Books: The Critique of Practical Reason
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Immanuel Kant >> The Critique of Practical Reason
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Every employment of reason in respect of an object requires pure
concepts of the understanding (categories), without which no object
can be conceived. These can be applied to the theoretical employment
of reason, i.e., to that kind of knowledge, only in case an
intuition (which is always sensible) is taken as a basis, and
therefore merely in order to conceive by means of- them an object of
possible experience. Now here what have to be thought by means of
the categories in order to be known are ideas of reason, which
cannot be given in any experience. Only we are not here concerned with
the theoretical knowledge of the objects of these ideas, but only with
this, whether they have objects at all. This reality is supplied by
pure practical reason, and theoretical reason has nothing further to
do in this but to think those objects by means of categories. This, as
we have elsewhere clearly shown, can be done well enough without
needing any intuition (either sensible or supersensible) because the
categories have their seat and origin in the pure understanding,
simply as the faculty of thought, before and independently of any
intuition, and they always only signify an object in general, no
matter in what way it may be given to us. Now when the categories
are to be applied to these ideas, it is not possible to give them
any object in intuition; but that such an object actually exists,
and consequently that the category as a mere form of thought is here
not empty but has significance, this is sufficiently assured them by
an object which practical reason presents beyond doubt in the
concept of the summum bonum, the reality of the conceptions which
are required for the possibility of the summum bonum; without,
however, effecting by this accession the least extension of our
knowledge on theoretical principles.
When these ideas of God, of an intelligible world (the kingdom of
God), and of immortality are further determined by predicates taken
from our own nature, we must not regard this determination as a
sensualizing of those pure rational ideas (anthropomorphism), nor as a
transcendent knowledge of supersensible objects; for these
predicates are no others than understanding and will, considered too
in the relation to each other in which they must be conceived in the
moral law, and therefore, only so far as a pure practical use is
made of them. As to all the rest that belongs to these conceptions
psychologically, that is, so far as we observe these faculties of ours
empirically in their exercise (e.g., that the understanding of man
is discursive, and its notions therefore not intuitions but
thoughts, that these follow one another in time, that his will has its
satisfaction always dependent on the existence of its object, etc.,
which cannot be the case in the Supreme Being), from all this we
abstract in that case, and then there remains of the notions by
which we conceive a pure intelligence nothing more than just what is
required for the possibility of conceiving a moral law. There is
then a knowledge of God indeed, but only for practical purposes,
and, if we attempt to extend it to a theoretical knowledge, we find an
understanding that has intuitions, not thoughts, a will that is
directed to objects on the existence of which its satisfaction does
not in the least depend (not to mention the transcendental predicates,
as, for example, a magnitude of existence, that is duration, which,
however, is not in time, the only possible means we have of conceiving
existence as magnitude). Now these are all attributes of which we
can form no conception that would help to the knowledge of the object,
and we learn from this that they can never be used for a theory of
supersensible beings, so that on this side they are quite incapable of
being the foundation of a speculative knowledge, and their use is
limited simply to the practice of the moral law.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 75}
This last is so obvious, and can be proved so clearly by fact,
that we may confidently challenge all pretended natural theologians (a
singular name) * to specify (over and above the merely ontological
predicates) one single attribute, whether of the understanding or of
the will, determining this object of theirs, of which we could not
show incontrovertibly that, if we abstract from it everything
anthropomorphic, nothing would remain to us but the mere word, without
our being able to connect with it the smallest notion by which we
could hope for an extension of theoretical knowledge. But as to the
practical, there still remains to us of the attributes of
understanding and will the conception of a relation to which objective
reality is given by the practical law (which determines a priori
precisely this relation of the understanding to the will). When once
this is done, then reality is given to the conception of the object of
a will morally determined (the conception of the summum bonum), and
with it to the conditions of its possibility, the ideas of God,
freedom, and immortality, but always only relatively to the practice
of the moral law (and not for any speculative purpose).
