Abstract

The central methodological innovation of Kant's transcendental philosophy is the doctrine of the regulative use of reason. All of Kant's well-known views revolve around ideas that he identified as regulative: the categorical imperative, the original social contract, to name the most familiar. The current revival in Kantian thinking is largely driven by the ability of a regulative account to counter various versions of naturalism in social theory and moral philosophy without having to rely on a moral ontology and the sustained effort to articulate the normativity of human institutions and practices in terms of autonomy. In this dissertation I consider Kant's practical philosophy in light of the doctrine of the regulative employment of the ideas of reason. I consider it first in its programmatic formulation in The Critique of Pure Reason, and argue for an underlying continuity in its subsequent refinements, though his well-known works in practical philosophy. In particular I focus on the claim made in the first Critique of a fundamental Kantian position which is for the most part relegated to the margins of Kant's philosophy, especially by Kant's supporters: the regulative employment of reason which is manifested phenomenally derives its normative effectiveness in that realm by virtue of its essentially incomprehensible relation to the noumenal realm. One of the keys to this part of Kant's view has to do with the largely ignored question of character in Kant. Character is the vehicle relating the noumenal to the empirical. Kant held that true moral character is like a re-birth, and occurs all at once, outside of time. Tracking its importance in Kant's thought, I then consider his views on education, and show that an elaborate web of parallels can consistently be found in his work. ;I conclude with some tentative observations about current Kantian views, those of Habermas and Rawls. I suggest that they too end up having to hold out for some external source of legitimacy for their proposals, lest they slide into the kind of relativism that they both reject.