Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian — Kant — John Shaqi
Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian
Kant · en
Now arises the question, how are all these imperatives possible?
This question does not seek to know how we can conceive the
accomplishment of the action which the imperative ordains, but
merely how we can conceive the obligation of the will which the
imperative expresses. No special explanation is needed to show how
an imperative of skill is possible. Whoever wills the end, wills
also (so far as reason decides his conduct) the means in his power
which are indispensably necessary thereto. This proposition is, as
regards the volition, analytical; for, in willing an object as my
effect, there is already thought the causality of myself as an
acting cause, that is to say, the use of the means; and the
imperative educes from the conception of volition of an end the
conception of actions necessary to this end. Synthetical
propositions must no doubt be employed in denning the means to a
proposed end; but they do not concern the principle, the act of the
will, but the object and its realization. Ex. gr., that in order to
bisect a line on an unerring principle I must draw from its
extremities two intersecting arcs; this no doubt is taught by
mathematics only in synthetical propositions; but if I know that it
is only by this process that the intended operation can be
performed, then to say that if I fully will the operation, I also
will the action required for it, is an analytical proposition; for
it is one and the same thing to conceive something as an effect
which I can produce in a certain way, and to conceive myself as
acting in this way.