++Groundlaying++
++toward the++
++Metaphysics++
++of Morals++
++by++
++Immanuel Kant.++
++Second Edition.++
_____________________________
++Riga,++
++by Johann Friedrich Hartknoch++
++1786.++
++Preface.++
Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences:
++physics++, ++ethics++, and ++logic++. This division
is perfectly suitable to the nature of the thing, and
there is nothing to improve about it, except perhaps
only to add its principle, in order in such way partly
to assure oneself of its completeness, partly to be
able to determine correctly the necessary subdivisions.
All rational cognition is either +material+ and considers
some object; or +formal+, and occupies itself merely
with the form of the understanding and of reason itself
and the universal rules of thinking in general, without
distinction of objects. Formal philosophy is called
++logic++, the material, however,
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which has to do with determinate objects and the laws
to which they are subjected, is again twofold. For
these laws are either laws of +nature+, or of +freedom+.
The science of the first is called ++physics++, that
of the other is ++ethics++; the former is also named
doctrine of nature, the latter doctrine of morals.
Logic can have no empirical part, i.e. one such, where
the universal and necessary laws of thinking rest on
grounds which were taken from experience; for otherwise
it would not be logic, i.e. a canon for the understanding,
or the reason, which is valid for all thinking and
must be demonstrated. On the other hand, natural as
well as moral philosophy can each have their empirical
part, because the former must determine its laws of
nature as an object of experience, the latter however
for the will of the human being so far as it is affected
by nature, the first to be sure as laws according to
which everything happens, the
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second as such according to which everything ought to
happen, but still also with consideration of the conditions
under which it often does not happen.
One can name all philosophy, so far as it is founded
on grounds of experience, +empirical+, that however,
so far as it explains its teachings only from principles
a priori, +pure+ philosophy. The latter, if it is merely
formal, is called +logic+; if, however, it is limited
to determinate objects of the understanding, then it
is called +metaphysics+.
In such way the idea of a twofold metaphysics arises,
of a +metaphysics of nature+ and of a +metaphysics
of morals+. Physics will thus have its empirical, but
also a rational part; ethics likewise; although here
the empirical part especially could be called +practical
anthropology+, the rational, however, properly +morals+.
All trades, crafts and arts have gained through the
distribution of labor,
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where, that is to say, no one makes everything, but
each restricts oneself to certain labor which differs
noticeably from others according to its mode of treatment,
in order to be able to do it in the greatest perfection
and with more ease. Where the labors are not in this
way differentiated and divided, where each is a Jack-of-all-trades,
there the trades still lie in the greatest barbarism.
But although it would for itself be an object not unworthy
of consideration, to ask: whether pure philosophy in
all its parts would not require its special man, and
would it not be better for the whole of the learned
trade, if those, who are accustomed to sell the empirical
mixed with the rational according to the taste of the
public in all kinds of proportions unknown even to
themselves, who name themselves independent thinkers,
others however, who prepare the merely rational part,
hair-splitters, would be warned, not to work at two
tasks at the same time, which in the way to handle
them, are entirely very different, for each of which
perhaps a special talent is required,
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and of which union in one person produces only bunglers:
nevertheless, I here ask only, whether the nature of
science does not always require separating carefully
the empirical from the rational part and sending before
the proper (empirical) physics a metaphysics of nature,
but before practical anthropology a metaphysics of
morals, which must be carefully cleansed of everything
empirical, in order to know how much pure reason in
both cases can achieve and from which sources it itself
draws its own instruction a priori, whether the latter
task is conducted by all teachers of morals (whose
name is legion) or only by some who feel a calling
to it.
Since my purpose here is properly directed to moral
philosophy, I limit the proposed question only to this:
whether one is not of the opinion that it is of the
utmost necessity to work up once a pure moral philosophy
which is completely cleansed of everything that
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might be only empirical and belong to anthropology;
for that there must be such one is clear of itself
from the common idea of duty and of moral laws. Everyone
must admit that a law, if it is to hold morally, i.e.
as a ground of an obligation, must carry about itself
absolute necessity; that the command: thou shalt not
lie, holds not at all merely for humans, other rational
beings having themselves, however, to pay no heed to
it, and similarly for all remaining proper moral laws;
that therefore the ground of the obligation here must
be looked for not in the nature of the human being,
or the circumstances in the world, in which it is placed,
but a priori only in concepts of pure reason, and that
every other prescription which is grounded on principles
of mere experience, and even a prescription universal
in a certain respect, so far as it is based in the
least part, perhaps only as regards a motive, on empirical
grounds, can to be sure be called a practical rule,
never however a moral law.
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Thus the moral laws together with their principles among
all practical cognitions differ not only essentially
from everything else in which there is anything empirical,
but all moral philosophy rests completely on its pure
part, and, applied to the human being, it borrows not
the least from the knowledge of human beings (anthropology),
but gives it, as a rational being, laws a priori, which
of course still require a power of judgment sharpened
through experience, in order partly to distinguish
in which cases they have their application, partly
to secure them entry into the will of the human being
and vigor for their practice, since this, as itself
affected with so many inclinations, is no doubt capable
of the idea of a practical pure reason, but not so
easily able of making it in concreto effective in its
conduct of life.
A metaphysics of morals is therefore indispensably necessary,
not merely from a motive of speculation, in order to
investigate the source of the practical ground propositions
lying a priori in our reason,
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but because morals themselves remain subject to all
kinds of corruption so long as that guide and highest
standard of their correct valuation is lacking. For
with that which is to be morally good it is not enough
that it be in +conformity+ with the moral law, but
it must also be done +for the sake of it+; failing
which, that conformity is only very contingent and
precarious because the unmoral ground will now and
then to be sure produce actions conforming to law,
but again and again actions contrary to law. Now, however,
the moral law is in its purity and genuineness (precisely
which in practical matters counts the most) to be sought
nowhere else than in a pure philosophy, and therefore
this (metaphysics) must precede, and without it there
can be no moral philosophy at all; that which mixes
these pure principles with the empirical does not even
deserve the name of a philosophy (for, by this, this
distinguishes itself precisely from common rational
cognition, that it presents in a separated science
what the latter only confusedly comprehends),
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much less of a moral philosophy, because precisely through
this confusion it even damages the purity of morals
themselves and proceeds against its own end.
Let one nevertheless certainly not think that what is
here demanded one already has in the propaedeutic of
the famous +Wolff+ before his moral philosophy, namely
before what he called the +universal practical philosophy+,
and thus here a completely new field is not at all
to be broken into. Precisely because it was to be a
universal practical philosophy, it has drawn into consideration
not a will of any special kind, for instance one which,
without any empirical motives, would be determined
completely from principles a priori, and which one
could call a pure will, but willing in general with
all actions and conditions, which belong to it in this
general sense, and by this it differs from a metaphysics
of morals, just in this way as general logic differs
from transcendental philosophy,
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of which the first explains the actions and rules of
thinking +in general+, the latter however only the
special actions and rules of ++pure++ thinking, i.e.,
of that, by which objects are cognized completely a
priori. For the metaphysics of morals is to investigate
the idea and the principles of a possible +pure+ will
and not the actions and conditions of human willing
in general, which for the most part are drawn from
psychology. That in the universal practical philosophy
(although contrary to all authorization) moral laws
and duty are also spoken of, constitutes no objection
opposed to my assertion. For the authors of that science
remain true to their idea of it also in this; they
do not distinguish the motives which, as such, are
represented completely a priori merely through reason
and are properly moral from the empirical, which the
understanding raises merely through comparison of experiences
to universal concepts, but consider them without paying
attention to the difference
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of their sources, only according to their greater or
smaller amount (since they are all looked upon as of
like kind) and in doing this make themselves their
concept of +obligation+, which of course is anything
but moral, but still so constituted, as can only be
demanded in a philosophy that judges not at all over
the +origin+ of all possible practical concepts whether
they occur also a priori or merely a posteriori.
In the intention at present to deliver someday a metaphysics
of morals, I let this groundlaying take the lead. To
be sure, there is properly no other foundation for
it than the critique of a +pure practical reason+,
just as for metaphysics there is no other than the
already delivered critique of pure speculative reason.
But, partly, the former is not of such extreme necessity
as the latter because human reason in moral matters
can easily be brought, even in the case of the commonest
understanding, to great correctness and completeness,
whereas it is in theoretical, but pure, use wholly
and
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entirely dialectical: partly, I require for the critique
of a pure practical reason, that, if it is to be finished,
its unity with the speculative must at the same time
be able to be presented in a common principle, because
there can, after all, in the end be only one and the
same reason that must be differentiated merely in its
application. I was, however, here not yet able to bring
it to such a completeness without bringing in considerations
of a quite different kind and confusing the reader.
For that reason I have, instead of the designation
of a +critique of pure practical reason+, helped myself
to that of a +groundlaying toward the metaphysics of
morals+.
Because, however, thirdly, a metaphysics of morals,
in spite of the forbidding title, is nevertheless also
capable of a great degree of popularity and suitability
to the common understanding, I think it useful to separate
this preparatory work of the foundation from it, in
order that subtleties which are unavoidable in it
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in the future need not attach to more comprehensible
teachings.
The present groundlaying is, however, nothing more than
the search for and establishment +of the highest principle
of morality+, which constitutes by itself a business
complete in its purpose and to be separate from all
other moral investigation. No doubt my assertions over
this important, and up to now by far still not adequately
discussed, main question would receive through application
of the same principle to the whole system much light
and through the adequacy, which it shows everywhere,
great confirmation: but I had to give up this advantage,
which would be also at bottom more self-loving than
generally useful, because the ease in the use of and
the apparent adequacy of a principle furnishes no completely
secure proof of the correctness of it, rather rouses
a certain bias not to investigate and to weigh it for
itself, without any regard for the consequences, in
all strictness.
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I have taken my method in this writing in such a way
that, I believe, it is the most fitting, if one wants
to take the path from the common cognition to the determination
of its highest principle analytically and again back
from the examination of this principle and its sources
to common cognition, in which its use is found, synthetically.
The division has therefore turned out in this way:
1. +First Section:+ Transition from
the common moral rational cognition
to the philosophical.
2. +Second Section:+ Transition from
the popular moral philosophy to the
metaphysics of morals.
3. +Third Section:+ Last step from
the metaphysics of morals to the critique of
pure practical reason.
____________________________
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++First Section.++
++Transition++
+from the common moral rational cognition+
+to the philosophical.+
It is possible to think nothing anywhere in the world,
indeed generally even out of it, which could without
limitation be held to be good, except only a ++good
will++. Understanding, wit, power of judgment and whatever
the +talents+ of the mind may otherwise be called,
or courage, resolution, perseverance in purpose, as
qualities of +temperament+, are without doubt for many
a purpose good and desirable; but they can also become
extremely bad and harmful, if the will, which is to
make use of these natural gifts and whose distinctive
quality is therefore called +character+, is not good.
With +gifts of fortune+ it is just in this way qualified.
Power, riches, honor, even health and the whole well-being
and satisfaction with one's condition under
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the name of +happiness+ produce courage and by this
often also arrogance, where a good will is not present,
which corrects their influence on the mind and with
this also the whole principle of acting and makes them
accord with universal ends; not to mention, that a
rational impartial spectator even by the view of an
uninterrupted prosperity of a being, adorned with no
trait of a pure and good will, can never again have
a satisfaction, and so the good will appears to constitute
the unavoidable condition even of the worthiness to
be happy.
Some qualities are even favorable to this good will
itself and can much ease its work, have however for
all that no inner unconditional worth, but always still
presuppose a good will, which limits the high esteem
that one after all justly carries for them and does
not permit them to be held to be absolutely good.
Moderation in emotional disturbances and passions,
self-restraint and sober reflection are not only for
many kinds of purpose good, but appear to constitute
even a part of the +inner+ worth of the person; but
it lacks much that would be needed in order to declare
them without limitation to be good (however unconditionally
they were praised by the ancients). For without ground
propositions of a good will they can become extremely
bad, and the cold blood of a scoundrel makes him
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not only far more dangerous, but also immediately in
our eyes even more abominable than he would be held
to be without this.
The good will is not through that which it effects or
accomplishes, not through its suitability to the attainment
of some proposed end, but only through the willing,
i.e. in itself, good, and, considered for itself, without
comparison of far higher value than anything which
could ever be brought about through it in favor of
any inclination, even if one wants, of the sum of all
inclinations. Even if this will, through a special
disfavor of fate, or through the scanty endowment of
a stepmotherly nature, were wholly lacking the capacity
to carry through its purpose; if, by its greatest effort
nevertheless nothing were accomplished by it, and only
the good will (of course not at all as a mere wish,
but as the summoning of all means so far as they are
in our power) were left over: then it would still shine
for itself like a jewel, as something which has its
full worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitlessness can
neither add something to this worth, nor take anything
away. It would, as it were, only be the setting in
order to be better able to handle it in common commerce,
or to call to itself the attention of those who are
not yet adequate connoisseurs, not however in order
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to recommend it to connoisseurs and to determine its
worth.
There is, nevertheless, in this idea of the absolute
worth of the mere will, without taking into account
some utility in its valuation, something so odd, that,
despite all agreement even of common reason with it,
nevertheless a suspicion must arise that perhaps mere
high-flying fantasy secretly lies as the ground, and
that nature, in its purpose in having reason attached
to our will as its governess, may be falsely understood.
Hence we will put this idea from this point of view
to the test.
In the natural predispositions of an organized being,
i.e., a being arranged purposively for life, we assume
it as a ground proposition that no organ for any end
will be found in it, except what is also the most appropriate
for it and the most suitable to it. Now if in a being
which has reason and a will, its +preservation+, its
+well-being+, in a word its +happiness+, were the proper
end of nature, then it would have hit very badly on
its arrangement for this to select the reason of the
creature as the executrix of its purpose. For all actions
that it has to carry out for this purpose
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and the whole rule of its behavior would be prescribed
to it much more exactly by instinct and that end would
have been able to be attained by this much more safely
than it can ever be by reason, and should this as well
over and above have been given to the favored creature,
then it would only have had to serve it in order to
meditate on the happy predisposition of its nature,
to admire it, to enjoy it and to be thankful for the
beneficent cause of it; not however, in order to submit
its faculty of desire to that weak and deceitful guidance
and to meddle in the purpose of nature; in a word,
it would have ensured that reason struck out not in
+practical use+ and had the audacity, with its feeble
insights, to think out for itself the plan of happiness
and the means to reach it; nature would have taken
over not only the choice of ends, but also even of
the means and with wise foresight entrusted both only
to instinct.
In fact we also find that the more a cultivated reason
occupies itself with the aim of the enjoyment of life
and of happiness, the further does the human being
deviate from true contentment, from which arises with
many and to be sure those most tested in the use of
it, if they are only candid enough to admit it,
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a certain degree of +misology+, i.e., hatred of reason,
because they, after rough calculation of all advantage
which they draw, I do not want to say from the invention
of all arts of common luxury, but even from the sciences
(which in the end also appear to them to be a luxury
of the understanding), nevertheless find that they
themselves in fact have only brought more hardship
down on their heads than have gained in happiness and
on that point finally rather envy than despise the
more common run of human being, which is nearer to
the guidance of mere natural instinct, and which does
not allow its reason much influence on its doing and
letting. And so far one must admit that the judgment
of those who greatly moderate and even decrease below
zero the boastful eulogies of advantages which reason
in view of happiness and contentment of life is to
supply to us is in no way peevish or ungrateful for
the kindness of world government, but that the idea
of another and much worthier purpose of their existence
lies secretly as ground for these judgments, for which
and not for happiness reason is quite properly destined,
and for which therefore, as highest condition, the
private purpose of the human being must largely make
way.
For since reason for that purpose is not able enough
so as to guide reliably the will in view of its objects
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and of the satisfaction of all our needs (which it in
part even multiplies), as to which end an implanted
natural instinct would have much more certainly led,
nevertheless however reason as a practical faculty,
i.e. as one that is to have influence on the +will+,
is still alloted to us; so its true function must be
not at all to produce a will good +as a means+ to some
other purpose but a +will good in itself+, for which
purpose reason was absolutely necessary, where otherwise
nature has everywhere in the distribution of its predispositions
purposefully gone to work. This will may thus, to be
sure, not be the sole and the complete good, but it
must yet be the highest good and for all the rest,
even every longing for happiness, be the condition,
in which case it is entirely consistent with the wisdom
of nature, if one notices that the cultivation of reason,
which is required for the first and unconditional purpose,
limits the attainment of the second, which always is
conditioned, namely of happiness, at least in this
life in many a way, indeed can even decrease it below
nothing, without nature proceeding unpurposively in
this, because reason, which cognizes its highest practical
function in the establishment of a good will, is capable
by attainment of this purpose only of a satisfaction
of its own kind, namely from the fulfillment of an
end which in turn only reason
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determines, even if this should be connected with many
impairments which happen to the ends of inclination.
In order, however, to explicate the concept of a will
to be highly esteemed in itself and good without further
purpose, just as it is already present in the naturally
sound understanding and needs not so much to be taught
as rather only to be cleared up, this concept, which
in the valuation of the whole worth of our actions
always stands at the top and constitutes the condition
of everything left over: we want to take up before
ourselves the concept of ++duty++, which contains that
of a good will, although under certain subjective limitations
and hindrances which, however, far from that they should
hide it and make it unrecognizable, rather bring it
out by contrast and allow it to shine forth that much
more brightly.
I here pass over all actions which are already recognized
as contrary to duty, although they might be useful
for this or that purpose; for with them the question
is not at all even whether they might be done +from
duty+, since they even conflict with this. I also set
aside the actions which actually are in conformity
with duty but to which human beings immediately have
+no inclination+, which, however, they nevertheless
practice because they are driven to it by another inclination.
For
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there it is easy to distinguish whether the action conforming
to duty is done +from duty+ or from self-seeking purpose.
It is far more difficult to notice this difference
where the action is in conformity with duty and the
subject moreover has an +immediate+ inclination to
it. E.g., it is certainly in conformity with duty that
the shopkeeper does not overcharge his inexperienced
buyers, and, where there is much commerce, the shrewd
merchant also does not do this, but holds a fixed common
price for everyone, so that a child buys from him just
as well as every other. One is thus +honestly+ served;
but that is not nearly enough in order on that account
to believe the merchant has acted in this way from
duty and ground propositions of honesty; his advantage
required it; but that he moreover still should have
an immediate inclination for the buyers in order, as
it were, from love to give no one a preference in price
over another, cannot here be assumed. Thus the action
was done neither from duty, nor from immediate inclination,
but merely done for a self-interested purpose.
On the other hand, to preserve one's life is a duty,
and besides everyone also has an immediate inclination
for it. But, on account of this, the often anxious
care, which the greatest part of human beings takes
of it, still has no inner worth, and its maxim no moral
content. They preserve their lives to be sure +in conformity
with duty+,
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but not +from duty+. On the other hand, if adversities
and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the
taste for life; if the unhappy one, strong of soul,
more angered over his fate than despondent or dejected,
wishes for death and yet preserves his life without
loving it, not from inclination or fear, but from duty;
then his maxim has a moral content.
To be beneficent, where one can, is a duty, and besides
there are many so compassionately attuned souls that
they, even without another motive of vanity or of self-interest,
find an inner pleasure in spreading joy around themselves,
and who can take delight in the satisfaction of others,
so far as it is their work. But I maintain that in
such a case, action of this kind, however in conformity
with duty, however kind it is, nevertheless has no
true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations,
e.g. with the inclination for honor, which, if it luckily
hits on what in fact is generally good and in conformity
with duty, therefore honorable, deserves praise and
encouragement, but not high esteem; for the maxim lacks
moral content, namely to do such actions not from inclination,
but +from duty+. Granted, then, that the mind of that
friend of the human being were clouded over by its
own sorrow, which extinguishes all
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compassion for the fate of others, he still had power
to benefit other sufferers, but foreign need did not
move him because he is sufficiently occupied with his
own, and now, since no inclination incites him further
to it, he nevertheless tears himself from out of this
deadly insensibility and does the action without any
inclination, merely from duty, then it has for the
first time its genuine moral worth. Further still:
if nature had generally put little sympathy in the
heart of this or that one, if he (after all an honest
man) were of cold temperament and indifferent toward
the sufferings of others, perhaps because he, himself
equipped against his own with the special gift of patience
and enduring strength, also presupposes, or even demands,
the same with every other; if nature had not formed
such a man (which truly would not be its worst product)
properly into a friend of the human being, would he
then not still in himself find a source to give himself
a far higher worth than that of a good-natured temperament
might be? Certainly! just there commences the worth
of character that is moral and without any comparison
the highest, namely that he is beneficent, not from
inclination, but from duty.
To secure one's own happiness is a duty (at least indirect),
for the lack of satisfaction
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with one's condition in a crowd of many worries and
in the midst of unsatisfied needs could easily become
a great +temptation to transgression of duties+. But,
even without looking here upon duty, all human beings
have already of themselves the most powerful and most
intimate inclination to happiness, because just in
this idea all inclinations unite themselves into a
sum. Only the prescription of happiness is for the
most part so constituted that it greatly infringes
some inclinations and yet the human being itself can
make no determinate and secure concept of the sum of
satisfaction of all under the name of happiness; hence
it is not to be wondered how a single inclination,
determinate in view of what it promises and of the
time in which its satisfaction can be received, can
outweigh a wavering idea, and the human being, e.g.
a gouty one, can choose to enjoy what tastes good to
him, and to suffer what he is able to, because he,
according to his rough calculation, here at least has
not destroyed for himself the enjoyment of the present
moment through perhaps groundless expectations of a
happiness that is to be put in health. But also in
this case, when the general inclination to happiness
does not determine his will, when health for him at
least in this rough calculation was not so necessary
a part, there in this way still remains here as in
all other cases a law, namely to
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promote his happiness, not from inclination, but from
duty, and there has his conduct first of all the proper
moral worth.
In this way we are without doubt also to understand
the scriptural passages in which it is commanded to
love one's neighbor, even our enemy. For love as inclination
cannot be commanded, but beneficence from duty itself,
though no inclination at all drives to it, indeed even
quite natural and invincible disinclination opposes,
is +practical+ and not +pathological+ love, which lies
in the will and not in the propensity of feeling, in
ground propositions of action and not melting compassion;
the former alone, however, can be commanded.
The second proposition is: an action from duty has its
moral worth +not in the purpose+ which is to be reached
by it, but in the maxim according to which it is decided,
depends thus not on the actuality of the object of
the action, but merely on the +principle+ of +willing+,
according to which the action is done irrespective
of any objects of the faculty of desire. That the purposes
which we may have in actions, and their effects, as
ends and incentives of the will, can give the actions
no unconditional and moral worth, is clear from the
foregoing. In what, therefore, can this worth lie,
if it is not
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to be in the will, in reference to the hoped-for effect
of them? It can lie nowhere else +than in the principle
of the will+ irrespective of the ends which can be
effected through such action; for the will is right
in the middle between its principle a priori, which
is formal, and between its incentive a posteriori,
which is material, as if at a crossroads, and since
it must still be determined by something, it must be
determined by the formal principle of willing in general,
if an action is done from duty, since every material
principle has been withdrawn from it.
The third proposition, as a consequence from both previous,
I would express in this way: +duty is the necessity
of an action from respect for the law+. For an object
as an effect of my intended action I can, to be sure,
have an +inclination+, but +never respect+, just because
it is merely an effect and not activity of a will.
Just in this way I cannot have respect for inclination
in general, whether it be mine or that of another,
I can at most in the first case approve it, in the
second sometimes even love, i.e. view it as favorable
to my own advantage. Only that which merely as ground,
never however as effect, is connected with my will,
which does not serve my inclination but outweighs it,
at least completely excludes this from rough calculation
of them
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during the choice, therefore the mere law for itself,
can be an object of respect and along with this a command.
Now an action from duty should wholly detach from the
influence of inclination and with it each object of
the will, thus nothing remains over for the will, which
might be able to determine it, except objectively the
+law+ and subjectively +pure respect+ for this practical
law, therefore the maxim*) of obeying such a law, even
with the thwarting of all my inclinations.
