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Wood
Preface
Introduction
and
(3-16)
ALLEN W. WOOD
ALLEN W. WOOD
3Pistorius'
ALLEN W. WOOD
ALLEN W. WOOD
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ALLEN W. WOOD
PREFACE
AND
INTRODUCTION
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ALLEN W. WOOD
PREFACE
AND
INTRODUCTION
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both our awareness of moral obligation and our impression that we are free are high-flown fantasies born of
metaphysical self-conceit. These doubts might be
answered either by a theoretical proof that we are free or
by some demonstration of the validity of the moral law
that
renders
that
validity
independent
of
the
presupposition of freedom. But Kant's strategy does not
appear to do either: it still seems to involve the
establishment of one dubious idea by appealing to another
idea just as dubious, and quite possibly dubious for just
the same reasons.
One possible way out of this impasse might be the
Groundwork's suggestion that freedom is unavoidably
presupposed in all judgment (IV 447-448), including
theoretical judgments (any judgments whatever, even
skeptical ones) about whether we are free. At least this
would push those who doubt freedom to the point where
they must admit that they are under an illusion even in
thinking that their own doubts might be based on reasons,
thus threatening fatalism, skepticism about freedom and
skepticism
about
the
moral
law
equally
with
unintelligibility or self-refutation. But those who see in the
second Critique's "fact of reason" doctrine a new starting
point for Kant's treatment of freedom and the moral law
typically regard him as having abandoned the
Groundwork's strategy on this point.
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PREFACE
AND
INTRODUCTION
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AND
INTRODUCTION
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against a priori cognition in general, since such an argument could consist only in a use of reason, but what it
tried to show would
PREFACE
AND
INTRODUCTION
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ALLEN W. WOOD
PREFACE
AND
INTRODUCTION
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ALLEN W. WOOD
have the effect he hopes for. He is also barred from trying to persuade us
that the effect of the argument (the resultant skepticism) is good for us,
since that too would require an argument that conforms to a touchstone
(or to normative principles). Also, if it is correct that to judge is to
represent oneself to oneself as judging according to normative principles
(or a "touchstone"), then empiricist skeptics must also represent those who
are convinced by their arguments as guilty of a kind of self-deception when
they subscribe to the conclusion of those arguments.
PREFACE
AND
INTRODUCTION
23
Bibliography
[Feder, J. G./Garve, Ch.): Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Von Imman. Kant, in:
Zugaben zu den
Gdttinger Gelehrten Anzeigen 0anuary 19, 1782), pp. 40-48. Pistorius,
H. A.: Rezension der "Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten", in:
Allgemeine