* Learning is properly only the whole content of the historical
sciences. Consequently it is only the teacher of revealed theology
that can be called a learned theologian. If, however, we choose to
call a man learned who is in possession of the rational sciences
(mathematics and philosophy), although even this would be contrary
to the signification of the word (which always counts as learning only
that which one must be "learned" and which, therefore, he cannot
discover of himself by reason), even in that case the philosopher
would make too poor a figure with his knowledge of God as a positive
science to let himself be called on that account a learned man.
According to these remarks it is now easy to find the answer to
the weighty question whether the notion of God is one belonging to
physics (and therefore also to metaphysics, which contains the pure
a priori principles of the former in their universal import) or to
morals. If we have recourse to God as the Author of all things, in
order to explain the arrangements of nature or its changes, this is at
least not a physical explanation, and is a complete confession that
our philosophy has come to an end, since we are obliged to assume
something of which in itself we have otherwise no conception, in order
to be able to frame a conception of the possibility of what we see
before our eyes. Metaphysics, however, cannot enable us to attain by
certain inference from the knowledge of this world to the conception
of God and to the proof of His existence, for this reason, that in
order to say that this world could be produced only by a God
(according to the conception implied by this word) we should know this
world as the most perfect whole possible; and for this purpose
should also know all possible worlds (in order to be able to compare
them with this); in other words, we should be omniscient. It is
absolutely impossible, however, to know the existence of this Being
from mere concepts, because every existential proposition, that is,
every proposition that affirms the existence of a being of which I
frame a concept, is a synthetic proposition, that is, one by which I
go beyond that conception and affirm of it more than was thought in
the conception itself; namely, that this concept in the
understanding has an object corresponding to it outside the
understanding, and this it is obviously impossible to elicit by any
reasoning. There remains, therefore, only one single process
possible for reason to attain this knowledge, namely, to start from
the supreme principle of its pure practical use (which in every case
is directed simply to the existence of something as a consequence of
reason) and thus determine its object. Then its inevitable problem,
namely, the necessary direction of the will to the summum bonum,
discovers to us not only the necessity of assuming such a First
Being in reference to the possibility of this good in the world,
but, what is most remarkable, something which reason in its progress
on the path of physical nature altogether failed to find, namely, an
accurately defined conception of this First Being. As we can know only
a small part of this world, and can still less compare it with all
possible worlds, we may indeed from its order, design, and
greatness, infer a wise, good, powerful, etc., Author of it, but not
that He is all-wise, all-good, all-powerful, etc. It may indeed very
well be granted that we should be justified in supplying this
inevitable defect by a legitimate and reasonable hypothesis; namely,
that when wisdom, goodness, etc, are displayed in all the parts that
offer themselves to our nearer knowledge, it is just the same in all
the rest, and that it would therefore be reasonable to ascribe all
possible perfections to the Author of the world, but these are not
strict logical inferences in which we can pride ourselves on our
insight, but only permitted conclusions in which we may be indulged
and which require further recommendation before we can make use of
them. On the path of empirical inquiry then (physics), the
conception of God remains always a conception of the perfection of the
First Being not accurately enough determined to be held adequate to
the conception of Deity. (With metaphysic in its transcendental part
nothing whatever can be accomplished.)
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 80}
When I now try to test this conception by reference to the object of
practical reason, I find that the moral principle admits as possible
only the conception of an Author of the world possessed of the highest
perfection. He must be omniscient, in order to know my conduct up to
the inmost root of my mental state in all possible cases and into
all future time; omnipotent, in order to allot to it its fitting
consequences; similarly He must be omnipresent, eternal, etc. Thus the
moral law, by means of the conception of the summum bonum as the
object of a pure practical reason, determines the concept of the First
Being as the Supreme Being; a thing which the physical (and in its
higher development the metaphysical), in other words, the whole
speculative course of reason, was unable to effect. The conception
of God, then, is one that belongs originally not to physics, i.e.,
to speculative reason, but to morals. The same may be said of the
other conceptions of reason of which we have treated above as
postulates of it in its practical use.