Thus the moral worth of the action lies not in the effect
which is expected from it, nor, therefore, in some
principle of the action, which needs to borrow its
motive from this expected effect. For all these effects
(pleasantness of one's condition, indeed even promotion
of the happiness of strangers) were also able to be
brought into existence through other causes, and therefore
there was for this no need for the will of a rational
being, in which however the highest and unconditional
good alone can be found. Nothing other, therefore,
than the +representation of the law+ in itself, +which+
*) A +maxim+ is the subjective principle of
willing; the objective principle (i.e. that
one which would serve all rational beings
also subjectively as a practical principle,
if reason had complete power over the faculty
of desire) is the practical +law+.
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+of course only occurs in a rational being+, so far
as it, not however the hoped-for effect, is the ground
of determination of the will, can constitute the so
pre-eminent good which we call moral, which is already
present in the person itself who acts accordingly,
and does not first need to be waited for from the effect.*)
*) One could reproach me, as if I sought behind
the word +respect+ only refuge in an obscure
feeling, instead of giving to the question
clear information through a concept of reason.
But although respect is a feeling, so is
it still not one through influence +received+,
but a +self-woven+ feeling received through
a rational concept and therefore specifically
different from all feelings of the first
kind, which let themselves be reduced to
inclination or fear. What I immediately cognize
for myself as law, I cognize with respect,
which merely means the consciousness of the
+subordination+ of my will under a law, without
mediation of other influences on my sense.
The immediate determination of the will through
the law and the consciousness of it is called
+respect+, so that this is looked at as an
+effect+ of the law on the subject and not
as a +cause+ of it. Respect is properly the
representation of a worth that infringes
on my self-love. Thus it is something which
is considered neither as an object of inclination,
nor of fear, although it has something analogous
with both at the same time. The +object+
of respect is therefore only the +law+ and
to be sure that one which we impose on +ourselves+
and yet as in itself necessary. As a law
we are subject to it without consulting self-love;
as imposed by us on ourselves, it is still
a consequence of our will and has in the
first respect analogy with fear, in the second
with inclination.
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What kind of law though can that really be, whose representation,
even without taking notice of the expected effect from
it, must determine the will, so that this absolutely
and without limitation can be called good? Since I
have robbed the will of any impulses which could spring
up for it from the following of some law, in this way
nothing remains over except the universal conformity
to law of actions in general, which alone is to serve
the will as a principle, i.e. I ought never act other
than in this way, +that I can also will, my maxim should
become a universal law+. Here is now the mere conformity
to law in general (without laying as ground some law
determined for certain actions) which serves the will
as a principle and must also serve it in that way if
duty is not to be everywhere an empty illusion and
chimerical concept; common human reason also agrees
with this completely in its practical judgment and
has the aforesaid principle always before its eyes.
All respect for a person is actually only
respect for the law (of integrity etc.),
of which that one gives us the example. Because
we view enlargement of our talents also as
a duty, we conceive of a person of talents
also as, so to speak, the +example of a law+
(to become like it in this through practice),
and that constitutes our respect. All so-called
moral +interest+ consists simply in the +respect+
for the law.
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The question is e.g. may I, when I am in distress, not
make a promise with the intention not to keep it? I
make here easily the distinction, which the meaning
of the question can have, whether it is prudent, or
whether it is in conformity with duty, to make a false
promise. The first can without doubt often occur. To
be sure, I well see that it is not enough to pull myself
by means of this excuse out of a present embarrassment,
but must be well weighed, whether for me out of this
lie not afterwards much greater inconvenience can spring
up than those are from which I now set myself free,
and, since the consequences with all my supposed +slyness+
are not so easy to predict, that a once lost trust
could not for me become far more disadvantageous than
all the trouble that I now intend to avoid, whether
it is not +more prudently+ handled, to proceed in this
according to a universal maxim and to make it my habit
to promise nothing except with the intention to keep
it. But it is soon clear to me here that such a maxim
still always only has anxious consequences as ground.
Now, it is surely something completely different to
be truthful from duty than from fear of disadvantageous
consequences; since in the first case the concept of
the action in itself already contains a law for me,
in the second I first of all must look around elsewhere
which effects for me might probably
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be connected with it. For if I deviate from the principle
of duty, then it is quite certainly bad; if I, however,
desert my maxim of prudence, then that can yet sometimes
be very advantageous for me, although it of course
is safer to stay with it. In order however to instruct
myself in view of the answer to this problem, whether
a lying promise is in conformity with duty, in the
very shortest and yet infallible way, I then ask myself:
would I really be content that my maxim (to extricate
myself from embarrassment by means of an untrue promise)
should hold as a universal law (just as much for me
as others), and would I really be able to say to myself:
everyone may make an untrue promise when he finds himself
in embarrassment from which he cannot extricate himself
in another way? In this way I soon become aware that
I, to be sure, can will the lie but not at all a universal
law to lie; for according to such a one there would
properly be no promising at all, because it would be
futile to profess my will in view of my future actions
to others, who would surely not believe this pretense,
or, if they in an over-hasty way did believe it, would
surely pay me back in like coin, and therefore my maxim,
as soon as it were made into a universal law, would
have to destroy itself.
What I therefore have to do, in order that my willing
is morally good, for that I do not at all need far-reaching
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sagacity. Inexperienced in view of the course of the
world, incapable of being prepared myself for all its
incidents that might happen, I ask myself only: can
you also will that your maxim become a universal law?
If not, then it is objectionable and that, to be sure,
not because of an impending disadvantage to you or
even others from it, but because it cannot fit as a
principle in a possible universal lawgiving; for this,
however, reason forcibly obtains from me immediate
respect, of which I, to be sure, now do not yet +discern+
upon what it is grounded (which the philosopher may
investigate), at least, however, still this much understand:
that it is an estimation of worth which far outweighs
all worth of that which is praised by inclination,
and that the necessity of my actions from +pure+ respect
for the practical law is that which constitutes duty,
to which every other motive must yield because it is
the condition of a will good +in itself+, whose worth
exceeds everything.
In this way, then, we have reached in the moral cognition
of common human reason up to its principle, which it
certainly of course does not conceive in such way separated
off in a universal form, but still always actually
has before eyes and uses as the standard of its judgement.
It would be easy to show here how
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it, with this compass in hand, in all occurring cases
knows very well how to distinguish what is good, what
bad, conformable to duty, or contrary to duty, if one,
without teaching it in the least something new, only
makes it, as Socrates did, attentive to its own principle,
and that it thus requires no science and philosophy
in order to know what one has to do so as to be honest
and good, yes, and what is more, so as to be wise and
virtuous. It might also well in advance have already
been supposed that the knowledge of what to do, and
therefore also to know, incumbent on each human being
would also be the concern of each, even of the most
common human being. Here one surely cannot look without
admiration at it, how the practical faculty of judgment
has so very great an advantage over the theoretical
in common human understanding. In the latter, when
common reason dares to depart from the laws of experience
and the perceptions of sense, it gets into nothing
but incomprehensibilities and contradictions with itself,
at least into a chaos of uncertainty, obscurity and
instability. In the practical, however, the power of
judgment then for just the first time begins to show
itself really to advantage when common understanding
excludes all sensuous incentives from practical laws.
It becomes then even subtle, whether it be that it
quibbles with its conscience or other claims in reference
to what is to be called right, or
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also wants sincerely to determine the worth of actions
for its own instruction, and what is the most, it can
itself have in the latter case just as good hope to
hit it right as a philosopher might ever promise, yes
is almost still more secure in this than even the latter,
because this one has still no other principle than
that one, but can easily confuse his judgment through
a crowd of foreign considerations not belonging to
the matter, and can make it diverge from the straight
direction. Would it, accordingly, not be more advisable
in moral things to rest satisfied with common rational
judgment and at most only to bring in philosophy in
order to present the system of morals the more completely
and comprehensibly, also to present its rules more
conveniently for use (but still more for disputation),
not however in order even for practical purpose to
divert common human understanding from its happy simplicity
and to bring it through philosophy to a new way of
investigation and instruction?
There is a magnificent thing about innocence, only it
is also in turn very bad that it does not let itself
be preserved well and is easily led astray. For this
reason even wisdom — which otherwise consists perhaps
more in doing and letting than in knowing — still also
requires science, not in order to learn from it, but
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to gain admittance and permanence for its prescription.
The human being feels in itself a powerful counterweight
to all commands of duty, which reason represents to
it as so worthy of high respect, in its needs and inclinations,
the complete satisfaction of which it embraces under
the name of happiness. Now reason commands its prescriptions
unrelentingly, yet without in so doing promising something
to the inclinations and therefore, as it were, with
neglect and disregard of those so impulsive and yet
so apparently reasonable claims (which will be neutralized
by no command). Out of this arises, however, a +natural
dialectic+, i.e., a propensity to reason speciously
against those strict laws of duty and to cast into
doubt their validity, at least their purity and strictness,
and where possible to make them more suitable to our
wishes and inclinations, i.e. to ruin them at bottom
and to destroy their complete dignity, which then after
all even common practical reason in the end cannot
call good.
Thus in this way +common human reason+ is driven, not
through some need of speculation (which never befalls
it, as long as it contents itself to be merely sound
reason), but from practical grounds themselves, to
go out of its circle and to take a step in the field
of a +practical philosophy+, in order there on behalf
of the source of its principle
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and its correct determination in comparison with the
maxims which base themselves on need and inclination,
to get information and clear instruction so that it
escapes from the embarrassment of double-sided claims
and does not run a risk, through the ambiguity in which
it easily falls, of being deprived of all genuine moral
ground propositions. Thus arises just as much in practical
common reason, when it cultivates itself, unnoticed
a +dialectic+, which compels it to search for help
in philosophy, as happens to it in theoretical use,
and the first will accordingly find rest, to be sure,
just as little as the other anywhere else than in a
complete critique of our reason.
____________________________
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++Second Section.++
++Transition++
+from popular moral philosophy+
++to the++
++metaphysics of morals.++
If we have drawn our previous concept of duty from the
common use of our practical reason, there is from that
no way to conclude, as if we had treated it as a concept
of experience. On the contrary, if we attend to the
experience of the doing and letting of human beings,
we encounter frequent and, as we ourselves admit, just
complaints that, of the disposition to act from pure
duty, one can adduce in this way not any sure examples
at all, that, although many a thing, which +duty+ commands,
may happen +accordingly+, nevertheless it is always
still doubtful whether it actually happens +from duty+
and hence has a moral worth. Hence in every epoch there
have been philosophers who have absolutely denied the
actuality of this disposition in human actions and
have attributed everything to a more or less refined
self-love, without yet on this account bringing the
correctness of the concept of morality into doubt,
rather mentioned with intimate regret the frailty and
impurity of human nature, which to be sure is noble
enough
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to make itself an idea so worthy of respect into its
prescription, but at the same time too weak so as to
follow it, and uses reason, which was to serve it for
lawgiving, only in order to provide for the interest
of inclinations, whether it be singly or, at the most,
in their greatest compatibility with one another.
In fact it is absolutely impossible to make out through
experience with complete certainty a single case in
which the maxim of an action otherwise in accordance
with duty has rested solely on moral grounds and on
the representation of one's duty. For it is indeed
occasionally the case that we meet by the most acute
self-examination nothing at all, except the moral ground
of duty, which could have been mighty enough to move
us to this or that good action and to such great sacrifice;
from this, however, it cannot at all with certainty
be concluded that actually the slightest secret impulse
of self-love under the mere pretense of that idea was
not the actual determining cause of the will, for on
behalf of it we gladly flatter ourselves with a nobler
motive falsely claimed for ourselves, in fact, however,
even through the strictest examination, can never completely
get behind the secret incentives, because, when the
discussion is about moral worth, it does not depend
on the actions which one sees, but on those inner principles
of them, which one does not see.
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One can also for those, who laugh at all morality as
a mere phantom of a human imagination stepping over
itself through self-conceit, not do a more wished-for
service than to admit to them that the concepts of
duty (just as one gladly convinces oneself also out
of convenience that it is the case also with all other
concepts) had to be drawn only from experience; for
then one prepares for them a guaranteed triumph. I
am willing to admit from love of human beings that
still most of our actions are in conformity with duty;
if one looks, however, at their intentions and endeavors
more closely, then one everywhere comes across the
dear self, which always stands out, on which, and not
on the strict command of duty, which would again and
again demand self-denial, their purpose is based. One
needs also not even to be an enemy of virtue, but only
a cold-blooded observer who does not immediately take
the liveliest wish for the good to be its actuality,
in order (especially with increasing years and a power
of judgment through experience partly grown shrewd
and partly sharpened for observation) in certain moments
to become doubtful, whether also actually in the world
any true virtue is found. And here now nothing can
protect us from the whole descent from our ideas of
duty and preserve grounded respect for its law in the
soul, except the clear conviction that, even if there
never have been actions,
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which have arisen from such pure sources, nevertheless
here also the discussion is not at all about whether
this or that occurs, but reason for itself and independently
of all appearances commands what ought to occur, and
therefore actions, of which the world perhaps has given
up to now still no example at all, on whose feasibility
even someone who grounds everything on experience would
very much like to doubt, nevertheless are by reason
unyieldingly commanded, and that e.g. pure honesty
in friendship can be no less required of every human
being, although until now there might have been no
honest friend at all, because this duty as duty in
general lies before all experience in the idea of a
reason determining the will through grounds a priori.
If one adds that, if one does not want to deny entirely
to the concept of morality all truth and reference
to some possible object, one cannot dispute that its
law is of such widespread significance that it must
hold not only for human beings, but for all +rational
beings in general+, not merely under contingent conditions
and with exceptions, but with +absolute necessity+;
in this way it is clear that no experience can give
occasion to infer to so much as even the possibility
of such apodictic laws. For with what right can we
bring that,
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which perhaps is valid only under the contingent conditions
of humanity, as a universal prescription for every
rational nature into unlimited respect, and how should
laws of the determination +of our+ will be held for
laws of the determination of the will of a rational
being in general and only as such also for those of
ours, if they were merely empirical and took their
origin not completely a priori from pure, but practical
reason?
One could also advise morality not more badly than if
one wanted to borrow it from examples. For each example
of it which is represented to me must itself previously
be judged according to principles of morality, whether
it is also worthy to serve as the original example,
i.e. as the model, in no way, however, can it provide
up to topmost the concept of it. Even the Holy One
of the Gospel must first be compared with our ideal
of moral perfection before one cognizes him as such;
even he says of himself: why do you name me (whom you
see) good, no one is good (the archetype of the good)
but the one God (whom you do not see). From where however
have we the concept of God as the highest good? Only
from the +idea+, which reason sketches a priori of
moral perfection and inseparably connects with the
concept of a free will. Imitation has in the moral
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no place at all, and examples serve only for encouragement,
i.e. they put the practicability of what the law commands
beyond doubt, they make what the practical rule more
generally expresses intuitive, can never, however,
justify setting aside their true original that lies
in reason and guiding oneself according to examples.
If there is then no genuine highest ground proposition
of morality which would not have to rest independently
of all experience merely on pure reason, then I believe
it is not necessary so much as even to ask whether
it is good to present these concepts, just as they,
together with the principles belonging to them, are
established a priori, in general (in abstracto), provided
that the cognition is to differ from the common and
is to be called philosophical. But in our times this
might well be necessary. For if one collected votes,
whether pure rational cognition separated from everything
empirical, therefore metaphysics of morals, or popular
practical philosophy is preferred, then one soon guesses
on which side the preponderance will fall.
This condescension to folk concepts is certainly very
laudable, if the ascent to the principles of pure reason
has first occurred and has been attained with complete
satisfaction, and that would mean
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+grounding+ the doctrine of morals first on metaphysics,
obtaining for it, however, when it is established,
+access+ afterwards through popularity. It is, however,
extremely absurd to want already to accede to this
in the first investigation on which all correctness
of the ground propositions depends. Not only can this
procedure never lay claim to the most rare merit of
a true +philosophical popularity+, since it is no art
at all to be commonly understandable if one by this
relinquishes all fundamental insight; in this way it
produces a loathsome mish-mash of patched-together
observations and half-reasoned principles, which stale
heads enjoy thoroughly, because it is after all something
quite useful for the everyday tittle-tattle, where
the insightful however feel confusion and, dissatisfied,
yet without being able to help themselves, turn away
their eyes, although philosophers, who quite well see
through the deception, find little hearing when they
for a short time call away from the supposed popularity
in order to be allowed to be rightly popular only first
of all after acquired determinate insight.
One needs only look at the attempts concerning morality
in that taste thought proper; in this way, one will
soon meet with the special determination of human nature
(occasionally however also the idea of a rational nature
in general), soon perfection, soon happiness,
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here moral feeling, there fear of God, some of this,
some also of that, in wonderful mixture, without that
it occurs to one to ask whether even anywhere in the
knowledge of human nature (which we can still only
get from experience) the principles of morality are
to be sought, and, if this is not so, if the latter
are to be found completely a priori, free from everything
empirical, simply in pure concepts of reason and nowhere
else not even in the least part, to form the plan rather
to separate off completely this examination as pure
practical philosophy, or (if one may use such a decried
name) as metaphysics*) of morals, to bring it by itself
alone to its full completeness and to put off the public,
which demands popularity, until the close of this undertaking.
Such a completely isolated metaphysics of morals that
is mixed with no anthropology, with
*) One can, if one wants, (just as pure mathematics
is distinguished from the applied, pure logic
from the applied, hence) distinguish the
pure philosophy of morals (metaphysics) from
the applied (namely to human nature). Through
this naming one is also at once reminded
that the moral principles must be grounded
not on the peculiarities of human nature,
but must be existing for themselves a priori,
out of such, however, as for each rational
nature, therefore also for the human, practical
rules must be able to be derived.
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no theology, with no physics or hyperphysics, still
less with hidden qualities (which one could call hypophysical)
is, however, not only an indispensable substrate of
all theoretical, securely determined cognition of duties,
but at the same time a desideratum of the highest importance
for the actual fulfillment of their prescriptions.
For the representation, pure and mixed with no foreign
addition of empirical incitements, of duty and in general
of moral law has on the human heart through the way
of reason alone (that by this first becomes aware that
it by itself can also be practical) a so much more
powerful influence than all other incentives*) which
one might summon from the empirical field that it in
the consciousness of its dignity despises the latter
and little by little can become their master; in place
of that, a mixed doctrine of morals, which is put together
from incentives of feelings and inclinations and at
the same time from rational concepts,
*) I have a letter from the deceased excellent
+Sulzer+, in which he asks me: what might
yet be the cause why the teachings of virtue,
howsoever much they have that is convincing
to reason, yet accomplish so little. My answer
was delayed through the preparation for it
so as to give it whole. But it is not other
than that the teachers themselves have not
brought their concepts into purity, and since
they want to make it too good, by this, that
they everywhere rummage out motives for moral
goodness in order to make the medicine right
strong, they ruin it. For the commonest
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must make the mind waver between motives which can be
brought under no principle, which only very contingently
can lead to the good, more often however also to the
bad.
From the foregoing it is evident: that all moral concepts
have completely a priori in reason their seat and origin
and this to be sure in the commonest human reason just
as much as that in the highest degree speculative;
that they can be abstracted from no empirical and hence
merely contingent cognition; that in this purity of
their origin precisely lies their dignity, so as to
serve us as highest practical principles; that each
time so much as one adds something empirical, so much
also one subtracts from their genuine influence and
the unlimited worth of actions; that it not only demands
the greatest necessity in theoretical purpose, when
it is merely a matter of speculation,
observation shows that, if one represents
an action of integrity, how it, separated
from all intention of some advantage in this
or another world, even under the greatest
temptations of need or of enticement, was
done with steadfast soul, it leaves far behind
itself and eclipses each similar action which
even in the least was affected through a
foreign incentive, raises the soul and arouses
the wish also to be able to act in such a
way. Even children of medium age feel this
impression, and one should also never otherwise
represent duties to them.
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but also is of the greatest practical importance to
obtain its concepts and laws from pure reason, to expound
pure and unmixed, yes to determine the extent of this
whole practical or pure rational cognition, i.e. the
whole faculty of pure practical reason, but in this
not, as indeed speculative philosophy allows, yes even
sometimes finds necessary, to make the principles dependent
on the special nature of human reason, but precisely
because moral laws are to hold for each rational being
in general, to derive them already from the universal
concept of a rational being in general and in such
a way to expound all morals, which for its +application+
to human beings requires anthropology, first independently
of this as pure philosophy, i.e. as metaphysics, completely
(which can well be done in this kind of quite separated
cognitions), well aware that, without being in possession
of this, it is futile, I do not want to say, to determine
for the speculative judgment exactly the moral element
of duty in everything that is in conformity with duty,
but is, even in mere common and practical use, especially
of moral instruction, impossible to ground morals on
their genuine principles and by this to effect pure
moral dispositions and to engraft minds for the highest
good of the world.
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In order, however, to advance in this treatment not
merely from common moral judgment (which here is very
worthy of respect) to the philosophical, as has already
happened, but from a popular philosophy, that reaches
no farther than it can get through gropings by means
of examples, up to metaphysics (which lets itself be
further held back by nothing empirical and, since it
must measure out the whole contents of rational cognition
of this kind, goes in any case up to ideas, where even
the examples desert us) by natural steps, we must follow
and clearly present the practical faculty of reason
from its universal rules of determination up to that
place where the concept of duty springs up from it.
Each thing in nature works according to laws. Only a
rational being has the capacity to act +according to
the representation+ of laws, i.e. according to principles,
or a +will+. Since for the derivation of actions from
laws +reason+ is required, the will is in this way
nothing other than practical reason. If reason unfailingly
determines the will, then the actions of such a being,
which are cognized as objectively necessary, are also
subjectively necessary, i.e. the will is a capacity
to choose +only that+ which reason independently of
inclination
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cognizes as practically necessary, i.e. as good. If,
however, reason by itself alone does not determine
the will sufficiently, if this is in addition subject
to subjective conditions (certain incentives) which
do not always agree with the objective; in a word,
if the will is not +in itself+ completely in conformity
with reason (as it actually is in the case of human
beings); then the actions, which are cognized objectively
as necessary, are subjectively contingent, and the
determination of such a will according to objective
laws is +necessitation+; i.e. the relation of objective
laws to a not thoroughly good will is represented as
the determination of the will of a rational being by
grounds, to be sure, of reason to which, however, this
will according to its nature is not necessarily obedient.
The representation of an objective principle, insofar
as it is necessitating for a will, is called a command
(of reason), and the formula of the command is called
++imperative++.
All imperatives are expressed through an +ought+ and
indicate by this the relation of an objective law of
reason to a will which according to its subjective
constitution is not necessarily determined (a necessitation)
by it. They say that to do or to omit something would
be good, but
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they say it to a will which does not always do something
just because it is represented to it that it is good
to do. Practical +good+ is, however, what by means
of the representations of reason, therefore not from
subjective causes, but objective, i.e. from grounds
that are valid for every rational being as such, determines
the will. It is distinguished from the +agreeable+
as that which only by means of feeling from mere subjective
causes that only hold for the sense of this or that
one, and not as a principle of reason that holds for
everyone, has influence on the will*).
*) The dependence of the faculty of desire
on sensations is called inclination, and
this thus indicates every time a +need+.
The dependence of a contingently determinable
will, however, on principles of reason is
called an +interest+. This occurs, therefore,
only with a dependent will, which is not
of itself every time in accordance with reason;
in the case of the divine will, one can think
of no interest. But even the human will can
+take an interest+ in something, without
on that account +acting from interest+. The
first means the +practical+ interest in the
action, the second the +pathological+ interest
in the object of the action. The first announces
only dependence of the will on principles
of reason in themselves, the second on its
principles for the benefit of inclination,
where, that is to say, reason only assigns
the practical rule, how the need of inclination
might be helped. In the first case the action
interests me, in the second the object of
the action (so far as it is agreeable to
me). We have in the first section seen: that
in the case of an action from duty interest
must be seen not in the object, but merely
in the action itself and its principle in
reason (the law).
