The fate of autonomy in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals

Bibliographic Data

ID21597892
AuthorsStefano Bacin (0000-0002-1862-1695, University of Milan, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume30
Issue1
Pages90-108
Publication date2022-01-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0960-8788 • E-ISSN: 1469-3526
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09608788.2021.1995323
OpenAlexW3216104765
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited19

The idea of autonomy, presented as Kant’s main achievement in the Groundwork and the second Critique, is hardly present in the ethics of the “Doctrine of Virtue”. Against Pauline Kleingeld’s recent interpretation, I argue that this does not amount to a disappearance of the Principle of Autonomy, but to an important development of the notion of autonomy. I first show that Kant still advocated the Principle of Autonomy in the 1790s along with the thought of lawgiving through one’s maxims. I then argue that the role of autonomy in Kant’s later ethics has a different focus than in the previous works, which requires to connect autonomy with autocracy. Conversely, in the “Doctrine of Virtue”, autocracy, which Kant had employed before as an independent notion, is construed as a new layer of autonomy. What Kant there calls subjective autonomy is thereby considered as reason’s self-government in the maxims of each rational agent

Autocracy · Autonomy · Democracy · Doctrine · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Political science · Politics · Theology · Virtue · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · War, Ethics, and Justification

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