If we are presumptively required by reason to abstain from incorporating certain needs into our idea of happiness, then difficult questions arise about whether we are required to help a needy person when she rationally should have organized her conception of happiness differently, such as a gourmand who is utterly miserable without expensive wine.72

13.4.2  Immoral Conceptions of Happiness The presumptive nature of the laws favored by our interest of reason in promoting happiness renders them consistent with a variety of views about whether we are required, all things considered, to promote the happiness of people who affirm unreasonable conceptions of happiness and to promote the happiness of people in unreasonable ways.73 Our power of reason includes an interest in promoting the happiness of everyone, no matter what conception of happiness they affirm, but it also includes competing interests that oppose certain ingredients in the conceptions of happiness people affirm and that oppose certain ways of furthering their happiness. The SCR, at this early stage of development, holds that these various considerations are relevant to what reason requires of us all things considered, but it does not specify what we are supposed to do when presumptive requirements of reason conflict.

13.4.3  Promoting Our Own Happiness The laws of reason to set the happiness of everyone as an end and to promote the happiness of all are not just limited to the happiness of other people. They also concern our own happiness. A central theme among Kantians and others, however, is that we are under no moral obligations to care about or promote our own happiness and that conflicts between what is good for us and what we morally ought to do are central to a proper understanding of morality and self-​interest.74 72 Eth-​C 27: 455. See also Cohen (1989). 73 A813/​B841; CPrR 5: 34; CPJ 5: 209; MM 6: 388; Rel 6: 47n; TP 8: 283. 74 See Paton (1967, 85–​7, 92, 105–​7, 126–​7), Gregor (1963, 78, 177), Johnson (2013), and Reath (2006, ­chapter 2) for further discussion of Kant’s conception of happiness and its role in the moral life. Kahn (2022) argues that Kant should have endorsed an obligation to pursue our own happiness. He makes some of the same conceptual points I note here, but his argument for a duty to promote our happiness is based on a requirement to properly respect ourselves, whereas my argument for such a requirement is based on our interests of reason in the happiness of all along with a principle of justifiability to persons.

Happiness  297 Plato, Aristotle, Butler, and others argue instead that morality and our own happiness, properly conceived, are harmonious if not in some ways identical.75 The SCR, as we are developing it here, does not take a position in this dispute. The presumptive laws we are discussing are simply laws of reason, whether or not they are also laws of moral reason, prudential reason, or theoretical reason. Presumptive requirements to promote our own happiness might not be moral laws, so when they conflict with presumptive moral requirements, morality and self-​interest are in tension with one another in the ways Kantians affirm. On the other hand, any laws of reason that derive from the Abstract Principle of Justifiability might be moral requirements, in which case morality and self-​interest might reinforce one another in a fully rational and reasonable person. A third possibility is that, whether or not morality presumptively requires us to promote our own happiness, the desires, feelings, and other interests that make up our conception of happiness might often tempt us to violate various laws of reason, including moral ones. In any case, it might seem at least pointless for our power of reason to legislate presumptive laws requiring us to set our own happiness as an end because, according to our assumed abstract idea of happiness, competent human persons necessarily choose to do so already. As a conceptual matter, however, we can be subject to laws of reason we necessarily satisfy. God, for example, is often depicted as perfectly rational because he necessarily complies with all requirements of reason that apply to him.76 In our discussion of the legislative powers of reason in Chapter 4, we said that it is not possible for someone to be constrained or bound by a law of reason that she necessarily satisfies.77 Imperatives and duties are laws of reason that include an element of constraint, such as threats of internal sanctions, that lead us to comply with them. We thus cannot have a duty to set our own happiness as an end because it is contradictory for us to be constrained to set an end that we necessarily endorse. We can, however, be presumptively required by reason to make our own happiness one of our ends as long as no element of constraint is involved. This requirement is not likely to make a practical difference to us, but it might play other explanatory roles as part of a larger theory of reason. The presumptive prohibition on setting our own unhappiness or misery as an end can include constraints and so be an imperative or duty. According to our abstract idea of happiness, we all necessarily set our own happiness as an end, but we do not necessarily refrain from adopting our own unhappiness or misery as ends as well. It is possible for us to adopt these ends even though they conflict with the end of happiness that we necessarily affirm. A depressed or self-​loathing person can endorse a goal of her own happiness and at the same time endorse a conflicting

75 See Plato (2007), Aristotle (1999), and Butler (2017). 76 For discussions of Kant’s conception of God, see Byrne (2007), Brewer (2022), Winegar (2017), and Chignell (2007a). 77 MM 6: 386–​7; CPrR 5: 37; Rel 6: 6n; Eth-​V 27: 544.

298 Sovereign Re ason goal of misery for herself. Our reason presumptively prohibits us from seeking our own unhappiness or misery, and it is possible for us to violate this law.78 We can enforce it in ourselves through rationally produced desires and feelings that lead us to abandon these ends.

13.4.4  Maximizing Happiness For many Kantians, an especially unsettling feature of some of the presumptive laws that concern the promotion of happiness is their maximizing element. I have been suggesting that our power of reason includes an interest that everyone is as happy as he or she can be and that this interest favors presumptive laws to set the maximal happiness of each person as an end and to promote the happiness of each person as much as we can. A distinctive feature of Kantian views is commonly thought to be their opposition to maximizing things, especially happiness, which Kantians regard as a value without claiming that producing more of it is always better.79 Some and perhaps all of these concerns might eventually be addressed by considering how the many presumptive laws of reason that apply to us combine together. Specifying some laws of reason as ideals rather than strict requirements might help as well. It might turn out that, because of conflicting presumptions, we are rarely strictly required by reason, all things considered, to maximize the happiness of anyone. There is some evidence that Kant’s own views about maximizing our own happiness and that of others are more complicated than they might initially appear. Kant says, for example, that we should ensure that “what is consistent with the greatest and most abiding well-​being is chosen, and that also the most apt means for . . . happiness are chosen.”80 In our own case, our power of reason, as it were, “[looks] after the interests of the inclinations, whether singly or, at most, in their greatest compatibility with one another.”81 Kant says that “[e]‌ach ought to be as happy as he can be.”82 God, according to Kant, is “determined to activity and to the production of the good, and indeed to the production of the greatest possible 78 A person of this kind also violates a formal law of reason that prohibits us from endorsing contradictory ends. See Chapters 6 and 7 for discussions of formal requirements of reason. 79 Hill (2002, 216–​17) attributes anti-​maximizing themes to Kant. The view I express here has some affinities with interpretations of Kant that emphasize some maximizing elements with regard to, for example, the duty of beneficence, such as those of Wolf (1982), Baron (1995), Baron and Falmy (2009), Timmermann (2005), and Stohr (2011). I suggest, however, that there are many more presumptive requirements of reason than they think there are that counteract presumptive requirements to maximize the happiness of others. I also leave open whether some laws of reason concerning happiness might be characterized as ideals that are, for instance, weakly rather than strongly enforced or induced instead of constrained through our reason. 80 Rel 6: 45. See also Eth-​C 27: 423. 81 G 4: 406. See also G 4: 415–​16; A800/​B828; Eth-​C 27: 424. 82 L-​NR 27: 1383.

Happiness  299 sum of all good.”83 Kant’s idea of the highest good, which he thinks we have a duty to bring about, consists of “morality coupled with happiness to the maximum possible degree.”84 Part of what makes friendships and other solidarity relationships an “ideal,” according to Kant, is that they involve “a maximum of good disposition toward each other” and a “maximum of mutual love.”85 And Kant describes a “rational prototype,” which is his idea of a fully reason-​governed human person, as someone “willing . . . to spread goodness about him as far wide as possible.”86 In sum, our interest of reason in promoting the happiness of all and the presumptive laws of reason that they favor are compatible with various views about, for example, how much we should give to charity, whether we should favor humanitarian or artistic causes, how we should apportion our generosity among family and strangers, whether we should help with our time or with our money, what prerogatives we have to pursue our own happiness, and much else. These laws, which concern not just promoting the happiness of people but also respecting their right to specify their own idea of happiness and adjusting our own conception of happiness in rational ways, nonetheless provide relevant considerations that accord with commonsense ways of thinking. Incorporating these presumptive laws and the interest of reason that grounds them into a more detailed interpretation of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason might help us to address some of the most persistent and pressing philosophical issues about promoting the happiness of different people when we cannot do so for everyone.

13.5  Desires and Feelings Toward the Happiness of Everyone: Interests and Laws of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes second-​order interests that all people come to have certain kinds of attitudes toward the happiness of all and that all people lack other kinds of attitudes. When we examine what it is that our power of reason leads us to care about regarding our own happiness and the happiness of others, we find first-​order desires and other interests to promote the happiness of all people. As rational and reasonable people, we want everyone to be happy. We find, in addition, substantive final interests of reason in the attitudes each of us takes toward the happiness of everyone. Our power of reason leads us to approve of certain kinds of natural feelings and desires toward the happiness of people and to oppose others. As rational and reasonable people, part of caring 83 L-​Th 28: 1066. 84 Eth-​V 27: 717. See also MM 6: 480–​1. For discussions of the highest good in Kant, see Guyer (2011), Wood (2008, 268–​9), and Beiser (2006). 85 Eth-​C 27: 423. See also MM 6: 469. 86 Rel 6: 61.

300 Sovereign Re ason about the happiness of all is that we want ourselves or others to have certain natural feelings and desires toward the happiness of people and we do not want ourselves or others to have other feelings and desires. These interests that are part of our interest of reason in the happiness of all could or would lead rational and reasonable people to endorse and oppose attitudes of various kinds. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument, reason thus presumptively requires us to or forbids us from having certain feelings and desires toward the happiness of others. Even though we cannot directly control what feelings and desires we have, our reason allows us to legislate, enforce, and adjudicate laws of these kinds in ourselves. A fully reason-​governed person would have certain natural feelings and desires and lack others because laws requiring or prohibiting them are justifiable to rational and reasonable people who value the happiness of all. As Kant says, “I am not only obligated to well-​doing, but also to loving others with well-​wishing, and well-​liking, too.”87 This is an especially shocking and unorthodox implication of the SCR that nonetheless fits with certain aspects of common sense and with some largely unnoticed themes in Kant’s thinking. How can we be required by reason to have or not have natural feelings and desires, which are ones that are not part of and do not arise from our power of reason? How can our power of reason enforce requirements of this kind in ourselves? These are complicated questions that we will consider but not fully address. The main point in suggesting that we are subject to laws of reason concerning the natural desires and feelings we have toward the happiness and unhappiness of others is to illustrate how the SCR can generate and explain a wide variety of requirements of reason that we might endorse in reflective common sense, including ones that are usually regarded as inconsistent with central Kantian themes. Let’s explore some of these interests by focusing on our interests of reason in the natural feelings we have toward the happiness of others along with some presumptive laws of reason that these interests favor.

13.5.1  Natural Feelings Toward the Happiness of Others Our power of reason, I suggest, includes interests in the kinds of natural feelings we have toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of other people that, combined with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ), lead us to legislate presumptive laws of reason concerning what natural feelings we have.88 According to our partial model of the 87 Eth-​C 27: 418. 88 I leave aside for further reflection any interests of reason we might have in the natural feelings and desires we have toward our own happiness, unhappiness, and misery, such as feelings of self-​hatred and self-​pity.

Happiness  301 human mind, natural feelings arise from our power of feeling. They include, for example, joy, gratification, sadness, and pain. Other feelings we have are produced by our power of reason itself, such as respect for the laws of reason, guilt, moral enthusiasm, moral disgust, and “sorrow at all the bad things that humans do to each other.”89 In common sense and ordinary language, we sometimes describe certain feelings using terms and concepts that relate to reason. We say that some feelings are unreasonable, irrational, contrary to reason, repugnant to reason, or not befitting a reasonable person, while others are quite reasonable and rational. We might think that no reasonable person would feel jealousy or hatred, feel shame on account of her sexual orientation, fear something that is not dangerous, enjoy the downfall of her friends, or feel pain simply at doing something nice for someone.90 Kant expresses these ordinary ways of thinking when he says that having certain feelings is “wicked,” “blameworthy,” “ethically objectionable,” “diabolical,” and a “vice.”91 He claims that we “cannot refrain from reproaching [ourselves]” if we find ourselves with feelings of certain kinds.92 He also suggests that reason in general assesses “enjoyment and pain” directly “by a higher satisfaction or dissatisfaction within ourselves” and that “enjoyment” in certain objects “pleases reason.”93 There are different ways of elucidating or explaining away these ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about the reasonableness or unreasonableness of certain feelings. In some cases, what we find objectionable or appropriate might be underlying choices people have made that led to the feeling, or we might be assessing the likely effects of having the feeling. In other cases, however, we seem to regard the presence or absence of certain feelings in people as in itself reasonable or unreasonable. According to the Content Criterion for assessing theories of reason that we discussed in Chapter 1, we have to take these reflective judgments as given, at least provisionally, and attempt to show how they can be captured and explained by theories of reason. This might not be possible on some views, perhaps because of conceptual problems with reason requiring us to have or not have certain feelings. A significant advantage of the Sovereignty Conception of Reasonover other theories is that, by expanding the scope of rational requirements beyond those that just concern our choices and beliefs to what we feel and desire, it provides a plausible way to generate and explain a wide variety of rational requirements that we seem to recognize in reflective common sense. We do not have to side with reason over emotion or emotion over reason because, according to the SCR, the two are inextricably linked.

89 CPJ 5: 276. 90 The last example is from Aristotle (1999, book 4). Foot (1978, c­ hapter 8) highlights some of these commonsense ways in which we directly assess our own feelings and those of other people. 91 L-​Anth 25: 593, L-​Anth 25: 593, Eth-​V 27: 698, L-​Anth 25: 608, and Rel 6: 34, respectively. 92 Anth 7: 237. See also L-​Anth 25: 576. 93 Anth 7: 237 and L-​Anth 25: 577, respectively.

302 Sovereign Re ason The SCR can capture and explain these ways of thinking and speaking about the reasonableness and unreasonableness of certain feelings. We have, I suggest, interests of reason in the kinds of natural feelings that we and others have toward the happiness of people. These interests of reason, combined with the Abstract Principle of Justifiability, favor laws that presumptively forbid us from having certain natural feelings and that presumptively require us to have others. Our interest of reason in the happiness of all leads us to disapprove of certain natural feelings concerning the happiness of others. As rational and reasonable people, we necessarily disapprove of having positive feelings toward the unhappiness or misery of other people. Our rational nature leads us to disapprove of people who, as Kant says, “rejoice immediately . . . in the misfortune of others,” such as those who are gleeful or content when another person hurts themselves, is frightened, is made a fool of, or experiences a setback.94 Our power of reason also leads us to disapprove of negative feelings at the happiness of others, such as feeling chagrinned at the success of someone or, as Kant says, feeling “displeased at the fact that the other has any share of happiness.”95 Feelings of hatred, in which we are pained by the happiness of others and enjoy their unhappiness or misery, are otiose to our power of reason.96 We necessarily dislike feelings of wrath, corrosive envy, ingratitude, and hate in themselves because our power of reason leads us to value the happiness of everyone, including those who are superior to us in certain ways or even people who have harmed or insulted us.97 Our power of reason also includes interests in supporting and encouraging other kinds of feelings toward the happiness of others. Rational and reasonable people as such approve of positive feelings toward the happiness of other people and negative feelings toward the unhappiness and misery of others. Kant describes these as “noble” feelings, which include “delight in the well-​being of every other,” sympathizing with the “joys and sorrows” of others, and “[rejoicing] at the best for the world even if it is not to the advantage of their fatherland or to their own gain.”98 Rational and reasonable people, simply as such, disapprove of having pleasant feelings at the unhappiness of others and painful feelings at the happiness of others. Our rational nature also leads us to directly approve of having pleasant feelings 94 MM 6: 460. See also Anth 7: 237, 265; Rel 6: 33; Ped 9: 492–​3; Eth-​V 27: 687, 692, 698; L-​Anth 25: 609, 636. Rejoicing in the misfortune of anyone, even those we dislike for good reason, simply because of their misfortune, Kant seems to suggest, is contrary to reason. 95 Eth-​C 27: 438. See also L-​Anth 25: 607; Eth-​V 27: 692. 96 As we discussed in Chapter 3, feelings such as hatred, corrosive envy, and ingratitude can, unlike mere bodily pains, involve complex judgments in which our reason plays a part. 97 MM 6: 402; Anth 7: 237; Eth-​V 27: 693, 699; Eth-​C 27: 453. 98 L-​Anth 25: 606, MM 6: 452, Eth-​V 27: 678, and Ped 9: 499, respectively. See also MM 6: 402, 455, 457, 460, 472; CPJ 5: 262; CF 7: 85; NF 19: 152–​3; L-​Anth 25: 607, 610. Holtman (2018a, 2022), Baxley (2010), Vilhauer (2021), and Fahmy (2009) emphasize Kant’s views of sympathy, including his puzzling distinction between active and passive sympathy and his apparently dismissive attitude in some places toward sympathy and other natural feelings. As I suggest in this section, there is nonetheless a theme in his thinking that our reason leads us to take an interest in sharing the joys and sorrows of other people.

Happiness  303 at the happiness of others and painful feelings at the unhappiness and misery of others. According to the SCR-​PPJ, a mental state of any kind, whether it is a choice or a feeling, is presumptively required by reason if rational and reasonable people could or would rationally endorse it or something suitably related to it on the basis of an interest of reason they have. Rational and reasonable people with interests of reason in the natural feelings people have toward the happiness of others could or would rationally endorse or reject those feelings themselves or things suitably related to them, such as laws of nature in which everyone has those feelings or normative laws that require or permit everyone to have them (assuming this is conceptually possible). Therefore, we are presumptively prohibited by reason from having pleasant natural feelings at the unhappiness of others and painful natural feelings at the happiness of others. We are also presumptively required by reason to have pleasant natural feelings at the happiness of others and painful natural feelings at the unhappiness and misery of others. This application of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument, which moves from our interests of reason in the kinds of natural feelings people have toward the happiness of others to presumptive laws of reason concerning those feelings through a principle of justifiability, fits with some ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about the unreasonableness of feeling aggrieved at the happiness of others and enjoying their downfall and the reasonableness of enjoying their successes and sympathizing with their sorrows. Does it even make sense, however, that we are required by reason to have or not have certain natural feelings? It seems strange to say that we presumptively should, for example, feel pleasure at some things and pain at others. One potential problem might be that reason cannot require us to have or not have certain natural feelings because if reason requires us to do something then it must be possible for us to do it voluntarily. As we discussed in Chapter 11, however, requirements of reason can apply directly to mental powers and mental acts that are out of our voluntary control. The principle of noncontradiction, for example, prohibits us from affirming contradictory beliefs even though we cannot choose what to believe. We have discussed a variety of other presumptive laws of reason that directly concern the operation of our powers of judgment, understanding, and attention rather than how we are required to choose or prohibited from choosing. Our choices can sometimes indirectly affect these mental powers along with what natural feelings we have toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of others.99 Common sense and ordinary language suggest that requirements of reason are not limited to ones that tell us how we should or should not choose. A significant virtue of the SCR is that it allows us to capture and explain 99 It might be possible for us indirectly to use our power of choice to take pleasure in things or to harbor certain feelings by doing things that tend to create and enliven those feelings in us. My suggestion, however, is that we have interests of reason in natural feelings themselves.

304 Sovereign Re ason these commonsense judgments by generating laws of reason that apply directly to our various mental powers, including our power of feeling. A second worry might be that our power of reason lacks the governing ability to enforce laws of reason to have or not have certain natural feelings. It might be self-​contradictory to constrain anyone, including ourselves, to have a positive natural feeling. Whether or not this is so, we can still be required by reason to have such feelings, much as reason can require us to do things that we necessarily do. A fully rational and reasonable person can legislate both kinds of laws to herself and would comply with them even if, as a conceptual matter, she cannot also exercise her executive abilities of reason to compel herself to comply with them. Presumptive laws of reason that prohibit certain natural feelings can, however, be legislated and enforced through our governing powers of reason. Our reason can produce feelings of its own that counteract or eliminate certain natural feelings we might find in ourselves.100 The natural feeling of conceit we feel at comparing our happiness favorably to that of others, for example, might be diminished by a feeling of humility that arises from our executive power of reason. Further investigation is needed for how, if at all, our governing powers of reason can enforce laws of reason that require or prohibit certain natural feelings. The SCR along with our assumed model of the human mind nonetheless allows that our reason can causally influence at least some of our natural feelings in accordance with laws of reason. Apart from issues of enforcement, we can at least legislate laws of reason to ourselves that require or prohibit feelings and assess ourselves by those self-​imposed laws as we strive to make ourselves as rational and reasonable as possible. Our interests of reason in the natural feelings we and others have toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of others favor presumptive laws that directly require us to or prohibit us from having these feelings. They also favor presumptive laws that indirectly promote or discourage feelings of these kinds in ourselves and others. As we discussed in Chapter 3, our various powers of mind can interact with one another in many ways. Our powers of attention, judgment, imagination, and choice, in particular, can indirectly produce, strengthen, prevent, or weaken our natural feelings toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of other people. Further reflection is needed to specify how our powers of mind can affect one another, but we can illustrate some additional presumptive laws of reason that rational and reasonable people who care about the happiness of all could or would endorse for human persons with what we assume to be our kinds of mental powers. In many cases, paying attention to or abstracting from things, Kant says, “either permits or prevents” certain natural feelings “from entering the mind,” as well as encourages or discourages such feelings in ourselves.101 When this supposed 100 CPrR 5: 73; L-​NR 27: 1326. 101 Anth 7: 235–​6. See also MM 6: 456.

Happiness  305 connection between our powers of attention and natural feeling holds, our interests of reason in having positive natural feelings toward the happiness of others and in not having such positive feelings toward their unhappiness or misery favor presumptive laws that require us to pay attention to or abstract from things in ways that tend to enhance or diminish these feelings. For example, we might be presumptively required by reason to abstract from particular features of someone we dislike or distract ourselves from our negative feelings toward them in order to enhance our feelings of satisfaction at her happiness. We might also be presumptively required to pay attention to the plight of others to encourage in ourselves feelings of dissatisfaction at their misfortune.102 Our powers of judgment and imagination can also affect our natural feelings, which again are ones that arise from our power of feeling rather than from our power of reason. If we initially feel twinges of pain at our friend’s recent success, for example, Kant suggests that we might be presumptively required to reflect on the news and judge that our own happiness does not depend on how it compares with others. Exercising our powers of judgment in these ways tends to diminish our feelings of corrosive envy and produce positive feelings toward our friend’s happiness.103 In addition, our feelings of sympathy tend to be stronger toward our loved ones and people who are physically close to us than to strangers or people who are far from us.104 In these conditions, we are presumptively required to investigate, gather evidence about, and imagine ourselves in the place of other people we do not usually sympathize with in order to produce in ourselves sympathetic feelings toward them.105 Our choices can also affect our natural feelings toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of others. Our interests of reason in these feelings favor presumptive laws that are directed to our choices as a means to promoting or diminishing how we feel about their happiness. Depending on the nature of the causal connections between our choices and natural feelings, these laws might presumptively require us to perform acts of kindness for people when doing so tends to produce feelings of love for them, to avoid treating other people or animals in cruel ways so as not to dull our sympathetic feelings, and to expose ourselves to people in need as a way of cultivating our sympathetic feelings.106 These laws might also presumptively forbid us from encouraging malicious or envious feelings in others, such as by stirring up hatred or jealousy, and presumptively require us to encourage feelings of love for one other, such as by being polite and grateful.107

102 MM 6: 457. 103 MM 6: 458–​9; Eth-​V 27: 678; L-​Anth 25: 593. 104 L-​Anth 25: 607; Eth-​V 27: 673. 105 MM 6: 321n, 433, 456; Anth 7: 238–​9; PMB 15: 944. 106 MM 6: 402, 442, 457; L-​Anth 25: 607, 611. 107 MM 6: 465–​6; Anth 7: 152, 278; Ped 9: 491; Eth-​V 27: 687.

306 Sovereign Re ason

13.5.2  Natural Desires Toward the Happiness of Others Our interest of reason in the happiness of all includes interests in the kinds of feelings we and others have toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of every person. These interests favor laws of reason that presumptively forbid certain natural feelings, such as malice and corrosive envy, and presumptively require others, such as satisfaction at the good fortune of others. Our interests of reason in how we and others feel toward the well-​being of persons also favor laws that indirectly promote or discourage these feelings through the operations of our other mental powers. A fully rational and reasonable person who nonetheless complies with these direct and indirect laws would lack any natural feelings of dismay or jealousy at anyone’s good fortune and instead be delighted at the successes of others and join them in their sorrows. As we shall see in the next section, however, other interests of reason might favor presumptive laws that conflict with ones concerning our natural feelings toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of others. Before we examine these and other conflicts, it is worth noting that the same basic structure for generating and explaining laws of reason that apply to our natural feelings also gives rise to laws of reason that apply to our natural desires and inclinations. Without repeating many of the same points in detail, our interest of reason in the happiness of all includes interests in the kinds of natural desires and aversions toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of others. As rational and reasonable people, we want everyone to desire the happiness of all, and we are averse to those who desire the unhappiness and misery of anyone. These interests of reason favor laws that presumptively require us, as Kant says, to “wish for the well-​being of others,” to wish “everything good” for people, to desire “the well-​ being of every other,” to have “an inner heartfelt benevolence” toward others, and not to exclude anyone “from our love or inclination towards them.”108 These interests also favor laws that presumptively forbid us from desiring the misfortune of others, from jealously wishing for their misery, and from wanting to enrage, offend, antagonize, physically harm, seek revenge on, or otherwise diminish the well-​being of other people.109 Even though we cannot directly control what desires and aversions we have, our power of reason, according to the Sovereignty Conception, legislates laws concerning them because such laws are justifiable to rational and reasonable people who care about the happiness of all. Our power of reason can enforce these laws through its own dispositions, desires, and aversions, which affect our natural 108 Eth-​V 27: 687, TP 8: 307, MM 6: 452, 471, and Eth-​V 27: 620, respectively. See also MM 6: 460; Eth-​V 27: 620–​1, 675–​6. In these passages, Kant apparently uses “wish” and its cognates to mean a natural desire rather than an operation of our power of choice. He also means by “wellbeing” what we have been mostly calling “happiness.” 109 MM 6: 458, 460; Rel 6: 27, 33–​4; Anth 7: 271; NF 19: 153; Eth-​V 27: 687, 692–​3; Eth-​C 27: 438; L-​Anth 25: 1353.

Happiness  307 desires and aversions. Indirect presumptive laws of reason that are addressed to our other mental powers, such as our powers of attention and choice, can also promote or diminish natural desires and aversions that are amenable or repugnant to reason. As Kant says, “even love from inclination is a moral virtue, and might be commanded to this extent, that one should first practise well-​doing as a duty, and later, through habituation, out of inclination as well.”110

13.6  Final Remarks: Conflicts with Interests of Reason in Solidarity, Freedom, and Happiness Our power of reason includes a variety of interests in the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of all people. These interests favor presumptive laws to specify our conception of happiness, to set the happiness of everyone as an end, and not to set the unhappiness or misery of anyone as an end, to promote everyone’s happiness and avoid promoting anyone’s unhappiness or misery, and to have and avoid certain natural feelings and natural desires toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of everyone. These are all relevant considerations that matter from the point of view of reason even if they are sometimes defeated or overridden by competing presumptions. A useful way to continue exploring these presumptive laws and their grounding in our power of reason itself is to examine how they can conflict with one another and conflict with presumptive laws that are favored by other interests of reason we have. We will not attempt to adjudicate these conflicts or provide all things considered principles for what reason requires of us. We will instead highlight some of the complexities that a more fully developed conception of reason must address.

13.6.1  Conflicts Within Happiness We have already discussed some of the main conflicts that can occur among presumptive laws to promote the happiness of each person. When we cannot fully promote the happiness of two or more people, these laws do not tell us what to do, so additional laws of reason are needed to adjudicate conflicts of this kind between the happiness of other people or our own happiness and theirs. Reason, all things considered, might allow us to choose however we like in such cases, or it might require us to help anyone in dire need, assist whoever has the lowest overall level of happiness, or perhaps in some cases even maximize overall happiness. These determinations depend on how the SCR is interpreted and so on what rational

110 Eth-​C 27: 417. See also MM 6: 456.

308 Sovereign Re ason and reasonable people could or would endorse on the basis of all their interests of reason. Other kinds of conflicts can occur between presumptive laws of reason to have or not have certain natural feelings and desires toward the happiness, unhappiness, or misery of people and presumptive laws to promote the happiness of oneself and others. It might not be possible for us to desire the happiness of many or all people because, in doing so, such a person “cannot fail to dissipate his inclination through its excessive generality, and quite loses any adherence to individual persons,” even though “there is no denying that the great value of human love rests in the general love of humanity as such.”111 Our feelings toward the happiness, unhappiness, and misery of others might also be limited in ways that make it “not possible that our bosom should swell with tenderness on behalf of every human being and swim in melancholy for everyone else’s need.”112 Feelings of sympathy for the suffering of others might lead someone, as Kant says, to become a “tenderhearted idler” who fails actually to help others because he is overwhelmed by his sympathetic feelings or because these feelings lead him to mistakenly think he has helped others merely by feeling their pain.113 Lamenting the misfortunes of other people might dull our sympathetic feelings or diminish our desires to help those in need.114 Feeling pain at the suffering of others also tends to decrease our own happiness so that, as Kant says, “two of us suffer, though the trouble really (in nature) affects only one.”115 On the other hand, Kant claims that sympathetic feelings can be effective “means to promoting active and rational benevolence.”116

13.6.2  Conflicts Between Happiness and Solidarity Our power of reason, as we will discuss in Chapter 16, includes substantive final interests in promoting, perfecting, and maintaining relationships of solidarity. Such relationships involve special ties among people who love one another on the basis of shared rational commitments, who have presumptive obligations to help one another in sometimes demanding ways, and who prioritize one another’s happiness over that of others. Such partiality, which is distinctive of many friendships, familial bonds, communities, and other kinds of solidary relationships, can conflict in direct and indirect ways with presumptive laws of reason to set the happiness of everyone as an end and to promote, desire, and feel good about the happiness of all. In addition to cases in which we must choose between helping

111 Eth-​V 27: 673. See also MM 6: 451; Eth-​H 27: 67. 112 OFBS 2: 216. 113 OFBS 2: 216. See also L-​Anth 25: 1321. 114 L-​Anth 25: 612. 115 MM 6: 457. See also L-​Anth 25: 597–​8, 1321. 116 MM 6: 456.

Happiness  309 a friend or a stranger or helping a family member at significant cost to ourselves, bonds of solidarity are, as Kant says, sometimes “detrimental to the propensity for a general love of mankind” and inhibit “the dissemination of general human goodwill” when they lead us to become naturally indifferent to the happiness of those to whom we are not connected.117 The danger, according to Kant, is that relationships of solidarity will have the effect “of closing the human heart towards those who are outside the group” and so “[impair] the soul’s true goodness, which aspires to a universal benevolence.”118

13.6.3  Conflicts Between Happiness and Freedom Our interests of reason in freedom of various kinds, which we discussed in Chapter 12, can also conflict with our interests of reason in the happiness of all. Our interest of reason in freedom of action favors presumptive laws of justice that can compete with presumptive laws to promote and not undermine the happiness of everyone. Someone might steal to feed her family and refuse to return someone’s property for his own good.119 A rich person might have the means to assist a poor person and the right to do as he pleases with his property even though both people occupy their respective social positions in large part owing to past injustices.120 A judge in a legitimate legal system might become so sympathetic with the defendant and concerned for his well-​being that she does not administer impartial justice.121 A victim of a violent crime might desire that harm befall her assailant, choose to make it her end that he be harmed, set out to harm him herself, call upon the legal system to punish him, and rejoice in his misfortune. If our interests of reason in freedom of action presumptively favor certain kinds of legal punishments that harm assailants, then some of these hateful feelings, desires, and purposes of the victim might be reasonable even though they are opposed to our interests of reason in the happiness of all.122 More generally, if our power of reason includes a substantive final interest that happiness is matched to moral virtue and unhappiness is matched to moral vice, then this interest of reason might favor presumptive laws to hate someone who is, as Kant says, “a deliberate author of evil.”123 117 Eth-​V 27: 673 and Eth-​V 27: 674, respectively. 118 Eth-​C 27: 428. See also Ped 9: 499. 119 MM 6: 388; TPP 8: 385–​6. See our discussion of interests of reason in several kinds of freedom in Chapter 12. 120 MM 6: 454; Ped 9: 490–​1; Eth-​C 27: 455. 121 L-​Anth 25: 611; L-​Log 24: 808. 122 MM 6: 460–​1; Anth 7: 270–​1. For further discussion of Kant’s theory of punishment, see Sussman (2008, 2022), Murphy (1987), Holtman (1997, 2011), Byrd (1980), and Hill (1992, ­chapter 7, 2002, ­chapters 10 and 11). 123 Eth-​C 27: 454. See also A813/​B841; CPrR 5: 34; CPJ 5: 209; MM 6: 388; Rel 6: 47n; TP 8: 283. For discussion of the highest good in Kant, see Guyer (2011), Wood (2008, 268–​9), and Beiser (2006). Some philosophers, such as Bell (2013) and Hieronymi (2004), might want a stronger endorsement

310 Sovereign Re ason These laws might allow or require us to wish for the misery of those who are morally vicious and wish to harm evil people or at least to exclude them from our beneficence even though our reason also presumptively requires us to seek, promote, wish for, and feel pleasure in the happiness of all people.

of vindictive feelings as rational responses to evil people or those who have significantly wronged us. Perhaps there is room within the SCR for such requirements in some cases once they and competing presumptive laws have been systematically organized. Difficulties also remain regarding paternalistic interventions for those who have mistaken beliefs about what will make them happy, who do not in certain situations understand their own conception of happiness, or who would affirm a different conception of happiness if they were to have more information and reflect rationally.

14

Natural Perfection Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in the natural perfection of all people. As rational and reasonable people, we care about developing our understanding, imagination, agility, dexterity, and other physical and mental abilities we have. We also value cultivating these powers in other people through music lessons, sports, on-​the-​job training, and formal education. We sometimes say that it is quite unreasonable or contrary to reason for someone to allow her talents to waste away. Blinding or maiming someone seems in many cases contrary to reason, while studiously attending rehabilitation therapy after an injury seems to accord with reason. Our reason, we might say, calls us to make something of ourselves and to make ourselves useful to others. These commonsense ways of thinking and speaking suggest that our reason includes final interests in developing talents and otherwise perfecting ourselves and others as embodied human persons. This sort of perfection is not simply a matter of achieving moral virtue or rational self-​governance but includes the full development of all our mental and physical powers. Apart from whether perfecting ourselves contributes to happiness or serves other interests of reason, our rational nature leads us to care about ensuring that we are all as naturally perfect as we can be. The aims of this chapter are to describe a conception of what it is to be a naturally perfect human person, to explain our interest of reason in this kind of natural perfection of all people, to distinguish it from others, and to explore some presumptive laws of reason that are favored by our interest of reason in the natural perfection of everyone. We will draw on themes in Kant as well as our partial model of the human mind to describe one way of thinking about natural perfection that has some affinities with reflective common sense. As with our discussion of the nature of happiness, this conception of natural perfection is controversial, but it serves our main purpose of illustrating how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) can be interpreted and applied in ways that capture and explain our ordinary judgments about what reason requires of us.

14.1  Natural Perfection: Fitness for All Possible Ends Explaining our interest of reason in natural perfection requires us to specify what it is for a human person to be perfect in this way. Let’s begin with an abstract kind of perfection such that we invoke when we say that something is a perfect knife, a Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0014

312  Sovereign Re ason perfect watch, a perfect poison, or a perfect heart.1 Teleological perfection is the suitability or fitness of something to some specified end, such as cutting things, telling time, killing people, or pumping blood. Something is teleologically perfect relative to an end if its intrinsic properties lead to the full realization of that end. Things are teleologically imperfect relative to an end if they are not well-​suited to the end. Teleological perfection is not itself a moral idea, but it is often coupled with a further claim that certain ends are morally good. Things that are perfect relative to a moral end are themselves morally good because they lead to the full realization of that morally worthy goal. Perfectionist moral theories typically define a substantive and morally good end, such as flourishing.2 They claim that a perfect human person has properties, such as Aristotelian virtues, that fully realize or promote this morally worthy end and that we should strive to make ourselves and others as perfect as we can be through, for example, habituation. Perfectionist moral theories, however, are often criticized as elitist. They seem to demean many disabled people and others as morally defective for supposed imperfections that are beyond their control and to favor those who are likely to achieve full perfection over people who are unlikely to do so. Theories of this kind often presuppose dubious ideas of natural purposes that are supposedly part of the natural order, propose an indeterminate moral end that makes it difficult to judge the perfection of people or how to promote it, or lack sufficient grounds to justify any particular end as the final moral end for human persons.3 Kant offers a different way of understanding the idea of a naturally perfect human person. Perfectionist theories specify a determinate purpose for human persons that sets the standards of perfection for what we must be like to fully instantiate or promote that end. Kant’s suggestion is that a naturally perfect human person is not suited to just a single end, such as flourishing, but is instead fully suited to all possible ends whatsoever. Whereas perfectionists claim that a perfect person fits with one supposedly special end, Kant claims that a naturally perfect person is fully adequate to every possible end, whatever those ends may be. Natural perfection in general, according to Kant, is “the fitness or adequacy of a thing for all sorts of ends.”4 A naturally perfect thing, whether an object or a person, leads to the full realization of any possible end. That is, something that is naturally perfect leads to the full

1 For discussions of teleological perfection, see Geach (1956) and Firth (1952). 2 Perfectionist moral theories include those of Plato (2007), Aristotle (1999), Leibniz (1952, 2020), Spinoza (2018), and on some readings Nietzsche (1954) and Millgram (2023). 3 Kant raises some of these challenges at G 4: 443–​4 and CPrR 5: 41. Clifton (2018) and Glackin (2016) object to perfectionist moral theories because of their implications for people with disabilities. Nagel (1991, c­ hapter 12) and Rawls (1999c, 285–​92) worry about inegalitarian aspects of perfectionism. 4 CPrR 5: 41. See also CPJ 5: 431; MM 6: 386; Eth-​V 27: 517–​18, 543, 651.

Natural Perfection  313 satisfaction of end 1, to the full satisfaction of end 2, to the full satisfaction of end 3, and so on for every possible end, including ends that no one actually endorses or will ever set for themselves. Some ends cannot be fully realized together, but a naturally perfect thing has intrinsic properties that nonetheless lead to the full satisfaction of each of them, taken one by one. Whereas watches, knives, poisons, and hearts are to varying degrees suited to some ends and not to others, a naturally perfect thing is completely adequate to any possible end whatsoever. Perhaps the closest we can come to conceiving of something that is perfect in this sense is God, who supposedly has the power to fully realize all ends in general.5 Let’s explore each part of this conception of natural perfection before discussing in the next section the idea of a naturally perfect human person.

14.1.1  Harmony Relation Natural perfection is a set of fully realized harmony relations, as I will call them, between something and each possible end.6 A harmony relation between a thing and a single end is the degree, if any, to which the intrinsic properties of that thing lead to the realization or frustration of that particular end.

14.1.1.1  Harmony, Dissonance, and Neutrality The harmony relation between a thing and a given end ranges from full harmony to full dissonance and includes neutrality. Harmony and dissonance, as I am using them in this context, are real opposites like up and down. Something is fully harmonious with an end if its intrinsic properties lead to the full realization of the end. Something is fully dissonant with an end or fully clashes with that end if its intrinsic properties lead to the full frustration of the end. Something is neutral with respect to an end if its intrinsic properties do not lead at all to the end’s realization or frustration. My grandfather’s Rolex watch, for example, harmonizes well but not fully with the end of keeping accurate time because it is off by only a few seconds per day. An old pen in my desk drawer clashes with the end of writing legibly because it drips large blobs of ink. The lamp on my nightstand is neutral with respect to the end of eradicating malaria because (I assume) it has no effect on that end one way or the other.

5 CPrR 5: 41. See also Byrne (2007), Brewer (2022), Winegar (2017), and Chignell (2007a) for discussions of how Kant conceives of God. 6 Kant calls these “portional perfections,” which “contain, as such, a conformity to an end” (Eth-​V 27: 517). For further discussion of Kant’s views about teleology, see Ginsborg (1997), Zuckert (2007), Guyer (2005, ­chapters 1 and 2), and Kitcher (1990, c­ hapter 8). See also the discussion of harmony in Chapter 9.

314  Sovereign Re ason

14.1.1.2  Intrinsic Properties of a Thing The properties of something that can make it harmonize, clash, or be neutral with an end are its intrinsic properties of all kinds, including its dispositional properties.7 The intrinsic properties of a thing, such as its mass, shape, charge, solubility, and internal structure, are ones the thing has just in virtue of how it is. Being popular or five feet from a chair are extrinsic properties of something because they depend in part on how other things are. Intrinsic properties are not necessarily essential properties but can also be contingent features of things.8 A harmonizing property of something with an end is an intrinsic feature of it that leads to the realization of that end. A dissonant property of something with an end is an intrinsic feature of it that leads to the frustration of that end. A neutral property of something with an end is an intrinsic feature of it that does not lead to the realization or frustration of that end. Something can have several harmonizing, dissonant, and neutral properties with respect to the same end. The overall harmony, dissonance, or neutrality of a thing with an end is how well, if at all, its intrinsic properties as a whole, including any interactions among them, together lead to the realization or frustration of that end. 14.1.1.3 Ends The ends that figure in harmony relations are possible aims, goals, or states of affairs. An end is a possible object of choice that someone with a negatively free will could but might not choose to set.9 World peace and running a four-​minute mile are ends that some people endorse as their own, while other people have not chosen to set those ends. Some ends might never be adopted by anyone, such as knowing how much water Alexander the Great’s horse consumed or traveling to a distant star that we never discover. Harmony relations hold between something and a possible end, whether or not anyone endorses that end, has endorsed it, or will ever endorse it.10 Things harmonize or clash with, or are neutral regarding an end independently of whether anyone has ever thought of the end, whether anyone has the end, who might have the end, and how the end might figure in anyone’s conception of happiness. The harmony relation abstracts from these features of ends and simply relates the intrinsic properties of things to a possible goal, aim, or state of affairs that any of us with a negatively free power of choice could but might not choose. The ends that stand in harmony relations with things cannot be self-​ contradictory, and it must be metaphysically possible to realize or frustrate those ends. A pencil cannot harmonize or clash with, or be neutral regarding the end 7 CPrR 5: 41. 8 I will pass over various philosophical questions about the nature of what I hope is a sufficiently recognizable distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. 9 CPJ 5: 227, 230. 10 CPJ 5: 227–​8.

