Jamsheed Siyar

In a much-discussed passage, Kant claims that it is an analytic proposition that whoever wills an end wills the necessary means to that end. The standard reading of this passage holds that Kant was here implicitly appealing to a normative principle; viz. that whoever wills an end ought also to will the means to that end. I argue here that the normative reading is mistaken, and that Kant was in fact asserting that the willing of the necessary means analytically follows from the willing of an end. In particular I argue that propositions articulating an agent’s willing of the means are analytic-practical propositions that can be derived from the agent’s willing of an end. Further, the derivation of these propositions is possible given the self-conception an agent necessarily inhabits insofar as she wills an end.

Kant famously distinguishes between the categorical imperative (CI) and hypothetical imperatives (HIs), which are instrumental norms. On the standard reading, Kant subscribes to the of HIs, which takes HIs to be consistency requirements that bind agents in exactly the same way whether or not agents are subject to CI and whether or not they conform their choices to CI. I argue that this reading cannot be squared with Kant's account of an agent's disposition, in particular his claim that cognition of CI is a necessary condition of willing a maxim. I further argue that Kant could not accept an account of HIs as consistency requirements. Finally, I outline Kant's conception of HIs as non-disjunctive requirements that arise when and only when agents will permissible ends. This account can help recapture Kant's conception of the unity of rational norms