How Far Do We Self-legislate?

Baiasu, Sorin

doi:10.1007/s11406-023-00613-4

How Far Do We Self-legislate?

Baiasu, Sorin

Authors

Sorin Baiasu s.baiasu@keele.ac.uk

Abstract

: In his early writings, Kant regarded the autonomy of the will as the supreme principle of morality, as well as the sole principle of all moral laws and of the duties conforming to them. Nevertheless, this impressively sounding principle gradually disappeared from the later Kant’s texts, and there is not much in the literature to explain why. Pauline Kleingeld’s purpose, in the two articles I consider here, is to address this lacuna and to show that there are good philosophical reasons for this principle’s gradual disappearance from the Kantian framework. One of my aims, in this paper, is to formulate and argue for several reservations about Kleingeld’s argument; however, even if these reservations turn out to be apposite, my claim is not that Kant did not actually abandon the Principle of Autonomy; instead, I argue that, even if Kleingeld were right and Kant had abandoned the Principle of Autonomy, he would still not have needed to.

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jan 9, 2023
Online Publication Date	Feb 2, 2023
Publication Date	Apr 1, 2023
Journal	Philosophia
Print ISSN	0048-3893
Publisher	Springer Verlag
Volume	51
Issue	2
Pages	525-544
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00613-4
Keywords	Autonomy, Political legislation, Ethical community, Pauline Kleingeld, Kant, Motivation, Analogy
Publisher URL	https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-023-00613-4