stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

espect. “This feeling [of respect] (under the name of moral feeling) is therefore produced solely
by reason” (CPrR 5:76). But what is reason? Reason is the moral law. Therefore it is really the
moral law that produces the feeling of respect. “The law that demands this respect and also
inspires it is, as one sees, none other than the moral law (for no other excludes all inclinations
from immediate influence on the will)” (CPrR 5:80). But what does the feeling of respect that
the moral law produces respect? This is key. The feeling of respect that the moral law produces
respects nothing other than that moral law itself. “But since this law is still something in itself
positive –– namely the form of an intellectual causality, that is, of freedom – it is at the same
time an object of respect…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 5:73). But the
moral law is the universal law, in other words, it is the autonomous attitude. Kant argues that
when I live autonomously, that is, when I want freely and act freely, I feel respect for that kind of
human life. This is what humanity is. This is why “respect is always directed only to persons,
never to things” (CPrR 5:76). Heidegger recognizes this point in Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics. “Reason, as free, gives to itself that for which the respect is respect, the moral law.
Respect before the law is respect before oneself as that self which does not come to be
determined through self-conceit and self-love. Respect, in its specific making-manifest, thus
refers to the person” (Heidegger 111). I have argued that the object of the autonomous will is
itself as practical freedom. I have also argued that the autonomous will understands itself as
transcendental freedom. But the autonomous will does not just understand itself as
transcendental freedom. It also senses, that is, feels respect for itself. This is the ultimate
meaning of practical knowledge as actualization. It is self-realization. “By reason’s ‘practical’
feature” Yovel argues “Kant thus indicates our ability to project inherent rational goals as our
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