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  • The Scope of Autonomy: Kant and the Morality of Freedom by Katerini Deligiorgi
  • Matthew McAndrew
Katerini Deligiorgi. The Scope of Autonomy: Kant and the Morality of Freedom. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xvi + 233. Cloth, $75.00.

In The Scope of Autonomy, Katerini Deligiorgi offers an original interpretation of Kantian autonomy. Her aim is to defend the continued relevance of this concept for moral philosophy. As such, she adopts the terminology of contemporary metaethics and situates her reading of Kant in relation to some of the current debates in this field. She challenges a number of widely held assumptions about Kant’s ethics, and her provocative book should inspire much discussion and debate.

Deligiorgi argues that autonomy is a complex concept concerning the relationship between reason, freedom, and morality. She denies that the entire theory can be deduced from any one of these concepts individually. For example, although Kant identifies autonomy with freedom, we cannot derive the theory that Deligiorgi sets forth from this concept alone. As she puts it, there is no “master-concept” for autonomy. She also denies that there is a single “master-argument” or deduction for this theory. According to her reading, Kant’s practical philosophy contains a series of distinct but related arguments [End Page 682] about the nature of practical rationality, morality, and the freedom that underlies them both. Together they constitute the theory of autonomy. However, these arguments are not united in a single proof or deduction. Different arguments are required to defend different aspects of autonomy. Deligiorgi regards this complex understanding of autonomy as one of the principal innovations of her book.

One of the more important claims that Deligiorgi advances concerns the place of metaphysics in Kant’s ethics. She argues that Kantian autonomy is inseparable from a set of metaphysical commitments about the kinds of beings that are capable of this form of agency. She describes these metaphysical presuppositions collectively as Kant’s “metaphysics of agency.” Deligiorgi further argues that we cannot adequately explain the relation between knowledge of the moral law and moral action without appealing to this underlying metaphysics.

Deligiorgi teases apart three facets of agency that are typically lumped together: the obligatoriness of moral beliefs, the influence of these beliefs on one’s actions, or what she terms “doxastic relevance,” and finally one’s motivations for acting. She offers explicitly metaphysical explanations for two of these facets. The obligatoriness of the moral law is a consequence of the necessity of the law and the fallibility of the human will. Doxastic relevance is ultimately based on the freedom that Kant attributes to the will. Only moral motivation is a question for psychology. This is significant because Deligiorgi claims that Kant’s moral psychology follows from his metaphysics. The metaphysics sets the parameters for the psychology. Moreover, she argues that this metaphysics actually accommodates a much wider range of possible motivational states than is often appreciated. For example, she denies that Kant is necessarily committed to either motivational internalism or motivational anti-Humeanism. Instead, she argues that he is in fact a pluralist about motives.

Deligiorgi claims that most contemporary Kantians have downplayed the metaphysical aspects of autonomy. They prefer to frame all questions about agency in strictly psychological terms, asking, for example, what kinds of mental states are sufficient to motivate one to act. This psychological approach is problematic for two reasons. First, it cannot adequately explain key features of autonomy, including doxastic relevance and the obligatoriness of moral beliefs. Second, it distorts Kant’s position because his moral psychology is derived from his metaphysics. We cannot properly understand the former without the latter. If Deligiorgi is correct, then the extensive debate about moral motivation in Kant could be at least somewhat resolved by reincorporating some of the metaphysics that underlies Kant’s conception of autonomous agency.

With the exception of a few select passages, Deligiorgi does not engage in a close reading of Kant’s text. She offers a reconstruction of his position rather than a commentary. However, some of her assertions about Kant are not justified by his words, or at least require further explication. For example, she claims that Kant...

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