The Critique of Practical Reason — Kant — John Shaqi
The Critique of Practical Reason
Kant · en
CHAPTER III. Of the Motives of Pure Practical Reason.
What is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the moral
law should directly determine the will. If the determination of the
will takes place in conformity indeed to the moral law, but only by
means of a feeling, no matter of what kind, which has to be
presupposed in order that the law may be sufficient to determine the
will, and therefore not for the sake of the law, then the action
will possess legality, but not morality. Now, if we understand by
motive (elater animi) the subjective ground of determination of the
will of a being whose reason does not necessarily conform to the
objective law, by virtue of its own nature, then it will follow,
first, that no motives can be attributed to the Divine will, and that
the motives of the human will (as well as that of every created
rational being) can never be anything else than the moral law, and
consequently that the objective principle of determination must always
and alone be also the subjectively sufficient determining principle of
the action, if this is not merely to fulfil the letter of the law,
without containing its spirit. *
* We may say of every action that conforms to the law, but is not
done for the sake of the law, that it is morally good in the letter,
not in the spirit (the intention).
Since, then, for the purpose of giving the moral law influence
over the will, we must not seek for any other motives that might
enable us to dispense with the motive of the law itself, because
that would produce mere hypocrisy, without consistency; and it is even
dangerous to allow other motives (for instance, that of interest) even
to co-operate along with the moral law; hence nothing is left us but
to determine carefully in what way the moral law becomes a motive, and
what effect this has upon the faculty of desire. For as to the
question how a law can be directly and of itself a determining
principle of the will (which is the essence of morality), this is, for
human reason, an insoluble problem and identical with the question:
how a free will is possible. Therefore what we have to show a priori
is not why the moral law in itself supplies a motive, but what
effect it, as such, produces (or, more correctly speaking, must
produce) on the mind.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_3 ^paragraph 5}