SenSibility FirSt : How to interpret Kant ’ S tHeoretical and practical pHiloSopHy

In the practical realm just as in the theoretical realm, everything comes down to human sensibility as an equally empirical and non-empirical primitive starting point that constitutively motivates, intentionally pervades, and intentionally structures our innately-specified yet also “human, all-too-human” capacities for theoretical and practical rationality, all the way up. Strong Kantian non-conceptualism  says that according to Kant, the faculty of human intuition or Anschauung, that is, human inner and outer sense perception, together with the faculty of imagination or Einbildungskraft, jointly constitute this sensible starting point for objective cognition and theoretical reason; and Kantian non-intellectualism  says that according to Kant, human affect, desire, and moral emotion—in a word, the human heart—jointly constitute this sensible starting point for free agency and practical reason.  Conjoined, they provide what I call the  Sensibility First  approach, which, in a nutshell, says that human rationality flows from the groundedness of our discursive, intellectual, and embodiment-neutral powers in our sensible, non-intellectual, and essentially embodied powers, without in any way reducing the former to the latter. If I’m correct about all this, then the result is a sharply non-classical and unorthodox, hence “shocking,” nevertheless fully unified and textually defensible approach to Kant’s proto-Critical philosophy (i.e., from 1768 to 1772), Critical philosophy (i.e., from 1781 to 1787) and post-Critical philosophy (i.e., from the late 1780s to the late 1790s) that encompasses his theoretical philosophy and the practical philosophy alike. KeywordS: Kant, theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, sensibility, non-conceptualism, non-intellectualism


i. introduction
In the practical realm just as in the theoretical realm, everything comes down to human sensibility as an equally empirical and non-empirical primitive starting point that constitutively motivates, intentionally pervades, and intentionally structures our innately-specified yet also "human, all-too-human" capacities for theoretical and practical rationality, all the way up. Strong Kantian non-conceptualism says that according to Kant,4 the faculty of human intuition or Anschauung, that is, human inner and outer sense perception, together with the faculty of imagination or Einbildungskraft, 5 jointly constitute this sensible starting point for objective cognition and theoretical reason; and strong Kantian non-intellectualism says that according to Kant, human affect, desire, and moral emotion-in a word, the human heart-jointly constitute this sensible starting point for free agency and practical reason. If I'm correct about Until recently, according to the classical, orthodox reading of Kant's theoretical philosophy in general and of his theory of cognition in particular-defended, for example, by Wilfrid Sellars and John McDowell 14 -Kant is a conceptualist, who believes that the rational human innate capacity for conceptualization and self-conscious propositional thinking, the understanding (Verstand), strictly determines all the intentional contents of cognition.
But the classical, orthodox standard reading has, since 2005, been seriously challenged by those who argue that, on the contrary, Kant is a non-conceptualist 15 who believes that not all the intentional contents of cognition are strictly determined by the understanding, and that at least some of the intentional contents of cognition are strictly determined by the rational human innate capacity for intuition, imagination, and sense perception, i.e., the capacity for sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), alone, in a non-conceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, and non-inferential way. 16 More specifically then, according to Kantian non-conceptualism, Kant is committed to the view that all rational human cognition not only begins in our specifically human sensibility, in the sense that it is triggered into action by worldly causal inputs deriving from empirical sensibility (since that fact can be accommodated by the weaker versions of Kantian conceptualism), but also (i) it is primitively grounded on the fully intentional and not merely causal inputs deriving from empirical sensibility, and (ii) it is necessarily limited by the a priori intentional inputs deriving from the forms of sensibility, the non-empirical representations of space and time. HANNA, R. Or in other words, according to Kantian non-conceptualism, where Kantian theoretical philosophy and Kantian theory of cognition are concerned, they are, in a constitutive sense, committed to the Sensibility First thesis.
