The Critique of Practical Reason — Kant — John Shaqi
The Critique of Practical Reason
Kant · en
Further, since of all the supersensible absolutely nothing [is
known] except freedom (through the moral law), and this only so far as
it is inseparably implied in that law, and moreover all
supersensible objects to which reason might lead us, following the
guidance of that law, have still no reality for us, except for the
purpose of that law, and for the use of mere practical reason; and
as reason is authorized and even compelled to use physical nature
(in its pure form as an object of the understanding) as the type of
the judgement; hence, the present remark will serve to guard against
reckoning amongst concepts themselves that which belongs only to the
typic of concepts. This, namely, as a typic of the judgement, guards
against the empiricism of practical reason, which founds the practical
notions of good and evil merely on experienced consequences (so-called
happiness). No doubt happiness and the infinite advantages which would
result from a will determined by self-love, if this will at the same
time erected itself into a universal law of nature, may certainly
serve as a perfectly suitable type of the morally good, but it is
not identical with it. The same typic guards also against the
mysticism of practical reason, which turns what served only as a
symbol into a schema, that is, proposes to provide for the moral
concepts actual intuitions, which, however, are not sensible
(intuitions of an invisible Kingdom of God), and thus plunges into the
transcendent. What is befitting the use of the moral concepts is
only the rationalism of the judgement, which takes from the sensible
system of nature only what pure reason can also conceive of itself,
that is, conformity to law, and transfers into the supersensible
nothing but what can conversely be actually exhibited by actions in
the world of sense according to the formal rule of a law of nature.
However, the caution against empiricism of practical reason is much
more important; for mysticism is quite reconcilable with the purity
and sublimity of the moral law, and, besides, it is not very natural
or agreeable to common habits of thought to strain one's imagination
to supersensible intuitions; and hence the danger on this side is
not so general. Empiricism, on the contrary, cuts up at the roots
the morality of intentions (in which, and not in actions only,
consists the high worth that men can and ought to give to themselves),
and substitutes for duty something quite different, namely, an
empirical interest, with which the inclinations generally are secretly
leagued; and empiricism, moreover, being on this account allied with
all the inclinations which (no matter what fashion they put on)
degrade humanity when they are raised to the dignity of a supreme
practical principle; and as these, nevertheless, are so favourable
to everyone's feelings, it is for that reason much more dangerous than
mysticism, which can never constitute a lasting condition of any great
number of persons.
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