Kant insists that our actions ought to conform to objective moral rules, and that these rules apply to us regardless of whether we feel inclined to conform to them. Can he establish the truth of these claims? ;His writings on moral philosophy contain not a single answer to this question but two distinct and incompatible ones. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that the basic norm that underlies our moral judgments, the Moral Law, is valid for (...) us because it is rooted in the freedom of our rational nature. But, in the Critique of Practical Reason, he argues that the Law is a fact that requires no justification and that this fact allows us to reason from morality to freedom. Is one of these arguments more convincing than the other? ;It would seem not. For each argument, I try to show, begs the question against an empirically-minded view of morality. More specifically, in the Groundwork Kant uncritically assumes that the freedom of rational agency enjoys a kind of independence from the motivational influence of sensible desires; while, in the second Critique, he similarly assumes that this motivation plays no role in an account of the validity of moral judgments. ;But I also try to show that Kant would have offered a more satisfying solution to the problems of moral theory had he modelled his views about agency more closely upon other views he holds about the self in its theoretical employment. The idea is this: Kant holds that theoretical knowledge requires a unified knowing subject, that a subject as varied as are its individual sense-experiences can never know the way the world is. I suggest that he could have defended an analogous claim about the connection between moral knowledge and the unity of agency; that is, were an agent as varied as are its individual desires, it could never know the way the world ought to be. I do not contend that this alternative solution is completely convincing, but I do hold that it offers an attractive response to central difficulties in the Groundwork and second Critique. (shrink)