As it turns out, and as I have implied in the parenthetical remark two sentences above, there are two distinct varieties of Kantian conceptualism and Kantian non-conceptualism respectively: strong and weak. Strong Kantian conceptualism says that the sensibility is explanatorily and ontologically reducible to the understanding. 17 And weak Kantian conceptualism says that the sensibility is neither explanatorily nor ontologically reducible to the understanding because sensibility provides an understanding-independent necessary condition for intentional content, whereby sensibility is at least causally required for delivering worldly information to the rational human mind; nevertheless, the sensibility is not constitutively involved in intentionality, hence all intentional content is essentially conceptual, even if it's initially presented to the rational human mind by the sensibility in a relatively conceptuallyundetermined or conceptually-unarticulated way. 18 By sharp contrast to both kinds of Kantian conceptualism, strong Kantian non-conceptualism says that non-conceptual cognitions have an essentially different kind of content from conceptual cognitions, and also that concepts are neither necessary nor sufficient for either the existence or specific character of the content of these cognitions. 19 And weak Kantian non-conceptualism says that although some cognitions are such that the subjects of those cognitions do not possess concepts for specifying the contents of those cognitions, nevertheless the contents of those cognitions either really could be or else really are essentially conceptual. 20 We should notice, particularly, that weak Kantian conceptualism and weak Kantian non-conceptualism are mutually consistent. Indeed, many or even most contemporary weak Kantian conceptualists, including recent McDowell, are also explicitly or at least implicitly weak Kantian non-conceptualists. In view of these distinctions, I've charitably formulated Kantian conceptualism in a way that is neutral as between strong Kantian conceptualism and weak Kantian conceptualism. Correspondingly, I've also formulated Kantian non-conceptualism as strong Kantian non-conceptualism, since that's what I take to be the most defensible version, and have argued for elsewhere in detail and at length. 21 Now what about non-conceptualism as an independent philosophical thesis outside the special context of Kant-interpretation? The thesis of non-conceptualism about mental content says that not all mental contents in the intentional or representational acts or states of minded animals are necessarily or constitutively determined by their conceptual capacities, and that at least some mental contents are necessarily or constitutively determined by their non-conceptual capacities. 22 Non-conceptualism is sometimes, but not always, combined with the further thesis that non-conceptual capacities and contents can be shared by rational human animals, nonrational human minded animals (and in particular, infants), and non-human minded animals alike. But in any case, non-conceptualism is directly opposed to the thesis of conceptualism about mental content, which says that all mental contents are necessarily or constitutively determined by minded animals' conceptual capacities. 23 Conceptualism is also sometimes, but not always, combined with the further thesis that the psychological acts or states of infants and non-human minded animals lack mental content. Now in a nutshell, non-conceptualism says (i) that our cognitive access to the targets of our intentionality is neither always nor necessarily mediated by concepts, nor sufficiently determined (i.e., constituted) by concepts, which is the conceptindependence of non-conceptual content, and therefore (ii) that our cognitive access to the targets of our intentionality is sometimes wholly unmediated by concepts, or altogether concept-free, which is the concept-autonomy of non-conceptual content.
And conceptualism says (i) that our cognitive access to the targets of our intentionality is always and necessarily mediated by concepts, and indeed also sufficiently determined or constituted by concepts.
Here, then, are the fundamental philosophical questions that are being asked in the debate about non-conceptual content: Can we and do we sometimes cognitively encounter other things and ourselves directly and nondiscursively, hence non-intellectually or sensibly (non-conceptualism), or must we always cognitively encounter them only within the framework of discursive rationality, hence intellectually or discursively (conceptualism)?
Are we, as rational animals, essentially different from other kinds of animals (conceptualism), or do we share at least some minimally basic mental capacities with all minded animals (non-conceptualism)?
And finally: Is a thoroughly Discursivity First view of the rational human mind as an innately-specified power for cognition that's grounded on embodiment-neutral self-conscious or reflective conceptualization, judgment or propositional thinking, and logical inference (conceptualism) correct, or by sharp contrast, is a thoroughly Sensibility First view of the rational "human, all-too-human" mind as a power for cognition that's grounded on essentially embodied non-self-consciously conscious or pre-reflective sense-perception and imagination (including episodic memory 24 ) (non-conceptualism) correct?
Obviously, I think that the Sensibility First view is the correct one.
It is also important to note that whereas conceptualism is of necessity a form of contentmonism, which says there is one and only kind of intentional or representational content (sometimes, however, combined with capacity-dualism, which says that there are two essentially different basic kinds of cognitive capacities), by contrast non-conceptualism can be, and usually is, a form of content-dualism, which says that there are two essentially different kinds of intentional or representational content, and if so, then it is always a form of capacity-dualism too. Correspondingly, the version of non-conceptualism that I defend, not only as a matter of Kant-interpretation, but also as an independently defensible thesis in contemporary philosophy, i.e., strong Kantian non-conceptualism, is both content-dualist and capacity-dualist.
As a sub-species of Non-Conceptualism, Strong Kantian Non-Conceptualism is the following three-part doctrine: (i) mental acts or states in minded animals have representational content whose semantic structure and psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content, (ii) the specific psychological function of essentially non-conceptual content is to guide conscious intentional desire-driven body movements for the purposes of essentially embodied cognition and practical agency, and (iii) the semantic structures of essentially non-conceptual content are equivalent to Kant's spatiotemporal forms of intuition, including their representational roles as "formal intuitions" (B136), and also as non-empirical schemata or "mental models" generated by the "figurative synthesis of the imagination" (B151-156 A137-147/B176-187).