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A perfectly good will would thus stand just as much
under objective laws (of the good), but not be able
to be represented by this as +necessitated+ to actions
conforming to law, because it of itself, according
to its subjective constitution, can be determined only
through the representation of the good. Therefore,
for the +divine+ and generally for a +holy+ will, no
imperatives hold; the +ought+ is here out of place
because the +willing+ is already of itself necessarily
unanimous with the law. Therefore, imperatives are
only formulas to express the relation of objective
laws of willing in general to the subjective imperfection
of the will of this or that rational being, e.g. of
the human will.
Now, all +imperatives+ command either +hypothetically+
or +categorically+. The former represent the practical
necessity of a possible action as a means to attain
something else that one wills (or yet is possible that
one wills it). The categorical imperative would be
one which represented an action as for itself, without
reference to another end, as objectively necessary.
Because each practical law represents a possible action
as good and on that account as necessary for a subject
practically determinable through reason, in this way
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all imperatives are formulas of the determination of
action which is necessary according to the principle
of a will good in some way. Now, if the action would
be good merely as a means +to something else+, then
the imperative is +hypothetical+; if it is represented
as +in itself+ good, therefore as necessary in a will
in itself in conformity with reason, as its principle,
then it is +categorical+.
The imperative thus says which action possible through
me would be good, and represents the practical rule
in relation to a will which for that reason does not
immediately do an action because it is good, partly
because the subject does not always know that it is
good, partly because, even if it knew this, its maxims
could still be opposed to the objective principles
of a practical reason.
The hypothetical imperative thus says only that the
action is good for some +possible+ or +actual+ purpose.
In the first case, it is a ++problematic++, in the
second ++assertoric++-practical principle. The categorical
imperative, which declares the action for itself without
reference to any purpose, i.e. even without any other
end, as objectively necessary, holds as an ++apodictic++
(practical) principle.
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One can conceive what is possible only through powers
of some rational being also as a possible purpose for
some will, and therefore the principles of action are,
so far as this is represented as necessary in order
to attain some possible purpose to be effected by it,
in fact infinitely many. All sciences have some practical
part which consists of problems that some end is possible
for us, and of imperatives how it can be attained.
These can therefore in general be called imperatives
of ++skill++. Whether the end is rational and good
is here not at all the question, but only what one
must do in order to attain it. The prescriptions for
the doctor in order to make his man in a thorough-going
way healthy, and for a poisoner in order certainly
to kill him, are of equal worth, insofar as each one
serves to effect perfectly its purpose. Because one
in early youth does not know which ends may meet with
us in life, parents accordingly seek above all to let
their children learn right +many things+ and provide
for the +skill+ in the use of means to all kinds of
+arbitrary+ ends, not one of which can they determine
whether it perhaps actually in the future can become
a purpose of their pupil, concerning which it nevertheless
is still +possible+ that it might once have it, and
this care is so great that they on that point commonly
neglect to form and to correct their judgment over
the worth
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of the things which they themselves would perhaps like
to make into ends.
There is nevertheless +one+ end which one can presuppose
in the case of all rational beings (as far as imperatives
apply to them, namely as dependent beings) as actual,
and thus one purpose which they not at all merely +can+
have, but of which one can surely presuppose that they
such one and all do +have+ according to a natural necessity,
and that is the purpose toward +happiness+. The hypothetical
imperative, which represents the practical necessity
of action as a means to the promotion of happiness,
is ++assertoric++. One may propose it not merely as
necessary to an uncertain, merely possible purpose,
but to a purpose which one safely and a priori can
presuppose in the case of every human being because
it belongs to its essence. Now, one can name the skill
in the choice of means to one's own greatest well-being
+prudence+*) in the narrowest sense. Therefore,
*) The word prudence is taken in a twofold
sense, one time it can bear the name world
prudence, in the second that of private prudence.
The first is the skill of a human being to
have influence on others, in order to use
them for its purposes. The second is the
insight to unite all these purposes for its
own lasting advantage. The latter is properly
the one to which even the worth of the first
is traced back, and who is prudent in the
first way, not however in the second, of
him one could better say: he is clever and
cunning, on the whole however still imprudent.
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the imperative which refers to the choice of means to
one's own happiness, i.e. the prescription of prudence,
is still always +hypothetical+; the action is commanded
not absolutely, but only as a means to another purpose.
Finally, there is an imperative, which, without laying
for the ground some other purpose, attainable through
a certain conduct, as a condition, commands this conduct
immediately. This imperative is ++categorical++. It
concerns not the matter of the action and that which
is to result from it, but the form and the principle
from which it itself follows, and the essential-good
of it consists in the disposition, may the result be
what it will. This imperative may be called that +of+
++morality++.
The willing according to these three kinds of principles
is also clearly distinguished by the +dissimilarity+
of necessitation of the will. In order now to make
this also noticeable, I believe that one would most
suitably so name them in their order if one said: they
were either +rules+ of skill, or +counsels+ of prudence,
or +commands (laws)+ of morality. For only the +law+
carries about itself the concept of an +unconditional+
and to be sure objective and therefore universally
valid +necessity+, and commands are laws,
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which must be obeyed, i.e. obeyed even against inclination.
The +counseling+ contains to be sure necessity, which,
however, can hold merely under a subjective contingent
condition, whether this or that human being counts
this or that in its happiness; on the other hand, the
categorical imperative is limited by no condition and
as absolutely, although practically, necessary can
quite properly be called a command. One could name
the first imperatives also +technical+ (belonging to
art), the second +pragmatic+*) (to well-being), the
third +moral+ (to free conduct in general, i.e. belonging
to morals).
Now the question arises: how are all these imperatives
possible? This question demands not to know how the
performance of the action which the imperative commands,
but merely how the necessitation of the will, which
the imperative expresses in the problem, can be thought.
How an imperative of skill is possible really requires
no special discussion. Who wills the end, wills (so
far as reason has
*) It appears to me, the proper meaning of
the word +pragmatic+ can in this way be determined
most exactly. For +sanctions+ are named pragmatic,
which flow properly not from the right of
states, as necessary laws, but from the +provision+
for the general welfare. A +history+ is composed
pragmatically when it makes us +prudent+,
i.e. teaches the world how it can take care
of its advantage better than, or at least
just as good as, the former ages.
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decisive influence on his actions) also the indispensably
necessary means to it that are in his power. This proposition
is, as concerns the willing, analytic; for in the willing
of an object as my effect is already thought my causality
as acting cause, i.e. the use of means, and the imperative
extracts the concept of actions necessary to this end
already from the concept of a willing of this end (to
determine the means themselves to a proposed purpose,
to this belong to be sure synthetic propositions, which,
however, do not concern the ground, the Actus of the
will, but to make the object actual). That, in order
to divide a line according to a sure principle into
two equal parts, I must make from its endpoints two
intersecting arcs, which mathematics teaches of course
only through synthetic propositions; but that, if I
know, through such action alone the intended effect
can occur, I, if I fully will the effect, will also
the action that is required for it, is an analytic
proposition; for to represent something as an effect
possible in a certain way through me and to represent
myself, in view of it, acting in the same way, is one
and the same.
The imperatives of prudence would, if only it were as
easy to give a determinate concept of happiness, with
those of skill wholly
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and entirely agree and be just as well analytic. For
it would just as well here as there be said: who wills
the end, wills also (necessarily in conformity with
reason) the sole means to it that are in his power.
But it is a misfortune that the concept of happiness
is such an indeterminate concept that, although each
human being wishes to attain this, it can still never
say determinately and consistently with itself, what
it genuinely wishes and wills. The cause of this is:
that all elements that belong to the concept of happiness
are one and all empirical, i.e. must be borrowed from
experience, that nevertheless for the idea of happiness
an absolute whole, a maximum of well-being, in my present
and every future condition is required. Now, it is
impossible that the most insightful and at the same
time most capable but still finite being makes for
itself a determinate concept of what it here actually
wills. If it wills riches, how much worry, envy and
intrigue could it not in so doing bring down on its
head. If it wills much cognition and insight, perhaps
that could become only an eye all the more sharper
in order only to show it the evil, that is for it now
still hidden and yet cannot be avoided, all the more
dreadfully, or to burden its eager desires, which already
occupy it enough, with still more needs. If it wills
a long life, who guarantees to it,
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that it would not be a long misery? If it wills at least
health, how often still has discomfort of the body
kept from excess into which unlimited health would
have let fall, and so on. In short, it is not capable
of determining according to some ground proposition
with complete certainty what will make it truly happy
because for that omniscience would be required. One
can thus not act according to determinate principles
in order to be happy but only according to empirical
counsels, e.g. of diet, of thrift, of courtesy, of
reserve and so on, of which experience teaches, that
they on the average most promote the well-being. From
this it follows that the imperatives of prudence, to
speak exactly, cannot command at all, i.e. present
actions objectively as practical-+necessary+, that
they are to be held as counsels (consilia) rather than
as commands (praecepta) of reason, that the problem:
to determine surely and universally which action will
promote the happiness of a rational being is completely
insoluble, and therefore no imperative in view of it
is possible which in the strict sense would command
doing what makes us happy, because happiness is not
an ideal of reason, but of imagination, which merely
rests on empirical grounds from which one futilely
expects that they should determine an action by which
the totality of an
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in fact infinite series of consequences would be attained.
This imperative of prudence would nevertheless be,
if one assumes the means to happiness could be certainly
assigned, an analytic-practical proposition; for it
is distinguished from the imperative of skill only
in this, that with the latter the end is merely possible,
with the former, however, given; since both, however,
merely command the means to that, of which one presumes
that one willed it as an end: in this way the imperative,
which commands the willing of the means for him who
wills the end, is in both cases analytic. Thus there
is, in view of the possibility of such an imperative,
also no difficulty.
On the other hand, how the imperative of +morality+
is possible is without doubt the only question in need
of a solution, since it is not at all hypothetical
and therefore the objective-represented necessity can
be based on no presupposition, as with the hypothetical
imperatives. Only it is always in this not to be let
out of account, that it is +through no example+, therefore
empirically, to be made out whether there is at all
any imperative of such kind, but to be apprehensive
that all that appear categorical might yet be in a
hidden way hypothetical. E.g. when it is bid: you ought
promise nothing fraudulently; and one assumes that
the necessity of this omission is not at all merely
giving counsel for
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avoidance of some other evil, so that it nearly bids:
you ought not promise falsely, so that you do not,
if it comes to light, destroy your credit; but an action
of this kind must for itself be considered as bad,
the imperative of prohibition is thus categorical:
in this way one can still in no example prove with
certainty that the will is determined here without
another incentive, merely through the law, although
it appears so; for it is always possible that secretly
fear of disgrace, perhaps also obscure apprehension
of other dangers, might have influence on the will.
Who can prove the nonexistence of a cause through experience,
since this teaches nothing further than that we do
not perceive the former? In such a case, however, the
so-called moral imperative, which as such appears categorical
and unconditional, would in fact only be a pragmatic
prescription which makes us attentive to our advantage
and merely teaches us to take care of this.
We will thus have to investigate the possibility of
a +categorical+ imperative completely a priori, since
here the advantage does not come in useful for us that
its actuality is given in experience and therefore
that the possibility would be necessary not for the
establishment, but merely for the explanation. So much
is nevertheless provisionally to be seen: that the
categorical imperative alone
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reads as a practical ++law++; the remaining can one
and all undoubtedly be called +principles+ of the will,
but not laws: because what is necessary to do merely
for the attainment of an arbitrary purpose can in itself
be considered as contingent, and we can be released
from the prescription any time if we give up the purpose;
on the contrary, the unconditional command leaves to
the will no discretion in view of the opposite, therefore
alone carries with it that necessity which we demand
of the law.
Secondly, with this categorical imperative or law of
morality, the ground of the difficulty (to look into
its possibility) is also very great. It is a synthetic-practical
proposition*) a priori, and since to look into the
possibility of propositions of this kind has so much
difficulty in theoretical cognition, it can be readily
gathered that in the practical it will not have less.
*) I connect with the will, without a presupposed
condition from any inclination, the deed
a priori, therefore necessarily (although
only objectively, i.e. under the idea of
a reason that had complete power over all
subjective motives). This is therefore a
practical proposition which analytically
derives the willing of an action not from
another, already presupposed (for we have
no such perfect will), but connects with
the concept of the will as of a rational
being immediately, as something that is not
contained in it.
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With this problem we want first inquire whether not
perhaps the mere concept of a categorical imperative
also supplies its formula which contains the proposition
which alone can be a categorical imperative; for how
such an absolute command is possible, even when we
also know how it reads, will still demand special and
difficult effort, which we, however, postpone to the
last section.
If I conceive a +hypothetical+ imperative in general,
then I do not know in advance what it will contain:
until the condition is given to me. If I conceive,
however, a +categorical+ imperative, then I know at
once what it contains. For since the imperative contains
besides the law only the necessity of the maxim*) to
be in conformity with this law, the law, however, contains
no condition to which it was limited, in this way nothing
but the universality of a law in general remains over
to which the maxim of the action is to be in conformance,
*) A +maxim+ is the subjective principle of
acting and must be distinguished from the
+objective principle+, namely the practical
law. The former contains the practical rule
which reason in conformity with the conditions
of the subject (often its ignorance or also
its inclinations) determines, and is thus
the ground proposition according to which
the subject +acts+; the law, however, is
the objective principle valid for every rational
being and the ground proposition according
to which it +ought to act+, i.e. an imperative.
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and which conformity alone the imperative properly represents
as necessary.
The categorical imperative is thus only a single and
indeed this: +act only according to that maxim, through
which you at the same time can will, that it becomes
a universal law+.
If now from this single imperative all imperatives of
duty can be derived as from their principle, then we
will, even though we leave it undecided whether in
general what one calls duty is not an empty concept,
still at least be able to announce what we think by
this and what this concept wants to say.
Because the universality of the law, according to which
effects occur, constitutes what properly is called
+nature+ in the most general sense (according to the
form), i.e. the existence of things, as far as it is
determined according to universal laws, in this way
the universal imperative of duty could also read thus:
+act in this way, as if the maxim of your action were
to become through your will a+ ++universal law of nature++.
Now we want to enumerate some duties according to the
usual division of them into duties to
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ourselves and to other human beings, into perfect and
imperfect duties.*)
1) One, who, through a series of misfortunes that has
grown up to hopelessness, feels a boredom with life,
is still so far in possession of his reason that he
can ask himself whether it is also not at all contrary
to the duty to himself to take his life. Now he tests:
whether the maxim of his action can indeed become a
universal law of nature. His maxim, however, is: from
self-love I make it my principle, when life by its
longer duration threatens more misfortune than it promises
pleasantness, to shorten it. There is only still the
question whether this principle of self-love can become
a universal law of nature. Then one, however, soon
sees that a nature, whose law it were, through the
same feeling the function of which it is
*) One must here note well that I wholly reserve
to myself the division of duties for a future
+metaphysics of morals+, this here thus stands
forth only as arbitrary (so as to order my
examples). Moreover, I understand here under
a perfect duty that one which permits no
exception to the advantage of inclination,
and there I have not merely outer, but also
inner +perfect duties+, which runs counter
to the word-use accepted in the schools;
I, however, am here not minded to answer
for, because it is all the same to my purpose
whether one concedes it to me or not.
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to urge on towards the promotion of life, to destroy
life itself, would contradict itself and would thus
not endure as nature, and therefore that maxim can
impossibly occur as a universal law of nature and consequently
wholly conflicts with the highest principle of all
duty.
2) Another sees himself forced by need to borrow money.
He well knows that he will not be able to repay, sees
also, however, that nothing will be lent to him if
he does not firmly promise to repay it at a determinate
time. He desires to make such a promise; still, however,
he has enough conscience to ask himself: is it not
impermissible and contrary to duty to help myself out
of need in such a way? Assuming he still resolves to
do it, then his maxim of the action would read in this
way: when I believe myself to be in need of money,
then I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although
I know it will never happen. Now, this principle of
self-love or of one's own advantage is perhaps quite
consistent with my whole future well-being, but now
the question is: whether it is right. I thus change
the unreasonable expectation of self-love into a universal
law and arrange the question in this way: how would
it then stand, if my maxim became a universal law.
Then I now see at once that it can never hold as a
universal law of nature and accord with itself, but
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must necessarily contradict itself. For the universality
of a law, that each, accordingly as he believes to
be in need, can promise what occurs to him with the
intention not to keep it, would make the promise and
the end, which one may have with it, itself impossible,
since no one would believe that something is promised
to him, but would laugh at every such utterance as
idle pretense.
3) A third finds in himself a talent which by means
of some cultivation could make him into a human being
useful for all kinds of purpose. He sees himself, however,
in comfortable circumstances and prefers rather to
indulge in pleasure than to trouble himself with enlargement
and improvement of his fortunate natural predispositions.
Still, however, he asks: whether, besides the agreement
which his maxim of neglecting his natural gifts in
itself has with his propensity to amusement, it also
agrees with that which one calls duty. Then he henceforth
sees that undoubtedly a nature according to such a
universal law can indeed always endure, although the
human being (in this way like the South Sea inhabitants)
lets his talent rust and were resolved to devote his
life merely to idleness, amusement, procreation, in
a word to enjoyment; but he can impossibly ++will++,
that this become a universal law of nature or as one
such be laid in us by natural instinct.
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For as a rational being he necessarily wills that all
capacities in him be developed, because they are after
all serviceable to him and given to him for all kinds
of possible purposes.
Yet a +fourth+, for whom it goes well while he sees
that others have to fight with great hardships (whom
he could also well help), thinks: what does it concern
me? may yet each one be so happy, as heaven wills it,
or he can make himself, I will take nothing from him,
indeed not even envy; only to his well-being or his
assistance in need I have no desire to contribute anything!
Now, of course, if such a way of thinking became a
universal law of nature, the human race could quite
well subsist and without doubt even better than when
everyone babbles about compassion and benevolence,
also exerts oneself occasionally to practice them,
on the other hand, however, also, where he only can,
cheats, sells the right of human beings, or otherwise
violates it. But, although it is possible that according
to that maxim a universal law of nature could indeed
subsist; in this way, it is nevertheless impossible
to +will+ that such a principle hold everywhere as
a law of nature. For a will, which resolved this, would
conflict with itself, since many cases can yet occur
where he needs the love and compassion of others, and
where he, through such a law of nature sprung from
his own will,
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would rob himself of all hope of the assistance for
which he longs.
These, then, are some of the many actual duties, or
at least held by us as such, whose separation from
the one principle cited above clearly strikes the eyes.
One must +be able to will+ that a maxim of our action
become a universal law: this is the canon of moral
judgment of it in general. Some actions are so constituted
that their maxim without contradiction cannot even
be +thought+ as a universal law of nature; far from
it, that one can still +will+ it +should+ become one
such. With others undoubtedly that inner impossibility
is not to be found, but it is still impossible to +will+
that their maxim be raised to the universality of a
law of nature, because such a will would contradict
itself. One easily sees: that the first conflicts with
the strict or narrower (unremitting) duty, the second
only with the wider (meritorious) duty, and so all
duties, as concerns the kind of obligation (not the
object of their action), have through these examples
in their dependence on the one principle been set forth
completely.
If we now pay attention to ourselves during each transgression
of a duty, then we find that we
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actually do not will that our maxim should become a
universal law, for that is for us impossible, but the
opposite of it should instead generally remain a law;
only we ourselves take the liberty to make for ourselves
or (even only for this time) to the advantage of our
inclination an +exception+ to it. Consequently, if
we weighed everything from one and the same point of
view, namely of reason, then we would find a contradiction
in our own will, namely, that a certain principle be
objectively necessary as a universal law and yet subjectively
not hold universally, but should permit exceptions.
Since we, however, one time consider our action from
the point of view of a will wholly in conformity with
reason, then, however, also just the same action from
the point of view of a will affected by inclination,
in this way no contradiction is actually here, to be
sure, however, an opposition of inclination against
the prescription of reason (antagonismus), by which
the universality of the principle (universalitas) is
changed into a mere generality (generalitas), and by
this means the practical principle of reason is to
meet with the maxim halfway. Now, although this cannot
be justified in our own impartially employed judgment,
in this way it yet shows that we actually acknowledge
the validity of the categorical imperative and permit
ourselves (with all respect for it) only a few,
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as it seems to us, inconsiderable and wrung-from-us
exceptions.
We have this much thus at least shown, that, if duty
is a concept which is to contain meaning and actual
lawgiving for our actions, this can be expressed only
in categorical imperatives, in no way, however, in
hypothetical; we have also, which is already much,
clearly and determinately for every use exhibited the
content of the categorical imperative, which would
have to contain the principle of all duty (if there
were such a thing at all). Still, however, we are not
so far, a priori to prove, that the same imperative
actually occurs, that there is a practical law which
absolutely and without any incentives commands for
itself, and that the following of this law is duty.
With the aim of arriving at this, it is of the utmost
importance to let this serve oneself as a warning,
that one, of course, not let it come into one's mind
to want to derive the reality of this principle from
the +special quality of human nature+. For duty is
to be practical-unconditional necessity of action;
it must thus hold for all rational beings (to which
only an imperative can apply at all) and +only for
this reason+ also be for all human wills a law. What,
on the other hand, is derived from the
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special natural predisposition of humanity, what from
certain feelings and propensity, indeed even where
possible from a special tendency, which were peculiar
to human reason and had not to hold necessarily for
the will of every rational being, that can, to be sure,
yield a maxim for us, but not a law, a subjective principle,
according to which we may act, have propensity and
inclination, but not an objective principle, according
to which we were +directed+ to act, even if all our
propensity, inclination and natural tendency were to
the contrary, what is more, that it all the more proves
the sublimity and inner dignity of the command in a
duty, the fewer the subjective causes for it, the more
they are against it, without yet for that reason weakening
even in the least the necessitation through the law
and taking anything away from its validity.
Here we now see philosophy put in fact on a precarious
standpoint which is to be firm, even though it is neither
in heaven nor on the earth suspended from something
or supported by it. Here it should prove its purity
as self-holder of its laws, not as herald of those
which an implanted sense or who knows what tutelary
nature whispers to it, which all together, they may
always be better than nothing at all, yet can never
yield ground propositions which reason dictates and
which must throughout have completely a priori their
source and with this at the same time their commanding
authority:
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to expect nothing from the inclination of the human
being, but everything from the supreme power of the
law and the respect owed to it, or otherwise to condemn
the human being to self-contempt and inner abhorrence.
Thus everything which is empirical, is, as an addition
to the principle of morality, not only wholly unsuitable
to it, but even highly disadvantageous to the purity
of morals, in which the proper worth, raised above
all price, of an absolutely good will consists just
in this, that the principle of the action be free from
all influences of contingent grounds, which only experience
can provide. Against this carelessness or even base
way of thinking, in search of the principle among empirical
motives and laws, one can issue neither too much nor
too frequently warnings, since the human reason in
its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in the
dream of sweet illusions (which permit it after all
to embrace a cloud instead of Juno) substitutes for
morality a bastard patched up from limbs of quite different
ancestry, which looks like everything which one wants
to see in it, only not like virtue for one who has
beheld it once in its true form.*)
*) To behold virtue in its proper form is
nothing other than to exhibit morality stripped
of all admixture of the sensuous
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Thus the question is this: is it a necessary law +for
all rational beings+ to judge their actions always
according to such maxims of which they themselves can
will that they should serve as universal laws? If there
is one such, then it must (completely a priori) be
connected already with the concept of the will of a
rational being in general. In order, however, to discover
this connection, one must, however much one resists,
take a step out, namely into metaphysics, although
in a region of it which is different from that of speculative
philosophy, namely into the metaphysics of morals.
In a practical philosophy, where it is not our concern
to assume grounds of that which +happens+, but laws
of that which +ought to happen+, although it never
happens, i.e. objective-practical laws: there we have
no need to undertake investigation of the grounds why
something pleases or displeases, how the enjoyment
of mere sensation is different from taste, and whether
the latter is different from a universal satisfaction
of reason; upon what feeling of pleasure and displeasure
rests, and how from here eager desires and inclinations,
from these, however, through cooperation of reason,
maxims
and all spurious adornment of reward or of
self-love. How much it then eclipses everything
else which appears enticing to the inclinations
can each easily become aware of by means
of the least effort of one's reason which
is not wholly ruined for all abstraction.
