Kant: The Audacity of Judgement

Abstract

In the legal judgement reason demands that it extend itself beyond the mere subjective limits of the self in order that it might fashion a judgement that speaks for the other. This is the universal necessity of the judgement. No claim of truth or the moral law can guarantee that others will agree with this judgement: thus disputation is the risk which reason takes in order to judge at all. The author examines this audacity of judgement by reference to Kant’s autonomy of reason, which risks itself in the thought that thinks.

Keywords: law, judgement, Kant, autonomy, reason, beauty, dispute, critique