Abstract

Kant's Critique of Judgment has often been explained as relating aesthetics and morality by presupposing his ethics. This dissertation reverses this direction of inquiry by interpreting the third Critique in terms of the contributions it makes to Kant's philosophy of action. Central here is an exposition of presentation as it functions in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy and takes on a special role in his aesthetics and natural teleology. ;The term action in Kant's thought indicates a much larger field than pure ethics, which is restricted to determining and justifying the supreme principle of morality . The move from pure ethics to action is the move from the determination and justification of the moral law in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason to its application in individual human life. I argue that the Critique of Judgment contributes to Kant's philosophy of action by revealing the work of reflective judgment in applying the moral law. ;For Kant, any application of concepts or ideas to experience requires a presentation that relates it to space and time as the forms of our experience. For theoretical concepts, presentation is by means of constructions and schemata, which Kant outlines in the Critique of Pure Reason. Practical concepts receive a formal presentation in what Kant labels the "Typic of Pure Practical Judgment" in the second Critique. But the material presentation of ideas related to action, particularly that of the efficacy of the moral law, requires the aesthetic and teleological mediation of reflective judgment in the third Critique. Kant's claim that beauty is the symbol of morality is the central example of this mediation, but it extends as well to the ideal of beauty, the sublime, genius, and Kant's philosophy of organic nature. ;The examination of action here also contains an exposition of Triebfedern and of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Metaphysics of Morals, and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Through the essay, "What Progress has Metaphysics Made in the Time since Leibniz and Wolff?", I relate presentation to practical cognition