On the Many Senses of “Self-Determination”
This chapter begins by noting a number of basic meanings that “determination” has for Kant: causal, epistemic, formal, and normative, in the sense of defining a “vocation” for the individual and humanity as a whole. These distinctions are employed in a reinterpretation of the difficult transition in Kant’s argument connecting Sections II and III of the Groundwork. In this context, a new reading is given of Kant’s “Formula of Autonomy,” one of the basic meanings of his categorical imperative. It is argued that it is primarily the autonomy of the faculty of reason and its appreciation of an absolutely necessary norm that is Kant’s main concern. It is also argued that Kant’s notion of autonomy should not be understood in a loose, anarchic way, nor in such a way that free action against morality, that is, evil, is not clearly possible.