The free self-determination which Kant denied to the speculative,
he has expressly vindicated for the practical reason. To many minds
this particular aspect of the Kantian philosophy made it welcome;
and that for good reasons. To estimate rightly what we owe to
Kant in the matter, we ought to set before our minds the form of
practical philosophy and in particular of 'moral philosophy,' which
prevailed in his time. It may be generally described as a system
of Eudaemonism, which, when asked what man's chief end ought to
be, replied Happiness. And by happiness Eudaemonism understood the
satisfaction of the private appetites, wishes and wants of the
man: thus raising the contingent and particular into a principle
for the will and its actualisation. To this Eudaemonism, which was
destitute of stability and consistency, and which left the 'door
and gate' wide open for every whim and caprice, Kant opposed the
practical reason, and thus emphasised the need for a principle
of will which should be universal and lay the same obligation
on all. The theoretical reason, as has been made evident in the
preceding paragraphs, is identified by Kant with the negative
faculty of the infinite; and as it has no positive content of its
own, it is restricted to the function of detecting the finitude of
experiential knowledge. To the practical reason, on the contrary,
he has expressly allowed a positive infinity, by ascribing to the
will the power of modifying itself in universal modes, _i.e._ by
thought. Such a power the will undoubtedly has: and it is well
to remember that man is free only in so far as he possesses it
and avails himself of it in his conduct. But a recognition of the
existence of this power is not enough and does not avail to tell
us what are the contents of the will or practical reason. Hence to
say, that a man must make the Good the content of his will, raises
the question, what that content is, and what are the means of
ascertaining what good is. Nor does one get over the difficulty by
the principle that the will must be consistent with itself, or by
the precept to do duty for the sake of duty.
55.] (c) The Reflective Power of Judgment is invested by Kant
with the function of an Intuitive Understanding. That is to say,
whereas the particulars had hitherto appeared, so far as the universal
or abstract identity was concerned, adventitious and incapable of
being deduced from it, the _Intuitive_ Understanding apprehends the
particulars as moulded and formed by the universal itself. Experience
presents such universalised particulars in the products of Art and of
_organic_ nature.
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