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arise; for all that belongs to an empirical doctrine
of the soul, which would constitute the second part
of the doctrine of nature, if one considers it as +philosophy
of nature+, as far as it is grounded on +empirical
laws+. Here, however, the discussion is of objective-practical
laws, therefore of the relation of a will to itself,
so far as it determines itself merely through reason,
where then everything, which has reference to the empirical,
of itself falls away; because, if +reason by itself
alone+ determines conduct (the possibility of which
we just now want to investigate), it must do this necessarily
a priori.
The will is thought as a capacity to determine itself
to action +according to the representation of certain
laws+. And such a capacity can only be found in rational
beings. Now, that which serves the will as the objective
ground of its self-determination is the +end+, and
this, if it is given through mere reason, must hold
equally for all rational beings. What, on the other
hand, contains merely the ground of the possibility
of an action whose effect is an end is called the +means+.
The subjective ground of desire is the +incentive+,
the objective ground of willing the +motive+; thus
the difference between subjective ends, which rest
on incentives, and objective, which depend on motives,
which
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hold for each rational being. Practical principles are
+formal+, if they abstract from all subjective ends;
they are, however, +material+, if they lay down these,
therefore certain incentives, as the ground. The ends
that a rational being arbitrarily proposes as +effects+
of its action (material ends) are one and all only
relative; for only merely their relation to a particularly
constituted faculty of desire of the subject gives
them the worth, which can therefore provide no valid
and necessary universal principles, i.e. practical
laws, for all rational beings or for every willing.
Hence all these relative ends are only the ground of
hypothetical imperatives.
Granted, however, there were something, +whose existence
in itself+ has an absolute worth, which as an +end
in itself+ could be a ground of determinate laws, then
in it and only in it alone would the ground of a possible
categorical imperative, i.e. a practical law, lie.
Now I say: the human being and in general every rational
being +exists+ as an end in itself, +not merely as
a means+ to the arbitrary use for this or that will,
but must in all its actions, directed not only to itself
but also to other rational beings,
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always be considered +at the same time as an end+. All
objects of inclinations have only a conditional worth;
for if the inclinations and the needs based on them
were not, then their object would be without worth.
The inclinations themselves, however, as sources of
need, are so far from having an absolute worth so as
to be wished for themselves that, on the contrary,
to be completely free of them must be the universal
wish of each rational being. Thus the worth of all
objects +to be obtained+ by our action is always conditional.
The beings whose existence rests indeed not on our
will, but on nature, have nevertheless, if they are
beings without reason, only a relative worth as means
and are therefore called +things+, on the other hand,
rational beings are named +persons+ because their nature
already marks them out as ends in themselves, i.e.
as something that may not be used merely as means,
therefore so far limits all choice (and is an object
of respect). These are thus not merely subjective ends
whose existence as effect of our action has a worth
+for us+; but +objective ends+, i.e. things whose existence
in itself is an end and, to be sure, one such in place
of which no other end can be put for which they should
stand to serve +merely+ as means, because without this
nothing at all of +absolute worth+ would be found anywhere;
if, however, all
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worth were conditional, therefore contingent, then for
reason no highest practical principle could be found
anywhere.
If, then, there is thus to be a highest practical principle
and in view of the human will a categorical imperative,
then it must be one such that, from the representation
of that which necessarily for everyone is an end because
it is an +end in itself+, constitutes an +objective+
principle of the will, therefore can serve as the universal
practical law. The ground of this principle is: +rational
nature exists as an end in itself+. In this way the
human being necessarily conceives its own existence;
so far is it thus a +subjective+ principle of human
actions. In this way, however, also every other rational
being conceives its existence owing to just the same
rational ground which also holds for me *); hence it
is at the same time an +objective+ principle from which
as a highest practical ground all laws of the will
must be able to be derived. The practical imperative
will thus be the following: +Act in this way, that
you use humanity in your own person, as well as in
the person of every other, always at the same time
as an end, never+
*) This proposition I set forth here as a
postulate. In the last section one will find
the grounds for this.
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+merely as a means+. We want to see whether this can
be achieved.
So as to stay with the previous examples, in this way
will
+Firstly+, in accordance with the concept of necessary
duty toward oneself, that one, who has suicide in mind,
ask himself whether his action can subsist together
with the idea of humanity +as an end in itself+. If
he, in order to escape from a troublesome situation,
destroys himself, then he makes use of a person merely
as +a means+ for the preservation of a tolerable situation
till the end of life. The human being, however, is
not a thing, therefore not something that can be used
+merely+ as means, but must in all its actions always
be considered as an end in itself. Thus I can dispose
of nothing concerning the human being in my own person,
to maim him, to corrupt, or to kill.(The more precise
determination of this ground proposition for the avoidance
of all misunderstanding, e.g. of the amputation of
limbs in order to preserve myself, of the danger to
which I expose my life in order to preserve my life,
etc., I must here pass by; it belongs to morals proper.)
+Secondly+, what concerns the necessary or obliged duty
to others, so will he, who has it in mind to make a
lying promise to others, at once see that he wills
to make use of another human being
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+merely as a means+, without that the latter at the
same time contains the end in itself. For he, whom
I will to use through such a promise for my purposes,
can impossibly agree in my way of proceeding against
him and thus himself contain the end of this action.
This conflict with the principle of other human beings
more clearly catches the eye when one draws near examples
of attacks on freedom and property of others. For then
it is clear that the transgressor of the rights of
human beings is disposed to make use of the person
of others merely as a means, without taking into consideration
that they as rational beings ought always at the same
time to be valued as ends, i.e. only as such, who must
be able to contain the end of just the same action
also in themselves*).
+Thirdly+, in view of the contingent (meritorious) duty
to oneself, it's not enough that the
*) Let one not think that here the trivial:
what you do not want done to you etc. can
serve as a rule of conduct or principle.
For it is, although with various limitations,
only derived from that one; it can be no
universal law, for it does not contain the
ground of duties to oneself, not of duties
of love to others (for many would gladly
agree to it that others ought not benefit
him if only he might be excused from showing
them kindness), finally not of duties owed
to one another; for the criminal would from
this ground argue against his punishing judges,
and so on.
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action not conflict with humanity in our person as an
end in itself, it must also +harmonize with it+. Now,
in humanity there are predispositions to greater perfection,
which belong to the end of nature in view of humanity
in our subject; to neglect these would be at most possibly
compatible with the +preservation+ of humanity as an
end in itself, but not with the +furtherance+ of this
end.
+Fourthly+, in reference to the meritorious duty to
others, the natural end that all human beings have
is their own happiness. Now, humanity would no doubt
be able to subsist, if no one contributes anything
to the happiness of others, in doing so, however, intentionally
withdraws nothing from it; but this is still only a
negative and not positive agreement with +humanity
as end in itself+, if everyone did not also strive
to further the ends of others, so far as he can. For
the subject, which is an end in itself, ends of it
must, if that representation is to have +full+ effect
in me, also, so far as possible, be +my+ ends.
This principle of humanity and of each rational nature
in general, +as an end in itself+, (which is the highest
limiting condition of the
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freedom of the actions of each human being) is not borrowed
from experience, firstly, on account of its universality,
since it applies to all rational beings in general,
about which to determine something no experience suffices;
secondly, because in it humanity is represented not
as an end of human beings (subjectively), i.e. as an
object which one of oneself actually makes an end,
but as an objective end which, whatever ends we may
have, as law is to constitute the highest limiting
condition of all subjective ends, and therefore must
arise from pure reason. That is to say, the ground
of all practical lawgiving lies +objectively in the
rule+ and in the form of universality which makes it
capable of being (according to the first principle)
a law (possibly law of nature), +subjectively+, however,
in the +end+; the subject of all ends, however, is
each rational being as an end in itself (according
to the second principle): from this follows now the
third practical principle of the will, as highest condition
of the harmony of it with universal practical reason,
the idea +of the will of each rational being as a will
giving universal law+.
All maxims are rejected according to this principle,
which are not consistent with the will's own universal
lawgiving. The will is thus not only subject to the
law,
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but so subject, that it also must be seen +as self-lawgiving+
and for just that reason subject first of all to the
law (of which it can consider itself as author).
The imperatives according to the previous way of representation,
namely, of a conformity to law of actions, generally
similar to a +natural order+, or of the universal +prerogative
of the end+ of rational beings in themselves, excluded
undoubtedly from their commanding authority all admixture
of any interest as incentive just by this: that they
were represented as categorical; they were, however,
only +assumed+ as categorical, because one had to assume
such-like, if one wanted to explain the concept of
duty. That there are, however, practical propositions
that command categorically could for itself not be
proved, just as little as it also not yet anywhere
here in this section can be done; but one thing could
still have been done, namely: that the renunciation
of all interest in willing from duty, as the specific
distinguishing mark of the categorical from hypothetical
imperative, would be jointly indicated in the imperative
itself through some determination which it contains,
and this is done in the present third formula of the
principle, namely, in the idea of the will of each
rational being as a +will giving universal law+.
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For if we think one such, then, although a will +which
stands under laws+ may still be bound by means of an
interest to this law, nevertheless a will, which is
itself at highest lawgiving, can depend impossibly
so far on any interest; for such a dependent will would
itself require still another law, which limited the
interest of its self-love to the condition of a validity
for universal law.
Thus the +principle+ of each human will, as +a will
giving universal law through all its maxims+*), if
it otherwise had with it only its correctness, would
be quite +well suited+ for the categorical imperative
by this, that it, just for the sake of the idea of
universal lawgiving, +is grounded on no interest+ and
thus among all possible imperatives can alone be +unconditional+;
or still better, in that we convert the proposition,
if there is a categorical imperative (i.e. a law for
every will of a rational being), then it can only command
to do everything from the maxim of its will as one
such that at the same time could have itself as giving
law universally
*) I can here be excused from citing examples
for the illustration of this principle, for
those, that at first illustrated the categorical
imperative and its formula, can here all
serve to just the same end.
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as an object; for then only is the practical principle
and the imperative, which it obeys, unconditional,
because it can have no interest at all as ground.
It is now no wonder, when we look back on all previous
efforts that have ever been undertaken in order to
discover the principle of morality, why they in every
case had to fail. One saw the human being through its
duty bound to laws, but it occurred to no one that
it is subject +only to its own+ and nevertheless +universal
lawgiving+, and that it is only bound to act in conformity
with its own will, though, according to the natural
end, universally lawgiving. For if one conceived of
it only as subject to a law (whichever it is): then
this had to carry with itself some interest as attraction
or constraint, because it arose not as law from +its+
will, but the latter was necessitated in conformity
to law by +something else+ to act in a certain way.
Through this wholly necessary consequence, however,
all labor to find a highest ground of duty was irretrievably
lost. For one never got duty, but necessity of action
from a certain interest. This might now be one's own
or another's interest. But then the imperative had
each time to turn out conditioned
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and was not able at all to be fit as the moral command.
Thus I want to name this ground proposition the principle
of the +autonomy+ of the will, in opposition to every
other that I on this account class with ++heteronomy++.
The concept of any rational being which must consider
itself through all maxims of its will as giving universal
law, in order from this point of view to judge itself
and its actions, leads to a very fruitful concept hanging
on it, namely, that +of an empire of ends+.
I understand, however, under an +empire+ the systematic
union of different rational beings through common laws.
Now, because laws determine ends as regards their universal
validity, in this way will, if one abstracts from the
personal difference of rational beings, also from all
content of their private ends, be able to be thought
a whole of all ends (not only of rational beings as
ends in themselves, but also of individual ends which
each one may set itself) in systematic bond, i.e. an
empire of ends, which in accordance with the above
principles is possible.
For rational beings all stand under the +law+ that each
of them is to treat itself and all others
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+never merely as a means+, but always +at the same time
as an end in itself+. Through this, however, arises
a systematic union of rational beings through common
objective laws, i.e. an empire, which, because these
laws have just the reference of these beings to each
other as ends and means as the purpose, can be called
an empire of ends (admittedly only an ideal).
A rational being, however, belongs as a +member+ to
the empire of ends, if it is, to be sure, universally
lawgiving in it but also is itself subject to these
laws. It belongs to it +as head+, if it as lawgiving
is subject to no will of another.
The rational being must consider itself always as lawgiving
in an empire of ends possible through freedom of the
will, whether it now be as a member, or as head. It
can keep the seat of the latter, however, not merely
through the maxims of its will, but only then, when
it is a completely independent being without need and
limitation of its capacity adequate to the will.
Morality thus consists in the reference of all action
to the lawgiving by which alone an empire of ends is
possible. This lawgiving must, however,
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be found in each rational being itself and be able to
arise from its will, whose principle therefore is:
to do no action according to another maxim, except
such that it also can be consistent with it, that it
is a universal law, and thus only such +that the will
through its maxim can consider itself at the same time
as universally lawgiving+. If now the maxims are with
this objective principle of rational beings, as universally
lawgiving, not through their nature already necessarily
in agreement, then the necessity of action according
to that principle is called practical necessitation,
i.e. +duty+. Duty belongs not to the head in the empire
of ends, does, however, to each member and undoubtedly
to all in equal measure.
The practical necessity to act according to this principle,
i.e. the duty, rests not at all on feelings, impulses
and inclinations, but merely on the relation of rational
beings to one another, in which the will of a rational
being must be considered always at the same time as
+lawgiving+, because it otherwise could not think them
as an +end in themselves+. Reason thus refers each
maxim of the will as universally lawgiving to each
other will and also to each action toward oneself and
this, to be sure, not for the sake of any other practical
motive or future advantage, but from the idea of the
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+dignity+ of a rational being who obeys no law other
than that which it at the same time itself gives.
In the empire of ends everything has either a ++price++,
or a ++dignity++. What has a price, in its place can
also something else as +equivalent+ be placed; what,
on the other hand, is raised above all price, and therefore
allows no equivalent, that has a dignity.
What refers to general human inclinations and needs
has a +market price+; that which, even without presupposing
a need, conforms to a certain taste, i.e. to a delight
in the mere purposeless play of our powers of mind,
a +fancy price+; that, however, which constitutes the
condition under which alone something can be an end
in itself has not merely a relative worth, i.e. a price,
but an inner worth, i.e. +dignity+.
Now, morality is the condition under which alone a rational
being can be an end in itself, because only through
it is it possible to be a lawgiving member in the empire
of ends. Thus morality and humanity, as far as it is
capable of it, is that which alone has dignity. Skill
and diligence in work have a market price; wit,
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lively imagination and humor, a fancy price; on the
other hand, fidelity in promising, benevolence from
ground propositions (not from instinct) have an inner
worth. Nature as well as art contain nothing which
they, in deficiency of them, could put in their place;
for their worth consists not in the effects that arise
from them, in the advantage and profit which they provide,
but in the dispositions, i.e. the maxims of the will,
that are ready to reveal themselves in this way in
actions, even though success did not favor them. These
actions also need no recommendation from any subjective
disposition or taste, to look at them with immediate
favor and delight, no immediate propensity or feeling
for the same: they present the will, which practices
them, as an object of an immediate respect, for which
nothing but reason is required in order +to impose+
them on the will, not to +coax+ from it, which latter
were in the case of duties anyhow a contradiction.
This estimation thus shows the worth of such a way
of thinking as dignity and puts it above all price
infinitely far off, with which it can not at all be
brought into account and comparison, without as it
were assaulting its holiness.
And what is it now, then, which justifies the morally
good disposition or virtue to make such high claims?
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It is nothing less than the +share+ that it affords
the rational being +in universal lawgiving+ and makes
it by this fit to be a member in a possible empire
of ends to which it through its own nature was already
determined as an end in itself and just for that reason
as lawgiving in the empire of ends, in view of all
natural laws as free, only obeying those alone that
it itself gives and according to which its maxims can
belong to a universal lawgiving (to which it at the
same time subjects itself). For nothing has a worth
other than that which the law determines for it. The
lawgiving itself, however, which determines all worth,
must just for that reason have a dignity, i.e. unconditional,
incomparable worth, for which the word +respect+ alone
furnishes the proper expression of the estimation which
a rational being has to assign with regard to it. +Autonomy+
is thus the ground of the dignity of the human and
every rational nature.
The three ways cited above to represent the principle
of morality, however, are at bottom only so many formulas
of just the same law, of which the one of itself unites
in itself the other two. Meanwhile, a difference is
yet in them that, to be sure, is subjective rather
than objective-practical, namely, so as to bring an
idea of reason nearer to intuition (according to a
certain analogy)
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and by this to feeling. All maxims have namely
1) a +form+, which consists in universality, and here
the formula of the moral imperative is expressed thus:
that the maxims must in this way be selected, as if
they were to hold as universal laws of nature;
2) a +matter+, namely an end, and here the formula says:
that the rational being, as an end according to its
nature, therefore as an end in itself, must serve for
every maxim as the limiting condition of all merely
relative and optional ends;
3) +a complete determination+ of all maxims through
that formula, namely: that all maxims from individual
lawgiving ought to harmonize to a possible empire of
ends, as to an empire of nature*). The progression
occurs here as through the categories of the +unity+
of the form of the will (of its universality), of the
+plurality+ of the matter (of the objects, i.e. of
the ends) and of the +allness+ or totality of the system
of them. One does better, however, if one in moral
+judgment+ always
*) Teleology considers nature as an empire
of ends, morals a possible empire of ends
as an empire of nature. There the empire
of ends is a theoretical idea in explanation
of that which exists. Here it is a practical
idea, in order to bring into existence that
which does not exist, but through our doing
and letting can become actual, and, to be
sure, in conformity with just this idea.
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proceeds according to the strict method and lays the
universal formula of the categorical imperative as
the ground: +act according to the maxim which at the
same time can make itself into a universal law+. If
one wants, however, to provide at the same time +entry+
for the moral law: then it is very useful to lead one
and just the same action through the named three concepts
and in so doing, so far as it is possible, to bring
it nearer to intuition.
We can now here end from where we in the beginning started,
namely, from the concept of an unconditionally good
will. The +will+ is +absolutely good+, which cannot
be bad, therefore whose maxim, if it is made into a
universal law, can never conflict with itself. This
principle is thus also its highest law: act always
according to that maxim whose universality as law you
at the same time can will; this is the sole condition
under which a will can never be in conflict with itself,
and such an imperative is categorical. Because the
validity of the will as a universal law for possible
actions has analogy with the universal connection of
the existence of things according to universal laws,
which is the formal aspect of nature in general, so
can the categorical imperative also in this way be
expressed: +Act according to maxims which can at the
same time have themselves as universal laws of nature
as the object+.
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Thus in this way the formula of an absolutely good will
is constituted.
Rational nature excludes itself from the rest by this,
that it sets itself an end. This would be the matter
of any good will. Since, however, in the idea of a
will absolutely good without limiting condition (of
the attainment of this or of that end) complete abstraction
must be made from every end to be +effected+ (as it
would only make each will relatively good), in this
way will the end here have to be thought not as one
to be effected, +but self-standing+ end, therefore
only negatively, i.e. the never acted against, which
therefore must never be valued merely as a means, but
always at the same time as an end in each willing.
This can now be nothing other than the subject of all
possible ends itself, because this at the same time
is the subject of a possible absolutely good will;
for this can without contradiction be subordinated
to no other object. The principle: act in reference
to any rational being (to yourself and others) in this
way, that it holds in your maxim at the same time as
an end in itself, is accordingly at bottom one and
the same with the ground proposition: act according
to a maxim, which contains its own universal validity
for each rational being at the same time in itself.
For that I ought to limit my maxim in the use
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of the means to each end to the condition of its universal
validity as a law for each subject, says just so much,
as the subject of ends, i.e. the rational being itself,
must never merely as a means, but as highest limiting
condition in the use of all means, i.e. always at the
same time as an end, be laid as the ground of all maxims
of actions.
Now follows from this incontestably: that each rational
being as an end in itself must be able to look at itself,
with reference to all laws to which it may ever be
subjected, at the same time as universal lawgiving,
because just this fitness of its maxims to the universal
lawgiving marks it out as an end in itself, also that
this its dignity (prerogative) before all mere natural
beings brings with it, to have to take its maxims always
from the point of view of itself, at the same time,
however, also of every other rational being as lawgiving
(who for this reason are also called persons). Now,
in such way a world of rational beings (mundus intelligibilis)
as an empire of ends is possible and undoubtedly through
the individual lawgiving of all persons as members.
Accordingly, any rational being must in this way act,
as if it were through its maxims always a lawgiving
member in the universal empire of ends. The formal
principle of these maxims is:
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act in this way, as if your maxim at the same time were
to serve as the universal law (of all rational beings).
An empire of ends is thus only possible according to
the analogy with an empire of nature, the former, however,
only according to maxims, i.e. rules imposed on oneself,
the latter only according to laws of externally necessitated
efficient causes. Despite this, one still gives also
to the whole of nature, although it is looked at as
a machine, nevertheless, so far as it has reference
to rational beings as its ends, from this ground the
name of an empire of nature. Such an empire of ends
would now through maxims, whose rule the categorical
imperative prescribes to all rational beings, really
come to pass, +if they would be universally followed+.
But, although the rational being cannot count on it,
that, even if it itself strictly followed this maxim,
for that reason every other would be faithful precisely
to it, also that the empire of nature and its purposive
order harmonize with it, as a fitting member, toward
an empire of ends possible through it itself, i.e.
will favor its expectation of happiness; so remains
still that law: act according to maxims of a member
giving universal law to a merely possible empire of
ends, in its full force because it is categorically
commanding. And in this lies precisely the paradox:
that merely the dignity of humanity, as
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of rational nature, without any other end or advantage
to be attained by this, therefore the respect for a
mere idea should nevertheless serve as the unrelenting
prescription of the will, and that just in this independence
of the maxim from all such incentives its sublimity
consists and the worthiness of any rational subject
to be a lawgiving member in the empire of ends; for
otherwise it would have to be represented only as subject
to the natural law of its need. Even if the natural
empire as well as the empire of ends were thought as
united under one head, and by this the latter remain
no longer merely an idea, but receive true reality,
in this way would by this undoubtedly that one gain
the increase of a powerful incentive, never, however,
augmentation of its inner worth; for, despite this,
even this sole unlimited lawgiver would have still
always to be so represented, how it judged the worth
of rational beings only according to their disinterested
conduct, prescribed to themselves merely from that
idea itself. The essence of things does not alter through
their outer relations, and what, without thinking of
the latter, alone constitutes the absolute worth of
the human being, accordingly must it also, by whomsoever
it is, even by the highest being, be judged. +Morality+
is thus the relation of actions to the autonomy of
the will, that is, to the possible universal
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lawgiving through its maxims. The action that can subsist
with the autonomy of the will is +permissible+; that
not harmonious with it, is +impermissible+. The will
whose maxims necessarily harmonize with the laws of
autonomy is a +holy+, absolutely good will. The dependence
of a not absolutely good will on the principle of autonomy
(moral necessitation) is +obligation+. This can thus
not be pulled on a holy being. The objective necessity
of an action from obligation is called +duty+.
One can from the recent foregoing now easily explain
it, how it comes to pass: that, although we conceive
under the concept of duty a subjection under the law,
we imagine by this nevertheless at the same time a
certain sublimity and +dignity+ in that person who
fulfills all its duties. For, to be sure, no sublimity
is in it so far as it is +subject+ to the moral law,
but rather so far as it is in view of just it at the
same time +lawgiving+ and only for that reason subordinate
to it. We have also shown above how neither fear, nor
inclination, but merely respect for the law is that
incentive which can give to the action a moral worth.
Our own will, so far as it would act only under the
condition of a universal lawgiving possible through
its maxims,
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this will possible to us in the idea, is the proper
object of respect, and the dignity of humanity consists
just in this capability, universal lawgiving, although
with the condition to be itself subject at the same
time precisely to this lawgiving.
++The autonomy of the will++
++as++
+highest principle of morality.+
Autonomy of the will is the characteristic of the will
by which it is to itself (independently of any characteristic
of the objects of willing) a law. The principle of
autonomy is thus: not otherwise to choose than in this
way, that the maxims of one's choice are comprehended
jointly in the same willing at the same time as universal
law. That this practical rule is an imperative, i.e.
the will of each rational being is necessarily bound
to it as a condition, cannot be proven through mere
analysis of the concepts present in it, because it
is a synthetic proposition; one would have to go out
beyond the cognition of objects and to a critique of
the subject, i.e. of pure practical reason, for this
synthetic proposition, which commands apodictically,
must be able to be cognized completely a priori, this
business, however, does not belong in the present
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section. But that the aforesaid principle of autonomy
is the exclusive principle of morals lets itself through
mere analysis of concepts of morality very well be
proved. For by this is found that its principle must
be a categorical imperative, this, however, commands
nothing more or less than just this autonomy.
