The Critique of Practical Reason — Kant — John Shaqi
The Critique of Practical Reason
Kant · en
change it into the knowledge of a being so acting, not even into the
knowledge of the possibility of such a being. This vacant place is now
filled by pure practical reason with a definite law of causality in an
intelligible world (causality with freedom), namely, the moral law.
Speculative reason does not hereby gain anything as regards its
insight, but only as regards the certainty of its problematical notion
of freedom, which here obtains objective reality, which, though only
practical, is nevertheless undoubted. Even the notion of causality-
the application, and consequently the signification, of which holds
properly only in relation to phenomena, so as to connect them into
experiences (as is shown by the Critique of Pure Reason)- is not so
enlarged as to extend its use beyond these limits. For if reason
sought to do this, it would have to show how the logical relation of
principle and consequence can be used synthetically in a different
sort of intuition from the sensible; that is how a causa noumenon is
possible. This it can never do; and, as practical reason, it does
not even concern itself with it, since it only places the
determining principle of causality of man as a sensible creature
(which is given) in pure reason (which is therefore called practical);
and therefore it employs the notion of cause, not in order to know
objects, but to determine causality in relation to objects in general.
It can abstract altogether from the application of this notion to
objects with a view to theoretical knowledge (since this concept is
always found a priori in the understanding even independently of any
intuition). Reason, then, employs it only for a practical purpose, and
hence we can transfer the determining principle of the will into the
intelligible order of things, admitting, at the same time, that we
cannot understand how the notion of cause can determine the
knowledge of these things. But reason must cognise causality with
respect to the actions of the will in the sensible world in a definite
manner; otherwise, practical reason could not really produce any
action. But as to the notion which it forms of its own causality as
noumenon, it need not determine it theoretically with a view to the
cognition of its supersensible existence, so as to give it
significance in this way. For it acquires significance apart from
this, though only for practical use, namely, through the moral law.
Theoretically viewed, it remains always a pure a priori concept of the
understanding, which can be applied to objects whether they have
been given sensibly or not, although in the latter case it has no
definite theoretical significance or application, but is only a
formal, though essential, conception of the understanding relating
to an object in general. The significance which reason gives it
through the moral law is merely practical, inasmuch as the idea of
the law of causality (of the will) has self causality, or is
its determining principle.