Greg wrote:

A question for those familiar with Kant: At some point I am planning to read Kant's second Critique and then his Metaphysics of Morals (having already read the Groundwork, of course). How essential is it that I read the first Critique before doing this?

Archetetonically, it's essential, since it establishes his way of construing pure practical reason. For instance, Aristotle's means of reasoning and natural law, as far as I can tell, simply don't *work* in a Kantian framework due to the limits placed on metaphysical reasoning in the first critique. You're not for instance, liscensed to reason about most natural ends, I should think.

In terms of just understanding "Kantian ethics" however, no, I shouldn't think the first and third critiques to be too important.

Edit:

The SEP covers the arcetectonic issues here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/

What I'm gesturing at, rather scantily is what they cover under "the primacy of practical reason" cf:

SEP wrote:

At the most general level, Kant's notion of autonomy already implied some sort of primacy for pure practical reason. In denying theoretical reason all insight into the supersensible (against various stripes of rationalism) and in denying normative authority to the inclinations (against Hume), Kant thereby rules out the only ways that that theoretical or instrumental reasoning could supply authoritative reasons to act:only pure practical reason can do this. Now, however, Kant argues that pure practical reason has “primacy” even on the home turf of theoretical reason. That is, pure practical reason should guide some of our beliefs, as well as our actions.

I take it that supposing we're correct as classical thinkers, it's probably going to turn out that we disagree with Kant on this matter or it's going to turn out that if Kant is followed through thoroughly one can vindicate our position (or family of positions) via another means (and the Critique of Judgement sugests a congeniality to natural teleology that might save more than the second and first critiques suggest). But I take it that Kant's idea of a merely formal ethics probably doesn't actually work for us. Classical natural law is founded on the authority of the natural order in some sense, not a formal principle of subjective reason, and it stands to reason that a lot of the difference comes from Kant thinking that the former simply isn't possible in the way that we tend to think it is.

Last edited by iwpoe (10/14/2016 7:09 am)