Abstract

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant avoids a circle in the proof by resorting to the notions of ratio essendi and ratio cognoscendi, favoring a regressive investigation. The argumentation begins with the Faktum of the moral law, a consequently determining ground in the order of knowledge, to go back from there to the antecedently determining ground in the order of being, the idea of freedom. We expose and problematize the general normativity of this argumentative structure in Kant’s moral texts, to draw some critical conclusions from Jacques Derrida’s analyzes, especially focusing on the 1980-81’s unpublished seminar Le respect. We postulate, following Derrida, that Kant co-implies the indicated orders, giving a structural function to the philosophical analogy that thus becomes the transcendental rule of the critical system. This question also opens an analysis of other rhetorical tropes in Kant’s work: metonymy and exemplarity.