Kant on Moral Autonomy is essential reading for scholars of Kant's moral philosophy. This is so because of a wide range of insights offered by the contributors, not only those immediately concerning autonomy. The volume contains fourteen chapters written by an international set of established Kant scholars. There are few surprises regarding who writes about what and how. The authors do the kind of work for which they are well-regarded, sometimes clarifying or expanding on positions originally developed elsewhere.
The collection honours Onora O'Neill, who has done so much to elucidate Kant's distinctive conception of autonomy. Although many contributors allude to O'Neill's work, few discuss it at length. Karl Ameriks does, engaging with O'Neill throughout his chapter. Paul Guyer situates his discussion in relation to theses for which she has argued. Several contributors, including Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Katrin Flikschuh and J. B. Schneewind, follow O'Neill in contrasting Kant's conception of autonomy with contemporary accounts.
The book is divided into three parts: ‘Kant's Conception of Autonomy’ (part I, chapters 1–4), ‘The History and Influence of Kant's Conception of Autonomy’ (part II, chapters 5–9), and ‘The Relevance of Kant's Conception of Autonomy for Contemporary Moral Philosophy’ (part III, chapters 10–14). All topics mentioned in those titles receive attention – though not equal attention, and not always within the part of the volume one would expect.
Nearly every chapter provides at least a brief account of Kant's conception of autonomy, even if that is not the chapter's focus. Andrews Reath's chapter is perhaps the one most exclusively devoted to developing an account of Kantian autonomy. Enlightening accounts are offered by others, too, notably Guyer, Ameriks and Henry Allison. Oliver Sensen's chapter divides its focus between the two crucial questions of how Kant conceives of autonomy and why it has the significance for him that it does.
Among the chapters that engage primarily with Kant's better known works in ethics, Dieter Schönecker's stands out for its deep, careful analysis of Groundwork III. The collection is enriched by the range of materials beyond the Groundwork and second Critique from which contributors draw. Heiner F. Klemme focuses on the third Critique; Susan Meld Shell and Richard Velkley mine a variety of Kant's essays; Sensen and Jens Timmermann make good use of Kant's lectures on ethics – as does Guyer, for whose account the Doctrine of Virtue is central.
Several chapters trace the development of Kant's views or provide historical context essential for understanding them. Among Kant's predecessors, it is (unsurprisingly) Rousseau whose influence on Kant is most widely discussed. Velkley explores Rousseau's influence in greatest depth. Substantive discussions of autonomy after Kant but before the contemporary period are offered by Ameriks (Sartre), Allison (Fichte, Schiller and Hegel), and Schneewind (Anglo-American moral philosophers).
Several chapters touch on the contemporary relevance of Kant's conception of autonomy. Guyer regards Kant's empirical, psychological account of autonomy's cultivation and realization as the aspect of his view likely to garner most interest now. Sensen shows that Kant's view that autonomy is necessary for moral obligation challenges many current approaches to ethics. Hill goes furthest in making the case for the relevance of Kant's conception of autonomy. He suggests it be used to evaluate and refine principles associated with influential contemporary conceptions of it.
I will now try to provide a sense of each chapter.
In chapter 1, ‘Kantian Autonomy and Contemporary Ideas of Autonomy’, Hill distinguishes Kantian autonomy first from related notions in Rousseau, Sartre, R. M. Hare and Kohlberg (as criticized by Gilligan), and then from three conceptions of autonomy prevalent within contemporary applied ethics: autonomy as a right to make significant life decisions for oneself, autonomy as a capacity to make decisions independently, and autonomy as a state of being in control of one's own life. Hill suggests that Kantian autonomy might fruitfully be employed to develop or evaluate principles related to these three, currently popular, conceptions of autonomy.
Reath uses chapter 2, ‘Kant's Conception of Autonomy of the Will’, to present and expand on his position that, for Kant, autonomy is fundamentally the will's sovereignty over itself – a sovereignty with both negative and positive aspects. Negatively, the will is constrained by no foreign authority; positively, the nature of rational willing itself generates the supreme practical principle, the categorical imperative. Reath's interpretation draws primarily on the Groundwork and second Critique.
