ABSTRACT
Immanuel Kant's conception of autonomy in action. The advice proffered by his doctors consisted only of hypothetical imperatives and appealed to his inclinations. As long as one heeds such appeals one is caught in a web of cause and effect and not free. What little plausibility Kant's model has depends entirely on the loaded alternative of the person who is unable to stop when he has had enough. Kant assumes in effect that there are only these two possibilities: the profligate and himself. Kant's contemporaries had no need to look that far back. They associated autonomy with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the development of thought after Kant cannot be understood very well without taking account of Goethe and his influence. As philosophy becomes more and more scholastic and prizes ingenuity while being deeply suspicious of spontaneity and individuality, so-called rational reconstructions of Kant's ethic have become popular.