Natural Perfection  315 of drawing four-​sided triangles, and an airplane cannot harmonize or clash with, or be neutral regarding the end of being in two different places at once. Within these broad logical and metaphysical constraints, the ends in harmony relations can otherwise be any possible aims or states of affairs whatsoever. They can be simple or complex, specific or general, final or derivative, negative or positive, rational or irrational, moral or immoral, determinate or indeterminate, or clear or vague. Some ends can be realized to varying degrees, such as those of wealth or power, while other ends are either fully realized or not, such as being President or winning a Nobel Prize. When a given end is indeterminate or vague, then the harmony relation between something and that end might also be indeterminate or vague.

14.1.1.4  Intrinsic Properties That Realize or Frustrate an End When we claim that something harmonizes or clashes with an end, we presuppose a particular thing and a particular end, and we claim that the intrinsic properties of that thing as a whole lead to the realization or frustration of that end. There are at least four ways in which something can lead to the realization or frustration of an end. First, a thing on the whole promotes the end by causing or causally contributing to the end’s satisfaction, such as a heart that promotes the end of circulating blood. Second, a thing partially or completely instantiates the end, such as a large tortoise that realizes the end that a large tortoise exists. Third, a thing is such that someone can use it in ways that promote or instantiate an end, such as a screwdriver that I use to further the end of fixing my sink. Fourth, a thing leads one or more people to choose in ways that promote or instantiate the end, such as when the size and shape of a pumpkin impact the judges in ways that lead, but do not cause, them to award it top prize. These four ways in which something can lead to the realization of an end can be combined, such as when the cuteness of a dog leads us to care for her, which allows us to use her for protection, which in turn promotes the end of our own safety. Things can harmonize with an end even when the end is never fully realized. And there might be other ways in which things that harmonize with an end lead to the realization of that end. Something clashes with an end if it causes or causally contributes to the frustration of the end, if it is incompatible with instantiating the end, if people can intentionally use it in ways that frustrate the end, or if it leads people to choose in ways that undermine the end. Whether and, if so, to what extent the intrinsic properties of something lead to the realization or frustration of an end usually depend on circumstances apart from the thing itself. Someone’s heart, for example, might be great at circulating blood when she is near sea level, but it might not circulate blood well when she is at high elevations. My grandfather’s watch partially instantiates the end of owning a rare watch only if there are not many of them still around. An electric drill might be quite useful under normal conditions but useless on the moon. The affability of

316  Sovereign Re ason a person might lead us to give her money if we are wealthy but not if we are in dire need ourselves. The harmony relation of something to an end is the degree, if any, to which the thing’s intrinsic properties as a whole lead to the realization or frustration of that end. Assessing this relation requires specifying the intrinsic properties of something, defining a possible end, and tracing out in various contexts how well or poorly the thing promotes, instantiates, can be used to satisfy, or leads people to satisfy the end. The harmony relation can be further investigated and specified, but let’s now consider how it figures in the idea of natural perfection.

14.1.2  Sets of Harmony Relations The harmony relation between something and an end is the extent, if any, to which the thing leads to the realization or frustration of that specific end. A thing can harmonize or clash with, or be neutral regarding multiple ends. My grandfather’s watch, for example, harmonizes well with the end of telling time accurately. The watch harmonizes less well with a different end, namely telling time conveniently, because the watch requires periodic winding and its face is difficult to see in low light. The watch clashes with the end of wearing gloves because its sharp edges tend to catch on the material. These three harmony relations of the watch can be somewhat arbitrarily represented as {0.95, 0.7, -​0.4}, where each number in the ordered set ranges from -​1 to 1 and stands for a harmony or disharmony relation between the watch and a specific end (in this case, telling time accurately, telling time conveniently, and wearing gloves, respectively). We typically evaluate the harmony relations of things relative to one or a small set of ends that seem especially relevant to them, the context, or our purposes. We might focus on the cutting ability of a knife, the effectiveness of a vaccine for preventing a disease, the suitability of a computer for completing complicated calculations quickly, and the usefulness of an employee for making sales. It would often seem strange or pointless to evaluate these things against various other ends, such as the suitability of a knife for taking pictures, a vaccine for destroying an asteroid, a computer for proving that God exists, or an employee for conducting electricity. Weird as it might be, these and other things nonetheless stand in harmony relations to possible ends that we would not normally associate with them. There are harmony relations between my grandfather’s watch, for example, and the ends of taking pictures, destroying asteroids, proving that God exists, and conducting electricity, even though we would not normally assess its suitability relative to these ends. My watch’s set of harmony relations includes these four harmony relations as well as the three relations we already mentioned, which might be represented together as {0.95, 0.7, -​0.4, 0.01, 0.2, 0, 0.4}.

Natural Perfection  317 We can employ this process for a given thing by assessing how well, if at all, it harmonizes or clashes with more and more ends and adding each new represented value of those relations to our ordered set. We might begin with harmony relations that are especially salient to us, such as how well my grandfather’s watch tells time accurately, tells time conveniently, and allows wearing gloves. We can then consider other possible ends, perhaps beginning with ones that we or others affirm, expanding to off-​the-​wall ends and to ends no one endorses, and eventually include any possible end. The set of all possible ends is infinitely large, so a complete set of values that represent the harmony or disharmony of a thing with each possible end is infinitely large as well.11 The harmony or disharmony of my grandfather’s watch with all ends, for example, might be partially represented as {0.98, 0.7, -​0.4, 0.01, 0.2, 0, 0.4, -​0.3, -​0.42, 0, 0.2, -​3.4 . . . and so on for every end}.

14.1.3  The Idea of Natural Perfection We are now in a position to interpret Kant’s idea of natural perfection as “suitability of a thing to all kinds of ends.”12 Something is naturally perfect just in case it fully harmonizes with every possible end. That is, for every possible end, a naturally perfect thing leads to the full realization of that end. Whereas my grandfather’s watch harmonizes to varying degrees with some ends, clashes to some extent with others, and neither harmonizes nor clashes with many ends, something that is naturally perfect fully harmonizes with every possible end whatsoever. Something that is not naturally perfect does not fully harmonize with at least one possible end. The complete set of harmony relations of a naturally perfect thing can be represented as {1,1,1,1,1 . . . and so on for all possible ends }, while one or more of these values for an imperfect thing is less than one.

14.1.4  Degrees of Natural Perfection Natural perfection is not a single harmony relation between something and a particular end. Instead, natural perfection is an infinitely large set of harmony relations between a thing and each possible end. This formal feature of natural perfection prevents us from easily defining an overall scale of natural perfection and comparing the degree of natural perfection that different things have. Each harmony relation comes in degrees, so we can compare two or more things by how well, if at

11 Ped 9: 449–​50. Walden (2023) explores this feature of our power of choice in which our ability to value is completely unbounded because there are infinite numbers of things that we can adopt as our ends. 12 Eth-​V 27: 651.

318  Sovereign Re ason all, they harmonize or clash with a particular end. If we claim, however, that one thing is more naturally perfect than another overall, then we are comparing sets of multiple harmony relations to one another. We need criteria for making these comparisons that determine whether one set of harmony relations is superior to, inferior to, or equal to another set of harmony relations with respect to their overall degree of natural perfection. Except in a few cases, the idea of natural perfection itself does not provide criteria of this sort. Most things are incomparable by their degree of natural perfection, which means there is no fact of the matter about whether they are more, less, or equally perfect than one another. My Apple watch, for example, tells time more accurately than my grandfather’s watch, but my grandfather’s watch is more durable than my Apple watch. Supposing the harmony relations of the two watches can be partially represented as {. . . 0.95, 0.6 . . .} for my grandfather’s watch and {. . . 0.98, 0.5 . . .} for my Apple watch, the idea of natural perfection does not give us grounds for comparing these two sets as representing a degree of natural perfection more or less than or equal to the other. The only criteria for comparing sets of harmony relations that seem to be justified by the idea of natural perfection itself are formal ones that allow many gaps. For example: Two things that harmonize with each possible end to the same degree are equally naturally perfect. Something has the same degree of natural perfection as itself. If one thing has a degree of natural perfection equal to or higher than something else and the latter thing has a degree of natural perfection equal to or higher than the first thing, then the two things have an equal degree of natural perfection. If a has a higher degree of natural perfection than b and b has a higher degree of natural perfection than c, then a has a higher degree of natural perfection than c. If one thing better harmonizes with an end than another thing without harmonizing less well than it does with any other end, then the former thing is superior to the latter thing in terms of its natural perfection. The Timex watch I had as a teenager, for example, is less accurate and less durable than my grandfather’s watch. Supposing the harmony relations of my Timex watch can be represented as {. . . 0.93, 0.4 . . .}, and supposing all else is equal, then we have grounds for saying that {. . . 0.95, 0.6 . . .}, which represents my grandfather’s watch, is superior to {. . . 0.93, 0.4 . . .}, which represents my Timex watch, in terms of their degrees of natural perfection. This Pareto rule also gives us grounds for asserting that a naturally perfect thing has greater perfection than anything that is not naturally perfect.13 13 It might help to explain the idea of natural perfection using some rough-​and-​ready formalism. Let’s define E as an ordered set of all possible ends {e1, e2, e3 . . .,} where en is the nth element of E. Even more formally, E =​([∀e: e is a possible end], O) where O is a total order relation on the set of all possible ends. O is transitive, reflexive, and antisymmetric, and any two elements in the set of all possible ends are comparable by O. Consider thing w. Things in this context are simply bundles of intrinsic properties, so if the intrinsic properties of something change, then it is no longer the same thing. A knife that is sharpened, for example, becomes, in this sense, a different knife. Let’s suppose that every harmony relation between thing w and possible end e can be represented as a real number from 1, which means w fully harmonizes

Natural Perfection  319 In the vast majority of cases, however, we cannot compare the relative perfection of things because some of them are better suited for some ends and less well-​suited to other ends than the other things. More specifically, if thing a is better suited to an end than thing b and b is better suited to a different end than a, then a and b are not each more or less perfect than, or equally perfect to the other. There might be ways of expanding the idea of natural perfection so that it includes additional criteria for comparing the degrees of natural perfection that different things have. We might appeal to intuitive judgments that some things are more perfect than other things. We might simply add up the values that represent each harmony relation something has to every possible end and use these sums to rank things in terms of their degrees of natural perfection. There are many difficulties that these approaches would have to overcome, including that there are infinitely many harmony relations in each set. Kant himself does not seem to include in the idea of natural perfection any way of comparing the degrees of natural perfection of most things. As we shall discuss in the next section, leaving such comparisons indeterminate is a distinctive and perhaps advantageous feature of with that end, to -​1, which means w fully clashes with the end, including 0, which means w is neutral with respect to e. Positive numbers represent w harmonizing to some extent with e, and negative numbers represent w clashing to some extent with e. Call this the harmony value of a thing to a possible end. This is somewhat artificial because of difficulties combining the at least four ways something can lead to the satisfaction of an end. Let’s define Vw as the ordered set of every harmony value between thing w and each member of E where this ordering is basically the same as in E (i.e. the nth element of Vw is the harmony value of w to the nth element of E). Call this the harmony value set of w to all possible ends. More informally, we start with the first end in E, calculate how well, if at all, w harmonizes or clashes with that end, and make that resulting harmony value the first member of our new set. We make the second member of our new set the harmony value between w and e2, and we continue in this way through our ordered set of all possible ends. More formally, let Uw =​[∀e ∈ E: harmony value of thing w to end e]. Vw =​{Uw, S} where S is a strict order on Uw and S ⇔ ∀a, b ∈ E: the ordering of a and b in E is the same as the ordering in Vw of the harmony value of w to a and of the harmony value of w to b. Using these definitions, w is naturally perfect if and only if each element of Vw is 1, that is, Vw =​{1,1,1,1, . . ..} More informally, w is naturally perfect just in case it fully harmonizes with every possible end. More formally, w is naturally perfect ⇔ ∀x ∈ Vw: x =​1. Now let’s define degrees of natural perfection. Suppose that U is the set of all possible harmony value sets that are based on the same ordered set E. More informally, after making our ordered list of all possible ends, we consider a particular thing, calculate all of its harmony values for each possible end, and add the resulting harmony value set of that thing to our new set U. We next consider a different thing, define its set of harmony values, and add its harmony value set to U. We continue in this way, adding to U the harmony value sets of all possible things. More formally, W =​[∀ possible things t: Vt]. Let relation R be a partial ordering on U. More informally, the idea that natural perfection can come in degrees presupposes that we can make some comparisons between members of U, that is, between the harmony value sets of different things. In addition to reflexivity, asymmetry, and transitivity, R also includes two further criteria. Let’s say N is the set of natural numbers that are less than or equal to the length of E, which is our totally ordered set of all possible ends. The equality condition says that ∀a,b ∈ W: if ∀n ∈ N: the nth member of a =​the nth member of b then a and b are equal with respect to R. The Pareto condition says that ∀a, b ∈ W: if ∃ n ∈ N: the nth member of a > the nth member of b and if ∀m ∈ N: the mth member of a ≥ the mth member of b then a is superior to b with respect to R. Any two harmony value sets that do not satisfy these and perhaps other formal standards are incomparable with respect to R. The harmony value sets of most things cannot be compared by R, so the relative degree of natural perfection that most things have is indeterminate.

320  Sovereign Re ason this view that distances it from some of the negative conations that are often associated with the idea of perfection and especially with the idea of a naturally perfect human person.

14.1.5  Contradictory Ends The idea of natural perfection might seem to be self-​contradictory because something apparently cannot lead to the full realization of all possible ends if two or more of those ends cannot be jointly realized. The set of all possible ends includes contradictory ends, such as to be a bachelor and to be married, as well as ends that are metaphysically incompatible with one another, such as to be in some place at a time and to be in some other place at that same time. It seems impossible for something to fully harmonize with all these ends because, if it did, it would lead to states of affairs that cannot exist. A significant clue for addressing this concern is to recall that God is traditionally conceived as having the power to fully realize any end. At least on many views, God lacks the capacity to bring about impossible ends as well as sets of ends that are logically or metaphysically incompatible with one another. He has the ability, however, to fully realize any possible end, perhaps by taking them one at a time. He can, for example, make someone a bachelor then make him married or move someone to one location and then to another place even though he cannot, at the same time, make someone both a bachelor and married or put him in two different places at once. Things in the natural world can also harmonize with ends that cannot be jointly realized, such as an elevator that is well-​suited to moving people to the top floor and to the ground floor even though an elevator cannot realize both ends at once. God, as he is usually conceived, has a negatively free will that allows him to choose whether or not to use his powers to realize any possible end. According to our account of the harmony relation, something counts as harmonizing with an end if its intrinsic properties can be intentionally used to bring about that end. God in this way harmonizes with any end, including conflicting ones, because he has intrinsic properties that he himself can employ in ways that would fully promote or realize each of those ends individually.14 Many things we interact with, such as screwdrivers and iPhones, harmonize well with incompatible ends because we can intentionally use them to bring about either end individually. Things can also harmonize with incompatible ends by leading, but not determining, us successfully to choose to bring about each of them individually but not as a group. It is possible in these and other ways for things to lead to the realization of ends that nonetheless cannot be satisfied together. 14 Other aspects of God’s nature, however, might prevent him from bringing about certain ends, such as intrinsically immoral ones.

Natural Perfection  321 In sum, a thing is naturally perfect just in case it fully harmonizes with every possible end. The abstract and apparently impractical character of this idea should not surprise or dishearten us because it is, after all, an idea of perfection as such. Assessing how well, if at all, something harmonizes or clashes with even a single end, let alone all possible ends, is difficult or impossible for us. We can sometimes form some reliable guesses, decent generalizations, heuristics, and ceteris paribus judgments about the relative suitability of some things to certain ends. Naturally perfect things are more perfect than things that are not naturally perfect. For most imperfect things, there is no fact of the matter about whether some of them are more or less perfect than, or equally perfect to the others.

14.2  Natural Perfection of Human Persons: Someone who Harmonizes with All Possible Ends Let’s now use the conception of natural perfection we have developed to characterize the idea of a naturally perfect human person. A human person is naturally perfect just in case she has intrinsic properties that, for any end, lead to the realization of that end. In more ordinary terms, such a person can accomplish all ends, is inherently useful for satisfying many purposes, has features that instantiate many ends, and otherwise has properties that realize the satisfaction of many ends. Let’s consider each part of this idea, starting with the harmony relation between a human person and a single end.

14.2.1  Harmony Relation A harmony relation between a human person and a single end is the degree, if any, to which her intrinsic properties lead to the realization or frustration of that particular end.

14.2.2  Intrinsic Properties of a Person The properties of a human person that can make her harmonize or clash with, or be neutral with regard to a given end are all her intrinsic properties.15 These properties concern how she is apart from how other things are. The intrinsic properties of a human person include her height, mass, physical appearance, genetic endowment, temperament, and health, along with the form and organization of

15 Eth-​V 27: 544.

322  Sovereign Re ason her body.16 They include her physical and mental powers, such as her dexterity, strength, agility, balance, senses, memory, imagination, attention, understanding, reason, judgment, wit, communication, taste, musical ability, ability to read and write, and capacity for original thought, as well as the degree to which these powers are developed and under her control.17 Her intrinsic properties also include her beliefs, knowledge, fears, desires, feelings, ends, habits, and tendencies.18 Her intrinsic properties do not include, for example, her wealth and social status.

14.2.3 Ends The ends that figure in a harmony relation between a human person and an end can be possible ends of any kind. They do not have to be the person’s own ends or ones she or anyone else has ever or will ever endorse. A human person can stand in a harmony relation with any possible end, including ones we would not normally associate with human persons or with the person herself.

14.2.4  Intrinsic Properties that Realize or Frustrate an End When we claim that a human person harmonizes or clashes with an end, we presuppose a particular human person and a particular end, and we claim that the intrinsic properties of the person as a whole lead to the realization or frustration of that end. A human person can harmonize with an end in several ways. First, a human person has intrinsic properties that promote the end. Someone’s body might give off heat that warms other people; her mass might prevent a tent from blowing away; her startle reflex might warn others of danger; and her calm demeanor might give them reassurance. Second, a human person has intrinsic properties that partially or completely instantiate the end. Someone’s height might instantiate the end that she is of that height, and her mathematical abilities might partially instantiate the end of being excellent at math. Third, a human person is such that she or someone else can choose to use her(self ) in ways that promote or instantiate an end. Someone might employ her own powers of dexterity and agility to score soccer goals. Her teammates might also use her to win games by running plays in which she is a decoy.19 Fourth, a human person has intrinsic properties that lead 16 G 4: 393; Eth-​V 27: 631; Eth-​C 27: 323, 385. 17 G 4: 393–​4; MM 6: 386–​7, 445; CPrR 5: 41; Rel 6: 4n; Anth 7: 182, 220; Ped 9: 466–​8, 475; Eth-​V 27: 517, 544, 631; Eth-​C 27: 363; L-​Anth 25: 485–​8, 499. 18 MM 6: 387, 392; Rel 6: 130; Anth 7: 185; Ped 9: 467; Eth-​V 27: 544, 631, 656; Eth-​C 27: 363. 19 L-​NR 27: 1319. Using people, as long as we do not treat them merely as means to our ends, is often unobjectionable and quite appropriate on Kantian ways of thinking. See Mieth and Williams (2021), Hill (2021a, c­ hapter 2), Johnson (2011), Pallikkathayil (2010), and Fahmy (2023a).

Natural Perfection  323 one or more people to choose in ways that promote or instantiate the end. The affability and good looks of someone might affect the motivations and deliberations of others in ways that lead them to do nice things for him. The intrinsic properties of a human person might lead to the realization of an end in these and other ways. Someone might use his social skills to convince someone to use her strength to help him carry his couch. A military sniper might check the wind direction downrange by seeing how it blows through someone’s hair. A wrestler might use his ability to put up with hunger by fasting for a few days so that he makes weight for his match. A human person clashes with an end in if she causes or causally contributes to its frustration, if she is incompatible with instantiating the end, if people can intentionally use her in ways that frustrate the end, or if she leads people to choose in ways that undermine the end. Whether a human person leads to the realization or frustration of an end usually depends on various circumstances.

14.2.5  Natural Perfection of a Human Person A human person is naturally perfect just in case, for every end, she fully harmonizes with that end. That is, taking all possible ends one by one, a naturally perfect human person has intrinsic properties that lead to the full realization of each end. Such a person, as Kant says, has “the inner means for all possible purposes.”20 The set of harmony relations between a naturally perfect human person and all possible ends can be represented as {1,1,1,1, . . . and so on for all possible ends}.

14.2.6  Degrees of Natural Perfection of Human Persons The idea of natural perfection, as we have described it, does not include grounds for comparing the degree of natural perfection that many human persons have. Apart from a few formal standards that we discussed in the previous section, we cannot justifiably claim that someone who is very well-​suited to a few ends is more or less than, or equally naturally perfect to someone who is moderately well-​suited to many ends. We cannot truthfully claim that a person who is good at one thing but bad at others is more or less than, or equally perfect to someone who is just as good at other things and bad at still others.21 Someone who harmonizes with an end better than someone else and harmonizes at least as well as someone else does with all other ends, is more perfect than he is. Usually there will be at least one end 20 Eth-​V 27: 544. 21 Eth-​C 27: 461.

324  Sovereign Re ason that she is better suited to than he is, which makes their relative levels of natural perfection incomparable.

14.2.7  Further Discussion Let’s highlight three features of this idea of a naturally perfect human person. First, it might not be possible, in some senses of possibility, for a human person to be naturally perfect. The concept of a naturally perfect human person is self-​ contradictory if a human person who has acquired intrinsic properties that lead to the satisfaction of all possible ends is necessarily not a human person anymore, but instead a person of some other kind. Having certain intrinsic properties together that are needed for us to harmonize with various ends might be metaphysically impossible for us. There are natural limits to our physical constitutions, to how well our powers of mind and body can be developed, to the time and energy we can devote to changing features of ourselves, and to how much we can know. Although natural perfection might not be in these ways possible for us, we can still make sense of a naturally perfect human person in the abstract as someone who fully harmonizes with all possible ends, taken one by one. Second, we often think of the perfection of persons in terms of their realized abilities and skills, such as their powers of intelligence, memory, attention, creativity, dexterity, strength, communication, and cooperation. The idea of a naturally perfect person, however, is broader than this because any of our intrinsic properties, not just our realized abilities and skills, can affect how well, if at all, we harmonize or clash with particular ends. Many features of ourselves that we have little or no control over, such as our height, electrical conductivity, reflexes, and instincts, can lead to the realization or frustration of specific ends. Some people are born with unrealized abilities that others lack, can acquire certain talents that others cannot, or have knowledge that is denied to others. How well we harmonize or clash with various ends is often out of our control and depends on features of ourselves apart from our realized abilities. Finally, there is a widespread tendency to think that people who have disabilities of various kinds are flawed or otherwise less perfect than those without disabilities. Someone who is blind, for example, seems to be defective by comparison to some substantive ideals of human perfection because he lacks a broadly based ability that is essential for realizing many ends.22 If there are intrinsic properties of human persons that we need to realize all possible ends, then, according to our account of natural perfection, those properties are perfections, and their absences are 22 CPJ 5: 241–​2. For more on the idea of natural primary goods, which are broad-​based features of persons that serve whatever ends we might have (e.g. health), see Foot (1978, c­ hapter 8), Nagel (1997), and Daniels (2008).

Natural Perfection  325 flaws.23 It is unlikely, however, that blindness or any disability is, strictly speaking, an imperfection of this sort. A blind person might harmonize with ends of reading Braille and navigating by sound, while many sighted people might clash with or fail to harmonize as well as he does with these ends. Many and perhaps all disabled people, including those with severe disabilities, are better suited to some ends than other people and less well-​suited to other ends than they are. The number of ends a person harmonizes with and the degree to which she harmonizes with them do not usually give us grounds in such cases to compare the overall natural perfection of different people. None of us is perfect and, except in a few cases, none of us is more or less perfect than anyone else.24

14.3  Natural Perfection of Everyone: Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in promoting and protecting in all people the kind of natural perfection we have discussed. We have interests of reason, more specifically, that each of us achieves complete harmony with all possible ends, that each of us becomes more perfect than we are until we reach this objective, and that none of us loses any degree of natural perfection that we have. Kant at times endorses this interest of reason in natural perfection, which also accords with some features of reflective common sense.25 He says, for example, that “as a rational being,” each of us “necessarily wills that all the capacities in him be developed, since they serve him and are given to him for all sorts of possible purposes.”26 A naturally perfect human person is fully suited to all possible ends. She can achieve anything she chooses, and she is immanently useful to other people. Instead of being good at one particular thing, a naturally perfect human person is good at and for everything. The idea of natural perfection, as we have seen, allows us to define a partial but not a complete ordering on the degrees of natural perfection that things can have. Many comparisons of this kind are left indeterminate. If, however, someone can be made more perfect than she is, then reason includes an interest in doing this, and if someone can be made less perfect than she is, then reason includes an interest in not doing this. For example, if learning a new skill would make someone better 23 Ped 9: 449–​50. 24 An additional complication that might limit the set of ends relative to which someone or something is naturally perfect is that one such end might be that someone or something is not perfect. It might not be possible for someone to fully harmonize with the end of disharmonizing with all possible ends, for in disharmonizing with all ends, she would disharmonize with this end and so cannot at the same time harmonize with it. There is a theological analogue to this problem, namely whether God can limit his own powers. A further condition on natural perfection thus seems to be that a naturally perfect person or thing harmonizes with all possible ends with which it is possible for her or it to harmonize. 25 G 4: 430; MM 6: 419–​23, 387, 391–​2, 444; CPJ 5: 429–​31; Anth 7: 329; CB 8: 115; Ped 9: 455. 26 G 4: 423.

326  Sovereign Re ason suited for some ends and no less suited for any other end, then we have an interest of reason that she learns the new skill because doing so would make her more naturally perfect. If, however, acquiring the skill would diminish her suitability for some ends, then learning it would not promote her degree of natural perfection because we have no way of comparing her two sets of harmony relations with and without the skill. Most cases are likely of this incomparable sort in which changing the intrinsic properties of someone neither increases, nor decreases, nor keeps constant her overall degree of natural perfection, because those changes increase her harmony with some ends but decrease her harmony with other ends. Our interest of reason in natural perfection is different from our interest of reason in happiness.27 Natural perfection is a set of fully realized relations between a person and all possible ends, whereas the complete happiness of a person is the full satisfaction of the end of happiness that she has endorsed for herself. A naturally perfect person might not be completely happy because, although she has intrinsic properties that lead to the realization of all possible ends, some of the ends in her conception of happiness might not actually be realized. A completely happy person might not be naturally perfect because some of her ends might be satisfied in ways that have nothing to do with her, or she might be well-​suited to her own ends but not to other possible ends.28 Enhancing our degree of natural perfection can promote or realize other interests of reason besides our interest in natural perfection. Acquiring properties that make us more perfect might promote our own happiness or improve our ability to promote the happiness of others.29 Becoming very good at golf, for example, might make us somewhat happy in light of our desires to learn the game so well as to allow us to spend time with our friends in ways that contribute to their happiness. Learning things can make us better suited for certain ends as well as directly promote our interest of reason in acquiring knowledge. Cultivating our memory, attention, understanding, judgment, reason, and other powers of mind can further our formal interests of reason in legislating, executing, and adjudicating its laws.30 Apart from these and other ways in which natural perfection might promote or satisfy various interests of reason we have, our reason includes final interests in promoting and protecting the natural perfection of all people. Kant suggests that our interest of reason in natural perfection can also be described as an interest of reason in a kind of freedom.31 As we discussed in Chapters 3 and 12, our power of choice allows us to make choices of all kinds without being determined or caused to do so by anything. We have the negative freedom, in particular, to choose any ends whatsoever. Ends are possible goals,

27 MM 6: 387, 444; CPJ 5: 431–​2. 28 Eth-​V 27: 651. 29 Eth-​V 27: 543, 651, 705. 30 G 4: 393; MM 6: 386–​7; Rel 6: 4n; Eth-​C 27: 265. 31 MM 6: 387, 395, 444; CPJ 5: 426–​7, 431–​2.

Natural Perfection  327 aims, or states of affairs that someone who is negatively free can but might not endorse. End freedom, as we might call it, is a kind of freedom in which we are in a position to realize any end we might possibly set, whether or not we adopt it as our own end. Kant suggests that we have an interest of reason in this kind of freedom for ourselves as well as for other people, which means we have an interest of reason in being in a position to realize any ends they might set as well. Our interest of reason in the end freedom of all is the same as an interest in the natural perfection of all, namely that each of us is fully adequate to all possible ends. Freedom of this kind does not depend on what ends we or others actually choose or on the likelihood that we or they will choose certain ends in the future. We all have the power to choose any ends whatsoever when our power of choice is working properly, so our reason has interests that we have the end freedom or natural perfection to realize all ends we or others can possibly choose. In other words, our interests of reason in our power of choice include interests in a kind of freedom in which any end we might choose is satisfied, which is another way of saying that we have interests of reason in promoting and protecting our own natural perfection and that of others. By drawing these connections to our power of choice and a kind of freedom associated with it, Kant suggests that the natural perfection of persons is a substantive final interest of reason.

14.4  Natural Perfection of Everyone: Presumptive Laws of Reason The idea of a naturally perfect human person is so abstract, formal, and difficult to apply that, ironically, it seems almost useless as a guide for how to go about improving ourselves and others. Our interests of reason in promoting and protecting the natural perfection of all nonetheless favor some general presumptive laws of reason, but interpreting and applying them are difficult or impossible for us because of limitations on our knowledge and indeterminacies that are implied by the idea of natural perfection itself. Assessing whether a change to someone would increase or decrease her harmony with a single end requires us to examine her many intrinsic properties, consider all the ways they lead to the realization or frustration of that end with and without the change to her, sometimes reckon with an indeterminate or vague end, and take into account a variety of circumstances throughout these investigations. Determining whether a change to someone’s intrinsic properties would make her more naturally perfect requires assessing these harmony relations for all possible ends to see how, if at all, the alteration would affect her suitability for every possible end. These and other difficulties prevent our power of reason from legislating specific laws that tell us, in detail, how to make ourselves or others more perfect than we are.32 32 MM 6: 392, 445; Eth-​V 27: 631, 651–​2.

328  Sovereign Re ason One presumptive law favored by our interest of reason in natural perfection is nonetheless to set the natural perfection of all people as one of our ends. Rational and reasonable people who care about the natural perfection of all could or would endorse a presumptive law to adopt our own perfection and that of others as a goal, count it as important, aim for it, and strive to make ourselves and others as naturally perfect as we can be. This law does not include particular requirements about how to perfect ourselves and others. It does require us to make this end a part of our lives and at least sometimes try to promote it in ways that we sincerely, but perhaps mistakenly, think will improve ourselves or others. Our interest of reason in natural perfection also favors several formal presumptive laws about how we should choose to act. We presumptively should act in ways that make someone better suited to an end if doing so does not make them less suited to any other end. We also presumptively should refrain from acting in ways that make someone less suited to an end without thereby making her better suited to other ends. The first kind of action makes someone more perfect, while the second kind of action makes her less perfect. As Kant says, a rational being “cannot possibly will” a universal law not to naturally perfect ourselves because “as a rational being he necessarily wills that all the capacities in him be developed.”33 He also says that we are required by reason to “perfect yourself as an end, perfect yourself as a means” and “to be a useful member of the world.”34 We can rarely if ever be sure that a specific action will, in these ways, make someone more or less perfect. Our interest of reason in natural perfection thus also favors presumptive laws about gathering relevant information and erring on the side of caution as well as ones that require us at least to intend to enhance the perfection of others and not to diminish their perfection in these ways.35 Conscientious attempts at enhancing our own natural perfection and that of others likely include cultivating our own powers of body and mind, learning new skills, acquiring knowledge, toughening our bodies, and not mutilating ourselves.36 We can also improve other people by, it seems, educating children, providing guidance and opportunities to develop their talents, and ensuring that their basic needs are met. Maiming or seriously injuring ourselves or others in certain ways may diminish our degree of natural perfection. Various kinds of friendships, 33 G 4: 423. This argument for a duty of natural self-​perfection is different from those of Wood (1999, ­chapter 4) and Johnson (2011, ­chapter 5), which are grounded in the Formula of Humanity as a requirement to have and show proper respect for ourselves and others. According to Johnson, setting and pursuing ends involves the use of our rational agency, and we can set and pursue ends only if we have the requisite natural abilities, so failing to develop our natural talents is a way of disrespecting our rational agency itself. Although the structure of our arguments is different, the argument I give for a requirement to promote natural perfection draws on Johnson’s account of what is involved in having and pursuing ends. 34 MM 6: 419 and MM 6: 445–​6, respectively. The former quote is a translation of “perfice te ut finem, perfice te ut medium.” For more on making oneself useful to others, see Rel 6: 130; Eth-​V 27: 544, 651. 35 MM 6: 441. 36 MM 6: 421; PMB 15: 948; Eth-​V 27: 593, 656.

Natural Perfection  329 social groups, economic competition, educational institutions, and political arrangements seem to provide favorable conditions for enhancing the natural perfection of human persons.37 Further investigation is needed, however, to determine whether these or other things tend to make us better suited to some ends without making us less well suited to any other ends. In addition to presumptive laws that concern our choices, our interests of reason in natural perfection also favor laws that concern our desires and feelings.38 These laws presumptively require us to want everyone to be as naturally perfect as they can be and not to desire our own imperfection or that of others.39 Our interests in natural perfection also favor laws that require us to feel pleasure, not pain, at the perfections of others and to feel pain, not pleasure, at their imperfections.40 We cannot, of course, directly control what we desire and how we feel, but our reason favors laws that exclude certain kinds of corrosive envy, schadenfreude, arrogance, hatred, and servility that involve wanting others to be less perfect than we are, feeling pleasure at their imperfections and our own higher degree of perfection relative to theirs, wanting to be less perfect than we are, and feeling pain that others are more perfect than we are.41 As Kant says, when the imperfection of others is “the reason for its own joy,” then this “makes it a moral defect.”42

14.5  Final Remarks: Further Issues about Promoting the Natural Perfection of Everyone Rational and reasonable people, I have suggested, necessarily value natural perfection for all people. We care about making ourselves and others as fit as possible for any ends that we or others might have. We are averse to allowing our talents to waste away and strive to make something of ourselves and to be useful to others. These concerns are not just with promoting happiness or choosing in prudent ways. We want everyone to have the freedom to realize any and all possible goals and aims. These interests of reason in natural perfection, when combined with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability, could or would lead us to endorse presumptive laws to promote and value the natural perfection of everyone. The presumptive laws of reason that are supported by our interests of reason in natural perfection are more expansive than the duty of natural self-​perfection

37 CPJ 5: 432–​3; Anth 7: 278–​80; IUH 8: 20, 26; Eth-​V 27: 679; Eth-​C 27: 278–​80. 38 For discussion of general issues related to laws of reason directed at our desires and feelings, see Chapter 13. 39 Eth-​V 27: 676. 40 Eth-​C 27: 417. 41 Eth-​V 27: 678; Eth-​C 27: 453; Eth-​H 27: 41; Rel 6: 27. 42 Eth-​H 27: 41.

330  Sovereign Re ason that Kant describes. This moral duty, according to Kant, is a wide and imperfect duty to set our own natural perfection as an end. Let’s end this chapter by briefly discussing two features of Kant’s account of the duty of natural self-​perfection that seem to conflict with the view I have described. Exploring these issues will help to explain some aspects of our interest of reason in natural perfection and the presumptive laws of reason that it favors. First, Kant sometimes seems to limit the duty of natural perfection to developing our own talents and skills, whereas on the conception of natural perfection I have presented, our level of natural perfection depends on how well all of our intrinsic properties, not just our talents and skills, harmonize with each possible end.43 Kant seems to distinguish between intrinsic properties of ourselves that we can alter by our choices and those that we cannot change in this way. He might be mistaken about which intrinsic features of a person fall into one or other of these categories, but he suggests that “gifts of nature,” such as our genetic endowment, temperament, and height, are largely inalterable.44 These intrinsic properties, he thinks, can affect our level of natural perfection just as much as our realized talents and skills, but the duty of natural perfection is a moral principle that, as such, can only require us to do things that we can do, which in the case of promoting natural perfection he thinks is limited to developing our abilities and powers of mind and body.45 If, however, we abstract from what intrinsic features of ourselves we can directly or indirectly alter through our choices, our interest of reason in natural perfection favors laws that presumptively require us to set and in some ways pursue and not undermine the end of being in all respects suited to all possible ends. Second, one of the most explicit and clear aspects of Kant’s system of moral duties is that we have a moral duty to naturally perfect ourselves but no moral duty to promote the natural perfection of other people. The duty of natural self-​perfection, Kant says, is a self-​regarding duty with no other-​regarding counterpart.46 We discussed several of these issues in Chapter 10 when we examined whether reason can require us to promote the rational perfection of others. Perhaps there are conceptual features of duties, as opposed to laws of reason in general, that explain this asymmetry in a way that allows for laws of reason, but not duties, to further the natural perfection of other people. According to the SCR, however, the presumptive laws to promote the natural perfection of others might not be duties or even moral requirements. Maybe perfecting some or all of someone’s powers of mind and body requires them to take an active role, which would make it self-​contradictory for 43 CPrR 5: 41. 44 G 4: 393. See also CPJ 5: 429–​30. 45 MM 6: 386–​7. 46 MM 6: 386. O’Neill (1975, 91), Korsgaard (1996a, 36), Denis (1999), and Johnson (2011, ­chapter 7) attempt to explain why, for Kant, we have no moral duty to naturally perfect other people. Broadening the idea of natural perfection beyond talents and abilities and abstracting from whether the relevant laws of reason are duties or moral principles at all seems to mitigate the main barriers Kant sees for a requirement of reason to help others become as naturally perfect as they can be.

Natural Perfection  331 someone to set as an end that she alone cultivates the talents and skills of another person, which still allows us to perfect other aspects of people.47 Kant might also, in some passages, be referring to moral perfection rather than natural perfection when he says that we do not have a duty to promote the natural perfection of other people.48 Whatever the explanation for this asymmetry between perfecting ourselves and perfecting others, Kant himself often enjoins us to improve other people in terms of their natural perfection through parenting, education, friendship, competition, assistance, scientific investigation, political systems, and other means.49

47 Eth-​V 27: 705. 48 Perhaps the relevant MM 6: 386 passage can be read in this way. 49 MM 6: 281; CPJ 5: 432; Anth 7: 313; IUH 8: 20–​2; Ped 9: 449, 455; Eth-​V 27: 676; Eth-​C 27: 461.

15

Respect and Expressions of Respect Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in respect and expressions of respect. As rational and reasonable people, we care about respecting and not disrespecting our own rational nature and that of others. We care about respecting rational and reasonable actions and characters as well as the laws of reason themselves. We also value expressions of respect for these things in word, manner, and deed. In addition to not harming or violating the rights of others, promoting their happiness, helping them to develop their powers of mind, expanding their knowledge, and otherwise treating people in accordance with our other interests of reason, our power of reason leads us to respect all people and to express respect for them. It seems contrary to reason to ridicule someone for a physical deformity or to think of her as a mere tool for our purposes even if she suffers no material harm as a result. Contemptuously denouncing true moral principles as imaginary or as merely devices of social control seems to be quite unreasonable, as do groveling and prostrating oneself in demeaning ways. Fully rational and reasonable people take account of one another’s interests and often treat each other with courtesy and politeness.1 They avoid arrogance and servility and seek to encourage mutual respect in everyone. These ordinary ways of thinking and speaking suggest that part of being a rational and reasonable person is a concern for ensuring that all people respect and express respect for the right kinds of things. The main aim of this chapter is to illustrate how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) can be interpreted and applied in ways that capture and explain a wide variety of judgments in reflective common sense about respect, contempt, and their expressions. We will explore a novel conception of respect as a judgment that something is an object of our interests of reason. This is an unorthodox view of respect that fits with some themes in Kant’s thinking and helps to explain why we sometimes fail to respect the things we should. We will consider the interests that reason takes in respect and expressions of respect as well as some presumptive laws of reason that these interests favor. In addition, we will illustrate how our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect can harmonize and conflict with other interests of reason. We will end with a difficulty about whether we are presumptively required by reason to praise and fawn over people or simply to avoid showing them disrespect. 1 As we shall discuss below, not all cultural forms of politeness and courtesy are commended by reason.

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0015

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  333

15.1  Respect and Expressions of Respect: Judgments of Inner Worth Explaining our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect requires specifying what it is to respect and express respect for something. Our main aim in this part of the book is to illustrate how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason can be interpreted and applied, so we will draw mainly on Kant as well as common sense to specify one novel way of thinking about respect and its expression. Other theories of respect might do just as well for this purpose, but the view I describe fits with central features of the SCR and makes sense of several aspects of respect that are often not sufficiently discussed.