More precisely however, according to Strong Kantian Non-Conceptualism, X is an essentially non-conceptual content of perception if and only if X is a mental content such that (i) X is not a conceptual content, as defined by a defensible, non-question-begging theory of concepts and conceptual content, (ii) X is included in an essentially embodied mental state, act, or process that directly refers to some or another causally efficacious actual individual macroscopic material being B in the local or distal natural environment of the minded animal subject of X-and it is also really possible that the minded animal subject of X = B-and thereby both uniquely (if not always perfectly accurately) locates B in 3D Euclidean orientable space and also uniquely (if not always perfectly accurately) tracks B's thermodynamically asymmetric and temporally irreversible causal activities in time, in order to individuate, normatively guide, and informationally mediate the subject's conscious intentional desire-driven body movements for the purposes of cognitive and practical intentional agency, and (iii) X is an inherently context-sensitive, egocentric or first-person-perspectival, spatiotemporally structured content that is not ineffable, but instead shareable or communicable only to the extent that another minded animal ego or first-person is in a cognitive position to be actually directly perceptually confronted by the same causally efficacious actual individual macroscopic material being B in a spacetime possessing the same basic 3D Euclidean orientable, thermodynamically asymmetric, and temporally irreversible structure.
In view of condition (ii), essentially non-conceptual content is inherently normatively governed by an ideal standard of accurate direct reference for the purposes of location and tracking, and can still be directly referential even when it is only more-or-less accurate. More accuracy means better location and tracking by the conscious subject, and less accuracy means worse location and tracking by the conscious subject. So in view of condition (ii), it follows that essentially non-conceptual content fully includes what Hubert Dreyfus calls "the nonconceptual world of absorbed coping," including Heideggerian "concern" and "readiness-to-hand" (that is, normatively engaged, skillful use of tools), Wittgensteinian "blind" involvement in shared practices as "forms of life," and Husserlian "lifeworld" phenomena more generally.
But this set of Heideggerian and Wittgensteinian features of essentially non-conceptual content must also be understood, as per the French existential phenomenologists Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, 25 but especially as per Kant, as also inherently belonging to a complete and fully unified package of normatively rich, pre-reflectively non-self-consciously conscious content that's inherently poised for guiding the performance of basic intentional actions 26 by essentially embodied minded animals-and in this way it is inherently essentially embodied agential content.
Here's a simple argument for the existence of essentially non-conceptual perceptual content, that I will call The Handwaving Argument. This simple argument anticipates a more complicated, explicit, and rigorously-formulated argument for the same conclusion, using the notion of directly perceivable qualitative three-dimensional material duplicates that are also mirror-reflected spatial counterparts-aka "incongruent counterparts," or "enantiomorphs," for example, (slightly idealized versions of ) your right and left hands-that I fully spell out and defend elsewhere. 27 In any case, The Handwaving Argument is directly inspired by Kant's famous "argument from incongruent counterparts" for the truth of the thesis of the "transcendental ideality" of space and time, according to which space and time are nothing but subjective forms of human sensibility. 28 So obviously it has deep Kantian historical roots. Moreover, although I do think that The Handwaving Argument is sound, it's not intended to be rationally decisive, because it leaves a lot of important information merely implicit-instead, it's intended to be only rationally evocative in the sense that it clearly and quickly illustrates what I have been saying about essentially non-conceptual content.
tHe Handwaving argument 1. Suppose that I am standing right in front of you and saying "All bachelors are males, and all males are animals, so it is analytic that all bachelors are animals, right?" 2. By hypothesis, you are concentrating your thoughts exclusively on what I am saying, and clearly understand it.
3. Suppose also that as I am saying "All bachelors are males," my arms are held out straight towards you and I am also moving my right hand, rotated at the wrist, in a clockwise circular motion seen clearly from your point of view, which is also a counterclockwise circular motion seen clearly from my point of view.
4. By hypothesis, you are looking at this hand-movement, but not also thinking about it, although of course in some other context you might be looking at it and also thinking about it-yet by hypothesis, not in this context. 5. In this context, by hypothesis, you are seeing the movement of my right hand, but not also thinking about it, just as when you are driving a car and your mind is fully focused on some train of thought having nothing to do with driving, you can see all sorts of things passing by you, and you can even skillfully drive, without thinking at all about the things that you are seeing or doing.
6. Suppose also that as I am saying, "…and all males are animals," I begin moving my left hand, again rotated at the wrist, in a counterclockwise circular motion seen clearly from your point of view, which is also a clockwise circular motion seen clearly from my point of view.
