Of a
Dialectic
of Pure Practical Reason Generally.
Kant - Critique of Practical Reason
The
feeling that arises from the consciousness of this obligation is not
pathological, as would be a feeling produced by an object of the
senses, but practical only, that is, it is made possible by a
preceding (objective) determination of the will and a causality of the
reason. As submission to the law, therefore, that is, as a command
(announcing constraint for the sensibly affected subject), it contains
in it no pleasure, but on the contrary, so far, pain in the action. On
the other hand, however, as this constraint is exercised merely by the
legislation of our own reason, it also contains something elevating,
and this subjective effect on feeling, inasmuch as pure practical
reason is the sole cause of it, may be called in this respect
self-approbation, since we recognize ourselves as determined thereto
solely by the law without any interest, and are now conscious of a
quite different interest subjectively produced thereby, and which is
purely practical and free; and our taking this interest in an action
of duty is not suggested by any inclination, but is commanded and
actually brought about by reason through the practical law; whence
this feeling obtains a special name, that of respect.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 15}
The notion of duty, therefore, requires in the action,
objectively, agreement with the law, and, subjectively in its maxim,
that respect for the law shall be the sole mode in which the will is
determined thereby. And on this rests the distinction between the
consciousness of having acted according to duty and from duty, that
is, from respect for the law. The former (legality) is possible even
if inclinations have been the determining principles of the will;
but the latter (morality), moral worth, can be placed only in this,
that the action is done from duty, that is, simply for the sake of the
law. *
* If we examine accurately the notion of respect for persons as it
has been already laid down, we shall perceive that it always rests
on the consciousness of a duty which an example shows us, and that
respect, therefore, can never have any but a moral ground, and that it
is very good and even, in a psychological point of view, very useful
for the knowledge of mankind, that whenever we use this expression
we should attend to this secret and marvellous, yet often recurring,
regard which men in their judgement pay to the moral law.
It is of the greatest importance to attend with the utmost exactness
in all moral judgements to the subjective principle of all maxims,
that all the morality of actions may be placed in the necessity of
acting from duty and from respect for the law, not from love and
inclination for that which the actions are to produce. For men and all
created rational beings moral necessity is constraint, that is
obligation, and every action based on it is to be conceived as a duty,
not as a proceeding previously pleasing, or likely to be pleasing to
us of our own accord. As if indeed we could ever bring it about that
without respect for the law, which implies fear, or at least
apprehension of transgression, we of ourselves, like the independent
Deity, could ever come into possession of holiness of will by the
coincidence of our will with the pure moral law becoming as it were
part of our nature, never to be shaken (in which case the law would
cease to be a command for us, as we could never be tempted to be
untrue to it).
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 20}
The moral law is in fact for the will of a perfect being a law of
holiness, but for the will of every finite rational being a law of
duty, of moral constraint, and of the determination of its actions
by respect for this law and reverence for its duty. No other
subjective principle must be assumed as a motive, else while the
action might chance to be such as the law prescribes, yet, as does not
proceed from duty, the intention, which is the thing properly in
question in this legislation, is not moral.
It is a very beautiful thing to do good to men from love to them and
from sympathetic good will, or to be just from love of order; but this
is not yet the true moral maxim of our conduct which is suitable to
our position amongst rational beings as men, when we pretend with
fanciful pride to set ourselves above the thought of duty, like
volunteers, and, as if we were independent on the command, to want
to do of our own good pleasure what we think we need no command to do.
We stand under a discipline of reason and in all our maxims must not
forget our subjection to it, nor withdraw anything therefrom, or by an
egotistic presumption diminish aught of the authority of the law
(although our own reason gives it) so as to set the determining
principle of our will, even though the law be conformed to, anywhere
else but in the law itself and in respect for this law. Duty and
obligation are the only names that we must give to our relation to the
moral law. We are indeed legislative members of a moral kingdom
rendered possible by freedom, and presented to us by reason as an
object of respect; but yet we are subjects in it, not the sovereign,
and to mistake our inferior position as creatures, and
presumptuously to reject the authority of the moral law, is already to
revolt from it in spirit, even though the letter of it is fulfilled.
With this agrees very well the possibility of such a command as:
Love God above everything, and thy neighbour as thyself. * For as a
command it requires respect for a law which commands love and does not
leave it to our own arbitrary choice to make this our principle.
Love to God, however, considered as an inclination (pathological
love), is impossible, for He is not an object of the senses. The
same affection towards men is possible no doubt, but cannot be
commanded, for it is not in the power of any man to love anyone at
command; therefore it is only practical love that is meant in that
pith of all laws. To love God means, in this sense, to like to do
His commandments; to love one's neighbour means to like to practise
all duties towards him. But the command that makes this a rule
cannot command us to have this disposition in actions conformed to
duty, but only to endeavour after it. For a command to like to do a
thing is in itself contradictory, because if we already know of
ourselves what we are bound to do, and if further we are conscious
of liking to do it, a command would be quite needless; and if we do it
not willingly, but only out of respect for the law, a command that
makes this respect the motive of our maxim would directly counteract
the disposition commanded. That law of all laws, therefore, like all
the moral precepts of the Gospel, exhibits the moral disposition in
all its perfection, in which, viewed as an ideal of holiness, it is
not attainable by any creature, but yet is the pattern which we should
strive to approach, and in an uninterrupted but infinite progress
become like to. In fact, if a rational creature could ever reach
this point, that he thoroughly likes to do all moral laws, this
would mean that there does not exist in him even the possibility of
a desire that would tempt him to deviate from them; for to overcome
such a desire always costs the subject some sacrifice and therefore
requires self-compulsion, that is, inward constraint to something that
one does not quite like to do; and no creature can ever reach this
stage of moral disposition. For, being a creature, and therefore
always dependent with respect to what he requires for complete
satisfaction, he can never be quite free from desires and
inclinations, and as these rest on physical causes, they can never
of themselves coincide with the moral law, the sources of which are
quite different; and therefore they make it necessary to found the
mental disposition of one's maxims on moral obligation, not on ready
inclination, but on respect, which demands obedience to the law,
even though one may not like it; not on love, which apprehends no
inward reluctance of the will towards the law. Nevertheless, this
latter, namely, love to the law (which would then cease to be a
command, and then morality, which would have passed subjectively
into holiness, would cease to be virtue) must be the constant though
unattainable goal of his endeavours. For in the case of what we highly
esteem, but yet (on account of the consciousness of our weakness)
dread, the increased facility of satisfying it changes the most
reverential awe into inclination, and respect into love; at least this
would be the perfection of a disposition devoted to the law, if it
were possible for a creature to attain it.
* This law is in striking contrast with the principle of private
happiness which some make the supreme principle of morality. This
would be expressed thus: Love thyself above everything, and God and
thy neighbour for thine own sake.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 25}
This reflection is intended not so much to clear up the
evangelical command just cited, in order to prevent religious
fanaticism in regard to love of God, but to define accurately the
moral disposition with regard directly to our duties towards men,
and to check, or if possible prevent, a merely moral fanaticism
which infects many persons. The stage of morality on which man (and,
as far as we can see, every rational creature) stands is respect for
the moral law. The disposition that he ought to have in obeying this
is to obey it from duty, not from spontaneous inclination, or from
an endeavour taken up from liking and unbidden; and this proper
moral condition in which he can always be is virtue, that is, moral
disposition militant, and not holiness in the fancied possession of
a perfect purity of the disposition of the will. It is nothing but
moral fanaticism and exaggerated self-conceit that is infused into the
mind by exhortation to actions as noble, sublime, and magnanimous,
by which men are led into the delusion that it is not duty, that is,
respect for the law, whose yoke (an easy yoke indeed, because reason
itself imposes it on us) they must bear, whether they like it or
not, that constitutes the determining principle of their actions,
and which always humbles them while they obey it; fancying that
those actions are expected from them, not from duty, but as pure
merit. For not only would they, in imitating such deeds from such a
principle, not have fulfilled the spirit of the law in the least,
which consists not in the legality of the action (without regard to
principle), but in the subjection of the mind to the law; not only
do they make the motives pathological (seated in sympathy or
self-love), not moral (in the law), but they produce in this way a
vain, high-flying, fantastic way of thinking, flattering themselves
with a spontaneous goodness of heart that needs neither spur nor
bridle, for which no command is needed, and thereby forgetting their
obligation, which they ought to think of rather than merit. Indeed
actions of others which are done with great sacrifice, and merely
for the sake of duty, may be praised as noble and sublime, but only so
far as there are traces which suggest that they were done wholly out
of respect for duty and not from excited feelings. If these,
however, are set before anyone as examples to be imitated, respect for
duty (which is the only true moral feeling) must be employed as the
motive- this severe holy precept which never allows our vain self-love
to dally with pathological impulses (however analogous they may be
to morality), and to take a pride in meritorious worth. Now if we
search we shall find for all actions that are worthy of praise a law
of duty which commands, and does not leave us to choose what may be
agreeable to our inclinations. This is the only way of representing
things that can give a moral training to the soul, because it alone is
capable of solid and accurately defined principles.
If fanaticism in its most general sense is a deliberate over
stepping of the limits of human reason, then moral fanaticism is
such an over stepping of the bounds that practical pure reason sets to
mankind, in that it forbids us to place the subjective determining
principle of correct actions, that is, their moral motive, in anything
but the law itself, or to place the disposition which is thereby
brought into the maxims in anything but respect for this law, and
hence commands us to take as the supreme vital principle of all
morality in men the thought of duty, which strikes down all
arrogance as well as vain self-love.
If this is so, it is not only writers of romance or sentimental
educators (although they may be zealous opponents of
sentimentalism), but sometimes even philosophers, nay, even the
severest of all, the Stoics, that have brought in moral fanaticism
instead of a sober but wise moral discipline, although the
fanaticism of the latter was more heroic, that of the former of an
insipid, effeminate character; and we may, without hypocrisy, say of
the moral teaching of the Gospel, that it first, by the purity of
its moral principle, and at the same time by its suitability to the
limitations of finite beings, brought all the good conduct of men
under the discipline of a duty plainly set before their eyes, which
does not permit them to indulge in dreams of imaginary moral
perfections; and that it also set the bounds of humility (that is,
self-knowledge) to self-conceit as well as to self-love, both which
are ready to mistake their limits.
Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing
charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, and yet seekest not
to move the will by threatening aught that would arouse natural
aversion or terror, but merely holdest forth a law which of itself
finds entrance into the mind, and yet gains reluctant reverence
(though not always obedience), a law before which all inclinations are
dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it; what origin is
there worthy of thee, and where is to be found the root of thy noble
descent which proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations; a
root to be derived from which is the indispensable condition of the
only worth which men can give themselves?
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 30}
It can be nothing less than a power which elevates man above himself
(as a part of the world of sense), a power which connects him with
an order of things that only the understanding can conceive, with a
world which at the same time commands the whole sensible world, and
with it the empirically determinable existence of man in time, as well
as the sum total of all ends (which totality alone suits such
unconditional practical laws as the moral). This power is nothing
but personality, that is, freedom and independence on the mechanism of
nature, yet, regarded also as a faculty of a being which is subject to
special laws, namely, pure practical laws given by its own reason;
so that the person as belonging to the sensible world is subject to
his own personality as belonging to the intelligible [supersensible]
world. It is then not to be wondered at that man, as belonging to both
worlds, must regard his own nature in reference to its second and
highest characteristic only with reverence, and its laws with the
highest respect.
On this origin are founded many expressions which designate the
worth of objects according to moral ideas. The moral law is holy
(inviolable). Man is indeed unholy enough, but he must regard humanity
in his own person as holy. In all creation every thing one chooses and
over which one has any power, may be used merely as means; man
alone, and with him every rational creature, is an end in himself.
By virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the subject of the
moral law, which is holy. Just for this reason every will, even
every person's own individual will, in relation to itself, is
restricted to the condition of agreement with the autonomy of the
rational being, that is to say, that it is not to be subject to any
purpose which cannot accord with a law which might arise from the will
of the passive subject himself; the latter is, therefore, never to
be employed merely as means, but as itself also, concurrently, an end.
We justly attribute this condition even to the Divine will, with
regard to the rational beings in the world, which are His creatures,
since it rests on their personality, by which alone they are ends in
themselves.
This respect-inspiring idea of personality which sets before our
eyes the sublimity of our nature (in its higher aspect), while at
the same time it shows us the want of accord of our conduct with it
and thereby strikes down self-conceit, is even natural to the
commonest reason and easily observed. Has not every even moderately
honourable man sometimes found that, where by an otherwise inoffensive
lie he might either have withdrawn himself from an unpleasant
business, or even have procured some advantages for a loved and
well-deserving friend, he has avoided it solely lest he should despise
himself secretly in his own eyes? When an upright man is in the
greatest distress, which he might have avoided if he could only have
disregarded duty, is he not sustained by the consciousness that he has
maintained humanity in its proper dignity in his own person and
honoured it, that he has no reason to be ashamed of himself in his own
sight, or to dread the inward glance of self-examination? This
consolation is not happiness, it is not even the smallest part of
it, for no one would wish to have occasion for it, or would,
perhaps, even desire a life in such circumstances. But he lives, and
he cannot endure that he should be in his own eyes unworthy of life.
This inward peace is therefore merely negative as regards what can
make life pleasant; it is, in fact, only the escaping the danger of
sinking in personal worth, after everything else that is valuable
has been lost. It is the effect of a respect for something quite
different from life, something in comparison and contrast with which
life with all its enjoyment has no value. He still lives only
because it is his duty, not because he finds anything pleasant in
life.
Such is the nature of the true motive of pure practical reason; it
is no other than the pure moral law itself, inasmuch as it makes us
conscious of the sublimity of our own supersensible existence and
subjectively produces respect for their higher nature in men who are
also conscious of their sensible existence and of the consequent
dependence of their pathologically very susceptible nature. Now with
this motive may be combined so many charms and satisfactions of life
that even on this account alone the most prudent choice of a
rational Epicurean reflecting on the greatest advantage of life
would declare itself on the side of moral conduct, and it may even
be advisable to join this prospect of a cheerful enjoyment of life
with that supreme motive which is already sufficient of itself; but
only as a counterpoise to the attractions which vice does not fail
to exhibit on the opposite side, and not so as, even in the smallest
degree, to place in this the proper moving power when duty is in
question. For that would be just the same as to wish to taint the
purity of the moral disposition in its source. The majesty of duty has
nothing to do with enjoyment of life; it has its special law and its
special tribunal, and though the two should be never so well shaken
together to be given well mixed, like medicine, to the sick soul,
yet they will soon separate of themselves; and if they do not, the
former will not act; and although physical life might gain somewhat in
force, the moral life would fade away irrecoverably.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 35}
Critical Examination of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason.
By the critical examination of a science, or of a portion of it,
which constitutes a system by itself, I understand the inquiry and
proof why it must have this and no other systematic form, when we
compare it with another system which is based on a similar faculty
of knowledge. Now practical and speculative reason are based on the
same faculty, so far as both are pure reason. Therefore the difference
in their systematic form must be determined by the comparison of both,
and the ground of this must be assigned.
The Analytic of pure theoretic reason had to do with the knowledge
of such objects as may have been given to the understanding, and was
obliged therefore to begin from intuition and consequently (as this is
always sensible) from sensibility; and only after that could advance
to concepts (of the objects of this intuition), and could only end
with principles after both these had preceded. On the contrary,
since practical reason has not to do with objects so as to know
them, but with its own faculty of realizing them (in accordance with
the knowledge of them), that is, with a will which is a causality,
inasmuch as reason contains its determining principle; since,
consequently, it has not to furnish an object of intuition, but as
practical reason has to furnish only a law (because the notion of
causality always implies the reference to a law which determines the
existence of the many in relation to one another); hence a critical
examination of the Analytic of reason, if this is to be practical
reason (and this is properly the problem), must begin with the
possibility of practical principles a priori. Only after that can it
proceed to concepts of the objects of a practical reason, namely,
those of absolute good and evil, in order to assign them in accordance
with those principles (for prior to those principles they cannot
possibly be given as good and evil by any faculty of knowledge), and
only then could the section be concluded with the last chapter,
that, namely, which treats of the relation of the pure practical
reason to the sensibility and of its necessary influence thereon,
which is a priori cognisable, that is, of the moral sentiment. Thus
the Analytic of the practical pure reason has the whole extent of
the conditions of its use in common with the theoretical, but in
reverse order. The Analytic of pure theoretic reason was divided
into transcendental Aesthetic and transcendental Logic, that of the
practical reversely into Logic and Aesthetic of pure practical
reason (if I may, for the sake of analogy merely, use these
designations, which are not quite suitable). This logic again was
there divided into the Analytic of concepts and that of principles:
here into that of principles and concepts. The Aesthetic also had in
the former case two parts, on account of the two kinds of sensible
intuition; here the sensibility is not considered as a capacity of
intuition at all, but merely as feeling (which can be a subjective
ground of desire), and in regard to it pure practical reason admits no
further division.
It is also easy to see the reason why this division into two parts
with its subdivision was not actually adopted here (as one might
have been induced to attempt by the example of the former critique).
For since it is pure reason that is here considered in its practical
use, and consequently as proceeding from a priori principles, and
not from empirical principles of determination, hence the division
of the analytic of pure practical reason must resemble that of a
syllogism; namely, proceeding from the universal in the major
premiss (the moral principle), through a minor premiss containing a
subsumption of possible actions (as good or evil) under the former, to
the conclusion, namely, the subjective determination of the will (an
interest in the possible practical good, and in the maxim founded on
it). He who has been able to convince himself of the truth of the
positions occurring in the Analytic will take pleasure in such
comparisons; for they justly suggest the expectation that we may
perhaps some day be able to discern the unity of the whole faculty
of reason (theoretical as well as practical) and be able to derive all
from one principle, which, is what human reason inevitably demands, as
it finds complete satisfaction only in a perfectly systematic unity of
its knowledge.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 40}
If now we consider also the contents of the knowledge that we can
have of a pure practical reason, and by means of it, as shown by the
Analytic, we find, along with a remarkable analogy between it and
the theoretical, no less remarkable differences. As regards the
theoretical, the faculty of a pure rational cognition a priori could
be easily and evidently proved by examples from sciences (in which, as
they put their principles to the test in so many ways by methodical
use, there is not so much reason as in common knowledge to fear a
secret mixture of empirical principles of cognition). But, that pure
reason without the admixture of any empirical principle is practical
of itself, this could only be shown from the commonest practical use
of reason, by verifying the fact, that every man's natural reason
acknowledges the supreme practical principle as the supreme law of his
will- a law completely a priori and not depending on any sensible
data. It was necessary first to establish and verify the purity of its
origin, even in the judgement of this common reason, before science
could take it in hand to make use of it, as a fact, that is, prior
to all disputation about its possibility, and all the consequences
that may be drawn from it. But this circumstance may be readily
explained from what has just been said; because practical pure
reason must necessarily begin with principles, which therefore must be
the first data, the foundation of all science, and cannot be derived
from it. It was possible to effect this verification of moral
principles as principles of a pure reason quite well, and with
sufficient certainty, by a single appeal to the judgement of common
sense, for this reason, that anything empirical which might slip
into our maxims as a determining principle of the will can be detected
at once by the feeling of pleasure or pain which necessarily
attaches to it as exciting desire; whereas pure practical reason
positively refuses to admit this feeling into its principle as a
condition. The heterogeneity of the determining principles (the
empirical and rational) is clearly detected by this resistance of a
practically legislating reason against every admixture of inclination,
and by a peculiar kind of sentiment, which, however, does not
precede the legislation of the practical reason, but, on the contrary,
is produced by this as a constraint, namely, by the feeling of a
respect such as no man has for inclinations of whatever kind but for
the law only; and it is detected in so marked and prominent a manner
that even the most uninstructed cannot fail to see at once in an
example presented to him, that empirical principles of volition may
indeed urge him to follow their attractions, but that he can never
be expected to obey anything but the pure practical law of reason
alone.
The distinction between the doctrine of happiness and the doctrine
of morality, in the former of which empirical principles constitute
the entire foundation, while in the second they do not form the
smallest part of it, is the first and most important office of the
Analytic of pure practical reason; and it must proceed in it with as
much exactness and, so to speak, scrupulousness, as any geometer in
his work. The philosopher, however, has greater difficulties to
contend with here (as always in rational cognition by means of
concepts merely without construction), because he cannot take any
intuition as a foundation (for a pure noumenon). He has, however, this
advantage that, like the chemist, he can at any time make an
experiment with every man's practical reason for the purpose of
distinguishing the moral (pure) principle of determination from the
empirical; namely, by adding the moral law (as a determining
principle) to the empirically affected will (e. g. , that of the man who
would be ready to lie because he can gain something thereby). It is as
if the analyst added alkali to a solution of lime in hydrochloric
acid, the acid at once forsakes the lime, combines with the alkali,
and the lime is precipitated. Just in the same way, if to a man who is
otherwise honest (or who for this occasion places himself only in
thought in the position of an honest man), we present the moral law by
which he recognises the worthlessness of the liar, his practical
reason (in forming a judgement of what ought to be done) at once
forsakes the advantage, combines with that which maintains in him
respect for his own person (truthfulness), and the advantage after
it has been separated and washed from every particle of reason
(which is altogether on the side of duty) is easily weighed by
everyone, so that it can enter into combination with reason in other
cases, only not where it could be opposed to the moral law, which
reason never forsakes, but most closely unites itself with.
