Autonomy, omniscience and the ethical imagination

from theoretical to practical philosophy in Kant

Carl J. Posy

pp. 106-134

in: Yirmiyahu Yovel (ed), Kant's practical philosophy reconsidered, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

We all know that Kant held ethics and empirical science to be separate, incommensurable disciplines. He also claimed that his views about ethical and empirical knowledge fit together in a single "Critical" system. In the essay that follows I want to sketch a modern, 'semantic," interpretation of Kant's philosophy which explains both the unity of the critical system and the unbridgeable gap between ethical and empirical knowledge. I believe that this interpretation can help resolve some exegetical problems that appear to plague Kant's theories about ethics and empirical science. And I believe that it can also focus attention in a new way on some aspects of Kant's moral theory that seem most troubling today.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel