We turn now from Kant to his successors. We have already discussed how on the standard account, the central difficulty he is said to have bequeathed them is the Kantian paradox of self-legislation: namely, how to make sense of a legislative will that relies on no prior order of values, without rendering that willing empty from a normative point of view. On the account of Kant’s position that I have offered above, however, this is no longer the central difficulty: for, I have argued, Kant’s position allows for just such a prior order of values. The standard story, of course, holds that Kant’s concerns about autonomy rule out an appeal to any such values; but, I have also argued, it would be wrong to follow the standard story here as well.

Aside from avoiding the problem of emptiness, the other problematic aspects of the self-legislation picture also look different on the account I have offered. The first of these concerns how self-legislation could amount to genuine constraint, where it would seem to remain in the power of the self to declare itself unbound at any time. On the hybrid account, however, this difficulty can be avoided, for the will is not in the Euthyphro-situation whereby it is free to make anything obligatory; and the only way to free itself from the constraining force of the moral law would be for it to become like the holy will, rather than to just set that law aside in a voluntaristic manner. The other problem for the self-legislation picture concerned how there could be such legislation without some part of the self having ‘superior power’ over another part, but where that power cannot be mere coercive force, but must be some sort of normative authority; but then, the question is, how can it get that normative authority if there is no prior set of values on which this authority can be based? Again, this is less of a difficulty on the hybrid account, as in constraining the will’s inclinations to act, the rational self can derive its authority from its capacity to discern what has moral value and to lead the subject to act on it, thereby explaining how the desiring self can be put under its control in a legitimate way.