But it does not follow that this distinction between the principle
of happiness and that of morality is an opposition between them, and
pure practical reason does not require that we should renounce all
claim to happiness, but only that the moment duty is in question we
should take no account of happiness. It may even in certain respects
be a duty to provide for happiness; partly, because (including
skill, wealth, riches) it contains means for the fulfilment of our
duty; partly, because the absence of it (e. g. , poverty) implies
temptations to transgress our duty. But it can never be an immediate
duty to promote our happiness, still less can it be the principle of
all duty. Now, as all determining principles of the will, except the
law of pure practical reason alone (the moral law), are all
empirical and, therefore, as such, belong to the principle of
happiness, they must all be kept apart from the supreme principle of
morality and never be incorporated with it as a condition; since
this would be to destroy all moral worth just as much as any empirical
admixture with geometrical principles would destroy the certainty of
mathematical evidence, which in Plato's opinion is the most
excellent thing in mathematics, even surpassing their utility.
Instead, however, of the deduction of the supreme principle of
pure practical reason, that is, the explanation of the possibility
of such a knowledge a priori, the utmost we were able to do was to
show that if we saw the possibility of the freedom of an efficient
cause, we should also see not merely the possibility, but even the
necessity, of the moral law as the supreme practical law of rational
beings, to whom we attribute freedom of causality of their will;
because both concepts are so inseparably united that we might define
practical freedom as independence of the will on anything but the
moral law. But we cannot perceive the possibility of the freedom of an
efficient cause, especially in the world of sense; we are fortunate if
only we can be sufficiently assured that there is no proof of its
impossibility, and are now, by the moral law which postulates it,
compelled and therefore authorized to assume it. However, there are
still many who think that they can explain this freedom on empirical
principles, like any other physical faculty, and treat it as a
psychological property, the explanation of which only requires a
more exact study of the nature of the soul and of the motives of the
will, and not as a transcendental predicate of the causality of a
being that belongs to the world of sense (which is really the
point). They thus deprive us of the grand revelation which we obtain
through practical reason by means of the moral law, the revelation,
namely, of a supersensible world by the realization of the otherwise
transcendent concept of freedom, and by this deprive us also of the
moral law itself, which admits no empirical principle of
determination. Therefore it will be necessary to add something here as
a protection against this delusion and to exhibit empiricism in its
naked superficiality.
The notion of causality as physical necessity, in opposition to
the same notion as freedom, concerns only the existence of things so
far as it is determinable in time, and, consequently, as phenomena, in
opposition to their causality as things in themselves. Now if we
take the attributes of existence of things in time for attributes of
things in themselves (which is the common view), then it is impossible
to reconcile the necessity of the causal relation with freedom; they
are contradictory. For from the former it follows that every event,
and consequently every action that takes place at a certain point of
time, is a necessary result of what existed in time preceding. Now
as time past is no longer in my power, hence every action that I
perform must be the necessary result of certain determining grounds
which are not in my power, that is, at the moment in which I am acting
I am never free. Nay, even if I assume that my whole existence is
independent on any foreign cause (for instance, God), so that the
determining principles of my causality, and even of my whole
existence, were not outside myself, yet this would not in the least
transform that physical necessity into freedom. For at every moment of
time I am still under the necessity of being determined to action by
that which is not in my power, and the series of events infinite a
parte priori, which I only continue according to a pre-determined
order and could never begin of myself, would be a continuous
physical chain, and therefore my causality would never be freedom.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 45}
If, then, we would attribute freedom to a being whose existence is
determined in time, we cannot except him from the law of necessity
as to all events in his existence and, consequently, as to his actions
also; for that would be to hand him over to blind chance. Now as
this law inevitably applies to all the causality of things, so far
as their existence is determinable in time, it follows that if this
were the mode in which we had also to conceive the existence of
these things in themselves, freedom must be rejected as a vain and
impossible conception. Consequently, if we would still save it, no
other way remains but to consider that the existence of a thing, so
far as it is determinable in time, and therefore its causality,
according to the law of physical necessity, belong to appearance,
and to attribute freedom to the same being as a thing in itself.
This is certainly inevitable, if we would retain both these
contradictory concepts together; but in application, when we try to
explain their combination in one and the same action, great
difficulties present themselves which seem to render such a
combination impracticable.
When I say of a man who commits a theft that, by the law of
causality, this deed is a necessary result of the determining causes
in preceding time, then it was impossible that it could not have
happened; how then can the judgement, according to the moral law, make
any change, and suppose that it could have been omitted, because the
law says that it ought to have been omitted; that is, how can a man be
called quite free at the same moment, and with respect to the same
action in which he is subject to an inevitable physical necessity?
Some try to evade this by saying that the causes that determine his
causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion
of freedom. According to this, that is sometimes called a free effect,
the determining physical cause of which lies within the acting thing
itself, e. g. , that which a projectile performs when it is in free
motion, in which case we use the word freedom, because while it is
in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the
motion of a clock a free motion, because it moves its hands itself,
which therefore do not require to be pushed by external force; so
although the actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which
precede in time, we yet call them free, because these causes are ideas
produced by our own faculties, whereby desires are evoked on
occasion of circumstances, and hence actions are wrought according
to our own pleasure. This is a wretched subterfuge with which some
persons still let themselves be put off, and so think they have
solved, with a petty word- jugglery, that difficult problem, at the
solution of which centuries have laboured in vain, and which can
therefore scarcely be found so completely on the surface. In fact,
in the question about the freedom which must be the foundation of
all moral laws and the consequent responsibility, it does not matter
whether the principles which necessarily determine causality by a
physical law reside within the subject or without him, or in the
former case whether these principles are instinctive or are
conceived by reason, if, as is admitted by these men themselves, these
determining ideas have the ground of their existence in time and in
the antecedent state, and this again in an antecedent, etc. Then it
matters not that these are internal; it matters not that they have a
psychological and not a mechanical causality, that is, produce actions
by means of ideas and not by bodily movements; they are still
determining principles of the causality of a being whose existence
is determinable in time, and therefore under the necessitation of
conditions of past time, which therefore, when the subject has to act,
are no longer in his power. This may imply psychological freedom (if
we choose to apply this term to a merely internal chain of ideas in
the mind), but it involves physical necessity and, therefore, leaves
no room for transcendental freedom, which must be conceived as
independence on everything empirical, and, consequently, on nature
generally, whether it is an object of the internal sense considered in
time only, or of the external in time and space. Without this
freedom (in the latter and true sense), which alone is practical a
priori, no moral law and no moral imputation are possible. Just for
this reason the necessity of events in time, according to the physical
law of causality, may be called the mechanism of nature, although we
do not mean by this that things which are subject to it must be really
material machines. We look here only to the necessity of the
connection of events in a time-series as it is developed according
to the physical law, whether the subject in which this development
takes place is called automaton materiale when the mechanical being is
moved by matter, or with Leibnitz spirituale when it is impelled by
ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter
(say the psychological and comparative, not also transcendental,
that is, absolute), then it would at bottom be nothing better than the
freedom of a turnspit, which, when once it is wound up, accomplishes
its motions of itself.
Now, in order to remove in the supposed case the apparent
contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature in one and
the same action, we must remember what was said in the Critique of
Pure Reason, or what follows therefrom; viz. , that the necessity of
nature, which cannot co-exist with the freedom of the subject,
appertains only to the attributes of the thing that is subject to
time-conditions, consequently only to those of the acting subject as a
phenomenon; that therefore in this respect the determining
principles of every action of the same reside in what belongs to
past time and is no longer in his power (in which must be included his
own past actions and the character that these may determine for him in
his own eyes as a phenomenon). But the very same subject, being on the
other side conscious of himself as a thing in himself, considers his
existence also in so far as it is not subject to time-conditions,
and regards himself as only determinable by laws which he gives
himself through reason; and in this his existence nothing is
antecedent to the determination of his will, but every action, and
in general every modification of his existence, varying according to
his internal sense, even the whole series of his existence as a
sensible being is in the consciousness of his supersensible
existence nothing but the result, and never to be regarded as the
determining principle, of his causality as a noumenon. In this view
now the rational being can justly say of every unlawful action that he
performs, that he could very well have left it undone; although as
appearance it is sufficiently determined in the past, and in this
respect is absolutely necessary; for it, with all the past which
determines it, belongs to the one single phenomenon of his character
which he makes for himself, in consequence of which he imputes the
causality of those appearances to himself as a cause independent on
sensibility.
With this agree perfectly the judicial sentences of that wonderful
faculty in us which we call conscience. A man may use as much art as
he likes in order to paint to himself an unlawful act, that he
remembers, as an unintentional error, a mere oversight, such as one
can never altogether avoid, and therefore as something in which he was
carried away by the stream of physical necessity, and thus to make
himself out innocent, yet he finds that the advocate who speaks in his
favour can by no means silence the accuser within, if only he is
conscious that at the time when he did this wrong he was in his
senses, that is, in possession of his freedom; and, nevertheless, he
accounts for his error from some bad habits, which by gradual
neglect of attention he has allowed to grow upon him to such a
degree that he can regard his error as its natural consequence,
although this cannot protect him from the blame and reproach which
he casts upon himself. This is also the ground of repentance for a
long past action at every recollection of it; a painful feeling
produced by the moral sentiment, and which is practically void in so
far as it cannot serve to undo what has been done. (Hence Priestley,
as a true and consistent fatalist, declares it absurd, and he deserves
to be commended for this candour more than those who, while they
maintain the mechanism of the will in fact, and its freedom in words
only, yet wish it to be thought that they include it in their system
of compromise, although they do not explain the possibility of such
moral imputation. ) But the pain is quite legitimate, because when
the law of our intelligible [supersensible] existence (the moral
law) is in question, reason recognizes no distinction of time, and
only asks whether the event belongs to me, as my act, and then
always morally connects the same feeling with it, whether it has
happened just now or long ago. For in reference to the supersensible
consciousness of its existence (i. e. , freedom) the life of sense is
but a single phenomenon, which, inasmuch as it contains merely
manifestations of the mental disposition with regard to the moral
law (i. e. , of the character), must be judged not according to the
physical necessity that belongs to it as phenomenon, but according
to the absolute spontaneity of freedom. It may therefore be admitted
that, if it were possible to have so profound an insight into a
man's mental character as shown by internal as well as external
actions as to know all its motives, even the smallest, and likewise
all the external occasions that can influence them, we could calculate
a man's conduct for the future with as great certainty as a lunar or
solar eclipse; and nevertheless we may maintain that the man is
free. In fact, if we were capable of a further glance, namely, an
intellectual intuition of the same subject (which indeed is not
granted to us, and instead of it we have only the rational concept),
then we should perceive that this whole chain of appearances in regard
to all that concerns the moral laws depends on the spontaneity of
the subject as a thing in itself, of the determination of which no
physical explanation can be given. In default of this intuition, the
moral law assures us of this distinction between the relation of our
actions as appearance to our sensible nature, and the relation of this
sensible nature to the supersensible substratum in us. In this view,
which is natural to our reason, though inexplicable, we can also
justify some judgements which we passed with all conscientiousness,
and which yet at first sight seem quite opposed to all equity. There
are cases in which men, even with the same education which has been
profitable to others, yet show such early depravity, and so continue
to progress in it to years of manhood, that they are thought to be
born villains, and their character altogether incapable of
improvement; and nevertheless they are judged for what they do or
leave undone, they are reproached for their faults as guilty; nay,
they themselves (the children) regard these reproaches as well
founded, exactly as if in spite of the hopeless natural quality of
mind ascribed to them, they remained just as responsible as any
other man. This could not happen if we did not suppose that whatever
springs from a man's choice (as every action intentionally performed
undoubtedly does) has as its foundation a free causality, which from
early youth expresses its character in its manifestations (i. e. ,
actions). These, on account of the uniformity of conduct, exhibit a
natural connection, which however does not make the vicious quality of
the will necessary, but on the contrary, is the consequence of the
evil principles voluntarily adopted and unchangeable, which only
make it so much the more culpable and deserving of punishment. There
still remains a difficulty in the combination of freedom with the
mechanism of nature in a being belonging to the world of sense; a
difficulty which, even after all the foregoing is admitted,
threatens freedom with complete destruction. But with this danger
there is also a circumstance that offers hope of an issue still
favourable to freedom; namely, that the same difficulty presses much
more strongly (in fact as we shall presently see, presses only) on the
system that holds the existence determinable in time and space to be
the existence of things in themselves; it does not therefore oblige us
to give up our capital supposition of the ideality of time as a mere
form of sensible intuition, and consequently as a mere manner of
representation which is proper to the subject as belonging to the
world of sense; and therefore it only requires that this view be
reconciled with this idea.
The difficulty is as follows: Even if it is admitted that the
supersensible subject can be free with respect to a given action,
although, as a subject also belonging to the world of sense, he is
under mechanical conditions with respect to the same action, still, as
soon as we allow that God as universal first cause is also the cause
of the existence of substance (a proposition which can never be
given up without at the same time giving up the notion of God as the
Being of all beings, and therewith giving up his all sufficiency, on
which everything in theology depends), it seems as if we must admit
that a man's actions have their determining principle in something
which is wholly out of his power- namely, in the causality of a
Supreme Being distinct from himself and on whom his own existence
and the whole determination of his causality are absolutely dependent.
In point of fact, if a man's actions as belonging to his modifications
in time were not merely modifications of him as appearance, but as a
thing in itself, freedom could not be saved. Man would be a marionette
or an automaton, like Vaucanson's, prepared and wound up by the
Supreme Artist. Self-consciousness would indeed make him a thinking
automaton; but the consciousness of his own spontaneity would be
mere delusion if this were mistaken for freedom, and it would
deserve this name only in a comparative sense, since, although the
proximate determining causes of its motion and a long series of
their determining causes are internal, yet the last and highest is
found in a foreign hand. Therefore I do not see how those who still
insist on regarding time and space as attributes belonging to the
existence of things in themselves, can avoid admitting the fatality of
actions; or if (like the otherwise acute Mendelssohn) they allow
them to be conditions necessarily belonging to the existence of finite
and derived beings, but not to that of the infinite Supreme Being, I
do not see on what ground they can justify such a distinction, or,
indeed, how they can avoid the contradiction that meets them, when
they hold that existence in time is an attribute necessarily belonging
to finite things in themselves, whereas God is the cause of this
existence, but cannot be the cause of time (or space) itself (since
this must be presupposed as a necessary a priori condition of the
existence of things); and consequently as regards the existence of
these things. His causality must be subject to conditions and even
to the condition of time; and this would inevitably bring in
everything contradictory to the notions of His infinity and
independence. On the other hand, it is quite easy for us to draw the
distinction between the attribute of the divine existence of being
independent on all time-conditions, and that of a being of the world
of sense, the distinction being that between the existence of a
being in itself and that of a thing in appearance. Hence, if this
ideality of time and space is not adopted, nothing remains but
Spinozism, in which space and time are essential attributes of the
Supreme Being Himself, and the things dependent on Him (ourselves,
therefore, included) are not substances, but merely accidents inhering
in Him; since, if these things as His effects exist in time only, this
being the condition of their existence in themselves, then the actions
of these beings must be simply His actions which He performs in some
place and time. Thus, Spinozism, in spite of the absurdity of its
fundamental idea, argues more consistently than the creation theory
can, when beings assumed to be substances, and beings in themselves
existing in time, are regarded as effects of a Supreme Cause, and
yet as not [belonging] to Him and His action, but as separate
substances.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 50}
The above-mentioned difficulty is resolved briefly and clearly as
follows: If existence in time is a mere sensible mode of
representation belonging to thinking beings in the world and
consequently does not apply to them as things in themselves, then
the creation of these beings is a creation of things in themselves,
since the notion of creation does not belong to the sensible form of
representation of existence or to causality, but can only be
referred to noumena. Consequently, when I say of beings in the world
of sense that they are created, I so far regard them as noumena. As it
would be a contradiction, therefore, to say that God is a creator of
appearances, so also it is a contradiction to say that as creator He
is the cause of actions in the world of sense, and therefore as
appearances, although He is the cause of the existence of the acting
beings (which are noumena). If now it is possible to affirm freedom in
spite of the natural mechanism of actions as appearances (by regarding
existence in time as something that belongs only to appearances, not
to things in themselves), then the circumstance that the acting beings
are creatures cannot make the slightest difference, since creation
concerns their supersensible and not their sensible existence, and,
therefore, cannot be regarded as the determining principle of the
appearances. It would be quite different if the beings in the world as
things in themselves existed in time, since in that case the creator
of substance would be at the same time the author of the whole
mechanism of this substance.
Of so great importance is the separation of time (as well as
space) from the existence of things in themselves which was effected
in the Critique of the Pure Speculative Reason.
It may be said that the solution here proposed involves great
difficulty in itself and is scarcely susceptible of a lucid
exposition. But is any other solution that has been attempted, or that
may be attempted, easier and more intelligible? Rather might we say
that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics have shown more shrewdness
than candour in keeping this difficult point out of sight as much as
possible, in the hope that if they said nothing about it, probably
no one would think of it. If science is to be advanced, all
difficulties must be laid open, and we must even search for those that
are hidden, for every difficulty calls forth a remedy, which cannot be
discovered without science gaining either in extent or in exactness;
and thus even obstacles become means of increasing the thoroughness of
science. On the other hand, if the difficulties are intentionally
concealed, or merely removed by palliatives, then sooner or later they
burst out into incurable mischiefs, which bring science to ruin in
an absolute scepticism.
Since it is, properly speaking, the notion of freedom alone amongst all
the ideas of pure speculative reason that so greatly enlarges our
knowledge in the sphere of the supersensible, though only of our
practical knowledge, I ask myself why it exclusively possesses so great
fertility, whereas the others only designate the vacant space for
possible beings of the pure understanding, but are unable by any means
to define the concept of them. I presently find that as I cannot think
anything without a category, I must first look for a category for the
rational idea of freedom with which I am now concerned; and this is the
category of causality; and although freedom, a concept of the reason,
being a transcendent concept, cannot have any intuition corresponding to
it, yet the concept of the understanding- for the synthesis of which the
former demands the unconditioned- (namely, the concept of causality)
must have a sensible intuition given, by which first its objective
reality is assured. Now, the categories are all divided into two
classes- the mathematical, which concern the unity of synthesis in the
conception of objects, and the dynamical, which refer to the unity of
synthesis in the conception of the existence of objects. The former
(those of magnitude and quality) always contain a synthesis of the
homogeneous, and it is not possible to find in this the unconditioned
antecedent to what is given in sensible intuition as conditioned in
space and time, as this would itself have to belong to space and time,
and therefore be again still conditioned. Whence it resulted in the
Dialectic of Pure Theoretic Reason that the opposite methods of
attaining the unconditioned and the totality of the conditions were both
wrong. The categories of the second class (those of causality and of the
necessity of a thing) did not require this homogeneity (of the
conditioned and the condition in synthesis), since here what we have to
explain is not how the intuition is compounded from a manifold in it,
but only how the existence of the conditioned object corresponding to it
is added to the existence of the condition (added, namely, in the
understanding as connected therewith); and in that case it was allowable
to suppose in the supersensible world the unconditioned antecedent to
the altogether conditioned in the world of sense (both as regards the
causal connection and the contingent existence of things themselves),
although this unconditioned remained indeterminate, and to make the
synthesis transcendent. Hence, it was found in the Dialectic of the Pure
Speculative Reason that the two apparently opposite methods of obtaining
for the conditioned the unconditioned were not really contradictory,
e. g. , in the synthesis of causality to conceive for the conditioned in
the series of causes and effects of the sensible world, a causality
which has no sensible condition, and that the same action which, as
belonging to the world of sense, is always sensibly conditioned, that
is, mechanically necessary, yet at the same time may be derived from a
causality not sensibly conditioned- being the causality of the acting
being as belonging to the supersensible world- and may consequently be
conceived as free. Now, the only point in question was to change this
may be into is; that is, that we should be able to show in an actual
case, as it were by a fact, that certain actions imply such a causality
(namely, the intellectual, sensibly unconditioned), whether they are
actual or only commanded, that is, objectively necessary in a practical
sense. We could not hope to find this connexion in actions actually
given in experience as events of the sensible world, since causality
with freedom must always be sought outside the world of sense in the
world of intelligence. But things of sense are the only things offered
to our perception and observation. Hence, nothing remained but to find
an incontestable objective principle of causality which excludes all
sensible conditions: that is, a principle in which reason does not
appeal further to something else as a determining ground of its
causality, but contains this determining ground itself by means of that
principle, and in which therefore it is itself as pure reason practical.
