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After providing a brief account of what Kant understands by a practical justification and the various types of it found in his writings, the essay examines the ways in which Kant attempts to provide a practical justification of freedom in various texts, chiefly the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. Its main focus is on the tension between Kant's attempt in the former work to ground the necessity of presupposing freedom in our conception of ourselves as rational agents, independently of any specifically moral considerations, and his view in the latter that, “[H]ad not the moral law already been distinctly thought in our reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a thing as freedom” (KpV 5: 4n). The tension is resolved by linking the former with freedom as spontaneity and the latter with freedom as autonomy.

This chapter further elaborates the incorporation analysis. Hope does indeed involve the basic elements of the orthodox definition—the desire for an outcome and a subjective probability estimate between 0 and 1. In addition, hope, when most fully realized, makes use of our capacities of self-reflection and rational justification; when we hope, we treat both our desire and our probability assignment as justifying reasons for hopeful activities. This is the feature that unifies the syndromatic elements of thought, feeling, and planning, and makes hope a distinctive and cohesive practical attitude. The chapter argues further that the justifications to which we commit ourselves in virtue of hoping are practical justifications, and that there are few epistemic or theoretical limitations on rational hope. It concludes by addressing the disadvantages of this analysis.

The essay is divided into three parts. The first provides a brief account of what Kant understands by a practical justification and the various types of such justification found in his writings. The second examines the different ways in which Kant attempts to provide a practical justification of freedom in various texts, chiefly the Groundwork and the second Critique. Its main focus is on the tension between Kant’s attempt in the former work to ground the necessity of presupposing freedom in our conception of ourselves as rational agents, and therefore independently of any specifically moral considerations, and his view in the latter that it is only our consciousness of standing under the moral law that justifies the assumption of freedom. It attempts to resolve this tension by linking the former with freedom as spontaneity and the latter with freedom as autonomy. The third part reflects upon the ontological issues posed by these two types of practical justification.

The main topic of this chapter is epistemic justification, which is distinct from moral or practical justification. Paradigm cases of epistemically justified belief include belief based on good inferences, belief in self-evident truths, and belief based on perceptual representations or immediate introspective awareness. Justification is the property that makes a belief justified. The goal here is to carve a good deal of the debate about justification at its joints. The concept of justification is an important epistemic concept in its own right, and much work in epistemology has been devoted to its analysis. The present discussion advances that endeavor via four avenues. The first offers a new taxonomy of theories of justification, the second elaborates on the four positions in the new taxonomy, the third makes some points of comparison between the two taxonomies, and the fourth briefly discusses evidence for theory-choice.