The Critique of Practical Reason — Kant — John Shaqi
The Critique of Practical Reason
Kant · en
By a concept of the practical reason I understand the idea of an
object as an effect possible to be produced through freedom. To be
an object of practical knowledge, as such, signifies, therefore,
only the relation of the will to the action by which the object or its
opposite would be realized; and to decide whether something is an
object of pure practical reason or not is only to discern the
possibility or impossibility of willing the action by which, if we had
the required power (about which experience must decide), a certain
object would be realized. If the object be taken as the determining
principle of our desire, it must first be known whether it is
physically possible by the free use of our powers, before we decide
whether it is an object of practical reason or not. On the other hand,
if the law can be considered a priori as the determining principle
of the action, and the latter therefore as determined by pure
practical reason, the judgement whether a thing is an object of pure
practical reason or not does not depend at all on the comparison
with our physical power; and the question is only whether we should
will an action that is directed to the existence of an object, if
the object were in our power; hence the previous question is only as
the moral possibility of the action, for in this case it is not the
object, but the law of the will, that is the determining principle
of the action. The only objects of practical reason are therefore
those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object
necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the
latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of
reason.