Abstract

It is argued to be essential to Kant's philosophy that natural forces bring about the emergence of reason without either ceasing to have causal efficacy or destroying the possibility of a priori knowledge or moral autonomy. Autonomy is the topic mainly explored here. In Chapter I, to introduce the issues, Kant's essays on history are shown to describe man "becoming a noumenon" by a natural development. The remaining chapters explore the implications of this naturalism for Kant's account of the self. ;In Chapter II objections to this approach are discussed. It is suggested that Kant's theory of synthesis requires, rather than ruling out, that the rational self should be a product of nature. Kant's argument is shown to lead to the conclusion that synthesis is a reconstruction of a nature whose effect the synthesizing self is. A confusion among commentators between two quite different senses of thing-in-itself, which has made the reconstruction view seem unacceptable, is examined critically. Kant's Copernican analogy is then discussed in the light of the idea of the reconstruction of experience. ;In Chapter III Kant's accounts of the relation between logic and psychology and between empirical and transcendental deductions are discussed and shown to require an empirical psychology distinct but inseparable from transcendental logic. Kant's misgivings about empirical psychology are also examined. ;The problem of action is taken up in Chapter IV where Kant is show to argue that the will is a natural cause. In Chapter V Kant's working out of this view for moral psychology is examined in detail. The key issue is the role of the feeling of respect for moral law. Kant's use of the term Triebfeder is discussed to show that empirical causes operate in a similar way after as before the emergence of reason. An interpretation of the function of the concept of noumenon, which links it with personal identity, is suggested. The chapter ends with a return to one of Kant's essays on history, "Conjectural Beginning of Human History" to show that it fits into the naturalist account of human development explored in the previous chapters