Chapter 3, ‘Vindicating Autonomy: Kant, Sartre, and O'Neill’, begins with Ameriks's presentation of O'Neill's distinction between two sorts of misunderstandings common among critics of Kant's conception of autonomy, ‘radical existentialism’ and ‘panicky metaphysics’. The former corresponds to the ‘auto’ or independence aspect of autonomy; the latter to the ‘nomos’ or lawfulness part. The first error involves attributing absolute value to choice as such; the second involves identifying the moral law with a law made and imposed by a transcendent, metaphysical self. Ameriks clarifies and refines the independence and lawfulness aspects of Kant's conception of autonomy in relation both to Kant's texts and O'Neill's interpretation of them. In addition to setting forth his own views about how best to understand Kant's conception of autonomy, Ameriks reveals a range of intermediate views of its ‘auto’ and ‘nomos’ aspects which avoid the errors diagnosed by O'Neill. Especially notable is Ameriks's sympathetic and illuminating account of Sartre's existentialism.
At the outset of chapter 4, ‘Progress toward Autonomy’, Guyer argues, in agreement with O'Neill, that realizing autonomy as independence from determination by alien causes requires realizing autonomy as rational self-governance. Guyer goes on to argue that, although Kant presents the fundamental choice to realize positive autonomy by making the moral law rather than self-love one's fundamental maxim as a single, noumenal, all-or-nothing choice (e.g. in the Religion and second Critique), Kant also (especially in the Doctrine of Virtue) presents an empirical, psychological account of positive autonomy as gradually cultivated and progressively realized within the phenomenal world. Guyer's account emphasizes the role of self-mastery in the realization of autonomy.
In chapter 5, ‘Transcending Nature, Unifying Reason: On Kant's Debt to Rousseau’, Velkley sheds light on the development of Kant's mature conception of autonomy by demonstrating Rousseau's impact on Kant. Velkley draws heavily on Kant's Observations and Remarks, as well as on Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Conjectural Beginning of Human History and The End of All Things. Velkley's focus is not on Rousseau's account of the general will, but rather on his accounts of reason, desire, nature, freedom, history, society and moral education. Especially crucial, according to Velkley, is Rousseau's conception of reason as self-correcting.
Within chapter 6, ‘Kant and the “Paradox” of Autonomy’, Shell elucidates Kant's Groundwork II discussion of the paradox of autonomy by tracing his work on a related paradox in cosmology. Her account of Kant's developing metaphysical views draws on such essays as Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge, and the Inaugural Dissertation, as well as Kant's lectures on metaphysics, situating Kant's evolving thought in relation to Leibniz, Wolff, Malebranche and others. Her account of Kant's pre-Groundwork moral thought is similarly textually rich. The first Critique features in Shell's explication of Kant's maturing views in both metaphysics and morality. Shell's culminating analysis of the paradox of autonomy sheds light on several ideas associated with Kant's later formulations of the categorical imperative, especially his conception of the kingdom of ends.
In the first half of chapter 7, ‘Autonomy in Kant and German Idealism’, Allison provides an analysis of Kantian autonomy as a property of the will which makes it possible for us to follow the categorical imperative. In the second half, Allison traces Fichte's, Schiller's and Hegel's modifications of Kant's conception of autonomy and related views. Allison highlights the contrasting approaches taken by Fichte and Schiller in their attempts to refine and improve upon Kant's moral theory. Allison concludes that, despite Hegel's criticisms of Kant's moral theory and his significant departures from it, his theory retains a core element of Kantian autonomy: ‘the conception of a rational law (or system of laws) with which the will can identify’ (145).
Schneewind's chapter 8, ‘Autonomy After Kant’, is one of the few surprises of the collection: the surprise being simply Schneewind's focus on autonomy after Kant. After sketching Kant's conception of autonomy as a law-making capacity, principle of morality and ideal of character, Schneewind examines autonomy in Anglophone moral philosophy. He finds interest in autonomy largely dormant within English-language moral philosophy for roughly a hundred years. Schneewind identifies five sources of the renewed interest in autonomy: philosophy of action, bio-medical ethics, feminist ethics, political liberalism, and Kant scholarship and Kantian ethics.
