The Critique of Practical Reason — Kant — John Shaqi
The Critique of Practical Reason
Kant · en
On the other hand, however, there is here an occasion of a vitium
subreptionis, and as it were of an optical illusion, in the
self-consciousness of what one does as distinguished from what one
feels- an illusion which even the most experienced cannot altogether
avoid. The moral disposition of mind is necessarily combined with a
consciousness that the will is determined directly by the law. Now the
consciousness of a determination of the faculty of desire is always
the source of a satisfaction in the resulting action; but this
pleasure, this satisfaction in oneself, is not the determining
principle of the action; on the contrary, the determination of the
will directly by reason is the source of the feeling of pleasure,
and this remains a pure practical not sensible determination of the
faculty of desire. Now as this determination has exactly the same
effect within in impelling to activity, that a feeling of the pleasure
to be expected from the desired action would have had, we easily
look on what we ourselves do as something which we merely passively
feel, and take the moral spring for a sensible impulse, just as it
happens in the so-called illusion of the senses (in this case the
inner sense). It is a sublime thing in human nature to be determined
to actions immediately by a purely rational law; sublime even is the
illusion that regards the subjective side of this capacity of
intellectual determination as something sensible and the effect of a
special sensible feeling (for an intellectual feeling would be a
contradiction). It is also of great importance to attend to this
property of our personality and as much as possible to cultivate the
effect of reason on this feeling. But we must beware lest by falsely
extolling this moral determining principle as a spring, making its
source lie in particular feelings of pleasure (which are in fact
only results), we degrade and disfigure the true genuine spring, the
law itself, by putting as it were a false foil upon it. Respect, not
pleasure or enjoyment of happiness, is something for which it is not
possible that reason should have any antecedent feeling as its
foundation (for this would always be sensible and pathological); and
consciousness of immediate obligation of the will by the law is by
no means analogous to the feeling of pleasure, although in relation to
the faculty of desire it produces the same effect, but from
different sources: it is only by this mode of conception, however,
that we can attain what we are seeking, namely, that actions be done
not merely in accordance with duty (as a result of pleasant feelings),
but from duty, which must be the true end of all moral cultivation.