Foundations of the metaphysics of morals.--Critique of practical reason.--An inquiry into the distinctness of the principles of natural theology and morals.--What is enlightenment?--What is orientation in thinking.--Perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch.--On a supposed right to lie from altruistic motives.--Selections from The metaphysics of morals.

The Critique of Practical Reason is traditionally regarded as one of Kant’s central works on practical philosophy. Its structural and stylistic parallels with the Critique of Pure Reason sustain one’s conviction about its fundamental systematic relevance in Kant’s ethics. Nevertheless, the compositional sketch of the system of critical philosophy in the first Critique does not presume any separate critique of reason in its practical use. This inspires to investigate the question (...) of the sense and aim of the critique of practical reason in Kant’s main works of the 1780s. Such an investigation discovers, that the concept of such a critique emerges in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, which intends to find and to establish the supreme principle of pure morals, to supply its full-value deduction and insofar to present a sufficient introduction to the system of moral metaphysics. It is for the purpose of such a deduction, which demonstrates the normative validity and truth of categorical imperatives, that Kant considers a transition to a critique of practical reason necessary. And yet this transition as well as this critique are presumed to take place within the subject field of the Groundwork itself: the main features of the practical critique of reason as described in the Groundwork III are, according to Kant, sufficient for the purpose of justification of critical morality. If, however, the deduction of the moral law given in Groundwork III should fail, no possible future “progress of metaphysics” could compensate this failure, - because this deduction occurs at the «extreme boundary of all practical philosophy”, beyond which lies the realm of moral faith. Kant scholars consider the concepts of the “fact of pure reason” and the doctrine of the highest derivative good as crucial innovations of the second “Critique”. There are however reasons enough to dispute the question as to whether both doctrines really make for an innovation - and for an advance. (shrink)

When this work was first published in 1960, it immediately filled a void in Kantian scholarship. It was the first study entirely devoted to Kant's _Critique of Practical Reason_ and by far the most substantial commentary on it ever written. This landmark in Western philosophical literature remains an indispensable aid to a complete understanding of Kant's philosophy for students and scholars alike. This _Critique_ is the only writing in which Kant weaves his thoughts on practical reason into (...) a unified argument. Lewis White Beck offers a classic examination of this argument and expertly places it in the context of Kant's philosophy and of the moral philosophy of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Kant's three Critiques, one of his three major treatises on moral theory, and a seminal text in the history of moral philosophy. Originally published three years after his Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique provides further elaboration of the basic themes of Kant's moral theory, gives the most complete statement of his highly original theory of freedom of the will, and develops his practical metaphysics. (...) This new edition of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason – prepared by an acclaimed translator and scholar of Kant's practical philosophy – presents the first new translation of this work to appear for some years. A substantial and lucid introduction by Andrews Reath places the main themes of the Critique in the context of Kant's moral theory and his critical system. (shrink)

With particular focus on imagination, Bernard Freydberg presents a close reading of Kant’s second critique, The Critique of Practical Reason. In an interpretation that is daring as well as rigorous, Freydberg reveals imagination as both its central force and the bridge that links Kant’s three critiques. Freydberg’s reading offers a powerful challenge to the widespread view that Kant’s ethics calls for rigid, self-denying obedience. Here, to the contrary, the search for self-fulfillment becomes an enormously creative endeavor (...) once imagination is understood as the heart of Kantian ethics. Seasoned scholars and newer students will find a surprising and provocative view of Kant’s ethics in this straightforward and accessible book. (shrink)

This seminal text in the history of moral philosophy elaborates the basic themes of Kant ’s moral theory, gives the most complete statement of his highly original theory of freedom of the will, and develops his practical metaphysics. This new edition, prepared by an acclaimed translator and scholar of Kant ’s practical philosophy, presents the first new translation of the work to appear for many years, together with a substantial and lucid introduction.

The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Kant's three Critiques, and his second work in moral theory after the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Its systematic account of the authority of moral principles grounded in human autonomy unfolds Kant's considered views on morality and provides the keystone to his philosophical system. The essays in this volume shed light on the principal arguments of the second Critique and explore their relation to Kant's critical philosophy (...) as a whole. They examine the genesis of the Critique, Kant's approach to the authority of the moral law given as a 'fact of reason', the metaphysics of free agency, the account of respect for morality as the moral motive, and questions raised by the 'primacy of practical reason' and the idea of the 'postulates'. Engaging and critical, this volume will be invaluable to advanced students and scholars of Kant and to moral theorists alike. (shrink)

The chapter first discusses the general meaning of a 'doctrine of method' in Kant’s work, as well as the specific goals of the Doctrine of Method of the second Critique. The central section, then, focuses on the notion of 'receptivity to morality', which here has a central role and a quite distinct meaning. I argue that Kant’s main point in his account of how to 'make objective practical reason subjectively practical' (5:151) is that one ought to (...) lead the individual agent to become aware of his own dignity as a moral being. In Kant’s view, recognition of this point is relevant to the overall aim of the second Critique – to show that pure reason is practical – and of moral theory itself. The task of the Doctrine of Method is to show how it is possible to make agents aware of their basic moral capacities, and through that awareness to instil genuine moral dispositions. Accordingly, the Doctrine of Method is the completion of the Critique, confirming the conclusions of the Analytic through the common use of pure practical reason and connecting them with the experience of every moral agent. (shrink)