+The heteronomy of the will+
+as the source of all spurious principles+
+of morality.+
If the will +anywhere else+ than in the suitability
of its maxims to its own universal lawgiving, hence,
if it, in that it goes out beyond itself, seeks the
law that is to determine it in the character of any
of its objects, then +heteronomy+ results each time.
The will gives then not itself, but the object through
its relation to the will gives it the law. This relation,
whether it rests now on inclination or on representations
of reason, lets only hypothetical imperatives become
possible: I ought do something just +because I will
something else+. On the other hand, the moral, hence
categorical imperative, says: I ought act thus or so,
even if I willed nothing else. E.g. the former says:
I ought not lie, if I will to remain with honor; the
latter,
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however: I ought not lie, even if it brings upon me
not the least shame. The latter must therefore abstract
from any object so far that this has no +influence+
at all on the will, so that practical reason (will)
not merely administers foreign interest, but merely
proves its own commanding authority as highest lawgiving.
In this way I ought e.g. seek to promote others' happiness,
not as if its existence were anything of consequence
to me (whether it be through immediate inclination,
or some satisfaction indirectly through reason), but
merely because the maxim which excludes it cannot be
comprehended in one and the same willing, as universal
law.
++Division++
+of all possible principles of morality+
+from the+
++assumed ground concept++
+of heteronomy.+
Human reason has here, as everywhere in its pure use,
so long as it lacks a critique, previously tried all
possible incorrect ways before it succeeds in hitting
upon the only true one.
All principles, which one might take from this point
of view, are either +empirical+ or
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+rational+. The ++first++, from the principle of +happiness+,
are built on physical or moral feeling, the ++second++,
from the principle of +perfection+, either on the rational
concept of it as a possible effect, or on the concept
of a self-standing perfection (the will of God), as
determining cause of our will.
+Empirical principles+ are not at all fit to be the
ground of moral laws. For the universality with which
they are to hold for all rational beings without difference,
the unconditional practical necessity that is imposed
on them by this, falls away, if the ground of them
is taken from the +special constitution of human nature+
or the contingent circumstances in which it is placed.
Yet the principle of +individual happiness+ is most
of all objectionable, not merely because it is false,
and experience contradicts the pretense, as if well-being
always adjusts itself according to good conduct, also
not merely because it contributes nothing at all to
the grounding of morality, since it is wholly something
else to make a happy than a good human being, and make
this prudent and sharp-sighted for its advantage than
make it virtuous: but because it puts incentives underneath
morality that rather undermine it and destroy its whole
sublimity, since they put the motives
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to virtue with those to vice in one class and only teach
better calculation, the specific difference of both,
however, wholly and entirely obliterate; on the other
hand, moral feeling, this supposed special sense*),
(however shallow the appeal to it is, since those,
who cannot +think+ even in that which merely depends
on universal laws, believe to help themselves out through
+feeling+, however little feelings, that are in terms
of rank by nature infinitely different from each other,
furnish a uniform standard of good and bad, also one
can through one's feeling for others not at all validly
judge) nevertheless remains closer to morality and
its dignity in that it shows to virtue the honor of
ascribing the satisfaction and the high esteem for
her +immediately+ to her, and does not say to her as
it were in her face, that it is not her beauty, but
only advantage, that attaches us to her.
Among the +rational+ or reason-grounds of morality is
yet the ontological concept of
*) I class the principle of moral feeling
with that of happiness because any empirical
interest, through the agreeableness that
something only affords, it may well happen
immediately and without view to advantages
or in regard to them, promises a contribution
to well-being. Likewise one must class the
principle of compassion for others' happiness,
with +Hutcheson+, with the same moral sense
assumed by him.
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+perfection+ (however empty, however indeterminate,
therefore useless it is, in order to discover in the
immense field of possible reality the greatest sum
appropriate for us, however much it, in order specifically
to distinguish the reality, of which here the discussion
is, from every other, has an unavoidable propensity
to turn in the circle, and cannot avoid secretly to
presume the morality which it is to explain) nevertheless
better than the theological concept, to derive it from
a divine, all-perfect will, not merely because we do
not, after all, intuit its perfection, but can only
derive it from our concepts, among which that of morality
is the foremost, but because, if we do not do this
(as it then, if it happened, would be a coarse circle
in the explanation), the concept still remaining to
us of its will from the qualities of eager desire for
glory and dominion, combined with the fearful representations
of power and of vengefulness, would have to make the
foundation for a system of morals which would be directly
set against morality.
If I, however, had to choose between the concept of
the moral sense and that of perfection in general (both
of which at least do not infringe on morality, although
they are not at all suitable for the purpose of supporting
it as foundations): then I would decide for the latter,
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because it, since it at least pulls the decision of
the question away from sensibility and to the court
of pure reason, although it also here decides nothing,
nevertheless preserves unfalsified the indeterminate
idea (of a will good in itself) for closer determination.
For the rest, I believe to be able to be excused from
a lengthy refutation of all these doctrines. It is
so easy, it is even by those, whose office demands
it, to declare themselves nevertheless for one of these
theories (because listeners do not really want to put
up with postponement of judgment), even presumably
so well seen, that by this only superfluous labor would
take place. What, however, interests us here more is
to know: that these principles set up everywhere nothing
but heteronomy of the will as the first ground of morality
and for that very reason must necessarily fail to do
their end.
Everywhere, where an object of the will must be laid
as ground in order to prescribe to this the rule that
determines it, there the rule is nothing but heteronomy;
the imperative is conditional, namely: +if+ or +because+
one wills this object, one ought act thus or so; hence
it can never morally, i.e. categorically, command.
Whether now the object by means of inclination, as
with the principle of one's own happiness,
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or by means of reason directed to objects of our possible
willing in general, in the principle of perfection,
determines the will, in this way the will never determines
itself +immediately+ through the representation of
the action, but only through the incentive which the
anticipated effect of the action has on the will; +I
ought do something, for this reason, because I will
something else+, and here must still another law in
my subject be laid as ground, according to which I
necessarily will this other, which law in turn requires
an imperative that limits this maxim. For, because
the impulse, which the representation of an object
possible through our powers is to exercise according
to the natural constitution of the subject on its will,
belongs to the nature of the subject, whether it is
of sensibility (of inclination and of taste) or of
understanding and of reason, which according to the
special arrangement of their nature exercise themselves
with delight on an object, in this way nature strictly
speaking gives the law, which, as one such must not
only be cognized and proved through experience, therefore
is in itself contingent and for apodictic practical
rule, of such kind the moral must be, becomes by this
unfit, but it is +always only heteronomy+ of the will,
the will gives not to itself, but a foreign impulse
gives the law to it by means of a
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nature of the subject attuned to the receptivity of
it.
The absolutely good will, whose principle must be a
categorical imperative, will therefore, undetermined
in view of all objects, contain merely the +form of
willing+ in general and undoubtedly as autonomy, i.e.
the suitability of the maxim of any good will to make
itself into universal law, is itself the sole law that
the will of any rational being imposes on itself, without
putting any incentive and interest of it underneath
as ground.
+How such a synthetic practical proposition a priori
is possible+ and why it is necessary, is a problem
whose solution lies no longer within the boundaries
of the metaphysics of morals, also we have its truth
here not maintained, much less presumed to have a proof
of it in our power. We showed only through development
of the once generally in vogue going concept of morality:
that an autonomy of the will attaches to it in an unavoidable
way, or rather lies as ground. Who, therefore, holds
morality to be something, and not to be a chimerical
idea without truth, must at the same time admit its
above-cited principle. This
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section was, therefore, just in this way, like the first,
merely analytic. That now morality is no phantom, which
then follows if the categorical imperative and with
it the autonomy of the will is true and as a principle
a priori absolutely necessary, requires a +possible
synthetic use of pure practical reason+, which we,
however, may not venture upon without sending on before
a +critique+ of this rational faculty itself, of which
we in the last section have to present the leading
features sufficient for our purpose.
____________________________
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++Third Section.++
++Transition++
+from the+
++metaphysics of morals to the critique++
+of pure practical reason.+
____________________________
+The concept of freedom+
+is the+
+key to the explanation of the autonomy+
+of the will.+
The +will+ is a kind of causality of living beings,
so far as they are rational, and +freedom+ would be
that quality of this causality, since it can be effective
independently of foreign causes +determining+ it; just
as +natural necessity+ the quality of the causality
of all reasonless beings to be determined to activity
through the influence of foreign causes.
The above-cited explanation of freedom is +negative+
and, therefore, in order to look into its essence,
unfruitful; but there flows out of it a +positive+
concept of it, which is so much more comprehensive
and more fruitful. Since the concept of a causality
carries with it that of +laws+, according to which
through something which we name cause, something
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else, namely the effect, must be posited: in this way
is freedom, although it is not a quality of the will
according to natural laws, for that reason still not
entirely lawless, but must rather be a causality according
to immutable laws, but of special kind; for otherwise
a free will would be an impossibility. Natural necessity
was a heteronomy of efficient causes; for each effect
was possible only according to the law that something
else determined the efficient cause to causality; what
really, then, can the freedom of the will be other
than autonomy, i.e. the quality of the will to be itself
a law? The proposition, however: the will is in all
actions itself a law, signifies only the principle
to act according to no other maxim except which can
have itself also as a universal law as object. This
is, however, just the formula of the categorical imperative
and the principle of morality: thus is a free will
and a will under moral laws one and the same.
If, therefore, freedom of the will is presupposed, then
morality follows together with its principle from that
through mere analysis of its concept. Nevertheless,
the latter is still always a synthetic proposition:
an absolutely good will is that one whose maxim can
always contain itself, considered as universal law,
in itself,
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for through analysis of the concept of an absolutely
good will can that quality of the maxim not be found.
Such synthetic propositions, however, are only possible
by this, that both cognitions are joined to each other
through the connection with a third in which they are
reciprocally to be found. The +positive+ concept of
freedom provides this third, which cannot be, as with
the physical causes, the nature of the world of sense
(in which concept the concepts of something as cause
in relation to +something else+ as effect come together).
What this third is, to which freedom directs us, and
of which we have a priori an idea, lets itself here
right now not yet be shown, and to make comprehensible
the deduction of the concept of freedom from pure practical
reason, with it also the possibility of a categorical
imperative, but requires still some preparation.
++Freedom++
++must as quality of the will++
++of all rational beings++
+be presupposed.+
It is not enough that we ascribe to our will, it be
from what ground, freedom, if we do not have sufficient
ground to attribute the very same also to all rational
beings.
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For since morality serves as law for us merely as for
+rational beings+, in this way must it hold also for
all rational beings, and since it must be derived only
from the quality of freedom, in this way must also
freedom as a quality of the will of all rational beings
be proved, and it is not enough to demonstrate it from
certain supposed experiences of human nature (although
this also is absolutely impossible and it can be demonstrated
only a priori), but one must prove it as belonging
to the activity of rational beings in general endowed
with a will. I say now: Any being, that can act not
otherwise than +under the idea of freedom+, is just
for that reason, in practical regard, actually free,
i.e. all laws that are inseparably joined with freedom
hold for it, just in this way, as if its will also
in itself, and validly in theoretical philosophy, would
be declared as free*). Now I maintain: that we, to
each
*) This way, to assume, as sufficient to our
purpose, freedom only as laid down by rational
beings in their actions merely +in the idea+
as ground, I suggest for this reason so that
I may not make myself bound to prove freedom
also in its theoretical respect. For, even
if this latter is left undecided, then still
the same laws hold for a being that can act
not otherwise than under the idea of its
own freedom that would bind a being that
really were free. We can thus liberate ourselves
here from the load that weighs down the theory.
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rational being that has a will, must necessarily lend
also the idea of freedom under which it alone acts.
For in such a being we conceive a reason that is practical,
i.e. has causality in view of its objects. Now, one
cannot possibly conceive a reason that, with its own
consciousness in view of its judgments, would receive
direction from elsewhere, for then the subject would
not to its reason, but to an impulse, ascribe the determination
of the power of judgment. It must look at itself as
authoress of its principles independently of foreign
influences, consequently, it must be looked at by itself
as practical reason, or as a will of a rational being,
as free; i.e. its will can only under the idea of freedom
be a will of its own and must therefore in practical
respect be attributed to all rational beings.
++Of the interest,++
++which to the ideas of morality++
++attaches.++
We have at last traced the determinate concept of morality
back to the idea of freedom; this, however, we were
not able even to prove as something actual in ourselves
and in human nature; we saw only that we must presuppose
it if we
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ourselves want to conceive a being as rational and endowed
with consciousness of its causality in view of actions,
i.e. with a will, and in this way we find that we must
from just the same ground attribute to each being endowed
with reason and will this quality of determining itself
to action under the idea of its freedom.
There flowed, however, from the presupposition of these
ideas also the consciousness of a law to act: that
the subjective ground propositions of actions, i.e.
maxims, must always be taken so that they also hold
objectively, i.e. universally as ground propositions,
and therefore can serve for our own universal lawgiving.
Why, however, should I then subject myself to this
principle and, to be sure, as a rational being in general,
therefore also by this all other beings endowed with
reason? I will admit that no interest +impels+ me to
this, for that would give no categorical imperative;
but I must still necessarily +take+ an interest in
this and look into how it comes about; for this ought
is properly a willing that holds under the condition
for each rational being, if reason with it were practical
without hindrances; for beings, who, as we, are still
affected through sensibility as incentives of different
kind, with whom what reason for itself alone would
do does not always happen,
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that necessity of action is called only an ought, and
the subjective necessity is distinguished from the
objective.
It appears, therefore, as if in the idea of freedom
we strictly speaking only presupposed the moral law,
namely the principle of the autonomy of the will itself,
and could not prove for itself its reality and objective
necessity, and there we would have gained to be sure
still always something quite considerable by this,
that we at least had determined the genuine principle
more accurately than indeed otherwise would occur,
but in view of its validity and of the practical necessity
to subject ourselves to it, we would have come farther
for nothing; for we could give no satisfactory answer
to him who asked us, why then the universal validity
of our maxim, as a law, must be the limiting condition
of our actions, and on what we ground the worth which
we attribute to this way of acting which is to be so
great that there can be no higher interest anywhere,
and how it comes to pass that the human being believes
to feel by this alone its personal worth against which
that of an agreeable or disagreeable condition is to
hold for nothing.
Of course we very well find that we can take an interest
in a personal characteristic that
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carries with itself no interest at all of the condition,
if only the former makes us capable of partaking of
the latter, in case reason should effect its distribution,
i.e. that the mere worthiness to be happy, even without
the motive of partaking of this happiness, can interest
for itself: but this judgment is in fact only the effect
of the already presupposed importance of moral laws
(when we separate ourselves through the idea of freedom
from all empirical interest); but we can not yet discern
in this way that we ought to separate ourselves from
this, i.e. consider ourselves as free in acting, and
in this way nevertheless take ourselves to be subject
to certain laws, in order to find a worth merely in
our person, which can compensate us for all loss of
that which provides a worth to our condition, and how
this is possible, therefore +from where the moral law
binds+.
There appears here, one must freely admit it, a kind
of circle, from which, as it seems, there is no coming
out. We assume ourselves in the order of efficient
causes as free in order to think ourselves in the order
of ends under moral laws, and we think ourselves afterwards
as subject to these laws because we have attributed
to ourselves the freedom of the will; for freedom and
individual lawgiving of the will are both
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autonomy, therefore reciprocal concepts, of which, however,
just for that reason, one cannot be used in order to
explain the other and to specify the ground of it,
but at most only in order for logical purpose to bring
different appearing representations of precisely the
same object to a single concept (like different fractions
of equal value to the littlest expression).
One recourse, however, remains over to us still, namely
to search: whether we, when we think ourselves through
freedom as a priori efficient causes, do not take up
a different standpoint than when we represent ourselves
according to our actions as effects that we see before
our eyes.
It is a remark which to post quite certainly no subtle
reflection is required, but of which one can assume
that indeed the commonest understanding, although according
to its way through an obscure distinction of power
of judgment that it names feeling, may make it: that
all representations that come to us without our choice
(like those of sense) give the objects to us to cognize
exactly so as they affect us, while what they may be
in themselves remains unknown to us, and therefore
that, as concerns representations of this kind, we
can by this, even with the most strenuous
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attentiveness and distinctness that the understanding
may ever add, still merely arrive at the cognition
of +appearances+, never of +things in themselves+.
As soon as this distinction (possibly merely through
the noticed difference between the representations
that are given to us from somewhere else, and with
which we are passive, from those that we bring forth
only from ourselves and with which we prove our activity)
is once made, then it follows of itself that one must
admit and assume behind the appearances yet still something
else which is not appearance, namely the things in
themselves, although we resign of ourselves, that,
since they can never become known to us, but always
only as they affect us, we cannot step nearer to them
and can never know what they are in themselves. This
must provide a, although crude, distinction of a +world
of sense+ from the +world of understanding+, of which
the first according to difference of sensibility in
various observers of the world also can be very different,
meanwhile the second, which underlies it as ground,
always remains the same. Even itself and, to be sure,
according to the knowledge that the human being has
through inner sensation of itself, it may not presume
to cognize how it is in itself. For since it after
all does not as it were procure itself and gets its
concept not a priori but empirically, in this way it
is natural that it can also draw in information of
itself through the inner sense and
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consequently only through the appearance of its nature
and the way in which its consciousness is affected,
meanwhile it nevertheless in a necessary way must assume
beyond this characteristic, put together from nothing
but appearances, of its own subject still something
else underlying as ground, namely its I, such as it
may in itself be constituted, and must thus class itself
in view of the mere perception and receptivity of sensations
with the +world of sense+, in view of that, however,
which in it may be pure activity (of that which arrives
in consciousness not at all by affecting the senses,
but immediately), class itself with the +intellectual
world+ which it, however, knows no further.
The reflective human being must draw a conclusion of
this kind from all things that may appear to it; presumably
it is also to be found in the most common understanding,
which, as is known, is very inclined to expect behind
the objects of the senses still always something invisible,
something active for itself, but again by this ruins
it, that it soon makes this invisible itself again
sensible, i.e. wants to make into an object of intuition,
and thus becomes by this not by a degree wiser.
Now the human being actually finds in itself a capacity
by which it distinguishes itself from all other things,
even from
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itself, so far as it is affected by objects, and that
is +reason+. This, as pure self-activity, is even in
this raised still above the +understanding+: that,
although this is also self-activity and does not, like
sense, contain merely representations that only arise
when one is affected by things (therefore passive),
it can nevertheless produce from its activity no other
concepts than those that in this way serve merely in
order +to bring sensuous representations under rules+
and to unite them by this in a consciousness, without
which use of sensibility it would think nothing at
all, while on the other hand, reason under the name
of ideas shows such a pure spontaneity that it goes
out by this far beyond anything that sensibility can
only deliver to it, and proves in this its most eminent
occupation, to distinguish the world of sense and the
world of understanding from each other, by this, however,
to prescribe to the understanding itself its boundaries.
For this reason a rational being must look at itself
+as an intelligence+ (thus not on behalf of its lower
powers), not as belonging to the world of sense, but
to the world of understanding; therefore, it has two
standpoints from which it can consider itself and can
cognize laws of the use of its powers, consequently
of all its actions, +once+, so far as it belongs to
the world of sense,
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under natural laws (heteronomy), +secondly+, as belonging
to the intelligible world, under laws that are independent
of nature, not empirical, but are grounded merely in
reason.
As a rational being, therefore as belonging to the intelligible
world, the human being can think the causality of its
own will never otherwise than under the idea of freedom;
for independence from the determinate causes of the
world of sense (of such kind reason must always attribute
to itself) is freedom. Now, with the idea of freedom
the concept of +autonomy+ is inseparably connected,
with this, however, the universal principle of morality,
which underlies in the idea all actions of +rational+
beings as ground just in this way as natural law all
appearances.
Now is the suspicion that we above made astir removed,
as if a hidden circle were contained in our inference
from freedom to autonomy and from this to the moral
law, namely, that perhaps we laid the idea of freedom
as ground only for the sake of the moral law in order
to infer this afterwards from freedom in turn, therefore
of that could provide no ground at all, but it only
as begging of a principle that friendly souls will
probably gladly allow to us, which we, however, could
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never set up as a provable proposition. For now we see
that when we think ourselves as free, in this way we
transfer ourselves as members into the world of understanding
and cognize the autonomy of the will together with
its consequence, morality; if we, however, think ourselves
as obligated, in this way we consider ourselves as
belonging to the world of sense and yet at the same
time to the world of understanding.
+How is a categorical imperative+
+possible?+
The rational being classes itself as intelligence with
the world of understanding, and only as an efficient
cause belonging to this does it name its causality
a +will+. From the other side, it is conscious of itself,
however, also as a piece of the world of sense, in
which its actions as mere appearances of that causality
are found, but of which possibility from this, which
we do not know, cannot be looked into, but in which
place those actions as determined through other appearances,
namely eager desires and inclinations, must be looked
into as belonging to the world of sense. As a mere
member of the world of understanding, all my actions
would thus be in perfect conformity with the principle
of the autonomy of the pure will; as a mere piece of
the world of sense, they would have to be taken as
wholly in conformity with the natural law of eager
desires and inclinations, therefore with the heteronomy
of
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nature.(The first would rest on the highest principle
of morality, the second of happiness.)But because +the
world of understanding contains the ground of the world
of sense, therefore also of its laws+, thus is in view
of my will (which wholly belongs to the world of understanding)
immediately lawgiving, and thus must also be thought
as such, in this way I will cognize myself as subject
as an intelligence, although on the other side as a
being belonging to the world of sense, nevertheless
to the law of the first, i.e. of reason, which contains
in the idea of freedom the law of it, and thus to the
autonomy of the will, consequently must look at the
laws of the world of understanding as imperatives for
me and the actions in conformity with this principle
as duties.
And in this way categorical imperatives are possible,
by this, that the idea of freedom makes me into a member
of an intelligible world, whereby, if I were only such,
all my actions +would+ always be in conformity with
the autonomy of the will, but since I intuit myself
at the same time as a member of the world of sense,
+ought+ to be in conformity with, which +categorical+
ought represents a synthetic proposition a priori,
by this, that to my will affected by sensuous eager
desires still is added the idea of just the same will,
but belonging to the world of understanding, pure,
and for itself practical,
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which contains the highest condition of the first according
to reason; approximately in the way that concepts of
the understanding, that for themselves signify nothing
but lawful form in general, are added to the intuitions
of the world of sense and by this make possible synthetic
propositions a priori, on which all cognition of a
nature rests.
The practical use of common human reason confirms the
correctness of this deduction. There is no one, even
the most wicked miscreant, if he is only otherwise
accustomed to use reason, who, when one puts before
him examples of honesty in purposes, of steadfastness
in observance of good maxims, of compassion and of
general benevolence (and connected moreover with great
sacrifices of advantages and convenience), does not
wish, that he also might be so disposed. He can, however,
only because of his inclinations and impulses, not
well bring it about in himself; by which he nevertheless
at the same time wishes to be free from such inclinations
burdensome to himself. He shows by this, therefore,
that he, with a will that is free from impulses of
sensibility, transfers himself in thought into an altogether
different order of things than that of his eager desires
in the field of sensibility, because he can expect
from that wish no satisfaction of eager desires, therefore
no satisfactory condition for any of his actual or
otherwise
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imaginable inclinations (for by this even the idea which
coaxes the wish from him would lose its preeminence),
but only a greater inner worth of his person. This
better person he believes, however, to be when he transfers
himself to the standpoint of a member of the world
of understanding, to which the idea of freedom, i.e.
independence from +determining+ causes of the world
of sense, involuntarily necessitates him, and in which
he is himself conscious of a good will that for his
bad will as a member of the world of sense according
to his own admission constitutes the law, of whose
authority he knows during the time that he transgresses
it. The moral ought is thus one's own necessary willing
as a member of an intelligible world and is thought
only by it as ought so far as it considers itself at
the same time as a member of the world of sense.