In chapter 9, ‘Personal Autonomy and Public Authority’, Flikschuh groups Kant with Rousseau and Mill as moral theorists whose ‘traditional’ conceptions of autonomy (or something like it) are partly constitutive of a larger end or ideal. By contrast, the contemporary conception of autonomy as the rational self-direction of an individual is presented – implausibly, in Flikschuh's view – as of pre-eminent value in itself. Of greater concern to Flikschuh is the presumption in favour of collective self-legislation, ‘the idea that no scheme of coercively imposed public law qualifies as legitimate which anyone who is subject to it could not regard as reasonably self-imposed’ (177). Flikschuh regards this (erroneous) presumption as implicit in much contemporary liberal political theory. Among some such theorists, this presumption reflects their acceptance of the moral value of personal autonomy. Flikschuh contrasts the loosely Kantian ideal of collective self-legislation seen in Rawls, Reath, Korsgaard and others with Kant's own conception of public law-giving. On Kant's view, public law-giving requires a public will, which, unlike a private will, is unilateral and has coercive authority over others.
Klemme begins Chapter 10, ‘Moralized Nature, Naturalized Autonomy: Kant's Way of Bridging the Gap in the Third Critique (and in the Groundwork)’, by highlighting a tension within the Groundwork between Kant's identification of morality with autonomy and his employment of natural teleology. In order to resolve this tension, Klemme turns to the third Critique, particularly the Critique of Teleological Judgment. He explicates Kant's conception of the reflective power of judgement (which Kant had not formed in 1785), Kant's view of the relation between practical reason and nature, and Kant's reconciliation of the dual causalities of nature and freedom. In addition to its more substantive accomplishments, this chapter demonstrates the value of the third Critique for a proper understanding of Kant's moral philosophy.
Timmermann's brief but engaging chapter 11, ‘Autonomy and Moral Regard for Ends’, provides an interpretation of the philosophical foundations and motivational significance of Kant's formula of humanity. Timmermann argues that it is autonomy – the capacity to act on a self-imposed law – that makes every human being an end in itself and gives her dignity. Furthermore, the formula of humanity contributes something of metaphysical, pedagogical and motivational importance to Kant's ethics: ‘the thought that all human beings are autonomous and hence, quite literally, ends in themselves, is intended to strengthen our moral disposition’ (224). An element of special scholarly interest is Timmermann's explication of a marginal note written in Kant's personal copy of the second Critique – a note in which Kant describes a pure will as ‘its own end’ (216).
In chapter 12, ‘A Free Will and a Will under Moral Laws are the Same’, Schönecker provides an incisive reading of Groundwork III and argues for an interpretation of Kant's claim that ‘a free will and a will under moral laws are the same’ (4: 447). According to Schönecker, the ‘moral law’ here referred to is not the categorical imperative, but the non-imperatival form of the moral law; furthermore, the relation between the free will and the moral law is analytic rather than synthetic. Schönecker presents the latter point as less crucial than the former to understanding Groundwork III, but as essential to understanding Kant's conception of autonomy.
Chapter 13, ‘Morality and Autonomy’, rejects Kant's legalistic conception of morality and the central role it attributes to autonomy. Philip Stratton-Lake argues that Kantians have failed to establish a necessary connection between morality and personal autonomy, such that morality ‘stem[s] from the will of the agent’ (246). We cannot consistently conceive morality as a matter of legislating universally and as respecting others’ autonomy; accepting the moral constraint of acting only on reasons others can share is also inadequate. Worse: thinking of morality in terms of following a prescriptive law – even one given by ourselves – precludes a satisfactory account of the rightness or wrongness of actions. Stratton-Lake argues for the superiority of a Rossian, intuitionist understanding of morality. On such an account, morality and autonomy are compatible, though the relation between moral action and autonomous action is contingent.
Chapter 14, ‘The Moral Importance of Autonomy’, contains Sensen's illuminating account of the nature and significance of autonomy for Kant. For Kant, autonomy is the legislation not of the agent's empirical self, but of her own reason. The significance of autonomy so understood is that only through it is moral obligation possible. Drawing on Kant's lectures on ethics in addition to his published works in moral philosophy, Sensen reconstructs Kant's arguments that morality cannot be grounded in desires, positive laws or real normative properties; autonomy is necessary.
In the short postscript, ‘Heteronomy as the Clue to Kantian Autonomy’, O'Neill explains Kant's conception of autonomy by contrasting it with heteronomy. She interprets Kant's characterization of autonomy as ‘the will's property of being a law to itself’ (4: 447) as expressing ‘the thought that autonomy is reasoned in a way that heteronomy cannot be, because it does not appeal to arbitrary assumptions’ (286).
All in all, this is a collection worthy of its topic.