Now, this principle had not to be searched for or discovered; it had
long been in the reason of all men, and incorporated in their nature,
and is the principle of morality. Therefore, that unconditioned
causality, with the faculty of it, namely, freedom, is no longer merely
indefinitely and problematically thought (this speculative reason could
prove to be feasible), but is even as regards the law of its causality
definitely and assertorially known; and with it the fact that a being (I
myself), belonging to the world of sense, belongs also to the
supersensible world, this is also positively known, and thus the reality
of the supersensible world is established and in practical respects
definitely given, and this definiteness, which for theoretical purposes
would be transcendent, is for practical purposes immanent. We could not,
however, make a similar step as regards the second dynamical idea,
namely, that of a necessary being. We could not rise to it from the
sensible world without the aid of the first dynamical idea. For if we
attempted to do so, we should have ventured to leave at a bound all that
is given to us, and to leap to that of which nothing is given us that
can help us to effect the connection of such a supersensible being with
the world of sense (since the necessary being would have to be known as
given outside ourselves). On the other hand, it is now obvious that this
connection is quite possible in relation to our own subject, inasmuch as
I know myself to be on the one side as an intelligible [supersensible]
being determined by the moral law (by means of freedom), and on the
other side as acting in the world of sense. It is the concept of freedom
alone that enables us to find the unconditioned and intelligible for the
conditioned and sensible without going out of ourselves. For it is our
own reason that by means of the supreme and unconditional practical law
knows that itself and the being that is conscious of this law (our own
person) belong to the pure world of understanding, and moreover defines
the manner in which, as such, it can be active. In this way it can be
understood why in the whole faculty of reason it is the practical reason
only that can help us to pass beyond the world of sense and give us
knowledge of a supersensible order and connection, which, however, for
this very reason cannot be extended further than is necessary for pure
practical purposes.
Let me be permitted on this occasion to make one more remark,
namely, that every step that we make with pure reason, even in the
practical sphere where no attention is paid to subtle speculation,
nevertheless accords with all the material points of the Critique of
the Theoretical Reason as closely and directly as if each step had
been thought out with deliberate purpose to establish this
confirmation. Such a thorough agreement, wholly unsought for and quite
obvious (as anyone can convince himself, if he will only carry moral
inquiries up to their principles), between the most important
proposition of practical reason and the often seemingly too subtle and
needless remarks of the Critique of the Speculative Reason,
occasions surprise and astonishment, and confirms the maxim already
recognized and praised by others, namely, that in every scientific
inquiry we should pursue our way steadily with all possible
exactness and frankness, without caring for any objections that may be
raised from outside its sphere, but, as far as we can, to carry out
our inquiry truthfully and completely by itself. Frequent
observation has convinced me that, when such researches are concluded,
that which in one part of them appeared to me very questionable,
considered in relation to other extraneous doctrines, when I left this
doubtfulness out of sight for a time and only attended to the business
in hand until it was completed, at last was unexpectedly found to
agree perfectly with what had been discovered separately without the
least regard to those doctrines, and without any partiality or
prejudice for them. Authors would save themselves many errors and much
labour lost (because spent on a delusion) if they could only resolve
to go to work with more frankness.
BOOK_2|CHAPTER_1
BOOK II. Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason.
CHAPTER I.
Of a Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason Generally.
Pure reason always has its dialetic, whether it is considered in its
speculative or its practical employment; for it requires the
absolute totality of the 'conditions of what is given conditioned, and
this can only be found in things in themselves. But as all conceptions
of things in themselves must be referred to intuitions, and with us
men these can never be other than sensible and hence can never
enable us to know objects as things in themselves but only as
appearances, and since the unconditioned can never be found in this
chain of appearances which consists only of conditioned and
conditions; thus from applying this rational idea of the totality of
the conditions (in other words of the unconditioned) to appearances,
there arises an inevitable illusion, as if these latter were things in
themselves (for in the absence of a warning critique they are always
regarded as such). This illusion would never be noticed as delusive if
it did not betray itself by a conflict of reason with itself, when
it applies to appearances its fundamental principle of presupposing
the unconditioned to everything conditioned. By this, however,
reason is compelled to trace this illusion to its source, and search
how it can be removed, and this can only be done by a complete
critical examination of the whole pure faculty of reason; so that
the antinomy of the pure reason which is manifest in its dialectic
is in fact the most beneficial error into which human reason could
ever have fallen, since it at last drives us to search for the key
to escape from this labyrinth; and when this key is found, it
further discovers that which we did not seek but yet had need of,
namely, a view into a higher and an immutable order of things, in
which we even now are, and in which we are thereby enabled by definite
precepts to continue to live according to the highest dictates of
reason.
It may be seen in detail in the Critique of Pure Reason how in its
speculative employment this natural dialectic is to be solved, and how
the error which arises from a very natural illusion may be guarded
against. But reason in its practical use is not a whit better off.
As pure practical reason, it likewise seeks to find the
unconditioned for the practically conditioned (which rests on
inclinations and natural wants), and this is not as the determining
principle of the will, but even when this is given (in the moral
law) it seeks the unconditioned totality of the object of pure
practical reason under the name of the summum bonum.
To define this idea practically, i. e. , sufficiently for the maxims
of our rational conduct, is the business of practical wisdom, and this
again as a science is philosophy, in the sense in which the word was
understood by the ancients, with whom it meant instruction in the
conception in which the summum bonum was to be placed, and the conduct
by which it was to be obtained. It would be well to leave this word in
its ancient signification as a doctrine of the summum bonum, so far as
reason endeavours to make this into a science. For on the one hand the
restriction annexed would suit the Greek expression (which signifies
the love of wisdom), and yet at the same time would be sufficient to
embrace under the name of philosophy the love of science: that is to
say, of all speculative rational knowledge, so far as it is
serviceable to reason, both for that conception and also for the
practical principle determining our conduct, without letting out of
sight the main end, on account of which alone it can be called a
doctrine of practical wisdom. On the other hand, it would be no harm
to deter the self-conceit of one who ventures to claim the title of
philosopher by holding before him in the very definition a standard of
self-estimation which would very much lower his pretensions. For a
teacher of wisdom would mean something more than a scholar who has not
come so far as to guide himself, much less to guide others, with
certain expectation of attaining so high an end: it would mean a
master in the knowledge of wisdom, which implies more than a modest
man would claim for himself. Thus philosophy as well as wisdom would
always remain an ideal, which objectively is presented complete in
reason alone, while subjectively for the person it is only the goal of
his unceasing endeavours; and no one would be justified in
professing to be in possession of it so as to assume the name of
philosopher who could not also show its infallible effects in his
own person as an example (in his self-mastery and the unquestioned
interest that he takes pre-eminently in the general good), and this
the ancients also required as a condition of deserving that honourable
title.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 5}
We have another preliminary remark to make respecting the
dialectic of the pure practical reason, on the point of the definition
of the summum bonum (a successful solution of which dialectic would
lead us to expect, as in case of that of the theoretical reason, the
most beneficial effects, inasmuch as the self-contradictions of pure
practical reason honestly stated, and not concealed, force us to
undertake a complete critique of this faculty).
The moral law is the sole determining principle of a pure will.
But since this is merely formal (viz. , as prescribing only the form of
the maxim as universally legislative), it abstracts as a determining
principle from all matter that is to say, from every object of
volition. Hence, though the summum bonum may be the whole object of
a pure practical reason, i. e. , a pure will, yet it is not on that
account to be regarded as its determining principle; and the moral law
alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its
realization or promotion are aimed at. This remark is important in
so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles, where the
slightest misinterpretation perverts men's minds. For it will have
been seen from the Analytic that, if we assume any object under the
name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the
moral law and then deduce from it the supreme practical principle,
this would always introduce heteronomy and crush out the moral
principle.
It is, however, evident that if the notion of the summum bonum
includes that of the moral law as its supreme condition, then the
summum bonum would not merely be an object, but the notion of it and
the conception of its existence as possible by our own practical
reason would likewise be the determining principle of the will,
since in that case the will is in fact determined by the moral law
which is already included in this conception, and by no other
object, as the principle of autonomy requires. This order of the
conceptions of determination of the will must not be lost sight of, as
otherwise we should misunderstand ourselves and think we had fallen
into a contradiction, while everything remains in perfect harmony.
BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2
CHAPTER II. Of the Dialectic of Pure Reason in defining the
Conception of the "Summum Bonum".
The conception of the summum itself contains an ambiguity which
might occasion needless disputes if we did not attend to it. The
summum may mean either the supreme (supremum) or the perfect
(consummatum). The former is that condition which is itself
unconditioned, i. e. , is not subordinate to any other (originarium);
the second is that whole which is not a part of a greater whole of the
same kind (perfectissimum). It has been shown in the Analytic that
virtue (as worthiness to be happy) is the supreme condition of all
that can appear to us desirable, and consequently of all our pursuit
of happiness, and is therefore the supreme good. But it does not
follow that it is the whole and perfect good as the object of the
desires of rational finite beings; for this requires happiness also,
and that not merely in the partial eyes of the person who makes
himself an end, but even in the judgement of an impartial reason,
which regards persons in general as ends in themselves. For to need
happiness, to deserve it, and yet at the same time not to
participate in it, cannot be consistent with the perfect volition of a
rational being possessed at the same time of all power, if, for the
sake of experiment, we conceive such a being. Now inasmuch as virtue
and happiness together constitute the possession of the summum bonum
in a person, and the distribution of happiness in exact proportion
to morality (which is the worth of the person, and his worthiness to
be happy) constitutes the summum bonum of a possible world; hence this
summum bonum expresses the whole, the perfect good, in which, however,
virtue as the condition is always the supreme good, since it has no
condition above it; whereas happiness, while it is pleasant to the
possessor of it, is not of itself absolutely and in all respects good,
but always presupposes morally right behaviour as its condition.
When two elements are necessarily united in one concept, they must
be connected as reason and consequence, and this either so that
their unity is considered as analytical (logical connection), or as
synthetical (real connection) the former following the law of
identity, the latter that of causality. The connection of virtue and
happiness may therefore be understood in two ways: either the
endeavour to be virtuous and the rational pursuit of happiness are not
two distinct actions, but absolutely identical, in which case no maxim
need be made the principle of the former, other than what serves for
the latter; or the connection consists in this, that virtue produces
happiness as something distinct from the consciousness of virtue, as a
cause produces an effect.
The ancient Greek schools were, properly speaking, only two, and
in determining the conception of the summum bonum these followed in
fact one and the same method, inasmuch as they did not allow virtue
and happiness to be regarded as two distinct elements of the summum
bonum, and consequently sought the unity of the principle by the
rule of identity; but they differed as to which of the two was to be
taken as the fundamental notion. The Epicurean said: "To be
conscious that one's maxims lead to happiness is virtue"; the Stoic
said: "To be conscious of one's virtue is happiness. " With the former,
Prudence was equivalent to morality; with the latter, who chose a
higher designation for virtue, morality alone was true wisdom.
While we must admire the men who in such early times tried all
imaginable ways of extending the domain of philosophy, we must at
the same time lament that their acuteness was unfortunately misapplied
in trying to trace out identity between two extremely heterogeneous
notions, those of happiness and virtue. But it agrees with the
dialectical spirit of their times (and subtle minds are even now
sometimes misled in the same way) to get rid of irreconcilable
differences in principle by seeking to change them into a mere contest
about words, and thus apparently working out the identity of the
notion under different names, and this usually occurs in cases where
the combination of heterogeneous principles lies so deep or so high,
or would require so complete a transformation of the doctrines assumed
in the rest of the philosophical system, that men are afraid to
penetrate deeply into the real difference and prefer treating it as
a difference in questions of form.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 5}
While both schools sought to trace out the identity of the practical
principles of virtue and happiness, they were not agreed as to the way
in which they tried to force this identity, but were separated
infinitely from one another, the one placing its principle on the side
of sense, the other on that of reason; the one in the consciousness of
sensible wants, the other in the independence of practical reason on
all sensible grounds of determination. According to the Epicurean, the
notion of virtue was already involved in the maxim: "To promote
one's own happiness"; according to the Stoics, on the other hand,
the feeling of happiness was already contained in the consciousness of
virtue. Now whatever is contained in another notion is identical
with part of the containing notion, but not with the whole, and
moreover two wholes may be specifically distinct, although they
consist of the same parts; namely if the parts are united into a whole
in totally different ways. The Stoic maintained that the virtue was
the whole summum bonum, and happiness only the consciousness of
possessing it, as making part of the state of the subject. The
Epicurean maintained that happiness was the whole summum bonum, and
virtue only the form of the maxim for its pursuit; viz. , the
rational use of the means for attaining it.
Now it is clear from the Analytic that the maxims of virtue and
those of private happiness are quite heterogeneous as to their supreme
practical principle, and, although they belong to one summum bonum
which together they make possible, yet they are so far from coinciding
that they restrict and check one another very much in the same
subject. Thus the question: "How is the summum bonum practically
possible? " still remains an unsolved problem, notwithstanding all
the attempts at coalition that have hitherto been made. The Analytic
has, however, shown what it is that makes the problem difficult to
solve; namely, that happiness and morality are two specifically
distinct elements of the summum bonum and, therefore, their
combination cannot be analytically cognised (as if the man that
seeks his own happiness should find by mere analysis of his conception
that in so acting he is virtuous, or as if the man that follows virtue
should in the consciousness of such conduct find that he is already
happy ipso facto), but must be a synthesis of concepts. Now since this
combination is recognised as a priori, and therefore as practically
necessary, and consequently not as derived from experience, so that
the possibility of the summum bonum does not rest on any empirical
principle, it follows that the deduction [legitimation] of this
concept must be transcendental. It is a priori (morally) necessary
to produce the summum bonum by freedom of will: therefore the
condition of its possibility must rest solely on a priori principles
of cognition.
I. The Antinomy of Practical Reason.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 10}
In the summum bonum which is practical for us, i. e. , to be
realized by our will, virtue and happiness are thought as
necessarily combined, so that the one cannot be assumed by pure
practical reason without the other also being attached to it. Now this
combination (like every other) is either analytical or synthetical. It
has been shown that it cannot be analytical; it must then be
synthetical and, more particularly, must be conceived as the
connection of cause and effect, since it concerns a practical good,
i. e. , one that is possible by means of action; consequently either the
desire of happiness must be the motive to maxims of virtue, or the
maxim of virtue must be the efficient cause of happiness. The first is
absolutely impossible, because (as was proved in the Analytic)
maxims which place the determining principle of the will in the desire
of personal happiness are not moral at all, and no virtue can be
founded on them. But the second is also impossible, because the
practical connection of causes and effects in the world, as the result
of the determination of the will, does not depend upon the moral
dispositions of the will, but on the knowledge of the laws of nature
and the physical power to use them for one's purposes; consequently we
cannot expect in the world by the most punctilious observance of the
moral laws any necessary connection of happiness with virtue
adequate to the summum bonum. Now, as the promotion of this summum
bonum, the conception of which contains this connection, is a priori a
necessary object of our will and inseparably attached to the moral
law, the impossibility of the former must prove the falsity of the
latter. If then the supreme good is not possible by practical rules,
then the moral law also which commands us to promote it is directed to
vain imaginary ends and must consequently be false.
II. Critical Solution of the Antinomy of Practical Reason.
The antinomy of pure speculative reason exhibits a similar
conflict between freedom and physical necessity in the causality of
events in the world. It was solved by showing that there is no real
contradiction when the events and even the world in which they occur
are regarded (as they ought to be) merely as appearances; since one
and the same acting being, as an appearance (even to his own inner
sense), has a causality in the world of sense that always conforms
to the mechanism of nature, but with respect to the same events, so
far as the acting person regards himself at the same time as a
noumenon (as pure intelligence in an existence not dependent on the
condition of time), he can contain a principle by which that causality
acting according to laws of nature is determined, but which is
itself free from all laws of nature.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 15}
It is just the same with the foregoing antinomy of pure practical
reason. The first of the two propositions, "That the endeavour after
happiness produces a virtuous mind," is absolutely false; but the
second, "That a virtuous mind necessarily produces happiness," is
not absolutely false, but only in so far as virtue is considered as
a form of causality in the sensible world, and consequently only if
I suppose existence in it to be the only sort of existence of a
rational being; it is then only conditionally false. But as I am not
only justified in thinking that I exist also as a noumenon in a
world of the understanding, but even have in the moral law a purely
intellectual determining principle of my causality (in the sensible
world), it is not impossible that morality of mind should have a
connection as cause with happiness (as an effect in the sensible
world) if not immediate yet mediate (viz. , through an intelligent
author of nature), and moreover necessary; while in a system of nature
which is merely an object of the senses, this combination could
never occur except contingently and, therefore, could not suffice
for the summum bonum.
Thus, notwithstanding this seeming conflict of practical reason with
itself, the summum bonum, which is the necessary supreme end of a will
morally determined, is a true object thereof; for it is practically
possible, and the maxims of the will which as regards their matter
refer to it have objective reality, which at first was threatened by
the antinomy that appeared in the connection of morality with
happiness by a general law; but this was merely from a
misconception, because the relation between appearances was taken
for a relation of the things in themselves to these appearances.
When we find ourselves obliged to go so far, namely, to the
connection with an intelligible world, to find the possibility of
the summum bonum, which reason points out to all rational beings as
the goal of all their moral wishes, it must seem strange that,
nevertheless, the philosophers both of ancient and modern times have
been able to find happiness in accurate proportion to virtue even in
this life (in the sensible world), or have persuaded themselves that
they were conscious thereof. For Epicurus as well as the Stoics
extolled above everything the happiness that springs from the
consciousness of living virtuously; and the former was not so base
in his practical precepts as one might infer from the principles of
his theory, which he used for explanation and not for action, or as
they were interpreted by many who were misled by his using the term
pleasure for contentment; on the contrary, he reckoned the most
disinterested practice of good amongst the ways of enjoying the most
intimate delight, and his scheme of pleasure (by which he meant
constant cheerfulness of mind) included the moderation and control
of the inclinations, such as the strictest moral philosopher might
require. He differed from the Stoics chiefly in making this pleasure
the motive, which they very rightly refused to do. For, on the one
hand, the virtuous Epicurus, like many well-intentioned men of this
day who do not reflect deeply enough on their principles, fell into
the error of presupposing the virtuous disposition in the persons
for whom he wished to provide the springs to virtue (and indeed the
upright man cannot be happy if he is not first conscious of his
uprightness; since with such a character the reproach that his habit
of thought would oblige him to make against himself in case of
transgression and his moral self-condemnation would rob him of all
enjoyment of the pleasantness which his condition might otherwise
contain). But the question is: How is such a disposition possible in
the first instance, and such a habit of thought in estimating the
worth of one's existence, since prior to it there can be in the
subject no feeling at all for moral worth? If a man is virtuous
without being conscious of his integrity in every action, he will
certainly not enjoy life, however favourable fortune may be to him
in its physical circumstances; but can we make him virtuous in the
first instance, in other words, before he esteems the moral worth of
his existence so highly, by praising to him the peace of mind that
would result from the consciousness of an integrity for which he has
no sense?
On the other hand, however, there is here an occasion of a vitium
subreptionis, and as it were of an optical illusion, in the
self-consciousness of what one does as distinguished from what one
feels- an illusion which even the most experienced cannot altogether
avoid. The moral disposition of mind is necessarily combined with a
consciousness that the will is determined directly by the law. Now the
consciousness of a determination of the faculty of desire is always
the source of a satisfaction in the resulting action; but this
pleasure, this satisfaction in oneself, is not the determining
principle of the action; on the contrary, the determination of the
will directly by reason is the source of the feeling of pleasure,
and this remains a pure practical not sensible determination of the
faculty of desire. Now as this determination has exactly the same
effect within in impelling to activity, that a feeling of the pleasure
to be expected from the desired action would have had, we easily
look on what we ourselves do as something which we merely passively
feel, and take the moral spring for a sensible impulse, just as it
happens in the so-called illusion of the senses (in this case the
inner sense). It is a sublime thing in human nature to be determined
to actions immediately by a purely rational law; sublime even is the
illusion that regards the subjective side of this capacity of
intellectual determination as something sensible and the effect of a
special sensible feeling (for an intellectual feeling would be a
contradiction). It is also of great importance to attend to this
property of our personality and as much as possible to cultivate the
effect of reason on this feeling. But we must beware lest by falsely
extolling this moral determining principle as a spring, making its
source lie in particular feelings of pleasure (which are in fact
only results), we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring, the
law itself, by putting as it were a false foil upon it. Respect, not
pleasure or enjoyment of happiness, is something for which it is not
possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its
foundation (for this would always be sensible and pathological); and
consciousness of immediate obligation of the will by the law is by
no means analogous to the feeling of pleasure, although in relation to
the faculty of desire it produces the same effect, but from
different sources: it is only by this mode of conception, however,
that we can attain what we are seeking, namely, that actions be done
not merely in accordance with duty (as a result of pleasant feelings),
but from duty, which must be the true end of all moral cultivation.
