| One of the defining features of a Kantian theory of morality is its account of how to answer the question, "Why be moral?" For Kant, we should be moral not out of sympathy or self-interest, but because it is a requirement of reason. Morality is built into our rational nature just as surely as the principle of non-contradiction and modus ponens, and we ought to be moral for the same reason that we ought to follow these other laws of rationality---we understand them to be correct. Moreover, like these laws of logic, the moral law has a special constitutive status. Rational knowers are subject to modus ponens in virtue of being a rational knower, and similarly, the Kantian argues, rational agents are subject to the moral law in virtue of being a rational agent.; Unfortunately, many of the recent attempts to reconstruct Kant's argument that morality is constitutive of rationality have tried to connect morality analytically with the idea of rational agency. In my first chapter, I show why this kind of analytic argument from rationality to morality will not work and why we should not attribute it to Kant. In later chapters, I try to provide a reconstruction of a genuinely synthetic argument. First, I try to make plausible the claim that practical consciousness of the form of rational agency brings along with it categorical restraints, by drawing an extensive analogy with theoretical reason. Next, I attempt to defend Kant's claim that any categorical restraint will lead to the Categorical Imperative. This will amount to proving that all external reasons are agent-neutral. I turn next to a close reading of Groundwork III in which I argue lies the key to Kant's synthetic account. In the Groundwork, Kant argues that a rational agent who becomes practically self-conscious of the form of her rationality must admit her own freedom and thereby is subject to the moral law. I close with considerations on what it means to justify a categorical requirement, and why this justification should satisfy the criteria of knowledge even of the first Critique. |