7. By hypothesis again, you are looking at this hand-movement too, but not also thinking about it, although of course in some other context you might be looking at it and also thinking about it-yet again by hypothesis, not in this context. 8. Suppose also that as I am saying, "… so it is analytic that all bachelors are animals, right?" I am moving both hands simultaneously in front of you in the ways specified in steps 3. and 6.
9. Your conceptual capacities are being used by you to concentrate on what I am saying about bachelors, males, and animals, and to understand it clearly, which by hypothesis you do. 10. Insofar as you are using those conceptual capacities exclusively to concentrate on and to understand clearly what I am saying, you are not using your conceptual capacities in order to see clearly what I am doing with my hands.
11. Yet you also see clearly what I am doing with my hands: your conscious attention in this context is divided into linguistic understanding and lucid vision, but by hypothesis in this context your conceptual capacities for linguistic understanding are neither distracted nor divided.
12. Therefore you are using your non-conceptual capacities to see clearly what I am doing with my hands.
13. Now the kind of mental content that individuates, guides, and mediates the use of non-conceptual capacities for the purposes of performing basic intentional actions is essentially non-conceptual content.
14. Therefore essentially non-conceptual content really exists.

iii. tranScendental idealiSm For SenSibility
Kant discovered the metaphysics of transcendental idealism between the publication of his seminal proto-Critical essay of 1768, "Concerning the Ground of the Ultimate Differentiation of Directions in Space" (DiS AA 2, pp. 375-383) and 1772. Indeed, the philosophical implications of the "Directions in Space" essay almost certainly triggered the major proto-Critical philosophical breakthough that Kant famously reports when he says in one of the Reflexionen that "the year '69 gave me great light" (R 5037, AA 18,p. 69 29 In 1772, Kant told Marcus Herz that if the human mind conformed to the world, whether phenomenal or noumenal, then a priori knowledge would be impossible (C AA 10, pp. 130-131). But by 1770 Kant already also held that a priori knowledge of the phenomenal world is actual and therefore really possible, in mathematics. Hence by 1772, Kant holds that the phenomenal world must conform to the non-empirical sensible structure of the human mind, and more specifically, it must conform to our a priori representations of space and time, since that is what makes mathematics really possible (ID AA 2,. So transcendental idealism for sensibility says that the apparent or phenomenal world fundamentally conforms to the essentially non-conceptual a priori forms of human sensibility, our representations of space and time. Briefly put, Kant's thesis of transcendental idealism for sensibility says that the basic structure of the apparent or phenomenal world necessarily conforms to the pure or nonempirical (hence a priori) structure of sensible human cognition, and not the converse (B xvixviii). Or in other words, Kant is saying that the phenomenal world fundamentally conforms to the a priori sensible structure of the human mind, and it is also not the case that the human mind fundamentally conforms to the phenomenal world, or indeed to any non-apparent or noumenal world. So if Kant is correct, then he is saying that the world in which we live, move, and have our being (by which I mean the phenomenal natural and social world of our ordinary human existence) is fundamentally dependent on our sensible nature, and not the converse. If transcendental idealism for sensibility is true, then we cannot be inherently alienated from the world we are trying to know, as global epistemic skeptics claim, and human knowledge-not only a priori knowledge, but also a posteriori knowedge-is therefore really possible. 30 It is especially to be noted that the thesis of transcedental idealism for sensibility holds logically independently of the Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts or Categories, and also that therefore transcendental idealism for sensibility can be true and the argument for it can be sound, even if, as I've argued elsewhere, 31 transcendental idealism for the understandingi.e., the necessary conformity of the phenomenal world to our conceptual and logical faculties (B xvii, A84-130/B116-169)-is false and the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories is unsound.

iv. Strong Kantian non-intellectualiSm
Let's now consider these Kant-texts.