Have we not, however, a word which does not express enjoyment, as
happiness does, but indicates a satisfaction in one's existence, an
analogue of the happiness which must necessarily accompany the
consciousness of virtue? Yes this word is self-contentment which in
its proper signification always designates only a negative
satisfaction in one's existence, in which one is conscious of
needing nothing. Freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of
following the moral law with unyielding resolution is independence
of inclinations, at least as motives determining (though not as
affecting) our desire, and so far as I am conscious of this freedom in
following my moral maxims, it is the only source of an unaltered
contentment which is necessarily connected with it and rests on no
special feeling. This may be called intellectual contentment. The
sensible contentment (improperly so-called) which rests on the
satisfaction of the inclinations, however delicate they may be
imagined to be, can never be adequate to the conception of it. For the
inclinations change, they grow with the indulgence shown them, and
always leave behind a still greater void than we had thought to
fill. Hence they are always burdensome to a rational being, and,
although he cannot lay them aside, they wrest from him the wish to
be rid of them. Even an inclination to what is right (e. g. , to
beneficence), though it may much facilitate the efficacy of the
moral maxims, cannot produce any. For in these all must be directed to
the conception of the law as a determining principle, if the action is
to contain morality and not merely legality. Inclination is blind
and slavish, whether it be of a good sort or not, and, when morality
is in question, reason must not play the part merely of guardian to
inclination, but disregarding it altogether must attend simply to
its own interest as pure practical reason. This very feeling of
compassion and tender sympathy, if it precedes the deliberation on the
question of duty and becomes a determining principle, is even annoying
to right thinking persons, brings their deliberate maxims into
confusion, and makes them wish to be delivered from it and to be
subject to lawgiving reason alone.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 20}
From this we can understand how the consciousness of this faculty of
a pure practical reason produces by action (virtue) a consciousness of
mastery over one's inclinations, and therefore of independence of
them, and consequently also of the discontent that always
accompanies them, and thus a negative satisfaction with one's state,
i. e. , contentment, which is primarily contentment with one's own
person. Freedom itself becomes in this way (namely, indirectly)
capable of an enjoyment which cannot be called happiness, because it
does not depend on the positive concurrence of a feeling, nor is it,
strictly speaking, bliss, since it does not include complete
independence of inclinations and wants, but it resembles bliss in so
far as the determination of one's will at least can hold itself free
from their influence; and thus, at least in its origin, this enjoyment
is analogous to the self-sufficiency which we can ascribe only to
the Supreme Being.
From this solution of the antinomy of practical pure reason, it
follows that in practical principles we may at least conceive as
possible a natural and necessary connection between the
consciousness of morality and the expectation of a proportionate
happiness as its result, though it does not follow that we can know or
perceive this connection; that, on the other hand, principles of the
pursuit of happiness cannot possibly produce morality; that,
therefore, morality is the supreme good (as the first condition of the
summum bonum), while happiness constitutes its second element, but
only in such a way that it is the morally conditioned, but necessary
consequence of the former. Only with this subordination is the
summum bonum the whole object of pure practical reason, which must
necessarily conceive it as possible, since it commands us to
contribute to the utmost of our power to its realization. But since
the possibility of such connection of the conditioned with its
condition belongs wholly to the supersensual relation of things and
cannot be given according to the laws of the world of sense,
although the practical consequences of the idea belong to the world of
sense, namely, the actions that aim at realizing the summum bonum;
we will therefore endeavour to set forth the grounds of that
possibility, first, in respect of what is immediately in our power,
and then, secondly, in that which is not in our power, but which
reason presents to us as the supplement of our impotence, for the
realization of the summum bonum (which by practical principles is
necessary).
III. Of the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason in its
Union with the Speculative Reason.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 25}
By primacy between two or more things connected by reason, I
understand the prerogative, belonging to one, of being the first
determining principle in the connection with all the rest. In a
narrower practical sense it means the prerogative of the interest of
one in so far as the interest of the other is subordinated to it,
while it is not postponed to any other. To every faculty of the mind
we can attribute an interest, that is, a principle, that contains
the condition on which alone the former is called into exercise.
Reason, as the faculty of principles, determines the interest of all
the powers of the mind and is determined by its own. The interest of
its speculative employment consists in the cognition of the object
pushed to the highest a priori principles: that of its practical
employment, in the determination of the will in respect of the final
and complete end. As to what is necessary for the possibility of any
employment of reason at all, namely, that its principles and
affirmations should not contradict one another, this constitutes no
part of its interest, but is the condition of having reason at all; it
is only its development, not mere consistency with itself, that is
reckoned as its interest.
If practical reason could not assume or think as given anything
further than what speculative reason of itself could offer it from its
own insight, the latter would have the primacy. But supposing that
it had of itself original a priori principles with which certain
theoretical positions were inseparably connected, while these were
withdrawn from any possible insight of speculative reason (which,
however, they must not contradict); then the question is: Which
interest is the superior (not which must give way, for they are not
necessarily conflicting), whether speculative reason, which knows
nothing of all that the practical offers for its acceptance, should
take up these propositions and (although they transcend it) try to
unite them with its own concepts as a foreign possession handed over
to it, or whether it is justified in obstinately following its own
separate interest and, according to the canonic of Epicurus, rejecting
as vain subtlety everything that cannot accredit its objective reality
by manifest examples to be shown in experience, even though it
should be never so much interwoven with the interest of the
practical (pure) use of reason, and in itself not contradictory to the
theoretical, merely because it infringes on the interest of the
speculative reason to this extent, that it removes the bounds which
this latter had set to itself, and gives it up to every nonsense or
delusion of imagination?
In fact, so far as practical reason is taken as dependent on
pathological conditions, that is, as merely regulating the
inclinations under the sensible principle of happiness, we could not
require speculative reason to take its principles from such a
source. Mohammed's paradise, or the absorption into the Deity of the
theosophists and mystics would press their monstrosities on the reason
according to the taste of each, and one might as well have no reason
as surrender it in such fashion to all sorts of dreams. But if pure
reason of itself can be practical and is actually so, as the
consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and
the same reason which, whether in a theoretical or a practical point
of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear
that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to
establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not
contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably
attached to the practical interest of pure reason, it must accept
them, though it be as something offered to it from a foreign source,
something that has not grown on its own ground, but yet is
sufficiently authenticated; and it must try to compare and connect
them with everything that it has in its power as speculative reason.
It must remember, however, that these are not additions to its
insight, but yet are extensions of its employment in another,
namely, a practical aspect; and this is not in the least opposed to
its interest, which consists in the restriction of wild speculation.
Thus, when pure speculative and pure practical reason are combined
in one cognition, the latter has the primacy, provided, namely, that
this combination is not contingent and arbitrary, but founded a priori
on reason itself and therefore necessary. For without this
subordination there would arise a conflict of reason with itself;
since, if they were merely co-ordinate, the former would close its
boundaries strictly and admit nothing from the latter into its domain,
while the latter would extend its bounds over everything and when
its needs required would seek to embrace the former within them. Nor
could we reverse the order and require pure practical reason to be
subordinate to the speculative, since all interest is ultimately
practical, and even that of speculative reason is conditional, and
it is only in the practical employment of reason that it is complete.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 30}
IV. The Immortality of the Soul as a Postulate of
Pure Practical Reason.
The realization of the summum bonum in the world is the necessary
object of a will determinable by the moral law. But in this will the
perfect accordance of the mind with the moral law is the supreme
condition of the summum bonum. This then must be possible, as well
as its object, since it is contained in the command to promote the
latter. Now, the perfect accordance of the will with the moral law
is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible
world is capable at any moment of his existence. Since,
nevertheless, it is required as practically necessary, it can only
be found in a progress in infinitum towards that perfect accordance,
and on the principles of pure practical reason it is necessary to
assume such a practical progress as the real object of our will.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 35}
Now, this endless progress is only possible on the supposition of an
endless duration of the existence and personality of the same rational
being (which is called the immortality of the soul). The summum bonum,
then, practically is only possible on the supposition of the
immortality of the soul; consequently this immortality, being
inseparably connected with the moral law, is a postulate of pure
practical reason (by which I mean a theoretical proposition, not
demonstrable as such, but which is an inseparable result of an
unconditional a priori practical law.
This principle of the moral destination of our nature, namely,
that it is only in an endless progress that we can attain perfect
accordance with the moral law, is of the greatest use, not merely
for the present purpose of supplementing the impotence of
speculative reason, but also with respect to religion. In default of
it, either the moral law is quite degraded from its holiness, being
made out to be indulgent and conformable to our convenience, or else
men strain their notions of their vocation and their expectation to an
unattainable goal, hoping to acquire complete holiness of will, and so
they lose themselves in fanatical theosophic dreams, which wholly
contradict self-knowledge. In both cases the unceasing effort to
obey punctually and thoroughly a strict and inflexible command of
reason, which yet is not ideal but real, is only hindered. For a
rational but finite being, the only thing possible is an endless
progress from the lower to higher degrees of moral perfection. The
Infinite Being, to whom the condition of time is nothing, sees in this
to us endless succession a whole of accordance with the moral law; and
the holiness which his command inexorably requires, in order to be
true to his justice in the share which He assigns to each in the
summum bonum, is to be found in a single intellectual intuition of the
whole existence of rational beings. All that can be expected of the
creature in respect of the hope of this participation would be the
consciousness of his tried character, by which from the progress he
has hitherto made from the worse to the morally better, and the
immutability of purpose which has thus become known to him, he may
hope for a further unbroken continuance of the same, however long
his existence may last, even beyond this life, * and thus he may
hope, not indeed here, nor in any imaginable point of his future
existence, but only in the endlessness of his duration (which God
alone can survey) to be perfectly adequate to his will (without
indulgence or excuse, which do not harmonize with justice).
* It seems, nevertheless, impossible for a creature to have the
conviction of his unwavering firmness of mind in the progress
towards goodness. On this account the Christian religion makes it come
only from the same Spirit that works sanctification, that is, this
firm purpose, and with it the consciousness of steadfastness in the
moral progress. But naturally one who is conscious that he has
persevered through a long portion of his life up to the end in the
progress to the better, and this genuine moral motives, may well
have the comforting hope, though not the certainty, that even in an
existence prolonged beyond this life he will continue in these
principles; and although he is never justified here in his own eyes,
nor can ever hope to be so in the increased perfection of his
nature, to which he looks forward, together with an increase of
duties, nevertheless in this progress which, though it is directed
to a goal infinitely remote, yet is in God's sight regarded as
equivalent to possession, he may have a prospect of a blessed
future; for this is the word that reason employs to designate
perfect well-being independent of all contingent causes of the
world, and which, like holiness, is an idea that can be contained only
in an endless progress and its totality, and consequently is never
fully attained by a creature.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 40}
V. The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason.
In the foregoing analysis the moral law led to a practical problem
which is prescribed by pure reason alone, without the aid of any
sensible motives, namely, that of the necessary completeness of the
first and principle element of the summum bonum, viz. , morality;
and, as this can be perfectly solved only in eternity, to the
postulate of immortality. The same law must also lead us to affirm the
possibility of the second element of the summum bonum, viz. , happiness
proportioned to that morality, and this on grounds as disinterested as
before, and solely from impartial reason; that is, it must lead to the
supposition of the existence of a cause adequate to this effect; in
other words, it must postulate the existence of God, as the
necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum (an
object of the will which is necessarily connected with the moral
legislation of pure reason). We proceed to exhibit this connection
in a convincing manner.
Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world with
whom everything goes according to his wish and will; it rests,
therefore, on the harmony of physical nature with his whole end and
likewise with the essential determining principle of his will. Now the
moral law as a law of freedom commands by determining principles,
which ought to be quite independent of nature and of its harmony
with our faculty of desire (as springs). But the acting rational being
in the world is not the cause of the world and of nature itself. There
is not the least ground, therefore, in the moral law for a necessary
connection between morality and proportionate happiness in a being
that belongs to the world as part of it, and therefore dependent on
it, and which for that reason cannot by his will be a cause of this
nature, nor by his own power make it thoroughly harmonize, as far as
his happiness is concerned, with his practical principles.
Nevertheless, in the practical problem of pure reason, i. e. , the
necessary pursuit of the summum bonum, such a connection is postulated
as necessary: we ought to endeavour to promote the summum bonum,
which, therefore, must be possible. Accordingly, the existence of a
cause of all nature, distinct from nature itself and containing the
principle of this connection, namely, of the exact harmony of
happiness with morality, is also postulated. Now this supreme cause
must contain the principle of the harmony of nature, not merely with a
law of the will of rational beings, but with the conception of this
law, in so far as they make it the supreme determining principle of
the will, and consequently not merely with the form of morals, but
with their morality as their motive, that is, with their moral
character. Therefore, the summum bonum is possible in the world only
on the supposition of a Supreme Being having a causality corresponding
to moral character. Now a being that is capable of acting on the
conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the
causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is
his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be
presupposed as a condition of the summum bonum is a being which is the
cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author,
that is God. It follows that the postulate of the possibility of the
highest derived good (the best world) is likewise the postulate of the
reality of a highest original good, that is to say, of the existence
of God. Now it was seen to be a duty for us to promote the summum
bonum; consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a
necessity connected with duty as a requisite, that we should
presuppose the possibility of this summum bonum; and as this is
possible only on condition of the existence of God, it inseparably
connects the supposition of this with duty; that is, it is morally
necessary to assume the existence of God.
It must be remarked here that this moral necessity is subjective,
that is, it is a want, and not objective, that is, itself a duty,
for there cannot be a duty to suppose the existence of anything (since
this concerns only the theoretical employment of reason). Moreover, it
is not meant by this that it is necessary to suppose the existence
of God as a basis of all obligation in general (for this rests, as has
been sufficiently proved, simply on the autonomy of reason itself).
What belongs to duty here is only the endeavour to realize and promote
the summum bonum in the world, the possibility of which can
therefore be postulated; and as our reason finds it not conceivable
except on the supposition of a supreme intelligence, the admission
of this existence is therefore connected with the consciousness of our
duty, although the admission itself belongs to the domain of
speculative reason. Considered in respect of this alone, as a
principle of explanation, it may be called a hypothesis, but in
reference to the intelligibility of an object given us by the moral
law (the summum bonum), and consequently of a requirement for
practical purposes, it may be called faith, that is to say a pure
rational faith, since pure reason (both in its theoretical and
practical use) is the sole source from which it springs.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 45}
From this deduction it is now intelligible why the Greek schools
could never attain the solution of their problem of the practical
possibility of the summum bonum, because they made the rule of the use
which the will of man makes of his freedom the sole and sufficient
ground of this possibility, thinking that they had no need for that
purpose of the existence of God. No doubt they were so far right
that they established the principle of morals of itself
independently of this postulate, from the relation of reason only to
the will, and consequently made it the supreme practical condition
of the summum bonum; but it was not therefore the whole condition of
its possibility. The Epicureans had indeed assumed as the supreme
principle of morality a wholly false one, namely that of happiness,
and had substituted for a law a maxim of arbitrary choice according to
every man's inclination; they proceeded, however, consistently
enough in this, that they degraded their summum bonum likewise, just
in proportion to the meanness of their fundamental principle, and
looked for no greater happiness than can be attained by human prudence
(including temperance and moderation of the inclinations), and this as
we know would be scanty enough and would be very different according
to circumstances; not to mention the exceptions that their maxims must
perpetually admit and which make them incapable of being laws. The
Stoics, on the contrary, had chosen their supreme practical
principle quite rightly, making virtue the condition of the summum
bonum; but when they represented the degree of virtue required by
its pure law as fully attainable in this life, they not only
strained the moral powers of the man whom they called the wise
beyond all the limits of his nature, and assumed a thing that
contradicts all our knowledge of men, but also and principally they
would not allow the second element of the summum bonum, namely,
happiness, to be properly a special object of human desire, but made
their wise man, like a divinity in his consciousness of the excellence
of his person, wholly independent of nature (as regards his own
contentment); they exposed him indeed to the evils of life, but made
him not subject to them (at the same time representing him also as
free from moral evil). They thus, in fact, left out the second element
of the summum bonum namely, personal happiness, placing it solely in
action and satisfaction with one's own personal worth, thus
including it in the consciousness of being morally minded, in which
they Might have been sufficiently refuted by the voice of their own
nature.
The doctrine of Christianity, * even if we do not yet consider it
as a religious doctrine, gives, touching this point, a conception of
the summum bonum (the kingdom of God), which alone satisfies the
strictest demand of practical reason. The moral law is holy
(unyielding) and demands holiness of morals, although all the moral
perfection to which man can attain is still only virtue, that is, a
rightful disposition arising from respect for the law, implying
consciousness of a constant propensity to transgression, or at least a
want of purity, that is, a mixture of many spurious (not moral)
motives of obedience to the law, consequently a self-esteem combined
with humility. In respect, then, of the holiness which the Christian
law requires, this leaves the creature nothing but a progress in
infinitum, but for that very reason it justifies him in hoping for
an endless duration of his existence. The worth of a character
perfectly accordant with the moral law is infinite, since the only
restriction on all possible happiness in the judgement of a wise and
all powerful distributor of it is the absence of conformity of
rational beings to their duty. But the moral law of itself does not
promise any happiness, for according to our conceptions of an order of
nature in general, this is not necessarily connected with obedience to
the law. Now Christian morality supplies this defect (of the second
indispensable element of the summum bonum) by representing the world
in which rational beings devote themselves with all their soul to
the moral law, as a kingdom of God, in which nature and morality are
brought into a harmony foreign to each of itself, by a holy Author who
makes the derived summum bonum possible. Holiness of life is
prescribed to them as a rule even in this life, while the welfare
proportioned to it, namely, bliss, is represented as attainable only
in an eternity; because the former must always be the pattern of their
conduct in every state, and progress towards it is already possible
and necessary in this life; while the latter, under the name of
happiness, cannot be attained at all in this world (so far as our
own power is concerned), and therefore is made simply an object of
hope. Nevertheless, the Christian principle of morality itself is
not theological (so as to be heteronomy), but is autonomy of pure
practical reason, since it does not make the knowledge of God and
His will the foundation of these laws, but only of the attainment of
the summum bonum, on condition of following these laws, and it does
not even place the proper spring of this obedience in the desired
results, but solely in the conception of duty, as that of which the
faithful observance alone constitutes the worthiness to obtain those
happy consequences.
* It is commonly held that the Christian precept of morality has no
advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the
Stoics; the distinction between them is, however, very obvious. The
Stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on
which all moral dispositions should turn; and although its disciples
spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed the
spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation of
the mind above the lower springs of the senses, which owe their
power only to weakness of mind. With them therefore, virtue was a sort
of heroism in the wise man raising himself above the animal nature
of man, is sufficient for Himself, and, while he prescribes duties
to others, is himself raised above them, and is not subject to any
temptation to transgress the moral law. All this, however, they
could not have done if they had conceived this law in all its purity
and strictness, as the precept of the Gospel does. When I give the
name idea to a perfection to which nothing adequate can be given in
experience, it does not follow that the moral ideas are thing
transcendent, that is something of which we could not even determine
the concept adequately, or of which it is uncertain whether there is
any object corresponding to it at all, as is the case with the ideas
of speculative reason; on the contrary, being types of practical
perfection, they serve as the indispensable rule of conduct and
likewise as the standard of comparison. Now if I consider Christian
morals on their philosophical side, then compared with the ideas of
the Greek schools, they would appear as follows: the ideas of the
Cynics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Christians are: simplicity
of nature, prudence, wisdom, and holiness. In respect of the way of
attaining them, the Greek schools were distinguished from one
another thus that the Cynics only required common sense, the others
the path of science, but both found the mere use of natural powers
sufficient for the purpose. Christian morality, because its precept is
framed (as a moral precept must be) so pure and unyielding, takes from
man all confidence that he can be fully adequate to it, at least in
this life, but again sets it up by enabling us to hope that if we
act as well as it is in our power to do, then what is not in our power
will come in to our aid from another source, whether we know how
this may be or not. Aristotle and Plato differed only as to the origin
of our moral conceptions.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 50}
In this manner, the moral laws lead through the conception of the
summum bonum as the object and final end of pure practical reason to
religion, that is, to the recognition of all duties as divine
commands, not as sanctions, that is to say, arbitrary ordinances of
a foreign and contingent in themselves, but as essential laws of every
free will in itself, which, nevertheless, must be regarded as commands
of the Supreme Being, because it is only from a morally perfect
(holy and good) and at the same time all-powerful will, and
consequently only through harmony with this will, that we can hope
to attain the summum bonum which the moral law makes it our duty to
take as the object of our endeavours. Here again, then, all remains
disinterested and founded merely on duty; neither fear nor hope
being made the fundamental springs, which if taken as principles would
destroy the whole moral worth of actions. The moral law commands me to
make the highest possible good in a world the ultimate object of all
my conduct. But I cannot hope to effect this otherwise than by the
harmony of my will with that of a holy and good Author of the world;
and although the conception of the summum bonum as a whole, in which
the greatest happiness is conceived as combined in the most exact
proportion with the highest degree of moral perfection (possible in
creatures), includes my own happiness, yet it is not this that is
the determining principle of the will which is enjoined to promote the
summum bonum, but the moral law, which, on the contrary, limits by
strict conditions my unbounded desire of happiness.
Hence also morality is not properly the doctrine how we should
make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of happiness. It
is only when religion is added that there also comes in the hope of
participating some day in happiness in proportion as we have
endeavoured to be not unworthy of it.
