Book I, Chapter II: The concept of an object of pure practical reason
Original German
Zweites Hauptstück. Von dem Begriffe eines Gegenstandes der reinen praktischen Vernunft.
Unter dem Begriffe eines Gegenstandes der praktischen Vernunft verstehe ich die Vorstellung eines Objects als einer möglichen Wirkung durch Freiheit. Ein Gegenstand der praktischen Erkenntniß als einer solchen zu sein, bedeutet also nur die Beziehung des Willens auf die Handlung, dadurch er oder sein Gegentheil wirklich gemacht würde, und die Beurtheilung, ob etwas ein Gegenstand der reinen praktischen Vernunft sei, oder nicht, ist nur die Unterscheidung der Möglichkeit oder Unmöglichkeit, diejenige Handlung zu wollen, wodurch, wenn wir das Vermögen dazu hätten (worüber die Erfahrung urtheilen muß), ein gewisses Object wirklich werden würde. A 101 Wenn das Object als der Bestimmungsgrund unseres Begehrungsvermögens angenommen wird, so muß die physische Möglichkeit desselben durch freien Gebrauch unserer Kräfte vor der Beurtheilung, ob es ein Gegenstand der praktischen Vernunft sei oder nicht, vorangehen. Dagegen wenn das Gesetz a priori als der Bestimmungsgrund der Handlung, mithin diese als durch reine praktische Vernunft bestimmt betrachtet werden kann, so ist das Urtheil, ob etwas ein Gegenstand der reinen praktischen Vernunft sei oder nicht, von der Vergleichung mit unserem physischen V:58 Vermögen ganz unabhängig, und die Frage ist nur, ob wir eine Handlung, die auf die Existenz eines Objects gerichtet ist, wollen dürfen, wenn dieses in unserer Gewalt wäre, mithin muß die moralische Möglichkeit der Handlung vorangehen; denn da ist nicht der Gegenstand, sondern das Gesetz des Willens der Bestimmungsgrund derselben.
Die alleinigen Objecte einer praktischen Vernunft sind also die vom Guten und Bösen. Denn durch das erstere versteht man einen nothwendigen Gegenstand des Begehrungs-, durch das zweite des Verabscheuungsvermögens, beides aber nach einem Princip der Vernunft.
Wenn der Begriff des Guten nicht von einem vorhergehenden praktischen Gesetze abgeleitet werden, sondern diesem vielmehr zum Grunde dienen soll, so kann er nur der Begriff von etwas sein, dessen Existenz Lust A 102 verheißt und so die Causalität des Subjects zur Hervorbringung desselben, d. i. das Begehrungsvermögen, bestimmt. Weil es nun unmöglich ist a priori einzusehen, welche Vorstellung mit Lust, welche hingegen mit Unlust werde begleitet sein, so käme es lediglich auf Erfahrung an, es auszumachen, was unmittelbar gut oder böse sei. Die Eigenschaft des Subjects, worauf in Beziehung diese Erfahrung allein angestellt werden kann, ist das Gefühl der Lust und Unlust, als eine dem inneren Sinne angehörige Receptivität, und so würde der Begriff von dem, was unmittelbar gut ist, nur auf das gehen, womit die Empfindung des Vergnügens unmittelbar verbunden ist, und der von dem schlechthin Bösen auf das, was unmittelbar Schmerz erregt, allein bezogen werden müssen. Weil aber das dem Sprachgebrauche schon zuwider ist, der das Angenehme vom Guten, das Unangenehme vom Bösen unterscheidet und verlangt, daß Gutes und Böses jederzeit durch Vernunft, mithin durch Begriffe, die sich allgemein mittheilen lassen, und nicht durch bloße Empfindung, welche sich auf einzelne Subjecte und deren Empfänglichkeit einschränkt, beurtheilt werde, gleichwohl aber für sich selbst mit keiner Vorstellung eines Objects a priori eine Lust oder Unlust unmittelbar verbunden werden kann, so würde der Philosoph, der sich genöthigt glaubte, ein Gefühl der Lust seiner praktischen Beurtheilung zum Grunde zu legen, A 103 gut nennen, was ein Mittel zum Angenehmen, und Böses, was Ursache der Unannehmlichkeit und des Schmerzens ist; denn die Beurtheilung des Verhältnisses der Mittel zu Zwecken gehört allerdings zur Vernunft. Obgleich aber Vernunft allein vermögend ist, die Verknüpfung der Mittel mit ihren Absichten einzusehen (so daß man auch den Willen durch das V:59 Vermögen der Zwecke definiren könnte, indem sie jederzeit Bestimmungsgründe des Begehrungsvermögens nach Principien sind), so würden doch die praktischen Maximen, die aus dem obigen Begriffe des Guten blos als Mittel folgten, nie etwas für sich selbst, sondern immer nur irgend wozu Gutes zum Gegenstande des Willens enthalten: das Gute würde jederzeit blos das Nützliche sein, und das, wozu es nutzt, müßte allemal außerhalb dem Willen in der Empfindung liegen. Wenn diese nun, als angenehme Empfindung, vom Begriffe des Guten unterschieden werden müßte, so würde es überall nichts unmittelbar Gutes geben, sondern das Gute nur in den Mitteln zu etwas anderm, nämlich irgend einer Annehmlichkeit, gesucht werden müssen.
Es ist eine alte Formel der Schulen: nihil appetimus, nisi sub ratione boni; nihil aversamur, nisi sub ratione mali; und sie hat einen oft richtigen, aber auch der Philosophie oft sehr nachtheiligen Gebrauch, weil die Ausdrücke des boni und mali eine Zweideutigkeit enthalten, daran A 104 die Einschränkung der Sprache Schuld ist, nach welcher sie eines doppelten Sinnes fähig sind, und daher die praktischen Gesetze unvermeidlich auf Schrauben stellen und die Philosophie, die im Gebrauche derselben gar wohl der Verschiedenheit des Begriffs bei demselben Worte inne werden, aber doch keine besondere Ausdrücke dafür finden kann, zu subtilen Distinctionen nöthigen, über die man sich nachher nicht einigen kann, indem der Unterschied durch keinen angemessenen Ausdruck unmittelbar bezeichnet werden konnte.8
Die deutsche Sprache hat das Glück, die Ausdrücke zu besitzen, welche diese Verschiedenheit nicht übersehen lassen. Für das, was die Lateiner mit einem einzigen Worte bonum benennen, hat sie zwei sehr verschiedene Begriffe und auch eben so verschiedene Ausdrücke, für bonum das Gute und das Wohl, für malum das Böse und das Übel (oder Weh), so V:60 daß es zwei ganz verschiedene Beurtheilungen sind, ob wir bei einer Handlung A 105 das Gute und Böse derselben, oder unser Wohl und Weh (Übel) in Betrachtung ziehen. Hieraus folgt schon, daß obiger psychologischer Satz wenigstens noch sehr ungewiß sei, wenn er so übersetzt wird: wir begehren nichts, als in Rücksicht auf unser Wohl oder Weh; dagegen er, wenn man ihn so giebt: wir wollen nach Anweisung der Vernunft nichts, als nur so fern wir es für gut oder böse halten, ungezweifelt gewiß und zugleich ganz klar ausgedrückt wird.
Das Wohl oder Übel bedeutet immer nur eine Beziehung auf unseren Zustand der Annehmlichkeit oder Unannehmlichkeit, des Vergnügens und Schmerzens, und wenn wir darum ein Object begehren oder verabscheuen, so geschieht es nur, so fern es auf unsere Sinnlichkeit und das Gefühl der Lust und Unlust, das es bewirkt, bezogen wird. Das Gute oder Böse bedeutet aber jederzeit eine Beziehung auf den Willen, so fern dieser durchs Vernunftgesetz bestimmt wird, sich etwas zu seinem Objecte zu machen; wie er denn durch das Object und dessen Vorstellung niemals unmittelbar bestimmt wird, sondern ein Vermögen ist, sich eine Regel der Vernunft zur Bewegursache einer Handlung (dadurch ein Object wirklich werden kann) zu machen. Das Gute oder Böse wird also eigentlich auf Handlungen, nicht auf den Empfindungszustand der Person bezogen, und sollte etwas schlechthin (und in aller Absicht und ohne A 106 weitere Bedingung) gut oder böse sein oder dafür gehalten werden, so würde es nur die Handlungsart, die Maxime des Willens und mithin die handelnde Person selbst als guter oder böser Mensch, nicht aber eine Sache sein, die so genannt werden könnte.
Man mochte also immer den Stoiker auslachen, der in den heftigsten Gichtschmerzen ausrief: Schmerz, du magst mich noch so sehr foltern, ich werde doch nie gestehen, daß du etwas Böses (κακον, malum) seist! er hatte doch recht. Ein Übel war es, das fühlte er, und das verrieth sein Geschrei; aber daß ihm dadurch ein Böses anhinge, hatte er gar nicht Ursache einzuräumen; denn der Schmerz verringert den Werth seiner Person nicht im mindesten, sondern nur den Werth seines Zustandes. Eine einzige Lüge, deren er sich bewußt gewesen wäre, hätte seinen Muth niederschlagen müssen; aber der Schmerz diente nur zur Veranlassung, ihn zu erheben, wenn er sich bewußt war, daß er ihn durch keine unrechte Handlung verschuldet und sich dadurch strafwürdig gemacht habe.
Was wir gut nennen sollen, muß in jedes vernünftigen Menschen Urtheil V:61 ein Gegenstand des Begehrungsvermögens sein, und das Böse in den Augen von jedermann ein Gegenstand des Abscheues; mithin bedarf es außer dem Sinne zu dieser Beurtheilung noch Vernunft. So ist es mit A 107 der Wahrhaftigkeit im Gegensatze mit der Lüge, so mit der Gerechtigkeit im Gegensatz der Gewaltthätigkeit &c. bewandt. Wir können aber etwas ein Übel nennen, welches doch jedermann zugleich für gut, bisweilen mittelbar, bisweilen gar unmittelbar, erklären muß. Der eine chirurgische Operation an sich verrichten läßt, fühlt sie ohne Zweifel als ein Übel; aber durch Vernunft erklärt er und jedermann sie für gut. Wenn aber jemand, der friedliebende Leute gerne neckt und beunruhigt, endlich einmal anläuft und mit einer tüchtigen Tracht Schläge abgefertigt wird: so ist dieses allerdings ein Übel, aber jedermann giebt dazu seinen Beifall und hält es an sich für gut, wenn auch nichts weiter daraus entspränge; ja selbst der, der sie empfängt, muß in seiner Vernunft erkennen, daß ihm Recht geschehe, weil er die Proportion zwischen dem Wohlbefinden und Wohlverhalten, welche die Vernunft ihm unvermeidlich vorhält, hier genau in Ausübung gebracht sieht.
