Abstract
My aim in this note is to shed light on ways of interpreting Kant’s Formula of Universal Law (FUL), by looking at relevant similarities and differences between Pauline Kleingeld and Mark Timmons. I identify both their readings as a formal interpretation of Kant’s FUL, in contrast to the substantive interpretations that favor a robust conception of rational agency as a necessary requirement for moral deliberation. I highlight the benefits that arise from Kleingled’s interpretation in showing the immediacy involved in the volitional self-contradiction when universalizing a maxim. Alongside Timmons, I address a question as to whether Kleingeld’s interpretation is completely free from at least a minimal set of assumptions about practical deliberation more broadly, that seem to play a role in generating the volitational self-contradiction she is defending. I close by raising some skeptical worries about the capacity of this kind of contradiction to translate into a moral judgment triggering action.
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Notes
The abbreviation refers to the Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft) (1788).The pagination reference is to the volume and page number in the Akademie-Ausgabe of Kant’s collected works. I am using the translation listed in the References.
I am aware that calling these two requirements ‘moments’ gives the impression of a sequence in the phenomenological experience of the agent. One of the benefits of Kleingeld’s interpretation lies in keeping these two requirements tightly together: we do not need to ‘wait’ to see the immediate consequences of my universalized maxim in a hypothetical world, to already recognise that it would be morally impermissible to act on it.
References
Kant, I. (1996). Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by M. J. Gregor. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813306
Kleingeld, P. (2017). Contradiction and Kant’s formula of Universal Law. Kant-Studien, 108(1), 89–115. https://doi.org/10.1515/kant-2017-0006.
Timmons, M. (2023). Making Sense of Kant’s Formula of Universal Law: On Kleingeld’s Volitional Self-Contradiction Interpretation. Philosophia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00615-2.
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Romero, P. From Volitional Self-Contradiction to Moral Deliberation: Between Kleingeld and Timmons’s Interpretations of Kant’s Formula of Universal Law. Philosophia 51, 477–481 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00644-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00644-x