A man is worthy to possess a thing or a state when his possession of
it is in harmony with the summum bonum.
feeling that arises from the consciousness of this obligation is not
pathological, as would be a feeling produced by an object of the
senses, but practical only, that is, it is made possible by a
preceding (objective) determination of the will and a causality of the
reason. As submission to the law, therefore, that is, as a command
(announcing constraint for the sensibly affected subject), it contains
in it no pleasure, but on the contrary, so far, pain in the action. On
the other hand, however, as this constraint is exercised merely by the
legislation of our own reason, it also contains something elevating,
and this subjective effect on feeling, inasmuch as pure practical
reason is the sole cause of it, may be called in this respect
self-approbation, since we recognize ourselves as determined thereto
solely by the law without any interest, and are now conscious of a
quite different interest subjectively produced thereby, and which is
purely practical and free; and our taking this interest in an action
of duty is not suggested by any inclination, but is commanded and
actually brought about by reason through the practical law; whence
this feeling obtains a special name, that of respect.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 15}
The notion of duty, therefore, requires in the action,
objectively, agreement with the law, and, subjectively in its maxim,
that respect for the law shall be the sole mode in which the will is
determined thereby. And on this rests the distinction between the
consciousness of having acted according to duty and from duty, that
is, from respect for the law. The former (legality) is possible even
if inclinations have been the determining principles of the will;
but the latter (morality), moral worth, can be placed only in this,
that the action is done from duty, that is, simply for the sake of the
law. *
* If we examine accurately the notion of respect for persons as it
has been already laid down, we shall perceive that it always rests
on the consciousness of a duty which an example shows us, and that
respect, therefore, can never have any but a moral ground, and that it
is very good and even, in a psychological point of view, very useful
for the knowledge of mankind, that whenever we use this expression
we should attend to this secret and marvellous, yet often recurring,
regard which men in their judgement pay to the moral law.
It is of the greatest importance to attend with the utmost exactness
in all moral judgements to the subjective principle of all maxims,
that all the morality of actions may be placed in the necessity of
acting from duty and from respect for the law, not from love and
inclination for that which the actions are to produce. For men and all
created rational beings moral necessity is constraint, that is
obligation, and every action based on it is to be conceived as a duty,
not as a proceeding previously pleasing, or likely to be pleasing to
us of our own accord. As if indeed we could ever bring it about that
without respect for the law, which implies fear, or at least
apprehension of transgression, we of ourselves, like the independent
Deity, could ever come into possession of holiness of will by the
coincidence of our will with the pure moral law becoming as it were
part of our nature, never to be shaken (in which case the law would
cease to be a command for us, as we could never be tempted to be
untrue to it).
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 20}
The moral law is in fact for the will of a perfect being a law of
holiness, but for the will of every finite rational being a law of
duty, of moral constraint, and of the determination of its actions
by respect for this law and reverence for its duty. No other
subjective principle must be assumed as a motive, else while the
action might chance to be such as the law prescribes, yet, as does not
proceed from duty, the intention, which is the thing properly in
question in this legislation, is not moral.
It is a very beautiful thing to do good to men from love to them and
from sympathetic good will, or to be just from love of order; but this
is not yet the true moral maxim of our conduct which is suitable to
our position amongst rational beings as men, when we pretend with
fanciful pride to set ourselves above the thought of duty, like
volunteers, and, as if we were independent on the command, to want
to do of our own good pleasure what we think we need no command to do.
We stand under a discipline of reason and in all our maxims must not
forget our subjection to it, nor withdraw anything therefrom, or by an
egotistic presumption diminish aught of the authority of the law
(although our own reason gives it) so as to set the determining
principle of our will, even though the law be conformed to, anywhere
else but in the law itself and in respect for this law. Duty and
obligation are the only names that we must give to our relation to the
moral law. We are indeed legislative members of a moral kingdom
rendered possible by freedom, and presented to us by reason as an
object of respect; but yet we are subjects in it, not the sovereign,
and to mistake our inferior position as creatures, and
presumptuously to reject the authority of the moral law, is already to
revolt from it in spirit, even though the letter of it is fulfilled.
With this agrees very well the possibility of such a command as:
Love God above everything, and thy neighbour as thyself. * For as a
command it requires respect for a law which commands love and does not
leave it to our own arbitrary choice to make this our principle.
Love to God, however, considered as an inclination (pathological
love), is impossible, for He is not an object of the senses. The
same affection towards men is possible no doubt, but cannot be
commanded, for it is not in the power of any man to love anyone at
command; therefore it is only practical love that is meant in that
pith of all laws. To love God means, in this sense, to like to do
His commandments; to love one's neighbour means to like to practise
all duties towards him. But the command that makes this a rule
cannot command us to have this disposition in actions conformed to
duty, but only to endeavour after it. For a command to like to do a
thing is in itself contradictory, because if we already know of
ourselves what we are bound to do, and if further we are conscious
of liking to do it, a command would be quite needless; and if we do it
not willingly, but only out of respect for the law, a command that
makes this respect the motive of our maxim would directly counteract
the disposition commanded. That law of all laws, therefore, like all
the moral precepts of the Gospel, exhibits the moral disposition in
all its perfection, in which, viewed as an ideal of holiness, it is
not attainable by any creature, but yet is the pattern which we should
strive to approach, and in an uninterrupted but infinite progress
become like to. In fact, if a rational creature could ever reach
this point, that he thoroughly likes to do all moral laws, this
would mean that there does not exist in him even the possibility of
a desire that would tempt him to deviate from them; for to overcome
such a desire always costs the subject some sacrifice and therefore
requires self-compulsion, that is, inward constraint to something that
one does not quite like to do; and no creature can ever reach this
stage of moral disposition. For, being a creature, and therefore
always dependent with respect to what he requires for complete
satisfaction, he can never be quite free from desires and
inclinations, and as these rest on physical causes, they can never
of themselves coincide with the moral law, the sources of which are
quite different; and therefore they make it necessary to found the
mental disposition of one's maxims on moral obligation, not on ready
inclination, but on respect, which demands obedience to the law,
even though one may not like it; not on love, which apprehends no
inward reluctance of the will towards the law. Nevertheless, this
latter, namely, love to the law (which would then cease to be a
command, and then morality, which would have passed subjectively
into holiness, would cease to be virtue) must be the constant though
unattainable goal of his endeavours. For in the case of what we highly
esteem, but yet (on account of the consciousness of our weakness)
dread, the increased facility of satisfying it changes the most
reverential awe into inclination, and respect into love; at least this
would be the perfection of a disposition devoted to the law, if it
were possible for a creature to attain it.
* This law is in striking contrast with the principle of private
happiness which some make the supreme principle of morality. This
would be expressed thus: Love thyself above everything, and God and
thy neighbour for thine own sake.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 25}
This reflection is intended not so much to clear up the
evangelical command just cited, in order to prevent religious
fanaticism in regard to love of God, but to define accurately the
moral disposition with regard directly to our duties towards men,
and to check, or if possible prevent, a merely moral fanaticism
which infects many persons. The stage of morality on which man (and,
as far as we can see, every rational creature) stands is respect for
the moral law. The disposition that he ought to have in obeying this
is to obey it from duty, not from spontaneous inclination, or from
an endeavour taken up from liking and unbidden; and this proper
moral condition in which he can always be is virtue, that is, moral
disposition militant, and not holiness in the fancied possession of
a perfect purity of the disposition of the will. It is nothing but
moral fanaticism and exaggerated self-conceit that is infused into the
mind by exhortation to actions as noble, sublime, and magnanimous,
by which men are led into the delusion that it is not duty, that is,
respect for the law, whose yoke (an easy yoke indeed, because reason
itself imposes it on us) they must bear, whether they like it or
not, that constitutes the determining principle of their actions,
and which always humbles them while they obey it; fancying that
those actions are expected from them, not from duty, but as pure
merit. For not only would they, in imitating such deeds from such a
principle, not have fulfilled the spirit of the law in the least,
which consists not in the legality of the action (without regard to
principle), but in the subjection of the mind to the law; not only
do they make the motives pathological (seated in sympathy or
self-love), not moral (in the law), but they produce in this way a
vain, high-flying, fantastic way of thinking, flattering themselves
with a spontaneous goodness of heart that needs neither spur nor
bridle, for which no command is needed, and thereby forgetting their
obligation, which they ought to think of rather than merit. Indeed
actions of others which are done with great sacrifice, and merely
for the sake of duty, may be praised as noble and sublime, but only so
far as there are traces which suggest that they were done wholly out
of respect for duty and not from excited feelings. If these,
however, are set before anyone as examples to be imitated, respect for
duty (which is the only true moral feeling) must be employed as the
motive- this severe holy precept which never allows our vain self-love
to dally with pathological impulses (however analogous they may be
to morality), and to take a pride in meritorious worth. Now if we
search we shall find for all actions that are worthy of praise a law
of duty which commands, and does not leave us to choose what may be
agreeable to our inclinations. This is the only way of representing
things that can give a moral training to the soul, because it alone is
capable of solid and accurately defined principles.
If fanaticism in its most general sense is a deliberate over
stepping of the limits of human reason, then moral fanaticism is
such an over stepping of the bounds that practical pure reason sets to
mankind, in that it forbids us to place the subjective determining
principle of correct actions, that is, their moral motive, in anything
but the law itself, or to place the disposition which is thereby
brought into the maxims in anything but respect for this law, and
hence commands us to take as the supreme vital principle of all
morality in men the thought of duty, which strikes down all
arrogance as well as vain self-love.
If this is so, it is not only writers of romance or sentimental
educators (although they may be zealous opponents of
sentimentalism), but sometimes even philosophers, nay, even the
severest of all, the Stoics, that have brought in moral fanaticism
instead of a sober but wise moral discipline, although the
fanaticism of the latter was more heroic, that of the former of an
insipid, effeminate character; and we may, without hypocrisy, say of
the moral teaching of the Gospel, that it first, by the purity of
its moral principle, and at the same time by its suitability to the
limitations of finite beings, brought all the good conduct of men
under the discipline of a duty plainly set before their eyes, which
does not permit them to indulge in dreams of imaginary moral
perfections; and that it also set the bounds of humility (that is,
self-knowledge) to self-conceit as well as to self-love, both which
are ready to mistake their limits.
Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name that dost embrace nothing
charming or insinuating, but requirest submission, and yet seekest not
to move the will by threatening aught that would arouse natural
aversion or terror, but merely holdest forth a law which of itself
finds entrance into the mind, and yet gains reluctant reverence
(though not always obedience), a law before which all inclinations are
dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it; what origin is
there worthy of thee, and where is to be found the root of thy noble
descent which proudly rejects all kindred with the inclinations; a
root to be derived from which is the indispensable condition of the
only worth which men can give themselves?
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 30}
It can be nothing less than a power which elevates man above himself
(as a part of the world of sense), a power which connects him with
an order of things that only the understanding can conceive, with a
world which at the same time commands the whole sensible world, and
with it the empirically determinable existence of man in time, as well
as the sum total of all ends (which totality alone suits such
unconditional practical laws as the moral). This power is nothing
but personality, that is, freedom and independence on the mechanism of
nature, yet, regarded also as a faculty of a being which is subject to
special laws, namely, pure practical laws given by its own reason;
so that the person as belonging to the sensible world is subject to
his own personality as belonging to the intelligible [supersensible]
world. It is then not to be wondered at that man, as belonging to both
worlds, must regard his own nature in reference to its second and
highest characteristic only with reverence, and its laws with the
highest respect.
On this origin are founded many expressions which designate the
worth of objects according to moral ideas. The moral law is holy
(inviolable). Man is indeed unholy enough, but he must regard humanity
in his own person as holy. In all creation every thing one chooses and
over which one has any power, may be used merely as means; man
alone, and with him every rational creature, is an end in himself.
By virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the subject of the
moral law, which is holy. Just for this reason every will, even
every person's own individual will, in relation to itself, is
restricted to the condition of agreement with the autonomy of the
rational being, that is to say, that it is not to be subject to any
purpose which cannot accord with a law which might arise from the will
of the passive subject himself; the latter is, therefore, never to
be employed merely as means, but as itself also, concurrently, an end.
We justly attribute this condition even to the Divine will, with
regard to the rational beings in the world, which are His creatures,
since it rests on their personality, by which alone they are ends in
themselves.
This respect-inspiring idea of personality which sets before our
eyes the sublimity of our nature (in its higher aspect), while at
the same time it shows us the want of accord of our conduct with it
and thereby strikes down self-conceit, is even natural to the
commonest reason and easily observed. Has not every even moderately
honourable man sometimes found that, where by an otherwise inoffensive
lie he might either have withdrawn himself from an unpleasant
business, or even have procured some advantages for a loved and
well-deserving friend, he has avoided it solely lest he should despise
himself secretly in his own eyes? When an upright man is in the
greatest distress, which he might have avoided if he could only have
disregarded duty, is he not sustained by the consciousness that he has
maintained humanity in its proper dignity in his own person and
honoured it, that he has no reason to be ashamed of himself in his own
sight, or to dread the inward glance of self-examination? This
consolation is not happiness, it is not even the smallest part of
it, for no one would wish to have occasion for it, or would,
perhaps, even desire a life in such circumstances. But he lives, and
he cannot endure that he should be in his own eyes unworthy of life.
This inward peace is therefore merely negative as regards what can
make life pleasant; it is, in fact, only the escaping the danger of
sinking in personal worth, after everything else that is valuable
has been lost. It is the effect of a respect for something quite
different from life, something in comparison and contrast with which
life with all its enjoyment has no value. He still lives only
because it is his duty, not because he finds anything pleasant in
life.
Such is the nature of the true motive of pure practical reason; it
is no other than the pure moral law itself, inasmuch as it makes us
conscious of the sublimity of our own supersensible existence and
subjectively produces respect for their higher nature in men who are
also conscious of their sensible existence and of the consequent
dependence of their pathologically very susceptible nature. Now with
this motive may be combined so many charms and satisfactions of life
that even on this account alone the most prudent choice of a
rational Epicurean reflecting on the greatest advantage of life
would declare itself on the side of moral conduct, and it may even
be advisable to join this prospect of a cheerful enjoyment of life
with that supreme motive which is already sufficient of itself; but
only as a counterpoise to the attractions which vice does not fail
to exhibit on the opposite side, and not so as, even in the smallest
degree, to place in this the proper moving power when duty is in
question. For that would be just the same as to wish to taint the
purity of the moral disposition in its source. The majesty of duty has
nothing to do with enjoyment of life; it has its special law and its
special tribunal, and though the two should be never so well shaken
together to be given well mixed, like medicine, to the sick soul,
yet they will soon separate of themselves; and if they do not, the
former will not act; and although physical life might gain somewhat in
force, the moral life would fade away irrecoverably.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 35}
Critical Examination of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason.
By the critical examination of a science, or of a portion of it,
which constitutes a system by itself, I understand the inquiry and
proof why it must have this and no other systematic form, when we
compare it with another system which is based on a similar faculty
of knowledge. Now practical and speculative reason are based on the
same faculty, so far as both are pure reason. Therefore the difference
in their systematic form must be determined by the comparison of both,
and the ground of this must be assigned.
The Analytic of pure theoretic reason had to do with the knowledge
of such objects as may have been given to the understanding, and was
obliged therefore to begin from intuition and consequently (as this is
always sensible) from sensibility; and only after that could advance
to concepts (of the objects of this intuition), and could only end
with principles after both these had preceded. On the contrary,
since practical reason has not to do with objects so as to know
them, but with its own faculty of realizing them (in accordance with
the knowledge of them), that is, with a will which is a causality,
inasmuch as reason contains its determining principle; since,
consequently, it has not to furnish an object of intuition, but as
practical reason has to furnish only a law (because the notion of
causality always implies the reference to a law which determines the
existence of the many in relation to one another); hence a critical
examination of the Analytic of reason, if this is to be practical
reason (and this is properly the problem), must begin with the
possibility of practical principles a priori. Only after that can it
proceed to concepts of the objects of a practical reason, namely,
those of absolute good and evil, in order to assign them in accordance
with those principles (for prior to those principles they cannot
possibly be given as good and evil by any faculty of knowledge), and
only then could the section be concluded with the last chapter,
that, namely, which treats of the relation of the pure practical
reason to the sensibility and of its necessary influence thereon,
which is a priori cognisable, that is, of the moral sentiment. Thus
the Analytic of the practical pure reason has the whole extent of
the conditions of its use in common with the theoretical, but in
reverse order. The Analytic of pure theoretic reason was divided
into transcendental Aesthetic and transcendental Logic, that of the
practical reversely into Logic and Aesthetic of pure practical
reason (if I may, for the sake of analogy merely, use these
designations, which are not quite suitable). This logic again was
there divided into the Analytic of concepts and that of principles:
here into that of principles and concepts. The Aesthetic also had in
the former case two parts, on account of the two kinds of sensible
intuition; here the sensibility is not considered as a capacity of
intuition at all, but merely as feeling (which can be a subjective
ground of desire), and in regard to it pure practical reason admits no
further division.
It is also easy to see the reason why this division into two parts
with its subdivision was not actually adopted here (as one might
have been induced to attempt by the example of the former critique).
For since it is pure reason that is here considered in its practical
use, and consequently as proceeding from a priori principles, and
not from empirical principles of determination, hence the division
of the analytic of pure practical reason must resemble that of a
syllogism; namely, proceeding from the universal in the major
premiss (the moral principle), through a minor premiss containing a
subsumption of possible actions (as good or evil) under the former, to
the conclusion, namely, the subjective determination of the will (an
interest in the possible practical good, and in the maxim founded on
it). He who has been able to convince himself of the truth of the
positions occurring in the Analytic will take pleasure in such
comparisons; for they justly suggest the expectation that we may
perhaps some day be able to discern the unity of the whole faculty
of reason (theoretical as well as practical) and be able to derive all
from one principle, which, is what human reason inevitably demands, as
it finds complete satisfaction only in a perfectly systematic unity of
its knowledge.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 40}
If now we consider also the contents of the knowledge that we can
have of a pure practical reason, and by means of it, as shown by the
Analytic, we find, along with a remarkable analogy between it and
the theoretical, no less remarkable differences. As regards the
theoretical, the faculty of a pure rational cognition a priori could
be easily and evidently proved by examples from sciences (in which, as
they put their principles to the test in so many ways by methodical
use, there is not so much reason as in common knowledge to fear a
secret mixture of empirical principles of cognition). But, that pure
reason without the admixture of any empirical principle is practical
of itself, this could only be shown from the commonest practical use
of reason, by verifying the fact, that every man's natural reason
acknowledges the supreme practical principle as the supreme law of his
will- a law completely a priori and not depending on any sensible
data. It was necessary first to establish and verify the purity of its
origin, even in the judgement of this common reason, before science
could take it in hand to make use of it, as a fact, that is, prior
to all disputation about its possibility, and all the consequences
that may be drawn from it. But this circumstance may be readily
explained from what has just been said; because practical pure
reason must necessarily begin with principles, which therefore must be
the first data, the foundation of all science, and cannot be derived
from it. It was possible to effect this verification of moral
principles as principles of a pure reason quite well, and with
sufficient certainty, by a single appeal to the judgement of common
sense, for this reason, that anything empirical which might slip
into our maxims as a determining principle of the will can be detected
at once by the feeling of pleasure or pain which necessarily
attaches to it as exciting desire; whereas pure practical reason
positively refuses to admit this feeling into its principle as a
condition. The heterogeneity of the determining principles (the
empirical and rational) is clearly detected by this resistance of a
practically legislating reason against every admixture of inclination,
and by a peculiar kind of sentiment, which, however, does not
precede the legislation of the practical reason, but, on the contrary,
is produced by this as a constraint, namely, by the feeling of a
respect such as no man has for inclinations of whatever kind but for
the law only; and it is detected in so marked and prominent a manner
that even the most uninstructed cannot fail to see at once in an
example presented to him, that empirical principles of volition may
indeed urge him to follow their attractions, but that he can never
be expected to obey anything but the pure practical law of reason
alone.
The distinction between the doctrine of happiness and the doctrine
of morality, in the former of which empirical principles constitute
the entire foundation, while in the second they do not form the
smallest part of it, is the first and most important office of the
Analytic of pure practical reason; and it must proceed in it with as
much exactness and, so to speak, scrupulousness, as any geometer in
his work. The philosopher, however, has greater difficulties to
contend with here (as always in rational cognition by means of
concepts merely without construction), because he cannot take any
intuition as a foundation (for a pure noumenon). He has, however, this
advantage that, like the chemist, he can at any time make an
experiment with every man's practical reason for the purpose of
distinguishing the moral (pure) principle of determination from the
empirical; namely, by adding the moral law (as a determining
principle) to the empirically affected will (e. g. , that of the man who
would be ready to lie because he can gain something thereby). It is as
if the analyst added alkali to a solution of lime in hydrochloric
acid, the acid at once forsakes the lime, combines with the alkali,
and the lime is precipitated. Just in the same way, if to a man who is
otherwise honest (or who for this occasion places himself only in
thought in the position of an honest man), we present the moral law by
which he recognises the worthlessness of the liar, his practical
reason (in forming a judgement of what ought to be done) at once
forsakes the advantage, combines with that which maintains in him
respect for his own person (truthfulness), and the advantage after
it has been separated and washed from every particle of reason
(which is altogether on the side of duty) is easily weighed by
everyone, so that it can enter into combination with reason in other
cases, only not where it could be opposed to the moral law, which
reason never forsakes, but most closely unites itself with.
