Phenomenology of Kant’s feeling of respect, or what does it looks like to will well

Abstract

Given Kant?s claim that the moral value of an action depends on whether the will is determined ?objectively by law and subjectively by pure respect for this practical law? (AA 4:400), this research is focused not on the usual a priori objective derivation of moral principles in thesis/in hypothesis, but on their subjective application in concreto. In other words, the paper examines how human beings, as sensuous beings, are affected by the principles of their own practical reason. Kant states that human beings can?t understand how they are motivated by a moral law because it is inexplicable to the human mind how an intelligible cause (law) produces a sensuous consequence (respect) that, whether we like it or not, find in the soul. By denying the possibility of (objective) knowledge of the source of the feeling of respect from the ?thirdperson perspective?, Kant makes room for the phenomenology of this feeling and shows how the subjective experience of coercion of the will by the reason of the moral law looks like ?from the first-person perspective?