The Critique of Practical Reason

Kant · en
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 105}



                       SUBJECTIVE.



          EXTERNAL                 INTERNAL

        Education                Physical feeling

                                         {BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 110}

        (Montaigne)              (Epicurus)

        The civil                Moral feeling

        Constitution             (Hutcheson)

        (Mandeville)



                                         {BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 115}

                       OBJECTIVE.



          INTERNAL                  EXTERNAL

        Perfection                Will of God

        (Wolf and the             (Crusius and other

                                         {BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 120}

        Stoics)                   theological Moralists)



Those of the upper table are all empirical and evidently incapable
of furnishing the universal principle of morality; but those in the
lower table are based on reason (for perfection as a quality of
things, and the highest perfection conceived as substance, that is,
God, can only be thought by means of rational concepts). But the
former notion, namely, that of perfection, may either be taken in a
theoretic signification, and then it means nothing but the
completeness of each thing in its own kind (transcendental), or that
of a thing merely as a thing (metaphysical); and with that we are
not concerned here. But the notion of perfection in a practical
sense is the fitness or sufficiency of a thing for all sorts of
purposes. This perfection, as a quality of man and consequently
internal, is nothing but talent and, what strengthens or completes
this, skill. Supreme perfection conceived as substance, that is God,
and consequently external (considered practically), is the sufficiency
of this being for all ends. Ends then must first be given,
relatively to which only can the notion of perfection (whether
internal in ourselves or external in God) be the determining principle
of the will. But an end- being an object which must precede the
determination of the will by a practical rule and contain the ground
of the possibility of this determination, and therefore contain also
the matter of the will, taken as its determining principle- such an
end is always empirical and, therefore, may serve for the Epicurean
principle of the happiness theory, but not for the pure rational
principle of morality and duty. Thus, talents and the improvement of
them, because they contribute to the advantages of life; or the will
of God, if agreement with it be taken as the object of the will,
without any antecedent independent practical principle, can be motives
only by reason of the happiness expected therefrom. Hence it
follows, first, that all the principles here stated are material;
secondly, that they include all possible material principles; and,
finally, the conclusion, that since material principles are quite