The capacity or incapacity of the power of choice/sensible will (Willkür) that arises from this natural propensity to adopt or not to adopt the moral law in its maxims can be called the good or evil heart. (Rel AA 6,p. 29,underlining added) We betray a culpable degree of moral unbelief if we do not grant sufficient authority to duty's precepts, as originally inscribed in the heart by reason. (Rel AA 6,p. 84,underlining added) Moral faith (Glaube) must be a free faith, founded on pure dispositions of the heart (fides ingenua). (Rel AA 6,p. 115,underlining added) The highest goal of the moral perfection of finite creatures, never completely attainable by human beings, is, however, the love of the [moral] law. (Rel AA 6,p. 145,underlining added) Correspondingly, here are some fundamental elements of Kant's theory of practical rationality. What Kant calls practical freedom is defined in a negative way as the independence of first-order volition, or the "power of choice" (Willkür), from necessitation by sensible impulses: Freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice (Willkür) from necessitation by impulses of sensibility. For a power of choice is sensible insofar as it is pathologically affected (through moving-causes of sensibility); it is called an animal power of choice (arbitrium brutum) if it can be pathologically necessitated. The human power of choice is indeed an arbitrium sensitivum, yet not brutum, but liberum, because sensibility does not render its action necessary, but in the human being there is a faculty of determining oneself from oneself, independently of necessitation by sensible impulses. (A534/B562, boldfacing in the original) But practical freedom, on its positive side, is also necessarily equivalent to the realization of Kantian autonomy: The moral law expresses nothing other than the autonomy of pure practical reason, that is, [practical] freedom. (CPrR AA 5, p. 33) More precisely, however, practical freedom, or realized autonomy, is how a transcendentally free person actually chooses or does things by means of her subjective experience or consciousness of recognizing the Categorical Imperative or moral law as a desireoverriding, strictly universal, a priori, categorically normative, non-instrumental practical reason that has both motivating and justifying force. And the actual fact of this subjective experience or consciousness of realized autonomous agency is what Kant calls the "Fact of Reason" (Faktum der Vernunft) (CPrR AA 5, p. 31; see also pp. 6, 42-43, 47-48, 55-57, 91-94, 104-108).
In the rest of this section, I want to concentrate on extending the Sensibility First view from Kant's and Kantian theoretical philosophy in general and the theory of rational human cognition in particular, to Kant's and Kantian practical philosophy in general and the theory of rational human practical agency in particular.
According to the classical and standard reading of Kant's practical philosophy and his theory of practical agency-as defended, for example, by Henry Sidgwick and Christine Korsgaard 32 -Kant is an intellectualist who believes that the rational human innate capacity for conceptualization and self-conscious thinking, the understanding, necessarily determines all the intentional contents of the will and practical reasoning, whether this is instrumental practical reasoning via the hypothetical imperative, i.e., the impure rational will or Wille, or non-instrumental practical reasoning via the Categorical Imperative, i.e., the pure rational will or Wille. Thus Kantian intellectualism says that the content of our moral principles is wholly determined by our conceptual capacities, and that all our specifically morally right actions are motivated, caused, and justified by pure practical reason alone. By contrast, Kantian nonintellectualism says that the content of our moral principles isn't wholly determined by our conceptual capacities, and that it's not the case that all our morally right actions are motivated, caused, and justified by pure practical reason alone. Moreover, there are strong and weak versions of Kantian intellectualism and non-intellectualism. Strong Kantian intellectualism, as per Sidgwick and Korsgaard, says that human emotions are inconsistent with and excluded by the content of our moral principles, and that the same goes for the motivations, causes, and justifications of our morally right actions. By contrast, weak Kantian intellectualism, as defended by, for example, Maria Borges, 33 says that human emotions always accompany and inflect not only the content of our moral principles, but also all our morally right or wrong actions alike, even if those emotions neither belong to or determine the content of those moral principles, nor motivate, cause, and justify morally right actions. On the non-intellectualist side of things, weak Kantian non-intellectualism (also called "Kantian affectivism") says that human emotions have irreducible content that necessarily belongs to the content of all our moral principles and of all our right or wrong actions alike, and that at least some of our morally right actions are motivated, caused, and justified by these desires, feelings, and emotions, in conjunction with pure practical reason. 34 By contrast, strong Kantian non-intellectualism says that human emotions have irreducible essentially non-conceptual content that partially constitutes and grounds the content of all our moral principles and of our right or wrong actions alike, that all our morally right actions are, exactly to that partially-constituted-and-grounded extent, HANNA, R. motivated, caused, and justified by these emotions, and that these emotions and their content therefore belong to the essence of pure practical reason itself.

Q: What is so philosophically important about these fine-grained distinctions?
A: They identify fundamentally different conceptions of rational human nature. Strong intellectualism is a version of Cartesian dualism; weak intellectualism in effect expresses Elisabeth of Bohemia's and Pascal's mitigated Cartesianism; weak non-intellectualism is nondualist; and strong non-intellectualism entails that our conscious, caring, perceiving, thinking, rational minds are essentially embodied.
