Abstract
It has long been argued by both his critics and admirers that Immanuel Kant ignores the issue of how the categorical imperative can be applied. Whether it is Hegel’s criticism that the emptiness of Kant’s principle prohibits its meaningful and concrete application or Habermas’ direct assertion that “Kant neglects the problem of application”, Kant has been portrayed as either being oblivious to the issue or having avoided it by de-sign.1Often such criticisms fail to recognize that application is a two-fold issue within Kant’s moral theory. In the first instance, finite rational beings must apply the categorical imperative to their maxims in the form of a test. Secondly, those general maxims which are judged to be instances of the categorical imperative need to be applied to the concrete, empirical circumstances of action. Kant treats the second role of practical judgment as something akin to ‘mother wit’ which can only be sharpened through the use of examples and practice. In contrast to the common view, I pro-pose that Kant both recognizes that applying the moral law in a test of our proposed maxims is problematic and that he attempts to address these difficulties.