15.1.1  Judgments of Inner Worth Respect is sometimes regarded as a type of intentional action, such as respect for a commander enacted by following her orders, or as a type of feeling, such as respect for a great tennis player.2 A common theme in Kant’s thinking is that respect is, first and foremost, a judgment. To respect something, Kant often says or implies, is to believe that it is good in itself or has inner worth.3 We will shortly discuss what it is for something to have this kind of value. Assuming we can make sense of the inner worth of things without invoking nonnatural normative properties or otherwise violating the Autonomy Restriction that we discussed in Chapter 6, respect is an ordinary cognitive judgment that arises from our mental power of judgment. Our beliefs about the inner worth of things can be true or false depending on whether those things are in fact good in themselves. Like other beliefs about the empirical world, logic, and morality, judgments of inner worth are subject to errors and prejudices, such as when our dislike of someone leads us to mistakenly deny that he has inner worth. Our respect for something can also be grounded on solid evidence that the person or thing is good in itself. We can reflect on and investigate these judgments, and they can count as knowledge. We respect someone as a person, for example, by judging that she has final value; we respect her character by acknowledging its inner worth; and we respect a law by affirming that it is good in itself (I use these phrases interchangeably to refer to a specific kind of value that we will soon discuss). Believing that something has merely instrumental value,

2 G 4: 436; CPrR 5: 80–​1; MM 6: 464. For further discussion of various aspects of Kant’s conception of respect, see Wood (1999, 2009), Kriegel and Timmons (2021), Herman (1993b, ­chapter 3), Hill (2000, ­chapter 4), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 1), Cranor (1980), Dillon (2016), and Thomason (2013). 3 G 4: 403, 428; MM 6: 435, 441, 454–​5, 462–​3; CPrR 5: 88; CPJ 5: 264; Anth 7: 260, 272; Eth-​V 27: 635–​6, 667, 674, 685, 688, 709, 727; Eth-​C 27: 281, 407, 409, 458; Eth-​Mr2 29: 624. See also Cureton (Forthcoming-​c, ­chapter 12).

334 Sovereign Re ason such as a criminal statute that helps to secure rights, does not count as respecting it in Kant’s sense.4 Respect is a belief that something has inner worth. Respect of this kind is connected to feeling and action. To explain these relations and what it is we believe when we respect something, we need to specify the idea of inner worth. Here we will continue looking to Kant.

15.1.2  Inner Worth Kant endorses a response-​dependent theory of value according to which goodness is a relation between the interests of a creature and the objects of those interests.5 These interests can be of any kind, including ends, desires, feelings, dispositions, or other conative states. Their objects can be objects in the world, events, states of affairs, ideas, or other kinds of things. A state of affairs is good, for example, if someone wants it to come about, while a meal is good if someone likes it. Goodness is not an intrinsic property of things or something we can detect in them. Value instead depends on whether things realize or further the desires, ends, or other interests of people and perhaps other creatures. Response-​dependent theories of value have always faced the problem (or perhaps embraced the virtue) that they apparently cannot explain how some things are objectively good and properly valued by all people regardless of the desires, feelings, dispositions, and other interests any of us happens to have. People vary widely in our interests, which suggests that many things are both good and bad and that nothing is objectively good. Hobbes and C. M. Perry endorse these conclusions as advantages of their response-​dependent theories of value.6 Other response-​dependent theorists define goodness in terms of the hypothetical feelings, desires, ends, or other interests that certain people would have toward things if they were, for example, fully informed, prudentially rational, ideally self-​aware, and free of certain psychological disorders.7 Issues remain about whether hypothetical responses can plausibly capture ordinary judgments of objective value and why we should care about the interests we would have under certain conditions when they conflict with or differ significantly from the interests we actually have.8 4 As Thomas E. Hill, Jr. pointed out to me, we might sometimes say in ordinary language that someone respects a criminal statute as an effective means for securing rights. Such a person, it seems, does not respect that law in the fullest sense if she thinks it would lose its value if it no longer protected rights or if she thinks breaking that law would be sensible if doing so would protect rights more effectively than obeying it. 5 For discussions of response-​dependent theories of value, see Hobbes (1994), Perry (1930), Brandt (1979), Hill (1992, c­ hapter 7), Korsgaard (1996b, 1996a, ­chapter 4), Reath (2009), and Smith (1994). 6 Hobbes (1994) and Perry (1930). 7 Smith (1994) and Brandt (1979) propose ideal desire accounts of values or reasons. 8 For this and other criticisms of ideal desire theories of good, see Harman (1982), Velleman (1988), and Rosati (1995).

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  335 One of Kant’s innovations for response-​dependent theories of value, I suggest, is that some feelings, desires, and other interests we have toward certain things are necessary rather than contingent interests that are part of or arise from our power of reason itself.9 Rational and reasonable people as such necessarily care about certain things for their own sake. As we discussed in Chapter 5, our interests of reason are not ones we happen to have. They do not vary according to our psychological peculiarities, genetics, upbringing, or environment. They are the same in everyone with a minimally realized power of reason. As competent rational and reasonable people, we cannot help but have certain needs, drives, desires, feelings, and other interests of reason toward certain things. These things are objectively valuable, on Kant’s response-​dependent theory of value, in the sense that all rational creatures necessarily have final interests of reason in them. Something is good in itself or has inner worth, Kant often says or implies, just in case and because it is the object of a final positive interest of reason. As Kant says: “That is good which pleases by means of reason alone, through the mere concept.”10 We do not have interests of reason in things because they are independently good in themselves; rather, they are intrinsically valuable because we all necessarily have interests of reason in them. There are a few complexities in and refinements to this theory of intrinsic value that need not concern us here.11 The 9 CPJ 5: 209, 213, 225, 237, 354; CPrR 5: 34, 63; NF 16: 130, 19: 138–​9. Bader (2023) argues that, for Kant, the only things that can have value are states of affairs and the only proper response to valuable things is to promote them. By contrast, the only things that can have dignity are existing objects and the only proper response to them is respect. Bader employs this distinction to argue against Kantian views that interpret dignity as a value that is to be promoted and respected, which he claims commit a category mistake. There is some textual support for Bader’s view as well as other passages, some of which I cite, in which Kant claims that some existing things are good in themselves and that states of affairs (e.g., a Kingdom of Ends) can have inner worth. 10 CPJ 5: 207. See also CPJ 5: 207–​9, 213, 225, 237, 296, 354; CPrR 5: 34, 43, 58–​9, 61, 63; NF 16: 130, 19: 103, 19: 138–​9. Kant sometimes uses the expressions “good in itself,” “inner worth,” “dignity,” “good for its own sake,” “final value,” “immediately good,” “intrinsic worth,” and similar phrases in different ways. He also uses many of them in a general way to refer to a kind of response-​dependent value that does not depend on whether something serves our own purposes or those of others or on the ends, goals, desires, feelings, or other mental states any of us happens to have. My account of inner worth draws from Sensen (2011b, 2022) and helps to overcome many of the important worries that Sensen describes as arising from the views of Korsgaard (1996a, ­chapter 4, 1996b, 122–​4), Wood (2008, ­chapter 5), Dean (2006), Kerstein (2002), and Guyer (2000, c­ hapters 3 and 4), which apparently regard dignity as an intrinsic and objective value. My account also differs from Hill’s (2002, c­ hapter 2) suggestion that goodness, for Kant, is what it is rational to choose. Hill’s view presupposes laws of reason that determine what it is rational for us to choose, whereas I claim that our interests of reason make things good. 11 One issue is how to distinguish goodness from agreeableness and beauty. Strictly, for Kant, judging that something is good or bad is judging that (1) a conceptual representation and (2) practical desires or feelings are (3) necessarily and universally connected. Like judgments of beauty but unlike those of agreeableness, judgments of goodness assert a universal and necessary connection between representing something and having certain desires or feelings toward it. Unlike judgments of beauty, however, judgments about the good assert that this connection is between the concept we use to represent something and these desires and feelings. Like judgments of agreeableness but unlike those of beauty, judgments of goodness assert that a representation is connected with desires to produce, promote, or maintain the object as well as positive feelings toward the existence of the object. A second issue is how to distinguish inner worth from usefulness. For Kant, to judge that something is mediately good or useful is to judge that (1) a conceptual representation of something and (2) practical desires and

336 Sovereign Re ason main idea is that inner worth is what all rational and reasonable people necessarily care about for its own sake. Intrinsic value does not depend on whether something serves our contingent purposes or on the ends, goals, desires, feelings, or other mental states any of us happens to have. Usefulness and other kinds of value, according to Kant, can be contingent in these ways, but things that are good in themselves are objects of our interests of reason. Something is immediately bad just in case and because it conflicts with our positive interests of reason or we have final negative interests of reason toward it. Whether or not something undermines our contingent purposes or we happen to dislike or hate it, a bad thing might frustrate a final need of reason, or we might have negative feelings and aversions toward it that arise from our power of reason itself. This basic account of inner worth as the objects of our final interests of reason can be developed and interpreted in different ways depending on what, if any, interests of reason we have. One important set of issues for Kantians and for the Sovereignty Conception of Reason concerns cases in which our final interests of reason conflict with one another. As we have repeatedly seen, we sometimes have interests of reason for and against the same thing. For instance, when someone’s conception of happiness includes immoral elements, her happiness is in one respect good in itself because we have interests of reason in the happiness of all, but her happiness is also in another respect bad in itself because our reason includes aversions to the immoral desires and ends that are part of what happiness is for her.12 Determining whether her happiness is overall good or bad in itself requires adjudicating this conflict among our interests of reason. We might find that some interests of reason are stronger than others so that when interests of reason lead in opposing directions, our overall interest of reason is in certain sorts of things that thereby have greater inner worth than other things. We might also discover that some interests of reason entirely defeat other interests of reason when they conflict, so that certain things have inner worth even when other interests of reason perhaps feelings toward that thing are (3) connected together in such a way that anyone who has some other end and judges that the thing represented is a means to that end would necessarily have positive practical desires and feelings toward that thing. To judge that something is immediately good, good in itself, or has inner worth is to judge that (1) a conceptual representation of something and (2) practical desires or feelings toward that thing itself, apart from its consequences, are (3) universally and necessarily connected through our power of reason in a way that does not depend on whether we think it serves any purposes they or anyone else might have. A third issue, which I briefly discuss below, is how to distinguish conditional from unconditional inner worth (perhaps things having the former are objects of at least one interest of reason but not all, while things having the latter are objects of our interests of reason all things considered). A fourth issue is that God, according to Kant, does not have desires and feelings, although perhaps he has some interests of reason, such as dispositions of reason that are, because of his divine nature, necessarily and fully realized (L-​Th 28: 1065). See Guyer (1997, 2006), Ginsborg (2015), and Allison (2001). 12 For discussions of Kant’s account of happiness, see Paton (1967, 85–​7, 92, 105–​7, 126–​7), Gregor (1963, 78, 177), Johnson (2013), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 2), and Kahn (2022).

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  337 would otherwise oppose them. The happiness of an evil person might be overall bad because other of our interests of reason are on balance stronger than our interests in her happiness or because those other interests silence or take absolute priority over our interests of reason in happiness. This latter approach would allow us to explain Kant’s famous opening lines of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals as a claim about how any interests of reason we might have in intelligence, wit, and other natural perfections or other things are only qualifiedly good because our interests of reason in them are conditioned on other of our interests of reason.13 What things have inner worth? On the Kantian conception of reason I am proposing, things of inner worth are things we have interests of reason in, but there are different views about what interests of reason we have and so what things are good in themselves. Rational nature as a whole, including our theoretical, prudential, and moral abilities, has inner worth because, as I suggested in Chapter 10, we all necessarily care about the power of reason in everyone for its own sake. Conforming to laws of reason through our formal interests of reason, achieving full rational self-​governance, and the existence of a world of such people all also have inner worth because we have final interests in all people exercising their governing abilities of reason and we share the various substantive interests of reason that help to ground rational requirements. In addition, unity, knowledge, enlightenment, freedom of various kinds, happiness, natural perfection, and any other substantive things that we take an interest of reason in have inner worth because we all, as rational and reasonable people, necessarily care about them.14 This expansive account of what has inner worth might seem to clash with much of what Kant says about this sort of value. For him, inner worth is often restricted to moral things, such as our rational powers for moral self-​governance (as humanity is often understood), morally good actions (doing one’s duty from duty), moral character (which includes a good will and virtue), and a morally perfect world (a Kingdom of Ends).15 On my account, these things all have inner worth, but so do other things that correspond to the many substantive 13 This assumes that we can distinguish moral from nonmoral interests of reason, which I suggested in Chapter 7 is more difficult than it might appear. 14 According to this account of inner worth, the happiness of all people also has inner worth because it is an object of our interests of reason. One way of reconciling the inner worth of happiness with Kant’s claims about dignity and price is that happiness itself has inner worth, but particular objects of the contingent interests that make up our conception of happiness have only price. My happiness matters to all rational and reasonable people simply as such, but few people share my love of old computers, so those things do not have inner worth and are instead replaceable by things that have equal value to me. 15 G 4: 403, 428, 435, 437–​8, 441; CPrR 5: 43, 62, 147, 161; CPJ 5: 448; MM 6: 427, 434–​5, 464; TP 8: 282, 285; Ped 9: 493; CB 8: 115; NF 15: 915, 18: 458, 19: 185; Eth-​V 27: 665; Eth-​Mr2 29: 624; L-​Th 28: 1078. See Baxley (2010), Frierson (2006), Munzel (1998), Cureton (2016a), Allison (1990, especially ­chapter 7), Engstrom (2009, 44–​7), and Timmons (2021b, 126, 219) for discussions of Kant’s conception of character. See also Chapters 3 and 12.

338 Sovereign Re ason final interests of reason we have in rational nature as a whole, governing oneself by all kinds of rational requirements, knowledge, natural perfection, and respect. An advantage of this expansion, I have been claiming, is that it allows us to capture and explain a wide variety of commonsense judgments about reason through a principle of justifiability that generates many presumptive laws of reason. Kant’s views about what has inner worth, as they are usually interpreted, face challenges of their own. It is difficult to explain how exactly Kant distinguishes moral from nonmoral requirements of reason, which distinction is essential for restricting inner worth to moral capacities, moral actions, and other moral things.16 Indeed, duties of respect pose a special difficulty for some ways of doing this because if respect is a judgment rather than a choice, then requirements of respect cannot be moral if morality concerns only our choices. It is also worth noting that Kant himself sometimes affirms the inner worth of many other things besides moral capacities, moral action, moral character, and a morally ideal world. For instance, he talks about the “the inner worth of the sciences” and says that “understanding, for example, has an inner worth,” that “the inner worth that cognitions have through logical perfection is not to be compared with the outer, their worth in application,” that many ancient “writings ... have been preserved through so long a time merely on account of their inner worth,” that “poetry, oratory” and other “liberal arts have an inner worth,” that we should respect people even “in the logical use of [their] reason” and “with regard to [their] talents” of intelligence and diligence, that “bravery is an object of admiration and one reason for the special respect commanded by that estate in which bravery is the sole merit; and this is not without basis in reason,” and that “religion, therefore, even if it contains such absurdity, is in no way an object of mockery, for the man who possesses it has an interest in it, and his future weal or woe depends on it.”17 In any case, the SCR, as I am interpreting and applying it in this part of the book, connects with a conception of inner worth, understood as the object of the interests of reason we necessarily share as people with the power of reason. My aim here is not to offer a complete interpretation of Kant’s value theory or a full account of what has inner worth. The focus of this chapter is on what respect is, how to show it, and our interests and accompanying laws of reason that concern respect and its expression. My approach to these topics is to draw mainly from Kant’s discussions of respect and expressions of respect to define notions of them that largely abstract from what things actually have inner worth.

16 See Chapter 7. 17 L-​Log 24: 820, Eth-​C 27: 357, L-​Log 24: 42, L-​Log 24:741, L-​Log 24:116, MM 6: 463, CPrR 5: 4n, Rel 6: 33, and Eth-​C 27: 314, respectively. See also CPrR 5: 78; L-​Log 24: 877.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  339

15.1.3 Respect When we respect something, we judge that it has inner worth.18 That is, we judge that it is the object of an interest of reason we necessarily have as people with a rational nature. Such judgments are sincere when those who make them recognize in themselves desires, feelings, dispositions, or other interests of reason toward this thing that they think are necessary for all rational and reasonable people to have toward it.19 We can also respect something insincerely when we judge that we have an interest of reason in it but fail to find this interest in ourselves, perhaps because it is not there, or we mistake a natural interest for a necessary interest of reason. When our judgment that something has inner worth along with our accompanying interests of reason toward it successfully lead us to do something, then our action is respectful. We can also judge that something lacks inner worth or that it is bad or evil in itself.20 Contempt is often used in both ways as the logical or real opposite of respect. We might also not have any judgments about the inner worth, lack of inner worth, or inner unworthiness of something.

15.1.4  Expressions of Respect We can express respect, lack of respect, and contempt through language, symbolic images, and other signs using our mental power of signification, which we discussed in Chapter 3.21 Artificial signs have literal or figurative meanings.22 Phrases, tones of voice, gestures, social practices, clothing, actions, and symbols can come to mean that something has or lacks inner worth. We express respect or disrespect, in this sense, if we hold these judgments of inner worth and make use of literal or figurative signs, either outwardly to others or inwardly in our own thinking, that have come to have the same meaning as, or to presuppose, our judgments of inner worth. We might express contempt by insulting someone or leading him around on a leash. Natural signs are evidence for things, such as when the smoke coming from a house signifies that it is on fire.23 Our actions, gestures, and other things can 18 Raz (2001) has a similar view that respect for something is believing that it is intrinsically valuable. 19 One such interest of reason is a rationally produced feeling of respect for the moral law. This feeling, according to Kant, includes a feeling of humiliation at comparing ourselves to the demands of morality and a feeling of esteem at our ability to satisfy them. See Dillon (1992, 2004), Buss (1999b), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 1), Dean (2009), and Sensen (2011a). 20 See Timmons (1994), Allison (1990), Baxley (2010), Kohl (2017), and Sussman (2005) for discussions of Kant’s account of evil. 21 Anth 7: 191–​7; MM 6: 290, 470; Eth-​V 27: 667, 707; Eth-​H 27: 41; Eth-​C 27 :335–​6; L-​Anth 25: 536–​7, 1293–​6. See Cureton (Forthcoming-​c, c­ hapters 5–​10, Forthcoming-​b, Forthcoming-​a), and Cureton and Silvers (2018). 22 Eth-​C 27: 336. 23 Anth 7: 193.

340 Sovereign Re ason express respect or contempt in this way when they reveal or indicate that we respect or have contempt for it. These things might not have an established meaning that something has or lacks inner worth, but they nonetheless count as expressing respect or disrespect if they provide strong evidence that we have these beliefs. Our contempt for something, for example, might be revealed by involuntarily sneering at it. We can use signs of both kinds to communicate with other people as well as, in a sense, to speak and listen to ourselves through our power of imagination.24 Signs can be ambiguous. An action might not have a meaning in some groups but have one in others. A phrase might have a literal and a symbolic meaning. A natural sign might be evidence that we have two or more separate emotions or attitudes. We will consider below some of the more specific ways that our judgments about the inner worth of things can be expressed through what we say, how we carry ourselves, our facial expressions, our actions, our social practices, and other natural or artificial signs.

15.2  Respect and Expressions of Respect: Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, has substantive final interests in respecting things that have inner worth, in expressing respect for things with inner worth, in not respecting or expressing respect for things that lack inner worth, and in having and showing contempt for things that are evil or bad in themselves.25 In addition to other interests of reason we have in promoting and protecting various things, our reason includes interests in making and expressing accurate judgments about their inner worth. A fully rational response to something with inner worth includes not just treating it in certain ways but also believing and showing that we believe that it is immediately good. As Kant says, for example, “every rational being” is an object in itself “given by reason alone” that, as such, not only “may not be used merely as a means” but also should be “regarded at the same time as an end” and judged to have inner worth as “an object of respect.”26 The “wisdom to judge about the true worth of things” is “a need of reason.”27 Denying people “the respect owed to human beings in general” by “inwardly looking down” on them and the “outward manifestation of this” both frustrate the intrinsic interests reason has in respect and expressions of respect.28 To “consider” a human being as a “trifle” and “regarding him as a mere tool” are each a “subversion of the final end of creation itself.”29 An 24 Anth 7: 192. 25 The latter feature of our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect might accord with some ideas of Bell (2013) and Hieronymi (2004) on contempt and blame. 26 G 4: 427–​8, Kant’s italics. 27 L-​Anth 25: 1481. 28 MM 6: 463. 29 CF 7: 89.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  341 honest person who has “such worth as can be demanded from everyone, without distinction ... deserves to be respected.”30 Someone who harbors mistaken judgments about the inner worth of others might, in a fit of anger, “expose his interior through the play of expressions (against the wish of his reason).”31 We have interests of reason in respecting and expressing respect for the objects of our interests of reason. Our reason leads us to act from laws of reason but also to affirm and express that those laws have inner worth. We not only have interests of reason in preserving and protecting rational nature in ourselves and others, but we also have interests of reason in judging that rational nature is immediately good and in expressing respect for it. Our power of reason leads us to pursue knowledge as well as affirm and express judgments about the inner worth of knowledge. We also have interests of reason in having and showing contempt for things that have no inner worth, in despising and showing this attitude for things that are bad in themselves, in not having and expressing these attitudes toward things that have inner worth, and in not respecting or showing respect for things that lack it. Scoffing at the laws of reason, judging that rational nature is merely a commodity, and ridiculing the pursuit of knowledge frustrate the intrinsic interests reason takes in respect and expressions of respect apart from whether doing so undermines other of its interests. More generally, reason has intrinsic interests that we each make accurate judgments of inner worth (including lack of inner worth and immediate badness), that we and others avoid errors in these judgments, that we reflect on and investigate their grounds, that we affirm them on the basis of mental states that represent grounds of their truth, and that we express these true judgments of inner worth and refrain from expressing false ones through what we say, what we do, how we carry ourselves, and other natural and artificial signs.

15.3  Respect: Laws of Reason Our interests of reason in respect, contempt, and their expressions favor various presumptive laws of reason. Rational and reasonable people as such, as we saw in Chapter 10, have interests of reason in preserving and protecting rational nature in everyone. Rational nature thus has inner worth because we all necessarily have these interests of reason. We also have interests of reason in respecting things that have inner worth, so part of being a rational and reasonable person is taking an interest in respecting the rational nature of everyone.32 If rational and reasonable 30 Eth-​C 27: 409. 31 Anth 7: 300. See also MM 6: 295, 331, 435–​6, 462–​4; Rel 6: 58; Ped 9: 488–​9, 493; CB 8: 114; Eth-​V 27: 594–​5, 636, 665, 667–​8; Eth-​C 27: 376, 409–​12; L-​Th 28: 1057. 32 Our respect for some things can come in degrees when we judge that they have more or less inner worth. We have interests of reason, for example, in the natural perfection of persons. If we can make sense of degrees of natural perfection, then it seems that people can have more or less inner worth with respect to their realized level of natural perfection. The inner worth of other things, such as rational

342 Sovereign Re ason people were to deliberate on the basis of this interest in respecting rational nature, they could or would rationally endorse judgments of this kind or something suitably related to those mental states, such as a law of nature that everyone respects all others as persons or a normative law requiring everyone to do so. According to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument, reason therefore presumptively requires us to respect all people as having inner worth. In short, we presumptively ought to respect one another because doing so is justifiable to rational and reasonable people who care about respect of this kind. In this and the next two sections, let’s consider three kinds of more specific presumptive laws that are favored by our interests of reason in respect, contempt, and their expressions.33 Our focus in each section will be on specifying these laws and interpreting and applying them in light of supposed facts about human beings and our circumstances. Let’s begin with presumptive laws of reason about respecting ourselves and others. Our interests of reason in respecting what has inner worth and having contempt for things that do not or that are intrinsically bad favor laws that presumptively require us to make accurate judgments of inner worth based only on mental states that represent grounds for their truth, not to make inaccurate judgments of this kind or ones that are insufficiently supported, and to think for ourselves about them by reflecting on and investigating these judgments or possible judgments.34 It is, Kant says, “right and proper” for someone to “[consider] himself to have his own specific worth” as a person and “already a crime even to call [the moral law] in doubt” by questioning or denying its inner worth.35 We are presumptively required to acknowledge the inner worth of all people who have a rational nature and presumptively should not “deny all respect to even a vicious man as a human being” but instead at least maintain “the respect that belongs to him in his quality as a human being.”36 Our judgments about the inner worth of things can be mistaken, whereas reason takes an interest in ensuring that they are true and based on mental states that represent grounds for their truth. Recall from Chapters 3 and 11 that, according to our partial model of the human mind, our power of judgment can be influenced by mental states that represent grounds for the truth of judgments as well as by

nature itself, does not come in degrees and so has an incomparable inner worth. Difficult issues remain about how to analyze different kinds of inner worth, varying degrees of inner worth, infinite inner worth, and the kinds of appraisal or recognition respect that they merit. See Darwall (1977). 33 For some contemporary attempts at applying Kant’s conception of respect to specific groups of people, see Sensen (2014), Noggle (1999), Buss (1999a), Cureton (Forthcoming-​c, ­chapters 5–​10, Forthcoming-​b, Forthcoming-​a), and Cureton and Silvers (2018). 34 MM 6: 397, 463–​4; CPrR 5: 62. 35 Eth-​C 27: 457 and MM 6: 319, respectively. 36 MM 6: 463. See also MM 6: 462. For further discussion of basic respect for persons, see Darwall (1977).

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  343 subjective mental states or prejudices that do not represent such grounds, such as our feelings and imaginings. Our power of reason itself provides us with mental states of the first kind that represent grounds for the truth of judgments of inner worth and so leads us to judge truly that the moral law, moral maxims, rational nature, moral character, and other things that are objects of our interests of reason have inner worth. Our judgments of inner worth, however, can be mistaken because of influences from subjective mental states that do not represent grounds for the truth of such judgments. These prejudices can also affect whether we reflect on or investigate judgments of inner worth that we already affirm or are considering. Our interests of reason in respect favor presumptive laws that require us to avoid making mistaken judgments of that sort, to identify and overcome prejudices when it comes to making and investigating judgments of inner worth, to help others to avoid such errors and to think for themselves about what is good or bad in itself, and to avoid encouraging or appealing to these prejudices as ways of affecting what other people think about the inner worth of things. To interpret and apply the presumptive laws of respect, let’s consider some of the prejudices that we presumptively should guard against in ourselves and others when it comes to respect and contempt. We will discuss a wide variety of them to illustrate the kinds of obstacles we must overcome to fulfill the presumptive requirement of reason to respect what is worthy of respect and to have contempt for what merits contempt.

15.3.1  Tendencies of Judgment Some prejudices that can interfere with making and investigating accurate judgments of inner worth are tendencies in our power of judgment itself. Some of us simply tend to accord ourselves a higher inner worth than we have or to accord ourselves a lower one than we have.37 We might tend to regard inner worth as a comparative rather than an absolute value by, for example, judging that the inner worth of someone’s character depends on a comparison with others rather than with requirements of reason.38 Many people tend to mistakenly think that the opinions of others about the inner worth of things are the same as their true value and to imitate these judgments rather than reflect on them ourselves, especially when judgments of inner worth are made by influential people or passed down through traditions.39 Our power of judgment might also have certain habits of thought that lead us to affirm false judgments of inner worth or to fail to investigate other judgments of this kind that we have repeatedly reaffirmed in the past, such as a child 37 Eth-​V 27: 611; Eth-​C 27: 350. 38 Eth-​V 27: 610, 703, 708. 39 Anth 7: 199–​200, 270; MM 6: 464; WIE 8: 35–​6; Ped 9: 493–​4; L-​Log 24: 162, 176, 864–​6.

344 Sovereign Re ason who is raised to think of morality as trivial or a racist who has always thought some people lack the inner worth we all share.40 Another common tendency of judgment that many of us have, Kant at times suggests, is to lose respect for things that are openly condemned. For example, if someone publicly rebukes or contemptuously violates the moral law without just punishment then, according to Kant, these actions tend to have “the effect of bringing into contempt the law of morality” and to “set off a more general resistance”41 to them.42 Knowing that we are an “object of contempt” in the opinions of others tends to “take away ... the consciousness of our own worth.”43 Belittling ourselves tends to “[inspire] contempt” and make “other people proud” by leading them to exaggerate their own inner worth outwardly and in their own minds.44 Many people, according to Kant, tend to judge that things lack inner worth altogether when we judge that they are bad or evil only in some respect. We might hold a vicious person in utter contempt because our true judgments about the immediate badness of his character led us to mistakenly think that he also lacks the basic inner worth that all people share simply in virtue of having a rational nature.45 Examining the many evils of human history might lead us to judge, as Kant says, that our species has “no greater value in the eyes of reason than that which other animal species possess.”46 Our awareness of the evil actions of others might tend to weaken our respect for morality by making us skeptical of its inner worth, although such reflections might also sometimes lead us to reaffirm our judgment that it has inner worth.47

15.3.2  Other Judgments We Have We might hold other mistaken judgments that lead us to make errors in our judgments of inner worth. For example, we might judge that someone has inner worth and so respect her because we mistakenly think that social status, wealth, power, race, or gender give people inner worth.48 That others are more powerful, wealthy, beautiful, or even virtuous than we are might itself lead us to judge that we have less inner worth simply as persons than we actually have.49 Someone who doubts his own powers might mistakenly judge that he lacks inner worth because he affirms

40 Anth 7: 219; TP 8: 281; OFBS 2: 247. 41 WIE 8: 37. 42 Eth-​V 27: 663 and WIE 8: 37, respectively. 43 Eth-​C 27: 407. 44 Eth-​H 27: 40–​1. 45 MM 6: 463–​4. 46 CF 7: 82. See also MM 6: 466; CF 7: 94; TP 8: 308–​9; IUH 8: 18; Rel 6: 34. 47 MM 6: 466; Ped 9: 496. 48 Ped 9: 492; Eth-​V 27: 609–​10; Eth-​C 27: 368. 49 Eth-​V 27: 703.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  345 an incorrect standard of what is good in itself.50 If someone mistakenly thinks that moral principles depend on God and comes to think that God does not exist, then he might conclude that morality itself is not real and so lacks inner worth.51 Mistakes about the intentions of others might lead us to hold their actions in contempt, whereas, in light of our difficulties in knowing why anyone does what they do, Kant proposes “the beneficial duty of taking a very mild view of the specifically illegal acts of other men, and judging them with leniency.”52

15.3.3 Imagination Our imagination is a potential source of error when it comes to making and reflecting on judgments of inner worth. We might imaginatively associate mere social conventions or rules of fashion with principles of reason and so mistakenly judge that these other things have inner worth and that violations of them are immediately bad or evil.53 We might imagine that the opinions of others, social status, natural talents, gender, or race determine the inner worth of a person’s character and that words, emotions, and signs of respect determine the inner worth of actions.54 Someone might judge that the moral law lacks inner worth because she regards it as imaginary.55 Our imagination might also lead us to confuse respect or expressions of respect, such as flattery, praise, pageantry, and titles, with inner worth and so lead us to mistakenly judge that someone who is highly esteemed therefore has greater inner worth than others.56 We might have imagined great merits for ourselves that lead us to judge that we are morally better than we are.57

15.3.4  Natural Desires Our natural desires can in various ways affect our judgments of inner worth and our willingness to investigate them. Selfish desires might lead us to think that the moral law is simply a set of standards about how to effectively pursue our own advantage and so lead us to the mistaken judgment that the moral law has only instrumental rather than inner worth.58 Wanting to be a morally good person might lead us to the illusion that we are morally better than we are by, for instance, mistaking

50 Eth-​V 27: 703–​4; Rel 6: 184. 51 CPJ 5: 451–​2; Eth-​V 27: 619–​20. 52 Eth-​V 27: 704. See also Eth-​C 27: 450. 53 MM 6: 437, 464; Eth-​V 27: 707–​8. 54 Ped 9: 493; Anth 7: 270; L-​Anth 25: 544–​5. 55 G 4: 407; CPJ 5: 451–​2. 56 Rel 6: 168n; Anth 7: 272; Ped 9: 498–​9; OFBS 2: 249; Eth-​V 27: 667; Eth-​C 27: 457–​8. 57 OFBS 2: 249. 58 CPrR 5: 77, 147; Eth-​Mr2 29: 624.

346 Sovereign Re ason “mere wishes” for “proof of a good heart,” “intentional transgressions” for “human weakness,” or “repentance for misdeeds at the end of one’s life” for “real improvement.”59 Fear of doing something might lead us to falsely judge that the action is not required by reason and so lacks inner worth.60 A desire to maintain power can lead politicians to falsely judge that unjust laws and conformity to them are both good in themselves.61 Our desire for superiority over others might lead us to mistakenly think we have greater inner worth than they have, to judge them harshly but ourselves leniently, and to seek acclaim in things that lack inner worth.62 And we might have a natural desire for favorable opinions from other people that mistakenly leads us to judge that we have a kind of inner worth that we jealously deny to others.63

15.3.5  Natural Feelings Our natural feelings can also lead us to affirm false judgments of inner worth. We might respect something simply because it excites us or gives us pleasure.64 Someone might make his actions, as Kant says, “glitter to the eye” of others by producing in them feelings of admiration and awe that extort their respect even though the actions would lose their inner worth for us if we were to reflect on them.65 According to Kant, an “illusion ... takes place” when “we really have more respect for an individual who has beautiful clothes” because, through our taste, fine clothes “make an impression on us on behalf of the individual.”66 Flattering people often leads to their arrogance where they erroneously judge themselves to have a greater inner worth than others.67 Feelings of despondency might lead us to judge that we lack the inner worth we all have simply as persons.68 Feelings of self-​satisfaction might lead us to deny that the moral law has inner worth and, as Kant says, “to ascribe to ourselves, without proof, a worth, or a higher worth, that we do not possess.”69 Feelings of love might lead us to judge that someone is better than she is, while feelings of dislike or anger might lead us to judge that she is worse than she is.70



59 MM 6: 441 and Anth 7: 153, respectively. 60 TPP 8: 379; WIE 8: 35–​6; Anth 7: 200; L-​Log 24: 176. 61 TPP 8: 369, 376. 62 Eth-​V 27: 708; Eth-​H 27: 40–​1; L-​Log 24: 864. 63 Anth 7: 273–​4; Eth-​V 27: 674; Eth-​C 27: 408. 64 L-​Log 24: 167. 65 Eth-​V 27: 666. See also CPrR 5: 157. 66 L-​Anth 25: 502–​3. 67 CPrR 5: 85; MM 6: 474; Anth 7: 272. 68 Eth-​V 27: 610–​11. 69 Eth-​V 27: 611. See also CPrR 5: 82–​3. 70 Anth 7: 251; Eth-​V 27: 674–​5.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  347

15.3.6  Demands and Attention Finally, other prejudices that can influence our judgments of inner worth include those exposed when others attempt to force these judgments from us by demanding that we think little of ourselves in comparison to them. This, according to Kant, is “encroaching on the rights of all” and might lead us to judge that our inner worth is lower than it is and that theirs is greater.71 Distractions, failures to abstract, or other problems with how we exercise our power of attention can lead us to make mistaken judgments of inner worth, such as failing to respect someone’s character because we were too focused on features of her that are not part of her character.72

15.3.7  Further Discussion In sum, our interests of reason in respect and contempt favor presumptive laws of reason that concern knowing what has inner worth, what lacks it, and what is immediately bad, avoiding errors in such judgments, and thinking for ourselves about them in ways that are not influenced by prejudices of various kinds. These biases can arise from our powers of judgment, imagination, natural desire, feeling, and attention. We presumptively should be modest in affirming certain judgments of inner worth, particularly those that concern the character of others, because of difficulties knowing what commitments they endorse. We presumptively should investigate why we affirm such judgments to see whether they are based on grounds of truth rather than on prejudices. We are also presumptively required to communicate with others as a way of seeking out and correcting errors in our judgments of inner worth. As Kant says, we might “go astray in our own judgment” about the inner worth of things if we “were to rely solely on our own judgement” and fail to “compare our judgements concerning our knowledge with the opinion of others.”73 These presumptive laws do not just apply to our own judgments of inner worth; they also apply to how we regard and treat other people. We presumptively should not manipulate, brainwash, or compel others to affirm or deny judgments of inner worth; nor should we encourage prejudices in them that lead to erroneous judgments of that sort. We presumptively should instead exercise due care in not giving people occasion to respect or condemn the wrong things, help them to come to know what is immediately good, immediately bad, or neither of these, and encourage them to think about such matters for themselves. Various complexities remain concerning how to interpret, apply, and reconcile with one another the presumptive laws of reason favored by our interests of 71 Eth-​C 27: 409. See also Eth-​C 27: 457; Eth-​V 27: 666. 72 A296/​B353; L-​Log 24: 42, 134. 73 Eth-​C 27: 411 and Eth-​V 27: 666, respectively.

348 Sovereign Re ason reason in respect and contempt. One such conflict is this: On the one hand, our interest of reason in accurately judging what has inner worth seems to favor laws that presumptively require us to investigate the characters, maxims, and actions of other people so that we can know whether these things are good in themselves, bad in themselves, or lack inner worth. As Kant says, we have a “right” to judge the worth of these things in one another and a “duty” to do so.74 On the other hand, we are subject to various prejudices that lead us to make mistaken judgments about the inner worth of people and morality itself when we are aware of evil characters and deeds.75 In our quest to judge the true inner worth of things, some of what we learn about the evil of people tends to result in exaggerated contempt for them and for other things. Given these tendencies, our interests in respect and contempt favor presumptive prohibitions on, as Kant says, “spying on the morals of others.”76 Reason’s interests in respect and contempt thus seem to favor opposing laws that presumptively require us to learn as much as we can about others so that we can judge their inner worth accurately but also to afford them significant privacy in these matters. A more complete theory of reason must adjudicate this apparent conflict to determine how, when, and for what purposes we can or should investigate the inner worth of other people’s character and actions.

15.4  Expressions of Respect: Laws of Reason Our interests of reason in expressing respect and contempt favor laws that presumptively require us to express true judgments of inner worth and not to express false ones. As Kant says, we presumptively should not “call good that which is in fact unworthy.”77 We “must not only abhor evil, but, when something evil is said in a society, also oppose oneself to it, not keep silent.”78 Each of us presumptively should also “provide marks that he does not fail to recognize the worth of others” and openly “reject with contempt” any suggestion that morality lacks inner worth.79 Judgments of inner worth can be expressed through artificial signs, which have acquired a meaning among a group of people that matches the content of those judgments, and through natural signs, which are evidence that we have such judgments. Signs of both kinds can be ambiguous or indeterminate; they can also vary 74 Eth-​C 27: 450 and Eth-​V 27: 703, respectively. See also Eth-​V 27: 704. 75 MM 6: 466, 474. 76 MM 6: 466. See also Eth-​C 27: 451. 77 L-​Anth 25: 1171. See also L-​Anth 25: 553. 78 L-​Anth 25: 1390. 79 L-​Anth 25: 15 and MM 6: 332, respectively. See also MM 6: 463. See, in addition, Wood (2008) and Hill (2021a, c­ hapters 16 and 17), who emphasize expressive reasons we have to show respect and not show contempt for what has dignity.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  349 with context and be unknown to those who use them. Let’s consider some of the signs that can express judgments of inner worth to illustrate how we might interpret and apply presumptive laws of reason to express respect for what has inner worth and to express contempt or disrespect for what lacks such worth or is bad in itself.

15.4.1 Language We can express respect and contempt by simply declaring our judgments of inner worth either to ourselves, in our own minds, or to other people. We can, for example, flatter someone with, as Kant says, “[p]‌referential tributes of respect in words.”80 We can assert or boast about our own inner worth and openly concede that something lacks inner worth.81 We can also publicly rebuke a law of reason or deny all allegiance to it.82 Insulting someone in our own minds, spreading false rumors about him, berating him, and other uses of language are ways of censuring, disparaging, vilifying, or casting aspersions on things in ways that express contempt for them.83 The manner in which we write or speak can also convey respect and contempt, such as when our tone with others is arrogant, commanding, dismissive, haughty, scornful, boastful, or scolding, or else when our manner of speaking is equanimous or cordial.84

15.4.2 Demeanor We can express respect or disrespect through our demeanor, such as when we have an air of entitlement, a fawning servility, or an indifferent, haughty, abject, courteous, or self-​assured bearing.85 According to Kant, a timorous person who is “given to anxiousness and sighing, of an affected kind,” who is “whining,” who abjectly “complains of his fate,” and who is “cringing” has a bearing that symbolizes lack of inner worth as a person. Someone “who shows a steadfast courage in his misfortune, feeling pain at it, to be sure, but making no abject complaints” symbolizes, according to Kant, someone who has the inner worth shared by all people with the power of reason.86 As we will discuss at the end of this section, we might disagree with these claims about what various things mean or symbolize in various



80 MM 6: 437. See also Anth 7: 272; Rel 6: 168n; OFBS 2: 249; Eth-​V 27: 707–​8; Eth-​C 27: 336. 81 MM 6: 236, 462–​3; Rel 6: 33n; Anth 7: 273; Eth-​V 27: 708; Eth-​H 27: 41. 82 WIE 8: 37; TPP 8: 376. 83 MM 6: 296–​7, 332–​3, 467; L-​Anth 25: 1353. 84 Anth 7: 281; TPP 8: 376; Ped 9: 478; Post-​M 8: 445. 85 Eth-​H 27: 39–​42. 86 Eth-​V 27: 708, MM 6: 436, Eth-​V 27: 703, and Eth-​C 27: 342, respectively.

350 Sovereign Re ason contexts and groups of people, but they illustrate how our demeanor and actions can in certain contexts express respect or contempt.