One fundamental thing to recognize here is that all Kantian intellectualists about practical intentional content are also, perforce, defenders of Kantian conceptualism, because representational contents of the sorts captured by judgments in the Kantian sense 35 -whether directly referential contents, conceptual contents, propositional contents, or formal-logical contents-are all essentially the same sorts of contents, whether in the context of theoretical judgments and theoretical inferences or in the context of practical judgments and practical inferences. Hence if, as I believe, strong Kantian non-conceptualism is true, then Kantian intellectualism is false from the get-go. By sharp contrast to Kantian intellectualism, then, what I want to argue in the rest of this section is that Kant is a strong non-intellectualist who believes (i) that not all of the intentional contents of practical reasoning and the rational will, whether instrumental or non-instrumental, are necessarily determined or constituted by the understanding, and (ii) that at least some of the intentional contents of practical reasoning, both instrumental and non-instrumental alike, are necessarily determined or constituted by the rational human innate capacity for sensibility in a practical sense, in an essentially nonconceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, and non-inferential way.
This capacity for practical sensibility includes the affective sub-capacities for conation, desire, emotion, and feeling, as well as the power of choice, the sensible will, or Willkür-in effect, it is nothing more and nothing less than the human heart. So Kantian non-intellectualism says that free choice and autonomous willing can come straight from the human heart. Or as Kant himself puts it in the first Kant-text I quoted in this section: The capacity or incapacity of the power of choice/sensible will (Willkür) that arises from this natural propensity to adopt or not to adopt the moral law in its maxims can be called the good or evil heart. (Rel AA 6,p. 29,underlining added) It is also particularly to be noted that strong Kantian non-intellectualism includes, but is not restricted to, the weak non-intellectualist, aka affectivist, interpretation of Kant's theory of moral motivation. This is because strong Kantian non-intellectualism, as I am formulating and defending it, is not merely the thesis that our rational human affective capacities can directly motivate free choice and autonomous moral agency (= weak Kantian non-intellectualism, aka affectivism), but instead the two-part thesis (i) that our rational human affective capacities can directly motivate free choice and autonomous willing (= weak Kantian non-intellectualism, aka affectivism), and (ii) that our human affective capacities can directly motivate free choice and autonomous willing only insofar as they necessarily determine the intentional contents of practical reasoning and the rational will in an essentially non-conceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, and non-inferential way (= strong Kantian non-conceptualism as applied to Kant's theory of practical agency).
In this way, strong Kantian non-intellectualism as I am formulating it is the conjunction of weak non-intellectualism, aka affectivism, and strong Kantian non-conceptualism as applied to Kant's theory of practical agency. Or in other words, according to strong Kantian nonintellectualism, free choice and autonomous willing can come not only from the human heart, and not from the head, understanding, or intellect, but also, insofar as they do come from the human heart, only straight from the heart, and not indirectly mediated by concepts, selfconscious deliberation, propositional reasons, or inferences.
Fully explicitly and specifically then, according to strong Kantian non-intellectualism, all rational human practical and moral action not only begins in our specifically human sensibility (since that can be accommodated by the weaker versions of Kantian conceptualism and Kantian intellectualism alike, according to which sensibility is a causally necessary but non-constitutive condition of cognitive intentionality or practical intentionality 36 ), but also (i) all rational human practical and moral action is primitively grounded on the first-order essentially non-conceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, and non-inferential affective intentional inputs deriving from empirical conation, desire, emotions, feeling, and choice/sensible willing, and (ii) all rational human practical and moral action is necessarily limited by the higher-order essentially non-conceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, and non-inferential affective intentional inputs deriving from the non-empirical so-called "Fact of Reason" or Faktum der Vernuft (CPrR AA 5, p. 31; see also pp. 6, 42-43, 47-48, 55-57, 91-94, 104-108), which, in turn is (iii) essentially the conscious manifestation of a capacity for loving the moral law that is innately inscribed in the human heart (Rel AA 6,pp. 84,145).
