Philosophers' Imprint 14 (2014)
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Kant’s doctrine of the Fact of Reason is one of the most perplexing aspects of his moral philosophy. The aim of this paper is to defend Kant’s doctrine from the common charge of dogmatism. My defense turns on a previously unexplored analogy to the notion of ‘matters of fact’ popularized by members of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century. In their work, ‘facts’ were beyond doubt, often referring to experimental effects one could witness first hand. While Kant uses the German equivalent in different contexts, I argue that the scientific analogy opens up a new framework for interpreting his strategy of justification in the Critique of Practical Reason. In the final section, I address a few possible objections to my reading, one of which I anticipate coming from Dieter Henrich and Ian Proops, who have argued that Kant’s Fact of Reason is best understood under a legal analogy
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Keywords | Kant Ethics Kantian Ethics Fact of Reason |
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References found in this work BETA
Jesuit Mathematical Science and the Reconstitution of Experience in the Early Seventeenth Century.Peter Dear - 1987 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 18 (2):133.
Kant's Legal Metaphor and the Nature of a Deduction.Ian Proops - 2003 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 41 (2):209-229.
Unfair to Facts.J. L. Austin - 1961 - In J. O. Urmson & G. J. Warnock (eds.), Philosophical Papers. Clarendon Press.
View all 17 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Transcendental Philosophy As Capacities‐First Philosophy.Karl Schafer - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (3):661-686.
Realism and Constructivism in Kantian Metaethics 1 : Realism and Constructivism in a Kantian Context.Karl Schafer - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (10):690-701.
Kant’s Deductions of Morality and Freedom.Owen Ware - 2017 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47 (1):116-147.
Kant's Criticism of Common Moral Rational Cognition.Martin Sticker - 2017 - European Journal of Philosophy 25 (1):85-108.
View all 14 citations / Add more citations
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