Hoon also told Rawnsley: "I had it, on absolutely categorical authority, that Jack was going to do the business".
Bagnoli argues that these advantages concern moral phenomenology; that is, constructivism best captures the experience of moral agency and the categorical authority of moral norms (Bagnoli 2002, Bagnoli 2011a).
But whether we consider the world view of the Monarchia an aberration [D'Entreves, 51] or take it as Dante's straightforward exposition of his views on the relations of secular and religious authority, its categorical definition of the twofold purpose of human life is impossible to explain away.
One of Leibowitz's concerns seems to be that for the imperatives to be truly categorical, they must draw their authority from something other than human needs and values, which are too weak a foundation to ground categorical imperatives.
While Kant presents a complicated and intricate argument to explain the normative authority of the categorical imperative, he claims that hypothetical imperatives require "no special discussion," and spends comparatively little time discussing them (4:417).
Kant's approach here which might seem to play into the hands of instrumentalists (see §4.1 above) who, while skeptical of the rational authority of the categorical imperative, follow Kant in thinking that the authority of hypothetical imperatives is obvious and unproblematic has been challenged.
Some, like Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, challenge the authority of today's puritans, who make categorical judgments based on a literal reading of scattered Koranic verses.
It is an imperative because it commands and constrains us; it is a categorical imperative because it commands and constrains us absolutely, with ultimate authority and without regard to our preferences or empirical features or circumstances.
In some ways, this was the result of a categorical confusion, the assumption that if I could use my hands to play a derivation of black music with any authority I could use my voice to do the same thing.
What they say is seldom tentative – they make impudently categorical assertions about Salinger's state of mind and the relationship of his life to his art – and yet its authority is, perversely, undermined by just being another voice in the gabble.
There is a paradox in Kant: Each person makes free, autonomous choices, unfettered by outside authority, and yet each person is compelled by the demands of rationality to accept Kant's ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative.