Es kommt allerdings auf unser Wohl und Weh in der Beurtheilung unserer praktischen Vernunft gar sehr viel und, was unsere Natur als sinnlicher Wesen betrifft, alles auf unsere Glückseligkeit an, wenn diese, wie Vernunft es vorzüglich fordert, nicht nach der vorübergehenden Empfindung, sondern nach dem Einflusse, den diese Zufälligkeit auf unsere ganze Existenz und die Zufriedenheit mit derselben hat, beurtheilt wird; A 108 aber alles überhaupt kommt darauf doch nicht an. Der Mensch ist ein bedürftiges Wesen, so fern er zur Sinnenwelt gehört, und so fern hat seine Vernunft allerdings einen nicht abzulehnenden Auftrag von Seiten der Sinnlichkeit, sich um das Interesse derselben zu bekümmern und sich praktische Maximen, auch in Absicht auf die Glückseligkeit dieses und wo möglich auch eines zukünftigen Lebens, zu machen. Aber er ist doch nicht so ganz Thier, um gegen alles, was Vernunft für sich selbst sagt, gleichgültig zu sein und diese blos zum Werkzeuge der Befriedigung seines Bedürfnisses als Sinnenwesens zu gebrauchen. Denn im Werthe über die bloße Thierheit erhebt ihn das gar nicht, daß er Vernunft hat, wenn sie ihm nur zum Behuf desjenigen dienen soll, was bei Thieren der Instinct verrichtet; sie wäre alsdann nur eine besondere Manier, deren sich die Natur bedient hätte, um den Menschen zu demselben Zwecke, dazu sie Thiere bestimmt hat, auszurüsten, ohne ihn zu einem höheren Zwecke zu V:62 bestimmen. Er bedarf also freilich nach dieser einmal mit ihm getroffenen Naturanstalt Vernunft, um sein Wohl und Weh jederzeit in Betrachtung zu ziehen, aber er hat sie überdem noch zu einem höheren Behuf, nämlich auch das, was an sich gut oder böse ist, und worüber reine, sinnlich gar nicht interessirte Vernunft nur allein urtheilen kann, nicht allein mit in Überlegung zu nehmen, sondern diese Beurtheilung von jener gänzlich A 109 zu unterscheiden und sie zur obersten Bedingung der letzteren zu machen.
In dieser Beurtheilung des an sich Guten und Bösen, zum Unterschiede von dem, was nur beziehungsweise auf Wohl oder Übel so genannt werden kann, kommt es auf folgende Punkte an. Entweder ein Vernunftprincip wird schon an sich als der Bestimmungsgrund des Willens gedacht, ohne Rücksicht auf mögliche Objecte des Begehrungsvermögens (also blos durch die gesetzliche Form der Maxime), alsdann ist jenes Princip praktisches Gesetz a priori, und reine Vernunft wird für sich praktisch zu sein angenommen. Das Gesetz bestimmt alsdann unmittelbar den Willen, die ihm gemäße Handlung ist an sich selbst gut, ein Wille, dessen Maxime jederzeit diesem Gesetze gemäß ist, ist schlechterdings, in aller Absicht, gut und die oberste Bedingung alles Guten: oder es geht ein Bestimmungsgrund des Begehrungsvermögens vor der Maxime des Willens vorher, der ein Object der Lust und Unlust voraussetzt, mithin etwas, das vergnügt oder schmerzt, und die Maxime der Vernunft, jene zu befördern, diese zu vermeiden, bestimmt die Handlungen, wie sie beziehungsweise auf unsere Neigung, mithin nur mittelbar (in Rücksicht auf einen anderweitigen Zweck, als Mittel zu demselben) gut sind, und diese Maximen können alsdann niemals Gesetze, dennoch aber vernünftige praktische Vorschriften heißen. Der Zweck selbst, das Vergnügen, A 110 das wir suchen, ist im letzteren Falle nicht ein Gutes, sondern ein Wohl, nicht ein Begriff der Vernunft, sondern ein empirischer Begriff von einem Gegenstande der Empfindung; allein der Gebrauch des Mittels dazu, d. i. die Handlung (weil dazu vernünftige Überlegung erfordert wird), heißt dennoch gut, aber nicht schlechthin, sondern nur in Beziehung auf unsere Sinnlichkeit, in Ansehung ihres Gefühls der Lust und Unlust; der Wille aber, dessen Maxime dadurch afficirt wird, ist nicht ein reiner Wille, der nur auf das geht, wobei reine Vernunft für sich selbst praktisch sein kann.
Hier ist nun der Ort, das Paradoxon der Methode in einer Kritik der praktischen Vernunft zu erklären: daß nämlich der Begriff des V:63 Guten und Bösen nicht vor dem moralischen Gesetze (dem er dem Anschein nach sogar zum Grunde gelegt werden müßte), sondern nur (wie hier auch geschieht) nach demselben und durch dasselbe bestimmt werden müsse. Wenn wir nämlich auch nicht wüßten, daß das Princip der Sittlichkeit ein reines, a priori den Willen bestimmendes Gesetz sei, so müßten wir doch, um nicht ganz umsonst (gratis) Grundsätze anzunehmen, es anfänglich wenigstens unausgemacht lassen, ob der Wille blos empirische, oder auch reine Bestimmungsgründe a priori habe; denn es ist wider alle Grundregeln des philosophischen Verfahrens, das, worüber man allererst entscheiden soll, schon zum voraus A 111 als entschieden anzunehmen. Gesetzt, wir wollten nun vom Begriffe des Guten anfangen, um davon die Gesetze des Willens abzuleiten, so würde dieser Begriff von einem Gegenstande (als einem guten) zugleich diesen als den einigen Bestimmungsgrund des Willens angeben. Weil nun dieser Begriff kein praktisches Gesetz a priori zu seiner Richtschnur hatte, so könnte der Probirstein des Guten oder Bösen in nichts anders, als in der Übereinstimmung des Gegenstandes mit unserem Gefühle der Lust oder Unlust gesetzt werden, und der Gebrauch der Vernunft könnte nur darin bestehen, theils diese Lust oder Unlust im ganzen Zusammenhange mit allen Empfindungen meines Daseins, theils die Mittel, mir den Gegenstand derselben zu verschaffen, zu bestimmen. Da nun, was dem Gefühle der Lust gemäß sei, nur durch Erfahrung ausgemacht werden kann, das praktische Gesetz aber der Angabe nach doch darauf als Bedingung gegründet werden soll, so würde geradezu die Möglichkeit praktischer Gesetze a priori ausgeschlossen: weil man vorher nöthig zu finden meinte, einen Gegenstand für den Willen auszufinden, davon der Begriff als eines Guten den allgemeinen, obzwar empirischen Bestimmungsgrund des Willens ausmachen müsse. Nun aber war doch vorher nöthig zu untersuchen, ob es nicht auch einen Bestimmungsgrund des Willens a priori gebe (welcher niemals irgendwo anders, als an einem reinen praktischen A 112 Gesetze, und zwar so fern dieses die bloße gesetzliche Form ohne Rücksicht auf einen Gegenstand den Maximen vorschreibt, wäre gefunden worden). Weil man aber schon einen Gegenstand nach Begriffen des Guten und Bösen zum Grunde alles praktischen Gesetzes legte, jener aber ohne vorhergehendes Gesetz nur nach empirischen Begriffen gedacht werden konnte, so hatte man sich die Möglichkeit, ein reines praktisches Gesetz auch nur zu denken, schon zum voraus benommen; da man im Gegentheil, wenn man V:64 dem letzteren vorher analytisch nachgeforscht hätte, gefunden haben würde, daß nicht der Begriff des Guten als eines Gegenstandes das moralische Gesetz, sondern umgekehrt das moralische Gesetz allererst den Begriff des Guten, so fern es diesen Namen schlechthin verdient, bestimme und möglich mache.
Diese Anmerkung, welche blos die Methode der obersten moralischen Untersuchungen betrifft, ist von Wichtigkeit. Sie erklärt auf einmal den veranlassenden Grund aller Verirrungen der Philosophen in Ansehung des obersten Princips der Moral. Denn sie suchten einen Gegenstand des Willens auf, um ihn zur Materie und dem Grunde eines Gesetzes zu machen (welches alsdann nicht unmittelbar, sondern vermittelst jenes an das Gefühl der Lust oder Unlust gebrachten Gegenstandes der Bestimmungsgrund des Willens sein sollte), anstatt daß sie zuerst nach einem Gesetze hätten A 113 forschen sollen, das a priori und unmittelbar den Willen und diesem gemäß allererst den Gegenstand bestimmte. Nun mochten sie diesen Gegenstand der Lust, der den obersten Begriff des Guten abgeben sollte, in der Glückseligkeit, in der Vollkommenheit, im moralischen Gefühle, oder im Willen Gottes setzen, so war ihr Grundsatz allemal Heteronomie, sie mußten unvermeidlich auf empirische Bedingungen zu einem moralischen Gesetze stoßen: weil sie ihren Gegenstand, als unmittelbaren Bestimmungsgrund des Willens, nur nach seinem unmittelbaren Verhalten zum Gefühl, welches allemal empirisch ist, gut oder böse nennen konnten. Nur ein formales Gesetz, d. i. ein solches, welches der Vernunft nichts weiter als die Form ihrer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung zur obersten Bedingung der Maximen vorschreibt, kann a priori ein Bestimmungsgrund der praktischen Vernunft sein. Die Alten verriethen indessen diesen Fehler dadurch unverhohlen, daß sie ihre moralische Untersuchung gänzlich auf die Bestimmung des Begriffs vom höchsten Gut, mithin eines Gegenstandes setzten, welchen sie nachher zum Bestimmungsgrunde des Willens im moralischen Gesetze zu machen gedachten: ein Object, welches weit hinterher, wenn das moralische Gesetz allererst für sich bewährt und als unmittelbarer Bestimmungsgrund des Willens gerechtfertigt ist, dem nunmehr seiner Form nach a priori bestimmten Willen als Gegenstand vorgestellt werden kann, welches wir in A 114 der Dialektik der reinen praktischen Vernunft uns unterfangen wollen. Die Neueren, bei denen die Frage über das höchste Gut außer Gebrauch gekommen, zum wenigsten nur Nebensache geworden zu sein scheint, verstecken obigen Fehler (wie in vielen andern Fällen) hinter unbestimmten Worten, V:65 indessen daß man ihn gleichwohl aus ihren Systemen hervorblicken sieht, da er alsdann allenthalben Heteronomie der praktischen Vernunft verräth, daraus nimmermehr ein a priori allgemein gebietendes moralisches Gesetz entspringen kann.