The highly arcane 'wisdom' produced by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is either endlessly regurgitated and recited as holy writ by his numerous acolytes, or radically dismissed as unpalatable nonsense by his equally countless detractors. Contrary to these common, strictly antagonistic yet uniformly uncritical practices, this book offers a meticulous critique of some key theoretical and clinical aspects of Lacan's expansive oeuvre, testing their consistency, examining their implications, and investigating their significance. In nine interrelated chapters, the book highlights both (...) the flaws and the strengths of Lacan's ideas, in areas of investigation that are as crucial as they are contentious, within as well as outside psychoanalysis. Drawing on a vast range of source-materials, including many unpublished archival documents, it teases out controversial issues such as money, organisational failure, and lighthearted, 'gay' thinking, and it relies on the highest standards of scholarly excellence to develop its arguments. At the same time, the book does not presuppose any prior knowledge of Lacanian psychoanalysis on the part of the reader, but allows its readership to indulge in the joys of in-depth critical analysis, trans-disciplinary creative thinking, and persistent questioning. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike in psychoanalytic studies and philosophy, as well as all those interested in French theory and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Kant did not initially intend to write the Critique of Practical Reason, let alone three Critiques. It was primarily the reactions to the Critique of Pure Reason and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that encouraged Kant to develop his moral philosophy in the second Critique. This volume presents both new and first-time English translations of texts written by Kant’s predecessors and contemporaries that he read and responded to in the Critique of (...) Practical Reason. It also includes several subsequent reactions to the second Critique. Together, the translations in this volume present the Critique of Practical Reason in its full historical context, offering scholars and students new insight into Kant’s moral philosophy. The detailed editorial material appended to each of the eleven chapters helps introduce readers to the life and works of the authors, outlines the texts translated, and points to relevant passages across Kant’s works. (shrink)

In the Typic chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant aims to enable moral judgment by means of the law of nature, which serves as the ‘type’, or formal analogue, of moral law. The present monograph is the first comprehensive study of this key text. It provides a detailed commentary on the Typic, situates it within Kant’s ethics and his theory of symbolic representation, and critically engages with the relevant secondary literature.

Jeanine Grenberg - Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.2 335-336 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Jeanine M. Grenberg St. Olaf College Bernard Freydberg. Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 180. Paper, $19.95. At the heart of the task of the historian of philosophy is the effort to (...) interpret well what has been said by another philosopher. Like the poet who chooses to create verse under the constraints of meter and rhyme, the historian does philosophy under the constraints of the historical text. Given these constraints, any historian of philosophy—continental or analytic—must bind herself to the text. The significant distinction one.. (shrink)

In this paper I defend three different points: first, that the concept of highest good is derived from an a priori but subjective argument, namely a maxim of pure practical reason; secondly, that the theory regarding the highest good has the validity of a practical regulative knowledge; and thirdly, that the practical regulative knowledge can be understood as the same “holding something to be true” as Kant attributes to hope and believe.

칸트가 최고선을 정의하기 위해 활용하는 최상선과 완전선은 공히 덕과 행복을 인과적 관계로 잇는 개념들이다. 전자는 ‘덕을 갖추었다면, 반드시 행복할 자격이 있다’고 말하는 개념이라면, 후자는 더 나아가 ‘덕스러운 자의 행복할 자격이 세계 안에서 정말로 실현될 수 있어야 한다’고 말하는 개념이다. 이를 통해 칸트의 최고선은 궁극적으로 ‘최상선의 실현으로서의 완전선’으로 정의된다. 이렇게 정의된 최고선 개념 안에는 덕스러운 자들이 곤궁하고 비참한 사회는 ‘불의’한 세계이며, ‘행복할 자격’이 있는 자들에게 정말로 ‘행복한 삶의 현존’을 보장해주는 사회가 정의로운 세계라는 것, 그리고 이런 정의로운 사회를 실현하는 것이 윤리적 존재로서의 (...) 우리의 책무라는 수수하지만 강력한 통찰이 담겨 있는 것으로 보인다. 그러나 칸트는 이런 통찰을 본격적으로 전개하는 쪽으로 나아가지 않고, 최고선의 가능성을 보증하기 위해 영혼의 불멸과 신의 현존을 요청하는데 그친다. 이런 도덕-신학적 해법은 지극히 불충분하다. 칸트의 말대로 덕과 행복이 이질적 성분들이며 이 양자의 인과적 종합을 요하는 ‘실천적’ 이념이 최고선이라면, 이 이념은 이 세계 안의 유한한 존재인 우리의 삶을 규정하는 물질적, 경험적 조건들을 고려하고 개선할 때에만 실현 가능할 것이기 때문이다. 그러나 칸트의 ‘순수’ 이성의 실천 철학이 포괄하기를 거부하는 것이 바로 이 조건들이다. (shrink)

A compact edition of Mr. Beck's excellent translation of the second Critique, slightly revised, together with a helpful short introduction and a bibliography.--V. C. C.

