The Autonomy of Reason and the Capacity for Autonomy

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter turns to the idea of reason as the capacity for a sort of genuinely autonomous activity or self-organization. In doing so, it develops the claims of the last three chapters by arguing that the idea of reason as autonomous ultimately expresses the same fundamental conception of reason as the idea of reason as the capacity for comprehension or cognition from principles. The chapter attempts to show that comprehension and autonomy are simply two (equally important) ways of capturing what is valuable about the distinctive activity of reason as Kant understands it. As we will see, each of these ways of thinking about reason’s activity is useful for certain purposes, but both are required if we are to fully understand Kant’s conception of reason and its unity. In other words, for Kant, the unity of theoretical and practical reason can only be fully understood if we understand the unity of comprehension and autonomy.