But it does not follow that this distinction between the principle
of happiness and that of morality is an opposition between them, and
pure practical reason does not require that we should renounce all
claim to happiness, but only that the moment duty is in question we
should take no account of happiness. It may even in certain respects
be a duty to provide for happiness; partly, because (including
skill, wealth, riches) it contains means for the fulfilment of our
duty; partly, because the absence of it (e. g. , poverty) implies
temptations to transgress our duty. But it can never be an immediate
duty to promote our happiness, still less can it be the principle of
all duty. Now, as all determining principles of the will, except the
law of pure practical reason alone (the moral law), are all
empirical and, therefore, as such, belong to the principle of
happiness, they must all be kept apart from the supreme principle of
morality and never be incorporated with it as a condition; since
this would be to destroy all moral worth just as much as any empirical
admixture with geometrical principles would destroy the certainty of
mathematical evidence, which in Plato's opinion is the most
excellent thing in mathematics, even surpassing their utility.
Instead, however, of the deduction of the supreme principle of
pure practical reason, that is, the explanation of the possibility
of such a knowledge a priori, the utmost we were able to do was to
show that if we saw the possibility of the freedom of an efficient
cause, we should also see not merely the possibility, but even the
necessity, of the moral law as the supreme practical law of rational
beings, to whom we attribute freedom of causality of their will;
because both concepts are so inseparably united that we might define
practical freedom as independence of the will on anything but the
moral law. But we cannot perceive the possibility of the freedom of an
efficient cause, especially in the world of sense; we are fortunate if
only we can be sufficiently assured that there is no proof of its
impossibility, and are now, by the moral law which postulates it,
compelled and therefore authorized to assume it. However, there are
still many who think that they can explain this freedom on empirical
principles, like any other physical faculty, and treat it as a
psychological property, the explanation of which only requires a
more exact study of the nature of the soul and of the motives of the
will, and not as a transcendental predicate of the causality of a
being that belongs to the world of sense (which is really the
point). They thus deprive us of the grand revelation which we obtain
through practical reason by means of the moral law, the revelation,
namely, of a supersensible world by the realization of the otherwise
transcendent concept of freedom, and by this deprive us also of the
moral law itself, which admits no empirical principle of
determination. Therefore it will be necessary to add something here as
a protection against this delusion and to exhibit empiricism in its
naked superficiality.
The notion of causality as physical necessity, in opposition to
the same notion as freedom, concerns only the existence of things so
far as it is determinable in time, and, consequently, as phenomena, in
opposition to their causality as things in themselves. Now if we
take the attributes of existence of things in time for attributes of
things in themselves (which is the common view), then it is impossible
to reconcile the necessity of the causal relation with freedom; they
are contradictory. For from the former it follows that every event,
and consequently every action that takes place at a certain point of
time, is a necessary result of what existed in time preceding. Now
as time past is no longer in my power, hence every action that I
perform must be the necessary result of certain determining grounds
which are not in my power, that is, at the moment in which I am acting
I am never free. Nay, even if I assume that my whole existence is
independent on any foreign cause (for instance, God), so that the
determining principles of my causality, and even of my whole
existence, were not outside myself, yet this would not in the least
transform that physical necessity into freedom. For at every moment of
time I am still under the necessity of being determined to action by
that which is not in my power, and the series of events infinite a
parte priori, which I only continue according to a pre-determined
order and could never begin of myself, would be a continuous
physical chain, and therefore my causality would never be freedom.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 45}
If, then, we would attribute freedom to a being whose existence is
determined in time, we cannot except him from the law of necessity
as to all events in his existence and, consequently, as to his actions
also; for that would be to hand him over to blind chance. Now as
this law inevitably applies to all the causality of things, so far
as their existence is determinable in time, it follows that if this
were the mode in which we had also to conceive the existence of
these things in themselves, freedom must be rejected as a vain and
impossible conception. Consequently, if we would still save it, no
other way remains but to consider that the existence of a thing, so
far as it is determinable in time, and therefore its causality,
according to the law of physical necessity, belong to appearance,
and to attribute freedom to the same being as a thing in itself.
This is certainly inevitable, if we would retain both these
contradictory concepts together; but in application, when we try to
explain their combination in one and the same action, great
difficulties present themselves which seem to render such a
combination impracticable.
When I say of a man who commits a theft that, by the law of
causality, this deed is a necessary result of the determining causes
in preceding time, then it was impossible that it could not have
happened; how then can the judgement, according to the moral law, make
any change, and suppose that it could have been omitted, because the
law says that it ought to have been omitted; that is, how can a man be
called quite free at the same moment, and with respect to the same
action in which he is subject to an inevitable physical necessity?
Some try to evade this by saying that the causes that determine his
causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion
of freedom. According to this, that is sometimes called a free effect,
the determining physical cause of which lies within the acting thing
itself, e. g. , that which a projectile performs when it is in free
motion, in which case we use the word freedom, because while it is
in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the
motion of a clock a free motion, because it moves its hands itself,
which therefore do not require to be pushed by external force; so
although the actions of man are necessarily determined by causes which
precede in time, we yet call them free, because these causes are ideas
produced by our own faculties, whereby desires are evoked on
occasion of circumstances, and hence actions are wrought according
to our own pleasure. This is a wretched subterfuge with which some
persons still let themselves be put off, and so think they have
solved, with a petty word- jugglery, that difficult problem, at the
solution of which centuries have laboured in vain, and which can
therefore scarcely be found so completely on the surface. In fact,
in the question about the freedom which must be the foundation of
all moral laws and the consequent responsibility, it does not matter
whether the principles which necessarily determine causality by a
physical law reside within the subject or without him, or in the
former case whether these principles are instinctive or are
conceived by reason, if, as is admitted by these men themselves, these
determining ideas have the ground of their existence in time and in
the antecedent state, and this again in an antecedent, etc. Then it
matters not that these are internal; it matters not that they have a
psychological and not a mechanical causality, that is, produce actions
by means of ideas and not by bodily movements; they are still
determining principles of the causality of a being whose existence
is determinable in time, and therefore under the necessitation of
conditions of past time, which therefore, when the subject has to act,
are no longer in his power. This may imply psychological freedom (if
we choose to apply this term to a merely internal chain of ideas in
the mind), but it involves physical necessity and, therefore, leaves
no room for transcendental freedom, which must be conceived as
independence on everything empirical, and, consequently, on nature
generally, whether it is an object of the internal sense considered in
time only, or of the external in time and space. Without this
freedom (in the latter and true sense), which alone is practical a
priori, no moral law and no moral imputation are possible. Just for
this reason the necessity of events in time, according to the physical
law of causality, may be called the mechanism of nature, although we
do not mean by this that things which are subject to it must be really
material machines. We look here only to the necessity of the
connection of events in a time-series as it is developed according
to the physical law, whether the subject in which this development
takes place is called automaton materiale when the mechanical being is
moved by matter, or with Leibnitz spirituale when it is impelled by
ideas; and if the freedom of our will were no other than the latter
(say the psychological and comparative, not also transcendental,
that is, absolute), then it would at bottom be nothing better than the
freedom of a turnspit, which, when once it is wound up, accomplishes
its motions of itself.
Now, in order to remove in the supposed case the apparent
contradiction between freedom and the mechanism of nature in one and
the same action, we must remember what was said in the Critique of
Pure Reason, or what follows therefrom; viz. , that the necessity of
nature, which cannot co-exist with the freedom of the subject,
appertains only to the attributes of the thing that is subject to
time-conditions, consequently only to those of the acting subject as a
phenomenon; that therefore in this respect the determining
principles of every action of the same reside in what belongs to
past time and is no longer in his power (in which must be included his
own past actions and the character that these may determine for him in
his own eyes as a phenomenon). But the very same subject, being on the
other side conscious of himself as a thing in himself, considers his
existence also in so far as it is not subject to time-conditions,
and regards himself as only determinable by laws which he gives
himself through reason; and in this his existence nothing is
antecedent to the determination of his will, but every action, and
in general every modification of his existence, varying according to
his internal sense, even the whole series of his existence as a
sensible being is in the consciousness of his supersensible
existence nothing but the result, and never to be regarded as the
determining principle, of his causality as a noumenon. In this view
now the rational being can justly say of every unlawful action that he
performs, that he could very well have left it undone; although as
appearance it is sufficiently determined in the past, and in this
respect is absolutely necessary; for it, with all the past which
determines it, belongs to the one single phenomenon of his character
which he makes for himself, in consequence of which he imputes the
causality of those appearances to himself as a cause independent on
sensibility.
With this agree perfectly the judicial sentences of that wonderful
faculty in us which we call conscience. A man may use as much art as
he likes in order to paint to himself an unlawful act, that he
remembers, as an unintentional error, a mere oversight, such as one
can never altogether avoid, and therefore as something in which he was
carried away by the stream of physical necessity, and thus to make
himself out innocent, yet he finds that the advocate who speaks in his
favour can by no means silence the accuser within, if only he is
conscious that at the time when he did this wrong he was in his
senses, that is, in possession of his freedom; and, nevertheless, he
accounts for his error from some bad habits, which by gradual
neglect of attention he has allowed to grow upon him to such a
degree that he can regard his error as its natural consequence,
although this cannot protect him from the blame and reproach which
he casts upon himself. This is also the ground of repentance for a
long past action at every recollection of it; a painful feeling
produced by the moral sentiment, and which is practically void in so
far as it cannot serve to undo what has been done. (Hence Priestley,
as a true and consistent fatalist, declares it absurd, and he deserves
to be commended for this candour more than those who, while they
maintain the mechanism of the will in fact, and its freedom in words
only, yet wish it to be thought that they include it in their system
of compromise, although they do not explain the possibility of such
moral imputation. ) But the pain is quite legitimate, because when
the law of our intelligible [supersensible] existence (the moral
law) is in question, reason recognizes no distinction of time, and
only asks whether the event belongs to me, as my act, and then
always morally connects the same feeling with it, whether it has
happened just now or long ago. For in reference to the supersensible
consciousness of its existence (i. e. , freedom) the life of sense is
but a single phenomenon, which, inasmuch as it contains merely
manifestations of the mental disposition with regard to the moral
law (i. e. , of the character), must be judged not according to the
physical necessity that belongs to it as phenomenon, but according
to the absolute spontaneity of freedom. It may therefore be admitted
that, if it were possible to have so profound an insight into a
man's mental character as shown by internal as well as external
actions as to know all its motives, even the smallest, and likewise
all the external occasions that can influence them, we could calculate
a man's conduct for the future with as great certainty as a lunar or
solar eclipse; and nevertheless we may maintain that the man is
free. In fact, if we were capable of a further glance, namely, an
intellectual intuition of the same subject (which indeed is not
granted to us, and instead of it we have only the rational concept),
then we should perceive that this whole chain of appearances in regard
to all that concerns the moral laws depends on the spontaneity of
the subject as a thing in itself, of the determination of which no
physical explanation can be given. In default of this intuition, the
moral law assures us of this distinction between the relation of our
actions as appearance to our sensible nature, and the relation of this
sensible nature to the supersensible substratum in us. In this view,
which is natural to our reason, though inexplicable, we can also
justify some judgements which we passed with all conscientiousness,
and which yet at first sight seem quite opposed to all equity. There
are cases in which men, even with the same education which has been
profitable to others, yet show such early depravity, and so continue
to progress in it to years of manhood, that they are thought to be
born villains, and their character altogether incapable of
improvement; and nevertheless they are judged for what they do or
leave undone, they are reproached for their faults as guilty; nay,
they themselves (the children) regard these reproaches as well
founded, exactly as if in spite of the hopeless natural quality of
mind ascribed to them, they remained just as responsible as any
other man. This could not happen if we did not suppose that whatever
springs from a man's choice (as every action intentionally performed
undoubtedly does) has as its foundation a free causality, which from
early youth expresses its character in its manifestations (i. e. ,
actions). These, on account of the uniformity of conduct, exhibit a
natural connection, which however does not make the vicious quality of
the will necessary, but on the contrary, is the consequence of the
evil principles voluntarily adopted and unchangeable, which only
make it so much the more culpable and deserving of punishment. There
still remains a difficulty in the combination of freedom with the
mechanism of nature in a being belonging to the world of sense; a
difficulty which, even after all the foregoing is admitted,
threatens freedom with complete destruction. But with this danger
there is also a circumstance that offers hope of an issue still
favourable to freedom; namely, that the same difficulty presses much
more strongly (in fact as we shall presently see, presses only) on the
system that holds the existence determinable in time and space to be
the existence of things in themselves; it does not therefore oblige us
to give up our capital supposition of the ideality of time as a mere
form of sensible intuition, and consequently as a mere manner of
representation which is proper to the subject as belonging to the
world of sense; and therefore it only requires that this view be
reconciled with this idea.
The difficulty is as follows: Even if it is admitted that the
supersensible subject can be free with respect to a given action,
although, as a subject also belonging to the world of sense, he is
under mechanical conditions with respect to the same action, still, as
soon as we allow that God as universal first cause is also the cause
of the existence of substance (a proposition which can never be
given up without at the same time giving up the notion of God as the
Being of all beings, and therewith giving up his all sufficiency, on
which everything in theology depends), it seems as if we must admit
that a man's actions have their determining principle in something
which is wholly out of his power- namely, in the causality of a
Supreme Being distinct from himself and on whom his own existence
and the whole determination of his causality are absolutely dependent.
In point of fact, if a man's actions as belonging to his modifications
in time were not merely modifications of him as appearance, but as a
thing in itself, freedom could not be saved. Man would be a marionette
or an automaton, like Vaucanson's, prepared and wound up by the
Supreme Artist. Self-consciousness would indeed make him a thinking
automaton; but the consciousness of his own spontaneity would be
mere delusion if this were mistaken for freedom, and it would
deserve this name only in a comparative sense, since, although the
proximate determining causes of its motion and a long series of
their determining causes are internal, yet the last and highest is
found in a foreign hand. Therefore I do not see how those who still
insist on regarding time and space as attributes belonging to the
existence of things in themselves, can avoid admitting the fatality of
actions; or if (like the otherwise acute Mendelssohn) they allow
them to be conditions necessarily belonging to the existence of finite
and derived beings, but not to that of the infinite Supreme Being, I
do not see on what ground they can justify such a distinction, or,
indeed, how they can avoid the contradiction that meets them, when
they hold that existence in time is an attribute necessarily belonging
to finite things in themselves, whereas God is the cause of this
existence, but cannot be the cause of time (or space) itself (since
this must be presupposed as a necessary a priori condition of the
existence of things); and consequently as regards the existence of
these things. His causality must be subject to conditions and even
to the condition of time; and this would inevitably bring in
everything contradictory to the notions of His infinity and
independence. On the other hand, it is quite easy for us to draw the
distinction between the attribute of the divine existence of being
independent on all time-conditions, and that of a being of the world
of sense, the distinction being that between the existence of a
being in itself and that of a thing in appearance. Hence, if this
ideality of time and space is not adopted, nothing remains but
Spinozism, in which space and time are essential attributes of the
Supreme Being Himself, and the things dependent on Him (ourselves,
therefore, included) are not substances, but merely accidents inhering
in Him; since, if these things as His effects exist in time only, this
being the condition of their existence in themselves, then the actions
of these beings must be simply His actions which He performs in some
place and time. Thus, Spinozism, in spite of the absurdity of its
fundamental idea, argues more consistently than the creation theory
can, when beings assumed to be substances, and beings in themselves
existing in time, are regarded as effects of a Supreme Cause, and
yet as not [belonging] to Him and His action, but as separate
substances.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 50}
The above-mentioned difficulty is resolved briefly and clearly as
follows: If existence in time is a mere sensible mode of
representation belonging to thinking beings in the world and
consequently does not apply to them as things in themselves, then
the creation of these beings is a creation of things in themselves,
since the notion of creation does not belong to the sensible form of
representation of existence or to causality, but can only be
referred to noumena. Consequently, when I say of beings in the world
of sense that they are created, I so far regard them as noumena. As it
would be a contradiction, therefore, to say that God is a creator of
appearances, so also it is a contradiction to say that as creator He
is the cause of actions in the world of sense, and therefore as
appearances, although He is the cause of the existence of the acting
beings (which are noumena). If now it is possible to affirm freedom in
spite of the natural mechanism of actions as appearances (by regarding
existence in time as something that belongs only to appearances, not
to things in themselves), then the circumstance that the acting beings
are creatures cannot make the slightest difference, since creation
concerns their supersensible and not their sensible existence, and,
therefore, cannot be regarded as the determining principle of the
appearances. It would be quite different if the beings in the world as
things in themselves existed in time, since in that case the creator
of substance would be at the same time the author of the whole
mechanism of this substance.
Of so great importance is the separation of time (as well as
space) from the existence of things in themselves which was effected
in the Critique of the Pure Speculative Reason.
It may be said that the solution here proposed involves great
difficulty in itself and is scarcely susceptible of a lucid
exposition. But is any other solution that has been attempted, or that
may be attempted, easier and more intelligible? Rather might we say
that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics have shown more shrewdness
than candour in keeping this difficult point out of sight as much as
possible, in the hope that if they said nothing about it, probably
no one would think of it. If science is to be advanced, all
difficulties must be laid open, and we must even search for those that
are hidden, for every difficulty calls forth a remedy, which cannot be
discovered without science gaining either in extent or in exactness;
and thus even obstacles become means of increasing the thoroughness of
science. On the other hand, if the difficulties are intentionally
concealed, or merely removed by palliatives, then sooner or later they
burst out into incurable mischiefs, which bring science to ruin in
an absolute scepticism.
Since it is, properly speaking, the notion of freedom alone amongst all
the ideas of pure speculative reason that so greatly enlarges our
knowledge in the sphere of the supersensible, though only of our
practical knowledge, I ask myself why it exclusively possesses so great
fertility, whereas the others only designate the vacant space for
possible beings of the pure understanding, but are unable by any means
to define the concept of them. I presently find that as I cannot think
anything without a category, I must first look for a category for the
rational idea of freedom with which I am now concerned; and this is the
category of causality; and although freedom, a concept of the reason,
being a transcendent concept, cannot have any intuition corresponding to
it, yet the concept of the understanding- for the synthesis of which the
former demands the unconditioned- (namely, the concept of causality)
must have a sensible intuition given, by which first its objective
reality is assured. Now, the categories are all divided into two
classes- the mathematical, which concern the unity of synthesis in the
conception of objects, and the dynamical, which refer to the unity of
synthesis in the conception of the existence of objects. The former
(those of magnitude and quality) always contain a synthesis of the
homogeneous, and it is not possible to find in this the unconditioned
antecedent to what is given in sensible intuition as conditioned in
space and time, as this would itself have to belong to space and time,
and therefore be again still conditioned. Whence it resulted in the
Dialectic of Pure Theoretic Reason that the opposite methods of
attaining the unconditioned and the totality of the conditions were both
wrong. The categories of the second class (those of causality and of the
necessity of a thing) did not require this homogeneity (of the
conditioned and the condition in synthesis), since here what we have to
explain is not how the intuition is compounded from a manifold in it,
but only how the existence of the conditioned object corresponding to it
is added to the existence of the condition (added, namely, in the
understanding as connected therewith); and in that case it was allowable
to suppose in the supersensible world the unconditioned antecedent to
the altogether conditioned in the world of sense (both as regards the
causal connection and the contingent existence of things themselves),
although this unconditioned remained indeterminate, and to make the
synthesis transcendent. Hence, it was found in the Dialectic of the Pure
Speculative Reason that the two apparently opposite methods of obtaining
for the conditioned the unconditioned were not really contradictory,
e. g. , in the synthesis of causality to conceive for the conditioned in
the series of causes and effects of the sensible world, a causality
which has no sensible condition, and that the same action which, as
belonging to the world of sense, is always sensibly conditioned, that
is, mechanically necessary, yet at the same time may be derived from a
causality not sensibly conditioned- being the causality of the acting
being as belonging to the supersensible world- and may consequently be
conceived as free. Now, the only point in question was to change this
may be into is; that is, that we should be able to show in an actual
case, as it were by a fact, that certain actions imply such a causality
(namely, the intellectual, sensibly unconditioned), whether they are
actual or only commanded, that is, objectively necessary in a practical
sense. We could not hope to find this connexion in actions actually
given in experience as events of the sensible world, since causality
with freedom must always be sought outside the world of sense in the
world of intelligence. But things of sense are the only things offered
to our perception and observation. Hence, nothing remained but to find
an incontestable objective principle of causality which excludes all
sensible conditions: that is, a principle in which reason does not
appeal further to something else as a determining ground of its
causality, but contains this determining ground itself by means of that
principle, and in which therefore it is itself as pure reason practical.
