The Kantian's Desire

Christine Korsgaard's oft-quoted image of the reflective agent “backing up” from her desires has been criticized on the ground that it depicts desires as items external to practical reason which can, therefore, have no normative bearing on her rational activity. I argue that her critics have failed to recognize the possibility of a different explanation of the deliberative import of desires: that even if their origin is external to reason, reason confers deliberate import upon them. I develop this alternative as a reading of the moral psychology of Kant, whose work informs that of both Korsgaard and her critics, and consider the question whether Korsgaard embraces it too.