Da nun die Begriffe des Guten und Bösen als Folgen der Willensbestimmung a priori auch ein reines praktisches Princip, mithin eine Causalität der reinen Vernunft voraussetzen: so beziehen sie sich ursprünglich nicht (etwa als Bestimmungen der synthetischen Einheit des Mannigfaltigen gegebener Anschauungen in einem Bewußtsein) auf Objecte, wie die reinen Verstandesbegriffe oder Kategorien der theoretisch gebrauchten Vernunft, sie setzen diese vielmehr als gegeben voraus; sondern sie sind insgesammt modi einer einzigen Kategorie, nämlich der der Causalität, so fern der Bestimmungsgrund derselben in der Vernunftvorstellung eines Gesetzes derselben besteht, welches als Gesetz der Freiheit die Vernunft sich selbst giebt und dadurch sich a priori als praktisch beweiset. Da indessen die Handlungen A 115 einerseits zwar unter einem Gesetze, das kein Naturgesetz, sondern ein Gesetz der Freiheit ist, folglich zu dem Verhalten intelligibeler Wesen, andererseits aber doch auch als Begebenheiten in der Sinnenwelt zu den Erscheinungen gehören, so werden die Bestimmungen einer praktischen Vernunft nur in Beziehung auf die letztere, folglich zwar den Kategorien des Verstandes gemäß, aber nicht in der Absicht eines theoretischen Gebrauchs desselben, um das Mannigfaltige der (sinnlichen) Anschauung unter ein Bewußtsein a priori zu bringen, sondern nur um das Mannigfaltige der Begehrungen der Einheit des Bewußtseins einer im moralischen Gesetze gebietenden praktischen Vernunft oder eines reinen Willens a priori zu unterwerfen, Statt haben können.
Diese Kategorien der Freiheit, denn so wollen wir sie statt jener theoretischen Begriffe als Kategorien der Natur benennen, haben einen augenscheinlichen Vorzug vor den letzteren, daß, da diese nur Gedankenformen sind, welche nur unbestimmt Objecte überhaupt für jede uns mögliche Anschauung durch allgemeine Begriffe bezeichnen, diese hingegen, da sie auf die Bestimmung einer freien Willkür gehen (der zwar keine Anschauung völlig correspondirend gegeben werden kann, die aber, welches bei keinen Begriffen des theoretischen Gebrauchs unseres Erkenntnißvermögens stattfindet, ein reines praktisches Gesetz a priori zum Grunde liegen hat), als praktische Elementarbegriffe statt der Form der Anschauung A 116 (Raum und Zeit), die nicht in der Vernunft selbst liegt, sondern anderwärts, V:66 nämlich von der Sinnlichkeit, hergenommen werden muß, die Form eines reinen Willens in ihr, mithin dem Denkungsvermögen selbst, als gegeben zum Grunde liegen haben; dadurch es denn geschieht, daß, da es in allen Vorschriften der reinen praktischen Vernunft nur um die Willensbestimmung, nicht um die Naturbedingungen (des praktischen Vermögens) der Ausführung seiner Absicht zu thun ist, die praktischen Begriffe a priori in Beziehung auf das oberste Princip der Freiheit sogleich Erkenntnisse werden und nicht auf Anschauungen warten dürfen, um Bedeutung zu bekommen, und zwar aus diesem merkwürdigen Grunde, weil sie die Wirklichkeit dessen, worauf sie sich beziehen, (die Willensgesinnung) selbst hervorbringen, welches gar nicht die Sache theoretischer Begriffe ist. Nur muß man wohl bemerken, daß diese Kategorien nur die praktische Vernunft überhaupt angehen und so in ihrer Ordnung von den moralisch noch unbestimmten und sinnlich bedingten zu denen, die, sinnlich unbedingt, blos durchs moralische Gesetz bestimmt sind, fortgehen.
Tafel A 117der Kategorien der Freiheit in Ansehung der Begriffe des Guten und Bösen.1.Der Quantität• Subjectiv, nach Maximen (Willensmeinungen des Individuum)Objectiv, nach Principien (Vorschriften)A priori objective sowohl als subjective Principien der Freiheit (Gesetze).2.Der Qualität• Praktische Regeln des Begehens (praeceptivae)Praktische Regeln des Unterlassens (prohibitivae)Praktische Regeln der Ausnahmen (exceptivae).3.Der Relation• Auf die PersönlichkeitAuf den Zustand der PersonWechselseitig einer Person auf den Zustand der anderen.4.Modalität• Das Erlaubte und UnerlaubteDie Pflicht und das PflichtwidrigeVollkommene und unvollkommene Pflicht.
V:67 Man wird hier bald gewahr, daß in dieser Tafel die Freiheit als eine A 118 Art von Causalität, die aber empirischen Bestimmungsgründen nicht unterworfen ist, in Ansehung der durch sie möglichen Handlungen als Erscheinungen in der Sinnenwelt betrachtet werde, folglich sich auf die Kategorien ihrer Naturmöglichkeit beziehe, indessen daß doch jede Kategorie so allgemein genommen wird, daß der Bestimmungsgrund jener Causalität auch außer der Sinnenwelt in der Freiheit als Eigenschaft eines intelligibelen Wesens angenommen werden kann, bis die Kategorien der Modalität den Übergang von praktischen Principien überhaupt zu denen der Sittlichkeit, aber nur problematisch einleiten, welche nachher durchs moralische Gesetz allererst dogmatisch dargestellt werden können.
Ich füge hier nichts weiter zur Erläuterung gegenwärtiger Tafel bei, weil sie für sich verständlich genug ist. Dergleichen nach Principien abgefaßte Eintheilung ist aller Wissenschaft ihrer Gründlichkeit sowohl als Verständlichkeit halber sehr zuträglich. So weiß man z. B. aus obiger Tafel und der ersten Nummer derselben sogleich, wovon man in praktischen Erwägungen anfangen müsse: von den Maximen, die jeder auf seine Neigung gründet, den Vorschriften, die für eine Gattung vernünftiger Wesen, so fern sie in gewissen Neigungen übereinkommen, gelten, und endlich dem Gesetze, welches für alle unangesehen ihrer Neigungen gilt, u. s. w. Auf A 119 diese Weise übersieht man den ganzen Plan von dem, was man zu leisten hat, sogar jede Frage der praktischen Philosophie, die zu beantworten, und zugleich die Ordnung, die zu befolgen ist.
Von der Typik der reinen praktischen Urtheilskraft.
Die Begriffe des Guten und Bösen bestimmen dem Willen zuerst ein Object. Sie stehen selbst aber unter einer praktischen Regel der Vernunft, welche, wenn sie reine Vernunft ist, den Willen a priori in Ansehung seines Gegenstandes bestimmt. Ob nun eine uns in der Sinnlichkeit mögliche Handlung der Fall sei, der unter der Regel stehe, oder nicht, dazu gehört praktische Urtheilskraft, wodurch dasjenige, was in der Regel allgemein (in abstracto) gesagt wurde, auf eine Handlung in concreto angewandt wird. Weil aber eine praktische Regel der reinen Vernunft erstlich, als praktisch, die Existenz eines Objects betrifft und zweitens, als praktische Regel der reinen Vernunft, Nothwendigkeit in Ansehung des Daseins der Handlung bei sich führt, mithin praktisches Gesetz ist und zwar V:68 nicht Naturgesetz durch empirische Bestimmungsgründe, sondern ein Gesetz der Freiheit, nach welchem der Wille unabhängig von allem Empirischen (blos durch die Vorstellung eines Gesetzes überhaupt und dessen Form) bestimmbar A 120 sein soll, alle vorkommende Fälle zu möglichen Handlungen aber nur empirisch, d. i. zur Erfahrung und Natur gehörig, sein können: so scheint es widersinnisch, in der Sinnenwelt einen Fall antreffen zu wollen, der, da er immer so fern nur unter dem Naturgesetze steht, doch die Anwendung eines Gesetzes der Freiheit auf sich verstatte, und auf welchen die übersinnliche Idee des sittlich Guten, das darin in concreto dargestellt werden soll, angewandt werden könne. Also ist die Urtheilskraft der reinen praktischen Vernunft eben denselben Schwierigkeiten unterworfen, als die der reinen theoretischen, welche letztere gleichwohl, aus denselben zu kommen, ein Mittel zur Hand hatte: nämlich da es in Ansehung des theoretischen Gebrauchs auf Anschauungen ankam, darauf reine Verstandesbegriffe angewandt werden könnten, dergleichen Anschauungen (obzwar nur von Gegenständen der Sinne) doch a priori, mithin, was die Verknüpfung des Mannigfaltigen in denselben betrifft, den reinen Verstandesbegriffen a priori gemäß (als Schemate) gegeben werden können. Hingegen ist das sittlich Gute etwas dem Objecte nach Übersinnliches, für das also in keiner sinnlichen Anschauung etwas Correspondirendes gefunden werden kann, und die Urtheilskraft unter Gesetzen der reinen praktischen Vernunft scheint daher besonderen Schwierigkeiten unterworfen zu sein, die darauf beruhen, daß ein Gesetz der Freiheit auf Handlungen als Begebenheiten, die in der A 121 Sinnenwelt geschehen und also so fern zur Natur gehören, angewandt werden soll.
Allein hier eröffnet sich doch wieder eine günstige Aussicht für die reine praktische Urtheilskraft. Es ist bei der Subsumtion einer mir in der Sinnenwelt möglichen Handlung unter einem reinen praktischen Gesetze nicht um die Möglichkeit der Handlung als einer Begebenheit in der Sinnenwelt zu thun; denn die gehört für die Beurtheilung des theoretischen Gebrauchs der Vernunft nach dem Gesetze der Causalität, eines reinen Verstandesbegriffs, für den sie ein Schema in der sinnlichen Anschauung hat. Die physische Causalität, oder die Bedingung, unter der sie stattfindet, gehört unter die Naturbegriffe, deren Schema transscendentale Einbildungskraft entwirft. Hier aber ist es nicht um das Schema eines Falles nach Gesetzen, sondern um das Schema (wenn dieses Wort hier schicklich ist) eines Gesetzes selbst zu thun, weil die Willensbestimmung V:69 (nicht die Handlung in Beziehung auf ihren Erfolg) durchs Gesetz allein, ohne einen anderen Bestimmungsgrund, den Begriff der Causalität an ganz andere Bedingungen bindet, als diejenige sind, welche die Naturverknüpfung ausmachen.
