The Possibility of Moral Imagination

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores reasons we might be skeptical that Kant countenances the possibility of a moral imagination on both textual grounds and grounds related to the commitments of his moral philosophy. However, it argues that Kant acknowledges a moral use of imagination, which we need to reconstruct. And it lays out the groundwork for the reconstruction offered here, which turns on applying Kant’s theory of imagination more generally to the practical domain. In particular, the chapter highlights the role that his account of imagination as a capacity that enables us to see more and imagination as the faculty of exhibition will play in this reconstruction of the use of our imagination vis-à-vis the faculty of desire and our pursuit of morality.