++Of++
++the extreme boundary++
+of all practical philosophy.+
All human beings think themselves as regards the will
as free. From this come all judgments about actions
as such that +ought+ have been +done+, although they
+were not done+. Nevertheless, this freedom is not
a concept of experience and it also cannot be, because
it always remains, although experience shows the opposite
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of those demands that are represented as necessary under
presupposition of it. On the other side, it is just
in this way necessary that everything that happens
according to natural laws is unfailingly determined,
and this natural necessity is also not a concept of
experience, just because it carries with itself the
concept of necessity, therefore of a cognition a priori.
But this concept of a nature is confirmed through experience
and must itself unavoidably be presupposed, if experience,
i.e. cohering cognition of objects of the senses according
to universal laws, is to be possible. Therefore, freedom
is only an +idea+ of reason, whose objective reality
is in itself doubtful, nature, however, a +concept
of the understanding+, which proves and necessarily
must prove its reality in examples of experience.
Although now out of this a dialectic of reason arises,
since in view of the will the freedom attributed to
it appears to stand in contradiction with the necessity
of nature, and, with this parting of the ways, reason
finds in +speculative purpose+ the way of natural necessity
much more worn and more useful than that of freedom:
in this way the footpath of freedom is in +practical
purpose+ still the only one on which it is possible
to make use of one's reason in our doing and letting;
hence it is for the most subtle
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philosophy just as impossible as for the most common
human reason to argue away freedom. This must thus
indeed presuppose: that no true contradiction will
be found between freedom and natural necessity of the
very same human actions, for it can just as little
give up the concept of nature as that of freedom.
Meanwhile, this apparent contradiction must at least
be destroyed in a convincing fashion, even though one
could never comprehend how freedom is possible. For,
if even the thought of freedom contradicts itself,
or of nature, which is just as necessary, then it,
as opposed to natural necessity, would have to be given
up completely.
It is, however, impossible to evade this contradiction,
if the subject, which imagines itself free, were to
think itself +in the same sense+, or +in just the same
relation+, when it names itself free as when it assumes
itself in respect of the same action subject to the
natural law. Hence, it is an inescapable problem of
speculative philosophy: at least to show that its illusion
with regard to the contradiction rests in this, that
we think the human being in a different sense and relation
when we name it free than when we consider it as a
piece of nature subject to this
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its laws, and that both +can+ not only quite well subsist
together, but also must be thought +as necessarily
united+ in the same subject, because otherwise a ground
could not be assigned why we should trouble reason
with an idea, that, although it allows itself to be
united +without contradiction+ with a different one,
sufficiently established, nevertheless involves us
in a business in which reason in its theoretical use
is put in a very tight spot. This duty, however, is
incumbent only on speculative philosophy, so that it
provides a clear path for practical philosophy. Thus
it is not put at the discretion of the philosopher
whether he wants to remove the apparent conflict or
leave it untouched; for in the latter case the theory
about this is bonum vacans, into the possession of
which the fatalist can put itself with ground and can
expel all morals from its alleged property possessed
without title.
Yet one can here not yet say that the boundary of practical
philosophy begins. For that settlement of the controversy
belongs not at all to it, but it demands only from
speculative reason that this bring to an end the discord
in which it in theoretical questions entangles itself,
so that practical reason has rest and security against
external attacks that for it could make contentious
the ground on which it wants to establish itself.
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The rightful claim, however, even of common human reason
to freedom of the will grounds itself on the consciousness
and the granted presupposition of the independence
of reason from merely subjective-determinate causes
which collectively constitute that which only belongs
to sensation, therefore under the general naming of
sensibility. The human being, who considers itself
in such a way as an intelligence, puts itself by this
in a different order of things and in a relation to
determining grounds of a quite different kind when
it thinks itself as an intelligence endowed with a
will, consequently with causality, than when it perceives
itself as a phenomenon in the world of sense (which
it actually also is) and subjects its causality, as
regards external determination, to natural laws. Now,
it soon becomes aware that both at the same time can
take place, indeed even must. For that a +thing in
the appearance+ (that belonging to the world of sense)
is subject to certain laws, of which just the same
+as thing+ or being +in itself+ is independent, contains
not the least contradiction; that it, however, must
represent and think itself in this twofold way, rests,
as concerns the first, on the consciousness of itself
as an object affected through senses, as regards the
second, on the consciousness of itself as an intelligence,
i.e. as independent in the use of reason of sensuous
impressions (therefore as belonging to the world of
understanding).
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Hence it happens that the human being presumes a will
that lets nothing come to its account which merely
belongs to its eager desires and inclinations, and
on the contrary thinks actions through itself as possible,
indeed even as necessary, that can be done only with
disregard of all eager desires and sensuous incitements.
Their causality lies in it as intelligence and in the
laws of effects and actions according to principles
of an intelligible world of which it indeed knows nothing
further than that in this only reason and, to be sure,
pure reason independent of sensibility gives the law,
also since it is in that very place only as an intelligence
its proper self (as a human being, on the other hand,
only an appearance of itself), those laws apply to
it immediately and categorically, so that, to what
inclinations and impulses (therefore the whole nature
of the world of sense) incite, cannot infringe the
laws of its willing as an intelligence, so entirely,
that it for the first does not answer and does not
ascribe to its proper self, i.e. to its will, certainly,
however, does ascribe the indulgence that it likes
to bear for them, if it allowed them to the detriment
of rational laws of the will influence on its maxims.
By this, that practical reason +thinks+ itself into
a world of understanding, it oversteps not at all its
boundaries, but certainly would if it wanted to +look+
or +feel+ itself +into+ it. The former is only a negative
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thought in view of the world of sense which gives reason
no laws in determination of the will, and only in this
single point positive, that that freedom, as negative
determination, at the same time is connected with a
(positive) capacity and even with a causality of reason,
which we name a will, to act in this way, that the
principle of actions is in accordance with the essential
character of a rational cause, i.e. the condition of
the universal validity of the maxim as a law. Were
it, however, still to fetch an +object of the will+,
i.e. a motive, from the world of understanding, then
it would overstep its boundaries and presume to know
something of which it knows nothing. The concept of
a world of understanding is thus only a +standpoint+,
that reason sees itself necessitated to take outside
the appearances, +in order to think itself as practical+,
which, if the influences of sensibility were determining
for the human being, would not be possible, which,
however, is still necessary insofar as the consciousness
of itself as an intelligence, therefore as a rational
cause active through reason, i.e. free acting, is not
to be denied it. This thought brings about, of course,
the idea of a different order and lawgiving than that
of the nature mechanism, which concerns the world of
sense, and makes the concept of an intelligible world
(i.e. the totality of rational beings, as things in
themselves)
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necessary, but without the least presumption to think
here further than merely according to its +formal+
condition, i.e. in conformity to the universality of
the maxim of the will as law, therefore to autonomy
of the latter, which alone can subsist with its freedom;
while, on the other hand, all laws that are determined
on an object give heteronomy, which can only be found
in natural laws and also can only concern the world
of sense.
But then reason would overstep all its boundary, if
it itself attempted to +explain+ ++how++ pure reason
can be practical, which would be fully one and the
same with the problem of explaining +how freedom is
possible+.
For we can explain nothing except what we can trace
back to laws whose object can be given in some possible
experience. Freedom, however, is a mere idea whose
objective reality can in no way be set forth according
to natural laws, therefore also not in any possible
experience, which thus can never be comprehended or
even only seen into because underneath it itself an
example may never be put according to any analogy.
It holds only as a necessary presupposition of reason
in a being that believes itself to be conscious of
a will, i.e. of a capacity still different from the
mere faculty of desire, (namely to determine itself
to action as an intelligence, therefore according to
laws of reason independently of
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natural instincts). Where, however, determination according
to natural laws ceases, there ceases also all +explanation+,
and there remains nothing left but +defense+, i.e.
repulsion of the objections of those who pretend to
have seen deeper into the essence of things and on
that account boldly pronounce freedom to be impossible.
One can only show them that the contradiction supposedly
discovered by them in it lies nowhere else than in
this, that, since they, in order to make the natural
law hold in view of human actions, had to consider
the human being necessarily as an appearance and now,
since one demands of them that they should think it
as an intelligence also as a thing in itself, they
still consider it always in this, too, as an appearance,
where, in that case admittedly, the separation of its
causality (i.e. of its will) from all natural laws
of the world of sense in one and the same subject would
stand in contradiction, which, however, falls away,
if they wanted to reflect and, as is reasonable, confess
that behind the appearances still the things in themselves
(although hidden) must lie as ground, of which laws
of working one cannot demand that they should be of
the same sort with those under which their appearances
stand.
The subjective impossibility of +explaining+ freedom
of the will is one and the same with the impossibility
of discovering and making comprehensible an
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+interest*)+, which the human being can take in moral
laws; and nevertheless it actually takes an interest
in them, of which the foundation in us we name moral
feeling, which has falsely been given out by some as
the standard gauge of our moral judgment, since it
rather must be looked at as the +subjective+ effect
that the law exercises on the will to which reason
alone delivers the objective grounds.
In order to will that for which reason alone prescribes
the ought to the sensuously-affected rational being,
to that belongs of course a faculty of reason +to instill+
a +feeling of pleasure+ or of satisfaction in the fulfillment
of duty, therefore a causality
*) Interest is that by which reason becomes
practical, i.e. a cause determining the will.
Hence one says only of a rational being that
it takes an interest in something, unreasoning
creatures feel only sensuous impulses. Reason
takes an immediate interest only then in
the action when the universal validity of
the maxim of it is a sufficient ground of
determination of the will. Such an interest
is alone pure. If it, however, can determine
the will only by means of another object
of desire, or under the presupposition of
a special feeling of the subject, then reason
takes only a mediate interest in the action,
and since reason can discover for itself
alone without experience neither objects
of the will, nor a special feeling underlying
it as ground, in this way the latter interest
would only be empirical and not a pure rational
interest. The logical interest of reason
(to advance its insights) is never immediate,
but presupposes purposes of its use.
122 [4:459-460]
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of it to determine sensibility in accordance with its
principles. It is, however, completely impossible to
look into, i.e. to make a priori comprehensible, how
a mere thought, which itself contains nothing sensuous
in itself, produces a sensation of pleasure or displeasure;
for that is a special kind of causality of which, as
of all causality, we can determine nothing at all a
priori but about which we must consult experience alone.
Since this, however, can provide no relation of cause
to effect, except between two objects of experience,
but here pure reason through mere ideas (which furnish
no object at all for experience) is to be the cause
of an effect that admittedly lies in experience, so
the explanation, how and why the +universality of the
maxim as law+, therefore morality, interests us, is
for us human beings completely impossible. This much
only is certain: that it does not have validity for
us +because it interests+ us (for that is heteronomy
and dependence of practical reason on sensibility,
namely on a feeling lying as the ground, by which it
never could be morally lawgiving), but that it interests
us because it holds for us as human beings, since it
has arisen from our will as intelligence, therefore
from our proper self; +what, however, belongs to mere
appearance is subordinated by reason necessarily to
the constitution of the thing in itself+.
123 [4:460-461]
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The question thus: how a categorical imperative is possible,
can be answered, to be sure, so far as one can declare
the sole presupposition under which it alone is possible,
namely the idea of freedom, also so far as one can
look into the necessity of this presupposition, which
is sufficient for the +practical use+ of reason, i.e.
for the conviction of the +validity of this imperative+,
therefore also of the moral law, but how this presupposition
itself is possible can never be looked into by any
human reason. Under the presupposition of freedom of
the will of an intelligence, however, its +autonomy+,
as the formal condition under which it alone can be
determined, is a necessary consequence. To presuppose
this freedom of the will is also not only (without
falling into contradiction with the principle of natural
necessity in the connection of appearances of the world
of sense) very well +possible+ (as speculative philosophy
can show), but also it is practically, i.e. in the
idea, to put underneath all its voluntary actions as
a condition, +necessary+ without further condition
for a rational being that is conscious of its causality
through reason, therefore of a will (which is distinct
from eager desires). But now +how+ pure reason without
other incentives that might be taken from somewhere
else can be practical for itself, i.e. how the mere
+principle of universal+
124 [4:461]
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+validity of all its maxims as laws+ (which admittedly
would be the form of a pure practical reason) without
any matter (object) of the will, in which one in advance
may take some interest, for itself can furnish an incentive
and produce an interest which would be called purely
+moral+, or in other words: +how pure reason can be
practical+, all human reason is completely incapable
of explaining that, and all effort and labor to seek
an explanation of this is lost.
It is just the same as if I sought to fathom how freedom
itself as causality of a will is possible. For there
I leave the philosophical ground of explanation and
have no other. To be sure, I could now swarm about
in the intelligible world that still remains over to
me, in the world of intelligences; but although I have
an +idea+ of it, which has its good ground, so I have
still not the least +knowledge+ of it and can also
never arrive at this through all effort of my natural
rational faculty. It signifies only a something that
there remains over when I have excluded from the grounds
of determination of my will everything that belongs
to the world of sense merely in order to limit the
principle of motives from the field of sensibility,
by this, that I bound it and show that it contains
in itself not everything in everything, but that beyond
it is still more; this more, however,
125 [4:461-462]
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I know not further. Of the pure reason which thinks
this ideal, nothing remains over to me after separation
of all matter, i.e. cognition of objects, but the form,
namely the practical law of the universal validity
of maxims, and, in accordance with this, to think reason
in reference to a pure world of understanding as a
possible efficient cause, i.e. as determining the will;
the incentive must here be completely missing; this
idea of an intelligible world itself would then have
to be the incentive or that one in which reason originally
would take an interest; which, however, to make comprehensible
is precisely the problem that we are not able to solve.
Here, then, is the highest boundary of all moral inquiry;
which, however, to determine is also already of great
importance for this reason, so that reason hunts not
on the one side around in the world of sense in a way
damaging to morals for the highest motive and for a
comprehensible, but empirical interest, on the other
side, however, so that it also not powerlessly swings
its wings in the space, empty for it, of transcendent
concepts under the name of the intelligible world,
without moving from the spot, and loses itself among
phantoms. Furthermore, the idea of a pure world of
understanding as a whole of all intelligences, to which
we ourselves as rational beings (although on the other
side at the same time members of the world of sense)
belong, remains always a useful and permitted idea
for the purpose of a
126 [4:462]
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rational faith, although all knowledge has at its border
an end, in order to effect a lively interest in the
moral law in us through the magnificent ideal of a
universal empire of +ends in themselves+ (of rational
beings), to which we only then can belong as members
when we carefully conduct ourselves according to maxims
of freedom, as if they were laws of nature.
++Concluding Remark.++
The speculative use of reason +in view of nature+ leads
to absolute necessity of some highest cause +of the
world+; the practical use of reason +with regard to
freedom+ also leads to absolute necessity, but only
+of laws of actions+ of a rational being as such. Now
it is an essential +principle+ of all use of our reason
to drive its cognition up to the consciousness of its
+necessity+ (for without this it would not be cognition
of reason). It is, however, also an equally essential
+limitation+ of the very same reason that it can see
into neither the +necessity+ of what exists, or what
happens, nor of what ought to happen, unless a +condition+,
under which it exists, or happens, or ought to happen,
is laid as ground. In this way, however, through the
constant inquiry for the
127 [4:462-463]
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condition, the satisfaction of reason is only further
and further postponed. Hence it seeks restlessly the
unconditioned-necessary and sees itself necessitated
to assume it without any means of making it comprehensible
to itself; lucky enough, if it can discover only the
concept which is compatible with this presupposition.
It is thus no shortcoming of our deduction of the highest
principle of morality, but a reproach that one would
have to make of human reason in general, that it cannot
make comprehensible an unconditional practical law
(of such kind the categorical imperative must be) as
regards its absolute necessity; for that it wants to
do this not through a condition, namely by means of
some interest laid as ground, can it not be blamed,
because it would then not be a moral law, i.e. highest
law of freedom. And in this way we comprehend, to be
sure, not the practical unconditional necessity of
the moral imperative, we comprehend, though, at least
its +incomprehensibility+, which is all that can fairly
be demanded of a philosophy that strives up to the
boundary of human reason in principles.
____________________________
128 [4:463]
[Scholar Translation: Orr]
____________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
Sections (Xs)
Pages (Xp)
Paragraphs (Xpar)
Footnotes (Xf)
Propositions (Xpro)
Formulas (Xfor)
Examples (Xe)
Assertions (Xa)
Headings (Xh)
Glossary (Xg)
Index (Xi)
Sections (Xs)
Preface [iii - xvi]
First Section [1 - 24]
Transition from common moral rational cognition to philosophical [1 - 24]
Second Section [25 - 96]
Transition from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysics of morals [25 - 96]
The autonomy of the will as the highest principle of morality [87 - 88]
The heteronomy of the will as the source of all spurious principles of morality [88 - 89]
Division of all possible principles of morality from the assumed basic concept of heteronomy [89 - 96]
Third Section [97 - 128]
Transition from the metaphysics of morals to the critique of pure practical reason [97 - 128]
The concept of freedom is the key to the explanation of the autonomy of the will [97 - 99]
Freedom must be presupposed as a quality of the will of all rational beings [99 - 101]
Of the interest which attaches to the ideas of morality [101 - 110]
How is a categorical imperative possible? [110 - 113]
Of the extreme boundary of all practical philosophy [113 - 127]
Concluding Remark [127 - 128]
Pages (Xp)
Preface
iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi
First Section
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Second Section
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62
63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75
76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88
89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96
Third Section
97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106
107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117
118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128
Paragraphs (Xpar)
Preface
1. Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: [iii.2]
2. All rational cognition is either +material+ and considers [iii.12]
3. Logic can have no empirical part, i.e. one [iv.9]
4. One can name all philosophy, so far as [v.4]
5. In such way the idea of a twofold [v.12]
6. All trades, crafts and arts have gained through [v.20]
7. Since my purpose here is properly directed to [vii.18]
8. Thus the moral laws together with their principles [ix.1]
9. A metaphysics of morals is therefore indispensably necessary, [ix.20]
10. Let one nevertheless certainly not think that what [xi.5]
11. In the intention at present to deliver someday [xiii.11]
12. Because, however, thirdly, a metaphysics of morals, in [xiv.17]
13. The present groundlaying is, however, nothing more than [xv.3]
14. I have taken my method in this writing [xvi.1]
First Section (Paragraphs)
1. (15) It is possible to think nothing anywhere in [1.5]
2. (16) Some qualities are even favorable to this good [2.12]
3. (17) The good will is not through that which [3.4]
4. (18) There is, nevertheless, in this idea of the [4.3]
5. (19) In the natural predispositions of an organized being, [4.14]
6. (20) In fact we also find that the more [5.21]
7. (21) For since reason for that purpose is not [6.25]
8. (22) In order, however, to explicate the concept of [8.4]
9. (23) I here pass over all actions which are [8.17]
10. (24) On the other hand, to preserve one's life [9.21]
11. (25) To be beneficent, where one can, is a [10.9]
12. (26) To secure one's own happiness is a duty [11.25]
13. (27) In this way we are without doubt also [13.4]
14. (28) The second proposition is: an action from duty [13.14]
15. (29) The third proposition, as a consequence from both [14.13]
16. (30) Thus the moral worth of the action lies [15.11]
17. (31) What kind of law though can that really [17.1]
18. (32) The question is e.g. may I, when I [18.1]
19. (33) What I therefore have to do, in order [19.26]
20. (34) In this way, then, we have reached in [20.21]
21. (35) There is a magnificent thing about innocence, only [22.21]
22. (36) Thus in this way +common human reason+ is [23.20]
Second Section (Paragraphs)
1. (37) If we have drawn our previous concept of [25.6]
2. (38) In fact it is absolutely impossible to make [26.7]
3. (39) One can also for those, who laugh at [27.1]
4. (40) If one adds that, if one does not [28.16]
5. (41) One could also advise morality not more badly [29.10]
6. (42) If there is then no genuine highest ground [30.8]
7. (43) This condescension to folk concepts is certainly very [30.22]
8. (44) One needs only look at the attempts concerning [31.22]
9. (45) Such a completely isolated metaphysics of morals that [32.18]
10. (46) From the foregoing it is evident: that all [34.5]
11. (47) In order, however, to advance in this treatment [36.1]
12. (48) Each thing in nature works according to laws. Only [36.16]
13. (49) The representation of an objective principle, insofar as [37.16]
14. (50) All imperatives are expressed through an +ought+ and [37.20]
15. (51) A perfectly good will would thus stand just [39.1]
16. (52) Now, all +imperatives+ command either +hypothetically+ or +categorically+. The [39.15]
17. (53) Because each practical law represents a possible action [39.23]
18. (54) The imperative thus says which action possible through [40.9]
19. (55) The hypothetical imperative thus says only that the [40.17]
20. (56) One can conceive what is possible only through [41.1]
21. (57) There is nevertheless +one+ end which one can [42.3]
22. (58) Finally, there is an imperative, which, without laying [43.6]
23. (59) The willing according to these three kinds of [43.16]
24. (60) Now the question arises: how are all these [44.13]
25. (61) The imperatives of prudence would, if only it [45.24]
26. (62) On the other hand, how the imperative of [48.14]
27. (63) We will thus have to investigate the possibility [49.20]
28. (64) Secondly, with this categorical imperative or law of [50.11]
29. (65) With this problem we want first inquire whether [51.1]
30. (66) If I conceive a +hypothetical+ imperative in general, [51.9]
31. (67) The categorical imperative is thus only a single [52.3]
32. (68) If now from this single imperative all imperatives [52.7]
33. (69) Because the universality of the law, according to [52.14]
34. (70) Now we want to enumerate some duties according [52.23]
35. (71) 1) One, who, through a series of misfortunes [53.3]
36. (72) 2) Another sees himself forced by need to [54.6]
37. (73) 3) A third finds in himself a talent [55.9]
38. (74) Yet a +fourth+, for whom it goes well [56.4]
39. (75) These, then, are some of the many actual [57.3]
40. (76) If we now pay attention to ourselves during [57.24]
41. (77) We have this much thus at least shown, [59.3]
42. (78) With the aim of arriving at this, it [59.17]
43. (79) Here we now see philosophy put in fact [60.17]
44. (80) Thus everything which is empirical, is, as an [61.6]
45. (81) Thus the question is this: is it a [62.1]
46. (82) The will is thought as a capacity to [63.13]
47. (83) Granted, however, there were something, +whose existence in+ [64.15]
48. (84) Now I say: the human being and in [64.21]
49. (85) If, then, there is thus to be a [66.4]
50. (86) So as to stay with the previous examples, [67.3]
51. (87) +Firstly+, in accordance with the concept of necessary [67.4]
52. (88) +Secondly+, what concerns the necessary or obliged duty [67.23]
53. (89) +Thirdly+, in view of the contingent (meritorious) duty [68.16]
54. (90) +Fourthly+, in reference to the meritorious duty to [69.10]
55. (91) This principle of humanity and of each rational [69.23]
56. (92) All maxims are rejected according to this principle, [70.23]
57. (93) The imperatives according to the previous way of [71.5]
58. (94) For if we think one such, then, although [72.1]
59. (95) Thus the +principle+ of each human will, as [72.10]
60. (96) It is now no wonder, when we look [73.5]
61. (97) The concept of any rational being which must [74.5]
62. (98) I understand, however, under an +empire+ the systematic [74.11]
63. (99) For rational beings all stand under the +law+ [74.23]
64. (100) A rational being, however, belongs as a +member+ [75.9]
65. (101) The rational being must consider itself always as [75.14]
66. (102) Morality thus consists in the reference of all [75.22]
67. (103) The practical necessity to act according to this [76.15]