Now, this principle had not to be searched for or discovered; it had
long been in the reason of all men, and incorporated in their nature,
and is the principle of morality. Therefore, that unconditioned
causality, with the faculty of it, namely, freedom, is no longer merely
indefinitely and problematically thought (this speculative reason could
prove to be feasible), but is even as regards the law of its causality
definitely and assertorially known; and with it the fact that a being (I
myself), belonging to the world of sense, belongs also to the
supersensible world, this is also positively known, and thus the reality
of the supersensible world is established and in practical respects
definitely given, and this definiteness, which for theoretical purposes
would be transcendent, is for practical purposes immanent. We could not,
however, make a similar step as regards the second dynamical idea,
namely, that of a necessary being. We could not rise to it from the
sensible world without the aid of the first dynamical idea. For if we
attempted to do so, we should have ventured to leave at a bound all that
is given to us, and to leap to that of which nothing is given us that
can help us to effect the connection of such a supersensible being with
the world of sense (since the necessary being would have to be known as
given outside ourselves). On the other hand, it is now obvious that this
connection is quite possible in relation to our own subject, inasmuch as
I know myself to be on the one side as an intelligible [supersensible]
being determined by the moral law (by means of freedom), and on the
other side as acting in the world of sense. It is the concept of freedom
alone that enables us to find the unconditioned and intelligible for the
conditioned and sensible without going out of ourselves. For it is our
own reason that by means of the supreme and unconditional practical law
knows that itself and the being that is conscious of this law (our own
person) belong to the pure world of understanding, and moreover defines
the manner in which, as such, it can be active. In this way it can be
understood why in the whole faculty of reason it is the practical reason
only that can help us to pass beyond the world of sense and give us
knowledge of a supersensible order and connection, which, however, for
this very reason cannot be extended further than is necessary for pure
practical purposes.
Let me be permitted on this occasion to make one more remark,
namely, that every step that we make with pure reason, even in the
practical sphere where no attention is paid to subtle speculation,
nevertheless accords with all the material points of the Critique of
the Theoretical Reason as closely and directly as if each step had
been thought out with deliberate purpose to establish this
confirmation. Such a thorough agreement, wholly unsought for and quite
obvious (as anyone can convince himself, if he will only carry moral
inquiries up to their principles), between the most important
proposition of practical reason and the often seemingly too subtle and
needless remarks of the Critique of the Speculative Reason,
occasions surprise and astonishment, and confirms the maxim already
recognized and praised by others, namely, that in every scientific
inquiry we should pursue our way steadily with all possible
exactness and frankness, without caring for any objections that may be
raised from outside its sphere, but, as far as we can, to carry out
our inquiry truthfully and completely by itself. Frequent
observation has convinced me that, when such researches are concluded,
that which in one part of them appeared to me very questionable,
considered in relation to other extraneous doctrines, when I left this
doubtfulness out of sight for a time and only attended to the business
in hand until it was completed, at last was unexpectedly found to
agree perfectly with what had been discovered separately without the
least regard to those doctrines, and without any partiality or
prejudice for them. Authors would save themselves many errors and much
labour lost (because spent on a delusion) if they could only resolve
to go to work with more frankness.
BOOK_2|CHAPTER_1
BOOK II. Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason.
CHAPTER I.
Of a Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason Generally.
Pure reason always has its dialetic, whether it is considered in its
speculative or its practical employment; for it requires the
absolute totality of the 'conditions of what is given conditioned, and
this can only be found in things in themselves. But as all conceptions
of things in themselves must be referred to intuitions, and with us
men these can never be other than sensible and hence can never
enable us to know objects as things in themselves but only as
appearances, and since the unconditioned can never be found in this
chain of appearances which consists only of conditioned and
conditions; thus from applying this rational idea of the totality of
the conditions (in other words of the unconditioned) to appearances,
there arises an inevitable illusion, as if these latter were things in
themselves (for in the absence of a warning critique they are always
regarded as such). This illusion would never be noticed as delusive if
it did not betray itself by a conflict of reason with itself, when
it applies to appearances its fundamental principle of presupposing
the unconditioned to everything conditioned. By this, however,
reason is compelled to trace this illusion to its source, and search
how it can be removed, and this can only be done by a complete
critical examination of the whole pure faculty of reason; so that
the antinomy of the pure reason which is manifest in its dialectic
is in fact the most beneficial error into which human reason could
ever have fallen, since it at last drives us to search for the key
to escape from this labyrinth; and when this key is found, it
further discovers that which we did not seek but yet had need of,
namely, a view into a higher and an immutable order of things, in
which we even now are, and in which we are thereby enabled by definite
precepts to continue to live according to the highest dictates of
reason.
It may be seen in detail in the Critique of Pure Reason how in its
speculative employment this natural dialectic is to be solved, and how
the error which arises from a very natural illusion may be guarded
against. But reason in its practical use is not a whit better off.
As pure practical reason, it likewise seeks to find the
unconditioned for the practically conditioned (which rests on
inclinations and natural wants), and this is not as the determining
principle of the will, but even when this is given (in the moral
law) it seeks the unconditioned totality of the object of pure
practical reason under the name of the summum bonum.
To define this idea practically, i. e. , sufficiently for the maxims
of our rational conduct, is the business of practical wisdom, and this
again as a science is philosophy, in the sense in which the word was
understood by the ancients, with whom it meant instruction in the
conception in which the summum bonum was to be placed, and the conduct
by which it was to be obtained. It would be well to leave this word in
its ancient signification as a doctrine of the summum bonum, so far as
reason endeavours to make this into a science. For on the one hand the
restriction annexed would suit the Greek expression (which signifies
the love of wisdom), and yet at the same time would be sufficient to
embrace under the name of philosophy the love of science: that is to
say, of all speculative rational knowledge, so far as it is
serviceable to reason, both for that conception and also for the
practical principle determining our conduct, without letting out of
sight the main end, on account of which alone it can be called a
doctrine of practical wisdom. On the other hand, it would be no harm
to deter the self-conceit of one who ventures to claim the title of
philosopher by holding before him in the very definition a standard of
self-estimation which would very much lower his pretensions. For a
teacher of wisdom would mean something more than a scholar who has not
come so far as to guide himself, much less to guide others, with
certain expectation of attaining so high an end: it would mean a
master in the knowledge of wisdom, which implies more than a modest
man would claim for himself. Thus philosophy as well as wisdom would
always remain an ideal, which objectively is presented complete in
reason alone, while subjectively for the person it is only the goal of
his unceasing endeavours; and no one would be justified in
professing to be in possession of it so as to assume the name of
philosopher who could not also show its infallible effects in his
own person as an example (in his self-mastery and the unquestioned
interest that he takes pre-eminently in the general good), and this
the ancients also required as a condition of deserving that honourable
title.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 5}
We have another preliminary remark to make respecting the
dialectic of the pure practical reason, on the point of the definition
of the summum bonum (a successful solution of which dialectic would
lead us to expect, as in case of that of the theoretical reason, the
most beneficial effects, inasmuch as the self-contradictions of pure
practical reason honestly stated, and not concealed, force us to
undertake a complete critique of this faculty).
The moral law is the sole determining principle of a pure will.
But since this is merely formal (viz. , as prescribing only the form of
the maxim as universally legislative), it abstracts as a determining
principle from all matter that is to say, from every object of
volition. Hence, though the summum bonum may be the whole object of
a pure practical reason, i. e. , a pure will, yet it is not on that
account to be regarded as its determining principle; and the moral law
alone must be regarded as the principle on which that and its
realization or promotion are aimed at. This remark is important in
so delicate a case as the determination of moral principles, where the
slightest misinterpretation perverts men's minds. For it will have
been seen from the Analytic that, if we assume any object under the
name of a good as a determining principle of the will prior to the
moral law and then deduce from it the supreme practical principle,
this would always introduce heteronomy and crush out the moral
principle.
It is, however, evident that if the notion of the summum bonum
includes that of the moral law as its supreme condition, then the
summum bonum would not merely be an object, but the notion of it and
the conception of its existence as possible by our own practical
reason would likewise be the determining principle of the will,
since in that case the will is in fact determined by the moral law
which is already included in this conception, and by no other
object, as the principle of autonomy requires. This order of the
conceptions of determination of the will must not be lost sight of, as
otherwise we should misunderstand ourselves and think we had fallen
into a contradiction, while everything remains in perfect harmony.
BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2
CHAPTER II. Of the Dialectic of Pure Reason in defining the
Conception of the "Summum Bonum".
The conception of the summum itself contains an ambiguity which
might occasion needless disputes if we did not attend to it. The
summum may mean either the supreme (supremum) or the perfect
(consummatum). The former is that condition which is itself
unconditioned, i. e. , is not subordinate to any other (originarium);
the second is that whole which is not a part of a greater whole of the
same kind (perfectissimum). It has been shown in the Analytic that
virtue (as worthiness to be happy) is the supreme condition of all
that can appear to us desirable, and consequently of all our pursuit
of happiness, and is therefore the supreme good. But it does not
follow that it is the whole and perfect good as the object of the
desires of rational finite beings; for this requires happiness also,
and that not merely in the partial eyes of the person who makes
himself an end, but even in the judgement of an impartial reason,
which regards persons in general as ends in themselves. For to need
happiness, to deserve it, and yet at the same time not to
participate in it, cannot be consistent with the perfect volition of a
rational being possessed at the same time of all power, if, for the
sake of experiment, we conceive such a being. Now inasmuch as virtue
and happiness together constitute the possession of the summum bonum
in a person, and the distribution of happiness in exact proportion
to morality (which is the worth of the person, and his worthiness to
be happy) constitutes the summum bonum of a possible world; hence this
summum bonum expresses the whole, the perfect good, in which, however,
virtue as the condition is always the supreme good, since it has no
condition above it; whereas happiness, while it is pleasant to the
possessor of it, is not of itself absolutely and in all respects good,
but always presupposes morally right behaviour as its condition.
When two elements are necessarily united in one concept, they must
be connected as reason and consequence, and this either so that
their unity is considered as analytical (logical connection), or as
synthetical (real connection) the former following the law of
identity, the latter that of causality. The connection of virtue and
happiness may therefore be understood in two ways: either the
endeavour to be virtuous and the rational pursuit of happiness are not
two distinct actions, but absolutely identical, in which case no maxim
need be made the principle of the former, other than what serves for
the latter; or the connection consists in this, that virtue produces
happiness as something distinct from the consciousness of virtue, as a
cause produces an effect.
The ancient Greek schools were, properly speaking, only two, and
in determining the conception of the summum bonum these followed in
fact one and the same method, inasmuch as they did not allow virtue
and happiness to be regarded as two distinct elements of the summum
bonum, and consequently sought the unity of the principle by the
rule of identity; but they differed as to which of the two was to be
taken as the fundamental notion. The Epicurean said: "To be
conscious that one's maxims lead to happiness is virtue"; the Stoic
said: "To be conscious of one's virtue is happiness. " With the former,
Prudence was equivalent to morality; with the latter, who chose a
higher designation for virtue, morality alone was true wisdom.
While we must admire the men who in such early times tried all
imaginable ways of extending the domain of philosophy, we must at
the same time lament that their acuteness was unfortunately misapplied
in trying to trace out identity between two extremely heterogeneous
notions, those of happiness and virtue. But it agrees with the
dialectical spirit of their times (and subtle minds are even now
sometimes misled in the same way) to get rid of irreconcilable
differences in principle by seeking to change them into a mere contest
about words, and thus apparently working out the identity of the
notion under different names, and this usually occurs in cases where
the combination of heterogeneous principles lies so deep or so high,
or would require so complete a transformation of the doctrines assumed
in the rest of the philosophical system, that men are afraid to
penetrate deeply into the real difference and prefer treating it as
a difference in questions of form.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 5}
While both schools sought to trace out the identity of the practical
principles of virtue and happiness, they were not agreed as to the way
in which they tried to force this identity, but were separated
infinitely from one another, the one placing its principle on the side
of sense, the other on that of reason; the one in the consciousness of
sensible wants, the other in the independence of practical reason on
all sensible grounds of determination. According to the Epicurean, the
notion of virtue was already involved in the maxim: "To promote
one's own happiness"; according to the Stoics, on the other hand,
the feeling of happiness was already contained in the consciousness of
virtue. Now whatever is contained in another notion is identical
with part of the containing notion, but not with the whole, and
moreover two wholes may be specifically distinct, although they
consist of the same parts; namely if the parts are united into a whole
in totally different ways. The Stoic maintained that the virtue was
the whole summum bonum, and happiness only the consciousness of
possessing it, as making part of the state of the subject. The
Epicurean maintained that happiness was the whole summum bonum, and
virtue only the form of the maxim for its pursuit; viz. , the
rational use of the means for attaining it.
Now it is clear from the Analytic that the maxims of virtue and
those of private happiness are quite heterogeneous as to their supreme
practical principle, and, although they belong to one summum bonum
which together they make possible, yet they are so far from coinciding
that they restrict and check one another very much in the same
subject. Thus the question: "How is the summum bonum practically
possible? " still remains an unsolved problem, notwithstanding all
the attempts at coalition that have hitherto been made. The Analytic
has, however, shown what it is that makes the problem difficult to
solve; namely, that happiness and morality are two specifically
distinct elements of the summum bonum and, therefore, their
combination cannot be analytically cognised (as if the man that
seeks his own happiness should find by mere analysis of his conception
that in so acting he is virtuous, or as if the man that follows virtue
should in the consciousness of such conduct find that he is already
happy ipso facto), but must be a synthesis of concepts. Now since this
combination is recognised as a priori, and therefore as practically
necessary, and consequently not as derived from experience, so that
the possibility of the summum bonum does not rest on any empirical
principle, it follows that the deduction [legitimation] of this
concept must be transcendental. It is a priori (morally) necessary
to produce the summum bonum by freedom of will: therefore the
condition of its possibility must rest solely on a priori principles
of cognition.
I. The Antinomy of Practical Reason.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 10}
In the summum bonum which is practical for us, i. e. , to be
realized by our will, virtue and happiness are thought as
necessarily combined, so that the one cannot be assumed by pure
practical reason without the other also being attached to it. Now this
combination (like every other) is either analytical or synthetical. It
has been shown that it cannot be analytical; it must then be
synthetical and, more particularly, must be conceived as the
connection of cause and effect, since it concerns a practical good,
i. e. , one that is possible by means of action; consequently either the
desire of happiness must be the motive to maxims of virtue, or the
maxim of virtue must be the efficient cause of happiness. The first is
absolutely impossible, because (as was proved in the Analytic)
maxims which place the determining principle of the will in the desire
of personal happiness are not moral at all, and no virtue can be
founded on them. But the second is also impossible, because the
practical connection of causes and effects in the world, as the result
of the determination of the will, does not depend upon the moral
dispositions of the will, but on the knowledge of the laws of nature
and the physical power to use them for one's purposes; consequently we
cannot expect in the world by the most punctilious observance of the
moral laws any necessary connection of happiness with virtue
adequate to the summum bonum. Now, as the promotion of this summum
bonum, the conception of which contains this connection, is a priori a
necessary object of our will and inseparably attached to the moral
law, the impossibility of the former must prove the falsity of the
latter. If then the supreme good is not possible by practical rules,
then the moral law also which commands us to promote it is directed to
vain imaginary ends and must consequently be false.
II. Critical Solution of the Antinomy of Practical Reason.
The antinomy of pure speculative reason exhibits a similar
conflict between freedom and physical necessity in the causality of
events in the world. It was solved by showing that there is no real
contradiction when the events and even the world in which they occur
are regarded (as they ought to be) merely as appearances; since one
and the same acting being, as an appearance (even to his own inner
sense), has a causality in the world of sense that always conforms
to the mechanism of nature, but with respect to the same events, so
far as the acting person regards himself at the same time as a
noumenon (as pure intelligence in an existence not dependent on the
condition of time), he can contain a principle by which that causality
acting according to laws of nature is determined, but which is
itself free from all laws of nature.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 15}
It is just the same with the foregoing antinomy of pure practical
reason. The first of the two propositions, "That the endeavour after
happiness produces a virtuous mind," is absolutely false; but the
second, "That a virtuous mind necessarily produces happiness," is
not absolutely false, but only in so far as virtue is considered as
a form of causality in the sensible world, and consequently only if
I suppose existence in it to be the only sort of existence of a
rational being; it is then only conditionally false. But as I am not
only justified in thinking that I exist also as a noumenon in a
world of the understanding, but even have in the moral law a purely
intellectual determining principle of my causality (in the sensible
world), it is not impossible that morality of mind should have a
connection as cause with happiness (as an effect in the sensible
world) if not immediate yet mediate (viz. , through an intelligent
author of nature), and moreover necessary; while in a system of nature
which is merely an object of the senses, this combination could
never occur except contingently and, therefore, could not suffice
for the summum bonum.
Thus, notwithstanding this seeming conflict of practical reason with
itself, the summum bonum, which is the necessary supreme end of a will
morally determined, is a true object thereof; for it is practically
possible, and the maxims of the will which as regards their matter
refer to it have objective reality, which at first was threatened by
the antinomy that appeared in the connection of morality with
happiness by a general law; but this was merely from a
misconception, because the relation between appearances was taken
for a relation of the things in themselves to these appearances.
When we find ourselves obliged to go so far, namely, to the
connection with an intelligible world, to find the possibility of
the summum bonum, which reason points out to all rational beings as
the goal of all their moral wishes, it must seem strange that,
nevertheless, the philosophers both of ancient and modern times have
been able to find happiness in accurate proportion to virtue even in
this life (in the sensible world), or have persuaded themselves that
they were conscious thereof. For Epicurus as well as the Stoics
extolled above everything the happiness that springs from the
consciousness of living virtuously; and the former was not so base
in his practical precepts as one might infer from the principles of
his theory, which he used for explanation and not for action, or as
they were interpreted by many who were misled by his using the term
pleasure for contentment; on the contrary, he reckoned the most
disinterested practice of good amongst the ways of enjoying the most
intimate delight, and his scheme of pleasure (by which he meant
constant cheerfulness of mind) included the moderation and control
of the inclinations, such as the strictest moral philosopher might
require. He differed from the Stoics chiefly in making this pleasure
the motive, which they very rightly refused to do. For, on the one
hand, the virtuous Epicurus, like many well-intentioned men of this
day who do not reflect deeply enough on their principles, fell into
the error of presupposing the virtuous disposition in the persons
for whom he wished to provide the springs to virtue (and indeed the
upright man cannot be happy if he is not first conscious of his
uprightness; since with such a character the reproach that his habit
of thought would oblige him to make against himself in case of
transgression and his moral self-condemnation would rob him of all
enjoyment of the pleasantness which his condition might otherwise
contain). But the question is: How is such a disposition possible in
the first instance, and such a habit of thought in estimating the
worth of one's existence, since prior to it there can be in the
subject no feeling at all for moral worth? If a man is virtuous
without being conscious of his integrity in every action, he will
certainly not enjoy life, however favourable fortune may be to him
in its physical circumstances; but can we make him virtuous in the
first instance, in other words, before he esteems the moral worth of
his existence so highly, by praising to him the peace of mind that
would result from the consciousness of an integrity for which he has
no sense?
On the other hand, however, there is here an occasion of a vitium
subreptionis, and as it were of an optical illusion, in the
self-consciousness of what one does as distinguished from what one
feels- an illusion which even the most experienced cannot altogether
avoid. The moral disposition of mind is necessarily combined with a
consciousness that the will is determined directly by the law. Now the
consciousness of a determination of the faculty of desire is always
the source of a satisfaction in the resulting action; but this
pleasure, this satisfaction in oneself, is not the determining
principle of the action; on the contrary, the determination of the
will directly by reason is the source of the feeling of pleasure,
and this remains a pure practical not sensible determination of the
faculty of desire. Now as this determination has exactly the same
effect within in impelling to activity, that a feeling of the pleasure
to be expected from the desired action would have had, we easily
look on what we ourselves do as something which we merely passively
feel, and take the moral spring for a sensible impulse, just as it
happens in the so-called illusion of the senses (in this case the
inner sense). It is a sublime thing in human nature to be determined
to actions immediately by a purely rational law; sublime even is the
illusion that regards the subjective side of this capacity of
intellectual determination as something sensible and the effect of a
special sensible feeling (for an intellectual feeling would be a
contradiction). It is also of great importance to attend to this
property of our personality and as much as possible to cultivate the
effect of reason on this feeling. But we must beware lest by falsely
extolling this moral determining principle as a spring, making its
source lie in particular feelings of pleasure (which are in fact
only results), we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring, the
law itself, by putting as it were a false foil upon it. Respect, not
pleasure or enjoyment of happiness, is something for which it is not
possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its
foundation (for this would always be sensible and pathological); and
consciousness of immediate obligation of the will by the law is by
no means analogous to the feeling of pleasure, although in relation to
the faculty of desire it produces the same effect, but from
different sources: it is only by this mode of conception, however,
that we can attain what we are seeking, namely, that actions be done
not merely in accordance with duty (as a result of pleasant feelings),
but from duty, which must be the true end of all moral cultivation.
