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

Beyleveld, Deryck

doi:10.1515/9783110470215-008

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

Beyleveld, Deryck

Authors

Professor Deryck Beyleveld deryck.beyleveld@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Contributors

Jens Peter Brune
Editor

Robert Stern
Editor

Micha H Werner
Editor

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