Abstract. In recent years, an increasing body of literature explores the idea that Kant may be read as endorsing a kind of meta-ethical constitutivism. In this paper, I argue that this label only partly fits. Although, it sheds helpful light on certain core elements of his ethical project in the Groundwork, it fits much less well when we consider his teleological re-casting of moral consciousness in his doctrine of the Highest Good. The way I show this is by examining Kant’s evolving response to what, following contemporary debates, I call ‘the problem of alienation’. I argue that Kant solves a first version of this problem through his doctrine of respect, while staying true to his constitutivist commitments, but that this leaves a more complex version of the problem untouched. This second form of alienation, which I call ‘practical alienation’ is, on my reading, the price Kant thinks finite agents must pay in order to be moral and is the core problem he explores in the Antinomy of Practical Reason in the second Critique. Through his doctrine of the Highest Good, I argue, Kant shows himself to be concerned with what is required for finite, embodied rational agents to sustain confidence in morality, despite what it costs them in practical alienation. According to this analysis, the transition to moral religion Kant articulates through the Highest Good leaves him at odds with his earlier, constitutivist commitments, and reveals a persistent tension in his ethics between what may be achieved from within the moral standpoint, as this is defined in constitutivist terms, and important practical goods this leaves out. Thus, I contend, many of the core concerns that motivate the doctrine of the Highest Good express what we might, following David Owen, regard as a realist orientation in ethics.
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