Dem Naturgesetze als Gesetze, welchem die Gegenstände sinnlicher Anschauung als solche unterworfen sind, muß ein Schema, d. i. ein allgemeines A 122 Verfahren der Einbildungskraft (den reinen Verstandesbegriff, den das Gesetz bestimmt, den Sinnen a priori darzustellen), correspondiren. Aber dem Gesetze der Freiheit (als einer gar nicht sinnlich bedingten Causalität) mithin auch dem Begriffe des unbedingt Guten kann keine Anschauung, mithin kein Schema zum Behuf seiner Anwendung in concreto untergelegt werden. Folglich hat das Sittengesetz kein anderes die Anwendung desselben auf Gegenstände der Natur vermittelndes Erkenntnißvermögen, als den Verstand (nicht die Einbildungskraft), welcher einer Idee der Vernunft nicht ein Schema der Sinnlichkeit, sondern ein Gesetz, aber doch ein solches, das an Gegenständen der Sinne in concreto dargestellt werden kann, mithin ein Naturgesetz, aber nur seiner Form nach, als Gesetz zum Behuf der Urtheilskraft unterlegen kann, und dieses können wir daher den Typus des Sittengesetzes nennen.
Die Regel der Urtheilskraft unter Gesetzen der reinen praktischen Vernunft ist diese: Frage dich selbst, ob die Handlung, die du vorhast, wenn sie nach einem Gesetze der Natur, von der du selbst ein Theil wärest, geschehen sollte, sie du wohl als durch deinen Willen möglich ansehen könntest. Nach dieser Regel beurtheilt in der That jedermann Handlungen, ob sie sittlich gut oder böse sind. So sagt man: Wie, wenn ein jeder, wo er A 123 seinen Vortheil zu schaffen glaubt, sich erlaubte, zu betrügen, oder befugt hielte, sich das Leben abzukürzen, so bald ihn ein völliger Überdruß desselben befällt, oder anderer Noth mit völliger Gleichgültigkeit ansähe, und du gehörtest mit zu einer solchen Ordnung der Dinge, würdest du darin wohl mit Einstimmung deines Willens sein? Nun weiß ein jeder wohl: daß, wenn er sich ingeheim Betrug erlaubt, darum eben nicht jedermann es auch thue, oder, wenn er unbemerkt lieblos ist, nicht sofort jedermann auch gegen ihn es sein würde; daher ist diese Vergleichung der Maxime seiner Handlungen mit einem allgemeinen Naturgesetze auch nicht der Bestimmungsgrund seines Willens. Aber das letztere ist doch ein Typus der Beurtheilung der ersteren nach sittlichen Principien. Wenn die Maxime der Handlung nicht so beschaffen ist, daß sie an der Form eines V:70 Naturgesetzes überhaupt die Probe hält, so ist sie sittlich unmöglich. So urtheilt selbst der gemeinste Verstand; denn das Naturgesetz liegt allen seinen gewöhnlichsten, selbst den Erfahrungsurtheilen immer zum Grunde. Er hat es also jederzeit bei der Hand, nur daß er in Fällen, wo die Causalität aus Freiheit beurtheilt werden soll, jenes Naturgesetz blos zum Typus eines Gesetzes der Freiheit macht, weil er, ohne etwas, was er zum Beispiele im Erfahrungsfalle machen könnte, bei Hand zu haben, dem Gesetze einer reinen praktischen Vernunft nicht den Gebrauch in der Anwendung verschaffen könnte.
Es ist also auch erlaubt, die Natur der Sinnenwelt als Typus A 124 einer intelligibelen Natur zu brauchen, so lange ich nur nicht die Anschauungen, und was davon abhängig ist, auf diese übertrage, sondern blos die Form der Gesetzmäßigkeit überhaupt (deren Begriff auch im gemeinsten Vernunftgebrauche stattfindet, aber in keiner anderen Absicht, als blos zum reinen praktischen Gebrauche der Vernunft a priori bestimmt erkannt werden kann) darauf beziehe. Denn Gesetze als solche sind so fern einerlei, sie mögen ihre Bestimmungsgründe hernehmen, woher sie wollen.
Übrigens, da von allem Intelligibelen schlechterdings nichts als (vermittelst des moralischen Gesetzes) die Freiheit und auch diese nur, so fern sie eine von jenem unzertrennliche Voraussetzung ist, und ferner alle intelligibele Gegenstände, auf welche uns die Vernunft nach Anleitung jenes Gesetzes etwa noch führen möchte, wiederum für uns keine Realität weiter haben, als zum Behuf desselben Gesetzes und des Gebrauches der reinen praktischen Vernunft, diese aber zum Typus der Urtheilskraft die Natur (der reinen Verstandesform derselben nach) zu gebrauchen berechtigt und auch benöthigt ist: so dient die gegenwärtige Anmerkung dazu, um zu verhüten, daß, was blos zur Typik der Begriffe gehört, nicht zu den Begriffen selbst gezählt werde. Diese also als Typik der Urtheilskraft bewahrt vor dem Empirism der praktischen Vernunft, der die praktischen Begriffe A 125 des Guten und Bösen blos in Erfahrungsfolgen (der sogenannten Glückseligkeit) setzt, obzwar diese und die unendlichen nützlichen Folgen eines durch Selbstliebe bestimmten Willens, wenn dieser sich selbst zugleich zum allgemeinen Naturgesetze machte, allerdings zum ganz angemessenen Typus für das sittlich Gute dienen kann, aber mit diesem doch nicht einerlei ist. Eben dieselbe Typik bewahrt auch vor dem Mysticism der praktischen Vernunft, welcher das, was nur zum Symbol diente, zum Schema macht, V:71 d. i. wirkliche und doch nicht sinnliche Anschauungen (eines unsichtbaren Reichs Gottes) der Anwendung der moralischen Begriffe unterlegt und ins Überschwengliche hinausschweift. Dem Gebrauche der moralischen Begriffe ist blos der Rationalism der Urtheilskraft angemessen, der von der sinnlichen Natur nichts weiter nimmt, als was auch reine Vernunft für sich denken kann, d. i. die Gesetzmäßigkeit, und in die übersinnliche nichts hineinträgt, als was umgekehrt sich durch Handlungen in der Sinnenwelt nach der formalen Regel eines Naturgesetzes überhaupt wirklich darstellen läßt. Indessen ist die Verwahrung vor dem Empirism der praktischen Vernunft viel wichtiger und anrathungswürdiger, weil der Mysticism sich doch noch mit der Reinigkeit und Erhabenheit des moralischen Gesetzes zusammen verträgt und außerdem es nicht eben natürlich und der gemeinen Denkungsart angemessen ist, seine Einbildungskraft bis zu übersinnlichen A 126 Anschauungen anzuspannen, mithin auf dieser Seite die Gefahr nicht so allgemein ist; da hingegen der Empirism die Sittlichkeit in Gesinnungen (worin doch, und nicht blos in Handlungen, der hohe Werth besteht, den sich die Menschheit durch sie verschaffen kann und soll) mit der Wurzel ausrottet und ihr ganz etwas anderes, nämlich ein empirisches Interesse, womit die Neigungen überhaupt unter sich Verkehr treiben, statt der Pflicht unterschiebt, überdem auch eben darum mit allen Neigungen, die (sie mögen einen Zuschnitt bekommen, welchen sie wollen), wenn sie zur Würde eines obersten praktischen Princips erhoben werden, die Menschheit degradiren, und da sie gleichwohl der Sinnesart aller so günstig sind, aus der Ursache weit gefährlicher ist als alle Schwärmerei, die niemals einen daurenden Zustand vieler Menschen ausmachen kann.
8 Überdem ist der Ausdruck sub ratione boni auch zweideutig. Denn er kann so viel sagen: wir stellen uns etwas als gut vor, wenn und weil wir es begehren (wollen); aber auch: wir begehren etwas darum, weil wir es uns als gut vorstellen, so daß entweder die Begierde der Bestimmungsgrund des Begriffs des Objects als eines Guten, oder der Begriff des Guten der Bestimmungsgrund des Begehrens (des Willens) sei; da denn das sub ratione boni im ersteren Falle bedeuten würde, wir wollen etwas unter der Idee des Guten, im zweiten, zu Folge dieser Idee, welche vor dem Wollen als Bestimmungsgrund desselben vorhergehen muß.
Musean translation
Complete machine-assisted translation directly from Kant's German, Akademie-Ausgabe V (1913), pages 1–163, including all eighteen author notes. Original page and section references are retained.
Chapter II. On the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason.
By the concept of an object of practical reason I understand the representation of an object as a possible effect through freedom. To be an object of practical cognition as such therefore means only the relation of the will to the action by which the object or its opposite would be made actual; and judging whether something is an object of pure practical reason is simply distinguishing whether it is possible or impossible to will the action by which a certain object would become actual, if we had the power to bring it about—a matter on which experience must judge. A 101 If the object is assumed to be the determining ground of our faculty of desire, its physical possibility through the free use of our powers must precede the judgment of whether or not it is an object of practical reason. If, by contrast, the law can be regarded a priori as the determining ground of the action, and the action therefore as determined by pure practical reason, the judgment of whether something is an object of pure practical reason is wholly independent of any comparison with our physical V:58 powers. The question is only whether we may will an action directed toward the existence of an object, if this were within our power; hence the moral possibility of the action must come first, since here its determining ground is not the object but the law of the will.
The only objects of practical reason, then, are those of the good and the evil. For the former means a necessary object of the faculty of desire, the latter of the faculty of aversion, but both according to a principle of reason.
If the concept of the good is not to be derived from a preceding practical law, but is instead to serve as its foundation, it can only be the concept of something whose existence promises pleasure A 102 and thus determines the subject's causality in producing it—that is, the faculty of desire. Now, since it is impossible to discern a priori which representation will be accompanied by pleasure and which by displeasure, determining what is immediately good or evil would depend entirely on experience. The property of the subject in relation to which alone this experience can be made is the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, as a receptivity belonging to inner sense. Thus the concept of what is immediately good would have to refer only to that with which the sensation of enjoyment is immediately connected, and the concept of unqualified evil only to what immediately arouses pain. But this already conflicts with ordinary usage, which distinguishes the agreeable from the good, the disagreeable from the evil, and requires that good and evil always be judged through reason, hence through concepts that can be universally communicated, rather than through mere sensation, which is confined to individual subjects and their receptivity. Yet no pleasure or displeasure can in itself be immediately connected a priori with any representation of an object. A philosopher who believed himself compelled to make a feeling of pleasure the foundation of his practical judgment would therefore A 103 call good what is a means to the agreeable, and evil what causes disagreeableness and pain; for judging the relation of means to ends certainly belongs to reason. Although reason alone can discern the connection of means with their intended ends—so that one could also define the will as the V:59 faculty of ends, since ends are always determining grounds of the faculty of desire according to principles—the practical maxims that followed from the above concept of the good merely as a means would never contain, as an object of the will, anything good in itself, but always only something good for some purpose. The good would always be merely the useful, and that for which it is useful would always have to lie outside the will, in sensation. If this sensation, as agreeable sensation, had to be distinguished from the concept of the good, there would be nothing immediately good at all: the good would have to be sought only in the means to something else, namely, to some agreeableness.