Have we not, however, a word which does not express enjoyment, as
happiness does, but indicates a satisfaction in one's existence, an
analogue of the happiness which must necessarily accompany the
consciousness of virtue? Yes this word is self-contentment which in
its proper signification always designates only a negative
satisfaction in one's existence, in which one is conscious of
needing nothing. Freedom and the consciousness of it as a faculty of
following the moral law with unyielding resolution is independence
of inclinations, at least as motives determining (though not as
affecting) our desire, and so far as I am conscious of this freedom in
following my moral maxims, it is the only source of an unaltered
contentment which is necessarily connected with it and rests on no
special feeling. This may be called intellectual contentment. The
sensible contentment (improperly so-called) which rests on the
satisfaction of the inclinations, however delicate they may be
imagined to be, can never be adequate to the conception of it. For the
inclinations change, they grow with the indulgence shown them, and
always leave behind a still greater void than we had thought to
fill. Hence they are always burdensome to a rational being, and,
although he cannot lay them aside, they wrest from him the wish to
be rid of them. Even an inclination to what is right (e. g. , to
beneficence), though it may much facilitate the efficacy of the
moral maxims, cannot produce any. For in these all must be directed to
the conception of the law as a determining principle, if the action is
to contain morality and not merely legality. Inclination is blind
and slavish, whether it be of a good sort or not, and, when morality
is in question, reason must not play the part merely of guardian to
inclination, but disregarding it altogether must attend simply to
its own interest as pure practical reason. This very feeling of
compassion and tender sympathy, if it precedes the deliberation on the
question of duty and becomes a determining principle, is even annoying
to right thinking persons, brings their deliberate maxims into
confusion, and makes them wish to be delivered from it and to be
subject to lawgiving reason alone.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 20}
From this we can understand how the consciousness of this faculty of
a pure practical reason produces by action (virtue) a consciousness of
mastery over one's inclinations, and therefore of independence of
them, and consequently also of the discontent that always
accompanies them, and thus a negative satisfaction with one's state,
i. e. , contentment, which is primarily contentment with one's own
person. Freedom itself becomes in this way (namely, indirectly)
capable of an enjoyment which cannot be called happiness, because it
does not depend on the positive concurrence of a feeling, nor is it,
strictly speaking, bliss, since it does not include complete
independence of inclinations and wants, but it resembles bliss in so
far as the determination of one's will at least can hold itself free
from their influence; and thus, at least in its origin, this enjoyment
is analogous to the self-sufficiency which we can ascribe only to
the Supreme Being.
From this solution of the antinomy of practical pure reason, it
follows that in practical principles we may at least conceive as
possible a natural and necessary connection between the
consciousness of morality and the expectation of a proportionate
happiness as its result, though it does not follow that we can know or
perceive this connection; that, on the other hand, principles of the
pursuit of happiness cannot possibly produce morality; that,
therefore, morality is the supreme good (as the first condition of the
summum bonum), while happiness constitutes its second element, but
only in such a way that it is the morally conditioned, but necessary
consequence of the former. Only with this subordination is the
summum bonum the whole object of pure practical reason, which must
necessarily conceive it as possible, since it commands us to
contribute to the utmost of our power to its realization. But since
the possibility of such connection of the conditioned with its
condition belongs wholly to the supersensual relation of things and
cannot be given according to the laws of the world of sense,
although the practical consequences of the idea belong to the world of
sense, namely, the actions that aim at realizing the summum bonum;
we will therefore endeavour to set forth the grounds of that
possibility, first, in respect of what is immediately in our power,
and then, secondly, in that which is not in our power, but which
reason presents to us as the supplement of our impotence, for the
realization of the summum bonum (which by practical principles is
necessary).
III. Of the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason in its
Union with the Speculative Reason.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 25}
By primacy between two or more things connected by reason, I
understand the prerogative, belonging to one, of being the first
determining principle in the connection with all the rest. In a
narrower practical sense it means the prerogative of the interest of
one in so far as the interest of the other is subordinated to it,
while it is not postponed to any other. To every faculty of the mind
we can attribute an interest, that is, a principle, that contains
the condition on which alone the former is called into exercise.
Reason, as the faculty of principles, determines the interest of all
the powers of the mind and is determined by its own. The interest of
its speculative employment consists in the cognition of the object
pushed to the highest a priori principles: that of its practical
employment, in the determination of the will in respect of the final
and complete end. As to what is necessary for the possibility of any
employment of reason at all, namely, that its principles and
affirmations should not contradict one another, this constitutes no
part of its interest, but is the condition of having reason at all; it
is only its development, not mere consistency with itself, that is
reckoned as its interest.
If practical reason could not assume or think as given anything
further than what speculative reason of itself could offer it from its
own insight, the latter would have the primacy. But supposing that
it had of itself original a priori principles with which certain
theoretical positions were inseparably connected, while these were
withdrawn from any possible insight of speculative reason (which,
however, they must not contradict); then the question is: Which
interest is the superior (not which must give way, for they are not
necessarily conflicting), whether speculative reason, which knows
nothing of all that the practical offers for its acceptance, should
take up these propositions and (although they transcend it) try to
unite them with its own concepts as a foreign possession handed over
to it, or whether it is justified in obstinately following its own
separate interest and, according to the canonic of Epicurus, rejecting
as vain subtlety everything that cannot accredit its objective reality
by manifest examples to be shown in experience, even though it
should be never so much interwoven with the interest of the
practical (pure) use of reason, and in itself not contradictory to the
theoretical, merely because it infringes on the interest of the
speculative reason to this extent, that it removes the bounds which
this latter had set to itself, and gives it up to every nonsense or
delusion of imagination?
In fact, so far as practical reason is taken as dependent on
pathological conditions, that is, as merely regulating the
inclinations under the sensible principle of happiness, we could not
require speculative reason to take its principles from such a
source. Mohammed's paradise, or the absorption into the Deity of the
theosophists and mystics would press their monstrosities on the reason
according to the taste of each, and one might as well have no reason
as surrender it in such fashion to all sorts of dreams. But if pure
reason of itself can be practical and is actually so, as the
consciousness of the moral law proves, then it is still only one and
the same reason which, whether in a theoretical or a practical point
of view, judges according to a priori principles; and then it is clear
that although it is in the first point of view incompetent to
establish certain propositions positively, which, however, do not
contradict it, then, as soon as these propositions are inseparably
attached to the practical interest of pure reason, it must accept
them, though it be as something offered to it from a foreign source,
something that has not grown on its own ground, but yet is
sufficiently authenticated; and it must try to compare and connect
them with everything that it has in its power as speculative reason.
It must remember, however, that these are not additions to its
insight, but yet are extensions of its employment in another,
namely, a practical aspect; and this is not in the least opposed to
its interest, which consists in the restriction of wild speculation.
Thus, when pure speculative and pure practical reason are combined
in one cognition, the latter has the primacy, provided, namely, that
this combination is not contingent and arbitrary, but founded a priori
on reason itself and therefore necessary. For without this
subordination there would arise a conflict of reason with itself;
since, if they were merely co-ordinate, the former would close its
boundaries strictly and admit nothing from the latter into its domain,
while the latter would extend its bounds over everything and when
its needs required would seek to embrace the former within them. Nor
could we reverse the order and require pure practical reason to be
subordinate to the speculative, since all interest is ultimately
practical, and even that of speculative reason is conditional, and
it is only in the practical employment of reason that it is complete.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 30}
IV. The Immortality of the Soul as a Postulate of
Pure Practical Reason.
The realization of the summum bonum in the world is the necessary
object of a will determinable by the moral law. But in this will the
perfect accordance of the mind with the moral law is the supreme
condition of the summum bonum. This then must be possible, as well
as its object, since it is contained in the command to promote the
latter. Now, the perfect accordance of the will with the moral law
is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible
world is capable at any moment of his existence. Since,
nevertheless, it is required as practically necessary, it can only
be found in a progress in infinitum towards that perfect accordance,
and on the principles of pure practical reason it is necessary to
assume such a practical progress as the real object of our will.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 35}
Now, this endless progress is only possible on the supposition of an
endless duration of the existence and personality of the same rational
being (which is called the immortality of the soul). The summum bonum,
then, practically is only possible on the supposition of the
immortality of the soul; consequently this immortality, being
inseparably connected with the moral law, is a postulate of pure
practical reason (by which I mean a theoretical proposition, not
demonstrable as such, but which is an inseparable result of an
unconditional a priori practical law.
This principle of the moral destination of our nature, namely,
that it is only in an endless progress that we can attain perfect
accordance with the moral law, is of the greatest use, not merely
for the present purpose of supplementing the impotence of
speculative reason, but also with respect to religion. In default of
it, either the moral law is quite degraded from its holiness, being
made out to be indulgent and conformable to our convenience, or else
men strain their notions of their vocation and their expectation to an
unattainable goal, hoping to acquire complete holiness of will, and so
they lose themselves in fanatical theosophic dreams, which wholly
contradict self-knowledge. In both cases the unceasing effort to
obey punctually and thoroughly a strict and inflexible command of
reason, which yet is not ideal but real, is only hindered. For a
rational but finite being, the only thing possible is an endless
progress from the lower to higher degrees of moral perfection. The
Infinite Being, to whom the condition of time is nothing, sees in this
to us endless succession a whole of accordance with the moral law; and
the holiness which his command inexorably requires, in order to be
true to his justice in the share which He assigns to each in the
summum bonum, is to be found in a single intellectual intuition of the
whole existence of rational beings. All that can be expected of the
creature in respect of the hope of this participation would be the
consciousness of his tried character, by which from the progress he
has hitherto made from the worse to the morally better, and the
immutability of purpose which has thus become known to him, he may
hope for a further unbroken continuance of the same, however long
his existence may last, even beyond this life, * and thus he may
hope, not indeed here, nor in any imaginable point of his future
existence, but only in the endlessness of his duration (which God
alone can survey) to be perfectly adequate to his will (without
indulgence or excuse, which do not harmonize with justice).
* It seems, nevertheless, impossible for a creature to have the
conviction of his unwavering firmness of mind in the progress
towards goodness. On this account the Christian religion makes it come
only from the same Spirit that works sanctification, that is, this
firm purpose, and with it the consciousness of steadfastness in the
moral progress. But naturally one who is conscious that he has
persevered through a long portion of his life up to the end in the
progress to the better, and this genuine moral motives, may well
have the comforting hope, though not the certainty, that even in an
existence prolonged beyond this life he will continue in these
principles; and although he is never justified here in his own eyes,
nor can ever hope to be so in the increased perfection of his
nature, to which he looks forward, together with an increase of
duties, nevertheless in this progress which, though it is directed
to a goal infinitely remote, yet is in God's sight regarded as
equivalent to possession, he may have a prospect of a blessed
future; for this is the word that reason employs to designate
perfect well-being independent of all contingent causes of the
world, and which, like holiness, is an idea that can be contained only
in an endless progress and its totality, and consequently is never
fully attained by a creature.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 40}
V. The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason.
In the foregoing analysis the moral law led to a practical problem
which is prescribed by pure reason alone, without the aid of any
sensible motives, namely, that of the necessary completeness of the
first and principle element of the summum bonum, viz. , morality;
and, as this can be perfectly solved only in eternity, to the
postulate of immortality. The same law must also lead us to affirm the
possibility of the second element of the summum bonum, viz. , happiness
proportioned to that morality, and this on grounds as disinterested as
before, and solely from impartial reason; that is, it must lead to the
supposition of the existence of a cause adequate to this effect; in
other words, it must postulate the existence of God, as the
necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum (an
object of the will which is necessarily connected with the moral
legislation of pure reason). We proceed to exhibit this connection
in a convincing manner.
Happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world with
whom everything goes according to his wish and will; it rests,
therefore, on the harmony of physical nature with his whole end and
likewise with the essential determining principle of his will. Now the
moral law as a law of freedom commands by determining principles,
which ought to be quite independent of nature and of its harmony
with our faculty of desire (as springs). But the acting rational being
in the world is not the cause of the world and of nature itself. There
is not the least ground, therefore, in the moral law for a necessary
connection between morality and proportionate happiness in a being
that belongs to the world as part of it, and therefore dependent on
it, and which for that reason cannot by his will be a cause of this
nature, nor by his own power make it thoroughly harmonize, as far as
his happiness is concerned, with his practical principles.
Nevertheless, in the practical problem of pure reason, i. e. , the
necessary pursuit of the summum bonum, such a connection is postulated
as necessary: we ought to endeavour to promote the summum bonum,
which, therefore, must be possible. Accordingly, the existence of a
cause of all nature, distinct from nature itself and containing the
principle of this connection, namely, of the exact harmony of
happiness with morality, is also postulated. Now this supreme cause
must contain the principle of the harmony of nature, not merely with a
law of the will of rational beings, but with the conception of this
law, in so far as they make it the supreme determining principle of
the will, and consequently not merely with the form of morals, but
with their morality as their motive, that is, with their moral
character. Therefore, the summum bonum is possible in the world only
on the supposition of a Supreme Being having a causality corresponding
to moral character. Now a being that is capable of acting on the
conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the
causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is
his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be
presupposed as a condition of the summum bonum is a being which is the
cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author,
that is God. It follows that the postulate of the possibility of the
highest derived good (the best world) is likewise the postulate of the
reality of a highest original good, that is to say, of the existence
of God. Now it was seen to be a duty for us to promote the summum
bonum; consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a
necessity connected with duty as a requisite, that we should
presuppose the possibility of this summum bonum; and as this is
possible only on condition of the existence of God, it inseparably
connects the supposition of this with duty; that is, it is morally
necessary to assume the existence of God.
It must be remarked here that this moral necessity is subjective,
that is, it is a want, and not objective, that is, itself a duty,
for there cannot be a duty to suppose the existence of anything (since
this concerns only the theoretical employment of reason). Moreover, it
is not meant by this that it is necessary to suppose the existence
of God as a basis of all obligation in general (for this rests, as has
been sufficiently proved, simply on the autonomy of reason itself).
What belongs to duty here is only the endeavour to realize and promote
the summum bonum in the world, the possibility of which can
therefore be postulated; and as our reason finds it not conceivable
except on the supposition of a supreme intelligence, the admission
of this existence is therefore connected with the consciousness of our
duty, although the admission itself belongs to the domain of
speculative reason. Considered in respect of this alone, as a
principle of explanation, it may be called a hypothesis, but in
reference to the intelligibility of an object given us by the moral
law (the summum bonum), and consequently of a requirement for
practical purposes, it may be called faith, that is to say a pure
rational faith, since pure reason (both in its theoretical and
practical use) is the sole source from which it springs.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 45}
From this deduction it is now intelligible why the Greek schools
could never attain the solution of their problem of the practical
possibility of the summum bonum, because they made the rule of the use
which the will of man makes of his freedom the sole and sufficient
ground of this possibility, thinking that they had no need for that
purpose of the existence of God. No doubt they were so far right
that they established the principle of morals of itself
independently of this postulate, from the relation of reason only to
the will, and consequently made it the supreme practical condition
of the summum bonum; but it was not therefore the whole condition of
its possibility. The Epicureans had indeed assumed as the supreme
principle of morality a wholly false one, namely that of happiness,
and had substituted for a law a maxim of arbitrary choice according to
every man's inclination; they proceeded, however, consistently
enough in this, that they degraded their summum bonum likewise, just
in proportion to the meanness of their fundamental principle, and
looked for no greater happiness than can be attained by human prudence
(including temperance and moderation of the inclinations), and this as
we know would be scanty enough and would be very different according
to circumstances; not to mention the exceptions that their maxims must
perpetually admit and which make them incapable of being laws. The
Stoics, on the contrary, had chosen their supreme practical
principle quite rightly, making virtue the condition of the summum
bonum; but when they represented the degree of virtue required by
its pure law as fully attainable in this life, they not only
strained the moral powers of the man whom they called the wise
beyond all the limits of his nature, and assumed a thing that
contradicts all our knowledge of men, but also and principally they
would not allow the second element of the summum bonum, namely,
happiness, to be properly a special object of human desire, but made
their wise man, like a divinity in his consciousness of the excellence
of his person, wholly independent of nature (as regards his own
contentment); they exposed him indeed to the evils of life, but made
him not subject to them (at the same time representing him also as
free from moral evil). They thus, in fact, left out the second element
of the summum bonum namely, personal happiness, placing it solely in
action and satisfaction with one's own personal worth, thus
including it in the consciousness of being morally minded, in which
they Might have been sufficiently refuted by the voice of their own
nature.
The doctrine of Christianity, * even if we do not yet consider it
as a religious doctrine, gives, touching this point, a conception of
the summum bonum (the kingdom of God), which alone satisfies the
strictest demand of practical reason. The moral law is holy
(unyielding) and demands holiness of morals, although all the moral
perfection to which man can attain is still only virtue, that is, a
rightful disposition arising from respect for the law, implying
consciousness of a constant propensity to transgression, or at least a
want of purity, that is, a mixture of many spurious (not moral)
motives of obedience to the law, consequently a self-esteem combined
with humility. In respect, then, of the holiness which the Christian
law requires, this leaves the creature nothing but a progress in
infinitum, but for that very reason it justifies him in hoping for
an endless duration of his existence. The worth of a character
perfectly accordant with the moral law is infinite, since the only
restriction on all possible happiness in the judgement of a wise and
all powerful distributor of it is the absence of conformity of
rational beings to their duty. But the moral law of itself does not
promise any happiness, for according to our conceptions of an order of
nature in general, this is not necessarily connected with obedience to
the law. Now Christian morality supplies this defect (of the second
indispensable element of the summum bonum) by representing the world
in which rational beings devote themselves with all their soul to
the moral law, as a kingdom of God, in which nature and morality are
brought into a harmony foreign to each of itself, by a holy Author who
makes the derived summum bonum possible. Holiness of life is
prescribed to them as a rule even in this life, while the welfare
proportioned to it, namely, bliss, is represented as attainable only
in an eternity; because the former must always be the pattern of their
conduct in every state, and progress towards it is already possible
and necessary in this life; while the latter, under the name of
happiness, cannot be attained at all in this world (so far as our
own power is concerned), and therefore is made simply an object of
hope. Nevertheless, the Christian principle of morality itself is
not theological (so as to be heteronomy), but is autonomy of pure
practical reason, since it does not make the knowledge of God and
His will the foundation of these laws, but only of the attainment of
the summum bonum, on condition of following these laws, and it does
not even place the proper spring of this obedience in the desired
results, but solely in the conception of duty, as that of which the
faithful observance alone constitutes the worthiness to obtain those
happy consequences.
* It is commonly held that the Christian precept of morality has no
advantage in respect of purity over the moral conceptions of the
Stoics; the distinction between them is, however, very obvious. The
Stoic system made the consciousness of strength of mind the pivot on
which all moral dispositions should turn; and although its disciples
spoke of duties and even defined them very well, yet they placed the
spring and proper determining principle of the will in an elevation of
the mind above the lower springs of the senses, which owe their
power only to weakness of mind. With them therefore, virtue was a sort
of heroism in the wise man raising himself above the animal nature
of man, is sufficient for Himself, and, while he prescribes duties
to others, is himself raised above them, and is not subject to any
temptation to transgress the moral law. All this, however, they
could not have done if they had conceived this law in all its purity
and strictness, as the precept of the Gospel does. When I give the
name idea to a perfection to which nothing adequate can be given in
experience, it does not follow that the moral ideas are thing
transcendent, that is something of which we could not even determine
the concept adequately, or of which it is uncertain whether there is
any object corresponding to it at all, as is the case with the ideas
of speculative reason; on the contrary, being types of practical
perfection, they serve as the indispensable rule of conduct and
likewise as the standard of comparison. Now if I consider Christian
morals on their philosophical side, then compared with the ideas of
the Greek schools, they would appear as follows: the ideas of the
Cynics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Christians are: simplicity
of nature, prudence, wisdom, and holiness. In respect of the way of
attaining them, the Greek schools were distinguished from one
another thus that the Cynics only required common sense, the others
the path of science, but both found the mere use of natural powers
sufficient for the purpose. Christian morality, because its precept is
framed (as a moral precept must be) so pure and unyielding, takes from
man all confidence that he can be fully adequate to it, at least in
this life, but again sets it up by enabling us to hope that if we
act as well as it is in our power to do, then what is not in our power
will come in to our aid from another source, whether we know how
this may be or not. Aristotle and Plato differed only as to the origin
of our moral conceptions.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 50}
In this manner, the moral laws lead through the conception of the
summum bonum as the object and final end of pure practical reason to
religion, that is, to the recognition of all duties as divine
commands, not as sanctions, that is to say, arbitrary ordinances of
a foreign and contingent in themselves, but as essential laws of every
free will in itself, which, nevertheless, must be regarded as commands
of the Supreme Being, because it is only from a morally perfect
(holy and good) and at the same time all-powerful will, and
consequently only through harmony with this will, that we can hope
to attain the summum bonum which the moral law makes it our duty to
take as the object of our endeavours. Here again, then, all remains
disinterested and founded merely on duty; neither fear nor hope
being made the fundamental springs, which if taken as principles would
destroy the whole moral worth of actions. The moral law commands me to
make the highest possible good in a world the ultimate object of all
my conduct. But I cannot hope to effect this otherwise than by the
harmony of my will with that of a holy and good Author of the world;
and although the conception of the summum bonum as a whole, in which
the greatest happiness is conceived as combined in the most exact
proportion with the highest degree of moral perfection (possible in
creatures), includes my own happiness, yet it is not this that is
the determining principle of the will which is enjoined to promote the
summum bonum, but the moral law, which, on the contrary, limits by
strict conditions my unbounded desire of happiness.
Hence also morality is not properly the doctrine how we should
make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of happiness. It
is only when religion is added that there also comes in the hope of
participating some day in happiness in proportion as we have
endeavoured to be not unworthy of it.
A man is worthy to possess a thing or a state when his possession of
it is in harmony with the summum bonum.
