カントと「真正な生」

Abstract

Kant is supposed to have notoriously claimed that the desires and impulses a rational agent happens to have should be regarded as something alien to the agent himself, and therefore should not be allowed to have any motivational influence on the agent's practical reasoning. There is of course a long tradition of criticizing Kant's ethics on this account, starting from Friedrich Schiller's well-known essay Über Anmut und Würde and extending up to Charles Taylor's recent complaint against Kantian disengagement of reason. In this article, I'm trying to defend Kant against those traditional lines of criticisms in the following way. (1) Although I agree with Taylor in that some engaged or authentic elements of life are required to grasp the whole depth of our moral life, I still find Taylor's criticism on Kant somewhat unfair and hence think it necessary and possible to rearticulate Kant's argument in a way conformable to Taylor's explanation of authentic self. (2) In defense of Kantian conception of practical reason, I repudiate the view that Kant's ethical theory provides a combat model between inclination and reason, and contend that we need to adopt what might be called a constitutional model of inclination and reason instead. (3) Constitutional understanding of Kantian agency demands we reconsider the relationship between categorical and hypothetical imperative. Namely, the normativity of hypothetical imperative is inextricable form the binding force of categorical imperative, and therefore we must presuppose the existence of categorical imperative if we are to comprehend the normative status that hypothetical imperative exerts on us, which point both defenders and critics of Kant have been failing to take into account.