Gabriela Basterra
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265145
- eISBN:
- 9780823266883
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265145.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
How does the causality of freedom affect the subject? This question concerns the alterity of the law and the subject's relationship with it. Kant refers to the law's impact on subjectivity in terms ...
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How does the causality of freedom affect the subject? This question concerns the alterity of the law and the subject's relationship with it. Kant refers to the law's impact on subjectivity in terms of respect (Achtung), a singular feeling originating not in sensibility but in practical reason. Respect produces a positive affect that furthers the law, but also a negative one whereby the law appears to consciousness as a threatening command. This chapter analyzes the positive and negative senses of respect in relation with two different conceptions of ethics that coexist in the Critique of Practical Reason, an immanent one defined by unconditionality (Analytic) and a transcendent one that privileges finality (Dialectic). Since, as this chapter shows, the discrepancies between these two conceptions parallel those between the third and the fourth antinomy of pure reason, it proposes to turn to the third antinomy for insight into an immanent ethical subjectivity.Less
How does the causality of freedom affect the subject? This question concerns the alterity of the law and the subject's relationship with it. Kant refers to the law's impact on subjectivity in terms of respect (Achtung), a singular feeling originating not in sensibility but in practical reason. Respect produces a positive affect that furthers the law, but also a negative one whereby the law appears to consciousness as a threatening command. This chapter analyzes the positive and negative senses of respect in relation with two different conceptions of ethics that coexist in the Critique of Practical Reason, an immanent one defined by unconditionality (Analytic) and a transcendent one that privileges finality (Dialectic). Since, as this chapter shows, the discrepancies between these two conceptions parallel those between the third and the fourth antinomy of pure reason, it proposes to turn to the third antinomy for insight into an immanent ethical subjectivity.
