A History of Philosophy in EpitomeSchwegler, Albert
Philosophy
A History of Philosophy in Epitome
Schwegler, Albert
Philosophy -- History
II. CRITICK OF THE PRACTICAL REASON.—With the Critick of the Practical
Reason, we enter a wholly different world, where the reason richly
recovers that of which it was deprived in the theoretical province. The
essential problem of the Critick of the Practical Reason is almost
diametrically different from that of the critick of the theoretical
reason. The object of investigation in the critick of the speculative
reason, was,—how can the pure reason know objects apriori; in the
practical reason it is,—how can the pure reason determine apriori the
will in respect of objects. The critick of the speculative reason
inquired after the cognizableness of objects apriori: the practical
reason has nothing to do with the cognizableness of objects, but only
with the determination of the will. Hence, in the latter critick, we
have an order directly the reverse of that which we find in the former.
As the original determinations of our theoretical knowledge are
intuitions, so the original determinations of our will are principles
and conceptions. The critick of the practical reason must, therefore,
start from moral principles, and only after these are firmly fixed, may
we inquire concerning the relation in which the practical reason stands
to the sensory.
Freedom, says Kant, is given to us apriori as an inner fact, it is a
fact of the inner experience. While, therefore, the reason in the
theoretical field had only a negative result, because, when it would
attain to a true thing in itself it became transcendent, yet now in the
practical province it becomes positive through the idea of freedom,
because with the fact of freedom we have no need to go out beyond
ourselves, but possess a principle immanent to the reason. But why then
give a critick of practical reason? In order to determine the relation
of freedom to the sensory. Since the free will works through its acts
upon the sensory, there must be a point of contact between the two. This
is found in the sensuous motives of the will, which exist implanted in
it by nature, in the impulses and inclinations which, as the principle
of the empiric in opposition to the free or pure will, bear in
themselves the character of a want of freedom. Since, then, freedom
cannot be touched, a critick of the practical reason can only relate to
these empirical motives, in the sense of divesting these from the claim
of being exclusively the motives by which the will is determined. While,
therefore, in the theoretical reason the empirical element was immanent,
and the intelligible transcendent, the reverse is the case in the
practical reason, since here the empirical is transcendent, and the
intelligible immanent. It is the object of the Analytic to show the
relation of these two momenta of the will, and the highest moral
principle which springs therefrom, while it belongs to the Dialectic to
solve the antinomies which result from the contradiction of the pure and
empiric will.
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