Understanding Philosophy Through our Commitment to Practices

I want to suggest and explain a strategy I have used while interpreting Kant and which I have been more regularly inclined towards in discussion. I will try to state it straightforwardly: 

Given any subject Kant discusses with regard to its form, a reader should look to the concrete practices that are indicated directly or indirectly in the analysis. These practices are read as what Kant is committed to, and what he assumes his readers are committed to. All of Kant's analyses should be framed by these commitments.

An interesting result from this is that the interpretations following this method allow one to interrogate their own behaviors and see how they may relate to the transcendental picture Kant paints. This approach also tends to expose the relationship that Transcendental Philosophy and Metaphysics have to Anthropology. 

I will now provide some examples.

Moral Judgments

The Practice: There are occasions when we take someone to task for something we consider bad without any qualification. Additionally we could note that in some of these occasions we will not allow circumstances to have made the offending action necessary.

Reflection on Kant: If we consider these practices as the object of an analysis, then we will not be very far away from finding Kant's discussion of the moral law - a law that is given by the form of lawgiving rather than in relation to any end - as well as Kant's discussion of freedom.

Result: Rather than seeing Kant's moral philosophy as committed primarily to formulae (e.g., Categorical Imperatives), or to formalisms (e.g., Freedom) we should see him committed to practices of judging the unsuitability of actions and holding people to account. If we take this to be the central commitment, we can consider the implications of these practices, how they relate to other practices and if we are actually willing (or able) to do without them.

Objective Judgments

For Kant, moral judgments are a sort of objective judgment, and so it will be interesting what sort of insights we can get by considering objective judgments more broadly.

The Practice: Sometimes we demand the assent of others, yet in a way where moveable if we discover disagreement.

Reflection on Kant: In these cases we are both sovereign so far as we set out how things stand, yet also we are subject in that the judgments of others in that their disagreement may bring about a reconsideration of the matter. 

Result: If we consider "On having an opinion, knowing, and believing." (A 820/B 848), we find that objective judgments may be found out to be subjective when submitted to the judgments of others. This is a confirmation of reading objective or subjective as formal characteristics of a judgment, but also how these formal characteristics are exposed by our practices.

Reflecting this back upon Kant's moral considerations we may see some insight into the kingdom of ends formulation of the moral law, wherein we are all subject and sovereign in a possible kingdom of ends - rather than an actual nature as with theoretical cognition. Additionally, seeing that our judgments are subject to be challenged effects how we maintain and reason in their favor will be important for observing how moral disagreements play out.

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I will be probably write more on this, expanding on these examples or contributing some more.

An additional topic that is worth considering here would be the relation between ratio essendi and ratio cognoscenti (see Preface to Critique of Practical Reason).