Abstract

In a much-discussed passage, Kant claims that it is an analytic proposition that whoever wills an end wills the necessary means to that end. The standard reading of this passage holds that Kant was here implicitly appealing to a normative principle; viz. that whoever wills an end ought also to will the means to that end. I argue here that the normative reading is mistaken, and that Kant was in fact asserting that the willing of the necessary means analytically follows from the willing of an end. In particular I argue that propositions articulating an agent’s willing of the means are analytic-practical propositions that can be derived from the agent’s willing of an end. Further, the derivation of these propositions is possible given the self-conception an agent necessarily inhabits insofar as she wills an end.