The Critique of Practical Reason — Kant — John Shaqi
The Critique of Practical Reason
Kant · en
* In order to make these characteristics of these conceptions
clear, I add the remark that whilst we ascribe to God various
attributes, the quality of which we also find applicable to creatures,
only that in Him they are raised to the highest degree, e.g., power,
knowledge, presence, goodness, etc., under the designations of
omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc., there are three that are
ascribed to God exclusively, and yet without the addition of
greatness, and which are all moral He is the only holy, the only
blessed, the only wise, because these conceptions already imply the
absence of limitation. In the order of these attributes He is also the
holy lawgiver (and creator), the good governor (and preserver) and the
just judge, three attributes which include everything by which God
is the object of religion, and in conformity with which the
metaphysical perfections are added of themselves in the reason.
That in the order of ends, man (and with him every rational being)
is an end in himself, that is, that he can never be used merely as a
means by any (not even by God) without being at the same time an end
also himself, that therefore humanity in our person must be holy to
ourselves, this follows now of itself because he is the subject of the
moral law, in other words, of that which is holy in itself, and on
account of which and in agreement with which alone can anything be
termed holy. For this moral law is founded on the autonomy of his
will, as a free will which by its universal laws must necessarily be
able to agree with that to which it is to submit itself.
VI. Of the Postulates of Pure Practical Reason Generally.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 60}
They all proceed from the principle of morality, which is not a
postulate but a law, by which reason determines the will directly,
which will, because it is so determined as a pure will, requires these
necessary conditions of obedience to its precept. These postulates are
not theoretical dogmas but, suppositions practically necessary;
while then they do [not] extend our speculative knowledge, they give
objective reality to the ideas of speculative reason in general (by
means of their reference to what is practical), and give it a right to
concepts, the possibility even of which it could not otherwise venture
to affirm.