Introduction

Immanuel Kant sets himself the task of deriving the authority and basic principles of morality from an analysis of rational agency in general, abstracting away from any specifically human qualities altogether. Kant distinguishes himself from both sorts of naturalism by arguing that morality is essentially a matter of freedom, autonomy, and rationality in action. For Kant, the authority and motivating power of morality are to be found in what it is to be a creature that can act from reasons at all. Kant’s view seems to have devastating consequences for the possibility of ordinary self-knowledge. Moral self-knowledge will be more closely related to what Kant calls faith than it is to cognition; and this result should appear as a limitation only to those who illicitly privilege scientific knowing over all other forms of thought. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.