This book, besides meeting a definite need in the field of Kantian ethical studies, is excellent. Professor Beck treats the Practical Reason as an exemplification of a general Kantian method applied to problems organic to the Kantian system as a whole. His interpretation of the 'Transcendental deduction' of the Principle of Pure Practical Reason is particularly brilliant; the Principle is shown to be established in precisely the form required for a complete resolution of the third antinomy (...) of the Critique of Pure Reason, and the procedure has the further warrant of showing the validity of the "deduction" of chapter III of the "Grundlegung."--J. B. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues that morality obliges us to believe in the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. I argue, however, that in two late essays – “The End of All Things” and “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” – Kant provides moral counterarguments to that position: these beliefs undermine moral agency by giving rise to fanaticism or fatalism. Thus, I propose, the Kantian position on the justification (...) of religious belief is ultimately antinomial. One ought, moreover, to understand Kant’s considered position concerning the immortality of the soul and the existence of God to be similar to that he proposes concerning the theoretical ideas of reason in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason: they are necessary as regulative ideas guiding moral action, not endorsed or even postulated as propositions. In other words, they are subject matters not of belief, but of hope. (shrink)

In _Critique of Black Reason_ eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness—from the Atlantic slave trade to the present—to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world's center of gravity while mapping the relations among colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital. Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black (...) class='Hi'>reason as the collection of discourses and practices that equated Blackness with the nonhuman in order to uphold forms of oppression. Mbembe powerfully argues that this equation of Blackness with the nonhuman will serve as the template for all new forms of exclusion. With _Critique of Black Reason_, Mbembe offers nothing less than a map of the world as it has been constituted through colonialism and racial thinking while providing the first glimpses of a more just future. (shrink)

When this work was first published in 1960, it immediately filled a void in Kantian scholarship.

본 서평은 루이스 화이트 벡의 『칸트의 「실천이성비판」 주해』가 우리말로 번역된 것을 기념하기 위해 작성되었다. 주지하다시피 영미권의 칸트 연구에서 실천철학, 특히 『도덕형이상학 정초』가 아닌 『실천이성비판』 자체에 대한 관심이 시작된 것은 기껏해야 1960년대 이후이며, 우리나라에서 칸트윤리학에 대한 연구가 본격적으로 시작된 것이 1990년대 이후부터라는 사실을 감안해 보면 칸트 실천철학에 대한 연구사가 결코 길지 않음을 확인할 수 있다. 그러한 가운데 이 책은 칸트 실천철학 연구자들에게 거의 고전의 반열에 오른, 교과서와 같은 저술이라는 점에서 큰 의미가 있다. 칸트 윤리학 연구자들은 벡에 동의하든, 벡에 동의하지 않든, 벡의 (...) 『주해』를 중심으로 연구사적인 흐름을 추적할 수밖에 없는 운명에 처해 있기 때문이다. 또 이러한 교과서가 영미권에서 이미 1960년에 출간되었음에도 불구하고 2023년에 이르러서야 겨우 번역되었다는 점에서 각별한 의미가 있다. 나를 비롯하여 칸트의 실천철학 연구에 입문하는 신진 학도들에게 이 번역서가 결코 피해갈 수 없는 귀중한 자료가 될 것이다.본 서평은 벡의 『주해』가 지닌 의미와 구성을 간략하게 살펴본 뒤, (본 서평자가 생각하기에) 벡의 『주해』에서 가장 중요한 논의라고 생각되는 최고선에 대한 벡의 입장을 비판적으로 검토할 것이다. 이는 최고선 이론을 중심으로 벡을 이해하는 나의 주관적 입장이 많이 반영된 것이다. 마지막으로 결론부에서는 벡 이후의 주요한 칸트 연구자들이 최고선 이론에 대해 어떻게 주장해 왔는지를 간략하게 제시함으로써 최고선에 대한 벡의 논의가 이후의, 최고선을 중심으로 하는 칸트 실천철학 연구에 어떠한 영향력을 미치게 되었는지를 간접적으로나마 드러내보고자 한다. (shrink)

I examine chapters I and II of the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason from the Critique of Practical Reason, to show that Kant resolved the antimony of practical reason by first giving an accurate representation of the cause of a properly moral act and then recognizing that this accurate representation raised further problems, problems that were anticipated by Rousseau, especially in his Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Rousseau’s reveries allowed Kant to explore, and (...) to some extent overcome, the darker implications of their common understanding of virtue. In the second Critique this takes the form of explaining how one can understand and existentially achieve one’s own satisfaction based on contentment with oneself rather than enjoyment. (shrink)