| Kant famously distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical imperatives and the conditional and unconditional necessitation they express. Hypothetical imperatives command conditionally, and they govern our instrumental and prudential reasoning. Categorical imperatives command unconditionally, and they govern our moral reasoning. There is significant disagreement in the literature about how to construe the nature and normativity of Kant's hypothetical imperatives. In the first part of the dissertation, I consider three, seemingly divergent, contemporary interpretations. I argue, that all three of these views collapse the crucial distinction between conditional and unconditional necessity that was supposed to distinguish between the imperatives. Moreover, on the standard interpretation of the hypothetical imperative's command, an interpretation that each of these views share, the "material interpretation," is the logical consequence. The material interpretation understands hypothetical imperatives as deriving from reason's endorsement of our ends, and thus ends that are set by the categorical imperative. Accordingly, all practical rational failing is a form of moral failing, and so, on Kant's view, we collapse the practical distinction between stupidity and evil. In the second part of the dissertation, I explain how the standard interpretation of hypothetical imperatives as anti-akratic rational principles that command agents to will the means to their ends, even in the face of any temptation not to, inevitably leads to the material interpretation. I offer an alternative understanding of hypothetical imperatives, and correlatively of Kant's conception of willing an end, that avoids this view, and which preserves the distinction between the conditional and unconditional necessitation that Kant thought the two imperatives express, and so also the crucial practical distinction between stupidity and evil. |
