Transcendental Arguments for a Categorical Imperative as Arguments from Agential Self-Understanding

Beyleveld, Deryck

Abstract

This chapter construes Kant’s contention that a categorical imperative is a synthetic a priori principle as equivalent to Gewirth’s claim that such an imperative is a dialectically necessary principle (a strict requirement of agential self-understanding). It is not concerned to defend either Kant’s or Gewirth’s argument for a categorical imperative, but to elucidate the “dialectically necessary method” (which rests on the dialectical necessity of a principle making it categorically binding) and to defend this method against David Enoch’s critique of “constitutivism” (taken as trying to show that transcendental arguments for morality, construed as dialectically necessary ones, are futile, even if they can be successful, because normativity cannot be constituted in dialectical necessity). In the process, it relates the dialectically necessary method to internalism, naturalism, foundationalism, coherentism, and realism.

Citation

Beyleveld, D. (2017). Transcendental Arguments for a Categorical Imperative as Arguments from Agential Self-Understanding. In J. P. Brune, R. Stern, & M. H. Werner (Eds.), Transcendental arguments in moral theory (141-159). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110470215-008

• Online Publication Date: Jan 20, 2017
• Publication Date: Jan 20, 2017
• Deposit Date: Aug 10, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 20, 2018
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Pages: 141-159
• Book Title: Transcendental arguments in moral theory.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110470215-008
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1667754