Sweet, Kristi E.: Kant on Practical Life: From Duty to History.

Wilford, Paul T.

SWEET, Kristi E. Kant on Practical Life: From Duty to History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xi + 223pp. Cloth, $90.00--Sweet's work contributes to a growing trend in Kant scholarship that recognizes "Kant's practical thought must be taken account of as a whole, perhaps even as a unity. " Identifying the ground of such unity in "the animating desire of reason for the unconditioned, understood in the practical context as human freedom," Sweet argues that reason's demand for the unconditioned "animates, authors, governs, and organizes the various aspects of [Kant's] practical thought." While Sweet states that "the broadest insight gained from addressing the unity of Kant's practical philosophy from the perspective of the unconditioned is a re-envisioning of the relationship between individual moral goodness and the state, religion, and history, namely, community," there are five interrelated and provocative theses that undergird this "re-envisioning": (1) Kant's concept of the will entails that "reason is not only lawgiving but at the same time end-setting." (2) "The capacity to set our own ends is what defines our humanity." (3) Kant's "deontological" commitments "require 'teleological' aspects in order to be actualized." (4) "Practical reason's demand always takes shape in relation to a given conditioned." (5) Practical reason's actualization requires that I continually "take what is--the context and conditions of finitude in which I find myself--and work to bring it into accord with what ought to be. "

The basis of Sweet's argument lies in the complex relation between theory and practice in Kant's systematic account of reason's structure, powers, and limitations. More specifically, the point of departure for her inquiry is Kant's suggestion that since theoretical reason suffers the "peculiar fate" that "it is destined to ask questions that it does not have the power to answer," reason necessarily turns to praxis in its pursuit of the unconditioned. In the Introduction, Sweet provides a brief but excellent adumbration of this argument. Sweet first highlights how, in the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, reason is "characterized by a kind of striving, how reason's demand for the unconditioned takes shape in relation to nature (as what is conditioned), and how reason demands an unconditioned causality (freedom) that is the cause of the whole of what is (world)." She then proceeds to show that although theoretical reason's ambitions to grasp the unconditioned or the absolute (that is, "an ultimate reason that accounts for the whole of what is") are stymied by reason's "intractably dialectical relation with nature," reason in its practical application "has the causality actually to bring forth what its concept contains" (KrV A328/B385). That is, "practical reason can bring about through its own activity what reason seeks in striving for the unconditioned: an unconditioned totality." Thus whereas theoretical reason's "only consolation is self-discipline in the form of critique, practical reason's dialectic is transformative; it leads reason out into the world in an effort to remake nature in its own image."

The book's six chapters trace the course of this transformative dialectic from its origin in individual moral action to its culmination in the formation of a "moral world as the totality of the ends of reason." Each chapter focuses on a stage of "practical reason's evolving demand for the unconditioned," illustrating how "at each moment in the dialectic, a new, deeper, or broader demand arises that increases the scope of what we must do to attain moral goodness." That is, Sweet shows how reason finds itself at each stage of this dialectic dissatisfied with the persistent influence of nature (the conditioned) and is driven to pursue ever more encompassing and totalizing projects in an attempt to overcome said influences. Thus, the book progresses from "duty in individual acts" (chapter one) to the cultivation of virtue "as a state of the will (a self over time)" (chapter two), to the pursuit of the highest good (chapter three), which connects the individual's pursuit of autonomy in the face of natural incentives (that is, the natural desire for happiness) with the externalization of morality in end-directed action that endeavors to remake the world "in reason's image." Chapters four and five then, show how enacting such a "moral world" requires the reformation of "our natural relations with others with regard to the use of both our external and our internal freedom," that is, the formation of republican political institutions and the promotion of "the ethical community." Sweet's final chapter explores how reason, given "the intractable influence of nature," is lead to reconsider its relation to nature and to develop an account of nature as purposive, as actually contributing to (rather than frustrating) reason's own ends "through culture and history."

Having persuasively argued for the coherence of Kant's practical thought, Sweet concludes by raising the unsettling prospect that practical reason might also be subject to "its own kind of peculiar fate," since its satisfaction is perpetually "deferred to the domain of the possible." With these closing reflections, Sweet directs the reader back to Kant's argument that reason must turn from the theoretical to the practical in order to satisfy its longing for the unconditioned. It is a testament to the philosophic integrity of Sweet's work that it concludes by spurring the reader to reconsider the essential premise of her inquiry.--Paul T. Wilford, New Orleans, Louisiana.