15.4.3 Actions Our actions can in other ways express our judgments of inner worth. Following a rule or principle because we judge it to have inner worth is a way of expressing our respect for it, while following someone’s orders or imitating their actions from our judgment that she has inner worth is a way of expressing our respect for her.87 Someone might express her contempt for the moral law with, as Kant says, a “a publicly given example of contempt for the strict laws of duty,” while we might express our respect for the laws of reason by breaking off our friendship with a scoundrel.88 Allowing oneself to be insulted without apology or to be made a fool of can be ways of expressing lack of self-​respect.89 We can express our respect or contempt by using signs to make demands on how others judge the inner worth of things. We might, for example, express our high opinion of our own inner worth by demanding that others think little of themselves. They in turn might scornfully reject this demand or else show that they accept it by fawning over or groveling to us.90

15.4.4  Social Practices We can express respect and contempt through systems of rules, such as ones of courtesy, civility, etiquette, manners, religious ceremonies, pageantry, legal systems, or the laws of reason themselves.91 Some of these rules, such as those of courtesy, seem to mean in part that people have equal inner worth as persons, while others carry a social meaning that people have unequal inner worth in some respects.92 A political system, for example, might demand “outward marks of precedence, which emphasize relative merit.”93 Aristocratic customs mark distinctions in status and might require, for example, a nobleman who has committed a verbal injury against a peasant to show outward signs of respect to him by kissing the peasant’s hand.94



87 Eth-​C 27: 335; MM 6: 464. 88 MM 6: 474. See also Eth-​V 27: 667, as well as Chapter 16. 89 Anth 7: 265; Eth-​V 27: 607–​8, 667; Eth-​C 27: 457. 90 MM 6: 465–​6; Anth 7: 258, 272; Eth-​H 27: 39. 91 Anth 7: 139; OFBS 2: 249; Eth-​C 27: 336. 92 MM 6: 437; Eth-​H 27: 67. 93 Eth-​H 27: 41. 94 MM 6: 332, 437.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  351

15.4.5 Portrayals How we portray something can express respect or contempt for it. We might express our judgment that something is immediately bad or lacks inner worth by using language, gestures, facial expressions, actions, and other signs to portray it as trivial, unimportant, merely useful, or immediately bad. According to Kant, punishing someone by “quartering [him], having him torn by dogs, [or] cutting off his nose and ears” is a symbolic way of making “the humanity in the person suffering it into something abominable.”95 A government might perform dangerous medical experiments on an inmate without his consent as a symbolic way of showing that they regard him as a mere means rather than an end in himself.96 A judge might mock a defendant in ways that trivialize justice.97 A jokester might expose someone to ridicule for her morally upright actions or character in ways that show contempt for these things of inner worth.98 Guests at a social gathering might make a fool of someone “whom one tosses to another like a ball” in ways that portray him as lacking the basic inner worth we all share.99 Excessive drunkenness, gluttony, and bestiality, according to Kant, symbolize that the person who engages in these activities is “beneath the beasts” and that he, as it were, “throws away the worth of humanity.”100 Suicide, selling our body parts, groveling, uncleanliness, and surrendering ourselves completely to the will of another express contempt for oneself if they are ways of portraying oneself as lacking basic inner worth.101 Various other things can come to symbolize inner worth or intrinsic badness, such as coats of arms, military decorations, brandings, and titles.102

15.4.6  Natural Signs Respect and contempt can be expressed through natural signs that provide evidence that we hold these judgments of inner worth. Human beings, according to Kant, naturally tend to recognize certain facial features, gestures, demeanors, and tones of voice as natural signs that provide strong evidence that we or others harbor these judgments.103 For example, voluntarily or involuntarily turning up our nose, laughing derisively, scornfully staring at someone, impudently rolling our eyes, spitting in someone’s face, bowing and scraping, and standing with a

95 MM 6: 463 and MM 6: 333, respectively. See also Eth-​V 27: 556; Eth-​C 27: 418. 96 MM 6: 331. 97 Eth-​C 27: 314. 98 MM 6: 467; Anth 7: 221–​2, 257; MPT 8: 261; Eth-​C 27: 458. 99 Anth 7: 265. See also Anth 7: 300. 100 MM 6: 425 and Eth-​C 27: 342, respectively. See also Ped 9: 489. 101 Ped 9: 489; Eth-​C 27: 342, 377; Eth-​V 27: 636. 102 Anth 7: 192; Rel 6: 168n; TPP 8: 376; OFBS 2: 249; Eth-​C 27: 313–​14, 409. 103 Anth 7: 301; L-​Anth 25: 667.

352 Sovereign Re ason straight posture with our head held high are, he thinks, natural signs that reveal what we think about the inner worth of various things.104

15.4.7  Mistaken Signs Natural and artificial signs can be indeterminate or vague in ways that make it difficult to determine whether someone’s judgments of inner worth are expressed through them. Blushing, for example, is a natural sign that might reveal someone’s judgment that the inner worth of her character has been diminished, or it might simply evince shame about something that is not immoral but is nonetheless likely to elicit disapproval from others.105 Laughing at another person is also an ambiguous natural sign that can be derisive but also good-​natured.106 People might be able to fake certain natural and artificial signs, such as bowing or using flattering language, without having the underlying judgments of inner worth that are usually associated with them.107 Words can have contested meanings, and gestures, tones of voice, social practices, actions, and the other kinds of artificial signs can have different symbolic meanings, or none at all, at different times in history and within and among different cultural groups. “Complaining and whining, even crying out in bodily pain ... especially if you are aware of having deserved it”108 might have, in Kant’s time and place, symbolized a person who lacks the courage and fortitude necessary for a morally worthy character, while such actions might not have the same symbolic meaning for us.

15.4.8  Further Discussion In sum, our power of reason includes interests in expressing true judgments of inner worth and not expressing false ones. These interests, combined with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ), favor laws that presumptively require us to express judgments of the former kind and not to express judgments of the latter kind. We express judgments through artificial or natural signs. Some actions, such as drawing and quartering a person or self-​flagellation, are sometimes immoral, not just because they hurt someone or undermine their freedom, but also because these actions express contempt

104 Anth 7: 205, 298, 300–​1; CPrR 5: 76–​7; MM 6: 437; MH 2: 268; Ped 9: 482; L-​Anth 25: 668, 1179; Eth-​H 27: 41. 105 Anth 7: 193; MM 6: 463. See also Dillon (1995), Nussbaum (2004), and Sussman (2008). 106 MM 6: 467; Anth 7: 133, 204–​5, 264–​5; Eth-​C 27: 458. 107 Anth 7: 152; Eth-​C 27: 336. Hill (1991, c­ hapter 1) highlights these kinds of dissimulations in his account of self-​respect. 108 MM 6: 436.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  353 for them or ourselves. Other actions, such as selling a tooth or doing someone a favor, might be otherwise innocuous or even reasonable but also sometimes express contemptuous messages that reason opposes. A significant difficulty with interpreting and applying presumptive laws about expressions of respect is that doing so depends on the meaning or evidentiary value of various signs. The literal and figurative meanings of words and gestures, the symbolic meanings of social practices and actions, and the evidence that we hold or do not hold certain judgments can all vary in many ways. Our interests of reason in expressions of respect thus also favor laws that presumptively require us to exercise due care in what signs we use or exhibit and to investigate their meanings or evidentiary value as best we can. Many complicated issues remain about expressing respect, contempt, and disrespect; let’s briefly examine one of them. Reason’s interest in expressions of respect favors presumptive laws that can sometimes conflict with presumptive laws it favors on the basis of its interest in respect. Reason’s interests in expressions of respect lead it to favor laws that require us to express contempt for the vicious or evil characters and actions of other people. Yet we are also subject to prejudices that lead us to make mistaken judgments about the inner worth of various things, including persons, rational nature, and the laws of reason, when contempt is expressed about the characters and actions of people.109 Reason thus also favors presumptive laws that require us not “to bring into the open something prejudicial to respect for others” and to “throw the veil of benevolence over their faults, not merely by softening our judgments but also by keeping these judgments to ourselves.”110 Reason’s interests in respect and expressions of respect thus pull in opposing directions when it comes to showing contempt for the genuinely bad deeds and characters of other people. We do not have to resolve this apparent conflict, however, to appreciate the reasons we have to both make and express true judgments of inner worth and not to make and express false ones.

15.5  Violations of Respect and Expressions of Respect: Laws of Reason Our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect favor second-​order laws about how we presumptively should respond to actual or potential violations of some of the other presumptive laws we have discussed that are favored by these interests. If other people mistakenly regard me as a bad person, openly condemn me for an immoral action I did not commit, ostracize one of my friends for a vicious action he did not do, express utter contempt for an entire class of people, or scoff 109 MM 6: 466, 464–​5, 474; Eth-​V 27: 663. 110 MM 6: 466.

354 Sovereign Re ason at morality itself, our interests of reason in respect and its expression favor laws that presumptively forbid us from ignoring these attacks or letting them go unchallenged. We not only presumptively should defend ourselves from mistaken judgments that we lack inner worth, but Kant claims that other people are “authorized by right” to defend us from such calumny.111 As Kant says, “reason necessarily takes a moral interest” in mistaken contempt and so favors presumptive laws that require us, when others falsely accuse us of immorality, “to conduct [the matter] with dignity and seriousness” by, for example, providing accusers and others with any relevant empirical facts, pointing out their errors in judgment, explaining to them the sources of those errors, and persuading them that our actions and character are not after all deserving of contempt.112 If these approaches fail or if others are in a better position than we are to respond, then reason might sometimes presumptively require us to offer no defense against the attack on our inner worth, to brush it aside, and even sometimes to insult the accuser in turn by declaring him a liar.113 Our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect also favor presumptive laws that prohibit us from acting in ways that are likely to lead people to make and express mistaken judgments about our inner worth.114 We should not expose ourselves to public mockery or allow ourselves to be used as a mere means in ways that are likely to encourage mistaken judgments of inner worth or inappropriate expressions of contempt.115 For example, according to Kant, “[n]‌ot even a son would be entitled to let himself be punished in place of his culpable father, and thus admit to a crime committed by the latter,” because this would likely make the son contemptible in the eyes of others even though he is innocent of the crime.116 If we are wrongly convicted of a crime and given the choice between various punishments, we presumptively should choose the one that is least likely to make us an object of contempt.117 Each of us presumptively should avoid even the semblance or suspicion of immorality so as to prevent others from mistakenly judging us harshly or inappropriately censuring us.118 As with the other two kinds of laws we have discussed in this chapter, I’ll mention just one of the many unresolved issues about interpreting and applying the second-​order laws of this section. Kant offers the following example: Suppose I am in a place where people are expected to prostrate themselves before religious images in ways that express respect for things that I know lack inner worth. This kind of idolatry is prohibited by the presumptive law not to express respect for things that are not good in themselves. If I do not join in the practice, however, then

111 MM 6: 295. See also MM 6: 296n, 418n; Eth-​C 27: 412; Eth-​V 27: 602. 112 MM 6: 467. 113 MM 6: 296n, 461, 467; Eth-​V 27: 686. 114 Eth-​V 27: 594, 602. 115 MM 6: 465; MH 2: 262; Eth-​V 27: 667; Eth-​C 27: 341. 116 Eth-​V 27: 594. 117 Eth-​C 27: 376. 118 Eth-​V 27: 594, 602; Eth-​C 27: 335.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  355 others will be offended and mistakenly come to hold me in contempt. Assuming that these are my only options, I face a conflict between, on the one hand, the second-​order presumptive requirement to provide no occasion for others to have mistaken contempt for me and, on the other hand, the first-​order requirement not to express mistaken judgments of inner worth. Adjudicating these competing rational presumptions in Kant’s example might involve extricating myself from the situation, somehow ensuring that I do not express mistaken judgments of inner worth by prostrating myself, refusing to do so but explaining my compunctions in ways meant to avoid offense, or simply going along with what is expected of me.119 There are many cases of this general sort in which preserving our good name among people who harbor mistaken moral views or who are likely to misinterpret or misjudge our actions gives us reasons to do things that we otherwise should not do and to avoid doing things that are otherwise innocuous or even good in themselves.

15.6  Connections with Other Interests of Reason: Autonomy, Knowledge, Solidarity, and Happiness Our interests of reason in respect and expressions respect favor laws that presumptively require us to judge that everyone has inner worth as persons with the power of reason and not to judge that anyone lacks such worth, to express these judgments through language, demeanor, action, and other signs, not to portray others as lacking basic inner worth, and to defend ourselves and others from insulting attacks on the inner worth we all share. These interests, however, can conflict with as well as serve other interests of reason we have. A comprehensive theory of reason would resolve these tensions as well as explain the various interests of reason that often underlie the same rational requirements according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability. Without attempting these deeper analyses, let’s illustrate a few tensions and harmonies among different interests of reason.

15.6.1  Self-​Governance As we discussed in Chapter 5, we have interests of reason that everyone conforms to and acts from laws of reason. According to Kant, respecting and expressing respect for things that have inner worth are often effective means of leading us and others to govern ourselves by rational requirements. If we lack correct judgments about the inner worth of things, for example, then immorality is more likely to follow than if 119 Eth-​C 27: 334.

356 Sovereign Re ason we judged their inner worth correctly. By expressing proper respect for ourselves in our outward demeanor, Kant says that we promote “the dissemination of virtue” by presenting our “inwardly virtuous disposition in appearance,” which is a “vehicle for gently exerting [morality’s] influence on” others through feelings of beauty and taste.120 Expressing proper respect for others through politeness and manners gives “a beautiful illusion resembling virtue” that enlivens “the feeling for virtue” and promotes “a virtuous disposition by at least making virtue fashionable.”121 Respect from others is “a motive to seek true honour” in our moral conduct, while our respect for them “strikes down [our] pride,” diminishes self-​deception about our ability to do as we should, and otherwise tends to diminish obstacles to virtue in ourselves.122 “[T]‌o pretend to be better than one is and to express dispositions that one does not have” can be an effective way of “[bringing] the human being out of his crudeness” and of “[allowing] him to assume at least the manner of the good” in ways that promote virtue in himself. Later, however, “when the genuine principles have finally been developed and incorporated into his way of thought, that duplicity must gradually be vigorously combated, for otherwise it corrupts the heart, and good dispositions cannot grow among the rampant weeds of fair appearance.”123 According to Kant, publicly rebuking the laws of reason, showing contempt for moral actions, or expressing respect for immoral ones tends to lead others to act immorally.124 The withdrawal of respect or a “look of contempt” toward someone for a moral transgression can come “to the aid of morality” as “punishments” that might deter future violations and encourage conformity with rational standards.125 “It is committing high treason against humanity” to pass off expressions of respect “as mere tokens that have no worth at all” because “the illusion of good in others must have worth for us, for out of this play with pretences, which acquires respect without perhaps earning it, something quite serious can finally develop.”126

15.6.2 Knowledge As we discussed in Chapter 11, our interests of reason in knowledge generally and in avoiding errors of all kinds favor presumptive laws to make accurate judgments 120 Eth-​V 27: 635–​6. 121 MM 6: 473. See also CPJ 5: 433; Anth 7: 151–​2; Eth-​V 27: 706. 122 Eth-​V 27: 666 and CPrR 5: 77, respectively. 123 A748/​B776. See also Cureton and Hill (2018a). 124 MM 6: 464; WIE 8: 37; Anth 7: 257; Eth-​V 27: 663. 125 Ped 9: 482. See also Anth 7: 152. Kant in these passages seem to acknowledge a needed middle ground in morality between duties of right, which are enforced through legal means, and duties of ethics, which are enforced through conscience. Social moral rules are generally accepted standards that are informally enforced through social pressures rather than formal legal punishment (e.g. not cutting in line). For further discussion of this aspect of the moral life, see Cureton (2012, 2015), Hill (2012, ­chapters 9 and 10), Hooker (2000), Strawson (2008), and Mill (1998). 126 Anth 7: 153. See also Anth 7: 295; NF 15: 371.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  357 about the inner worth of things. Having and showing contempt for others, according to Kant, “obviously damage the possibility of communication in human relations” in ways that frustrate our interests in acquiring knowledge.127 Arrogantly demanding that others think little of themselves or compelling them to do so encroaches on our presumptive right to freedom of thought that is supported by our interests of reason in knowledge, avoiding error, and enlightenment.128 Aiming to acquire respect from others, Kant says, leads some people to “devote [themselves] to the sciences,” although this concern for respect from others can also lead scientists to “to deck out falsehoods and misinformation with specious arguments” and “to filch the approval of others.”129 Gathering as much knowledge as we can includes acquiring information about the characters and actions of other people, whereas promoting respect and expressions of respect for things that have inner worth often gives us reasons to afford them some privacy about such matters. Finally, we sometimes have reasons of respect not to disseminate what we know about the inner worth of others and to hide certain information about ourselves, whereas our interest of reason in knowledge favors presumptive laws to share all we know with other people.130

15.6.3 Solidarity Our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect can also support or undermine our interests of reason in solidarity. As we will explore in the next chapter, respect and expressions of respect are part of the bonds that tie people together in certain solidary relationships that reason favors.131 Expressing respect toward others, according to Kant, tends to inspire their love for us, while expressing contempt for others tends to encourage meanness and hatred in ways that interfere with forming, maintaining, and perfecting relationships of solidarity with them.132 In such relationships, one way of expressing our judgment that a friend has become evil or has done something especially vile is to break off our association with him.133 Our partiality or loyalty to our family or social class might lead us to falsely judge that only they, not other people, have inner worth as persons.134 When we are in a relationship of solidarity with someone, such as a friendship, reproving or expressing superiority over him in terms of inner worth, even if these judgments are true, tends to wound his self-​respect and undermine

127 Eth-​V 27: 705. 128 Eth-​C 27: 409. 129 Eth-​C 27: 410–​11. 130 Eth-​V 27: 699. 131 Anth 7: 152; MM 6: 457; Eth-​C 27: 409, 411. 132 Anth 7: 152; Eth-​V 27: 708. 133 MM 6: 474. 134 Eth-​V 27: 674.

358 Sovereign Re ason our relationship.135 Maintaining a solidary relationship with someone might also require us to be cautious about how much we reveal about ourselves so that, as Kant says, “we do not run the risk of thereby forfeiting his respect.”136

15.6.4 Happiness Finally, our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect can also support or frustrate our interest of reason in the happiness of all. According to Kant, expressing arrogance by demanding that others think little of themselves and highly of us tends to cause them to hate us.137 Ridiculing someone is often motivated by meanness and tends to “[make] that person really malicious and gradually embitters him toward people who ... think they are better.”138 We might be forced to portray ourselves in contemptuous ways by abasing ourselves to others, flattering and groveling to them, and perhaps begging for money or food in order to meet our basic needs or avoid significant suffering.139 Beneficent actions can also express contemptuous messages or lead others to lose some self-​respect. Kant thinks we sometimes presumptively should “practice [our] beneficence in complete secrecy” or “behave as if our help is either merely what is due him or but a slight service of love, and to spare him humiliation and maintain his respect for himself.”140

15.7  Final Remarks: Positive and Negative Respect I have suggested that our power of reason includes substantive final interests in respecting and expressing respect for things that have inner worth, in not having or showing contempt for such things, and otherwise in making and expressing accurate judgments of inner worth. We explored some of the presumptive laws of reason that these interests, combined with a principle of justifiability, might imply and considered some of the ways in which they conflict and harmonize with ones that are favored by other interests of reason. Additional work is needed to interpret and apply our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect, assess their 135 Eth-​V 27: 684–​5. 136 Eth-​V 27: 685–​6. 137 Eth-​V 27: 708. 138 Anth 7: 299. See also MM 6: 467; Anth 7: 265; Eth-​C 27: 458. 139 Eth-​V 27: 706. Allais (2015) discusses conflicts among respect and beneficence in the context of begging and giving money to beggars. For more general discussions of how beneficence and respect can conflict, see (Cureton Forthcoming-​c, ­chapters 7 and 8), Hill (2021a, c­ hapter 16), and Herman (2007b). 140 MM 6: 453 and MM 6: 448–​9, respectively. See also MM 6: 457; Eth-​V 27: 697–​8; Eth-​C 27: 439, 443.

Respect and E xpressions of Respect  359 relative priority, formulate the presumptive laws they favor, and combine these laws with other presumptive laws of reason. I’ll end this chapter by noting that Kant sometimes expresses doubts about one aspect of our interests of reason in respect and expressions of respect. The issue is whether we are rationally required to show respect for some things that have inner worth in addition to not showing contempt or disrespect for them. Kant says, for example, that “the respect we are bound to show other human beings is ... only a negative duty” in the sense that “I am not bound to revere others (regarded merely as human beings), that is, to show them positive high esteem,” by, for example, “[performing] some acts of reverence for them.”141 He also says that we should be willing “to forgo any external acknowledgement of [our] inner worth” and that “nobody else is called upon to declare respect for me or acknowledge my merits.”142 My aim is not fully to interpret Kant’s considered view of respect; rather, I have tried to identify themes in Kant’s thinking according to which our power of reason includes interests in expressing respect for things that have inner worth. Perhaps Kant in these statements, which are at odds with many of the others I cited throughout this chapter, is expressing a view about what laws reason favors all things considered once we take account of our other interests of reason, not just those that concern respect and its expression. Kant in other places suggests that expressing respect to others as persons through, for example, politeness and showing respect for the morally worthy characters and actions of others through, for example, modest praise are often rational and reasonable ways of responding to the inner worth of persons. In any case, Kant and common sense seem to agree that it is usually unreasonable to ridicule, scoff at, or otherwise show contempt for anything that has inner worth and that it is often quite reasonable to have and show some degree of positive respect for one another and anything else that is good in itself.

141 MM 6: 467–​8, Kant’s italics. See also Eth-​V 27: 667. Perhaps there is a middle ground between not showing disrespect and showing reverence for someone, such as nods, handshakes, and other marks of basic courtesy and politeness. 142 Eth-​V 27: 667. See also MM 6: 457; Eth-​C 27: 457.

16

Solidarity Personal relationships of various kinds are, from the perspective of reflective common sense, part of a fully reason-​governed life.1 Friendships, marriages, family ties, and community bonds, it seems, accord with reason. We have strong reasons to promote, protect, and respect such relationships. Reasonable people do not, it seems, entirely cut themselves off from others but instead seek to relate with other reasonable people in mutually agreeable ways. Betraying a friend, cheating on a spouse, sowing discord in a family, and ostracizing a colleague often seem to be contrary to reason. It is usually quite reasonable to prioritize the interests of our loved ones, to keep their confidences, to give special consideration to their opinions and values, and to be more forgiving toward them than we are to others. We often appeal to what is reasonable, what accords with reason, what reasons we have, and other notions of reason in our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about personal relationships of various kinds. According to the Content Criterion from Chapter 1, a theory of reason must somehow capture and explain our reflective commonsense judgments that certain relationships accord with reason, generate requirements of reason, play a significant role in a life of reason, and are worthy of promotion, protection, and respect by rational and reasonable people. As we discussed in Chapter 1, a longstanding criticism of Kantian theories of reason is that they apparently deny, downplay, or misrepresent the nature and value of friendship, community, and other loving relationships.2 Most personal bonds we have are emotional, contingent, and particular, whereas reason is apparently intellectual, necessary, and universal. Kantian theories of reason, it seems, afford no value or authority to our natural feelings of affection in themselves. We are supposed to respect the common humanity of everyone apart from their personal qualities and circumstances.3 Requirements of reason derive from an Abstract Principle of Justifiability that, at its most basic level, abstracts from our personal ties to particular people. These laws of reason for the most part apply to and protect everyone equally, without allowances for partiality toward our loved ones. Even the substantive final interests of reason we have discussed are general

1 This chapter draws on and extends Cureton (2022). 2 See Mackenzie and Stoljar (2000), Jaggar (1983), Noddings (2003), Held (2006), Walker (2007), Kittay (2019), Wolf (1982), Williams (1981, ­chapter 8), Habermas (1984), and MacIntyre (1988), who raise aspects of this concern against Kantian frameworks. 3 Velleman (1999) emphasizes this aspect of Kantian moral theories.

Sovereign Reason. Adam Cureton, Oxford University Press. © Adam Cureton 2025. DOI: 10.1093/​9780191960253.003.0016

Solidarit y  361 concerns for the lives, enlightenment, happiness, autonomy, and other things of all people as such, regardless of our personal connections to them. By placing our power of reason at their core and insisting that all reasons, values, principles, and ideals arise from the nature and operation of this peculiar power of mind that emphasizes impartiality, universality, and necessity, Kantian theories of reason seem to be at fundamental odds with the importance of personal relationships in reflective common sense. The Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) offers a new and unorthodox way for Kantian theories to incorporate and justify the value of many kinds of personal relationships. Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests in forming, maintaining, perfecting, respecting, and promoting relationships of solidarity. Part of being a rational and reasonable person is to be concerned with relationships of this sort apart from any natural desires and feelings we might have. These interests of reason provide grounds for legislating presumptive laws of reason that rational and reasonable people could or would rationally endorse according to the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Qualified Justifiability Argument. Our interests of reason in solidarity along with the basic laws of reason they favor are impartial and universal in scope. They provide a background framework for personal relationships of various kinds to flourish. The interpretation and application of these interests and laws also generate special allowances and requirements of reason for particular people in specific relationships to, for example, favor their friends over others, maintain their spouse’s trust, do their part in joint projects, improve their relationships with their parents, promote the aims of their communities, avoid betrayal and duplicity, and otherwise maintain and perfect the social ties they have with others. The main aim of this final chapter is to illustrate how the Sovereignty Conception of Reason can be interpreted and applied in ways that capture and explain a wide variety of judgments in reflective common sense about loving relationships. We will first sketch some examples that highlight several normative dimensions that, in reflective common sense, loving relationships seem to have. We will consider the charge that central features of Kantian theories of reason prevent them from adequately capturing and explain these ordinary judgments. We will draw on and abstract from Kant’s discussions of various relationships to characterize a kind of solidarity and suggest that our power of reason includes final interests in each of us establishing relationships of solidarity with other people, maintaining and perfecting ones we are in, promoting such relationships among others, and respecting relationships of solidarity themselves. We will examine some presumptive laws of reason that are favored by our interests of reason in solidarity when they are combined with a principle of justifiability. We will end by describing a fully general and universal social ideal that arises out of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason and that reveals the deeply social nature of our power of reason. This ideal is a world of fully autonomous, self-​governing people who are bound together in solidarity

362  Sovereign Re ason by their shared commitments to the laws of reason themselves and to their shared interests of reason that underlie those standards.

16.1  The Value of Loving Relationships in Reflective Common Sense: Forming, Maintaining, Perfecting, Respecting, and Promoting Them Let’s begin with some examples that illustrate several kinds of apparently normative dimensions of loving relationships that a theory of reason should capture and explain. Although our commonsense judgments about these cases might vary somewhat and depend on further details, the examples exhibit several general features of how we ordinarily think and speak about what accords with reason, how a reasonable person would conduct herself, and what reasons we have regarding relationships of various kinds.

16.1.1  Forming Loving Relationships David lives alone on a secluded mountaintop where he has no friends, family, spouse, or other personal relationships. He mainly sees his limited interactions with other people as ones of convenience or utility. He is, by his own lights, quite content and well-​off in his social isolation. David does not hate or have contempt for people in general. He scrupulously respects the rights of everyone, pays his taxes, donates to charity, treats others with politeness, and otherwise fulfills his standard moral duties. Yet it seems somewhat unreasonable or not fully in keeping with reason for David to cut himself off from other rational and reasonable people in this way. A reasonable person, it seems, would seek out at least some friendships, romantic attachments, community ties, or other loving relationships with other people.

16.1.2  Maintaining Loving Relationships Miguel and Doreen have been happily married for twenty years. Their marriage seems to include moral requirements that are different from and more demanding than what they owe other people in general, such as ones that concern candor, discretion, fidelity, trust, respect, promoting one another’s happiness, expressing love and respect for one another, and tolerating, apologizing for, and forgiving certain faults or transgressions they find in each other. It seems quite reasonable for Miguel and Doreen to prioritize one another’s interests over their own or those of other people. For example, it seems that Miguel should save Doreen rather than a

Solidarit y  363 stranger in a standard lifeboat case. Doreen should defend Miguel from scurrilous and disparaging attacks at some cost to her own career. Miguel should help Doreen to finish her law degree rather than donate his time and money to the local food bank. Traditional moral duties that Miguel and Doreen have to people in general also seem to include reasonable exceptions that in certain circumstances permit them, for example, to lie, cheat, or steal to get needed medical treatment for each other, to refuse to turn in or testify against one another, and to avoid participating in a just war to care for each other.

16.1.3  Perfecting Loving Relationships Ramari is an active member of a thriving teachers’ union who feels a deep sense of camaraderie with his fellow members based on their shared commitments and joint projects. He also finds, however, that he envies those in the group who have greater influence and receive greater acclaim than he does. He begrudges certain members for past slights, sometimes loses his temper at meetings, and scorns those who he thinks are not fully committed to their cause. Ramari, it seems, has strong reasons to improve the bonds of solidarity he has with members of his union by striving, for example, to combat and overcome his corrosive envy, to give up many of his grudges and resentments, and to keep his cool more often. He and other members also, it seems, have good reasons to institute fair procedures for raising complaints and adjudicating conflicts within the group as well as to continue their rituals and meetings as ways of expressing and reinforcing their ties with one another.

16.1.4  Respecting Loving Relationships Lisa and June were close friends who recently fell out over a heated series of arguments in which they both said some especially harsh things that they knew their relationship could not survive. Soon after their split, Lisa and June began divulging one another’s secrets, including Lisa’s marital problems and struggles with alcohol and June’s true political leanings and recent demotion at work. Lisa and June also tend to focus on and exaggerate the negative aspects of their past friendship, chide themselves for trusting one another for so long, each assume that the other person was merely using them, and express these views to others. It seems that these behaviors are unreasonable and that Lisa and June should have and show greater respect than this for the thriving friendship they once had by cherishing and venerating its memory, not regarding their prior relationship as a sham or a waste of time, and not betraying one another’s confidences.

364  Sovereign Re ason

16.1.5  Promoting Loving Relationships Finally, Bob sees the loving relationships that other people have with one another as a source of weakness that he can exploit. He imposes working conditions on his employees that pit them against one another and strain their marriages. He fosters envy and enmity among his children. He works to alienate his wife from her family. And he sows doubt and distrust among his acquaintances by stoking disagreements and bringing up long-​forgotten grievances among them. It seems unreasonable for Bob to seek to discourage or prevent those around him from having loving relationships of various kinds. Seeking instead to foster such relationships among others seems to be something that a more reasonable person would do.

16.2  Kantian Difficulties with Loving Relationships Can Kantian theories of reason capture and explain these or other commonsense judgments about the value of loving relationships and the normative requirements they include? Basic features of such frameworks seem to be incompatible with doing so. According to the Autonomy Restriction that is part of Kantian ways of thinking, all of normativity, including values, ideals, virtues, requirements, and reasons, is ultimately grounded in the nature and operation of our power of reason, which determines what things are valuable and worth striving for, what we ought to do, what we have reason to do, and so on. Loving relationships, such as friendships, are not intrinsic values in G. E. Moore’s sense. There is not a hodgepodge of independently existing reasons to, for example, promote or maintain them that our reason merely allows us to recognize and moves us to satisfy. Our natural affections, loyalties, sociability, and love for other people also do not by themselves make our relationships with them valuable or directly ground rational requirements or reasons of any kind. Any normative aspects of loving relationships, according to Kantian theories of reason, must ultimately arise from our rational nature itself.4 Our reason, however, seems to be too formal, thin, and impartial to capture and explain many of the reasons and requirements we seem to have to form, maintain, perfect, respect, and promote loving relationships. Reason is the power we use to do logical proofs and pursue and organize our ends in consistent and

4 See Moore (1993) and Scanlon (1998), as well as Chapter 6. For discussions of Kant’s conception of autonomy, see Reath (2006, ­chapters 4 and 5), Hill (1992, ­chapter 5), Holtman (2009), Wolff (1974), Guyer (2009), O’Neill (2003), Wood (2008, c­ hapter 6), Allison (1990), Kohl (2023), Johnson (2007), Baxley (2010), and Kleingeld and Willaschek (2019).

Solidarit y  365 efficient ways. On traditional Kantian theories of reason, our power of reason also includes a fundamental principle of justifiability. This constitutive principle of reason, which as we have seen in Chapter 6 can be formulated in different ways, expresses a universal and impartial concern for all rational and reasonable people simply as such. It generates basic laws of reason about how to treat everyone in general. These features of our reason seem to be an inadequate basis for permitting or requiring partiality and special concern for loved ones, for explaining why the fact that someone is my spouse sometimes grounds exceptions to certain moral prohibitions, for capturing our apparent reasons to respect and not undermine friendships and family ties, and for otherwise capturing and explaining the kinds of reasons and requirements that loving relationships seem to involve. These basic features of Kantian theories of reason suggest that there is an unbridgeable gap between how Kantians characterize our power of reason and our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason. We have seen how the SCR can plausibly capture and explain many of the ways we use reason and related terms in connection with, for example, pursuing knowledge, helping other people, making ourselves useful, not coercing others, and showing them respect. The problem here is deeper than this. Capturing and explaining the normative dimensions of personal relationships seem to require abandoning basic Kantian commitments to the primacy, authority, impartiality, and universality of reason that are essential to the SCR.

16.2.1  Revise Common Sense One strategy Kantians can employ is to question our commonsense judgments about the value of personal relationships. Kantians could argue that many of these commonsense judgments are illusory and try to explain them away as illegitimate appeals to the authority of reason for things we merely like or happen to care about. Kantians can also claim that our basic philosophical commitments and their implications are more firmly grounded than any remaining judgments we cannot capture and explain. Parochialism and tribalism, for example, are often sources of evil that we should overcome in favor of embracing the ideal of a cosmopolitan and impartial standpoint that emphasizes our shared humanity. The approach we are using to develop and assess theories of reason, however, prevents us from pursuing this strategy unless we have exhausted all other options. According to the Content Criterion, we are taking ordinary ways of thinking and speaking about reason, especially deeply held ones about the importance of loving relationships, as provisionally fixed and attempting as best we can to capture and explain them with a theory of reason.

366  Sovereign Re ason

16.2.2  Presumptive Laws of Happiness A second strategy is to look to the presumptive requirements of reason that concern happiness.5 We are presumptively required by reason, for instance, to set the happiness of others as one of our ends. This requirement does not specify whom, when, or how to help. As long as we stay within the bounds of our other duties, we are presumptively allowed to direct our beneficence to those we love and to prioritize their happiness over that of others.6 Miguel, for example, can choose to save Doreen rather than a stranger from drowning when both options are permissible, because the presumptive requirement of beneficence allows him to save her on the basis of his natural affections and love for her.7 A problem with this approach, however, is that the duty of beneficence only permits us to help and to prioritize the happiness of our loved ones even though it often seems that we are required by reason to do so.8 It seems that Miguel, for example, should save Doreen from drowning instead of a stranger in a standard lifeboat case, whereas the duty of beneficence merely permits him to save either person, or perhaps no one at all, as he pleases. A related difficulty is that the requirement to set the happiness of others as an end cannot adequately explain why we apparently have special reasons to care about and prioritize the happiness of our loved ones.9 When Miguel faces a choice between saving Doreen or a stranger, the mere fact that Doreen is his wife seems to be a reason to save her, whereas the duty of beneficence implies that both actions are merely instances of doing something good for a person and that Miguel is permitted to apportion his beneficence on nonrational grounds, such as his natural feelings and personal ends. And, at least according to Kant’s own system of moral duties, the duty of beneficence is strictly subordinated to narrow and perfect ones, which we must never violate when promoting the happiness of others, whereas it seems that we are sometimes morally justified in stealing and lying for the sake of the happiness of our loved ones. The same sorts of problems arise for other presumptive requirements to promote the happiness of others, which do not tell us what to do when we cannot help everyone and so might allow us to help our loved ones without requiring us to do so. Perhaps the most significant limitation of appealing to presumptive laws of happiness to capture and explain the various normative dimensions of loving relationships is that many of the apparent moral reasons and requirements to form,

5 See Chapter 13 and Paton (1967, 85–​7, 92, 105–​7, 126–​7), Gregor (1963, 78, 177), Johnson (2013), Reath (2006, c­ hapter 2), and Kahn (2022). 6 MM 6: 451–​2. 7 See Baron (2008), Herman (1993a), and Bramer (2010), who argue in this way for incorporating or allowing for a kind of partiality within impartial Kantian frameworks. 8 For further discussion of the duty of beneficence, including whether it includes some strict requirements to save others from duress, see Stohr (2011), Hill (2002, ­chapter 7), and Timmermann (2005). 9 Sticker and van Ackeren (2018).

Solidarit y  367 maintain, perfect, respect, and promote loving relationships do not, or do not only, concern or reduce to happiness. David’s reasons not to socially isolate himself and to seek out loving relationships with others do not appear to be fully explained by any increase in happiness that others might get from being David’s friend. David’s social isolation might even be a form of beneficence on his part because of the inconvenience and heartache he would likely cause any friends he would have because of his grouchy temperament. Miguel and Doreen, it seems, should be faithful to one another, keep one another’s confidences, defend one another from disparaging treatment, help one another to develop their natural abilities, and show respect to one another, not simply because of the contributions these make to their happiness. Apart from considerations of happiness, Ramari should strengthen the bonds of solidarity with members of his union, Lisa and June should show respect for their past friendship, and Bob should not goad others into avoiding or abandoning loving relationships.

16.2.3  Instrumental Justifications A third strategy Kantians can employ is to highlight ways in which loving relationships are often effective or essential means for promoting rational and reasonable ends or for complying with laws of reason.10 Kant argues, for example, that establishing, maintaining, and perfecting certain kinds of communities is necessary for human persons to counteract evil influences, enliven our moral dispositions, and otherwise come close to achieving moral perfection.11 Certain friendships, marriages, associations, and other loving relationships, he also claims, tend to promote enlightenment, peace, the acquisition of knowledge, general happiness, and the development of our natural abilities.12 There are standard concerns, however, with instrumentalist forms of justification, such as that they depend on contingent, potentially changing, and sometimes unknowable causal chains, that they can ground opposing reasons and requirements that outweigh ones that seem to exist, and that they can at best justify only rules of thumb unless some attitudes or actions are necessary means for promoting some end. For example, there might be better ways to promote enlightenment, peace, and natural self-​perfection than being in loving relationships with others. Relationships often engender corrosive envy, rivalry, parochialism, and other attitudes and actions that undermine rather than promote various rationally 10 Cureton and Hill (2018b), Stark (1997). A stronger claim that some Kantians defend is that reasoning, rational agency, and standards of rationality are constitutively social in the sense that they presuppose other people who we can give reasons and arguments to, seek rational consent from, and so on (Korsgaard 1996b, lecture 4, Herman 2007a, c­ hapter 1, and O’Neill 1989). 11 Rel 6: 96–​8. 12 MM 6: 473; Anth 7: 277; WOT 8: 144. See also Cureton (2018b).

368  Sovereign Re ason mandated ends. And violating the requirements of relationships is sometimes the most effective way to further those other ends. Even if an instrumentalist approach allows Kantian theories of reason to capture most or all of the reasons and requirements that loving relationships seem to involve, a remaining concern is that these explanations do not fully accord with why we seem to have these reasons and seem to be subject to these requirements. For example, it seems that David should form loving relationships with others, that Miguel and Doreen owe it to one another to be candid, discreet, and faithful, and that Lisa and June should not disparage their prior friendship, whether or not these actions happen to improve their knowledge, help them to develop their natural abilities or to avoid immorality, or otherwise promote rational and reasonable ends. If spilling our friend’s deepest secrets, cheating on our spouse, cutting ourselves off from others, and demeaning a past friend were the only ways to promote various goals favored by reason, it seems that sometimes we should nonetheless refrain from doing these things or at least have some rational compunction in doing them. These doubts about whether laws concerning happiness and instrumentalist forms of justification allow Kantian theories to capture and explain the apparent moral aspects of loving relationships might be overcome. The basic approach we have been exploring throughout Part II, however, allows the Sovereignty Conception of Reason to square the Kantian commitment to the primacy of impartial reason with the partiality and other normative aspects that such relationships seem to involve. As rational and reasonable people, we have interests of reason in a kind of solidarity that, combined with a principle of justifiability, grounds presumptive requirements to form, maintain, perfect, respect, and promote relationships of that kind.

16.3  Solidarity: Love and Trust Based on Shared Commitments Favored by Interests of Reason To explain our interests of reason in a kind of solidarity, we need to consider the nature of that sort of loving relationship. We will, as usual, draw mainly on reflective common sense and on Kant, whose discussions of friendship, marriage, family, community, and other loving relationships are scattered, often incomplete, and sometimes apparently contradictory.13 There are important differences among these kinds of relationships, but we can abstract from them a general type of solidarity that includes many relationships of those other types. This conception 13 For further discussion of Kant’s accounts of various kinds of relationships, see Denis (2001), Korsgaard (1996a, 215–​ 16), Paton (1993), Guyer (2011), Ebels-​ Duggan (2009), (Wood 1999, ­chapter 8), and Herman (1993a).

