Jochen Bojanowski

Kant and Sartre are two of the most significant figures in modern philosophy, and yet there has, until very recently, been little comparative research undertaken on them. Despite dealing with many shared philosophical issues, they have traditionally been taken to be too opposed to each other to render any search for possible parallels between their works a useful enterprise. Indeed, Sartre is often taken to be one of Kant’s most vocal critics in the literature, and as rather indebted to other major figures, such as Husserl and Heidegger. As a consequence, often, where comparative analysis has been done upon Kant and Sartre, the emphasis has been on their differences, rather than on their similarities. However, as recent research has begun to show, the story is not that straightforward and there is much to be explored with regard to parallels between Kant and Sartre. Baiasu has characterised Sartre’s relation to Kant as one of an “anxiety of influence” – Sartre desires to explicitly distance himself from Kant, but this obscures some deeper underlying parallels between them1. Such parallels can form a foundation for productive dialogue, more widely, between the schools of Kantian “Critical philosophy” and existentialism2

Nach einer verbreiteten Auffassung kann Kant die Zurechenbarkeit menschlicher Handlungen nicht erklären, weil seine Freiheitstheorie impliziere, dass ausschließlich die moralisch guten Handlungen freie Handlungen sind. Folgt man Kants Kritikern, hätte er Freiheit als ein Wahlvermögen für oder gegen das moralisch Gebotene bestimmen müssen. In diesem Aufsatz wird dafür argumentiert, dass diese empirische Definition für Kant aus erkenntniskritischen Gründen ausscheidet und er mit der nicht-empirischen Vernunfteinsicht moralischer Verpflichtung zum ersten Mal einen Definitionsgrund gefunden hat, mit dem er über die analytische Definition einer Kausalität aus Freiheit aus der ersten Kritik hinausgehen kann. Dass diese Definition die Möglichkeit der moralisch bösen Handlung nicht ausschließt, wird durch eine genaue Analyse von Kants Argument für seine sogenannte „Analytizitätsthese“ bewiesen

Kant famously claims that the table of the categories of freedom does not require explanation. Kant interpreters have been baffled by this claim, and the disagreement among the increasing number of studies in more recent years suggests that the table is not as straightforward as Kant took it to be. In this article I want to show that a coherent interpretation of the table depends essentially on a clarification of what have been taken to be three fundamental ambiguities in Kants text is, I argue, rooted in a hybrid conception of practical rationality assumed by his interpreters. I believe the task of disambiguating the table in all three cases can be completed. But it will require spelling out Kant’s moral cognitivism in such a way that he emerges as holding what I will call a unitary account of practical rationality