Agency and Autonomy in Kant’s Moral Theory: Selected Essays

The volume consists of nine interconnected essays. Chapter 1 examines respect for the moral law as both recognition of moral authority and the affective experience produced when morality limits inclination. Chapter 2 rejects the interpretation that Kant reduces all non-moral motivation to a pursuit of pleasure and instead explains the principle of happiness as the structural form of choice based on desire. Chapter 3 analyses practical rationality and Kant’s derivation of the Formula of Universal Law. Chapter 4 distinguishes the senses in which rational agents legislate the moral law and particular moral requirements. Chapter 5 interprets autonomy of the will as the foundation of morality and develops the idea that moral agents are both subjects and authors of moral law. Chapter 6 examines the social dimension of autonomy and the community of equal rational legislators represented by the realm of ends. Chapter 7 shows how a conception of autonomous agency informs the universalization of maxims and judgments concerning deception, coercion, and violence. Chapter 8 explains self-legislation and duties to oneself by showing how one agent may occupy the distinct normative positions of legislator, subject, and beneficiary of a duty. Chapter 9 investigates moral responsibility and the imputation of consequences, arguing that consequences may be attributed to the agent on whose authority an action is undertaken.