Kant's Struggle for Autonomy

In Kant?s Struggle for Autonomy: On the Structure of Practical Reason, Raef Zreik presents an original synoptic view of Kant?s practical philosophy, uncovering the relatively hidden architectonics of Kant?s system and critically engaging with its broad implications. He begins by investigating the implicit strategy that guides Kant in making the distinctions that establish the autonomous spheres: happiness, morality, justice, public order-legitimacy. The organizing principle of autonomy sets these spheres apart, assuming there is self-sufficiency for each sphere. Zreik then develops a critique of this strategy, showing its limits, its costs, and its inherent instability. He questions self-sufficiency and argues that autonomy is a matter of ongoing struggle between the forces of separation and unification. Zreik proceeds to suggest that we ?read Kant backward,? reading early Kant in light of late Kant. This reading reveals Kant's strategy of both taking things apart and putting them together, focusing on the joints, transitions, and metastructures of the system. The image emanating from this account of Kant?s legal and moral philosophy is of an intimate yet tragic conflict within Kant?s thought?one that leaves us to our own judgment as to where to draw the boundaries between spheres, opening the door for politicizing Kant's practical philosophy.

Raef Zreik shows that Kant?s use of the concept of autonomy as the underlying principle of both theoretical and practical philosophy has to be distinguished from the idea of autonomous domains of virtue, happiness, and law within practical philosophy. He argues carefully and convincingly that the idea of autonomy is crucial to Kant?s approach to each of these domains but that to think of them as completely separate from each other is a mistake that undermines the unity of Kant?s own philosophy and a coherent approach to practical philosophy in general. This is the most extensive and thorough interpretation and critique of Kant?s use of the concept of autonomy that I know.