Solidarit y  369 of solidarity, which we can also call fellowship, might not fully accord with all ordinary ways of thinking about solidarity. Let’s nonetheless consider its four paradigmatic features.14

16.3.1  Shared Rational Commitments The first paradigmatic feature of solidarity is that a group of people share an effective commitment that is favored by reason. Commitments are stable choices that can include ends, maxims, policies, plans, and projects. Someone has an effective commitment only if she tends to live up to it, such as choosing to act in ways that promote ends we are committed to or that satisfy principles we affirm even though sometimes we might fail to do so. Two or more people share a commitment if they are committed to the same thing, such as a common goal or principle. Our reason favors commitments if they serve one or more of our formal or substantive interests of reason, such as interests in consistency, harmony, knowledge, happiness, and affirming and acting from laws of reason. Miguel and Doreen, for example, are committed to promoting one another’s happiness.15 Our reason favors this shared commitment because of its final interests in the happiness of all. Ramari’s teachers’ union is a group of people who endorse many of the same genuine moral principles and goals and who aim for all of them to live up to those commitments. The union members also work together to eliminate obstacles that interfere with these shared commitments by helping one another to develop fortitude and to, as Kant says, excite “the moral incentives of each individual.”16 Before their split, Lisa and June shared an effective commitment to open communication with one another that our reason favors because of its interests in communication as a means for promoting knowledge and correcting errors.17 David could join a community orchestra that is committed to developing the musical abilities of everyone in their group.18 Bob might be preventing his employees from forming relationships based on their shared commitments to advancing and promulgating the scientific research that their company produces.19 Our reason favors these commitments because of its intrinsic interests in natural perfection and in promoting knowledge, respectively.20 And, more generally, our 14 This account of solidarity has strong affinities to and is perhaps a more general form of the relationships of fellowship and citizenship that Sarah Holtman (2009, 2018a, 2018b, 2022) persuasively characterizes and attributes to Kant. 15 Eth-​C 27: 425. 16 Rel 6: 197. See also Rel 6: 93, 95, 124, 151; MM 6: 469; Eth-​V 27: 677, 682. 17 Eth-​V 27: 683. 18 Eth-​C 27: 428; Eth-​V 27: 679. 19 L-​Anth 25: 702, 1347. 20 This assumes that developing the musical abilities of orchestra members would increase their natural perfection. As we discussed in Chapter 14, it is difficult to know what sorts of things will make us

370  Sovereign Re ason reason, in at least one respect, favors shared commitments as such because of our interests of reason in unity, which includes interests in promoting and maintaining convergence among the commitments of different people, whatever those commitments happen to be.21

16.3.2  Trust in Shared Rational Commitments The second paradigmatic feature of solidarity is that each of the people trusts that they all share an effective commitment that reason favors.22 To trust that someone has a commitment of this sort is to judge with conviction that she endorses and will likely maintain and live up to an end, aim, project, or principle that serves an interest of reason. Drawing on our partial model of the human mind, trust of this kind can be reasonable in two ways. First, we might know that someone endorses a commitment if our judgment is based on mental states that represent grounds that indicate that the judgment is probably true, such as credible testimony from others or firsthand experiences.23 Second, we might reasonably hope that someone has a commitment on the basis of nonrepresentational mental states that arise from our power of reason itself, such as ones that might lead us to judge with conviction that, without good evidence to the contrary, other people are honest and good.24 We might erroneously judge that other people share our commitments because of prejudices, such as how they look or our affection for them, or because we ignored strong evidence that they are merely pretending to be committed to our cause.25 Developing reasonable trust among a group of people often requires them to show one another that they endorse the same commitments. An orchestra might express their shared commitment to developing their natural abilities by practicing together for long hours, choosing complicated pieces, mentoring younger members, and visibly taking pleasure in the group’s achievements. Lisa and June showed their commitment to open communication between them by progressively sharing more of their thoughts with one another and sincerely asking one another progressively more probing questions. The members of the teachers’

better suited to some ends without making us less well-​suited to other ends. See also Chapter 11 for a discussion of our interests of reason in knowledge, avoiding error, and enlightenment. 21 Eth-​V 27: 681–​3, 703; Eth-​H 27: 50; Eth-​C 27: 429. See also Chapter 9. 22 Eth-​V 27: 681; Eth-​C 27: 429. See also Brownlee (2020) for a discussion of trusting other people. 23 For discussion of our assumed conception of knowledge, see Chapters 3 and 11. 24 L-​Log 24: 246. See also Cureton (2018b), Chignell (2007a, 2013), Sussman (2010), and Stratmann (Forthcoming). 25 Eth-​C 27: 429.

Solidarit y  371 union developed a moral bond with one another by, as Kant says, each ensuring “that his actions not only furnish a negative example, in containing nothing evil, but also provide a positive one, in possessing an element of good.”26 Social structures, such as norms, rules, laws, formalities, ceremonies, observances, and traditions, can also provide ways for people to develop trust in one another. For example, Ramari’s teachers’ union regularly holds public assemblies in which the members’ common cause is, as Kant says, “loudly proclaimed and thereby fully shared.” They maintain “this fellowship through repeated public formalities which stabilize the union of its members.” They use ceremonies and instruction as ways of “transmitting” their shared commitments and trust “to posterity through the reception of new members.”27 Their leaders regularly make speeches “in the name of the whole” group in order to make its shared concerns “visible as a public issue,” so that the wishes of each person in the group are “represented as united with the wishes of all toward one and the same end.”28 They also established and enforce rules that they trust one another to follow.29 Miguel and Doreen use rules, ceremonies, and other social structures to maintain and enhance their trust in one another by regularly cooking together, calling ahead when one of them will be late, celebrating holidays and anniversaries, and spending Sunday afternoons with one another. Developing and maintaining trust that someone else shares our commitments can nonetheless be difficult because we might not be sure whether she is sufficiently self-​aware to know her own commitments, whether she has the commitment or is merely pretending to have it, and whether she endorses it on rational grounds. Our commitments can shift and change so that “the discovered incompatibility” of the commitments that two people affirm “equally distances and destroys any instituting of friendship” or other kinds of solidarity between them.30 If two people in a solidary relationship fail to find common commitments in one another, then their solidarity of the kind we are discussing comes to an end.31 We can begin to doubt whether our comrades share our commitments or are simply using our relationship as a means to their own advantage.32 David, we can imagine, came to lose trust in his ex-​wife when he discovered that they affirm different values and principles and that he is strongly opposed to the ones she endorses.33

26 Eth-​C 27: 412. 27 Rel 6: 193. 28 Rel 6: 197. 29 MM 6: 307. See Timmons (Forthcoming), who explores Kant’s discussion of the nature and value of religious practices. 30 Eth-​V 27: 681. 31 Eth-​C 27: 429. 32 Eth-​V 27: 683. 33 Eth-​V 27: 682.

372  Sovereign Re ason

16.3.3 Love A third paradigmatic feature of solidarity is that each of the people involved is committed to the happiness of the others for their own sake because of the reasonable and mutual trust that they all share an effective commitment that reason favors.34 A commitment to the happiness of others for their own sake includes adopting it as a noninstrumental end, tending to prioritize that end over the happiness of other people, and regularly choosing to act in ways that promote it. A group of people might be committed to one another’s happiness on other grounds, but this special love for one another arises from and is sustained by their reasonable trust in their shared rational commitments with respect to one another.35 Union members, for example, might have a love for one another for their own sake that is derived from their trust in one another to support the cause. If their trust disappears, then they lose this commitment to the happiness of their comrades while still perhaps maintaining their general love for other people as such. An effective and easily recognizable way to implement our commitment to the happiness of someone we are in solidarity with is to advance or live up to the shared goals, principles, projects, or other commitments that provide the bases for our mutual love. Each of us in a relationship of this sort began with a commitment that reason favors, but the love for one another that arose on the basis of our trust that we share this commitment can provide an additional ground for endorsing and maintaining that commitment as a way of promoting the happiness of our comrades. These additional grounds might increase the priority we give to the commitment as compared to others we endorse and lead us to resist undermining or violating the commitment because doing so would hurt and betray those we care about. How much priority to give to promoting the happiness of a comrade over that of other people or even over our own happiness can, according to Kant, also vary “because the limits here are not defined, and there can be no indication of degree as to how far I ought to care for myself, and how far for others,” so that the measure of solidary dispositions “is not determinable by any law or rule.”36

16.3.4  Trust in Love The fourth paradigmatic feature of solidarity is that each of the people reasonably trusts that they all share a commitment to one another’s happiness for its own sake on the basis of their mutual trust that they all share an effective commitment that reason favors.37 According to Kant, it is “in itself reassuring to be able to count on

34 MM 6: 469, 471; Eth-​V 27: 676–​7, 682–​4; Eth-​C 27: 424–​5. 35 MM 6: 452; Eth-​C 27: 424. 36 Eth-​C 27: 424. 37 Eth-​V 27: 676; Eth-​C 27: 426.

Solidarit y  373 . . . assistance” from a comrade, to “confidently count on the other’s help . . . in case of need,” and to “have confidence . . . that he would be able and willing to look after my affairs.”38 This help that “each may count on from the other” must be regarded “only as the outward manifestation of an inner heartfelt benevolence.”39 Developing this kind of public trust among members of a group of people often requires them to show one another that they are committed to one another’s happiness. Miguel and Doreen might assure one another that they stand ready to help in times of need, show concern for one another’s misfortunes, do small favors for one another, give one another gifts, and promote their common goals. The teachers’ union uses social structures of various kinds as ways of developing and securing trust in their love for one another, such as rules about supporting members who are on strike or in the hospital, celebrating birthdays, covering for one another at work, and “a ritual communal partaking at the same table” that represents a kind of fraternal love among them.40 There are various difficulties with creating and sustaining this public trust that arise from fears that others are merely using us or even secretly hate us. When they were friends, for example, June regularly demanded Lisa’s help and burdened her with her troubles, which led Lisa to worry that June is ungenerous toward her and merely out for herself, does not love her for her own sake, aims in their relationship only to secure assistance with her own needs, and perhaps even hates her.41 On some occasions, “in a fit of anger,” June would “consign [Lisa] to the gallows” and heap “coarse rebukes” on her.42 June would later offer “apologies the moment [she] calms down.”43 June showed signs of envy for Lisa’s accomplishments and merits that suggested that her aim is to bring Lisa down rather than pull herself up. June also sometimes used Lisa’s confidences against her.44 Miguel and Doreen, on the other hand, have an expressed willingness to forgo help from the other person on some occasions, not to trouble one another, to endure certain hardships, and not to make demands on one another’s help, as ways of showing their love for each other.45 In sum, solidarity is one form of special tie in which we basically share commitments with one another that serve our interests of reason, trust that we share these commitments, love one another on the basis of this trust, and trust that we love one another. There is an ideal form of solidarity in which the four paradigmatic features are fully satisfied but also imperfect ones in which these features are satisfied

38 Eth-​V 27: 684, MM 6: 471, and Eth-​C 27: 425, respectively. 39 MM 6: 470–​1. 40 Rel 6: 199. 41 MM 6: 471; Eth-​C 27: 425. 42 Eth-​C 27: 430 43 Eth-​V 27: 685. 44 Eth-​C 27: 427. 45 MM 6: 471; Eth-​V 27: 684; Eth-​C 27: 425.

374  Sovereign Re ason to varying degrees. Various kinds of more specific relationships can be forms of solidarity, such as friendships, marriages, communities, and so on. These relationships have other features that differentiate them from one another, and not all forms of them are species of solidarity, but many of us are bonded to people by shared rational and reasonable commitments that ground a special love we have for one another.

16.4  Solidarity: Interests of Reason Our power of reason, I suggest, includes substantive final interests of reason in solidarity of the kind we have described. Apart from our natural sociability, we have interests of reason in forming, maintaining, perfecting, respecting, and promoting relationships of solidarity. Kant at times suggests or implies as much. He describes some relationships of this sort as “practically necessary” ideas and ideals of reason that make us “deserving of happiness,” that serve “a purely intellectual need” of reason itself, that further interests of “humanity,” and that “should inspire respect.”46 Kant also valorizes other kinds of relationships, such as marriages, families, and communities.47 And he says more generally that the “human being is destined by his reason to live in a society with human beings” and that humans have “a calling to use their reason socially.”48 Aside from this explicit textual evidence, some of the specific duties that Kant describes seem to presuppose that our power of reason has interests in relationships of solidarity. We will consider some of these laws of reason in the next section, but from a broadly Kantian perspective and a commonsense standpoint, it seems that a rational and reasonable person could or would, as such, favor relationships in which people share rational commitments, trust that they have these commitments, love one another on this basis, and trust that they have this mutual love. Relationships of solidarity incorporate and arrange a variety of other interests that reason has, such as in committing to ends, principles, or projects that it favors, in promoting the happiness of other people, in expressing these rational and reasonable commitments, and in trusting other people. Attributing this interest in solidarity to our power of reason itself allows us to capture and explain many of the reasons and requirements that such relationships seem to involve.

46 MM 6: 469, Eth-​V 27: 680–​2, and Eth-​C 27: 429, respectively. These passages mainly concern various competing and fragmentary conceptions of friendship. 47 Eth-​V 27: 493; Rel 6: 193; Ped 9: 494. 48 Anth 7: 325 and L-​Log 24: 151, respectively.

Solidarit y  375

16.5  Solidarity: Laws of Reason As rational and reasonable people, we have substantive final interests in each of us establishing relationships of solidarity with other people, maintaining and perfecting ones we are in, promoting such relationships among other people, and respecting relationships of solidarity themselves. What sorts of presumptive laws of reason might these interests favor when combined with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justifiability (SCR-​PPJ), which requires us to conform to laws that are justifiable to rational and reasonable people on the basis of our interests of reason? The laws I mention below, which in most cases Kant himself endorses in some form and on some occasions, are presumptive principles that our reason favors in the sense that, all else equal, each of us could or would rationally endorse them on the basis of our interests of reason in solidarity.

16.5.1  Forming Relationships of Solidarity Our interest of reason in forming relationships of solidarity favors various kinds of presumptive laws, including, as Kant says, “a duty to oneself as well as to others not to isolate oneself ” from all other people.49 Rational and reasonable people who care about forming relationships of solidarity could or would endorse a law that presumptively requires us to seek out and develop such attachments as well as laws that presumptively forbid us from entirely forgoing friendships, romantic attachments, or other kinds of solidarity with others. Our interest of reason in forming solidary relationships favors a presumptive prohibition on hating and shying away from people in general because doing so makes it difficult or impossible for us to develop relationships of solidarity with them.50 These laws also presumptively forbid more limited forms of misanthropy in which we hate or isolate ourselves from anyone outside of our family or community, such as a sect that attempts to “cut itself off from all other peoples and avoid intermingling with them,” because doing so makes it difficult or impossible for us to form relationships of solidarity with those other people.51 Misanthropy tends to arise, according to Kant, by overgeneralizing from particular cases, such as people like David who have been cheated and ill-​used or who have observed evil in others and so come to mistrust all other people.52 In light of this tendency, our interest of reason in forming relationships of solidarity also



49 MM 6: 473. See also MM 6: 402; MM 6: 471. 50 MM 6: 466; TP 8: 307; CPJ 5: 276; Rel 6: 34. 51 Rel 6: 184. 52 MM 6: 466; CPJ 5: 276; Anth 7: 205; Eth-​C 27: 440; L-​Anth 25: 553.

376  Sovereign Re ason favors laws that combat misanthropy, such as ones that presumptively forbid us from making such overgeneralizations and that presumptively require us to diminish instances that are especially likely to engender misanthropy in others, such as ingratitude, hypocrisy, injustice, and arrogance.53 Laws that are favored by our interest of reason in forming relationships of solidarity also presumptively require us to strive for solidarity with other people by, for example, adopting commitments that reason approves of, searching for other people who share those commitments, and communicating with them in ways that promote mutual trust and reciprocal love. They presumptively require us to develop and express traits that tend to lead others to form relationships of solidarity with us, which according to Kant include “uprightness of disposition, candour and trustworthiness,” “conduct that is free from malice and falsity,” and “vivacity, amiability and cheerfulness of mind.”54 There might be limits, however, to how many relationships of solidarity we can form with others.55 Our interest of reason in forming relationships of solidarity favors presumptive requirements to treat everyone, including our enemies, as if they might someday stand in a relationship of solidarity with us. Acting from this maxim, according to Kant, is “a course of conduct appropriate to the use of reason, and conformable to the laws of morality.”56 All human persons are worthy of being in these relationships of friendship or community with us. Treating them as potential friends or allies tends to make it more likely that we will enter into such relationships with them. If we manage to form a relationship of solidarity with someone, then Kant says “we do a service to mankind, or to humanity” by establishing a relationship that reason favors.57 More specifically, we should not, as Lisa and June did, disparage to third parties people with whom we were previously in a relationship of solidarity, not only because we might someday reconcile with our prior comrades, but also because this tends to make the people to whom we say such things avoid forming relationships of solidarity with us out of fear that they might receive the same treatment if we fall out with them.58

16.5.2  Maintaining Relationships of Solidarity Our interests of reason in maintaining and not undermining relationships of solidarity we are in favors presumptive laws of various kinds. Relationships of solidarity ground special requirements of reason that the parties have to one another

53 CPJ 5: 276. 54 Eth-​C 27: 429. 55 Eth-​V 27: 673, 685. 56 Eth-​V 27: 680. 57 Eth-​V 27: 680. 58 Eth-​V 27: 680–​1.

Solidarit y  377 because their goals, projects, principles, or other commitments, along with their commitments to one another’s happiness, are shared.59 One presumptive requirement that people in solidarity have is to maintain and live up to their joint commitments by, for example, promoting and not undermining their common goals and complying with their shared principles. For example, if Miguel and Doreen are in a solidary relationship with regard to their shared aim of having and raising a child “as their joint work,” then, if they produce a child together, they incur “an obligation . . . towards each other to maintain it.”60 According to Kant, “pure sincerity in friendship can be no less required of everyone even if up to now there may never have been a sincere friend, because this duty—​as duty in general—​lies, prior to all experience, in the idea of a reason determining the will by means of a priori grounds.”61 Friends also have a duty to be candid with one another as a way of living up to their shared commitment to open communication.62 A second kind of special presumptive requirement concerns promoting the happiness of our comrades. When people are in relationships of solidarity, Kant says that there are “certainly duties to which they are obligated,” such as to help one another in times of need, not to wish for or feel pleasure in one another’s misfortune, not to misuse the trust that they have in one another’s goodwill, not to allow the other person to help us without reciprocating ourselves, and “participating and sharing sympathetically in the other’s well-​being.”63 In some cases, for example, it is “a duty for one of the friends to point out the other’s faults to him; this is in the other’s best interests and is therefore a duty of love,” but in other cases to “uncover his weaknesses” or to “censure his errors” is “contrary to the duty of friendship,” because doing so would “injure his self-​love.”64 Among friends who are committed to candor with one another, each of them is “bound not to share the secrets entrusted to him with anyone else, no matter how reliable he thinks him, without explicit permission to do so.”65 A brother might be under a presumptive law of “kinship” not to serve as a witness against his sibling in ways that would harm him even though he might be under other presumptive laws of greater priority to be open with the authorities.66 And if a “wife loses her husband, then the grown-​up, well-​behaved son has the duty incumbent on him, and also the natural inclination within him, to honor her, to support her, and to make her life as a widow pleasant.”67



59 Eth-​V 27: 696. 60 MM 6: 381. 61 G 4: 408. 62 Rel 6: 33. 63 Eth-​V 27: 696 and MM 6: 471, respectively. See also Rel 6: 33; Eth-​C 27: 426. 64 MM 6: 470 and Eth-​V 27: 685, respectively. 65 MM 6: 472. See Flynn (2007). 66 Eth-​V 27: 493. 67 Anth 7: 310.

378  Sovereign Re ason Maintaining relationships of solidarity also involves not undermining the four paradigmatic features of those relationships. We “must not,” for example, “seek to diminish” the “well-​wishing dispositions” the other person has toward us or the trust the other has in our goodwill toward them by leading them to think that we do not love them or that we are simply using them to fulfill our selfish interests.68 Indiscreetly sharing a friend’s secret as Lisa and June did, for instance, likely diminishes her confidence that we love her, while violating the moral standards of our community tends to diminish the trust others may have that we share their moral commitments. Our interest of reason in maintaining relationships of solidarity favors presumptive laws that require us on some occasions to apologize to our comrades, reaffirm our commitments and love for them, and refrain from quarreling in ways that make “mutual trust impossible during a future peace.”69 Lisa and June overstepped these limits when they destroyed their relationship beyond repair. On some occasions, such as when our friends or comrades are especially evil or repeatedly treating us in vile ways, Kant says that “one must break off the association that existed or avoid it as much as possible.”70

16.5.3  Perfecting Relationships of Solidarity Our interest of reason in perfecting our solidary relationships favors laws that presumptively require us to adopt and strive to realize ideal forms of solidarity.71 These ideals consist in each of the people sharing exactly the same commitments that are fully supported by our interests of reason, affording this commitment the same high priority, fully trusting that this is the case, maximally loving each other, and fully trusting that this is so. In most relationships of solidarity, one or more of these elements is not fully realized. We often do not know for sure what exact commitments and attitudes we or others have or what priority we or they assign to them.72 Perfecting our relationships of solidarity thus often requires us, as Kant says, to “track down . . . any misunderstandings that hinder agreement; to clear up errors and come together as much as possible” with our comrades as well as to communicate the degree of love we have for one another.73 Perfecting our relationships of solidarity might also involve committing more fully to ends or principles that we share

68 Eth-​C 27: 426. 69 TPP 8: 346. See also MM 6: 471. This quote refers to actions of states during times of war, but many of Kant’s articles of perpetual peace seem to have plausible analogs in interpersonal relationships. 70 MM 6: 474, cf. MM 6: 365; Anth 7: 294; Eth-​C 27: 425; L-​Anth 25: 1390. 71 MM 6: 469, 471. 72 MM 6: 471. 73 Eth-​V 27: 685.

Solidarit y  379 with others as well as promoting their happiness and striving to eliminate feelings of resentment or envy toward our comrades that tend to undermine these commitments.74

16.5.4  Respecting Relationships of Solidarity Our interest of reason in respecting relationships of solidarity favors presumptive requirements to respect such relationships. As Kant says, we must “venerate” relationships of this kind, which “should inspire respect” in us.75 Respecting relationships of solidarity involves judging that they are good in themselves and not judging that they are merely useful or contemptible.76 We are also not supposed to act in ways that express lack of respect or disrespect for such relationships. According to Kant, it is “bad in itself to speak disparagingly” of a previous friend, even if he has become our enemy, “in that we thereby show that we have no respect” for our relationship.77 And we must not show disrespect for “even the memory of a friendship now broken off ” by “abusing later on the former confidence and candor of the other person.”78

16.5.5  Promoting Relationships of Solidarity Finally, our interest of reason in promoting relationships of solidarity among other people favors presumptive requirements not to act in ways that prevent or undermine such relationships. Teachers, for example, “must not prefer one child over another because of its talents but only because of its character, for otherwise resentment develops, which is contrary to friendship.” It is also “wrong” for teachers to oppose friendships among children because “[t]‌he child must maintain friendships with others and not remain by itself all the time.”79 We should not, as Bob did, tempt people to violate the responsibilities of their relationships, prevent them from associating with one another, or denigrate their relationships of solidarity. And we should provide opportunities for them to form relationships of solidarity and do what we can to encourage mutual trust and love among them.80



74 MM 6: 471; Eth-​V 27: 678–​9; Ped 9: 484–​5. 75 Eth-​C 27: 429. 76 MM 6: 479. See also Chapter 15. 77 Eth-​C 27: 429. 78 Anth 7: 194. 79 Ped 9: 484–​5. 80 Ped 9: 499.

380  Sovereign Re ason

16.6  Final Remarks: Sovereign Reason in Solidarity A basic problem for Kantian theories of reason is to reconcile impartial and universal reason with the contingency and partiality of loving relationships that we deeply value. I have suggested that our power of reason itself includes interests in a kind of solidarity that, when combined with an impartial principle of justifiability, generate in a plausible way many of the presumptive requirements and reasons that such relationships seem to involve, including those in the five examples with which we began this chapter. A fully developed theory of reason along these lines, however, must go on to interpret and apply these interests and presumptive laws as well as adjudicate conflicts among them and other interests and presumptive laws of reason. Our interests of reason in solidarity not only lead us to form and maintain typical kinds of friendships and other ties with particular people, but they also reveal the deeply social nature of our power of reason itself, as it is characterized by the Sovereignty Conception of Reason. Through our reason, each of us wants to stand in an overarching kind of solidarity with all other rational and reasonable people. We are moved by our reason to relate with one another in mutually agreeable ways according to the interests of reason we share in ourselves and with each other. We strive for a kind of solidarity in which there is public knowledge among fully rational and reasonable people that we love and trust one another on the basis of our shared commitments to the laws of reason themselves. The SCR gives us an inspiring social ideal of, as Kant describes it, a “systematic union of rational beings through common objective laws.”81 An ideal world of this kind would include many friendships, families, associations, and communities. It would also be, as Kant says, a “unity of humankind as that of a family” that is centered around our joint and open commitment to the sovereignty of reason and the bonds of mutual love and trust this would engender among us.82

81 G 4: 433. Members of Kant’s ideal of a Kingdom of Ends are united by their shared commitment to moral principles, whereas I am suggesting that there is a more general ideal associated with the Sovereignty Conception of Reason in which all rational and reasonable people are jointly committed to all laws of reason as well as to the primacy and authority of reason. See also Hill (1992, c­ hapter 3), Reath (2006, ­chapter 6), Waldron (2021), Timmons (2021a), Holtman (2022), von der Pfordten (2021), and Sensen (2021). 82 Ped 9: 494. See also L-​Th 28: 1100–​3; CPJ 5: 444, 449; A808/​B836; CPrR 5: 43; CF 7: 59; Rel 6: 138–​9n, 192; Eth-​Mr2 29: 629; Eth-​C 27: 412.

Postscript When I was in graduate school, I shared many common prejudices about Kant. I was inspired by his ideas of respect and dignity and admired his attempt to chart a course between moral naturalism and intuitionism, but I was also skeptical about whether reason alone could provide a suitable foundation for morality. Despite Kant’s arguments, I could not see how the same mental power that allows us to do logic and efficiently pursue our goals could also ground and move us to follow substantive moral requirements. My breakthrough came when my supervisor and friend, Thomas E. Hill, Jr., explained that the idea of reason Kant is investigating combines elements of what we typically call rationality and reasonableness. As Hill put it, Kant starts with a broad and rich notion of reason that he takes to be implicit in our ordinary beliefs and practices. Reason is not just the narrow rationality of logicians and economists but also includes commonsense ideas of what it is to be reasonable and to treat oneself and others in reasonable ways. This was a revelation to me. It helped me to understand and appreciate Kant’s ideas of autonomy, humanity, the Categorical Imperative, moral motivation, respect, and dignity as aspects of a broad and substantive idea of reason that became progressively vivid for me. Since then, I have been exploring the contours of our ordinary ideas of what is rational and reasonable, what reasons we have, how a rational and reasonable person conducts herself, what reason requires of us, and how these issues help us to understand ourselves and the moral life. My ambitions have been guided but also tempered by an important admonition of another friend, Robert N. Johnson, who emphasized to me that our commonsense idea of reason “is just so complicated.” This book is an attempt to draw from Kant and common sense some features of a new way of thinking about what it is to govern oneself by reason and to lay some needed groundwork for a broadly Kantian normative ethical framework that Hill, I, and others have been developing. As we examined the main contours of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason (SCR) and explored some of its implications, we encountered many ongoing philosophical debates. We discussed virtue, character, happiness, perfection, respect, conscience, supererogation, prudence, and various kinds of freedom. We highlighted some themes in Kant’s thinking along with some supporting passages that bear on his views about dignity, the unity of reason, the Categorical Imperative, and autonomy. We also left some loose ends for further investigation, including whether the SCR can be justified apart from the Content Criterion and its connections to reflective common sense, why our power of reason is authoritative,

382 Postscript whether there is any underlying unity to our substantive interests of reason, and how to adjudicate conflicts among interests of reason within and among persons. Stepping back from the details of the book, I thought I would say something general about its main findings, why anyone should care about them, and the purposes I plan to put them to in future work. The SCR gives us a way of thinking about ourselves as autonomous or rationally self-​governing people. For many of us, the ideal of living a life of reason, of always conducting ourselves in rational and reasonable ways, of relating on rational and reasonable terms with everyone, of self-​discipline through our own reason, of hearing and responding to the voice of reason, of bringing rational order to our own minds, and of certain kinds of freedom from arbitrary authority and happenstance is deeply inspiring. Much depends on the details of this ideal. Sovereignty over oneself might turn out to be mere metaphor or else grounded in special biases and unexamined values of old, white, educated men. The picture of autonomy I present is far more expansive and rich than traditional ideas of rational self-​governance. It incorporates sociality and emotional attachment, encourages partiality toward our friends and family, extends to our attitudes as well as our actions, and reflects our moral uncertainty and ambivalence when we are pulled in different moral directions. Investigating the abilities, interests, and principles that make up our rational nature enhances our understanding of ourselves as rationally self-​governing people who can establish in our own minds a rational and reasonable order that incorporates the fundamental interests of all people and forms the foundation for an ideal world of mutual love and respect. A fully rational and reasonable person is sovereign over her mind as a whole. She not only governs her actions by rational and reasonable principles that she accepts, she also thinks and pays attention according to such standards, keeps her emotions in check when this is rational and reasonable, cultivates appropriate attitudes of forgiveness and respect, avoids racist bias and animus, and takes no pleasure in the misfortunes of others. Autonomy has, for too long, been restricted to actions, but we can also govern ourselves by requirements of reason that tell us what we should or should not believe, notice, imagine, desire, and even feel. An autonomous person can govern many parts of herself through the involuntary operation of her reason, which reaches out to attitudes that lie beyond her ability to adopt or abandon them just by choosing to do so. Our power to govern ourselves by rational and reasonable standards comes with a variety of abilities that reflect what it is like to deliberate about moral problems, to be bound by moral principles, and to assess ourselves by rational and reasonable standards. We use our reason to formulate basic moral principles and to think about them in rational and reasonable ways. After careful reasoning, we find ourselves endorsing some of them and recognizing their authority as genuine moral standards. We also do this for requirements of theoretical and prudential reason

Postscript  383 when we consider, for example, the principle of noncontradiction or the principle to take the necessary means to our ends or abandon them. We come to recognize and accept certain percepts as part of our reason itself. Our reason also allows us to interpret and apply rational and reasonable standards and to warn ourselves against violating them. Desires, feelings, and other motivational states produced by our reason lead us to choose, think, notice, and desire in rational and reasonable ways. In addition, we can impartially hold ourselves accountable for violating norms of reason and punish ourselves with feelings of regret or guilt for doing so. These legislative, executive, and judicial abilities provide a rich and nuanced conception of what it is to govern oneself in involuntary ways through our own power of reason. We are sovereign over ourselves in part because of our capacities for self-​ legislation, self-​mastery, and self-​assessment. Rationally self-​governing people care about many things for their own sake. Part of being a rational and reasonable person is that we are moved by our reason to comply with rational and reasonable requirements and to exercise our governing abilities. We also necessarily want to explain and unify things, to gather knowledge, to think for ourselves, to promote our own happiness and that of others, to respect everyone, and to develop bonds of friendship and community with others. These desires, dispositions, and other interests are not just natural ones we happen to have but are instead grounded in our rational nature itself. A rational and reasonable person is not passive and does not sit idly waiting for a contingent desire or feeling to spur her rational abilities into action. She wants to live a life of reason and wants others to do the same. She also cares about solidarity, developing her natural abilities, spreading happiness far and wide, and ensuring the freedom of all people. Far from the cold and indifferent Kantian Captain that Blackburn attributes to Kant, our rational nature fills us with feeling, emotion, cares, concerns. Rational and reasonable people govern ourselves in ways that can stand up to reason in all people. We legislate moral principles and other rational standards to ourselves by deliberating about what actions, beliefs, desires, and other mental states are justifiable to rational and reasonable people apart from their contingent proclivities, habits, desires, and ways of thinking. What justifies many specific requirements of reason is that rational and reasonable people who are moved by substantive final interests of reason could or would accept them in rational and reasonable ways. We strive to organize ourselves and regard and treat everyone in ways that accord with the reason of all people. Kantians have long relied on thin and formal standards for whether an action or policy is justifiable to rational and reasonable people. Incorporating substantive interests into our rational nature itself provides additional criteria for generating and explaining a wide variety of principles that rational and reasonable people could or would accept. By incorporating all four of these features, the Sovereignty Conception of Reason enhances our self-​understanding as people who can govern our minds as a

384 Postscript whole through moral, prudential, and theoretical standards of reason that are justifiable to all rational and reasonable people on the basis of our shared interests of reason. Many of us might, on reflection, find that this view accords at an abstract or a practical level with how we see ourselves and others, what it is to be a rational and reasonable person, the nature of moral deliberation and moral motivation, the content and grounds of moral requirements, and the many specific rational requirements we adduced. Our reason binds us with others through mutually agreeable standards that reflect the love, respect, and sense of fellowship we necessarily have for one another as rational and reasonable people. Turning to future directions, the SCR provides a foundation for developing a new kind of broadly Kantian normative ethical theory that is different from moral frameworks proposed by O’Neill, Korsgaard, Herman, Wood, Rawls, Darwall, Scanlon, and others. Drawing on the Kingdom of Ends formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Hill suggests that the most fundamental principle of morality is to treat each other in accordance with laws that we would legislate for ourselves if we were to abstract from our personal differences and deliberate in fully rational and reasonable ways. A significant gap in this proposal, which Hill himself recognizes, is the same problem that social contract theorists and contractualists have always faced, namely specifying the motivations and standards that determine whether hypothetical people would endorse something. Making sense of a counterfactual principle of justifiability requires explaining what would lead us to accept things from a specified perspective. Rawls has his primary goods, Scanlon has his independently existing reasons, and Hill appeals to aspects of the Humanity Formulation of the Categorical Imperative. Substantive interests that are built into our rational nature itself offer an alternative set of grounds for determining whether ideal moral legislators would select certain principles for general acceptance. These interests are not contingent but are instead necessary concerns of rational and reasonable people. They do not depend on external moral facts but are rather part of our power of reason itself. They are interests in all people, not just ourselves. And they are quite extensive and substantive, which provides a wide variety of grounds for accepting or rejecting candidate moral laws. To work out a principle of justifiability along these lines that reflects the idea of a morally ideal Kingdom of Ends, I first needed to explain and specify many of our interests of reason. I also needed to begin exploring different ways of interpreting the idea of justifiability and how interests of reason might figure into them. Along the way, I came to think that the Kingdom of Ends legislative perspective should be expanded beyond moral duties to include ideals and principles that concern our beliefs, desires, and other attitudes. I also became convinced that the appeal of an ideal moral world in which we govern ourselves through moral standards that are acceptable to all is not just reflected in our endorsement of those standards but also includes ways we use our reason to enforce them in ourselves, interpret and apply

Postscript  385 them, and hold ourselves responsible for breaking them. The SCR incorporates and organizes these ideas in preparation for my next project of working out some details of a significantly expanded version of the Kingdom of Ends legislative perspective that Hill first proposed. Perhaps one way of exhibiting the appeal of the moral framework I and perhaps Hill envision is by starting from the kinds of moral deliberation that occur in everyday life.1 These conversations happen between employers and employees, among teachers, parents, and students, between friends and family, and in our own minds about a wide variety of moral issues. Our deliberations presuppose some general moral attitudes that should orient and guide us. Attitudes, such as love and fear, are complex sets of dispositions to think, feel, desire, and act in various ways. We bring our attitudes to the table when we are deciding which candidate to support, whether to give to a charity, how to avoid offending others, and what to do about our wayward family members. Our attitudes, however, are not always ideal or appropriate for the occasion. They are sometimes mistaken, founded in self-​serving biases, unreflectively endorsed, or morally bad. When we are deliberating, we should reflect on what attitudes we and others should bring to bear. These moral reflections about attitudes occur at a middle level between reflecting on comprehensive principles of morality and making determinations about particular cases. Basic respect for persons should be one of our main orienting attitudes when we deliberate about anything. A general kind of love for everyone that involves valuing their wellbeing for its own sake should influence these deliberations. Attitudes of solidarity with all fellow human beings, justice and fairness for all, and concerns for life, knowledge, and personal development are also morally worthy attitudes for us to take up when we reflect on moral questions. Focusing on the moral attitudes that should guide our deliberations is not secondary to deeper philosophical issues about what justifies those laws and what they should say. On our Kantian way of thinking, the basic principle of morality itself requires us to abide by laws that would be endorsed by all rational persons who take up a morally ideal perspective in which they, among other things, deliberate according to the orienting moral attitudes of respect, love, solidarity, and others. We should, in other words, strive to deliberate about particular issues from an ideal moral standpoint in which we are guided by our interests of reason in the happiness of all, respect for everyone, and other concerns that are constitutively part of being a rational and reasonable person. These interests are not arbitrary, contingent, or derived from external normative facts but are instead part of what it is to be a rational and reasonable person. 1 I am indebted to Hill (2021b) for this way of explaining some of the main ideas of our framework in ordinary language apart from most Kantian terminology and theoretical intricacies. See also Cureton (Forthcoming-​b).

386 Postscript Much more work needs to be done specifying the details of the Kingdom of Ends legislative framework and assessing its merits in comparison to other views. I plan to pursue this project by drawing on and continuing to refine the main features of the Sovereignty Conception of Reason I have proposed here. This partial theory of rational self-​governance nonetheless gives us a glimpse of who we are and what we could be.

Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason Adam Cureton https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191960253.001.0001 Published online: 27 January 2025 Published in print: 17 April 2025

Online ISBN: 9780191960253

Print ISBN: 9780192868190

Search in this book

END MATTER

Abbreviations for Kant’s Works  Adam Cureton https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191960253.003.0020 Published: January 2025

Pages 387–390

Subject: 17th - 18th Century Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Citations of Kant’s works, except for the Critique of Pure Reason, include one of the following abbreviations followed by the volume and page number or numbers in the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences edition of Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902–). References to the Critique of Pure p. 388 p. 389 p. 390

Reason begin with A, B, or A/B and include the relevant page number from the Gesammelte Schriften.

A, B, A/B

Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Anth

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 227–429. Translated by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

CB

“Conjectural Beginnings of Human History.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 160–75. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

CF

“The Conflict of the Faculties.” In Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 233–327. Translated by Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

CHR

“Determination of the Concept of a Human Race.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 145–59. Translated by Holly Wilson and Günter Zöller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

CPJ

Critique of the Power of Judgment. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Edited by Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

CPrR

Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Edited by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Corr

Correspondence. Translated by Arnulf Zweig. Edited by Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

EAT

“The End of All Things.” In Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, 217–32. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Eth-C

“Moral Philosophy: Collinsʼs Lecture Notes.” In Lectures on Ethics, edited by Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, 37– 222. Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

EthH

“Kantʼs Practical Philosophy: Herderʼs Lecture Notes.” In Lectures on Ethics, edited by Peter Lauchlan Heath and J. B. Schneewind, 1–36. Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

EthMr2

“Morality According to Prof Kant: Mrongoviusʼ Lecture Notes.” In Lectures on Ethics, edited by Peter Lauchlan Heath and J. B. Schneewind, 225–48. Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Eth-V

“Kant on the Metaphysics of Morals: Vigilantiusʼs Lecture Notes.” In Lectures on Ethics, edited by Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, 249–452. Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

G

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 37–108. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

IUH

“Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 107–20. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

LAnth

Lectures on Anthropology. Translated by Robert R. Clewis, Robert B. Louden, G. Felicitas Munzel, and Allen W. Wood. Edited by Allen W. Wood and Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

L-Log

Lectures on Logic. Translated by J. Michael Young. Edited by J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

L-M

Lectures on Metaphysics. Translated by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Edited by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon.

L-NR

“Natural Right Course Lecture Notes by Feyerabend.” In Lectures and Dra s on Political Philosophy, edited by Frederick Rauscher, 81–180. Translated by Frederick Rauscher and Kenneth R. Westphal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

L-Th

“Lectures on the Philosophical Doctrine of Religion.” In Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 335–451. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

MH

“Essay on the Maladies of the Head.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 18–62. Translated by Holly Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

MM

The Metaphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 353–603. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

MPT

“On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy.” In Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, 24–37. Translated by Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

NF

Notes and Fragments. Translated by Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer, and Frederick Rauscher. Edited by Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

OFBS

“Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 18–62. Translated by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

P

Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science. In Theoretical Philosophy a er 1781, edited by Henry E. Allison and Peter Heath, 50–169. Translated by Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

PMB

“On the Philosophersʼ Medicine of the Body.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 184–91. Translated by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

PMG

“What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made in Germany since the Time of Leibniz and Wol ?” In Theoretical Philosophy a er 1781, edited by Henry E. Allison and Peter Heath, 349–424. Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Ped

Lectures on Pedagogy. In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 486– 527. Translated by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

PostM

“Postscript to Christian Gottlieb Mielckeʼs Lithuanian-German and German-Lithuanian Dictionary.” In Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 432–3. Translated by Günter Zöller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

RL

“On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 611–15. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Rel

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 39–216. Translated by George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

RevH

“Review of Gottlieb Hufelandʼs Essay on the Principle of Natural Right.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 273–310. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

RevS

“Review of Schulzʼs Attempt at an Introduction to a Doctrine of Morals for All Human Beings Regardless of Di erent Religions.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 1–10. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

TP

“On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice.” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 273–310. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

TPP

Toward Perpetual Peace. In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 311–52. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

TSP

“On a Recently Prominent Tone of Superiority in Philosophy.” In Theoretical Philosophy a er 1781, edited by Henry E. Allison and Peter Heath, 429–45. Translated by Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

WIE

“An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” In Practical Philosophy, edited by Mary J. Gregor, 11–22. Translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

WOT

“What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” In Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni, 1–14. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason Adam Cureton https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191960253.001.0001 Published online: 27 January 2025 Published in print: 17 April 2025

Online ISBN: 9780191960253

Print ISBN: 9780192868190

Search in this book

END MATTER

References  Published: January 2025

Subject: 17th - 18th Century Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

Abela, Paul. 2006. “The Demands of Systematicity: Rational Judgment and the Structure of Nature.” In A Companion to Kant, edited by Graham Bird, 408–22. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Abraham, Anna. 2016. “The Imaginative Mind.” Human Brain Mapping 37 (11): 4197–211. Google Scholar WorldCat Ackroyd, Peter. 2014. Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I. New York: St. Martinʼs Gri in. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Albritton, Rogers. 1985. “Freedom of Will and Freedom of Action.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 59 (2): 239–51. Google Scholar WorldCat Allais, Lucy. 2015. “What Properly Belongs to Me.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 12 (6): 754–71. Google Scholar WorldCat Allison, Henry E. 1990. Kantʼs Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Allison, Henry E. 2001. Kantʼs Theory of Taste: A Reading of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Allison, Henry E. 2011. Kantʼs Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Ameriks, Karl. 2000. Kantʼs Theory of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Annas, Julia. 1984. “Personal Love and Kantian Ethics in E i Briest.” Philosophy and Literature 8 (1): 15–31. Google Scholar WorldCat Anscombe, G E M. 1958. “Modern Moral Philosophy.” Philosophy 33 (124): 1–19. Google Scholar WorldCat Anscombe, G E M. 2000. Intention. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Aquila, Richard. 1989. Matter and Mind. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Aquinas, Thomas. 1964. Summa Theologicae. Translated by Thomas Gilby and T C OʼBrien. New York: Blackfriars. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Aristotle. 1991. The Metaphysics. Translated by John H McMahin. New York: Prometheus. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Terence Irwin. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Arrow, Kenneth Joseph. 1963. Social Choice and Individual Values. 2nd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bader, Ralf M. 2023. “The Dignity of Humanity.” In Rethinking the Value of Humanity, edited by Sarah Buss and Nandi Theunissen , 153–180. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Baier, Annette. 1995. “The Need for More Than Justice.” In Justice and Care: Essential Readings in Feminist Ethics, edited by Virginia Held, 47–59. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Baier, Kurt. 1958. The Moral Point of View. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Barclay, Linda. 2020. Disability with Dignity: Justice, Human Rights and Equal Status. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Baron, Marcia. 1984. “The Alleged Moral Repugnance of Acting from Duty.” The Journal of Philosophy 81 (4): 197–220. Google Scholar WorldCat Baron, Marcia. 1995. Kantian Ethics Almost without Apology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Baron, Marcia. 2008. “Virtue Ethics, Kantian Ethics, and the ʻOne Thought Too Manyʼ Objection.” In Kantʼs Ethics of Virtue, edited by Monika Betzler, 245–78. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Baron, Marcia, and Melissa Seymour Falmy. 2009. “Beneficence and Other Duties of Love in the Metaphysics of Morals.” In The Blackwell Guide to Kantʼs Ethics, edited by Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 211–28. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Baxley, Anne Margaret. 2005. “The Practical Significance of Taste in Kantʼs ʻCritique of Judgmentʼ: Love of Natural Beauty as a Mark of Moral Character.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (1): 33–45.

