„Das Denken in Fallbeispielen im Spätwerk von Ludwig Wittgenstein“, in: Plurale. Zeitschrift für Denkversionen. Fälle. Nr. 1. (2002), 99-117. (original) (raw)

"Praktische Vernunft und Reflexion", in: Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 70:3 (2016), 342-361.

It is often said that practical reason is a capacity to deliberate practically or to step back from one’s motivation and reflect on them. I argue that this conception of practical reason is faced with a dilemma: On the face of it, everyday intelligent action is then either always the result of deliberation and reflection or it is, where unreflective, in fact arational. Both horns seem unpalatable. Several attempts to show how unreflective, undeliberated action can nevertheless be intelligent fail as long as practical reason is described as a capacity to reflect and deliberate. We must therefore conceive of practical reason as first and foremost a capacity unreflective and undeliberated intelligent action. We can then say that it is also, but only derivatively, a capacity for reflection and deliberation.