Kant and prejudice, or, the mechanical use of reason

This paper examines an issue of recent Kant scholarship on education: the supposed disconnect between his theory of morals and his theory of character. While the debate is often couched in terms of Kant’s ‘phenomenal–noumenal’ distinction, or the distinction between moral theory and culture, I follow scholarship suggesting the best way to understand Kant’s distinction is by following his account of the ‘conduct of thought.’ Doing so demonstrates the Lectures on Logic and particularly, his account of prejudice, as playing a large role in the articulation of what it is to think subjectively. We also see the importance of conducting our thinking from the subjective standpoint to an objective one in order to fulfill our obligations to both think and act morally.