Google Scholar

WorldCat

Baxley, Anne Margaret. 2010. Kantʼs Theory of Virtue: The Value of Autocracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 392

Beiser , Frederick C. 2006. “Moral Faith and the Highest Good.” In The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, edited by Paul Guyer, 588–629. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bell, Macalester. 2013. Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of Contempt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bennett, Jonathan Francis. 1964. Rationality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Betzler, Monika. 2008. Kantʼs Ethics of Virtue. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bittner, Rudiger. 1989. What Reason Demands. Translated by Theodore Talbot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Blackburn, Simon. 1998. Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Blackburn, Simon. 2010. “The Majesty of Reason.” Philosophy 85 (1): 5–27. Google Scholar WorldCat Blackburn, Simon. 2013. “Reason and Passion.” In The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, edited by Hugh LaFollette. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee238 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Blum, Lawrence A. 1980. Friendship, Altruism, and Morality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bovens, Luc, and Stephan Hartmann. 2003. Bayesian Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bramer, Marilea. 2010. “The Importance of Personal Relationships in Kantian Moral Theory: A Reply to Care Ethics.” Hypatia 25 (1): 121–39. Google Scholar WorldCat Brandt, Richard. 1979. A Theory of the Good and the Right. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Bratman, Michael. 1987. Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Breazeale, Daniel. 1994. “Kant, Fichte and ʻthe Interest of Reasonʼ.” Daimon: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 9: 81–100. Google Scholar WorldCat Brewer, Kimberly. 2022. “Kantʼs Theory of the Intuitive Intellect.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 39 (2): 163–82. Google Scholar WorldCat Brook, Andrew. 2004. “Kant, Cognitive Science and Contemporary Neo-Kantianism.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (10–

11): 10–11. Google Scholar

WorldCat

Broome, John. 2013. Rationality through Reasoning. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Brownlee, Kimberley. 2020. Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Buchak, Lara. 2013. Risk and Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Buchdahl, Gerd. 1992. Kant and the Dynamics of Reason: Essays on the Structure of Kantʼs Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Buss, Sarah. 1999a. “Appearing Respectful: The Moral Significance of Manners.” Ethics 109 (4): 795–826. Google Scholar WorldCat Buss, Sarah. 1999b. “Respect for Persons.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (4): 517–50. Google Scholar WorldCat Buss, Sarah. 2005. “Valuing Autonomy and Respecting Persons: Manipulation, Seduction, and the Basis of Moral Constraints.” Ethics 115 (2): 195–235. Google Scholar WorldCat Buss, Sarah, and L Nandi Theunissen, eds. 2023. Rethinking the Value of Humanity. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Butler, Joseph. 2017. Fi een Sermons and Other Writings on Ethics, edited by David McNaughton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Byrd, B Sharon. 1980. “Kantʼs Theory of Punishment: Deterrence in Its Threat, Retribution in Its Execution.” Law and Philosophy 8: 151–220. Google Scholar WorldCat Byrd, B Sharon. 2002. “Kantʼs Theory of Contract.” In Kantʼs Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, edited by Mark Timmons, 111–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Byrd, B Sharon, and Joachim Hruschka. 2010. Kantʼs Doctrine of Right: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Byrne, Peter. 2007. Kant on God. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Caro, Robert A. 1975. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Vintage Books. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 393

Chance , Brian A. 2021. “Kant and the Enhancement Debate: Imperfect Duties and Perfecting Ourselves.” Bioethics 35 (8): 801–11. Google Scholar WorldCat Chignell, Andrew. 2007a. “Belief in Kant.” Philosophical Review 116 (3): 323–60.

Google Scholar

WorldCat

Chignell, Andrew. 2007b. “Kantʼs Concepts of Justification.” Noûs 41 (1): 33–63. Google Scholar WorldCat Chignell, Andrew. 2013. What May I Hope? New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Clarke, Samuel. 2010. A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God and Other Writings, Edited by Ezio Vailati. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cli on, Shane. 2018. Crippled Grace: Disability, Virtue Ethics, and the Good Life. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cohen, G A 1989. “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice.” Ethics 99: 906–44. Google Scholar WorldCat Corbetta, Maurizio, and Gordon L. Shulman. 2002. “Control of Goal-Directed and Stimulus-Driven Attention in the Brain.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 3 (3): 201–15. Google Scholar WorldCat Cranor, Carl F. 1980. “Kantʼs Respect-for-Persons Principle.” International Studies in Philosophy 12 (2): 19–39. Google Scholar WorldCat Cummiskey, David. 1996. Kantian Consequentialism. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam. 2012. “Solidarity and Social Moral Rules.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (5): 691–706. Google Scholar WorldCat Cureton, Adam. 2013a. “A Contractualist Reading of Kantʼs Proof of the Formula of Humanity.” Kantian Review 18 (3): 363–86. Google Scholar WorldCat Cureton, Adam. 2013b. “From Self-Respect to Respect for Others.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (4): 166–87. Google Scholar WorldCat Cureton, Adam. 2015. “Making Room for Rules.” Philosophical Studies 172 (3): 737–59. Google Scholar WorldCat Cureton, Adam. 2016a. “Kant on Cultivating a Good and Stable Will.” In Questions of Character, edited by Iskra Fileva, 63–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam. 2016b. “Unity of Reasons.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (4): 877–95. Google Scholar WorldCat Cureton, Adam. 2018a. “The Moral Concept of Right as Adjudication.” In Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Vol. 7, edited by Mark Timmons, 51–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam. 2018b. “Reasonable Hope in Kantʼs Ethics.” Kantian Review 23 (2): 181–203. Google Scholar WorldCat

Cureton, Adam. 2021. “Knowledge, Error, and Enlightenment in Kantʼs Moral Philosophy.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem Van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 283–309. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam. 2022. “Solidarity in Kantian Moral Theory.” In Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Vol. 12, edited by Mark Timmons , 54–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam. Forthcoming-a. “Disclosing a Disability at Work.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Work, edited by Julian Jonker and Grant Rozeboom. New York: Oxford University Press. Cureton, Adam.Forthcoming-b. “Respectful Deliberation in Disability Law: A Kantian Perspective.” In Philosophical Foundations of Disability Law, edited by Heloise Robinson. Jonas-Sébastien Beaudry, and Jonathan Herring. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam. Forthcoming-c. Respecting Disability: Attitudes, Ideals, and Relationships. New York: Oxford University Press. Cureton, Adam, and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. 2014. “Kant on Virtue and the Virtues.” In Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology, edited by Nancy Snow, 87–110. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam, and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. 2018a. Hypocrisy. In International Encyclopedia of Ethics, edited by Hugh LaFollette. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Original edition, 06/30/2018. https://doi-org.utk.idm.oclc.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee851 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam, and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. 2018b. “Kant on Virtue: Seeking the Ideal in Human Conditions.” In The Oxford Handbook of Virtue, edited by Nancy Snow, 263–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Cureton, Adam, and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. 2023. Supererogation. In International Encyclopedia of Ethics, edited by Hugh LaFollette. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee326.pub2 Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 394

Cureton , Adam, and Anita Silvers. 2018. “Respecting the Dignity of Children with Disabilities in Clinical Practice.” HEC Forum 29 (3): 257–76. Google Scholar WorldCat Dancy, Jonathan. 2004. Ethics without Principles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Daniels, Norman. 2008. Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Darwall, Stephen. 1977. “Two Kinds of Respect.” Ethics 88 (1): 36–49. Google Scholar WorldCat Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The Second-Person Standpoint. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Darwall, Stephen. 2008. The British Moralists and the Internal ʻOughtʼ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Davidson, Donald. 1963. “Actions, Reasons, and Causes.” The Journal of Philosophy 60: 685–99.

Google Scholar

WorldCat

Davidson, Donald. 1978. “Intending.” In Essays on Actions and Events, edited by Donald Davidson, 83–102. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Dean, Richard. 2006. The Value of Humanity in Kantʼs Moral Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Dean, Richard. 2009. “The Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself.” In The Blackwell Guide to Kantʼs Ethics, edited by Thomas E Hill, Jr., 83–101. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Deligiorgi, Katerina. 2002. “Universalisability, Publicity, and Communication: Kantʼs Conception of Reason.” European Journal of Philosophy 10 (2): 143–59. Google Scholar WorldCat Denis, Lara. 1999. “Kant on the Perfection of Others.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 37 (1): 25–41. Google Scholar WorldCat Denis, Lara. 2001. “From Friendship to Marriage: Revising Kant.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (1): 1–28. Google Scholar WorldCat Denis, Lara. 2006. “Kantʼs Conception of Virtue.” In The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, edited by Paul Guyer, 505–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Dillon, Robin. 1992. “Respect and Care: Toward Moral Integration.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22: 105–32. Google Scholar WorldCat Dillon, Robin. 1995. Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Dillon, Robin. 2004. “Kant on Arrogance and Self-Respect.” In Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women Philosophers, edited by Cheshire Calhoun, 191–216. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Dillon, Robin. 2016. “Respect.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N Zalta. Winter. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/respect/ Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Donagan, Alan. 1977. The Theory of Morality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Ebels-Duggan, Kyla. 2009. “Moral Community: Escaping the Ethical State of Nature.” Philosophersʼ Imprint 9 (8). Engstrom, Stephen. 1986. “Herman on Mutual Aid.” Ethics 96 (2): 346–9. Google Scholar WorldCat Engstrom, Stephen. 2002. “The Inner Freedom of Virtue.” In Kantʼs Metaphysics of Morals: Interpetative Essays, edited by Mark Timmons, 289–315. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Engstrom, Stephen. 2009. The Form of Practical Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Fahmy, Melissa Seymour. 2009. “Active Sympathetic Participation: Reconsidering Kantʼs Duty of Sympathy.” Kantian Review 14 (1): 31–52. Google Scholar WorldCat Fahmy, Melissa Seymour. 2019. “On Virtues of Love and Wide Ethical Duties.” Kantian Review 24 (3): 415–37. Google Scholar WorldCat Fahmy, Melissa Seymour. 2023a. “Never Merely as a Means: Rethinking the Role and Relevance of Consent.” Kantian Review 28 (1): 41–62. Google Scholar WorldCat Fahmy, Melissa Seymour. 2023b. “On Kantian Obligatory Ends and Their Maxims of Actions.” Studia Kantiana 21 (2): 31–43. Google Scholar WorldCat Falduto, Antonino. 2014. The Faculties of the Human Mind and the Case of Moral Feeling in Kantʼs Philosophy. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Falk, W D. 1986. “Goading and Guiding.” In Ought, Reasons, and Morality, edited by W D Falk, 42–66. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Ferrarin, Alfredo. 2015. The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 395

Firth , Roderick. 1952. “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (3): 317– 45. Google Scholar WorldCat Flynn, Patricia C. 2007. “Honesty and Intimacy in Kantʼs Duty of Friendship.” International Philosophical Quarterly 47 (4): 417–24. Google Scholar WorldCat Fodor, Jerry. 1968. Psychological Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology. New York: Random House. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Fodor, Jerry. 1975. The Language of Thought. New York: Crowell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Foot, Philippa. 1978. Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Formosa, Paul, and Martin Sticker. 2019. “Kant and the Demandingness of the Virtue of Beneficence.” European Journal of Philosophy 27 (3): 625–42. Google Scholar WorldCat Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Friedman, Marilyn. 1997. “Autonomy and Social Relationships: Rethinking the Feminist Critique.” In Feminists Rethink the Self, edited by Diana T Meyers, 40–61. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Friedman, Michael. 1992. “Regulative and Constitutive.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (S1): 73–102. Google Scholar WorldCat

Frierson, Patrick R. 2006. “Character and Evil in Kantʼs Moral Anthropology.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (4): 623–34. Google Scholar WorldCat Galvin, Richard. 1991. “Ethical Formalism: The Contradiction in Conception Test.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 8 (4): 387–408. Google Scholar WorldCat Galvin, Richard. 2009. “The Universal Law Formulas.” In The Blackwell Guide to Kantʼs Ethics, edited by Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 52–82. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Gauthier, David. 1986. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Geach, Peter. 1956. “Good and Evil.” Analysis 17 (2): 33–42. Google Scholar WorldCat Gelfert, Axel. 2006. “Kant on Testimony.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 14 (4): 627–52. Google Scholar WorldCat Gelfert, Axel. 2010. “Kant and the Enlightenmentʼs Contribution to Social Epistemology.” Episteme 7 (1): 79–99. Google Scholar WorldCat Gert, Bernard. 2001. “Hobbes on Reason.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82: 243–57. Google Scholar WorldCat Gibbard, Allan. 1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Gilead, Amihud. 1985. “Restless and Impelling Reason: On the Architectonic of Human Reason According to Kant.” Idealistic Studies 15: 137–50. Google Scholar WorldCat Ginsborg, Hannah. 1997. “Kant on Aesthetic and Biological Purposiveness.” In Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls, edited by Andrews Reath. Barbara Herman, and Christine M. Korsgaard, 329–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Ginsborg, Hannah. 2015. The Normativity of Nature: Essays on Kantʼs “Critique of Judgement”. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Glackin, Shane N. 2016. “Three Aristotelian Accounts of Disease and Disability.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 33 (3): 311–26. Google Scholar WorldCat Goodman, Nelson. 1983. Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Granger, Frank. 1893. “Aristotleʼs Theory of Reason.” Mind 2 (7): 307–18. Google Scholar WorldCat Greco, John. 2009. “Knowledge and Success from Ability.” Philosophical Studies 142 (1): 17–26. Google Scholar WorldCat Greco, John. 2010. Achieving Knowledge: A Virtue-Theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Greene, Joshua. 2007. “The Secret Joke of Kantʼs Soul.” In Moral Psychology, Vol. 3, edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, 35–80. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Gregor, Mary J. 1963. Laws of Freedom. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Grenberg, Jeanine. 2022. Kantʼs Deontological Eudaimonism: The Dutiful Pursuit of Virtue and Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Gri in, James. 1986. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 396

Guevara , Daniel. 1999. “The Impossibility of Supererogation in Kantʼs Moral Theory.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (3): 593–624. Google Scholar WorldCat Guyer, Paul. 1987. Kant and the Claims of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Guyer, Paul. 1989. “The Unity of Reason: Pure Reason as Practical Reason in Kantʼs Early Conception of the Transcendental Dialectic.” The Monist 72 (2): 139–67. Google Scholar WorldCat Guyer, Paul. 1997. Kant and the Claims of Taste. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Guyer, Paul. 2000. Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Guyer, Paul. 2005. Kantʼs System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Guyer, Paul. 2006. “Bridging the Gulf: Kantʼs Project in the Third Critique.” In A Companion to Kant, edited by Graham Bird, 423– 40. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Guyer, Paul. 2009. “Problems with Freedom: Kantʼs Argument in Groundwork Iii and Its Subsequent Emendations.” In Kantʼs Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, edited by Jens Timmermann, 176–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Guyer, Paul. 2011. “Kantian Communities: The Realm of Ends, the Ethical Community, and the Highest Good.” In Kant and the Concept of Community, edited by Charlton Payne and Lucas Thorpe, 88–120. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Haack, Susan. 1976. “The Justification of Deduction.” Mind 85 (337): 112–19. Google Scholar WorldCat Habermas, Jürgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Polity. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hampton, Jean. 1995. “Does Hume Have an Instrumental Conception of Practical Reason?” Hume Studies 21 (1): 57–74.

Google Scholar

WorldCat

Harman, Gilbert. 1982. “Critical Review: Richard B. Brandt, a Theory of the Good and the Right.” Philosophical Studies 42 (1): 119–39. Google Scholar WorldCat Harman, Gilbert. 1986. Change in View: Principles of Reasoning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by Hugh Barr Nisbet. Edited by Allen W Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Held, Virginia. 2006. The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Henson, Richard G. 1979. “What Kant Might Have Said: Moral Worth and the Overdetermination of Dutiful Action.” Philosophical Review 88 (1): 39–54. Google Scholar WorldCat Herman, Barbara. 1993a. “Could It Be Worth Thinking About Kant on Sex and Marriage?” In A Mind of Oneʼs Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity, edited by Louise Antony and Charlotte Witt, 49–68. New York: Westview Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Herman, Barbara. 1993b. The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Herman, Barbara. 2007a. “A Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends.” In Moral Literacy, by B. Herman, 51–78. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Herman, Barbara. 2007b. Moral Literacy. New York: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Heyd, David. 1980. “Beyond the Call of Duty in Kantʼs Ethics.” Kant-Studien 71 (1–4): 308–24. Google Scholar WorldCat Hieronymi, Pamela. 2004. “The Force and Fairness of Blame.” Philosophical Perspectives 18: 115–48. Google Scholar WorldCat Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 1991. Autonomy and Self-Respect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 1992. Dignity and Practical Reason in Kantʼs Moral Theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 2000. Respect, Pluralism, and Justice: Kantian Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 2002. Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 2012. Virtue, Rules, and Justice: Kantian Aspirations. Oxford: Oxford Unievrsity Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 2021a. Beyond Duty: Kantian Ideals of Respect, Beneficence, and Appreciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 397

Hill , Thomas E, Jr. 2021b. “Deliberating with Solidarity, Respect, and Appreciation.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 310–29. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hobbes, Thomas. 1991. Man and Citizen, Edited by Bernard Gert. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Leviathan, Edited by E M. Curley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Holtman, Sarah. 1997. “Toward Social Reform: Kantʼs Penal Theory Reinterpreted.” Utilitas 9: 3–21. Google Scholar WorldCat Holtman, Sarah. 2009. “Autonomy and the Kingdom of Ends.” In The Blackwell Guide to Kantʼs Ethics, edited by Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 102–18. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Holtman, Sarah. 2011. “Kant, Retributivism and Civic Respect.” In Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy, edited by Mark D. White, 107–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Holtman, Sarah. 2018a. “Beneficence and Disability.” In Disability in Practice: Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships, edited by Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 33–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Holtman, Sarah. 2018b. Kant on Civil Society and Welfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Holtman, Sarah. 2022. “Legislating in the Fray: Lillian Hellman and the Kingdom of Ends.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspectives and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 227–48. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hooker, Brad. 2000. Ideal Code, Real World: A Rule-Consequentialist Theory of Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hruschka, Joachim. 1986. “Imputation.” BYU Law Review (669): 669–710. Google Scholar WorldCat Hubbard, Timothy L. 2010. “Auditory Imagery: Empirical Findings.” Psychological Bulletin 136 (2): 302–29. Google Scholar WorldCat Hume, David. 1998. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Hume, David. 2000. A Treatise of Human Nature, Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Irwin, Terence. 1975. “Aristotle on Reason, Desire, and Virtue.” The Journal of Philosophy 72 (17): 567–78. Google Scholar WorldCat

Jackson, Robert H. 1945. Opening Statement before the International Military Tribunal. The Robert H. Jackson Center. Jaggar, Alison M. 1983. Feminist Politics and Human Nature. (Philosophy and Society.) Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Je erson, Thomas. 1813. “Thomas Je erson to Richard Rush, May 31, 1813.” In The Thomas Je erson Papers at the Library of Congress, edited by Paul Leicester Ford: Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/collections/thomas-je erson-papers/aboutthis-collection/ Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johnson, Robert N. 1996a. “Kantʼs Conception of Merit.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 77 (4): 310–34. Google Scholar WorldCat Johnson, Robert N. 1996b. “Kantʼs Conception of Virtue.” Jarhbuch für Recht und Ethik 5: 365–87. Google Scholar WorldCat Johnson, Robert N. 2007. “Value and Autonomy in Kantian Ethics.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 2: 133–48. Google Scholar WorldCat Johnson, Robert N. 2009. “Good Will and the Moral Worth of Acting from Duty.” In The Blackwell Guide to Kantʼs Ethics, edited by Thomas E Hill, Jr., 19–51. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johnson, Robert N. 2011. Self-Improvement: An Essay in Kantian Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Johnson, Robert N. 2013. “Happiness as a Natural End.” In Kantʼs Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, edited by Mark Timmons, 317–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Jorati, Julia 2023. “Slavery, Freedom, and Human Value in Early Modern Philosophy.” In Rethinking the Value of Humanity, edited by Sarah Buss and L Nandi Theunissen, 97–126. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kahn, Samuel. 2021. Kantʼs Theory of Conscience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kahn, Samuel. 2022. “Kant and the Duty to Promote Oneʼs Own Happiness.” Inquiry 65 (3): 1–12. Google Scholar WorldCat Kamm, F M. 1993. Morality, Mortality. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 398

Keller , Simon. 2004. “Friendship and Belief.” Philosophical Papers 33 (3): 329–51. Google Scholar WorldCat Kemp Smith, Norman. 1962. A Commentary to Kantʼs “Critique of Pure Reason.” 2nd ed. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kerstein, Samuel. 2002. Kantʼs Search for the Supreme Principle of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kitcher, Patricia. 1990. Kantʼs Transcendental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Kittay, Eva Feder. 2019. Learning from My Daughter: The Value and Care of Disabled Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kleingeld, Pauline. 1998a. “The Conative Character of Reason in Kantʼs Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 36 (1): 77–97. Google Scholar WorldCat Kleingeld, Pauline. 1998b. “Kant on the Unity of Theoretical and Practical Reason.” Review of Metaphysics 52 (2): 500–28. Google Scholar WorldCat Kleingeld, Pauline. 2017. “Contradiction and Kantʼs Formula of Universal Law.” Kant-Studien 108 (1): 89–115. Google Scholar WorldCat Kleingeld, Pauline, and Marcus Willaschek. 2019. “Autonomy without Paradox: Kant, Self-Legislation and the Moral Law.” Philosophersʼ Imprint 19 (6): 1–18. Google Scholar WorldCat Kneller, Jane. 2007. Kant and the Power of Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kohl, Markus. 2015. “Kant on Determinism and the Categorical Imperative.” Ethics 125 (2): 331–56. Google Scholar WorldCat Kohl, Markus. 2017. “Radical Evil as a Regulative Idea.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (4): 641–73. Google Scholar WorldCat Kohl, Markus. 2018. “Kantʼs Critique of Instrumental Reason.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (3): 489–516. Google Scholar WorldCat Kohl, Markus. 2023. Kant on Freedom and Rational Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kolodny, Niko. 2005. “Why Be Rational.” Mind 114 (455): 509–63. Google Scholar WorldCat Kolodny, Niko. 2008. “Why Be Disposed to Be Coherent?” Ethics 118 (3): 437–63. Google Scholar WorldCat Korsgaard, Christine M. 1996a. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Korsgaard, Christine M. 1996b. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Korsgaard, Christine M. 2008. The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Korsgaard, Christine M. 2009. Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kosch, Michelle. 2023. “Fichte on the Value of Rational Agency.” In Rethinking the Value of Humanity, edited by Sarah Buss and L Nandi Theunissen, 202–24. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Kotkas, Toomas. 2011. “Kant on the Right of Pardon: A Necessity and Rulerʼs Personal Forgiveness.” Kant Studien 102 (4): 413–21. Google Scholar WorldCat Kraus, Katharina T. 2020. Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation: The Nature of Inner Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Kriegel, Uriah, and Mark Timmons. 2021. “The Phenomenology of Kantian Respect for Persons.” In Respect: Philosophical Essays, edited by RichardDean and Oliver Sensen, 77–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1952. Theodicy. Translated by E M Huggard. Edited by Austin Farrer. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 2020. Discourse on Metaphysics. Translated by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Locke, John. 1979. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Edited by P H Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Locke, John. 1988. Two Treatises of Government, Edited by PeterLaslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Longuenesse, Béatrice. 1998. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 399

Louden , Robert B. 2011. Kantʼs Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Machina, Mark J. 1987. “Choice under Uncertainty: Problems Solved and Unsolved.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 1 (1): 121– 54. Google Scholar WorldCat MacIntyre, Alasdair C. 1988. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? London: Duckworth. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Mackenzie, Catriona, and Natalie Stoljar. 2000. “Introduction: Autonomy Refigured.” In Relational Autonomy, edited by Catriona Mackenzie and Natalie Stoljar, 3–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Mackenzie, Jordan. 2018. “Knowing Yourself and Being Worth Knowing.” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (2): 243–61. Google Scholar WorldCat Massie, Robert K. 1981. Peter the Great: His Life and World. New York: Random House. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC McDowell, John Henry. 1998. Mind, Value, and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC McMahan, Je rey. 2005. “Causing Disabled People to Exist and Causing People to Be Disabled.” Ethics 116 (1): 77–99. Google Scholar WorldCat

Mele, Alfred R. 2003. “Agentsʼ Abilities.” Noûs 37 (3): 447–70. Google Scholar WorldCat Merritt, Melissa McBay. 2009. “Reflection, Enlightenment, and the Significance of Spontaneity in Kant.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (5): 981–1010. Google Scholar WorldCat Mieth, Corinna, and Garrath Williams. 2021. “Poverty, Dignity, and the Kingdom of Ends.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem Van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 206–23. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Mill, John Stuart. 1998. Utilitarianism, Edited by Roger Crisp. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Millgram, Elijah. 2023. “The Invention of Value and the Value of Humanity.” In Rethinking the Value of Humanity, edited by Sarah Buss and L Nandi Theunissen, 366–93. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Møller, Sofie. 2020. Kantʼs Tribunal of Reason: Legal Metaphor and Normativity in the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Moore, G E. 1993. Principia Ethica, Edited by Thomas Baldwin. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Moyar, Dean. 2008. “Unstable Autonomy: Conscience and Judgment in Kantʼs Moral Philosophy.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (3): 327–60. Google Scholar WorldCat Mudd, Sasha. 2016. “Rethinking the Priority of Practical Reason in Kant.” European Journal of Philosophy 24 (1): 78–102. Google Scholar WorldCat Mudd, Sasha. 2017. “The Demand for Systematicity and the Authority of Theoretical Reason in Kant.” Kantian Review 22 (1): 81– 106. Google Scholar WorldCat Munzel, G Felicitas. 1998. Kantʼs Conception of Moral Character: The “Critical” Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Murphy, Je rie G. 1987. “Does Kant Have a Theory of Punishment?” Columbia Law Review 87 (3): 509–32. Google Scholar WorldCat Nagel, Thomas. 1978. The Possibility of Altruism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Nagel, Thomas. 1991. Equality and Partiality. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Nagel, Thomas. 1997. “Justice and Nature.” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 17 (2): 303–21. Google Scholar WorldCat Neiman, Susan. 1994. The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1954. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Noddings, Nel. 2003. Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Noggle, Robert. 1999. “Kantian Respect and Particular Persons.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29 (3): 449–77. Google Scholar WorldCat Nussbaum, Martha C. 2004. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC OʼNeill, John. 2002. “The Rhetoric of Deliberation: Some Problems in Kantian Theories of Deliberative Democracy.” Res Publica 8 (3): 249–68. Google Scholar WorldCat OʼNeill, Onora. 1975. Acting on Principle. New York: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 400

OʼNeill , Onora. 1989. Constructions of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC OʼNeill, Onora. 1992. “Vindicating Reason.” In The Cambridge Companion to Kant, edited by Paul Guyer, 280–308. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC OʼNeill, Onora. 2000. Bounds of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC OʼNeill, Onora. 2003. “Autonomy: The Emperorʼs New Clothes.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 77 (1): 1–21. Google Scholar WorldCat Pallikkathayil, Japa. 2010. “Deriving Morality from Politics: Rethinking the Formula of Humanity.” Ethics 121 (1): 116–47. Google Scholar WorldCat Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Parfit, Derek, and John Broome. 1997. “Reasons and Motivation.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 71: 98–146. Google Scholar WorldCat Paton, H J. 1967. The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kants Moral Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Paton, H J. 1993. “Kant on Friendship.” In Friendship: A Philosophical Reader, edited by Neera Badhwar, 133–54. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Pearson, Joel, and Stephen M. Kosslyn. 2015. “The Heterogeneity of Mental Representation: Ending the Imagery Debate.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (33): 10089–92. Google Scholar WorldCat Perry, Charner M. 1930. “Value as Any Object of Any Interest.” International Journal of Ethics 40 (4): 490–5. Google Scholar WorldCat

Pettit, Philip, and Michael Smith. 1993. “Practical Unreason.” Mind 102 (405): 53–79. Google Scholar WorldCat Pinheiro Walla, Alice. 2022. Happiness in Kantʼs Practical Philosophy: Morality, Indirect Duties, and Welfare Rights. New York: Lexington Books. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Pinker, Steven. 2021. Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. New York: Viking. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Plato. 2007. Six Great Dialogues. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Mineola, NY: Dover. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Pogge, Thomas. 1998. “The Categorical Imperative.” In Kantʼs Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays, edited by Paul Guyer, 189–213. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Pollok, Konstantin. 2017. Kantʼs Theory of Normativity: Exploring the Space of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Quinn, Warren. 1992. “Rationality and the Human Good.” Social Philosophy and Policy 9 (2): 81–95. Google Scholar WorldCat Raedler, Sebastian. 2015. Kant and the Interests of Reason. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rawls, John. 1999a. Collected Papers, Edited by Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rawls, John. 1999b. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rawls, John. 1999c. A Theory of Justice. Rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rawls, John. 2000. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Edited by Erin Kelly. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Raz, Joseph. 1999. Engaging Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Raz, Joseph. 2001. Value, Respect, and Attachment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Reath, Andrews. 2006. Agency and Autonomy in Kantʼs Moral Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Reath, Andrews. 2009. “Setting Ends for Oneself through Reason.” In Spheres of Reason, edited by Simon Robertson, 199–219. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Reid, Constance. 1996. Hilbert. New York: Springer. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Rescher, Nicholas. 2000. Kant and the Reach of Reason: Studies in Kantʼs Theory of Rational Systematization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 401

Ridge , Michael. 2003. “Contractualism and the New and Improved Redundancy Objection.” Analysis 63 (4): 337–42. Google Scholar WorldCat Ripstein, Arthur. 2009. Force and Freedom: Kantʼs Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rosati, Connie S. 1995. “Persons, Perspectives, and Full Information Accounts of the Good.” Ethics 105 (2): 296–325. Google Scholar WorldCat Ross, W D. 2002. The Right and the Good, Edited by Philip Stratton-Lake. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1994. The Social Contract. Translated by Christopher Betts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Russell, Gillian, and Greg Restall. 2010. “Barriers to Implication.” In Hume on Is and Ought, edited by Charles Pigden, 243–59. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Ryle, Gilbert. 1951. The Concept of Mind. Watford, UK: Mayflower. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Satne, Paula. 2018. “Forgiveness and Punishment in Kantʼs Moral System.” In Kantʼs Doctrine of Right in the 21st Century, edited by Larry Krasno . Nuria Sánchez Madrid, and Paula Satne, 201–19. Cardi , UK: University of Wales Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Savage, Leonard. 1954. The Foundations of Statistics. New York: Wiley. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Scanlon, T M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Scanlon, T M. 2007. “Structural Irrationality.” In Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit, edited by Geo rey Brennan, 84–103. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Scanlon, T M. 2009. Being Realistic About Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Scanlon, T M 2011. “How I Am Not a Kantian.” In On What Matters, Vol. 2, edited by Derek Parfit and Samuel Sche ler, 116–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

WorldCat

COPAC

Schafer, Karl. 2023. Kantʼs Reason: The Unity of Reason & the Limits of Comprehension in Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Schmidt, James. 1992. “What Enlightenment Was: How Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant Answered the Berlinische Monatsschri .” Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (1): 77–101. Google Scholar WorldCat Schneewind, J B. 1998. The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2010. The World as Will and Representation. Translated by Judith Norman. Alistair Welchman, and Christopher Janaway. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sedgwick, Sally. 1997. “Can Kantʼs Ethics Survive the Feminist Critique?” In Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant, edited by Robin May Schott, 77–100. College Station, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sen, Amartya. 1970. Collective Choice and Social Welfare. San Francisco, CA: Holden-Day. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sensen, Oliver. 2011a. “Duties to Others from Respect (Tl 6:462–468).” In Kantʼs “Tugendlehre”: A Comprehensive Commentary, edited by Andreas Trampota. Oliver Sensen, and Jens Timmermann, 343–64. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sensen, Oliver. 2011b. Kant on Human Dignity. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sensen, Oliver. 2014. “Respect Towards Elderly Demented Patients.” Diametros 39: 109–24. Google Scholar WorldCat Sensen, Oliver. 2021. “The Kingdom of Ends in the Groundwork.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem Van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 51–67. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sensen, Oliver. 2022. “How to Treat Someone with Respect.” In Respect: Philosophical Essays, edited by Richard Dean and Oliver Sensen, 99–117. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Shieber, Joseph. 2010. “Between Autonomy and Authority: Kant on the Epistemic Status of Testimony.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (2): 327–48. Google Scholar WorldCat Sibley, W M. 1953. “The Rational Versus the Reasonable.” Philosophical Review 62 (4): 554–60. Google Scholar WorldCat Smith, Michael. 1994. The Moral Problem. (Philosophical Theory.) Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Smith, Michael. 2003. “Rational Capacities, Or: How to Distinguish Recklessness, Weakness, and Compulsion.” In Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality, edited by Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet, 17–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Smith, Michael. 2020. “Are There Reasons to Act Morally?” Jiangsu Social Sciences 2: 33–41. p. 402

Smith , Michael, and Edward Harcourt. 2004. “Instrumental Desires Instrumental Rationality.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 78: 93–129. Google Scholar WorldCat Sorensen, Kelly, and Diane Williamson, eds. 2018. Kant and the Faculty of Feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Spinoza, Baruch. 2018. Ethics. Translated by MichaelSilverthorne and Matthew J. Kisner. Edited by Matthew J Kisner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Stark, Cynthia A. 1997. “Decision Procedures, Standards of Rightness and Impartiality.” Noûs 31 (4): 478–95. Google Scholar WorldCat Stark, Cynthia A. 2021. “Gaslighting, Self-Respect, and the Kingdom of Ends.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem Van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 266–82. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Stevenson, Leslie. 2003. “Opinion, Belief or Faith, and Knowledge.” Kantian Review 7: 72–101. Google Scholar WorldCat Sticker, Martin. 2021a. “Kant, Moral Overdemandingness and Self-Scrutiny.” Noûs 55 (2): 293–316. Google Scholar WorldCat Sticker, Martin. 2021b. Rationalizing (Vernün eln). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sticker, Martin, and Marcel van Ackeren. 2018. “The Demandingness of Beneficence and Kantʼs System of Duties.” Social Theory and Practice 44 (3): 405–36. Google Scholar WorldCat Stohr, Karen. 2011. “Kantian Beneficence and the Problem of Obligatory Aid.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 8 (1): 45–67. Google Scholar WorldCat Stohr, Karen. 2018. “Pretending Not to Notice: Respect, Attention, and Disability.” In Disability in Practice: Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships, edited by Adam Cureton and Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 50–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Stone, Oliver. 1986. Platoon. Orion Pictures. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat

COPAC

Stratmann, Joe.2023. “Kantʼs Rationalist Account of Hope.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph2022-0057 Stratton-Lake, Philip. 2003. “Scanlonʼs Contractualism and the Redundancy Objection.” Analysis 63 (1): 70–6. Google Scholar WorldCat Strawson, P F. 1966. The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kantʼs Critique of Pure Reason. London: Methuen. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Strawson, P F. 2008. “Social Morality and Individual Ideal.” In Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, edited by P. F. Strawson, 29–49. London: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Stroud, Sarah. 2006. “Epistemic Partiality in Friendship.” Ethics 116 (3): 498–524. Google Scholar WorldCat Suikkanen, Jussi. 2005. “Contractualist Replies to the Redundancy Objections.” Theoria 71 (1): 38–58. Google Scholar WorldCat Sumner, L Wayne. 1996. Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sussman, David. 2005. “Perversity of the Heart.” Philosophical Review 114 (2): 153–77. Google Scholar WorldCat Sussman, David. 2008. “Shame and Punishment in Kantʼs ʻDoctrine of Rightʼ.” Philosophical Quarterly 58 (231): 299–317. Google Scholar WorldCat Sussman, David. 2010. “Something to Love: Kant and the Faith of Reason.” In Kantʼs Moral Metaphysics: God, Freedom, and Immortality, edited by Benjamin J Bruxvoort Lipscomb and James Krueger, 133–48. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Sussman, David. 2022. “Respect and Retribution in the Kingdom of Ends.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspectives and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 168–89. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Tang, Yi-Yuan, and Michael I. Posner. 2009. “Attention Training and Attention State Training.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13 (5): 222–7. Google Scholar WorldCat Thomason, Krista K. 2013. “Shame and Contempt in Kantʼs Moral Theory.” Kantian Review 18 (2): 221–40. Google Scholar WorldCat Timmermann, Jens. 2005. “Good but Not Required?—Assessing the Demands of Kantian Ethics.” Journal of Moral Philosophy 2 (1): 9–27. Google Scholar WorldCat Timmermann, Jens. 2007. Kantsʼ Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Timmermann, Jens. 2013. “Kantian Dilemmas? Moral Conflict in Kantʼs Ethical Theory.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 95 (1): 36–64. Google Scholar WorldCat p. 403

Timmons , Mark. 1985. “Kant and the Possibility of Moral Motivation.” Southern Journal of Philosophy 23 (3): 377–98. Google Scholar WorldCat Timmons, Mark. 1994. “Evil and Imputation in Kantʼs Ethics.” Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik 2: 113–41. Google Scholar WorldCat Timmons, Mark. 2017. Significance and System: Essays on Kantʼs Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Timmons, Mark. 2021a. “ʻCloser to Intuition (According to a Certain Analogy) and Thereby to Feelingʼ: Making Kantʼs Kingdom of Ends Intuitive.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem Van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 68–87. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Timmons, Mark. 2021b. Kantʼs Doctrine of Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Timmons, Mark. Forthcoming. “ʻCounteracting Evil with United Forcesʼ: On Citizenship in a Religious Community with Special Attention to Church Rituals.” In Kantian Citizenship: Grounds, Standards and Global Implications, edited by Mark Timmons and Sorin Baiasu. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Treisman, A M, and G. Gelade. 1980. “A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention.” Cognitive Psychology 12 (1): 97–136. Google Scholar WorldCat Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. 1974. “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science 185 (4157): 1124–31. Google Scholar WorldCat Urmson, J O 1953. “The Interpretation of the Moral Philosophy of J. S. Mill.” Philosophical Quarterly 3 (10): 33–9. Google Scholar WorldCat Urmson, J O. 1958. “Saints and Heroes.” In Essays in Moral Philosophy, edited by A I. Melden, 198–216. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Van der Rijt, Jan-Willem. 2012. The Importance of Assent: A Theory of Coercion and Dignity. Dordrecht: Springer. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Van der Rijt, Jan-Willem. 2017. “Inherent Dignity, Contingent Dignity and Human Rights: Solving the Puzzle of the Protection of Dignity.” Erkenntnis 82 (6): 1321–38. Google Scholar WorldCat van Fraassen, Bas C. 1989. Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Varden, Helga. 2020. Sex, Love, & Gender: A Kantian Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Varden, Helga.2024. “Kant on Property.” In The Oxford Handbook of Kant, edited by Anil Gomes and Andrew Stephenson, 410– 30. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Velkley, Richard. 2014. Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundation of Kantʼs Critical Philosophy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Velleman, J David. 1988. “Brandtʼs Definition of “Good”.” Philosophical Review 97 (3): 353–71. Google Scholar WorldCat Velleman, J David. 1999. “Love as a Moral Emotion.” Ethics 109 (2): 338–74. Google Scholar WorldCat Velleman, J David. 2006. “Self to Self.” In Self to Self: Selected Essays, by David Velleman, 170–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Vilhauer, Benjamin. 2021. “ʻReasonʼs Sympathyʼ and Its Foundations in Productive Imagination.” Kantian Review 26 (3): 455–74. Google Scholar WorldCat

von der Pfordten, Dietmar. 2021. “Kantʼs Understanding of Human Dignity as Self-Determination in the Realm of Ends.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem Van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 88–106. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC von Neumann, John. 1944. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC von Neumann, John, and Oskar Morgenstern. 1953. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Vorhaus, John. 2020. “Respect, Identification and Profound Cognitive Impairment.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, edited by Adam Cureton and David Wasserman, 399–415. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Walden, Kenneth. 2023. “Great Beyond All Comparison.” In Rethinking the Value of Humanity, edited by Sarah Buss and Nandi Theunissen, 181–201. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Waldron, Jeremy. 2021. “All Kings in the Kingdom of Ends.” In Human Dignity and the Kingdom of Ends: Kantian Perspective and Practical Applications, edited by Jan-Willem Van der Rijt and Adam Cureton, 132–47. New York: Routledge. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC p. 404

Walker , Margaret Urban. 2007. Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics. 2nd ed, (Studies in Feminist Philosophy.) New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Watkins, Eric. 2005. Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Waxman, Wayne. 1991. Kantʼs Model of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Weber, Max. 1930. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. London: George Allen & Unwin. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wedgwood, Ralph. 2011. “Instrumental Rationality.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 6: 280–309. Google Scholar WorldCat Wiggins, David. 1998. “Deliberation and Practical Reason.” In Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value, edited by David Wiggins, 215–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Williams, Bernard. 1973. Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Williams, Bernard. 1981. Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Williams, Bernard. 1985. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Williams, Howard. 1977. “Kantʼs Concept of Property.” Philosophical Quarterly 27 (106): 32–40.

