Objections: Coherence or Plausibility
Kant’s conception of the proper self, located outside of and prior to space and time (according to transcendental idealism), as the cite of our true autonomy, gives rise to considerable difficulties, both exegetical and philosophical. Both types of difficulty are engaged with in this chapter. First of all, the chapter investigates the exegetical problem standardly raised at this point, which involves the anxiety that in speaking, in the Groundwork, about our access to the free noumenal self, Kant violates his own critical epistemic discipline. It is shown that Kant does not, in fact, violate his own critical discipline in the Groundwork. The chapter also shows that although the conception of the noumenal intelligible self is hardly ‘common-sensical’ to ‘us’, it would not have been incredible to Kant, and would not have led, necessarily, to some of the deleterious consequences that commentators have feared.