Abstract

Three pivotal claims of Kant’s moral philosophy are that: the obliged agent’s will is some form of practical reason; the supreme principle of obligation is an a priori moral law which can in some way determine the agent’s choices; the obliged agent must be thought of as some kind of being with a will free in both a negative sense and a positive sense. The traditional explication of these takes Kant to be claiming that: the obliged agent’s will is pure practical reason; the a priori moral law can determine the agent’s choice in a wholly a priori way; we must suppose the obliged agent is a noumenon. I shall call this the “pure, a priori, noumenal reading” or “PAN.” My aim here is to make out a case for taking Kant instead to claim that: the obliged agent’s will is empirical practical reason; the a priori moral law can determine the obliged agent’s will as applied in an a posteriori way and only as applied in that way; we must suppose the obliged agent is neither a phenomenal object nor a thing in itself but of a third ontological kind I shall refer to as a “subject.” I shall call this the “empirical, a posteriori, subject reading” or “EAS.” There is ample textual support for PAN but philosophically it is a radically unacceptable, because self-defeating, view. EAS is equally plausible as a reading of Kant’s texts and markedly superior philosophically.