A rational superego

Abstract

Although Freud claimed that the superego gives voice to the categorical imperative, he did not conceive it as exerting the kind of rational authority that’s required by Kantian moral theory. Recently, Samuel Scheffler and John Deigh have suggested that a properly Kantian source of rational authority might develop and operate in the manner of the Freudian superego and, hence, that these two theories might be reconciled, after all. I offer an interpretation of Freud’s theory of the superego and explain how the reconciliation suggested by Sheffler and Deigh might be carried out.