Conclusion

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter concludes the discussion with a brief discussion of four issues. First, it returns to the implications of this conception of reason for our understanding of the entire system of rational capacities, arguing that what results from my account is a radicalization of Longuenesse’s work on the teleological structure of such capacities. Then it returns to the potential advantages of the resulting “reason-first” approach to meta-normative questions by comparing this approach to some of the forms of “reasons fundamentalism” in the recent literature, and argues that the connections established between reason, understanding, and autonomy also provide a powerful framework for critiquing many social and political institutions as implicitly irrational. But the chapter ends on a less optimistic note, by briefly considering whether Kant really provides us with a satisfying framework for thinking about how reason is realized in finite, sensibly conditioned creatures. In doing so, the chapter suggests that Kant’s conception of the unity of theoretical and practical reason, while powerful, remains insufficient in some ways to do justice to their interdependence. A more satisfying picture of this relationship points us towards the attempts of Kant’s idealist successors to better integrate these concerns into the foundations of the critical system.