There is an old formula of the schools: we desire nothing except under the aspect of good; we shun nothing except under the aspect of evil. Its use is often correct, but also often highly detrimental to philosophy, because the expressions good and evil contain an ambiguity for which A 104 the limitations of language are to blame: they admit a double meaning. They therefore inevitably distort practical laws and force philosophy into subtle distinctions. In using these expressions, philosophy can readily recognize that the concept differs while the word remains the same, yet can find no separate expressions for it; afterward no agreement can be reached about these distinctions, because no fitting expression could directly mark the difference.8
German is fortunate in possessing expressions that keep this difference from being overlooked. Where Latin uses the single word bonum, German has two very different concepts and equally different expressions: for bonum, the good and well-being; for malum, evil and ill (or woe). Thus V:60 it is one thing to consider an action's A 105 goodness and evil, and quite another to consider our well-being and woe (ill). It already follows that the psychological proposition above remains at least very uncertain if it is translated as: we desire nothing except with regard to our well-being or woe. By contrast, if it is rendered as: under reason's guidance, we will nothing except insofar as we hold it to be good or evil, it becomes unquestionably certain and at the same time perfectly clear.
Well-being or ill always signifies only a relation to our state of agreeableness or disagreeableness, of enjoyment and pain. If we desire or shun an object on that account, we do so only insofar as it is related to our sensibility and to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure that it produces. Good or evil, however, always signifies a relation to the will, insofar as the will is determined by the law of reason to make something its object. For the will is never immediately determined by the object and its representation; rather, it is a faculty for making a rule of reason the motive of an action through which an object can become actual. Good or evil thus refers properly to actions, not to a person's state of sensation; and if anything were to be good or evil without qualification—in every respect and without A 106 any further condition—or to be regarded as such, it could only be the manner of acting, the maxim of the will, and hence the acting person himself as a good or evil human being, but never a thing, that could be so named.
People might laugh all they liked at the Stoic who cried out in the fiercest pangs of gout: “Pain, however much you may torment me, I will still never admit that you are an evil (κακον, malum)!” Yet he was right. It was an ill: he felt that, and his cries betrayed it. But he had no reason at all to concede that an evil thereby attached to him; for pain does not diminish the worth of his person in the least, but only the worth of his condition. A single lie of which he was conscious would have had to cast down his spirit; but the pain served only as an occasion to raise it, if he was conscious that he had not brought it upon himself through any wrongful action and thereby made himself deserving of punishment.
Whatever we are to call good must, in every rational person's judgment, V:61 be an object of the faculty of desire, and evil must in everyone's eyes be an object of aversion. Hence this judgment requires reason in addition to sense. So it is with A 107 truthfulness as opposed to lying, with justice as opposed to violence, and so forth. But we can call something an ill that everyone must nevertheless declare to be good—sometimes indirectly, sometimes even directly. Someone undergoing a surgical operation undoubtedly feels it as an ill; but through reason both he and everyone else declare it good. If, however, someone who enjoys provoking and disturbing peaceable people finally meets his match and is sent off with a sound thrashing, this is certainly an ill, yet everyone approves and considers it good in itself, even if nothing further should come of it. Indeed, even the person receiving it must recognize in his reason that he is being justly treated, because he sees here the exact realization of that proportion between well-being and good conduct which reason inevitably holds before him.
In the judgment of our practical reason, a very great deal does indeed depend on our well-being and woe; and as far as our nature as sensible beings is concerned, everything depends on our happiness, provided that, as reason above all demands, happiness is judged not by a passing sensation but by the influence this contingent circumstance has on our whole existence and our satisfaction with it. A 108 Yet not everything without exception depends on it. A human being is a needy being insofar as he belongs to the sensible world; and to that extent his reason certainly has an undeniable commission from sensibility to concern itself with sensibility's interests and to frame practical maxims, including maxims concerning happiness in this life and, if possible, in a future one. Yet he is not so entirely an animal as to be indifferent to everything reason says on its own account and to use it merely as an instrument for satisfying his needs as a sensible being. For possessing reason does not raise him in worth above mere animality at all, if reason is to serve him only for what instinct accomplishes in animals. It would then be merely a particular method nature had employed to equip the human being for the same end to which it has destined animals, without V:62 destining him for a higher end. Given this arrangement nature has made for him, he does indeed need reason to take his well-being and woe into account at all times. But he also possesses it for a higher purpose: not merely to include in his deliberations what is good or evil in itself, on which pure reason, wholly unconcerned with sensible interests, alone can judge, but to distinguish this judgment entirely A 109 from the former and make it the supreme condition of that former judgment.
In judging what is good and evil in itself, as distinct from what can be so called only in relation to well-being or ill, the following points matter. Either a principle of reason is already thought in itself as the determining ground of the will, without regard to possible objects of the faculty of desire, and thus merely through the lawful form of the maxim; in that case the principle is a practical law a priori, and pure reason is assumed to be practical of itself. The law then determines the will immediately; the action conforming to it is good in itself; a will whose maxim always conforms to this law is absolutely good in every respect, and is the supreme condition of everything good. Or else a determining ground of the faculty of desire precedes the maxim of the will, presupposing an object of pleasure and displeasure, hence something that delights or pains. Reason's maxim of promoting the former and avoiding the latter determines actions as good in relation to our inclination, and therefore only indirectly—in regard to some other end, as means to it. Such maxims can then never be called laws, although they can be called rational practical precepts. In the latter case the end itself, the enjoyment A 110 we seek, is not a good but a well-being, not a concept of reason but an empirical concept of an object of sensation. Yet the use of the means to it, that is, the action, is still called good, because it requires rational deliberation—but not good without qualification, only in relation to our sensibility with regard to its feeling of pleasure and displeasure. The will whose maxim is affected by this, however, is not a pure will, which is directed only toward that in which pure reason can be practical of itself.
Here, then, is the place to explain the paradox of method in a critique of practical reason: the concept of V:63 good and evil must not be determined before the moral law, although it would seemingly even have to serve as the law's foundation, but only after it and through it, as is done here. Even if we did not know that the principle of morality is a pure law determining the will a priori, we would still, in order not to assume principles wholly gratuitously (gratis), have to leave it initially at least undecided whether the will has only empirical determining grounds or also pure determining grounds a priori. For it conflicts with every fundamental rule of philosophical procedure to assume in advance A 111 that the very matter to be decided has already been decided. Suppose we wished to begin with the concept of the good in order to derive the laws of the will from it. This concept of an object as good would at the same time identify that object as the will's sole determining ground. Since this concept had no practical law a priori as its guide, the touchstone of good or evil could be placed nowhere but in the object's agreement with our feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The use of reason could consist only in determining, on the one hand, this pleasure or displeasure within the entire connection of all the sensations of my existence and, on the other, the means of procuring its object for me. Now, since only experience can determine what accords with the feeling of pleasure, while the practical law is nevertheless supposed to be founded on this as its condition, the possibility of practical laws a priori would be excluded outright. This would happen because one thought it necessary first to discover an object for the will, the concept of which as good would constitute the universal, though empirical, determining ground of the will. Yet what was first necessary was to investigate whether there might also be a determining ground of the will a priori. This could never have been found anywhere except in a pure practical A 112 law, insofar as that law prescribes to maxims merely their lawful form, without regard to an object. But since an object conceived in terms of good and evil had already been made the foundation of every practical law, and since without a preceding law that object could be thought only through empirical concepts, one had already deprived oneself in advance of even the possibility of thinking a pure practical law. If, on the contrary, V:64 one had first investigated such a law analytically, one would have found that it is not the concept of the good as an object that determines the moral law; rather, the moral law first determines and makes possible the concept of the good insofar as it deserves that name without qualification.
This observation, which concerns only the method of the most fundamental moral investigations, is important. It explains at once the source of all the philosophers' errors concerning the supreme principle of morality. For they sought an object of the will in order to make it the matter and foundation of a law, which was then to determine the will not immediately but through that object as brought into relation with the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Instead, they should first have A 113 sought a law determining the will a priori and immediately, and only then determining the object in accordance with the will. Whether they placed this object of pleasure, which was to furnish the supreme concept of the good, in happiness, perfection, moral feeling, or the will of God, their principle was always heteronomy. They inevitably encountered empirical conditions for a moral law, because they could call their object good or evil, as an immediate determining ground of the will, only according to its immediate relation to feeling, which is always empirical. Only a formal law—that is, one prescribing to reason nothing beyond the form of its universal legislation as the supreme condition of maxims—can be a determining ground of practical reason a priori. The ancients, however, revealed this error openly by directing their entire moral inquiry toward determining the concept of the highest good, hence of an object they afterward intended to make the determining ground of the will in the moral law. Such an object can be presented to the will only much later, after the moral law has first been established on its own and justified as the will's immediate determining ground, so that the will is now determined a priori as to its form. We shall attempt this in A 114 the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason. The moderns, among whom the question of the highest good seems to have fallen out of use, or at least to have become merely incidental, conceal this error, as in many other cases, behind indefinite words. V:65 Yet one still sees it showing through their systems, where it everywhere betrays a heteronomy of practical reason from which a moral law commanding universally a priori can never arise.
Now, since the concepts of good and evil, as consequences of the determination of the will a priori, also presuppose a pure practical principle, and hence a causality of pure reason, they do not originally refer to objects as do the pure concepts of the understanding, or categories of reason in its theoretical use—for example, as determinations of the synthetic unity of the manifold of given intuitions in one consciousness. Rather, they presuppose these objects as given. They are all, instead, modes of a single category, namely causality, insofar as its determining ground consists in reason's representation of a law of causality that reason gives itself as a law of freedom, thereby proving itself practical a priori. Yet actions A 115 belong on the one hand under a law that is not a law of nature but a law of freedom, and thus to the conduct of intelligible beings, while on the other hand, as events in the sensible world, they also belong to appearances. The determinations of practical reason can therefore have a place only in relation to the latter, and thus in accordance with the categories of the understanding. This is not, however, for the purpose of using the understanding theoretically to bring the manifold of sensible intuition under one consciousness a priori, but only to subject the manifold of desires a priori to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason commanding in the moral law, or of a pure will.
