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   

it is our consciousness of the moral law (KP :);

it is the moral law itself (KP :, , );

it is the consciousness of freedom of the will (KP :);

it is autonomy in the principle of morality (KP :);

it is an inevitable determination of the will by the moral law

itself (KP :);

() it is actual cases of actions presupposing unconditional causality (KP :).



()

()

()

()

()



The fifth characterization is, I think, of no importance for our question,

and so I ignore it here; the sixth, the phrasing of which seems quite different,

is actually just like () when the whole passage is read, and so I put it under

(). This leaves ()–().

. Now, ()–() are not as different as they look; in fact, they are closely

related. In order to give a consistent reading of Kant’s view, I shall use ().

To explain why, consider §, KP :

The consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of

reason, since one cannot by subtle arguments derive it from already

given data of reason, for example, the consciousness of freedom (for

this is not already given) and because it forces itself upon us as a synthetic a priori proposition based on no pure or empirical intuition,

although it would be analytic if the freedom of the will were presupposed, but for this a positive concept, an intellectual intuition, would

be required, and here we cannot assume it. Yet in order to avoid any

misunderstanding in regarding this law as given, we must note well

that: it [the Moral Law] is not an empirical fact but the sole fact of

pure reason, which announces itself [through that fact] as originating

law (Sic volvo, sic iubeo).1



This crucial passage begins with the first specification of the fact of reason

and ends with the second. Despite this ambiguity, I follow the first characterization. Let’s say:

1. The Latin means “Thus I will, thus I command.”



[  ]



   

The fact of reason is the fact that, as reasonable beings, we are conscious of the moral law as the supremely authoritative and regulative

law for us and in our ordinary moral thought and judgment we recognize it as such.



I believe that we can give a coherent account of the fact of reason by using

this formulation. To see this, consider the following points.

First, the moral law as an idea of reason is only an idea, and as such

may lack, as the ideas of immortality and of God may, objective reality,

and so not apply to anything. Thus the moral law cannot itself be the fact

of reason. This excludes ().

Second, the fact of reason cannot be the (direct) consciousness of freedom, since it is a feature of Kant’s transcendental idealism that we have

no intellectual intuition of freedom. This excludes ().

Third, the fact of reason cannot be autonomy in the principle of morality because whether autonomy is meant as the principle of morality itself

(the moral law) (), or as freedom (), () is excluded once we exclude ()

and ().

I conclude that the fact of reason is (): our consciousness of the moral

law as supremely authoritative and regulative for us.

. A few observations. First, the doctrine of the fact of reason settles a

question that long bothered Kant: namely, whether our knowledge of the

moral law is rooted in our moral consciousness of this law or in our consciousness of our freedom as reasonable beings. Kant holds that our knowledge of the moral law cannot be based on our consciousness of our freedom. For this would imply that we have an intellectual intuition of freedom,

whereas our intuitions (our experiences of particular objects and processes)

are always subject to the conditions of sensibility. The order of knowledge

is the other way around: the fact of reason, our shared consciousness of

the moral law as supremely authoritative, is the basic fact from which our

moral knowledge and conception of ourselves as free must begin (KP

:n.).

Further, Kant says that our consciousness of the moral law as supremely

authoritative for us is not an empirical fact but “the sole fact of pure reason.”

To see the significance of this, and the central role it gives to the fact of



[  ]



   



reason, consider what he says about the concept of freedom in the Preface

(KP :f.):

The concept of freedom, insofar as its reality is shown by an apodictic

law of practical reason [the fact of reason], is the keystone of the whole

architecture of the system of pure [practical] reason and even of speculative reason. All other concepts (those of God and immortality) which,

as mere ideas, are unsupported by anything in speculative reason, now

attach themselves to the concept of freedom and gain, with it and

through it, existence as objective reality. That is, their possibility is

shown by the fact that there really is freedom, for this [that there really

is freedom] is shown through the moral law.



Plainly, the doctrine of the fact of reason is central, not only to Kant’s

moral philosophy, but to his transcendental idealism as a whole. That the

concept of freedom has objective reality, which is the keystone of the system of speculative as well as of practical reason, depends on the fact of

reason.



§. The Third Passage: Appendix I to Analytic I, Paragraphs –

. In this passage Kant says that the moral law can be given no deduction,

that is, no justification of its objective and universal validity; instead, it rests

on the fact of reason. He says further that the moral law needs no justifying

grounds; rather, that law proves not only the possibility but also the actuality of freedom in those who recognize and acknowledge that law as supremely authoritative (that is, those of whom the fact of reason holds). The

moral law thus gives objective, although only practical, reality to the idea

of freedom, and thereby answers a need of pure speculative reason, which

had to assume the possibility of freedom to be consistent with itself. That

the moral law does this is sufficient authentication, or credential, as Kant

says, for that law. This credential takes the place of all of those vain attempts to justify it by theoretical reason, whether speculative or empirical

(KP :ff.).



[  ]



   



As we have seen, this is a fundamental change from the Groundwork.

Now, what is the significance of this change? 2 It signals, I believe, Kant’s

recognition that each of the four forms of reason in his critical philosophy

has a different place and role in what he calls the unity of reason. He thinks

of reason as a self-subsistent unity of principles in which every member

exists for every other, and all for the sake of each (KR Bxxiii; KP :ff.).

In the most general sense, the authentication of a form of reason consists

in explaining its place and role within what I shall call the constitution of

reason as a whole. For Kant, there can be no question of justifying reason

itself. Reason must answer all questions about itself from its own resources

(KR B–), and it must contain the standard for any critical examination

of every use of reason (KP :): the constitution of reason must be selfauthenticating.

Once we regard the authentication3 of a form of reason as explaining

its role within the constitution of reason, then, since the forms of reason

have different roles, we should expect their authentications also to be different. Each fits into the constitution of reason in a different way, and the

more specific considerations that explain their role in that constitution will

likewise be different. The moral law will not have the same kind of authentication that the categories do, namely, the special kind of argument Kant

gives for them in the Transcendental Deduction of the first Critique. This

deduction tries to show the categories to be presupposed in our experience

of objects in space and time, in contrast to their being regulative of the use

of a faculty, in the way that the ideas of reason regulate the use of the

understanding.

2. On the importance of this change, I agree with much of Karl Ameriks’s valuable discussion

in his Kant’s Theory of Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), chap. . He discusses the views

of Beck, Paton, and Henrich, who have tried to preserve the continuity of Kant’s doctrine and have

questioned the fundamental nature of the change.

3. It is important to keep in mind the ambiguity in Kant’s use of the term “deduction.” He

sometimes uses it, as in the third fact of reason passage, to mean the special kind of argument

given to establish the universal validity of the categories in the Transcendental Deduction; at other

times it means simply considerations that suffice to justify, or defend against challenge, our use of

something already in our possession. This broad meaning Kant adopted from the legal terminology

of his day, for which I have used the term “authenticate” instead. On this, see Dieter Henrich,

“Kant’s Notion of a Deduction,” in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. Eckart Foărster (Stanford:

Stanford University Press, ), pp. .



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