According to strong Kantian non-intellectualism, then, The Fact of Reason is merely "so-called," because it would be far more appropriately called The Affect of Reason, insofar as it is most accurately construed as a conscious manifestation of higher-order, essentially nonconceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, non-inferential conation, desire, emotion, and feeling (aka the affects). More precisely, The Fact/Affect of Reason is fundamentally expressed as the higher-order, essentially non-conceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, noninferential, and also specifically moral, affects of (i) "respect" or Achtung, and (ii) "self-fulfillment" or Selbstzufriedenheit, both of which in turn are specifically moral conscious manifestations of what I will call the desire for self-transcendence. According to this strong Kantian non-intellectualist account, the desire for self-transcendence is nothing more and nothing less than the fundamental higherorder desire to be moved to choice and action by non-egoistic, non-hedonistic, non-consequentialist first-order desires. In turn, the desire for self-transcendence, consciously manifested as the higher-order, essentially non-conceptual, non-self-conscious, and non-propositional affect of respect, that is, a love of the moral law that is innately inscribed in the human heart, "is properly the representation of a worth that infringes upon my self-love (Eigenliebe)" (GMM AA 4,p. 402n.). Correspondingly, the directly-referential object or target of that representation is the moral law, namely, the Categorical Imperative, innately specified in the hearts of human persons, who inherently possess the absolute intrinsic non-denumerable objective moral value of dignity, and are inherently capable of transcendental and practical freedom. Therefore, that target is at the same time an object of respect inasmuch as … it weakens self-inflation (Eigendünkel); and inasmuch as it even strikes down self-inflation, that is, humiliates it, it is an object of the greatest respect and so too the ground of a positive feeling that is not of empirical origin and is cognized a priori. (CPrR AA 5,p. 73) In other words, morally true love overcomes self-love. And in this way, via the higherorder essentially non-conceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, and non-inferential feeling of respect, the desire for self-transcendence directly opposes both "self-love" or Eigenliebe (roughly, narcissism) and also "self-inflation" or Eigendünkel (roughly, selfishness), which is to say that it directly opposes human egoism in all its forms. 37 An essential feature of the higher-order desire for self-transcendence is that it can robustly manifest itself not only in morally right choice and action (as the higher-order, essentially nonconceptual, non-self-conscious, non-propositional, and non-inferential affects of respect and self-fulfillment), but also in morally wrong choice and action, even to the point of umitigated evil and wickedness. At this point, paradoxically, the desire for self-transcendence, as the higher-order desire that inherently opposes first-order willing that is egoistic, hedonistic, or consequentialist, can turn into its dialectical opposites, self-love or narcissism and self-inflation or selfishness, by becoming the monstrous narcissism and selfishness of Hume's fictional person who would allow the whole world and everyone in it, including himself, to be destroyed just so that he could avoid having his finger scratched, 38 and also of Milton's fictional fallen angel, Satan, who chillingly says: So farewell, hope; and with hope farewell, fear; Farewell, remorse! all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good. 39 Now I do not mean to say that any actual or possible rational human animal could ever be wholly Satanic-indeed, Kant explicitly rejects this (Rel AA 6,p.35), and I completely agree-but rather only that some rational human choices and acts really are near-Satanic, and also that some people have characters that really are near-Satanic. Outside of Miltonic poetic fiction and in the real world, the "human, all too human" capacity for freely choosing the bad and the wrong, whether as-bad-and-wrong, or seemingly as-good-and-right, is what Augustine calls "the perversity of the will," 40 and what Kant, clearly following Augustine, calls "the perversity of the human heart" (Rel AA 6,pp. 30,37). In view of Kant's full recognition of the perversity of the will/the human heart, then, (i) the fact that near-satanic, monstrous narcissism and selfishness are humanly actual and really possible (for example, Hitler and Stalin), together with (ii) the all-too-familiar fact of everyday self-love/narcissism and self-inflation/selfishness, then (iii) collectively yield the dual fact of what Kant calls radical evil (Rel AA 6,.
Radical evil, the perversity of the human will or heart, is the fully natural and "human, all too human" disposition, tendency, or Gesinnung, towards freely-chosen moral disvalue or wrongness, whose fundamental cause is human egoism in all its forms.
In this connection, it's crucially important to note that according to the strong Kantian non-intellectualist scheme of moral rational normativity that I'm presenting here, there are two fundamentally different kinds of moral disvalue or wrongness (which is the same as Kant's "radical evil"-hence my use of the term "evil," aka Böse, is narrower than Kant's own use of that term): (i) moral evil, which is choice or action involving the intentional violation of people's dignity, that is, considering or treating them like things, like mere instruments, or, even worse, like garbage or offal, and (ii) non-evil moral badness, aka das Übel, aka schlecht, which is the non-evil privation, or falling-short-of, ideal or high-bar good, for example, in choices or acts involving benevolence or kindness to others, or sensitivity to their needs, and the related thought that "we can never do enough to help others." More precisely, according to the strong Kantian non-intellectualist scheme of moral rational normativity, moral evil and moral badness are inherently lexically ordered in relation to moral disvalue or wrongness. Clearly, moral disvalue or wrongness, just like moral value or rightness, always comes in degrees: morally wrong choices and acts are always more or less so, just as morally right choices and acts are. Other things being equal, for example, it's much worse literally to stab someone with the intention of murdering them, than it is merely to say "cutting" things to her with the intention of hurting their feelings. But according to this lexical ordering between moral evil and non-evil moral badness, even the least case of real moral evil is fundamentally worse than even the greatest case of real non-evil moral badness. The person who rejoices in the suffering of another, or who acts specifically in order to make somone else suffer, is fundamentally worse than even the biggest con artist, embezzler, or thief that you can think of, although obviously the utilitarian bad consequences of the latter's choices and acts can massively outweigh those of the former. Again, it's one morally disvalued thing to fall short of the best you can be, for example, as regards benevolence and kindness to others, and sensitivity to their needs (moral badness), but radically another to violate people's dignity (moral evil). Non-evil morally bad choices and acts are all about human imperfection and weakness, that is, being "human, all too human," whereas evil choices or acts strike at the heart of human real personhood itself.
