AGAINST AUTONOMY: WHY PRACTICAL REASON CANNOT BE PURE

Abstract

Abstract The perennial appeal of Kantian ethics surely lies in its conception of autonomy. Kantianism tells us that the good life is fundamentally about acting in accordance with an internal rather than an external authority: a good will is simply a will in agreement with its own rational, self-constituting law. In this paper, I argue against Kantian autonomy, on the grounds that it excessively narrows our concept of the good, it confuses the difference between practical and theoretical modes of knowing the good, and it cannot respect the essential efficacy of the principles of practical reason.

Keywords

• Autonomy
• Practical reason
• Aristotle
• Kant
• Ethics