68. (104) In the empire of ends everything has either [77.3]
69. (105) What refers to general human inclinations and needs [77.9]
70. (106) Now, morality is the condition under which alone [77.18]
71. (107) And what is it now, then, which justifies [78.25]
72. (108) The three ways cited above to represent the [79.20]
73. (109) 1) a +form+, which consists in universality, and [80.3]
74. (110) 2) a +matter+, namely an end, and here [80.7]
75. (111) 3) +a complete determination+ of all maxims through [80.12]
76. (112) We can now here end from where we [81.9]
77. (113) Rational nature excludes itself from the rest by [82.3]
78. (114) Now follows from this incontestably: that each rational [83.9]
79. (115) One can from the recent foregoing now easily [86.12]
80. (116) Autonomy of the will is the characteristic of [87.10]
81. (117) If the will +anywhere else+ than in the [88.11]
82. (118) Human reason has here, as everywhere in its [89.19]
83. (119) All principles, which one might take from this [89.24]
84. (120) +Empirical principles+ are not at all fit to [90.8]
85. (121) Among the +rational+ or reason-grounds of morality is [91.19]
86. (122) If I, however, had to choose between the [92.22]
87. (123) For the rest, I believe to be able [93.7]
88. (124) Everywhere, where an object of the will must [93.18]
89. (125) The absolutely good will, whose principle must be [95.3]
90. (126) +How such a synthetic practical proposition a priori+ [95.13]
Third Section (Paragraphs)
1. (127) The +will+ is a kind of causality of [97.10]
2. (128) The above-cited explanation of freedom is +negative+ and, [97.18]
3. (129) If, therefore, freedom of the will is presupposed, [98.21]
4. (130) It is not enough that we ascribe to [99.23]
5. (131) We have at last traced the determinate concept [101.21]
6. (132) There flowed, however, from the presupposition of these [102.8]
7. (133) It appears, therefore, as if in the idea [103.4]
8. (134) Of course we very well find that we [103.24]
9. (135) There appears here, one must freely admit it, [104.19]
10. (136) One recourse, however, remains over to us still, [105.9]
11. (137) It is a remark which to post quite [105.15]
12. (138) The reflective human being must draw a conclusion [107.14]
13. (139) Now the human being actually finds in itself [107.24]
14. (140) For this reason a rational being must look [108.20]
15. (141) As a rational being, therefore as belonging to [109.5]
16. (142) Now is the suspicion that we above made [109.16]
17. (143) The rational being classes itself as intelligence with [110.10]
18. (144) And in this way categorical imperatives are possible, [111.16]
19. (145) The practical use of common human reason confirms [112.8]
20. (146) All human beings think themselves as regards the [113.20]
21. (147) Although now out of this a dialectic of [114.17]
22. (148) Meanwhile, this apparent contradiction must at least be [115.8]
23. (149) It is, however, impossible to evade this contradiction, [115.15]
24. (150) Yet one can here not yet say that [116.19]
25. (151) The rightful claim, however, even of common human [117.1]
26. (152) Hence it happens that the human being presumes [118.1]
27. (153) By this, that practical reason +thinks+ itself into [118.24]
28. (154) But then reason would overstep all its boundary, [120.9]
29. (155) For we can explain nothing except what we [120.14]
30. (156) The subjective impossibility of +explaining+ freedom of the [121.25]
31. (157) In order to will that for which reason [122.10]
32. (158) The question thus: how a categorical imperative is [124.1]
33. (159) It is just the same as if I [125.11]
34. (160) Here, then, is the highest boundary of all [126.13]
35. (161) The speculative use of reason +in view of+ [127.10]
Footnotes (Xf)
First Section
1. A +maxim+ is the subjective principle of willing; [15.23]
2. One could reproach me, as if I sought [16.8]
Second Section
3. One can, if one wants, (just as pure [32.20]
4. I have a letter from the deceased excellent [33.19]
5. The dependence of the faculty of desire on [38.12]
6. The word prudence is taken in a twofold [42.19]
7. It appears to me, the proper meaning of [44.21]
8. I connect with the will, without a presupposed [50.19]
9. A +maxim+ is the subjective principle of acting [51.19]
10. One must here note well that I wholly [53.18]
11. To behold virtue in its proper form is [61.25]
12. This proposition I set forth here as a [66.24]
13. Let one not think that here the trivial: [68.18]
14. I can here be excused from citing examples [72.23]
15. Teleology considers nature as an empire of ends, [80.22]
16. I class the principle of moral feeling with [91.21]
Third Section
17. This way, to assume, as sufficient to our [100.20]
18. Interest is that by which reason becomes practical, [122.15]
Propositions (Xpro)
1. The "First" Proposition 8 - 13
2. The Second Proposition 13.14
3. The Third Proposition 14.13
Formulas (Xfor)
1. Universal Law 52.3 (17.10 76.3 81.3 81.15 83.26)
2. Universal Law of Nature 52.19 (80.5 81.25)
3. Humanity 66.21 (74.23 80.8 82.20 83.3)
4. Autonomy 70.18 (71.24 72.10 76.5 82.23 87.13)
5. Empire of Ends 74.5 (83.23 84.23)
Examples (Xe)
1. You ought not lie viii.9
2. Intelligence, humor, power of judgment 1.8
3. Courage, decisiveness, perseverance 1.10
4. Power, wealth, honor, health, happiness 1.17
5. Moderation, self-control, reflection 2.18
6. The cold-blooded villain 2.26
7. Like a jewel 3.19
8. The shopkeeper and his inexperienced buyers 9.6
9. The unlucky one who wishes for death 10.3
10. The compassionately attuned souls 10.10
11. The inclination to honor 10.19
12. The friend of the human being 10.25
13. The man with little sympathy 11.9
14. The gouty person 12.17
15. Scriptural passages 13.4
16. A false promise 18.1
17. Pure honesty in friendship 28.9
18. The doctor and the poisoner 41.14
19. Parents and their children 41.20
20. Dividing a line into two equal parts 45.13
21. Diet, thrift, courtesy, reserve 47.11
22. You ought promise nothing deceitfully 48.24
23. The four examples (first appearance) 53.3
24. The four examples (second appearance) 67.3
25. The amputation of limbs 67.19
26. The four examples ("third" appearance) 72.23
27. Skill and diligence in work 77.23
28. Wit, imagination and humor 77.24
29. Fidelity in promising 78.2
30. Benevolence from ground propositions 78.2
31. I ought not lie 88.24
32. To promote others' happiness 89.7
33. Different fractions of equal value 105.6
34. The most wicked miscreant 112.10
Assertions (Xa)
Preface
1. Material philosophy is twofold. [iii.18]
2. Logic can have no empirical part. [iv.9]
3. Natural and moral philosophy can have an empirical part. [iv.17]
4. Physics has its empirical and rational parts. [v.15]
5. It is of the most extreme necessity to work out a pure moral philosophy. [vii.21]
6. The ground of obligation must be sought in concepts of pure reason. [viii.13]
7. Every prescription that rests on empirical grounds can never be called a moral law. [viii.17]
8. All moral philosophy rests completely on its pure part. [ix.5]
9. Moral philosophy gives a priori laws to the human being. [ix.9]
10. Power of judgement sharpened by experience is still required. [ix.10]
11. A metaphysics of moral is indispensably necessary. [ix.20]
12. Morals remain subject to all kinds of corruption. [x.2]
13. What is to be morally good must also be done for the sake of the law. [x.5]
14. Conformity alone is very contingent and precarious. [x.9]
15. Pure philosophy (metaphysics) must come first. [x.16]
16. Without metaphysics there can be no moral philosophy at all. [x.17]
First Section (Assertions)
1. Nothing but a good will can be considered good without qualifications. [1.7]
2. The good will is good through willing alone. [3.4]
3. The true function of reason must be to produce a will good in itself. [7.7]
4. The good will must be the highest good. [7.12]
5. The good will must be the condition of everything else. [7.14]
6. The concept of duty contains the concept of a good will. [8.11]
7. To secure one's own happiness is a duty. [11.25]
8. All human beings have the most powerful and intimate inclination for happiness. [12.5]
9. The human being can make no determinate and secure concept of happiness. [12.10]
10. Practical love alone can be commanded. [13.13]
11. An action from duty has its moral worth only in its maxim. [13.14]
12. Intentions and effects can give no unconditional and moral worth. [13.21]
13. The moral worth of an action can only lie in the principle of the will. [14.2]
14. Duty is the necessity of an action out of respect for the law. [14.14]
15. Only the mere law in itself can be an object of respect and thus a command. [15.1]
16. Only the law can objectively determine the wii. [15.6]
17. Pure respect for the practical law subjectively determines the will. [15.6]
18. The moral worth of action does not lie in the effects. [15.11]
19. Only the representation of the law in itself constitutes the moral good. [15.21]
20. The mere conformity to law in general must serve the will as a principle. [17.12]
21. Duty is the condition of a will good in itself. [20.18]
22. Common human reason, in order to know what to do, does not require philosophy. [21.7]
23. Out of practical grounds, common human reason is driven to philosophy. [23.24]
Second Section (Assertions)
1. It is impossible to make out by experience with certainty whether an action is done from duty. [26.7]
2. When the issue is moral worth, what matters are inner principles of actions, which are not seen. [26.24]
3. Duty lies before all experience in the idea of a reason determining the will through a priori grounds. [28.13]
4. The law must hold for all rational beings in general. [28.21]
5. The law must hold with absolute necessity. [28.23]
6. Examples serve only as encouragement and can never justify. [30.1]
7. A completely isolated metaphysics of morals is an indispensable substrate of all securely established theoretical knowledge of duties. [32.18]
8. A completely isolated metaphysics of morals is a desideratum of the greatest importance for the actual fulfillment of its prescriptions. [32.18]
9. The pure representation of duty has a powerful influence on the human heart through reason alone. [33.7]
10. Reason can get control over incentives. [33.11]
11. All moral concepts have their seat and origin completely a priori in reason. [34.5]
12. No moral concepts can be abstracted from empirical cognitions. [34.9]
13. The dignity of all moral concepts lies in the purity of their origin. [34.11]
14. So far as one adds the empirical, one also detracts from the genuine influence of moral principles and from the unlimited worth of actions. [34.13]
15. It is of the greatest practical importance to derive moral laws from the universal concept of a rational being in general. [35.1]
16. For its application to human beings, morality requires anthropology. [35.14]
17. Without presenting morals as metaphysics, it is impossible to ground morals on its genuine principles and in so doing to bring about pure moral dispositions. [35.14]
18. Each thing in nature works according to laws. [36.16]
19. Only a rational being has the capacity to act according to the representation of laws, i.e., according to principles, or has a will. [36.17]
20. The will is nothing other than practical reason. [36.20]
21. Necessitation is the determination of a will that is not in itself fully in accord with reason. [37.6]
22. The representation of an objective principle, insofar as it is necessitating for a will, is called a command (of reason), and the formula of the command is called an imperative. [37.16]
23. All imperatives are expressed through an ought. [37.20]
24. No imperatives hold for the divine will and in general for a holy will. [39.6]
25. All imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. [39.15]
26. The hypothetical imperative only says that an action would be good for some possible or actual purpose. [40.17]
27. The pursuit of happiness is one end which one can presuppose as actual for all rational beings. [42.3]
28. The imperative which refers to the choice of means to your own happiness is hypothetical. [43.1]
29. That imperative is categorical which, without laying down as a condition for the imperative's basis some other purpose that is to be achieved by that conduct, commands the conduct immediately. [43.6]
30. Whoever wills the end, wills also the indispensable means, that are in his power. [44.20]
31. The concept of happiness is an indeterminate concept. [46.6]
32. One cannot act according to determinate principles in order to be happy. [47.8]
33. The imperative of morality is not at all hypothetical. [48.14]
34. Only the categorical imperative reads as a practical law. [49.26]
35. The categorical imperative is a synthetic practical proposition a priori. [50.14]
36. There is only one categorical imperative. [52.3]
37. Some actions are constituted in such a way that their maxim cannot without contradiction even be thought as a universal law of nature. [57.9]
38. We really do acknowledge the validity of the categorical imperative. [58.25]
39. Duty, if it is to be genuine, can only be expressed in categorical imperatives, never in hypothetical imperatives. [59.4]
40. Duty must hold for all rational beings. [59.23]
41. Everything empirical is highly damaging to the purity of morals themselves. [61.6]
42. The purity of morals consists just in this, that the principle of action is free from all influences of contingent grounds that only experience can provide. [61.10]
43. If there is a necessary law for all rational beings, then it must (completely a priori) already be connected with the concept of the will of a rational being in general. [62.1]
44. The will is thought as a capacity to determine itself to act according to the representation of certain laws. [63.13]
45. Rational beings are called persons because their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves. [65.15]
46. The human being necessarily conceives of its own existence as an end in itself. [66.12]
47. The principle of humanity must arise from pure reason. [70.11]
48. The human being is subject only to its own, but universal, lawgiving. [73.11]
49. In the empire of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. [77.3]
50. Morality and humanity, so far as it is capable of it, alone have dignity. [77.21]
51. Lawgiving itself must have a dignity. [79.12]
52. Autonomy is the ground of the dignity of human nature and of all rational nature. [79.17]
53. The three ways above of representing the principle of morality are at bottom only so many formulas of the very same law. [79.20]
54. All maxims have a form, a matter, and a complete determination of all maxims. [80.2]
55. That will is absolutely good which cannot be bad and therefore whose maxim, if the maxim is made into a universal law, can never conflict with itself. [81.11]
56. Rational nature distinguishes itself from the others by setting an end for itself. [82.3]
57. The end here must be thought not as one to be produced but rather as a self-sufficient end. [82.10]
58. Any rational being must so act as if it were through its maxims always a lawgiving member in the universal empire of ends. [83.23]
59. An empire of ends would actually come into existence through maxims whose rule the categorical imperative prescribes to all rational beings, if the maxims were universally followed. [84.11]
60. Autonomy of the will is the characteristic of the will by which the will is a law to itself. [87.10]
61. If the will seeks the law that is to determine it in the character of any of its objects, then heteronomy always results. [88.11]
62. Empirical principles are not at all fit to be the ground of moral laws. [90.8]
63. The principle of personal happiness is the most objectionable. [90.16]
64. Moral feeling, this supposed special sense, remains closer to morality. [91.4]
65. If I had to choose between the concept of moral sense and that of perfection in general, then I would decide for the latter. [92.22]
66. The absolutely good will contains merely the form of willing in general as autonomy. [95.3]
67. Whoever holds morality to be something must admit the principle of autonomy. [95.23]
Third Section (Assertions)
1. The will is a kind of causality of living beings. [97.10]
2. A free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same. [98.18]
3. Any being that can act not otherwise than under the idea of freedom is, just for that reason, in practical regard, actually free. [100.13]
4. We must attribute to each being endowed with reason and will this quality of determining itself to action under the idea of its freedom. [102.4]
5. Freedom and individual lawgiving of the will are both autonomy. [104.26]
6. This must provide a distinction between a world of sense and a world of understanding. [106.16]
7. By the knowledge the human being has of itself through inner sensation, it cannot presume to know what it is in itself. [106.22]
8. A rational being has two standpoints from which it can consider itself. [108.23]
9. With the idea of freedom the concept of autonomy is inseparably connected, but this is inseparably connected with the universal principle of morality. [109.11]
10. The world of understanding contains the ground of the world of sense, and therefore also of its laws. [111.3]
11. One must look at the laws of the world of understanding as imperatives for oneself. [111.13]
12. Categorical imperatives are possible because the idea of freedom makes me into a member of an intelligible world and I intuit myself at the same time as a member of the world of sense. [111.16]
13. The practical use of common human reason confirms the correctness of this deduction. [112.8]
14. All human beings think themselves as regards the will as free. [113.20]
15. Freedom is only an idea of reason, whose objective reality is in itself doubtful. [114.12]
16. No true contradiction will be found between freedom and natural necessity of the very same human actions. [115.3]
17. This duty, however, is incumbent only on speculative philosophy so that speculative philosophy might prepare a clear path for practical philosophy. [116.10]
18. That a thing as an appearance is subject to certain laws while the very same as a thing or being in itself is independent of those laws contains not the least contradiction. [117.17]
19. The concept of a world of understanding is only a standpoint. [119.14]
20. Reason would overstep its entire boundary if it attempted to explain how pure reason can be practical. [120.9]
21. The idea of freedom holds only as a necessary presupposition of reason. [120.23]
22. Where the determination of natural laws stops, all explanation stops, too. [121.2]
23. The subjective impossibility of explaining the freedom of the will is one and the same with the impossibility of discovering and making understandable an interest which the human being might take in moral laws. [121.25]
24. Moral feeling must be seen as the subjective effect that the law exercises on the will. [122.7]
25. The explanation of how and why the universality of a maxim as law, and therefore morality, interests us, is completely impossible for us human beings. [123.14]
26. It interests us because it is valid for us as human beings. [123.22]
27. The question of how a categorical imperative is possible can be answered so far as you can provide the sole presupposition under which the imperative is possible. [124.1]
28. Under the presupposition of the freedom of the will of an intelligence, the will's autonomy is a necessary consequence. [124.11]
29. To presuppose this freedom of the will is not only possible but also practically necessary. [124.14]
30. All human reason is completely incapable of explaining how pure reason can be practical. [125.7]
31. The idea of a pure world of understanding remains always a useful and permitted idea for the purpose of a rational faith. [126.23]
32. Reason restlessly seeks the unconditioned-necessary. [128.2]
Headings (Xh)
Preface
1. The branches of philosophy: physics, ethics, logic [iii.2]
2. All rational knowledge is material or formal; ethics is material [iii.12]
3. The empirical (practical anthropology) and rational (metaphysics of morals) parts of ethics [iv.9]
4. The need for a metaphysics of morals [v.20]
5. A metaphysics of morals differs from Wolff's philosophy [xi.5]
6. Three reasons for this Groundlaying [xiii.11]
7. The aims of this Groundlaying [xv.3]
8. The method and parts of this Groundlaying [xvi.1]
First Section (Headings)
1. Only the good will is good without qualification [1.5]
2. The good will is good in itself [3.4]
3. The practical function of reason is the establishment of a good will [4.3]
4. The concept of duty contains the concept of a good will [8.4]
5. Acting from duty [8.17]
6. Only actions from duty have a moral worth [9.21]
7. The second proposition: an action from duty has its moral worth in the principle of willing [13.14]
8. The third proposition: duty is the necessity of an action out of respect for the law [14.13]
9. The formula of universal law: mere conformity to law serves as the principle of a good will [15.11]
10. An illustration: a false promise [18.1]
11. Common human reason uses this principle of a good will [20.21]
12. Moral philosophy is still needed to avoid dialectic [22.21]
Second Section (Headings)
1. Morality cannot be drawn from experience [25.6]
2. Morality cannot be borrowed from examples [29.10]
3. Popular moral philosophy is unreliable [30.8]
4. Review of methodological conclusions [34.5]
5. Reason and its influence on the will [36.16]
6. Classification of Imperatives [37.16]
7. The hypothetical imperative [39.15]
8. The categorical imperative [43.6]
9. How hypothetical imperatives are possible [44.13]
10. How categorical imperatives are possible [48.14]
11. The formula of universal law [51.1]
12. The formula of universal law of nature [52.14]
13. Four examples [52.23]
14. Willing and thinking maxims [57.3]
15. Exceptions [57.24]
16. An a priori proof is still required [59.3]
17. Objective and relative ends [63.13]
18. The formula of humanity [64.15]
19. Four Examples [67.3]
20. The formula of autonomy [69.23]
21. The exclusion of interest [71.5]
22. Heteronomy [73.5]
23. The formula of the empire of ends [74.5]
24. Price and dignity [77.3]
25. Review of the formulas [79.20]
26. Overall review [81.9]
27. The autonomy of the will [87.7]
28. The heteronomy of the will [88.8]
29. Taxonomy of all heteronomous principles [89.14]
30. Empirical heteronomous principles: happiness and feeling [90.8]
31. Rational heteronomous principles: ontological and theological perfection [91.19]
32. The inadequacy of heteronomy in general [93.7]
33. Review and Preview: what has been proved and what is still to be proved [95.3]
Third Section (Headings)
1. Concepts of freedom: positive and negative [97.6]
2. The presupposition of freedom [99.19]
3. A vicious circle? [101.18]
4. Escaping from the vicious circle: the two standpoints [105.9]
5. How is a categorical imperative possible? [110.8]
6. A contradiction between freedom and natural necessity? [113.17]
7. Resolution of the contradiction: the two standpoints [115.15]
8. The limits of knowledge: the world of understanding [118.24]
9. The limits of explanation: the possibility of freedom [120.9]
10. The limits of explanation: moral interest [121.25]
11. Review: how is a categorical imperative possible? [124.1]
12. The highest limit of all moral inquiry [126.13]
13. Concluding remark: the limitations of reason [127.9]
Glossary (Xg)
absolute :: Kant uses 'absolute' or 'absolutely' to let us know that something is not dependent or based on some empirical, contingent condition. He frequently uses it to describe a good will, necessity, and law. So an absolutely good will is a will that is always guided by the moral law and never swayed by desires and other empirical incentives. And a moral command such as the categorical imperative expresses absolute necessity because it must be followed no matter what desires you might have. This independence from any empirical condition implies that you will not be able to excuse yourself from, or make for yourself an exception to, the moral law. []
a posteriori :: This Latin phrase is typically used in connection with concepts and incentives. It indicates availability only by means of empirical investigation and is to be understood in opposition to 'a priori'. An example of an a posteriori concept is the concept of gravity. We have the concept of gravity only through experience (e.g., of dropped objects falling to the ground rather than floating) and, in its more precise form, through the empirical investigations of experimenters like Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. In philosophy in general, it is knowledge justified by appeal to the senses that is typically alleged to be a posteriori. []
a priori :: This Latin phrase is frequently used in connection with concepts, principles, laws, and propositions. It signals availability without the aid of empirical investigation and so is to be understood in opposition to 'a posteriori'. Characterizing a principle as a priori, for instance, can signal that the principle can be known without the aid of empirical investigation. Kant thinks that all genuinely moral principles are a priori (and also that they are synthetic). In philosophy in general, it is knowledge that is sometimes alleged to be a priori, particularly knowledge of logical truths but also of some moral and metaphysical truths. In these contexts, we are said to know these truths a priori; that is, we can gain access to the truths without having to resort to empirical investigation. []
analytic ::
1. Kant's method of investigation is in part analytic, another part being synthetic. In this methodological context, 'analytic' refers to transitioning to higher principles (having a more general or wider scope of application) from lower principles (having a more specific or narrower scope of application) by examination of the lower principles. Other ways to think of it are to see it as a transition from conclusion to premises or assumptions, or as a process of reverse-engineering a finished product into the components from which it is assembled. Kant says (at pp. 95-6) that the first two Sections of the work exhibit this analytic approach. [xvi]
2. Kant also speaks of analytic propositions (see p. 45). Such a proposition linguistically joins together concepts that are conceptually inseparable in the sense that if you think one concept and fully probe the concept you will come across the other concept, thus merely making explicit what is already implicit in the probed concept. The usual metaphor is that one (i.e., the probed) concept contains the other concept, this containment being what makes the concepts inseparable in the specified sense. As an example, Kant says (pp. 44-5) that the proposition 'whoever wills the end also wills the indispensable means to that end' is an analytic proposition; for if we sufficiently probe the concept of willing an end we will find in it the concept of willing the indispensable means to that end. [45]
apodictic :: This unusual word indicates the absolute necessity of something such as a law or principle. For example (p. 40), the categorical imperative is an apodictic practical principle; hypothetical imperatives, on the other hand, are never apodictic because the necessity they express is always conditional (on, for instance, desires and wants) rather than absolute. []
appearance :: An appearance is an object of experience and is located in space and time. This word ('Erscheinung' in German) occurs most frequently in the Third Section (an earlier and less specific use appears on p. 28) in the context of the world of sense: appearances are what we encounter in the world of sense, in the world that is full of sensible objects such as trees and bumblebees. A closely related term is 'phenomenon' ('phenomena' being the plural, analogous to 'appearances'). An appearance (phenomenon) is to be contrasted with a thing in itself (noumenon). The appearance is supposed to be the appearing, to us in the world of sense, of the thing in itself which is not in the world of sense and which we cannot know; the unknowable thing in itself is in some way "behind" the appearance. []
assertoric :: Kant categorizes hypothetical imperatives in several ways. One of these ways is to say that the hypothetical imperative is an assertoric practical principle, by which he means that the imperative, taken as a principle, asserts that an action is appropriate for some actual or real (as opposed to some merely possible) purpose. Kant's example (p. 42) is that everyone has as an actual purpose the pursuit of happiness; the hypothetical imperative prescribing the pursuit is thus assertoric. On p. 40, Kant contrasts assertoric principles with problematic principles. []
autonomy :: Kant uses this word to refer to the capacity of the will to govern itself by formulating and following laws and principles that are based in reason. This capacity is a distinguishing feature of rational beings endowed with a will. Such beings can (but, if they are imperfect beings such as humans, do not always) make principled decisions that are the result of thinking things through using their reason; frequently, however, such beings make decisions (and then act) based chiefly on emotions, feelings, desires, wants, likes and dislikes, biases, and prejudices. Kant also speaks (p. 74) of the principle of autonomy, and in this usage he means a principle that prescribes that we should exercise this capacity of the will to act on rational principles or maxims formulable as universal laws. []
categorical :: Most generally, this signals an independence from desires, wants, and needs. So, for example, the categorical imperative is an imperative that holds independently of what you might happen to want or desire. The categorical is aligned with what is universal and absolute rather than with what is personal/individual and relative. This alignment with the universal and absolute is perhaps the chief reason why moral imperatives, which are always categorical, are not hypothetical imperatives. []