These categories of freedom—as we shall call them in contrast to those theoretical concepts as categories of nature—have an evident advantage over the latter. The latter are merely forms of thought that, through universal concepts, designate only indeterminately objects in general for any intuition possible for us. The former, by contrast, concern the determination of a free power of choice. No fully corresponding intuition can indeed be given for this power, but it has a pure practical law a priori as its foundation, which is true of no concept belonging to the theoretical use of our faculty of cognition. Thus, as elementary practical concepts, instead of having as their given foundation the form of intuition A 116—space and time—which does not lie in reason itself but must be drawn from elsewhere, V:66 namely from sensibility, they have the form of a pure will within reason, and hence within the faculty of thought itself. Consequently, since all the precepts of pure practical reason concern only the determination of the will, not the natural conditions, belonging to the practical faculty, for carrying out its intention, practical concepts a priori, in relation to the supreme principle of freedom, become cognitions at once and need not await intuitions to acquire meaning. This is for the remarkable reason that they themselves produce the actuality of that to which they refer—the disposition of the will—something theoretical concepts do not do at all. It must only be carefully noted that these categories concern practical reason in general alone, and therefore proceed in order from those that are still morally undetermined and sensibly conditioned to those that, unconditioned by sensibility, are determined solely by the moral law.
Table A 117of the categories of freedom with regard to the concepts of good and evil.1.Quantity• Subjective, according to maxims (the individual's opinions of the will)Objective, according to principles (precepts)A priori objective as well as subjective principles of freedom (laws).2.Quality• Practical rules of commission (praeceptivae)Practical rules of omission (prohibitivae)Practical rules of exceptions (exceptivae).3.Relation• To personalityTo the condition of the personReciprocally, of one person to the condition of another.4.Modality• The permitted and the forbiddenDuty and what is contrary to dutyPerfect and imperfect duty.
V:67 It will soon be apparent that in this table freedom is considered as a A 118 kind of causality not subject to empirical determining grounds, with regard to the actions possible through it as appearances in the sensible world, and therefore in relation to the categories of their possibility in nature. Yet each category is taken so generally that the determining ground of that causality can also be assumed outside the sensible world, in freedom as a property of an intelligible being, until the categories of modality introduce the transition from practical principles in general to those of morality, but only problematically; only afterward can the latter be presented dogmatically through the moral law.
I add nothing further here to explain this table, since it is sufficiently intelligible on its own. A division of this kind, framed according to principles, greatly benefits every science, both in thoroughness and in intelligibility. Thus, for example, the table above and its first heading tell us at once where practical deliberations must begin: with the maxims each person bases on his inclination; with the precepts valid for a class of rational beings insofar as they share certain inclinations; and finally with the law valid for all, regardless of their inclinations, and so forth. In A 119 this way one surveys the entire plan of what must be accomplished, indeed every question of practical philosophy that must be answered, and at the same time the order to be followed.
On the typic of pure practical judgment.
The concepts of good and evil first determine an object for the will. But they themselves stand under a practical rule of reason which, if reason is pure, determines the will a priori with regard to its object. Whether an action possible for us in sensibility is a case falling under the rule requires practical judgment, through which what was stated universally in the rule (in the abstract) is applied to an action in the concrete. But a practical rule of pure reason, first, as practical, concerns the existence of an object, and second, as a practical rule of pure reason, carries with it necessity concerning the existence of the action. It is therefore a practical law, and indeed V:68 not a law of nature operating through empirical determining grounds, but a law of freedom, according to which the will is to be determinable A 120 independently of everything empirical, merely through the representation of a law in general and its form. Yet all cases that arise for possible actions can only be empirical, that is, belong to experience and nature. It therefore seems paradoxical to seek in the sensible world a case that, although always subject thus far only to the law of nature, nevertheless admits the application of a law of freedom, and to which the supersensible idea of the morally good can be applied, so as to be exhibited in it in the concrete. Thus the judgment of pure practical reason faces the very same difficulties as that of pure theoretical reason. The latter, however, had a means at hand for escaping them: since its theoretical use required intuitions to which pure concepts of the understanding could be applied, such intuitions, although only of objects of the senses, could nevertheless be given a priori, and hence, as regards the connection of their manifold, in conformity a priori with the pure concepts of the understanding, as schemata. The morally good, by contrast, is something supersensible in respect of its object, for which nothing corresponding can therefore be found in any sensible intuition. Judgment under laws of pure practical reason thus seems subject to special difficulties, arising from the requirement that a law of freedom be applied to actions as events occurring in the A 121 sensible world and to that extent belonging to nature.
Yet here a favorable prospect opens once again for pure practical judgment. Subsuming an action possible for me in the sensible world under a pure practical law is not a matter of the possibility of the action as an event in the sensible world. That belongs to the judgment of reason in its theoretical use according to the law of causality, a pure concept of the understanding for which reason has a schema in sensible intuition. Physical causality, or the condition under which it occurs, belongs among the concepts of nature, whose schema is drawn up by the transcendental imagination. Here, however, the issue is not the schema of a case under laws, but the schema—if that word is appropriate here—of a law itself. For the determination of the will V:69 (not the action in relation to its outcome) through the law alone, without any other determining ground, binds the concept of causality to conditions quite different from those constituting the connection of nature.
A law of nature, as a law to which objects of sensible intuition as such are subject, must have a corresponding schema, that is, a universal A 122 procedure of the imagination for presenting a priori to the senses the pure concept of the understanding that the law determines. But no intuition, hence no schema for its application in the concrete, can be supplied for the law of freedom, as a causality not sensibly conditioned at all, nor therefore for the concept of the unconditionally good. Consequently the moral law has no faculty of cognition mediating its application to objects of nature except the understanding, not the imagination. The understanding can supply for an idea of reason not a schema of sensibility but a law—one, however, that can be exhibited in the concrete in objects of the senses, hence a law of nature, but only as to its form—as a law for the use of judgment. We can therefore call this the type of the moral law.
The rule of judgment under laws of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if the action you intend were to occur according to a law of nature of which you yourself were a part, you could regard it as possible through your will. By this rule everyone does in fact judge whether actions are morally good or evil. Thus we say: what if everyone, whenever he A 123 believed it would serve his advantage, permitted himself to deceive, or considered himself entitled to shorten his life as soon as he became thoroughly weary of it, or looked on others' distress with complete indifference—and you too belonged to such an order of things: would you be there with the consent of your will? Now everyone knows perfectly well that if he secretly permits himself a deception, this does not mean everyone else does the same; or that if he is unloving without being noticed, everyone else would not immediately be so toward him. Hence this comparison of the maxim of his actions with a universal law of nature is not the determining ground of his will. Yet the latter is a type for judging the former according to moral principles. If the maxim of the action is not such that it withstands the test of the form of a V:70 law of nature in general, it is morally impossible. Even the most ordinary understanding judges in this way; for a law of nature always underlies all its most familiar judgments, even its judgments of experience. It therefore always has such a law at hand, except that, in cases where causality through freedom is to be judged, it makes that law of nature merely the type of a law of freedom. For without having at hand something it could use as an example in a case of experience, it could not provide the law of pure practical reason with a use in application.
It is therefore also permissible to use the nature of the sensible world as the type A 124 of an intelligible nature, provided that I do not transfer to the latter the intuitions and what depends on them, but relate to it only the form of lawfulness in general. The concept of this form occurs even in the most ordinary use of reason, but can be cognized determinately a priori for no other purpose than the pure practical use of reason alone. For laws as such are to this extent alike, wherever they may obtain their determining grounds.
Moreover, of everything intelligible, absolutely nothing is available to us except freedom, through the moral law, and even freedom only insofar as it is a presupposition inseparable from that law. Furthermore, any intelligible objects to which reason might yet lead us under that law's guidance have, in turn, no reality for us beyond what serves that same law and the use of pure practical reason. Yet reason is entitled, and indeed required, to use nature, as regards its pure form of understanding, as a type for judgment. The present observation therefore serves to prevent what belongs merely to the typic of concepts from being counted among the concepts themselves. This typic of judgment guards against the empiricism of practical reason, which places the practical concepts A 125 of good and evil merely in consequences of experience, in so-called happiness. Happiness and the endlessly beneficial consequences of a will determined by self-love, if that will at the same time made itself a universal law of nature, can indeed serve as a wholly appropriate type for the morally good, but are not identical with it. The same typic also guards against the mysticism of practical reason, which turns what served only as a symbol into a schema: V:71 that is, it supplies actual yet nonsensible intuitions—of an invisible kingdom of God—as the basis for applying moral concepts, and strays into the transcendent. Only the rationalism of judgment is appropriate to the use of moral concepts. It takes from sensible nature nothing beyond what pure reason can also think for itself, namely lawfulness, and carries into supersensible nature nothing beyond what, conversely, can actually be exhibited through actions in the sensible world according to the formal rule of a law of nature in general. Nevertheless, guarding against the empiricism of practical reason is far more important and advisable. For mysticism remains compatible with the purity and sublimity of the moral law; moreover, it is not exactly natural or in keeping with ordinary ways of thinking to strain one's imagination toward supersensible A 126 intuitions, so the danger on this side is not so widespread. Empiricism, by contrast, tears morality out of dispositions by the roots—although it is in dispositions, not merely in actions, that the high worth consists which humanity can and should acquire through morality. In place of duty it substitutes something quite different, namely an empirical interest through which inclinations conduct their mutual dealings. For precisely this reason, and because it allies itself with all inclinations—which, whatever shape they take, degrade humanity when raised to the dignity of a supreme practical principle, yet are so congenial to everyone's way of feeling—it is far more dangerous than any fanaticism, which can never become the lasting condition of many people.
8 Moreover, the expression under the aspect of good is also ambiguous. It can mean: we represent something to ourselves as good when and because we desire (will) it; but also: we desire something because we represent it to ourselves as good. Thus either desire is the determining ground of the concept of the object as good, or the concept of the good is the determining ground of desire (of the will). In the former case, under the aspect of good would mean that we will something under the idea of the good; in the second, as a consequence of this idea, which must precede willing as its determining ground.
Plain English translation
Complete machine-assisted Plain English translation made independently and directly from the same German text, including all eighteen author notes.
Chapter II. The Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason.
By the concept of an object of practical reason, I mean the representation of an object as a possible effect through freedom. To be an object of practical cognition as such therefore means only that the will relates to the action that would make the object or its opposite actual. Judging whether something is an object of pure practical reason means only distinguishing whether it is possible or impossible to will the action through which a certain object would become actual if we had the capacity to bring it about. Experience must judge whether we have that capacity. A 101 If the object is assumed to be the determining ground of our faculty of desire, its physical possibility through the free use of our powers must be established before we judge whether it is an object of practical reason. But suppose the law can be regarded a priori as the action's determining ground, and the action therefore as determined by pure practical reason. Then judging whether something is an object of pure practical reason is entirely independent of comparison with our physical V:58 capacity. The only question is whether we may will an action directed toward an object's existence, if it were within our power. The action's moral possibility must therefore come first. For here the determining ground of the action is not the object, but the law of the will.
