But, if this is so, we must give up the sharp separation Kant makes
between the moral law and nature, and allow that things in nature can
have a moral value. It may still be true that they only have moral value
through their relation to a good will, and have no moral significance
apart from such a relation.
The difficulties created by Kant’s sharp separation of the moral and the
phenomenal worlds are equally apparent in his discussion of motives. He
conceives the individual as phenomenal, to be determined solely by
pleasure and pain. The power of the moral law is manifest, therefore,
when its commands run counter to inclination, and the motive of respect
for the moral law conquers inclination. It is true to say that a man’s
likes and dislikes in themselves are not to the point when we are asking
what he ought to do, but Kant sometimes speaks as though there could be
no moral value in an action which did not go against inclination. This
is perilously near that morbid theory of conscience which assumes that
the fact that an action would be very disagreeable to the agent is
itself proof that the proposal to perform it is the voice of conscience.
Here again we have to say that the fact that inclinations viewed merely
as inclinations have no moral value, does not show that, relatively to
the good will, one may not be better than another. There is nothing to
be proud of in the fact that we dislike doing our duty.
This sharp separation between the world of morality and science was
somewhat tempered in Kant’s third _Critique_, which we shall examine in
the next chapter.
*CHAPTER VII*
*THE "CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT"--ÆSTHETICS AND TELEOLOGY*