categories :: Although this word has the same root as 'categorical' in 'categorical imperative', their meanings are not closely related. The categories are pure concepts of the understanding. They are basic, very general concepts that are built-in to the structure of our minds and that play an essential role in constructing our experience of the empirical world, the world of sense. According to Kant, there are twelve of these categories; examples of these fundamental concepts include: unity, plurality, causality, and possibility. Kant discusses the categories at length in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). In the Groundlaying, they are mostly in the background. In fact, Kant only explicitly refers to them once, on p. 80; other references are indirect such as those on p. 108 where they are the concepts that "bring sensuous representations under rules" or on p. 112 where they are the concepts that are "added" to intuitions. []
cognition :: A cognition is a kind of representation (in Kant's sense) of an object or relation between objects. A moral cognition, for instance, might be a true judgment about what our duty is in a particular situation. The German word is 'Erkenntniß' and is sometimes translated as 'knowledge' in the sense of knowing that something is the case or of holding a true proposition about something. []
concept :: A concept is a kind of representation (in Kant's sense) of a property or characteristic of something of a particular kind. For example, the concept of a rational being specifies the property or attribute of having the power or faculty of reason. Some concepts can be complex and specify more than one property; for example, the concept of a moral principle specifies, among others which Kant does not emphasize so much, the three properties of being universal, being necessary, and being absolute. []
critique :: Kant speaks several times in the Groundlaying of a critique of reason and of practical reason. These critiques are part of his so-called critical philosophy, which is the philosophy he started putting together in the 1770s and which represents his more mature views. Kant thinks these critiques of reason are necessary in order to prevent reason from exceeding its limits, which it does when it tries to claim knowledge of things that are beyond our possible experience. Examples of such claims to knowledge, from traditional metaphysics (which Kant rejects) include claims about God's abilities, claims about the immortality of the soul, and claims about how freedom is possible. (Note that although in the Groundlaying Kant says a bunch about this last, freedom, he does not say how it is possible but only that it must be presupposed.) []
dignity :: Like so many of the terms he uses, it's hard to pin down what Kant means by 'dignity', but it seems to be closely associated with autonomy. On p. 77, he seems to say that dignity is a kind of inner worth that human beings have insofar as they can be lawgivers. He later (p. 79) also seems to add that this inner worth is unconditional and incomparable. And on p. 87 Kant suggests that dignity is, or arises from, the capability of rational beings to be universal lawgivers. []
duty :: In the Groundlaying, a duty is a moral obligation. For Kant, this means that duties have several features. They are based on the moral law and so are unconditioned and specify absolutely necessary actions. We feel this necessity that they have, this obligatoriness, when we respect the moral law. These features help explain Kant's account of duty in The Third Proposition (p. 14). Kant also holds that there are different kinds (pp. 52-3) of duties and that the concept of duty contains (p. 8) the concept of a good will. []
ethics :: Ethics is one of the main branches of philosophy. As such, it is the science of morals, the methodological study of the system of duties that govern human conduct. As a branch of philosophy, ethics should be thought of as philosophical ethics or as moral or practical philosophy. Kant says (p. v) that ethics has two parts, one empirical and one rational: practical anthropology (which is the empirical part) and the metaphysics of morals (which is the purely rational part). The term should not be thought of as synonymous with 'morals' or 'morality' because ethics takes morals or morality as its object of study as, for instance, biology takes the living organism as its object of study. []
empirical ::
1. As an adjective, it usually characterizes motives, laws, or principles as in some way relying on sense experience. So, for instance, an empirical law (such as the law of gravity) is a law that is established through observation and experiment. For Kant, no genuine moral laws or principles are empirical at their foundations (but applying the laws or principles may require empirical inputs). This is so because all moral laws are synthetic a priori statements while all empirical laws are synthetic a posteriori statements. [iv]
2. As a noun (as in 'the empirical'), it refers to content obtained or generated by using the senses. So, for instance, the propositional content in the general claim that humans desire companionship is based on our repeated observations of the social behavior of others (and ourselves). The opposite of the empirical is the transcendent, what is beyond experience (and the analogous adjective is 'transcendental'). [vi]
end in itself :: By an end in itself ('Zweck an sich selbst' in German), Kant means a rational being with a will. Human beings with wills and persons count as ends in themselves. These kinds of beings are able to set goals for themselves and to have purposes which they try to fulfill by following principles of action. This conception of rational beings underlies the Humanity formulation of the categorical imperative. []
experience :: In a non-technical sense, experience is the empirical knowledge we have from our interactions with the world of sense. More technically, an experience is a judgment or statement our faculty of understanding forms from combining sensory inputs (intuitions) with the twelve categories of the understanding (such as the category of causality). Kant holds that no moral concepts, such as duty, are concepts of experience (p. 25). []
ground :: Kant uses this word very frequently in various contexts: "ground of obligation" at viii.13; "ground of the difficulty" at 50.12; "ground of desire" at 63.22; "ground of determinate laws" at 64.17; "ground of this principle" at 66.11; "ground of the dignity" at 79.18; "ground of the world of sense" at 111.4; "its good ground" at 125.17; and others. It can, in general, perhaps best be understood as an amalgam of the following: (rational) basis, foundation, cause, source, origin, reason, warrant, justification, account. []
groundlaying :: A metaphysics of morals requires a rational basis, and in this work Kant is trying to figure out such a rational basis: the content of the sequential transitions passed through in the process of this figuring out constitutes the groundlaying. Others have translated the German word, 'Grundlegung', as 'groundwork', 'fundamental principles', 'foundations', and 'grounding'. []
heteronomy :: In contrast to autonomy, heteronomy is a capacity of the will to relinquish control to empirical influences such as desires and wants. A will in this state would be a heteronomous will and is not free. Kant also speaks of principles of heteronomy, meaning by this principles, such as the principle of happiness, that prescribe that the will should let itself be governed by desires and wants rather than by reason. According to Kant, such heteronomous principles can never be genuine moral principles. []
highest good :: Kant says (p. 7) that a will that is good in itself is the highest good. Such a will is good not because of what it accomplishes but only because of the way in which it wills (i.e, willing in accordance with a universalizable maxim). The highest good should not be confused with the complete good, which (as we learn (5:110) in the Critique of Practical Reason) is a good will which is also happy because it has all the virtues that entitle it to that happiness. Note that Kant also remarks (p. 29) that we identify God as the highest good. []
hypothetical :: This is an adjective characterizing some imperatives as based on wants, desires, and needs rather than on reason. So a hypothetical imperative prescribes that you should do some action provided that you desire some result that would probably be brought about (at least in part) by performing the action. An example of a hypothetical imperative would be: I should do what my boss tells me to do or else I won't get the promotion that I want. In this example, obeying the boss is the necessary means to the unnecessary but wanted end of getting the promotion. Kant's meaning of "hypothetical" should not be confused with the dictionary definition of "hypothetical" which equates it with "imaginary" or "supposed" as in "a hypothetical case"; for Kant, hypothetical imperatives are very real, as are the desires and wants in the world of sense upon which such imperatives are based. []
idea :: Kant's use of 'idea' ('Idee' in the German) is peculiar. He typically means a representation that comes from pure reason and so which represents something transcendent and unconditional. Examples include the idea of God, the idea of duty, the idea of immortality, and the idea of freedom. He rarely, if ever, uses 'idea' in the ordinary sense of just a thought, conception, or notion. For this ordinary sense, Kant is more likely to use 'representation' ('Vorstellung' in the German). Some translators use 'Idea' for Kant's peculiar sense and 'idea' for the ordinary sense. []
incentive :: An incentive ('Triebfeder' in the German) is just about anything that can influence the will, that can move us to action through an act of willing: feelings, desires, objects of desires, the expected effect of an action, secret or hidden springs of action, etc. They are typically empirical and of a sensuous sort and as such can never be a basis for morality. But Kant leaves it open as to whether there are non-empirical, pure, or a priori incentives. He says (p. 86), for instance, that respect (which is a special kind of feeling) for the law can be an incentive. And, though he holds it out as a possibility, Kant does not claim to be able to explain how something non-sensuous (such as an idea or a thought) could be an incentive (see pp. 123-6). Kant sometimes uses 'motive' ('Bewegungsgrund') for these possible non-sensuous incentives. []
inclination :: An inclination ('Neigung' in the German) is a kind of habitual desire that arises from needs and that is stimulated by sensibility (see the footnote on p. 38). Examples would include desires, either mediate or immediate, for food, sleep, sex, companionship, self-love, and happiness. Because inclinations arise from the needs we have as embodied beings, and are therefore thoroughly empirical in nature, Kant denies that inclinations can ever be a basis for morality. []
intelligible :: The intelligible world is that world of things in themselves, including our true selves, which we cannot know or even be acquainted with. According to Kant, we cannot know, for instance, whether the intelligible world exists in space and time or whether causal laws govern the relations between the objects (if there are such) in the intelligible world. We cannot have such knowledge because the intelligible world is not presented to us through sensibility. Because causality cannot be attributed to the intelligible world, when we, as rational beings, think of our true selves as belonging to that world, we must think of ourselves as having freedom of the will. Still (and perhaps inexplicably), Kant wants to go on to say that the intelligible world and its things in themselves lie behind, and are the rational ground of, the appearances in the world of sense that we interact with as embodied beings. Furthermore, this rational ground, reason itself, is the source of morality. So, although we, as rational beings with wills, must think of ourselves as free, we are not totally undetermined; for we, as rational beings, willingly conform to reason and thus to moral law. But, at the same time, we, as also embodied beings belonging to the world of sense, find our wills obligated by these moral laws which have their source in the intelligible world. []
intuition :: An intuition ('Anschauung' in the German), in Kant's technical vocabulary, is a kind of representation which is essential to the operation of the faculty of sensibility. Intuitions can be empirical, as when we have sensuous intuitions of objects in the world of sense; examples would be the mental imagery of a patch of color, the tactile impression of a felt texture, or the auditory awareness of a singular sound. These empirical intuitions, or passively received sensory inputs with uninterpreted content, are unlike non-empirical, pure, or a priori intuitions, which are formal and have no content at all; examples of these are the intuitions of space and time. []
knowledge :: For Kant, knowledge is the outcome of the understanding's job of combining intuitions with concepts. The result of the combination is a judgment. So knowledge always occurs in the form of a judgment. Depending on the intuitions and concepts involved, the judgment or knowledge might be either empirical or non-empirical. Examples of the latter kind are the categorical imperative and the claim that every event has a cause, both of which are synthetic a priori judgments. []
law :: There are several kinds of laws. Kant refers, for instance on p. 11, to laws of nature (e.g., theoretical laws such as the law of cause and effect), laws of freedom (e.g., practical laws such as moral laws), and laws of thought (e.g., formal laws of logic). What they all have in common is that they are true, universal, absolute, and necessary. []
maxim :: A maxim is a subjective principle of willing on which a rational being with a will acts. Maxims specify the end to be achieved by the action, the means or action used to achieve the end, and the contextual circumstances of the situation. A maxim does not have to be explicitly formulated by the acting rational being. When a maxim is consistent with the moral law then it holds not just subjectively (for the acting rational being) but also objectively (for all rational beings similarly situated). For all maxims that can succeed as moral principles, Kant says (p. 80) that they have: a form, a matter, and a complete determination according to universal law. []
metaphysics :: It is a subsidiary branch of philosophy; in particular, it is the non-formal (non-logic) part of pure philosophy that deals with objects of the understanding. The knowledge we get from metaphysics is synthetic a priori because it says something about how our experience (hence synthetic) of nature or of morals must (hence a priori) be. Kant thinks this kind of knowledge is possible because our mind, our understanding in particular, is an active participant in constructing our experience. In general, for Kant, metaphysics is possible just to the extent that it helps to explain the structure of our experience. Note, however, that Kant thinks that traditional metaphysics, which goes beyond possible experience by making claims, for instance, about God, the soul, and substance, is not possible. []
metaphysics of morals :: This phrase refers to the pure, rational part of morals or ethics, the part of morals in which its principles (which are synthetic a priori propositions) are derived only from pure reason rather than also from empirical facts about the nature of human beings. The metaphysics of morals thus provides the rational basis for the system of moral duties that govern our behavior. Kant insists that morals must, for its foundations, have such a metaphysics, but he at the same time allows that morals, for its applications to human life, must have access to empirical facts about humans and their circumstances in the world of sense. []
misology :: Kant makes use of this uncommon word, which means a distrust or hatred of reason and reasoning, in arguing that reason has not been given to us specifically in order to help us obtain happiness. []
morals ::
1. Morals, in one meaning, is the system of obligations that govern how rational beings ought to behave toward each other. This is closer to the meaning of Kant's use of 'Sitten', 'Sittlichkeit', and 'Moralität' and is the meaning of 'Morals' in the English title of the work. See the first occurrence of 'morals' on page v, embedded in the phrase 'metaphysics of morals'. [v]
2. In another meaning, morals is the rational part of ethics or the rational part of the science (i.e., methodological study) of morality. This is closer to the meaning of Kant's use of 'Moral', 'Ethik', 'Moralphilosophie', and the entire phrase 'Metaphysik der Sitten'. See the second occurrence of 'morals' on page v. [v]
noumenon :: This word does not occur in the Groundlaying, but it is a synonym for 'thing in itself', which does. The opposite of 'noumenon' is 'phenomenon' or an appearance. A noumenon is unknowable because it cannot be intuited and so cannot be an object of experience. If we try to intuit a noumenon and so try to make it an object of experience, we exceed the boundary of reason. Kant is critical of those philosophers who have tried to do this, and it is because of this error that he rejects traditional (speculative) metaphysics which claims knowledge of God, immortality, and freedom. A properly critiqued reason is limited to mere ideas, not knowledge, of such features of the noumenal or intelligible world. []
objective :: Kant frequently uses 'objective' in two adjectival contexts: to qualify 'reality' and to qualify terms such as 'principle', 'law', and 'necessity'. In the former context (e.g., p. 114), Kant means that there is an actual, really existing, object for a representation (such as an idea or thought) that we have constructed of that object. In the latter context (e.g., p. 37), Kant means that the principle, law, or necessity is valid, holds for, or is applicable to all rational beings simply because they are rational, independently of any individuating characteristics such as desires, wants, or physical abilities. []
phenomenon :: A phenomenon is an appearance in the world of sense. What lies behind the phenomenon is a noumenon, or thing in itself, in the intelligible world. []
physics :: It is one of the main branches of philosophy. The term is not synonymous with present-day physics and is even broader in scope than our contemporary notion of the natural sciences as a group of disciplines. []
practical :: Not used in the sense of 'feasible', 'practical' refers to behavior, conduct, or action. Moral principles are thus practical principles because they prescribe how we should behave, conduct ourselves, and act. And practical reason is the faculty or power of reason in its capacity to issue directives to action (i.e., to determine the will). The term should be understood in contrast to the theoretical and speculative. []
practical anthropology :: It is the science of human beings with respect to customs and social behavior, in other words, the empirical part of ethics. Practical anthropology, being empirical, is not a part of the metaphysics of morals, but Kant also holds that practical anthropology is essential to the application of moral principles to human life. []
problematic :: A category of hypothetical imperative, Kant uses this word to mark out those practical principles that pertain to merely possible purposes that a rational being might happen to have. On p. 40, Kant contrasts problematic principles with assertoric principles. []
pure :: Kant typically uses this adjective to describe concepts and motives that are unmixed with empirical content; it is nearly synonymous with 'a priori'. []
rational :: This word indicates that something (e.g., a person or a principle) is not empirical or is not mixed or encumbered in some way with empirical or sensory elements. For example, 'the rational person' might refer to someone who makes decisions based on principles arrived at through reasoning instead of someone whose actions are caused by emotions or sentiment; it might also refer to the true self, the person considered from the point of view of the intelligible world rather than the world of sense. []
rational being :: This phrase refers to a special kind of being, a being with a will and so with the capacity to act on a principle. A typical human being is an example of such a being because typical humans have wills, have reason, and can (but do not always) allow their reason to guide their will. []
reason :: It is a capacity, faculty, or power of rational beings to think in a lawlike or rule-based (i.e., according to a canon of thought) way; it is thus what we use when we think logically, as when we make inferences from premises to a conclusion. It is also an original source of new and pure or a priori concepts. Kant says (p. 7) that the highest practical function of reason is to help our wills become good. This meaning of 'reason' (as a faculty or power) should be distinguished from the meaning of 'reason' as an account of why something is done or what justifies it; for something akin to these latter meanings, Kant's favorite word is perhaps 'ground'. []
representation :: Kant uses this word in a very special sense. For him, it is a generic term signifying any kind of output or object which we are mentally aware of and which our mind (in particular, our understanding) has actively processed. For example, all of the following are representations: concepts, ideas, intuitions, sensations. Representations can be of varying degrees of complexity, from the simple perception or intuition of a single patch of uniform color to the multi-layered comprehension of a proposition built up or synthesized out of several related concepts. Note, too, that representations do not have to be of actual objects; they can, for instance, be of imaginary objects such as centaurs and so do not have to represent something real. []
respect :: Respect ('Achtung' in the German) is a special kind of feeling (p. 16). This special feeling does not arise through empirical sensibility; rather, it arises when we become aware that the moral law places us under an obligation. So respect for the law is an effect that the law has on us, and it is thus not a cause of the law. []
science :: A science is any organized body of knowledge. Kant's meaning is much broader than in contemporary usage of the word which is more or less restricted to disciplines that employ rigorous experimental methodologies. []
sensation :: A sensation ('Empfindung' in the German) is the immediate or direct effect of something on the senses. There can be external and internal sensations, depending on whether the outer sense or inner sense is affected, but in any case are always empirical, never pure or a priori. For example, visually tracking a bird in flight would involve (external) sensations; consumption of alcohol might give rise to (internal) sensations associated with giddiness. Sensations are one kind of representation and furnish the material for empirical intuitions. []
sensibility :: Sensibility ('Sinnlichkeit' in the German) is the capacity, faculty, or power of having sensations and intuitions. []
speculative :: Used frequently in conjunction with 'reason', Kant emphasizes the use of the power of reason to engage in theoretical, as opposed to practical or action-based, pursuits; a first approximation might be to think of it as intellectual curiosity. Kant thinks that speculative reason can get carried away in its attempt to gain theoretical knowledge and in so doing overstep its bounds and hopelessly try to know the transcendent. []
subjective :: Something is subjective insofar as it is particular to an individual at a given time or place, is not possessed by all rational beings, or relates to the perspective of the individual. So, for instance, desires are subjective in that they can differ in various ways (e.g., duration, intensity, existence) from individual to individual and even within the same individual. The opposite of 'subjective' is 'objective'. Another example, is sensibility; it, too, is variable, some individuals having greater perceptual acuity than others, for instance. It is their subjectivity that rules out desire and sensibility as candidates for the basis or source of morality, for Kant holds that morality exhibits universality and necessity. []
synthetic ::
1. Part of Kant's method is to proceed in a synthetic fashion, that is, by transitioning from higher principles to lower principles and in so doing showing how the lower depend on the higher. For this meaning, see the last paragraph of the Preface. [xvi]
2. In another context, but in which it is still opposed to 'analytic', the word describes a particular kind of proposition in which conceptually separable concepts are joined. Kant holds that all empirical propositions are synthetic (and a posteriori), the propositions' component concepts being joined by experience (e.g., by intuitions). [45]
synthetic practical proposition a priori :: This is a practical proposition which is both synthetic and a priori. So, breaking this down further, it is first of all a practical proposition, a proposition in which at least one of its expressed concepts has to do with action or conduct. Then, second, it is synthetic so that the proposition asserts a connection between concepts that are conceptually distinct, separate, not internally linked just between themselves. Third, the linkage between concepts is a priori in that the concepts are necessarily (and so not empirically) joined together by something other than experience. In sum, it is a proposition in which action-related concepts that can be thought separately are nevertheless bound to each other in a necessary way. For an example, see the footnote on p. 50, where the concepts being connected are will and action. []
teleology :: Teleology is a theory that views processes as aiming for or striving to achieve goals or ends. The conception of nature as having purposes, for instance, is the core of teleological theory. Kant makes use (p. 80) of teleology in comparing an empire of ends with and empire of nature. Teleology also figures in his discussion (starting on p. 4) of the role of reason in the life of a rational being. []
thing in itself :: A thing in itself, also called a noumenon, is what exists in the intelligible world. We cannot know things in themselves because they cannot be intuited or represented to us and so cannot be possible objects of experience. But Kant claims that they exist and that they somehow lie behind, and provide the ground for, appearances in the world of sense. []
transcendent :: What is transcendent is what is beyond the possibility of experience; it is accordingly unknowable. The intelligible world of things in themselves, of noumena, is a transcendent realm. []
transcendental :: Kant uses this adjective to refer to what helps explain the possibility of experience. So, for instance, transcendental knowledge, such as the synthetic a priori proposition that every event has a cause, sets a condition that must be met in order for us to have any experience at all. Note that, according to Kant, transcendental knowledge is possible but that transcendent knowledge is not possible. []
understanding :: This word, a noun ('der Verstand' in German), has a special meaning in Kant's philosophy. The understanding is another of the powers, faculties, or capacities of the mind. Unlike the faculty of reason, the understanding is not a spontaneous source of new, pure (i.e., free from the impurities of the empirical) concepts. Rather, the understanding's main job is to take sensory inputs (empirical intuitions) and then process them (using schema) with the understanding's own pure concepts (the categories); the result is a cognition such as a thought or judgment. Unlike reason, the understanding needs sensory inputs or intuitions; without them, it would have nothing to do. []
will :: The will ('der Wille' being the German word for it) is an ability or power of a rational being to represent to itself a law, principle, or rule for the specific purpose of action; at one point (p. 36), Kant says that the will is practical reason. This ability (as it occurs in humans) can be compromised or weakened by non-rational empirical factors such as desires, incentives, inclinations, and impulses; a bad will, such as that of the villain, is frequently the result. It is also possible, however, that this ability is guided or determined solely by reason, in which case a good will is the result. But note that, in order for this good will actually to produce a good outcome, further steps and favorable circumstances are required; for instance, the rational being must be free to choose (i.e., must have free will or, in the German, 'die Willkür') to act on or carry out the representation of the law for action that the will has given it, and then the external circumstances must be such that the action will be efficacious. []
Index (Xi)
(Proper names and the first occurrence of some uncommon words)
A
analytic 45
analytically xvi
apodictic 28
assertoric 40
autonomy 74
C
categorical 39
H
heteronomy 74
Hutcheson 91
hypophysical 33
hypothetical 39
J
Juno 61
P
problematic 40
S
Socrates 21
Sulzer 33
synthetic 45
synthetically xvi
W
Wolff xi
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Kant, Immanuel. Groundlaying toward the Metaphysics of Morals. 2nd ed. (corrected). Trans. and ed. Stephen Orr.
Groundlaying: Kant's Search for the Highest Principle of Morality. Google AppSpot,
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