The only objects of practical reason, then, are good and evil. For the former means a necessary object of the faculty of desire, the latter a necessary object of the faculty of aversion, in both cases according to a principle of reason.
Suppose the concept of good is not to be derived from a prior practical law, but instead to serve as its basis. Then it can only be the concept of something whose existence promises pleasure A 102 and so determines the subject's causality toward producing it—that is, the faculty of desire. But it is impossible to understand a priori which representation will be accompanied by pleasure and which by displeasure. So experience alone would decide what is directly good or evil. The property of the subject to which alone this experience can relate is the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, a receptivity belonging to inner sense. Thus the concept of what is directly good would concern only what is directly connected with the sensation of enjoyment. The concept of absolute evil would have to concern only what directly causes pain. But this already conflicts with ordinary language. It distinguishes the agreeable from the good, and the disagreeable from evil. It requires good and evil always to be judged through reason, and so through universally communicable concepts, rather than through mere sensation, which is restricted to individual subjects and their receptivity. Yet pleasure or displeasure cannot in itself be directly connected a priori with any representation of an object. So a philosopher who thought he had to base his practical judgment on a feeling of pleasure A 103 would call good whatever is a means to the agreeable, and evil whatever causes discomfort and pain. For judging the relation of means to ends certainly belongs to reason. Reason alone can indeed understand the connection of means with their purposes. We might even define the will as the V:59 capacity for ends, since ends are always determining grounds of the faculty of desire according to principles. Yet practical maxims following from the above concept of good merely as a means would never make anything good in itself an object of the will. They would always make it good only for something. The good would always be merely the useful, and what it is useful for would always have to lie outside the will, in sensation. Now if this agreeable sensation had to be distinguished from the concept of good, there would be nothing directly good at all. We would have to seek the good only in means to something else, namely some agreeable experience.
There is an old formula of the schools: We desire nothing except under the aspect of good; we avoid nothing except under the aspect of evil. Its use is often correct, but also often very harmful to philosophy. For the expressions good and evil contain an ambiguity A 104 caused by the limitations of the language. Each can have two meanings. This inevitably puts practical laws on an uncertain footing. Philosophy may clearly recognize the difference between the concepts in its use of the same word, yet be unable to find separate expressions for them. It is then forced into subtle distinctions on which agreement cannot later be reached, because no suitable expression could directly mark the difference.8
German fortunately has expressions that keep this distinction in view. For what the Latins call by the single word bonum, it has two very different concepts and equally different expressions: for bonum, the morally good and well-being. For malum it has moral evil and ill-being or suffering. So V:60 it involves two quite different judgments whether, in considering an action A 105, we look at its moral good and evil or at our well-being and suffering (ill-being). This already shows that the psychological proposition above is at least very uncertain if translated as: we desire nothing except with regard to our well-being or suffering. By contrast, it is unquestionably certain and entirely clear if stated as: under reason's direction, we will nothing except insofar as we consider it good or evil.
Well-being or ill-being always means only a relation to our state of comfort or discomfort, enjoyment and pain. If we desire or avoid an object on that account, we do so only in relation to our sensibility and the feeling of pleasure or displeasure it produces. But good or evil always means a relation to the will, insofar as it is determined by the law of reason to make something its object. The will is never determined directly by the object and its representation. It is instead a capacity to make a rule of reason the motive for an action through which an object can become actual. Good or evil therefore properly refers to actions, not to a person's state of feeling. If something is to be, or be considered, absolutely good or evil—in every respect and without A 106 any further condition—only the way of acting, the will's maxim, and thus the acting person as a good or evil human being could be called that, not a thing.
So people may laugh all they like at the Stoic who, suffering the most violent gout pains, cried out: "Pain, however much you torture me, I will never admit that you are something evil (κακον, malum)!" Yet he was right. It was an ill: he felt that, and his cries revealed it. But he had no reason to admit that moral evil therefore attached to him. For pain does not lessen his value as a person at all, only the value of his condition. A single lie of which he was aware would have had to crush his spirit. Pain, however, only gave him occasion to raise his spirits, if he was aware that he had not brought it on himself by any wrongful action and thus made himself deserving of punishment.
What we are to call good must, in every rational person's judgment V:61, be an object of the faculty of desire. Evil must be an object of aversion in everyone's eyes. So this judgment requires reason as well as sense. This applies to A 107 truthfulness as opposed to lying, to justice as opposed to violence, and so on. But we can call something an ill that everyone must also declare good, sometimes indirectly, sometimes even directly. Someone who undergoes surgery undoubtedly feels it as an ill. But through reason, both that person and everyone else declare it good. Now suppose someone who likes to harass and disturb peaceful people finally meets their match and receives a sound beating. That is certainly an ill, yet everyone approves and considers it good in itself, even if nothing further results from it. Even the person receiving it must recognize in his reason that he is being treated justly. For he sees the proportion between well-being and good conduct, which reason inevitably holds before him, being put into exact practice here.
Our well-being and suffering certainly matter a great deal in the judgment of our practical reason. As far as our nature as sensible beings is concerned, everything depends on our happiness, provided that happiness is judged, as reason especially requires, not by a passing sensation but by the influence this contingent circumstance has on our whole existence and our satisfaction with it. A 108 Yet not everything without exception depends on it. Human beings have needs insofar as they belong to the world of sense. To that extent, their reason certainly has an unavoidable assignment from sensibility: to attend to its interests and form practical maxims concerning happiness in this life and, if possible, in a future one. But a human being is not so completely an animal as to be indifferent to everything reason says on its own, using it merely as a tool to satisfy needs as a sensible being. For possessing reason does not raise humans in value above mere animality if it serves only to do what instinct does for animals. It would then be merely a special method nature had used to equip humans for the same end for which it destined animals, without destining humans for a higher end V:62. Given the arrangement nature has made for them, humans do indeed need reason always to consider their well-being and suffering. But they also have it for a higher purpose: to take into account what is good or evil in itself, which only pure reason, with no interest in sense, can judge. And they have it not merely to take this into account, but to distinguish this judgment completely A 109 from the former one and make it the supreme condition of that judgment.
Judging what is good and evil in itself, as distinct from what can be called so only in relation to well-being or ill-being, involves the following points. Either a principle of reason is already thought in itself as the will's determining ground, without regard to possible objects of the faculty of desire, and thus merely through the maxim's lawgiving form. In that case, the principle is a practical law a priori, and pure reason is assumed to be practical on its own. The law then determines the will directly. The action that conforms to it is good in itself. A will whose maxim always conforms to this law is absolutely good in every respect, and is the supreme condition of everything good. Or else a determining ground of the faculty of desire precedes the will's maxim. This presupposes an object of pleasure or displeasure, and thus something that pleases or hurts. Reason's maxim of promoting the former and avoiding the latter then determines actions as good in relation to our inclination, and therefore only indirectly—as means to some other end. Such maxims can never be called laws, though they can be called rational practical precepts. In the latter case, the end itself, the enjoyment A 110 we seek, is not a moral good but a form of well-being. It is not a concept of reason, but an empirical concept of an object of sensation. Yet using the means to it—that is, the action—is still called good, because it requires rational consideration. It is not absolutely good, however, but only good in relation to our sensibility and its feeling of pleasure and displeasure. The will whose maxim is affected by this is not a pure will, directed only toward that in which pure reason can be practical on its own.
This is the place to explain the paradox in the method of a critique of practical reason: the concept of V:63 good and evil must be determined not before the moral law, though it seems that it ought even to provide the law's basis, but only after it and through it, as is done here. Even if we did not know that the principle of morality is a pure law determining the will a priori, we would still have to avoid assuming principles without any justification. We would have to leave it at least initially undecided whether the will has only empirical determining grounds or also pure ones a priori. For it violates every basic rule of philosophical procedure to assume in advance A 111 that the very question to be decided has already been settled. Suppose we wanted to begin with the concept of good and derive the laws of the will from it. This concept of an object as good would also identify that object as the will's sole determining ground. Since the concept had no practical law a priori as its standard, the touchstone of good or evil could only be the object's agreement with our feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Reason's use could consist only in determining, first, this pleasure or displeasure in its overall connection with all the sensations of my existence, and second, the means of obtaining its object. Now only experience can establish what accords with the feeling of pleasure. Yet the practical law would supposedly have to rest on this as its condition. That would directly rule out the possibility of practical laws a priori. This is because people thought it necessary first to find an object for the will whose concept, as something good, must supply the will's universal, though empirical, determining ground. But what needed to be investigated first was whether the will also has an a priori determining ground. Such a ground could never have been found anywhere except in a pure practical A 112 law, insofar as it prescribes to maxims the mere form of law, without regard to an object. Instead, an object conceived as good or evil was already made the basis of every practical law. Without a prior law, that object could only be thought through empirical concepts. So people had already deprived themselves in advance of even the possibility of thinking a pure practical law. Had they V:64 first investigated that law analytically, they would instead have found that the concept of good as an object does not determine the moral law. Rather, the moral law first determines and makes possible the concept of good, insofar as it deserves that name without qualification.
This observation concerns only the method of investigating the highest moral questions, but it is important. It explains at once what caused all the philosophers' errors about morality's supreme principle. For they searched for an object of the will to make it the content and basis of a law. That law would then determine the will not directly, but through the object brought into relation with the feeling of pleasure or displeasure. Instead, they should first have searched A 113 for a law that determined the will directly and a priori, and only then determined the object in conformity with that will. Whether they placed this object of pleasure, which was supposed to supply the supreme concept of good, in happiness, perfection, moral feeling, or God's will, their principle was always heteronomy. They inevitably encountered empirical conditions for a moral law. For they could call their object, as the will's direct determining ground, good or evil only according to its direct relation to feeling, which is always empirical. Only a formal law can be a determining ground of practical reason a priori: a law prescribing to reason nothing but the form of its universal lawgiving as the supreme condition of maxims. The ancients openly revealed this error by making their moral investigation entirely a matter of determining the concept of the highest good. This was an object they then intended to make the will's determining ground in the moral law. But such an object can be presented to the will only much later, once the moral law has been independently established and justified as the will's direct determining ground, and the will has thus been determined a priori as to its form. We will attempt this in A 114 the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason. Among modern philosophers, the question of the highest good seems to have fallen out of use, or at least become secondary. As in many other cases, they hide the same error behind vague words V:65. Yet it can still be seen in their systems, where it always reveals heteronomy of practical reason. From this, a moral law commanding universally a priori can never arise.
