Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of MoralsKant, Immanuel
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
Kant, Immanuel
Ethics; Philosophy, German
The claims to freedom of will made even by common reason are founded
on the consciousness and the admitted supposition that reason is
independent of merely subjectively determined causes which together
constitute what belongs to sensation only and which consequently
come under the general designation of sensibility. Man considering
himself in this way as an intelligence places himself thereby in a
different order of things and in a relation to determining grounds
of a wholly different kind when on the one hand he thinks of himself
as an intelligence endowed with a will, and consequently with
causality, and when on the other he perceives himself as a
phenomenon in the world of sense (as he really is also), and affirms
that his causality is subject to external determination according to
laws of nature. Now he soon becomes aware that both can hold good,
nay, must hold good at the same time. For there is not the smallest
contradiction in saying that a thing in appearance (belonging to the
world of sense) is subject to certain laws, of which the very same
as a thing or being in itself is independent, and that he must
conceive and think of himself in this twofold way, rests as to the
first on the consciousness of himself as an object affected through
the senses, and as to the second on the consciousness of himself as an
intelligence, i.e., as independent on sensible impressions in the
employment of his reason (in other words as belonging to the world
of understanding).
Hence it comes to pass that man claims the possession of a will
which takes no account of anything that comes under the head of
desires and inclinations and, on the contrary, conceives actions as
possible to him, nay, even as necessary which can only be done by
disregarding all desires and sensible inclinations. The causality of
such actions lies in him as an intelligence and in the laws of effects
and actions [which depend] on the principles of an intelligible world,
of which indeed he knows nothing more than that in it pure reason
alone independent of sensibility gives the law; moreover since it is
only in that world, as an intelligence, that he is his proper self
(being as man only the appearance of himself), those laws apply to him
directly and categorically, so that the incitements of inclinations
and appetites (in other words the whole nature of the world of
sense) cannot impair the laws of his volition as an intelligence. Nay,
he does not even hold himself responsible for the former or ascribe
them to his proper self, i.e., his will: he only ascribes to his
will any indulgence which he might yield them if he allowed them to
influence his maxims to the prejudice of the rational laws of the
will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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