Google Scholar

WorldCat

Winegar, Reed. 2017. “Kant on Godʼs Intuitive Understanding: Interpreting Cj §76ʼs Modal Claims.” Kantian Review 22 (2): 305– 29. Google Scholar WorldCat Wolf, Susan. 1982. “Moral Saints.” The Journal of Philosophy 79 (8): 419–39. Google Scholar WorldCat Wolf, Susan. 2012. “One Thought Too Many: Love, Morality, and the Ordering of Commitment.” In Luck, Value, and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, edited by Ulrike Heuer and Gerald Lang, 71–94. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wol , Robert Paul. 1974. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kantʼs Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: Harper & Row. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wood, Allen W. 1970. Kantʼs Moral Religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wood, Allen W. 1984. “Kantʼs Compatibilism.” In Self and Nature in Kantʼs Philosophy, edited by Allen W Wood, 73–101. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wood, Allen W. 1999. Kantʼs Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wood, Allen W. 2008. Kantian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Wood, Allen W. 2009. “Duties to Oneself, Duties of Respect to Others.” In The Blackwell Guide to Kantʼs Ethics, edited by Thomas E Hill, Jr., 229–52. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Yovel, Yirmiyahu. 1986. “The Interests of Reason: From Metaphysics to Moral History.” Seventh Jerusalem Philosophy Encounter. Ypi, Lea. 2021. The Architectonic of Reason: Purposiveness and Systematic Unity in Kantʼs Critique of Pure Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Zagzebski, Linda. 1996. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Zagzebski, Linda. 2010. “Exemplarist Virtue Theory.” Metaphilosophy 41 (1–2): 41–57. Google Scholar WorldCat Zuckert, Rachel. 2007. Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar Google Preview WorldCat COPAC

Sovereign Reason: Autonomy and our Interests of Reason Adam Cureton https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191960253.001.0001 Published online: 27 January 2025 Published in print: 17 April 2025

Online ISBN: 9780191960253

Print ISBN: 9780192868190

Search in this book

END MATTER

Index  Published: January 2025

Subject: 17th - 18th Century Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

For the bene t of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Abstract Principle of Justi ability 124–25, 186–87 See also Categorical Imperative; principle of justi ability schema for interpreting 125–37 abstraction  See attention, power of action  See choice, power of acts acts of body 95, 250, 270 acts of mind 44, 83, 95, 250, 267 voluntary and involuntary acts 44, 52, 58, 95, 250, 267–71 See also attribute; choice, power of; freedom of action; habit; impute voluntary and involuntary omissions 252–53, 267–71 See also attribute; choice, power of; freedom of action; habit; impute addictions 25–26, 247–48, 252, 270–71 See also freedom of action; habits admiration 1–2, 54–55, 57–58, 125, 231, 338, 346 aesthetic judgments 49–50, 54, 57, 62, 98n.8, 275, 278, 335–36n.11, 338, 355–56 See also beauty; sublimity a ability 54–55, 215, 364, 374, 376 See also politeness a

nity 180, 193–94, 201–2, 205 See also systematic unity interests of reason 193–94 laws 194, 200–1, 285

akratic principle of reason 9–10, 105n.19, 120–21 See also laws of reason Allison, Henry 10n.21, 11n.23, 42n.1, 50n.24, 52n.32, 53n.36, 54n.37, 61n.1, 70n.25, 76n.48, 98n.8, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 143n.5, 145n.10, 173n.9, 188n.34, 195n.60, 218n.61, 247n.2, 254–55n.22, 257n.38, 273n.99, 335– 36n.11, 337n.15, 339n.20, 364n.4 Ameriks, Karl 46n.9, 52n.32, 218n.61, 247n.2 anger 1–2, 54–55, 58, 79, 233, 240–41, 340–41, 346, 373 animal choice 247n.1

animals 21, 96, 131–32, 189–90, 228–29, 247n.1, 254, 305, 344 apology 54, 86–87, 88, 106–7, 261–62, 350, 362–63, 373, 378 appreciation 54–55, 57–58, 96, 98n.8, 188, 195, 215, 216, 240–41, 275, 335–36n.11, 355–56 Aquila, Richard 45n.5, 48n.16, 119n.14, 195n.59, 229n.10 Aquinas, Thomas 8n.10, 12n.27, 16, 124, 253n.15 Aristotle 2–3, 9n.18, 19, 30, 120–21n.24, 122n.31, 296–97, 297n.75, 301n.90, 312n.2 arrogance 55, 80n.62, 81, 145–46, 186–87, 196, 231, 264–65, 272–73, 304, 329, 332, 344, 345–46, 349–50 attention, power of 44, 50–51, 57–58, 95, 101, 142, 252, 264, 269 abstraction 39, 43, 50–51, 133, 134n.62, 304–5, 347, 360–61, 384 distraction 38, 44, 50–51, 52, 200, 220–21, 252, 254, 264–65, 269, 304–5, 347 ignoring 11–12, 51, 57–58, 93, 113, 200, 244–45, 370 impaired 50–51, 250–51 See also impairment laws of reason concerning 39, 42, 43, 51, 74–75, 81, 83, 85–86, 93, 113, 142, 145–46, 223, 240–41, 244–45, 254, 264–65, 271, 304–5, 347, 353–54 limited voluntary control over 38, 44, 58, 83, 268, 270 attitudes 43, 105n.19, 145–46, 230, 288, 299–300, 340, 341, 367–68, 378–79, 382, 384–86 attribute acts 82–84, 89–91, 206, 250, 276 See also impute acts autocracy.  See self-mastery; Sovereignty Conception of Reason Autonomy Restriction 11–12, 19, 114, 115–18, 119, 121, 123, 124, 134n.62, 136, 139, 148–49, 151–52, 154–55, 156–57, 159–60, 333–34, 364 See also laws of reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason natural desires and feelings 22, 27, 114, 115, 116, 123, 134n.62, 139, 148, 151, 154–55, 159–60, 360–61, 364–65, 384–85 normativity 11–12, 19, 22, 27, 114, 115, 116, 123, 136, 139, 148, 151, 156–57, 333–34, 360–61, 364–65, 384–85 only reason 22, 114, 115, 117, 124, 139, 148, 151, 154–55, 360–61, 384–85 p. 406

autonomy  See Kantian theories of reason; sovereign freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason avarice  See greed bad in itself 336, 339, 340–41, 344, 345, 347, 348, 351 See also contempt; evil; good in itself; value Baron, Marcia 10n.21, 22n.43, 43n.2, 80n.62, 101n.15, 211n.17, 261n.54, 275n.114, 289n.39, 295n.70, 298n.79, 366n.7 basic needs 28, 208–9, 216–17, 218–19, 220–21, 250, 283, 291–92, 295, 328–29, 358, 373 Baxley, Anne Margaret 11n.23, 42n.1, 43n.2, 53n.35, 53n.36, 54n.37, 61n.1, 76n.47, 76n.48, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 188n.33, 254–55n.22, 257n.38, 273n.99, 302n.98, 337n.15, 339n.19, 364n.4 beauty 50–51, 57, 188, 195, 215, 216, 240–41, 275, 278, 335–36n.11, 338, 344–45, 346, 355–56 See also aesthetic judgments begging 358 beliefs  See judgment, power of bene cence 27–28, 102–3, 108, 117–18, 153–56, 173, 244–45, 261n.53, 263, 278, 286–90, 294–96, 298– 99, 307, 336–37, 358, 366–67, 369–70, 372, 373 See also happiness; mutual aid benevolence 37, 66n.8, 215, 289–91, 306, 308–9, 353, 372–73 See also bene cence; happiness; love betrayal 22, 139, 149, 360, 361, 363, 372 See also loyalty bias in judgment  See prejudices of judgment Blackburn, Simon 3n.4, 4n.6, 8, 8n.14, 9n.17, 14n.30, 15, 18n.38, 21, 45n.8, 122n.32, 124n.38, 256n.36, 383 blame 83, 87, 88–89, 90–91, 340–41, 356 See also expressing contempt; hold responsible; impute acts; punishment; self-punishment; Sovereignty Conception of Reason blameworthy  See responsibility body 7–8, 45, 54–55, 56, 68n.17, 95, 203, 204–5, 206, 207, 208–11, 213–14, 218, 250–51, 252, 267, 311, 321–23, 324, 328–29, 330–31, 351 See also acts; basic needs; health brain  See body

bribery 57, 73 epistemic interests of reason 233, 240–41 See also deliberative freedom; prejudices of judgment motivational freedom 247–48, 256, 260–61 See also coercion; motivational freedom Broome, John 2–3, 8n.11, 9n.18, 66n.8, 71n.28, 77n.49, 110n.25, 120n.23, 120–21, 121n.25, 122n.31, 204n.4 Brownlee, Kimberley 370n.22 Buss, Sarah 111n.27, 150n.20, 207n.8, 242–43n.83, 266n.71, 339n.19, 342n.33 Butler, Joseph 37, 37n.1, 296–97, 297n.75 candor 51, 117, 226, 242–43, 266, 347, 357–58, 362–63, 368, 376, 377, 379 See also honesty; lying; reticence Categorical Imperative 11, 19, 22, 27, 28, 39–40, 106, 139, 144n.9, 151, 364–65, 381 See also principle of justi ability; Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justi ability Formula of Humanity  See Formula of Humanity Formula of the Kingdom of Ends  See Formula of the Kingdom of Ends Formula of Universal Law  See Formula of Universal Law causation 38, 43n.2, 52, 56, 76n.48, 186–87, 218, 250–51, 253, 257, 268, 269, 304–5, 315, 367–68 See also habits; negative freedom character 7, 22–23, 53–54, 128, 272–75, 337–38, 381–82 See also identity act out of character 274, 275 choose commitments for oneself 274 See also choosing for oneself chosen with deliberative freedom 274 See also deliberative freedom endorse commitments 53–54, 273 See also good will evil character 53–54, 101–2, 275, 336–37, 344, 347–48 good character 53–54, 275, 337–38 laws of reason concerning  See character freedom; respect maintain commitments 53–54, 273 no character 53–54, 275 strong will to follow commitments 53–54, 273–74 See also strength of will; virtue character freedom 272–75 See also character di erent from other kinds of freedom 275 interests of reason 272–75, 337 laws of reason 248–49, 275–76 cheerfulness  See a ability Chignell, Andrew 39n.7, 44n.3, 49n.20, 66n.10, 100n.13, 228n.8, 232n.27, 245n.98, 297n.76, 313n.5, 370n.24 children 1–2, 22, 44, 54, 74–75, 95, 101–2, 132, 185, 200–1, 203, 206, 207, 211, 213–14, 215–19, 221–23, 224, 231–32, 234, 240–41, 243, 249–50, 255–56, 258–59, 260–61, 262, 264–65, 274–76, 283, 290–91, 311, 328–29, 330–31, 343–44, 364, 377, 379, 385 choice, power of 42, 52–54, 58, 84, 90–91, 247–49, 269–71 See also acts; animal choice; freedom p. 407

a ected by interests 53, 83–84, 254–59 See also interests; motivational freedom; negative freedom cannot force choice 218, 247–48, 254–59 See also coercion; motivational freedom; negative freedom deliberation  See deliberative freedom destroyed 249, 250–51 di

cult choices 53, 254–59, 261–63 See also motivational freedom

easy choices 53, 254–59, 261–63 See also motivational freedom ends  See ends free in a negative sense  See negative freedom impaired 54, 83, 248n.4, 249, 250–51, 253, 254–59, 283 See also impairment laws of reason concerning 185, 190–91, 193, 194, 198–99, 208–11, 213–17, 221–22, 239–46, 249–54, 259–63, 265–66, 271–72, 275–77, 278–99, 305, 326–29, 347–55, 357–59, 361, 374–80 necessarily set own happiness as end 67n.14, 100n.12, 262n.56, 283, 288, 297–98 See also happiness omissions  See acts

personal ends  See personal ends strong or weak  See motivational freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason; strength of will; virtue; weakness of will undeveloped 54, 250–51 unexercised 249, 252–54 See also acts; habits choice  See choice, power of choosing for oneself 273, 274, 275 See also choice, power of; freedom civility  See politeness Clarke, Samuel 12n.27, 106n.20, 116n.5, 124n.38 coercion 3–4, 11, 54, 61, 68–69, 70–71, 73, 75–76, 77, 84–85, 88, 108–9, 113, 196, 247–49, 254–55n.22, 256, 260–61, 265, 275–76, 285–86, 365 See also choice, power of; freedom of action; motivational freedom; punishment; threats cognition  See experience cognitive impairment  See impairment common sense  See Content Criterion communication  See signi cation, power of community  See solidarity compulsion 25–26, 96, 198, 247–48, 252–53, 258–59, 290–91 See also addictions; habits; motivational freedom conceit  See arrogance conscience  See Sovereignty Conception of Reason does not reward 80n.62 consequentialism 294n.60, 294n.61 constructivism 13–14, 125–26, 128n.48, 147–48, 161 See also Hill, Thomas E., Jr.; O’Neill, Onora; Rawls, John; Sovereignty Conception of Reason contempt 9, 11–12, 67, 122–23, 139, 196, 312, 332, 362 See also bad in itself; expressing contempt; expressing See also respect; judging people; respect interests of reason 340–41, 358–59 judge something is bad in itself 339 judge something lacks inner worth 339, 379 laws of reason concerning 211–12, 332, 348, 353–55, 356–57 Content Criterion 3, 8, 13–14, 17, 18, 20, 43, 112, 139, 163, 167, 170, 175–76, 301, 360, 365, 381–82 analogy to formulating principles of inductive reasoning 4 assess theories by re ective common sense 8, 14–15, 16–17, 23 develop theories 8, 14–15, 16, 19 See also reason, theories of and Kant 18–19, 30–31, 169–71, 175–77 objections to 13–14, 17, 23, 30–31, 170–71, 175–77 re ective common sense 3n.5, 4, 8, 14–16 contractualism 123, 125–26, 128n.48, 133n.59, 133n.61, 137, 147–48, 158n.30, 159, 161, 384 See Rawls, John; Scanlon, T. M.] cooperation 20, 84–85, 182, 195–96, 197, 198, 199–201, 214, 218–19n.64, 324, 361, 363, 377 See also social practices; solidarity courage 79, 215, 349–50, 352 courtesy  See politeness culpability  See responsibility Darwall, Stephen 37n.1, 125, 125n.43, 261n.55, 341–42n.32, 342n.36, 384 Dean, Richard 118n.12, 126n.47, 141n.1, 335n.10, 339n.19 deception 3–4, 139, 145–46, 149, 176–77, 185, 200–1, 242–43, 245–46, 247–48, 265, 274, 275, 276, 290– 91, 355–56 See also candor; deliberative freedom; dissimulation; lying; motivational freedom; paternalism;

propaganda; reticence; self-deception; signi cation, power of decision theory 10n.20, 121n.29 defamation 22, 349, 353–54, 356–57 deliberation  See attitudes; deliberative freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason deliberative freedom 263–65, 275 See also choice, power of; deception; judgment, power of; lying; prejudices of judgment interests of reason 263–65, 337 laws of reason 200–1, 265–66, 275–76, 285–86, 290–91, 294–95 p. 408

demandingness objection 18, 30, 261–63, 289n.39, 290, 293–96, 298, 299, 308–9, 362–63 Denis, Lara 76n.48, 196n.75, 213n.27, 218, 19n.64, 330n.46, 368n.13 depression 45, 55, 56, 252, 254, 297–98 See also impairment desire, power of 12, 21–22, 38, 56–57, 61, 103, 231, 233, 257–58, 273–74, 279–80, 345–46 See also Autonomy Restriction; emotion; happiness; inclinations; instincts; prejudices of judgment impaired 56 See also impairment laws of reason concerning 38, 56–57, 142, 190–91, 198, 215, 224–25, 240–41, 257–58, 259–60, 278, 299–300, 306–7, 329, 345–46, 376–78 limited voluntary control over 58 natural desires as distinct from interests of reason 56, 61, 75–76, 87, 88–89, 93–94, 96–99, 101, 103– 4, 107–8, 116, 148, 180, 197 See also interests of reason; reason, power of desires  See desire, power of dignity  See good in itself; humanity; reason, power of; Sovereignty Conception of Reason Dillon, Robin 43n.2, 333n.2, 339n.19, 352n.105 disability  See impairment disgust 54, 300–1 See also interests of reason disrespect  See contempt; ridicule dissimulation 352, 355–58, 371, 373 See also candor; honesty; lying; politeness; reticence distraction  See attention, power of domination 64, 196, 243, 275, 276, 290–91 drugs  See intoxication drunkenness  See intoxication due care 113, 211, 293–94, 328, 347, 352–53 duplicity  See dissimulation duty 30–31n.51, 40–41, 66–67, 86, 106, 116, 129–30, 131–32, 133, 135, 136, 143, 144–46, 177, 186–87, 188, 191–92, 193–94, 205, 238, 239, 245, 250–51, 261–63, 266n.71, 288, 289n.39, 291–92, 295–96, 296n.74, 297–99, 298n.79, 306–7, 328, 329–31, 337–38, 344–45, 347–48, 350, 356n.125, 359, 362–63, 366–67, 374, 375, 377, 384–85 See also Categorical Imperative; imperatives; Sovereignty Conception of Reason education 3–4, 110–11, 185, 200–1, 215–19, 221–23, 240–41, 243, 250, 260–61, 262, 274–76, 311, 328–29, 330–31, 379, 385 embodied  See body emotion 5–6, 9, 14, 15, 18, 21–22, 30, 43, 45, 95, 145–46, 260–61, 264–65, 290–91, 301, 340, 345, 360–61, 382, 383 See also attitudes; desire, power of; feeling, power of; manipulation; reason, power of; self-mastery empty formalism objection 11–12, 16–17, 22, 27–28, 29, 114, 117–18, 141, 148, 381–82 See also Autonomy Restriction end freedom 326–27 See also natural perfection interests of reason 326–27, 337 ends 22, 52, 108, 187, 195, 247, 249–50, 252, 266, 267, 314–15, 326–27 See also choice, power of; personal ends Engstrom, Stephen 25n.45, 52nn.31–32, 53n.35, 53n.36, 76n.48, 93–94n.1, 126n.47, 138n.65, 141n.1, 168n.2, 176n.14, 181n.1, 186n.13, 211n.17, 218n.61, 247n.2, 257n.38, 273n.99, 337n.15

enlightenment 1–2, 50, 111, 177n.16, 235–36, 245, 262, 264–65 interests of reason 110–11, 226–27, 228, 232, 235–43, 244–45, 262, 337, 341–48, 355–56, 367, 369–70 laws of reason 145–46, 294–95, 355–57, 369–70 enthusiasm 300–1 See also interests of reason envy corrosive envy 55, 96, 102–3, 142, 145–46, 215n.47, 301, 302–3, 305–6, 329, 363, 364, 367–68, 373, 378–79 emulating envy 215, 218, 373 error in judgment 49, 233–35, 245, 262, 264–65 See also judgment, power of; prejudices of judgment interests of reason 110–11, 226–27, 228, 232–33, 235, 337 laws of reason 145–46, 236–43, 244–45, 262, 294–95, 341–48, 355–57, 367, 369–70 ethical commonwealth 187–88 See also solidarity etiquette  See politeness evil 53–54, 78–79, 101–2, 105–6, 122–23, 187–88, 265–66, 276, 336–37, 344, 348, 365, 375–76 See also bad in itself; contempt diabolical evil 119n.18, 309–10 laws of reason concerning 187–88, 309–10, 348, 353, 357–58, 367, 370–71, 378 radical evil 76n.48, 254–55n.22 experience 48–49, 57, 195, 205, 228–29, 232, 233, 234, 264–65, 333–34, 370 See also understanding, power of interests of reason 110–11, 226–27, 228, 232, 264–65 p. 409

laws of reason 145–46, 236–43, 262, 294–95, 355–57, 367, 369–70 explanation 180–83 interests of reason 181–83 laws of reason 183–85, 200–1, 245 expressing contempt 85–86, 332, 339–40, 368 See also expressing See also respect; respect; ridicule; signi cation, power of e ects of 344, 356–58 interests of reason 340–41, 358–59 laws of reason concerning 348–53, 356–57, 358, 359, 379 social punishment 356 expressing disrespect  See expressing contempt expressing love 51, 363, 373, 378–79 politeness 196n.73, 256, 293, 295, 305, 332, 349–50, 355–56, 359, 362 expressing respect 51, 339–40 See also respect; signi cation, power of e ects 355–58 interests of reason 340–41, 358–59 laws of reason concerning 348–53, 359, 379 Fahmy, Melissa Seymour 188n.33, 261n.54, 287n.36, 293n.58, 302n.98, 322n.19 faith 1–2, 245n.98 fear 29–30, 49, 53, 54–55, 58, 81, 93, 95, 101, 151, 200–1, 221–22, 226, 231, 235, 240–41, 256, 257, 258, 260, 262–63, 264–65, 269, 285–86, 301, 321–22, 345–46, 373, 376, 385 feeling, power of 9, 12, 15, 21–22, 38, 54, 57–58, 61, 75–76, 81–82, 86, 88–89, 103, 231–32, 233, 234, 258, 273–74, 279–81, 300–1, 305, 346, 348 See also aesthetics; Autonomy Restriction; emotion; happiness; prejudices of judgment impaired 55 See also impairment laws of reason concerning 38, 55, 190–91, 198, 215, 224–25, 240–41, 259–60, 278, 299–307, 329, 376–78 limited voluntary control over 58, 270

natural feelings as distinct from interests of reason 54–55, 61, 75–76, 81–82, 86, 88–89, 93–94, 96– 99, 103–4, 107–9, 116, 148 See also interests of reason; reason, power of feelings  See feeling, power of; interests of reason fellowship 368–69, 371, 383–84 See also solidarity fellowship  See solidarity feminism 21–22, 360–61 delity  See promises attery epistemic interests of reason 240–41 See also deliberative freedom; prejudices of judgment motivational freedom 256, 260–61 See also coercion; motivational freedom respect 345, 346, 349, 352, 358 See also expressing respect; respect Foot, Phillipa 9n.18, 77n.49, 110n.25, 122n.31, 124n.38, 143n.6, 196n.73, 204, 204n.2, 301n.90, 324n.22 forgiveness 5–6, 22, 87, 88, 360, 362–63, 382 formalist theories of reason 6, 9–11, 16, 17, 105, 106–7, 121–22, 162, 204 Formosa, Paul 261n.54 Formula of Humanity 11, 117–18, 122–23, 124n.41, 125, 137, 157–59, 195–96, 242–43n.83, 328n.33, 360–61, 384 See also good in itself; humanity Formula of the Kingdom of Ends 22–23, 29, 117–18, 122–23, 125, 128n.48, 137, 147–48, 156–59, 382–86 See also Kingdom of Ends Formula of Universal Law 11, 22–23, 27, 108–9, 117–18, 119n.18, 122–23, 125–26, 128n.48, 131n.54, 132n.58, 137, 141, 144n.9, 147–48, 149–50, 152–56, 178, 183, 208, 236, 328 free will  See freedom freedom 248–49, 275, 277, 294–95 See also character freedom; choice, power of]; deliberative freedom; end freedom; freedom of action; motivational freedom; negative freedom; paternalism; sovereign freedom freedom of action 267–71, 275 See also coercion interests of reason 267–71, 337 laws of reason 222–24, 242–43n.83, 244, 271–72, 276, 285–86, 290–91, 294–95, 309–10, 367 freedom of assembly 215–16 freedom of communication  See also signi cation, power of for de ning own conception of happiness 285–86 for deliberative freedom 285–86 for development of reason 215–16, 218 for exercise of reason 222, 241 for explanation, systematic unity, and harmony 200–1 for knowledge, error, enlightenment 161, 227, 240–41, 243, 245–46, 285–86 for respect 347, 356–57 respect interferes with 355–56 freedom of conscience  See freedom of thought p. 410

freedom of speech  See freedom of communication freedom of thought  See judgment, power of for de ning own conception of happiness 285–86 for deliberative freedom 285–86 for development of reason 215–16, 218 for exercise of reason 222, 241 for explanation, systematic unity, and harmony 200–1 for knowledge, error, enlightenment 161, 227, 240–41, 243, 245–46 Rawls on 161, 240–41, 244 for respect 347, 356–57 respect interferes with 355–56

friendship  See solidarity Galvin, Richard 11n.22, 17n.37, 114n.1, 117n.10, 126n.47, 141n.1, 148n.16 Gauthier, David 2–3, 8, 8n.11, 16, 16n.35, 122n.33, 125–26, 125n.43, 147–48, 148n.15 gluttony 271–72, 351 God 7–8, 49, 51, 62–63, 70n.24, 75, 78–80, 90, 95, 102, 123, 231, 240–41, 316, 320, 344–45 conceive of God 205, 312–13 God and interests of reason 335–36n.11 God lacks desires and feelings 335–36n.11 God’s power of reason 39–41, 66–67, 73, 100n.13, 102, 204–5, 297, 298–99 See also human reason God’s power of understanding 228–29 law of reason to assume God exists 197–98, 245 See also postulates of reason no rational insight into God’s existence 10–11, 229, 245 See also rational insight good in itself 22–23, 334–38, 379, 381 See also bad in itself; value and respect 143, 348, 381 See also respect character 337–38, 342–43 conforming to laws of reason 337 Kingdom of Ends 337 See also Kingdom of Ends moral principles 214, 332 objects of interests of reason 337–38 See also interests of reason rational nature as a whole 337, 341–42 rational self-governance 337 See also autonomy; Sovereignty Conception of Reason relationships 379 See also solidarity science 338 good will 196, 254–55n.22, 337–38 See also character goodness  See value governance.  See also sovereignty; Sovereignty Conception of Reason gratitude 5–6, 39–40, 117, 145–46, 258–59, 293, 302, 305, 375–76 greed 113, 255–56, 259–60 See bene cence; happiness; self-mastery Gregor, Mary J. 64n.4, 100n.12, 256n.33, 262n.56, 272n.95, 296n.74, 336n.12, 366n.5 Grenberg, Jeanine 279n.6 guilt  See also hold responsible; impute acts; punishment; responsibility; self-punishment; Sovereignty Conception of Reason culpability 1–2, 66n.8, 81–82, 104–5 See hold responsible; impute acts; responsibility feeling of 24, 26, 57, 61–62, 75–76, 81–82, 87–88, 206, 261–62, 263, 280n.9, 300–1, 382– 83 See punishment; self-punishment guise of the truth 234, 235–36, 239 Guyer, Paul 10n.21, 11n.23, 42n.1, 45n.5, 48n.16, 49n.20, 50n.24, 61n.1, 70n.25, 76n.48, 98n.8, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 118n.12, 119n.14, 119n.16, 126n.47, 141n.1, 143n.5, 144n.8, 145n.10, 173n.9, 185n.11, 186n.13, 188n.34, 189n.40, 195n.59, 195n.60, 198n.80, 229n.10, 232n.27, 257n.38, 279n.6, 280n.8, 299n.84, 309–10n.123, 313n.6, 335n.10, 335–36n.11, 364n.4, 368n.13 habits 6, 56, 233, 247–48, 252–54, 270–71, 276, 306–7, 312, 321–22, 383 See also acts; choice, power of; self-mastery laws of reason concerning 222–23, 240–41, 242, 248–49, 252–54, 276 of choice 252–54, 255–56, 257n.38, 270–71 of judgment 49, 81, 83–84, 89–90, 99, 215, 221–22, 226, 231–32, 234, 235, 242, 343–44 See also judgment, power of happiness 188, 220–21, 278–84 See also conception of the good; partiality; solidarity basic needs  See basic needs conception of happiness 117–18, 187, 188, 190–92, 200–1, 279, 281–82, 291–92, 314, 326, 336–37, 372

demandingness of laws  See demandingness objection ingredients 279–81, 336–37 interests of reason 107–8, 173–74, 278, 284, 286–87, 294–95, 296–98, 326, 358, 385 law not to demand help 373 law not to fantasize about harm 83, 113 See also hatred; self-hatred law not to harm 67, 110–11, 198, 287, 288–89, 291–92, 294–95, 297–98, 300–1, 302–7, 308, 309– 10 See also hatred; self-hatred p. 411

law not to harm oneself 244, 289–90, 297–98, 358 See also self-hatred; self-interest law not to ignore harm 83, 85–86, 113 law not to set own unhappiness an end 288, 296–97 law not to wish for harm 67, 83, 113 See also hatred; self-hatred law of bene cence  See bene cence law of due care  See due care law of mutual aid  See mutual aid law to avoid needs of happiness 199, 291–92, 295–96, 299, 373 See also needs of happiness law to be sensitive to feelings of others 288 law to harmonize own happiness with others 188, 292 See also harmony; Kingdom of Ends law to investigate happiness of others 288 law to pay attention to happiness of others 113, 133–34, 304–5 law to promote bene cence 293 See also gratitude; politeness law to promote own happiness 264–65, 276, 288–91, 296–99, 358 See also self-interest law to set own happiness as an end 288, 296–97 See also choice, power of law to specify happiness 188, 190–92, 193, 194, 198, 200–1, 278, 284–86 law to sympathize with others 288, 300–5, 308, 309–10 See also sympathy laws concerning desires and feelings 67, 299–307 laws of reason 223, 244–45, 260, 278 misery 211–12, 279–80, 284 necessarily set as an end  See choice, power of needs of happiness  See needs of happiness right to pursue happiness 290–91 right to specify happiness 284–86, 299 supererogation  See supererogation unhappiness 110–11, 198, 278, 279–80, 284 harm  See happiness; malice harmony 38, 108, 168–69, 180, 194–97, 201–2, 205, 313, 316 See also Kingdom of Ends; natural perfection interests of reason 194–97 laws of reason 197–201, 292, 325–26, 369 hatred 3–4, 56, 195, 198, 224–25, 278, 288, 289–90, 301, 302–3, 305–6, 309–10, 329, 336, 357–58, 362, 373, 375 See also happiness health 96, 211, 218, 220–21, 233, 250–51, 321–22, 324n.22 See also basic needs; impairment; natural perfection; powers of mind; skills; Sovereignty Conception of Reason Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 11n.22, 17n.37, 114n.1, 117n.10, 148n.16 Herman, Barbara 10n.21, 22n.43, 26n.47, 101n.15, 125, 125n.44, 126n.47, 129n.50, 131n.53, 132n.58, 136n.63, 141n.1, 154n.25, 173n.9, 211n.17, 288n.37, 333n.2, 358n.139, 366n.7, 367n.10, 368n.13, 384 highest good 30–31n.51, 109–10, 197, 198n.80, 205, 218, 245, 298–99, 309–10 Hill, Thomas E. Hill, Jr. 8, 8n.12, 10n.21, 11n.23, 25n.45, 29, 42n.1, 52nn.31–32, 61n.1, 66n.8, 70n.25, 71n.28, 76n.48, 78n.56, 80n.62, 85n.83, 86n.90, 88n.98, 93–94n.1, 110n.26, 111n.27, 115–16n.2, 116n.4, 117n.8, 120n.23, 124n.40, 125, 125n.44, 126n.47, 128n.48, 133n.59, 134n.62, 137, 141n.1, 143n.5, 143n.6, 147–48, 148n.15, 150n.20, 151–61, 156n.27, 158n.31, 171n.3, 173n.9, 176n.15, 178, 178n.18, 188n.31, 191n.43, 196n.75,

199n.93, 202n.99, 211n.17, 213n.27, 218n.61, 227n.4, 242–43n.83, 247n.2, 253n.15, 261n.54, 266n.71, 273n.104, 275n.114, 278n.4, 279n.6, 281n.16, 283n.21, 289n.39, 290n.49, 292n.57, 295n.63, 295n.70, 298n.79, 309n.122, 322n.19, 333n.2, 334n.4, 334n.5, 335n.10, 348n.79, 352n.107, 356n.123, 356n.125, 358n.139, 364n.4, 366n.8, 367n.10, 380n.81, 381, 384–85, 385n.1 Hobbes, Thomas 2–3, 9n.18, 17, 110n.24, 120n.21, 125, 125n.42, 147–48, 148n.15, 159, 268n.80, 334, 334n.5, 334n.6 hold responsible 24, 61–62, 79–91, 106–7, 206, 250–51, 276, 384–85 See also impute acts; punishment assign punishment  See punishment; self-punishment assign rewards 68–69, 74–75, 80n.62 Holtman, Sarah 10n.21, 11n.23, 42n.1, 61n.1, 64n.3, 64n.4, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 188n.31, 188n.33, 191n.43, 199n.93, 202n.99, 256n.33, 272n.97, 292n.57, 302n.98, 309n.122, 364n.4, 369n.14, 380n.81 honesty 77–78n.54, 237–38, 242–43, 272–73, 274, 275, 328, 339, 340–41, 377 See also candor; deception; dissimulation; lying; reticence; signi cation, power of laws to assume others are honest 237–38, 370 Hooker, Brad 356n.125 hope 1–2, 5, 44n.3, 98, 108, 212–13, 224n.90, 289–90, 370 Hruschka, Joachim 64n.4, 82nn.71–72 human reason 39–40, 100–2, 119, 194, 204–5, 208, 213–14 See also propensities of reason p. 412

humanity 20, 195–96, 215–16, 236, 241, 242–43n.83, 243, 285–86, 288–90, 308, 337, 351, 356, 360–61, 365, 374, 376, 381–84 See also Formula of Humanity; good in itself; humanity; reason, power of; respect; Sovereignty Conception of Reason Humanity Formula  See Formula of Humanity Hume, David 2–3, 8–9, 13–14, 15, 16, 17, 30, 91–92, 103–4, 109–10, 120n.20, 268n.80 Humean theories of reason 2–3, 8–9, 13–14, 15, 17, 21, 23, 91–92, 103–4, 109–10, 120n.20, 122n.32, 162, 214 humiliation 339n.19, 358 humility 304 hypochondria 47–48, 57–58, 233, 264–65 See also imagination, power of hypocrisy 5–6, 375–76 Hypothetical Imperative 9–10, 11–12, 54, 66n.8, 67, 71, 76–78, 105, 113, 119n.18, 120–21, 126–27, 136, 144, 152–57, 159–60, 162, 206, 367–68, 382–83 See also prudential reason ideals 7, 21–22, 25n.45, 26, 80n.62, 122–23, 135–36, 147–48, 153–54, 180, 189, 190–91, 198, 205, 237, 242, 274, 285, 292, 324–25, 334, 360–61, 364, 365, 382, 384–86 freedom of choice 264 See also freedom highest good 218 See also highest good rational world 133, 200–2, 218, 292, 338, 361–62, 365, 380 See also Kingdom of Ends solidarity 123, 218, 298–99, 365, 373–74, 378 See also solidarity as a type of law of reason  See laws of reason identity  See character; happiness; conception of the good idolatry 354–55 ignoring  See attention, power of imagination, power of 45, 47–49, 57–59, 95, 98–99, 101, 104–5, 111–12, 142, 208, 226, 228–29, 233–35, 252, 340, 345 See also experience; prejudices of judgment; sympathy impaired 47–48, 264–65 See also impairment; hypochondria laws of reason concerning 11–12, 43, 48, 55, 81, 93, 106–7, 114, 141, 142, 145–46, 233, 240–41, 305, 345 limited voluntary control over 38, 44, 270 immediately bad  See good in itself immediately good  See good in itself impairment 1–2, 9, 21–22, 207, 312, 324–25 See also paternalism

mental 7, 44–45, 46–49, 50–51, 55, 56, 63–64, 68n.17, 79, 83, 84–85, 86, 90, 101–2, 118–19, 120, 132, 204–5, 206–7, 209–11, 213–14, 216–17, 219, 220–21, 234n.36, 235–36, 239, 245–46, 249, 250–51, 253, 254–59, 264–65, 266, 271, 276, 283, 290–91, 308–9 See also hypochondria; intoxication; unreason physical 250–51, 269, 270–71, 311, 324–25 imperatives 66–67, 68–71, 75–79, 177, 297–98 imperfect duties  See laws of reason impute acts 80n.62, 82–84, 89–91, 206, 250, 276 See also attribute acts; hold responsible; negative freedom; responsibility only negatively free acts 82–84, 89–90, 250 inclinations 56, 77, 95, 101–3, 190–91, 242, 247n.1, 256, 258, 276, 298–99, 306–7, 308 See also desire, power of ingratitude 293, 302, 305 inner worth  See good in itself insight  See rational insight instincts 56, 95, 214, 222–23, 250, 254, 324 See also desire, power of instrumental reason  See Hypothetical Imperative; prudential reason insult 51, 74–75, 83, 88–89, 145–46, 242–43, 244–45, 255–56, 270, 302, 339, 349, 350, 353–55, 385 See also contempt; expressing contempt; expressing See also respect; respect; ridicule intellectual virtues 29–30, 238n.51 See also attention, power of; imagination, power of; judgment, power of; prejudices of judgment; sense, power of interests 95, 96–97, 279–81, 334 arise from a power of mind 54–55, 56, 61, 97–98, 109–11, 116, 300–1 interests of reason  See interests of reason part of a power of mind 98–99, 100, 118–19, 240–41, 343–44 of a power of mind 4n.6, 96–99 rational interests  See interests of reason interests of reason 5, 8–13, 25–27, 93–94, 100–3, 109, 113, 206, 214, 261–63, 280 arise from power of reason 101, 103, 104–5 compatible with Autonomy Restriction 148–49, 151 See also Autonomy Restriction con icts among 110–11, 168–69, 171, 175, 192n.51, 193, 336–37, 381–82 desires of reason 56, 61, 67, 75–79, 86, 93–94, 97–98, 101, 104–5, 108–9, 258–59, 306–7 distinct from natural desires  See feeling, power of dispositions of reason 5, 9–10, 12, 25–26, 45n.8, 75–79, 93–94, 95, 96–97, 100, 101–3, 104–5, 106–8, 111–12, 203–4, 206, 207, 209–10, 214–16, 261–62, 298–99, 334, 335–36n.11, 339, 355–56, 367, 372, 376, 378, 383 p. 413

distinct from rational interests  See rational interests feelings of reason 54–55, 61, 67, 75–79, 86, 93–94, 97–98, 101, 104–5, 108–9, 258–59, 300–1, 304 distinct from natural feelings  See desire, power of formal 5, 10, 11–12, 93–94, 104–7, 167, 203–4, 258–59, 382–83 grounds of justi ability 26–28, 113–14, 134–35, 136–38, 147–49, 159–61, 206, 383 See also principle of justi ability; interests of reason impaired 132, 206–7, 210 in all people 6, 27, 28–29, 108, 169, 182, 203, 212–13, 217, 226–27, 239, 248–49, 278, 325, 329–31, 383–84 latent 132, 206–7, 210 objects are good in themselves  See good in itself part of power of reason 101–2, 103, 104 propensities  See propensities of reason

substantive 3–4, 5, 10, 12, 25–26, 93–94, 107–11, 112, 168–69, 172–74, 203–4, 206, 258–59, 280, 383 intimidation 200–1, 217, 226, 240–41, 260–61 intoxication.  See also impairment power of attention 38 See also attention, power of power of choice 54, 83, 84–86, 247–48, 250–51, 268, 270–71 See also choice, power of; responsibility power of desire 255–56 See also desire, power of power of feeling 58 See also feeling, power of power of imagination 38, 240–41, 269 See also imagination, power of power of judgment 1–2, 235, 239, 247–48, 264–65, 266 See also judgment, power of power of reason 203, 206, 216–17, 220–21, 239 See also see reason, power of; Sovereignty Conception of Reason power of understanding 48–49, 239, 264–65 See also understanding, power of respect 351 See also respect involuntary acts  See acts jealousy 345–46 See also envy Johnson, Robert N. 11n.23, 42n.1, 44n.4, 61n.1, 76n.48, 80n.62, 100n.12, 101n.15, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 196n.75, 199n.90, 213n.27, 218–19n.64, 262n.56, 275n.114, 283n.22, 291n.51, 295n.70, 296n.74, 322n.19, 328n.33, 330n.46, 336n.12, 364n.4, 366n.5, 381 judging people 81, 142, 206, 243, 333–34, 341, 343–45, 347–48, 353–55, 357–58 See also respect; selfscrutiny; solidarity; Sovereignty Conception of Reason judgment, power of 44n.3, 49–50, 57, 79, 228–29, 230–32, 233–36, 305, 370–71 See also deliberative freedom; enlightenment; freedom of thought; guise of the truth; knowledge; prejudices of judgment; respect beliefs 44n.3 develop 90 impaired 50, 90 See also impairment interests of 99, 240–41, 343–44 See also habits investigation and re ection 49–50, 58, 235–36, 270 See also enlightenment laws of reason concerning 50, 79, 83–84, 142, 145–46, 183–85, 189–90, 192, 194, 197–98, 214, 222– 23, 236–43, 288, 293, 305, 328, 341–48, 356–57, 375–76, 379 limited voluntary control over 58, 79, 83–84, 90–91, 141, 231, 270 justice 1–2, 6, 25n.45, 30, 38, 42, 54, 56–57, 90n.111, 96, 125–26, 142, 159–60, 187–88, 193–94, 196, 197– 98, 217n.58, 227, 244, 272, 275, 285–86, 309–10, 351, 375–76, 385 Kant, Immanuel  See Kantian theories of reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason astute observer of common sense 18–19, 30–31, 169–71, 175–77 Kant’s texts 29–33 themes in Kant’s thinking 18–19, 22–23, 29–33, 37, 57, 64, 80n.62, 142, 169–70, 176, 180–81, 227n.4, 254–55n.22, 279, 280n.8, 284, 290, 296–97, 298n.79, 300, 302n.98, 311, 332, 333–34, 359, 381–82 Kantian theories of reason  See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason adjudicate moral laws 60–62 See also conscience Autonomy Restriction  See Autonomy Restriction Categorical Imperative  See Categorical Imperative criticism as aimless 21–22, 26, 364–65, 368, 383 criticism as cold and unfeeling 21–22, 26, 30, 360–61, 364–65, 368, 380, 382 criticism as demanding  See demandingness objection criticism as empty formalism  See empty formalism objection criticism as metaphorical 24–25, 62–63 p. 414

criticism as redundant  See redundancy objection criticism as socially disconnected 26, 360–61, 364–65, 368, 380, 382

execute moral laws 11–12, 60–62 formal interests 12, 19, 26, 94, 106, 115 formal laws  See Hypothetical Imperative; principle of noncontradiction; laws of reason govern by moral standards 11, 19, 24–25, 27, 106, 143 govern choice 3–4, 19, 24–25, 27, 42, 60–62, 128–29, 141 governing abilities 3–4, 11–12, 19, 24–25, 60–62, 106 Hypothetical Imperative  See Hypothetical Imperative legislate moral laws 11–12, 60–62 logic  See logic operates according to principle of noncontradiction 40–41, 120 See principle of noncontradiction principle of noncontradiction  See principle of noncontradiction propensities of reason  See propensities of reason substantive laws derive from Categorical Imperative 11, 19, 27–28, 106 See Categorical Imperative substantive laws  See laws of reason Kerstein, Samuel 118n.12, 204n.3, 335n.10 killing 26–27, 54, 136, 195–96, 208–10, 211–12, 218, 220, 251, 255, 271, 311–12 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason Kingdom of Ends 22–23, 29, 64n.4, 111–12, 125, 187–88, 190–91, 199, 200–2, 292, 335n.9, 337–38, 380, 382, 383–84, 385 See also Formula of the Kingdom of Ends; good in itself; happiness; harmony; ideals; love; moral perfection; rational perfection; solidarity; Sovereignty Conception of Reason; systematic unity Kingdom of Ends Formula  See Formula of the Kingdom of Ends Kitcher, Patricia 46n.9, 313n.6 Kittay, Eva Feder 22n.44, 207n.8, 360n.2 Kleingeld, Pauline 10n.21, 11n.23, 25n.45, 42n.1, 93–94n.1, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 123n.36, 126n.47, 138n.65, 144n.8, 168n.2, 181n.1, 186n.13, 364n.4 knowledge 49–50, 230–32, 264–65, 294–95, 333–34, 337, 340–41, 385 See also error in judgment; judgment, power of; prejudices of judgment interests of reason 110–11, 226–27, 228, 232, 245, 264–65 laws of reason 145–46, 236–43, 262, 341–48, 355–57, 367, 369–70 Kohl, Markus 11n.23, 12n.25, 42n.1, 52n.32, 54n.37, 61n.1, 71n.28, 76n.48, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 120–21n.24, 218n.61, 247n.2, 254–55n.22, 339n.20, 364n.4 Korsgaard, Christine 7n.9, 10n.21, 26n.47, 52n.31, 52n.32, 66n.8, 71n.28, 111n.27, 118n.12, 120n.23, 120–21, 121n.28, 125, 125n.44, 126n.47, 132n.58, 136n.63, 137, 141n.1, 150n.20, 173n.9, 218n.61, 218–19n.64, 242– 43n.83, 247n.2, 266n.71, 272n.96, 275n.117, 330n.46, 334n.5, 335n.10, 367n.10, 368n.13, 384 language  See signi cation, power of laws of reason 65–67, 72–75 See also Autonomy Restriction; Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justi ability; Sovereignty Conception of Reason absolute laws 66, 172–77 Categorical Imperative  See Categorical Imperative; principle of justi ability conditional and unconditional laws 66, 144–45 con icts among laws 172–77, 192n.51, 193, 201, 262–66, 288–90, 294–96, 307–10, 354–58, 381–82 constitutive of power of reason 6, 8–13, 22, 40, 113–14, 118–19, 136, 152, 156–57, 236n.40 See also Categorical Imperative; Hypothetical Imperative; logic; principle of justi ability; principle of noncontradiction exceptions 66, 67n.12, 172–77, 290–91, 362–63, 364–65 formal laws 5–6, 9–10, 11, 19, 27, 114, 120–23, 135–36, 141, 144–45, 152–57, 173–74, 236n.40 See also formalist theories of reason; Hypothetical Imperative; logic; principle of noncontradiction; prudential reason higher-order laws 66, 69, 172–77, 293, 353–55