It's also very important to note that, corresponding to the overarching normative distinction between moral evil and non-evil moral badness, under the same rubric of moral evil, there are in fact two sharply different further sub-kinds of moral evil: (i1) near-Satanic evil, that is, evil chosen or done for its own sake, whatever the consequences, as the result of titanic egoism-for example, Hitler, and (i2) banal evil, that is, evil chosen or done for merely self-interested reasons (aka "banal egoism"), for hedonistic reasons, or for consequentialist reasons-for example, the choices and acts of Adolf Eichmann, aka "the man in the glass booth," as per Hannah Arendt's famous moral analysis of the Eichmann trial in 1961. 41 Arendt's basic (and, I think, ultimately Kantian non-intellectualist) point, with which I also completely agree, is that on the assumption that we hold the stunning general fact of the moral horror of Nazism temporarily fixed for the purposes of some further moral reflection, there is still an intrinsic moral difference between Hitler's kind of evil and (Arendt's) Eichmann's kind of evil.
By way of wrapping up this section, I want to emphasize that the strong Kantian nonintellectualist approach to Kant's theory of practical reason that I am presenting here will doubtless come as a great surprise to many philosophers and non-philosophers alike, who regard Kant as the Puritanical enemy of all human affect, conations, desires, emotions, and feelings. Indeed, as Ido Geiger aptly notes in a slightly different but still closely-related connection, [t]his must come as a great surprise to those readers who take the caricature of Kant as the mortal enemy of all human feelings to be a realistic portrait of his views. 42 In other words, contrary to the classical, orthodox interpretation of Kant's ethics and theory of practical agency that locates the ground of all wrong choice and action in affect, conation, desire, emotion, and feeling-that is, in practical sensibility-in fact, according to Kant in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (and according to me, also), it's human egoism that is "the root of all evil," in the broad sense that it is the motivational ground of what I am calling "moral evil" (whether near-Satanic or banal) and of "non-evil moral badness" alike, by virtue of its being the ultimate source of what Kant calls our "self-incurred perversity" of the will. Indeed, for Kant in Religion, [c]onsidered in themselves natural inclinations are good, i.e., not reprehensible, and to want to extirpate them would not only be futile but harmful and blameworthy as well (Rel AA 6, p. 58, underlining added), and there is absolutely no salvation for human beings except in the innermost adoption of genuine moral principles in their disposition, [and] … to inferere with this adoption is surely the not so often blamed sensibility but a self-incurred perversity or, as we might otherwise also call this wickedness, fraud (faussité, the satanic guile through which evil comes into the world): [this is] a corruption that lies in all human beings and cannot be overcome except through the idea of the moral good in its absolute purity. (Rel AA 6,p. 83,underlining added) Part of this bears repeating because it might otherwise seem so "shockingly" unKantian as to cloud philosophical recognition of its actually being what Kant is asserting: [c]onsidered in themselves natural inclinations are good, i.e., not reprehensible, and to want to extirpate them would not only be futile but harmful and blameworthy as well (Rel AA 6, p. 58, underlining added). Considered in themselves, natural inclinations are good! Therefore, in his all-things-considered post-Critical ethical theory circa 1792 (the year of the publication of the first edition of Religion), Kant is not a philosophical enemy of practical sensibility. On the contrary, he's explicitly a philosophical enemy of those who are philosophical enemies of practical sensibility.
According to Kant's considered post-Critical view, then, he is no more an enemy of practical sensibility than he is an enemy of cognitive sensibility. On the contrary: Kant's post-Critical theoretical and practical philosophy consistently and globally puts sensibility first. This in turn means that not only the classical, orthodox (strong or weak) intellectualist reading of Kant's theory of practical agency, but also the classical anti-Kantian critique of Kant's theory of practical agency as based on "empty formalism" and as sternly and unrealistically rigorist, are equally misguided. 43 Indeed, Kantian ethics, properly understood, and "the ethics of care," properly understood, are one. Correspondingly, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, pure practical sensibility, that is, moral sensibility-epitomized as The Fact/Affect of Reason, that is, the feeling of respect, that is, the true love for the moral law that is inscribed in the human heart, and self-fulfillment-is the Kantian motivational ground of radical goodness. And that, in turn, brings out the core of truth in Derek Parfit's contrarian observation, quoted as the second