As consequences of the will's determination a priori, the concepts of good and evil also presuppose a pure practical principle, and therefore a causality of pure reason. They therefore do not originally refer to objects, as the pure concepts of understanding or categories of reason in its theoretical use do—for example, as determinations of the synthetic unity of the manifold of given intuitions in one consciousness. Rather, they presuppose these objects as given. They are all modes of a single category, causality, insofar as its determining ground consists in reason's representation of a law of causality. Reason gives itself this law as a law of freedom and thereby proves itself practical a priori. Now actions A 115, on the one hand, fall under a law that is not a law of nature but a law of freedom, and thus belong to the conduct of intelligible beings. On the other hand, as events in the world of sense, they also belong to appearances. So the determinations of practical reason can occur only in relation to the latter, and thus in conformity with the categories of understanding. But their purpose is not a theoretical use of understanding, bringing the manifold of sensible intuition under one consciousness a priori. It is only to subject the manifold of desires a priori to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason commanding in the moral law, or of a pure will.
These categories of freedom, as we will call them in contrast to the theoretical concepts as categories of nature, have an obvious advantage over the latter. The categories of nature are only forms of thought. Through universal concepts they designate objects in general only indeterminately, for any intuition possible for us. The categories of freedom, by contrast, concern the determination of a free power of choice. No fully corresponding intuition can be given for it, but it rests on a pure practical law a priori, something no concept in the theoretical use of our cognitive faculty does. So, as elementary practical concepts, they have as their given basis not the form of intuition A 116, space and time, which does not lie in reason itself and must be taken from elsewhere V:66, namely sensibility. Instead, they have the form of a pure will within reason, and thus within the capacity for thought itself. All the precepts of pure practical reason concern only the determination of the will, not the natural conditions, belonging to practical capacity, for carrying out its purpose. As a result, practical concepts a priori, in relation to the supreme principle of freedom, immediately become cognitions. They need not wait for intuitions to acquire meaning. The remarkable reason is that they themselves produce the actuality of what they refer to—the will's disposition—which theoretical concepts do not do at all. We must note, however, that these categories concern only practical reason in general. In their order they therefore proceed from what is still morally undetermined and sensibly conditioned to what is sensibly unconditioned and determined solely by the moral law.
Table A 117of the categories of freedom in relation to the concepts of good and evil.1.Quantity• Subjective, according to maxims (the individual's intentions of will)Objective, according to principles (precepts)A priori principles of freedom that are both objective and subjective (laws).2.Quality• Practical rules of doing (prescriptive)Practical rules of not doing (prohibitive)Practical rules of exceptions (exceptive).3.Relation• To personalityTo the person's conditionReciprocally, of one person to the condition of another.4.Modality• The permitted and forbiddenDuty and what is contrary to dutyPerfect and imperfect duty.
V:67 It is easy to see that this table considers freedom as a A 118 kind of causality that is not subject to empirical determining grounds, with regard to the actions it makes possible as appearances in the world of sense. It therefore relates to the categories of their natural possibility. Yet each category is taken so generally that the determining ground of that causality can also be assumed outside the world of sense, in freedom as a property of an intelligible being. Finally, the categories of modality introduce the transition from practical principles in general to moral principles, though only problematically. Only afterward, through the moral law, can these be presented dogmatically.
I add no further explanation of this table, since it is clear enough on its own. A classification of this kind, drawn up according to principles, greatly benefits every science in both thoroughness and clarity. For example, the table's first item immediately shows where practical considerations must begin: with maxims that each person bases on inclination; then precepts valid for a class of rational beings insofar as they share certain inclinations; and finally the law valid for all, regardless of their inclinations, and so on. In A 119 this way we can survey the whole plan of what must be accomplished, including every question practical philosophy must answer and the order to follow.
The typic of pure practical judgment.
The concepts of good and evil first determine an object for the will. But they themselves fall under a practical rule of reason. If reason is pure, this rule determines the will a priori with regard to its object. Practical judgment is needed to decide whether an action possible for us in sensibility is a case falling under the rule. Through it, what the rule says generally, in the abstract, is applied to an action in the concrete. But a practical rule of pure reason, first, as something practical, concerns the existence of an object. Second, as a practical rule of pure reason, it carries necessity concerning the action's existence. It is therefore a practical law V:68, not a law of nature operating through empirical determining grounds, but a law of freedom. According to it, the will is to be determinable A 120 independently of everything empirical, merely through the representation of a law in general and its form. Yet every actual case of a possible action can only be empirical, belonging to experience and nature. So it seems absurd to look in the world of sense for a case which, though always subject as such only to natural law, still allows a law of freedom to be applied to it, and to which the supersensible idea of moral good, which is to be presented there concretely, could be applied. The judgment of pure practical reason thus faces the same difficulties as that of pure theoretical reason. The latter, however, had a means of escaping them. Its theoretical use concerned intuitions to which pure concepts of understanding could be applied. Such intuitions, though only of objects of the senses, can still be given a priori. So far as the connection of their manifold is concerned, they can therefore be given a priori in conformity with pure concepts of understanding, as schemata. Moral good, by contrast, is supersensible as to its object. Nothing corresponding to it can therefore be found in any sensible intuition. Judgment under laws of pure practical reason thus seems to face special difficulties. They arise because a law of freedom is to be applied to actions as events occurring in the A 121 world of sense, and thus belonging to nature in that respect.
Yet a favorable prospect again opens up for pure practical judgment here. When an action possible for me in the world of sense is subsumed under a pure practical law, the question is not the possibility of the action as an event in that world. For that question belongs to the judging of reason's theoretical use according to the law of causality, a pure concept of understanding for which reason has a schema in sensible intuition. Physical causality, or the condition under which it occurs, belongs among concepts of nature whose schema is drawn up by the transcendental imagination. But here we are concerned not with the schema of a case under laws, but with the schema—if the word is suitable here—of a law itself. For the determination of the will V:69 (not the action in relation to its result) by the law alone, without another determining ground, binds the concept of causality to conditions entirely different from those constituting natural connections.
A natural law, as a law to which objects of sensible intuition as such are subject, must have a corresponding schema. This is a general A 122 procedure of the imagination for presenting a priori to the senses the pure concept of understanding specified by the law. But no intuition, and therefore no schema for applying it concretely, can underlie the law of freedom, as a causality not conditioned by sense at all. The same holds for the concept of the unconditionally good. Consequently, the moral law has no cognitive faculty to mediate its application to objects of nature except understanding, not imagination. Understanding can supply an idea of reason not with a schema of sensibility, but with a law. This must still be a law that can be presented concretely in objects of the senses: a law of nature, but only as to its form as a law, for the purposes of judgment. We can therefore call it the type of the moral law.
The rule of judgment under laws of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if your proposed action were to occur according to a law of nature of which you yourself were a part, you could regard it as possible through your will. In fact, everyone uses this rule to judge whether actions are morally good or evil. People say: what if everyone, whenever A 123 they thought it would benefit them, allowed themselves to cheat? Or considered themselves entitled to cut their life short as soon as they became completely tired of it? Or viewed others' distress with complete indifference? If you belonged to such an order of things, could you be in it with your will's consent? Now everyone knows that secretly allowing oneself to cheat does not mean everyone else does it too. Nor does being unkind without being noticed mean everyone will immediately be unkind to oneself. So comparing the maxim of one's actions with a universal law of nature is not the determining ground of one's will. Yet such a law is a type for judging that maxim according to moral principles. If the maxim of an action cannot pass the test supplied by the form of a V:70 law of nature in general, it is morally impossible. Even the most ordinary understanding judges this way. For natural law always underlies all its most usual judgments, including judgments of experience. It therefore always has this law at hand. But where causality through freedom is to be judged, it makes the law of nature merely the type of a law of freedom. Without something at hand that it could make an example in a case of experience, it could not give a law of pure practical reason a use in application.
So it is also permissible to use the nature of the world of sense as the type A 124 of an intelligible nature, as long as I do not transfer intuitions and what depends on them to it, but relate to it only the form of lawfulness in general. Its concept occurs even in reason's most ordinary use, but it can be determinately cognized a priori only for reason's pure practical use, and for no other purpose. For laws as such are identical in this respect, wherever they take their determining grounds from.
Of everything intelligible, absolutely nothing has reality for us except freedom, through the moral law, and freedom only insofar as it is an assumption inseparable from that law. Any further intelligible objects to which reason might lead us under that law's guidance likewise have reality for us only for the purposes of the same law and the use of pure practical reason. Yet practical reason is entitled, and indeed required, to use nature, in its pure form of understanding, as a type for judgment. This observation therefore serves to prevent what belongs merely to the typic of concepts from being counted as part of the concepts themselves. As a typic of judgment, it guards against the empiricism of practical reason. That empiricism places the practical concepts A 125 of good and evil merely in consequences experienced—in so-called happiness. Happiness and the endlessly beneficial consequences of a will determined by self-love, if that will also made itself a universal law of nature, can indeed serve as a fully suitable type of moral good. But they are not identical with it. The same typic also guards against the mysticism of practical reason, which turns what served only as a symbol into a schema V:71. It bases the application of moral concepts on actual yet nonsensible intuitions of an invisible kingdom of God, and wanders beyond all bounds. Only the rationalism of judgment suits the use of moral concepts. It takes from sensible nature nothing beyond what pure reason can also think on its own: lawfulness. And it carries into supersensible nature nothing except what can, in turn, actually be presented through actions in the world of sense according to the formal rule of a law of nature in general. Still, guarding against the empiricism of practical reason is much more important and advisable, because mysticism remains compatible with the purity and loftiness of the moral law. Besides, straining one's imagination toward supersensible A 126 intuitions is not especially natural or suited to ordinary thought, so the danger on that side is not so widespread. Empiricism, by contrast, uproots morality in dispositions. Yet it is there, and not merely in actions, that the high value lies which humanity can and should acquire through morality. Empiricism replaces duty with something entirely different: an empirical interest, through which inclinations trade with one another. Moreover, for that very reason it joins forces with all inclinations. Whatever form these take, they degrade humanity when raised to the dignity of a supreme practical principle. Yet they appeal so strongly to everyone's way of feeling. This makes empiricism far more dangerous than any fanaticism, which can never become a lasting condition for large numbers of people.
8 Moreover, the expression under the aspect of good is itself ambiguous. For it can mean that we represent something as good if and because we desire or will it. But it can also mean that we desire something because we represent it as good. So either desire determines the concept of the object as good, or the concept of good determines desire, or the will. In the first case, under the aspect of good would mean that we will something under the idea of good. In the second, it would mean that we will it as a consequence of this idea, which must precede willing as its determining ground.
About this section
Book I, Chapter II: The concept of an object of pure practical reason is part of Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is part 6 of 12 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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