Hypothetical Imperative  See Hypothetical Imperative incentives 66–67, 68–70, 75–79, 297, 356n.125 See also imperatives; Sovereignty Conception of Reason; virtue latitude 66, 72, 102–3, 109–10, 175–76n.12, 176, 213, 266n.71, 287, 288, 289n.39, 296–97, 298n.79, 328, 366–67 laws as duties  See duty; Sovereignty Conception of Reason p. 415

laws as ideals 66, 175–76, 212, 237, 244, 295, 298 laws as imperatives  See imperatives laws of logic  See logic laws that are necessarily satis ed 67n.14, 100n.12, 262n.56, 283, 288, 297–98, 303–4, 306–7, 330–31 presumptive laws 66, 172–77, 192 principle of justi ability  See Categorical Imperative; principle of justi ability principle of noncontradiction  See principle of noncontradiction regulative principles 119n.16, 184–85 substantive laws 5–6, 9–10, 12–13, 19, 105–6, 115, 122–24, 125, 126–27, 130, 139, 141, 144–45 See also Categorical Imperative; principle of justi ability Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 2–3, 2n.3, 8n.10, 12n.27, 16, 116, 116n.5, 124n.38, 195n.58, 207n.7, 312n.2 life 66n.8, 107–8, 109–10, 171, 182, 210–12, 222–23, 272, 345–46, 362–63, 366 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason Locke, John 12n.27, 16, 116, 116n.5, 124n.38, 125, 125n.42, 147–48, 148n.15, 159 logic 1, 4, 5–6, 17, 40–41, 44–45, 64–65, 100, 120, 130, 132, 139, 142, 170–71, 200–1, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 212–13, 214, 219–20, 221–22, 230, 236n.40, 239, 314–15, 333–34, 337, 366, 381 Longuenesse, Béatrice 45n.5, 48n.16, 49n.20, 119n.14, 195n.59, 229n.10, 232n.27 Louden, Robert B. 46n.9 love 37, 278 See also bene cence; expressing love; happiness; Kingdom of Ends; solidarity attitude 95, 145–46, 231–32, 234, 256, 258, 260–61, 280–81, 298–99, 308–9, 357–58, 362–63, 364, 366, 372–74 being loved by others 195 desire 281–83 feeling of 54–55, 57–58, 95, 233, 240–41, 305, 346 and Kingdom of Ends 380, 382, 383–84, 385 See also Kingdom of Ends laws of reason 306–7, 358, 376, 377–79 See also bene cence; happiness loving relationships 56, 260, 308–9, 360–61, 362–63, 364–65, 366, 372–74, 376, 377–79 See also solidarity as part of happiness 280–81 from reason 280–81 loyalty 5–6, 56, 95, 247, 279–80, 281, 357–58, 364 lying 26–27, 51, 58, 72–73, 110–11, 122–24, 150, 200–1, 211, 216–17, 258–59, 290–91, 353–54, 362–63, 366 See also candor; deception; dissimulation; honesty; paternalism; reticence; signi cation, power of laws based in deliberative freedom 265, 266 See also deliberative freedom laws based in epistemic interests of reason 226–27, 236n.40, 242–43, 244 See also enlightenment; experience; explanation; judgment, power of; knowledge laws based in exercising rational powers 242–43n.83 laws based in freedom of action 242–43n.83, 272 See also freedom of action laws based in respect 242–43n.83 malice 25n.45, 160, 190–91, 193, 240, 280 manipulation 145–46, 226, 264–65, 266 deliberative freedom 247–49, 276 See also deliberative freedom; propaganda motivational freedom 247–49, 260–61, 264–65, 276 See also motivational freedom

respect 347 See also respect truth, error, and enlightenment 244, 245–46, 347 See also enlightenment; error in judgment; experience; knowledge manners  See politeness marriage  See solidarity maxims 22, 26n.47, 27, 42, 43, 52, 108–9, 119n.18, 128–29, 129n.51, 131–32, 141, 149–50, 153n.23, 155–56, 181–82, 187–88, 195, 220, 247, 249–50, 252, 256, 264, 266, 267, 274, 289, 342–43, 347–48, 369, 376 See also choice, power of life-governing 52, 181–82, 254–55n.22, 273, 275 See also character means  See usefulness mental acts  See acts mental illness  See impairment mental impairment  See impairment mental powers Mill, John Stuart 30, 158, 191n.43, 356n.125 misanthropy 375–76 See also solidarity mockery  See ridicule Moore, G. E. 116, 116n.5, 364, 364n.4 moral disgust 54, 300–1 See also interests of reason moral enthusiasm 300–1 See also interests of reason moral feeling 76n.47, 188, 215 See also interests of reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason p. 416

moral feeling  See interests of reason moral perfection 39–40, 196, 218, 337–38, 367 See also rational perfection moral reason 40–41 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason di

culties distinguishing from prudential and theoretical reason 66n.8, 70n.25, 129–30, 143–46, 184,

290, 296–97, 338 moral status of persons 4, 46–47, 132, 206–7, 210 See also good in itself; respect; Sovereignty Conception of Reason motivational freedom 110–11, 218, 254–64, 275, 281–82, 285–86, 322–23 See also coercion; lying; manipulation compatible with negative freedom 256–57 interests of reason 254–59, 337 laws of reason 200–1, 259–63, 275–76, 285–86, 289n.39, 290–91, 294–95 laws of reason diminish 258–59, 261–63, 289n.39 motive of duty 18, 21–22, 101, 337–38 murder  See also killing mutual aid 108, 208–9, 210–11, 294–96, 366n.8, 376–77 Nagel, Thomas 12n.27, 13n.28, 116, 116n.5, 175n.11, 196n.73, 204n.4, 289n.43, 312n.3, 324n.22 natural desires  See desire, power of natural feelings  See feeling, power of; interests of reason natural perfection 196, 204n.1, 311–25 See also harmony interests of reason 311, 325–27, 341–42n.32, 385 laws of reason 149–50, 223, 251, 271–72, 327–29, 330–31, 366–67, 369–70 laws of reason concerning desires and feelings 329 laws of reason to perfect others 239, 327–31 talents and skills  See mental powers; skills needs 28, 93–94, 95, 96–97 See also interests basic needs  See basic needs needs of happiness  See needs of happiness

needs of reason  See reason needs of happiness 259–60, 291–92, 373 See also happiness needs of reason 93–112, 162, 335 See also interests of reason negative freedom 52–53, 75–76, 82–84, 145, 147, 155n.26, 218, 247–49, 252, 255, 264, 267–68, 274, 281– 82, 290–91, 314, 320, 326–27 compatible with being a ected by interests  See choice, power of interests of reason 249–54, 337 lacking 82–86 laws 249–54, 276, 294–95 See also choice, power of; habits only power of choice 53, 84, 145n.10, 247 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 312n.2 noticing  See attention, power of O’Neill, Onora 2–3, 7n.9, 8n.10, 9n.18, 10n.21, 11n.23, 12n.25, 26n.47, 38n.2, 42n.1, 61n.1, 63n.2, 64n.3, 111n.27, 115–16n.2, 117nn.7–8, 117n.9, 118n.11, 120–21, 121n.26, 124n.40, 125–26, 125n.44, 125n.45, 126n.47, 128n.48, 128n.49, 129n.50, 129n.51, 131n.53, 132n.58, 136n.63, 137, 141n.1, 142, 142n.4, 147–48, 148n.15, 150n.20, 151–61, 152n.21, 152n.22, 153n.23, 157n.28, 171n.5, 173n.9, 176n.14, 178, 178n.17, 218–19n.64, 242n.75, 242–43n.83, 245n.97, 256n.33, 266n.71, 289n.39, 330n.46, 364n.4, 367n.10, 384 o end  See insult; ridicule omissions  See acts oppression 196 See also freedom pain 38, 52, 54–55, 57–58, 61–62, 75, 78, 95n.2, 95, 188, 216–17, 247–48, 250–51, 256, 258, 269, 279n.6, 280n.9, 281–83, 300–1, 302–5, 308, 329, 349–50, 352 See also feeling, power of; happiness; interests of reason parents 22, 74–75, 95, 185, 200–1, 203, 211, 221–22, 224, 231–32, 234, 240–41, 243, 250, 255–56, 260–61, 274–76, 328–29, 330–31, 343–44, 361, 364, 377, 385 Par t, Derek 12n.27, 13n.28, 116, 116n.5, 125, 125n.43, 147–48, 148n.15, 175n.11, 204n.4, 294n.60 parochialism  See partiality partiality 65, 294–96, 299, 307–10, 360–61, 362–68, 375–76, 377, 382 See also solidarity paternalism 110–11, 176–77, 272, 285–86, 290–91, 309–10n.123 See also children; freedom; happiness; impairment peace 38–39, 42, 54, 56–57, 196, 218, 314, 367–68, 378 perfection 196 moral perfection  See Kingdom of Ends; moral perfection natural perfection  See natural perfection rational perfection  See Kingdom of Ends; rational perfection perfectionism 133n.61, 312, 319–20 p. 417

personal ends 22, 25–26, 93–94, 103, 107–8, 109, 116, 148–49, 153–57, 159–60, 180, 187–88, 190–91, 198, 279n.6, 279–80, 366 See also choice, power of; ends; happiness physical acts  See acts physical impairment  See impairment Pinker, Steven 6, 6n.7, 8n.10 Plato 8n.10, 12n.27, 16, 37, 37n.1, 38n.2, 63n.2, 124n.38, 195n.58, 296–97, 297n.75, 312n.2 pleasure 42, 54–55, 80n.62, 95n.2, 139, 141, 145–46, 187, 188, 258, 279n.6, 280n.9, 283, 300–1, 302–5, 309–10, 329, 335–36, 346, 370–71, 377 See also feeling, power of; happiness; interests of reason positive freedom.  See autonomy; Kantian theories of reason; sovereign freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason postulates of reason 245 poverty 196, 275, 288–90 See also bene cence; happiness

powers of mind 4n.6, 44–45, 60, 186–87 See also acts; attention, power of;; choice, power of; desire, power of; feeling, power of]; imagination, power of; reason, power of; sense, power of; signi cation, power of; understanding, power of abilities 44, 118–19 constitutive principles 4n.6, 44–45, 118–19, 152, 156–57 developed and undeveloped 44–45 See also natural perfection impaired 44–45, 204–5, 210 See also impairment; natural perfection; Sovereignty Conception of Reason interests  See interests limits to 44 voluntary control over 44, 52, 58, 95, 141, 250, 267–71 See also acts practical identity  See identity practical reason 40–41 See also moral reason; prudential reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason prejudices of judgment 49–50, 57–58, 79, 90–91, 231–32, 233–35, 345, 370 See also freedom of thought; manipulation laws of reason concerning 90–91, 238–39, 240–43, 264–65, 341–48 principle of justi ability 115, 124–25 See also Categorical Imperative; laws of reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason Abstract Principle of Justi ability  See Abstract Principle of Justi ability criteria of justi ability 135–36, 151, 152–59 See also laws of reason grounds of justi ability  See also grounds of justi ability; interests of reason schema for interpreting 125–37 Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justi ability  See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justi ability status of persons 125, 207n.8 See also moral status of persons; trustees principle of noncontradiction 40–41, 44–45, 67, 100, 105, 113, 114, 120–21, 126–27, 130, 139, 152, 156–57, 162, 185, 206, 303–4, 382–83 See also laws of reason; logic no contradictory beliefs 5–6, 9–10, 11–12, 42, 50, 71, 78–79, 85–86, 90, 120, 141, 144, 145n.10, 184 no self-contradictory beliefs 38, 67, 71, 120, 122n.34, 153n.24, 238 principles of reason  See laws of reason privacy 347–48, 356–57 promises 22, 66, 74–75, 117, 131n.54, 144–45, 256, 258–62, 362–63 propaganda 266 See also deception; lying; manipulation propensities of reason 100n.13, 102, 245 See also interests of reason property 85, 147–48, 176, 193–94, 216–17, 253, 255–56, 272, 309–10, 362–63, 366 prudential reason 2, 9–10, 11–12, 17, 22–23, 25n.45, 28, 40–41, 61–62, 64–65, 67, 70, 71, 76–78, 93, 100, 105, 106–7, 114, 120–22, 139, 141, 143–44, 159–61, 161n.40, 162, 206, 214, 236n.40, 264, 289, 296–97 See also formalist theories of reason; Hypothetical Imperative; laws of reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason distinguish from moral reason  See moral reason enforcing 76–78 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason; virtue law that prohibits contradictory choices 5–6, 54, 69–70, 135–36, 144–45, 152–53, 297–98 law that prohibits self-contradictory choices 27, 69–70, 96, 119n.18, 135–36, 144–45, 152–53, 153n.24, 314–15, 320–21 tribunal of prudence 88–89 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason; conscience punishment 68–69, 74, 79–81, 83, 86–91, 206, 240–41, 256, 266, 272, 344 See also hold responsible; impute acts legal 68–69, 74, 79–81, 83, 86–87, 260–61, 262–63, 272, 309–10, 354 self  See self-punishment

p. 418

social 243, 356 threats of 68–70, 72, 73, 79–80, 86–87, 260–61, 262–63 See also motivational freedom; threats racism 30, 145–46, 343–44, 382 rational insight 10–11, 12–13, 19–20, 40–41, 49, 105n.19, 116, 228–29, 230–32, 234, 238, 240, 241–43, 245–46, 264–65, 333–34, 340–41 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason interests of reason 110–11, 226–27, 228, 232, 264–65, 337, 385 laws of reason 145–46, 236–43, 294–95, 341–48, 355–57 rational interests 25n.45, 96, 102–3, 110n.26 See also interests; interests of reason distinct from interests of reason 96, 102–3 rational nature  See humanity; moral status of persons; reason, power of; Sovereignty Conception of Reason rational nature  See reason, power of; Sovereignty Conception of Reason rational perfection 196, 204n.1, 208, 212–19, 262, 326, 330–31, 355–56, 367, 369–70 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason rational requirements  See laws of reason rationalist theories of reason 12–13, 17, 23, 105–7, 109–10, 162, 195n.58, 204–5 rationality 1–3, 8, 15, 30, 117, 167 See also Content Criterion; formalist theories of reason; reason, power of; Sovereignty Conception of Reason and reasonableness 6, 381 Rawls, John 2–3, 3n.5, 6n.8, 8, 8n.12, 10n.21, 11n.22, 17n.37, 25n.45, 31n.52, 31n.53, 31nn.52–53, 32n.55, 65n.6, 82n.72, 93–94n.1, 96n.4, 106n.20, 106n.21, 114n.1, 115–16n.2, 116n.4, 117n.8, 117n.10, 120–21, 121n.27, 125–26, 125n.42, 125n.45, 126n.46, 128n.48, 128n.49, 129n.51, 131n.53, 132n.56, 133n.59, 133n.61, 134n.62, 138n.65, 147–48, 148n.15, 148n.16, 151–61, 159n.33, 159nn.33–36, 160nn.37–40, 160nn.37–39, 167n.1, 178, 178n.19, 196n.73, 199n.90, 217n.58, 224n.90, 240, 240n.59, 278n.4, 283n.21, 291n.51, 294n.61, 312n.3, 384 Raz, Joseph 12n.27, 13n.28, 116, 116n.5, 175n.11, 339n.18 reason 1–2, 8, 15, 30, 167 See also Content Criterion; rational nature; reason, power of; Sovereignty Conception of Reason reason, formalist theories of  See formalist theories of reason reason, Humean theories of  See Humean theories of reason reason, Kantian theories of  See Kantian theories of reason reason, laws of  See laws of reason reason, power of  See formalist theories of reason; Humean theories of reason; Kantian theories of reason; rational nature; rationalist theories of reason]; Sovereignty Conception of Reason reason, principles of  See laws of reason reason, rationalist theories of  See rationalist theories of reason reason, sovereignty conception of  See Sovereignty Conception of Reason reason, theories of 2–3, 7–13, 16 See also formalist theories of reason; Humean theories of reason; Kantian theories of reason; rationalist theories of reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason reason, tyranny of 262–63 reasonableness 1–3, 8, 15, 30, 117, 167, 364 See also Content Criterion; reason, power of; Sovereignty Conception of Reason and rationality 6, 381 reasons 1–3, 4, 6, 8, 12–13, 15, 19, 25–26, 30, 40–41, 105n.19, 114, 116, 117, 121n.28, 123n.37, 135–36, 147– 48, 161n.41, 167, 174–76, 189, 204, 263, 334n.7, 348n.79, 356–57, 360, 363, 364, 366–68, 381, 384 See also Content Criterion based in power of reason 13, 16–17, 19n.39, 114, 116, 174–75, 175n.11, 360–61, 364–65 Reath, Andrews 10n.21, 11n.23, 42n.1, 53n.35, 61n.1, 70n.25, 76n.47, 85n.83, 100n.12, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 126n.47, 141n.1, 143n.5, 173n.9, 176n.14, 188n.31, 191n.43, 199n.93, 202n.99, 257n.38, 262n.56, 292n.57, 296n.74, 333n.2, 334n.5, 336n.12, 339n.19, 364n.4, 366n.5, 380n.81 redundancy objection 123n.36, 157–58

re ective common sense  See Content Criterion re ex 83, 95, 252, 269, 322–23, 324 See also freedom of action regret 24, 61–62, 75, 78, 81–82, 87, 88–89, 93, 103, 206, 261–62, 280n.9, 301, 382–83 See also hold responsible; impute acts; prudential reason; punishment; responsibility; self-punishment; Sovereignty Conception of Reason relationships  See solidarity religion 7, 10–11, 30–31n.51, 43n.2, 68, 187, 200–1, 221–22, 223, 226, 231, 233, 240–41, 338, 350, 354–55, 371n.29 p. 419

reproach  See blame; self-reproach reproduction 56, 224–25, 233 requirements of rationality  See laws of reason requirements of reason  See laws of reason respect.  See contempt; good in itself; expressing contempt; expressing respect; judging people interests of reason 223, 244–45, 340–41, 358–59 as judgments of inner worth 145–46, 332–34, 339, 379 laws of reason 201, 341–42, 347–48, 353–55, 379 respect for character 333–34, 342–44, 345, 347–48, 351, 352, 379 See also character respect for relationships  See solidarity respect for theoretical use of reason 201, 239, 338 responsibility 24, 61–62, 79–91, 301 See also hold responsible; impute acts; negative freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason degrees of responsibility 85–86 hold responsible  See hold responsible not responsible for 79, 90, 250–51 reticence 196n.73, 242–43, 355–58, 359, 373 See also candor; dissimulation; honesty; lying; privacy ridicule 9, 51, 113, 123–24, 332, 344, 351, 359 See also contempt; expressing contempt; expressing respect Ripstein, Arthur 64n.3, 64n.4, 86n.90, 256n.33, 272n.95, 272n.96 Ross, W. D. 12n.27, 106n.20, 116, 116n.5, 174n.10, 218–19n.64 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 125, 125n.42, 147–48, 148n.15, 159 sadness 54–55, 259–60, 300–1 scandal 353–55 Schadenfreude 102–3, 139, 141, 145–46, 300–5, 329 Schopenhauer, Arthur 11n.22, 17n.37, 114n.1, 117n.10, 148n.16 self-command.  See self-mastery; Sovereignty Conception of Reason self-control.  See self-mastery; Sovereignty Conception of Reason self-creation 281–82 See also character; happiness self-deception 274, 355–56 See also deception; lying; signi cation, power of self-defense 211–12 See also killing; self-interest self-discipline.  See self-mastery; Sovereignty Conception of Reason self-discovery 190–91, 281–82 See also character; happiness self-governance.  See self-mastery; Sovereignty Conception of Reason self-hatred 278, 288, 289–90, 297–98, 300n.88 See also happiness; hatred self-interest 1, 37, 76n.48, 117, 147–48, 153, 256, 272–73, 275, 278, 286–93, 296–98, 299, 345–46, 377– 78 See also conception of the good; happiness self-loathing  See self-hatred self-love  See self-interest self-mastery 5, 21–22, 61n.1, 74, 75–76, 77, 79, 88–89, 111–12, 198, 213–14, 215, 248–49, 259–60, 271–72, 273n.99, 273–74, 278, 334, 349–50, 352, 371, 382–83 See also autocracy; Sovereignty Conception of Reason self-pity 139

self-possession.  See self-mastery; Sovereignty Conception of Reason self-preservation 66n.8, 109–10, 171, 208, 211–12 See also life; self-interest self-punishment 68, 74–78, 81–82, 87–91, 106–7, 206, 382–83 See also hold responsible; impute acts; punishment self-reproach 69–70, 78, 81–82, 87, 88–89, 97–98, 104–5, 106–7, 175–76n.12 See also hold responsible; impute acts; punishment; responsibility; self-punishment; Sovereignty Conception of Reason self-respect 109–10, 117, 147–48, 159, 244, 350, 352, 357–58 See also expressing See also respect; respect; servility self-scrutiny 81, 88, 99, 145–46, 190–91, 214, 216, 334, 371, 382–83 See also deliberative freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason sense, power of 47, 57, 195, 205, 228–29 See also experience impaired 47 See also impairment laws of reason concerning 47, 237 limits to 184–85, 205, 228–29 Sensen, Oliver 117n.9, 118n.12, 126n.47, 141n.1, 188n.31, 191n.43, 199n.93, 202n.99, 292n.57, 335n.10, 339n.19, 342n.33, 380n.81 servility 22, 260–61, 264–65, 329, 332, 349–50, 351, 352, 358 See also expressing See also respect; respect; self-respect sexism 30, 145–46 shame 54–55, 233, 244–45, 301, 352 p. 420

signi cation, power of 49, 51, 58, 229, 321–22, 324, 339–40, 348, 370–71, 372–74 See also deception; expressing love; expressing respect; freedom of communication; lying; solidarity; testimony arti cial signs 339, 340 impaired 51 See also impairment language 339, 340, 349 laws of reason concerning 216, 222, 237–43, 348–59, 376, 377, 378–79 limited voluntary control over 58, 90–91 as means to epistemic interests of reason 107, 171, 200–1, 237–38, 241–43, 356–57, 369–70 as means to exercising power of reason 222 natural signs 339–40, 351–52 as related to solidarity 376–77, 378–79 speaking to ourselves 340 See also imagination, power of sincerity  See honesty skills 44, 128, 195, 196, 199, 249–50, 269–70, 271–72, 283, 322–23, 324, 325–26, 328–29, 330–31 See also natural perfection; powers of mind general purpose skills 196, 324 limited control over 269–71, 322–23 limits to development 324, 325–26 slavery 1–2, 5–6, 27, 117, 121–22, 139, 149, 152–53, 181, 212 Smith, Michael 25n.45, 44n.4, 45n.5, 48n.16, 66n.8, 71n.28, 93–94n.1, 119n.14, 119n.18, 120n.23, 120– 21n.24, 195n.59, 210n.15, 229n.10, 334n.5, 334n.7 sociability  See a ability social contract 125, 147–48, 151, 159, 161, 384 social practices 7, 63, 125, 128, 159, 195–96, 217n.58, 223, 328–29, 339, 340, 350, 352–53, 363, 371, 373 See also politeness; social rules social rules 243, 356, 371, 373 solidarity 1–2, 3–4, 5, 25–26, 55, 111–12, 123n.35, 123n.37, 187–88, 218, 243, 244n.95, 298–99, 308–9, 360–61, 368–74, 382, 383–84, 385 See also unity; harmony interests of reason 94, 107, 109–10, 111, 298–99, 308–9, 360–61, 368, 374, 376, 383–84

and Kingdom of Ends  See Kingdom of Ends; Sovereignty Conception of Reason laws concerning breaking o

relationships 350, 353–54, 357–58, 378

laws concerning judging people  See judging people laws concerning respecting relationships 360, 363, 379 See respect laws of reason 22, 26, 43, 65, 109, 110–11, 139, 149, 187, 198, 211–12, 243, 244–45, 285–86, 301, 305, 308–9, 326, 328–29, 330–31, 357–58, 361–62, 374–79, 382 See also a ability; betrayal; envy; loyalty; partiality; trust sovereign freedom 276–77 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason interests of reasons 276–77, 337 sovereignty 62–64, 70n.24 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason executive abilities 72–75 judicial abilities 74–75, 79–80 legislative abilities 65–70 legitimacy 63–64 Sovereignty Conception of Reason 3–4, 22–23, 24–28, 39, 161–63, 382–84 adjudicate 61–62, 68–70, 74–75, 79–87, 104–5, 206, 261–62 authority of reason 6, 7n.9, 14, 19, 21, 30–31n.51, 38–39, 60, 67, 73–74, 77, 79, 106, 119n.18, 170–71, 214, 365, 380n.81, 381–83 autonomy as rational self-governance 3–4, 5, 24, 38–39, 60–62, 73–74, 91–92, 111, 112, 198, 277, 382–83 See also sovereignty freedom communicable 40–41 competent rational people 26–27, 28, 68n.17, 128–29, 149–50, 156, 168–69, 283, 297, 335 creating rational nature  See reproduction criteria of justi ability  See criteria of justi ability criticism as aimless 21–22, 26, 364–65, 368, 383 criticism as cold and unfeeling 21–22, 26, 30, 360–61, 364–65, 368, 380, 382 criticism as demanding  See demandingness objection criticism as empty formalism  See empty formalism objection criticism as metaphorical 24–25, 62–63, 382–83 criticism as redundant  See redundancy objection criticism as socially disconnected 26, 360–61, 364–65, 368, 380, 382 criticism concerning duty from duty  See motive of duty cultivate 214 desires of reason  See interests of reason; virtue execute 61–62, 67, 68–70, 72–77, 81–82, 86–87, 104–5, 198, 206, 261–63, 302–4, 306–7 See also duty; imperatives; interests of reason; laws of reason feelings of reason  See interests of reason; virtue p. 421

formal interests of reason  See interests of reason formal laws 114, 137–38, 139, 162 See also criteria of justi ability; laws of reason formulate ideas of reason 40–41, 184–85, 205–6, 229, 245 govern by all kinds of laws of reason 11–12, 24, 62, 71, 76–77, 78–79, 88–91, 93, 106–7, 113, 129–30, 137, 139–40, 143–44, 161–62, 206, 296–97, 382 govern many mental powers 3–4, 11–12, 24, 26–27, 43, 60–63, 93, 106–7, 113, 128, 136–37, 139–42, 161–62, 198, 206, 251n.8, 302–4, 382 governing abilities 3–4, 5, 11–12, 24, 60–64, 93, 104, 106–7, 113, 140, 161–62, 185, 206, 326, 382–83 grounds of justi ability  See grounds of justi ability human reason  See human reason impaired power of reason 63–64, 68n.17, 79, 86, 101–2, 119, 119n.17, 120, 204–5, 206–7, 209–11, 213– 14, 216–17, 219, 220–21, 234n.36, 235 See also impairment

interests of reason in power of reason 203–4, 207–8, 212–14, 219–20 interests of reason  See interests of reason laws to develop power of reason 208, 214–19, 262, 326, 330–31, 355–56, 367, 369–70 laws to exercise power of reason 208, 220–23, 355–56, 367, 369–70 laws to preserve and not damage power of reason 110–11, 185, 208, 210–12 legislate 61–62, 67–70, 206, 261–63 limited control over power of reason 67, 68, 70, 75, 78, 81, 85, 88, 93, 206, 219–20, 382–83 moral reason  See moral reason moral status  See moral status no rational insight into external world 10–11, 19–20, 40–41, 116, 205–6, 228–29 See also rational insight often operates slowly 86, 216, 222–23 operates according to principle of noncontradiction 40–41, 120–21, 209–10 See also principle of noncontradiction; unreason partial theory 23 people with the power of reason 4, 132, 206–7, 210 See also moral status; rational nature perfection of reason  See rational perfection principle of justi ability  See Categorical Imperative; principle of justi ability; Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justi ability propensities of reason  See propensities of reason prudential reason  See prudential reason rational insight into reason itself 7–8, 10–11, 19–20, 49, 90n.111, 102, 205–6, 228–29, 230–32, 234, 238, 245–46 See also rational insight rational nature.  See rational nature self-su

cient 40–41

social ideal 380 See also Kingdom of Ends sovereign freedom  See sovereign freedom substantive interests of reason  See interests of reason theoretical reason  See theoretical reason undeveloped power of reason 101–2, 119, 119n.17, 206–7, 209–11, 212–17 unity of reason  See unity of reason unreason  See unreason Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Partial Principle of Justi ability 126–37, 149–51, 156, 158–59, 161–62, 177, 208, 227, 236, 287, 299–300, 303, 341–42, 361 See also Categorical Imperative; principle of justi ability use in Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Quali ed Justi ability Argument  See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Quali ed Justi ability Argument Sovereignty Conception of Reason’s Quali ed Justi ability Argument 171–74, 177–79, 183–85, 208, 227, 236, 287, 299–300, 303, 341–42, 361 substantive interests of reason de ned in terms of 204 speci city 180, 191–92, 201–2, 205 See also systematic unity interests of reason 191–92, 194 laws of reason 192–93, 200–1, 285 Spinoza, Baruch 12n.27, 16, 312n.2 Stark, Cynthia A. 267n.74, 367n.10 stealing  See property Sticker, Martin 14n.31, 41n.15, 81n.66, 206n.6, 261n.54, 366n.9 Stohr, Karen 51n.27, 289n.39, 298n.79, 366n.8 Stoicism 110n.26, 214, 218, 219, 259–60, 271–72, 291–92 Stratmann, Joe 13n.29, 44n.3, 70n.24, 370n.24

strength of mind  See self-mastery; Sovereignty Conception of Reason strength of will 53, 76n.48, 254–59, 261–63, 273n.99, 274 See also choice, power of; motivational freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason p. 422

sublimity 111–12, 215, 216 See also aesthetic judgments suicide 72–73, 210, 211–12, 220, 255, 271, 311–12, 351 See also killing supererogation 22–23, 80n.62, 261n.54, 275, 278, 295, 381–82 See also bene cence; happiness Sussman, David 53n.36, 76n.48, 86n.90, 224n.90, 272n.97, 309n.122, 339n.20, 352n.105, 370n.24 sympathy 48, 58, 101, 114, 142, 147–48, 188, 300–5, 308, 309–10, 377 See also feeling, power of; imagination, power of laws of reason concerning 300–5, 308, 309–10 systematic unity 25–26, 124, 186, 193–94, 200–2, 205, 206, 380 See also a

nity; Kingdom of Ends;

speci city; unity talents  See skills testimony 49, 51, 57, 229, 230–32, 234, 370–71 See also judgment, power of; knowledge; signi cation, power of; understanding, power of laws of reason concerning 237–38, 242, 370–71 theft  See property theoretical reason 2, 11–12, 17, 22–23, 28, 39–40, 61–62, 64–65, 70, 71, 93, 105, 106–7, 114, 120–21, 139, 143–46, 162, 236n.40, 296–97, 329, 334, 337 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason adjudicating 89–91 See also see judgment, power of; see laws of reason; logic; principle of noncontradiction; rational insight; Sovereignty Conception of Reason distinguish from moral reason  See moral reason enforcing 78–79 laws of reason 142, 145–46, 183–84, 244, 339 See also enlightenment; error in judgment; explanation; harmony; knowledge; respect; systematic unity laws that require making assumptions 142, 184–85, 189, 192, 194, 197–98, 201, 208–9, 237–38, 245, 247, 370 See also explanation; God; harmony; honesty; postulates of reason; systematic unity thinking for oneself  See enlightenment threats 57, 68–70, 72, 73, 79–80, 86–87, 297 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason epistemic interests of reason 233, 240–41 See also deliberative freedom; prejudices of judgment motivational freedom 247–48, 256, 260–61, 276 See also coercion; motivational freedom of punishment  See punishment powers of reason 217, 218, 222 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason Timmermann, Jens 66n.8, 70n.25, 143n.5, 176n.14, 176n.15, 261n.54, 289n.39, 298n.79, 366n.8 Timmons, Mark 10n.21, 26n.47, 53n.35, 53n.36, 54n.37, 68n.18, 70n.25, 76n.47, 76n.48, 80n.62, 81n.66, 81n.69, 87n.97, 101n.15, 119n.18, 126n.47, 129n.52, 141n.1, 143n.5, 172n.7, 173n.9, 175–76n.12, 176n.14, 188n.31, 191n.43, 199n.93, 202n.99, 254–55n.22, 257n.38, 273n.99, 292n.57, 333n.2, 337n.15, 339n.20, 371n.29, 380n.81 torture 5–6, 247–48, 257–58, 260–61 trust 142, 237–38, 240–41, 361, 362–63, 364, 370–74, 375–76, 377–78, 379, 380 See also solidarity trustees 131–32, 207n.8 truth 49, 226, 228, 229–30, 233 See also experience; guise of the truth; knowledge; rational insight understanding, power of 48–49, 57, 118–19, 195, 229, 234–35, 370 See also experience constitutive principles of 44–45, 98, 118–19 impaired 48–49, 118–19, 235, 250–51 See also impairment interests of 98–99, 118–19 laws of reason concerning 49, 142, 184, 189, 228–29, 237, 288, 328, 376 limited voluntary control over 58 limits to 48–49, 205, 228–29

never errs when unimpaired 234–35 understanding  See experience unity 180, 186–88, 194, 201–2, 205 See also Kingdom of Ends; systematic unity interests of reason 186–88, 194, 337 laws of reason concerning 188–91, 198, 200–1, 285, 369–74, 378–79 unity of reason 22–23, 144, 381–82 See also moral reason; prudential reason; Sovereignty Conception of Reason; theoretical reason Universal Law Formula  See Formula of Universal Law unreason 45n.6, 119, 120, 209–10 usefulness 25n.45, 50–51, 54–55, 66n.8, 71n.28, 77, 77–78n.54, 86n.90, 159–60, 171, 182, 196, 199, 201–2, 215–16, 222, 226–27, 241, 264–65, 289, 305, 308, 309–10, 311, 315–16, 321, 323, 325, 328, 329, 330–31, 334n.4, 335–36n.11, 335–36, 340–41, 351, 354, 355–56, 356n.125, 365, 367–68, 369–70, 371, 379 See also natural perfection; value utilitarianism 6n.7, 30, 133n.61, 158, 191n.43, 278, 294–96 p. 423

value 334–38 See also good in itself; usefulness Van der Rijt, Jan-Willem 64n.4 vanity 231, 256 Varden, Helga 64n.4, 256n.33, 272n.95 Velleman, J. David 275n.117, 334n.8, 360n.3 violence 206, 209, 210–11, 217, 218, 222, 239, 247–49, 250, 251, 260–61, 271, 276, 309–10, 328–29 virtue 22–23, 40–41, 75–76, 80n.62, 187–88, 197–98, 205, 207, 218–19n.64, 229, 238, 245, 257n.38, 309– 10, 311, 337–38, 344–45, 355–56, 364, 381–82 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason analog for prudence 76–78 virtue epistemology 238n.51 See also attention, power of; imagination, power of; judgment, power of; prejudices of judgment; sense, power of virtue ethics 2–3, 17, 19, 21, 30, 116, 296–97, 301, 312 virtues 7, 19, 30, 116, 123, 215, 238n.51, 306–7, 312 See also Sovereignty Conception of Reason voluntary acts  See acts von Neumann, John 6, 6n.7, 8, 8n.11, 10n.20, 121n.29 Waldron, Jeremy 63n.2, 64n.4, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 188n.31, 191n.43, 199n.93, 202n.99, 292n.57, 380n.81 war 1–2, 38, 63–64, 196, 362–63, 378 Watkins, Eric 45n.5, 48n.16, 119n.14, 195n.59, 229n.10 weakness of will 53, 76n.48, 254–59, 261–63, 273n.99, 274 See also choice, power of; motivational freedom; Sovereignty Conception of Reason will  See choice, power of Williams, Bernard 2–3, 11n.22, 15, 15n.33, 17n.37, 18n.38, 22nn.43–44, 46n.9, 78n.55, 95, 95n.2, 95n.3, 114n.1, 117n.10, 122n.32, 124n.38, 148n.16, 199n.93, 244n.93, 264n.62, 272n.95, 322n.19, 360n.2 Wolf, Susan 11n.23, 18n.38, 22n.44, 42n.1, 43n.2, 52n.31, 61n.1, 70n.25, 115–16n.2, 117n.8, 143n.5, 261n.54, 298n.79, 360n.2, 364n.4 Wood, Allen 10n.21, 11n.22, 11n.23, 15n.33, 17n.37, 30–31n.51, 52n.32, 61n.1, 70n.24, 70n.25, 76n.48, 81n.66, 86n.90, 88n.98, 101n.15, 111n.27, 114n.1, 115–16n.2, 116n.6, 117n.8, 117n.9, 117n.10, 118n.12, 118n.13, 124n.40, 124n.41, 126n.47, 131n.55, 141n.1, 143n.5, 144n.8, 148n.16, 150n.20, 157n.29, 198n.80, 204n.3, 218n.61, 242– 43n.83, 247n.2, 266n.71, 279n.6, 299n.84, 309–10n.123, 328n.33, 333n.2, 335n.10, 348n.79, 364n.4, 368n.13, 384