Kant and the Feelings of Reason

This essay brings Kant's notion of a philosophical medicine or a practical dietetics to bear on his ethics and, more precisely, the place of feeling within it. It argues that Kant offers up a dietetic regime in his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft designed to prevent a pathological subjectivity or, what he terms, solipsism by cultivating moral feelings. But this ethical discipline involves not so much the extirpation of feelings or affect than the modification of their place in the larger human economy. Kant's moral regimens cultivate particular feelings as necessary and indispensable elements of moral being. For Kant, reason not only legislates: it needs, it feels, it suffers, and disciplines, and a disciplined reason is an embodied reason, a reason bound to particular human beings and particular practices.