Filozofija i drustvo 2011 Volume 22, Issue 2, Pages: 239-263
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1102239S
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Conservative and revolutionary readings of the categorical imperative: The logic of desire and the logic of drive in Kant’s practical philosophy
Selimbegović Ivan
This paper will confront two possible conceptions of Imamanuel Kant’s
practical philosophy based on two different possible understandings of
categorical imperative. The first conception sees the categorical imperative
as prescribing a form for the maxime under which a subject is to act if his
actions are to be taken as moral. This conception is shown to be conservative
as it preserves the existing moral norms of a society. This way of
functioning of categorical imperative is shown to be homologuous to the logic
of desiare as described by the french psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and as
incapable of providing a basis for ascribing responsibility to a subject for
his acts. Another conception will be offered as an alternative: on that
conception the categorical imeprative prescribes a manner of willing any
maxime which is shown to be analoguous to the logic of the death drive. It’s
ethical and revolutionary character are elucidated towards the end of the
paper.
Keywords: categorical imperative, law, exception, universalised crime, desire, drive, subject