In the history of Grecian philosophy we find no distinct traces of a
pure rational theology earlier than Anaxagoras; but this is not
because the older philosophers had not intelligence or penetration
enough to raise themselves to it by the path of speculation, at
least with the aid of a thoroughly reasonable hypothesis. What could
have been easier, what more natural, than the thought which of
itself occurs to everyone, to assume instead of several causes of
the world, instead of an indeterminate degree of perfection, a
single rational cause having all perfection? But the evils in the
world seemed to them to be much too serious objections to allow them
to feel themselves justified in such a hypothesis. They showed
intelligence and penetration then in this very point, that they did
not allow themselves to adopt it, but on the contrary looked about
amongst natural causes to see if they could not find in them the
qualities and power required for a First Being. But when this acute
people had advanced so far in their investigations of nature as to
treat even moral questions philosophically, on which other nations had
never done anything but talk, then first they found a new and
practical want, which did not fail to give definiteness to their
conception of the First Being: and in this the speculative reason
played the part of spectator, or at best had the merit of embellishing
a conception that had not grown on its own ground, and of applying a
series of confirmations from the study of nature now brought forward
for the first time, not indeed to strengthen the authority of this
conception (which was already established), but rather to make a
show with a supposed discovery of theoretical reason.
From these remarks, the reader of the Critique of Pure Speculative
Reason will be thoroughly convinced how highly necessary that
laborious deduction of the categories was, and how fruitful for
theology and morals. For if, on the one hand, we place them in pure
understanding, it is by this deduction alone that we can be
prevented from regarding them, with Plato, as innate, and founding
on them extravagant pretensions to theories of the supersensible, to
which we can see no end, and by which we should make theology a
magic lantern of chimeras; on the other hand, if we regard them as
acquired, this deduction saves us from restricting, with Epicurus, all
and every use of them, even for practical purposes, to the objects and
motives of the senses. But now that the Critique has shown by that
deduction, first, that they are not of empirical origin, but have
their seat and source a priori in the pure understanding; secondly,
that as they refer to objects in general independently of the
intuition of them, hence, although they cannot effect theoretical
knowledge, except in application to empirical objects, yet when
applied to an object given by pure practical reason they enable us
to conceive the supersensible definitely, only so far, however, as
it is defined by such predicates as are necessarily connected with the
pure practical purpose given a priori and with its possibility. The
speculative restriction of pure reason and its practical extension
bring it into that relation of equality in which reason in general can
be employed suitably to its end, and this example proves better than
any other that the path to wisdom, if it is to be made sure and not to
be impassable or misleading, must with us men inevitably pass
through science; but it is not till this is complete that we can be
convinced that it leads to this goal.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 85}
VIII. Of Belief from a Requirement of Pure Reason.
A want or requirement of pure reason in its speculative use leads
only to a hypothesis; that of pure practical reason to a postulate;
for in the former case I ascend from the result as high as I please in
the series of causes, not in order to give objective reality to the
result (e.g., the causal connection of things and changes in the
world), but in order thoroughly to satisfy my inquiring reason in
respect of it. Thus I see before me order and design in nature, and
need not resort to speculation to assure myself of their reality,
but to explain them I have to presuppose a Deity as their cause; and
then since the inference from an effect to a definite cause is
always uncertain and doubtful, especially to a cause so precise and so
perfectly defined as we have to conceive in God, hence the highest
degree of certainty to which this pre-supposition can be brought is
that it is the most rational opinion for us men. * On the other hand,
a requirement of pure practical reason is based on a duty, that of
making something (the summum bonum) the object of my will so as to
promote it with all my powers; in which case I must suppose its
possibility and, consequently, also the conditions necessary
thereto, namely, God, freedom, and immortality; since I cannot prove
these by my speculative reason, although neither can I refute them.
This duty is founded on something that is indeed quite independent
of these suppositions and is of itself apodeictically certain, namely,
the moral law; and so far it needs no further support by theoretical
views as to the inner constitution of things, the secret final aim
of the order of the world, or a presiding ruler thereof, in order to
bind me in the most perfect manner to act in unconditional
conformity to the law. But the subjective effect of this law,
namely, the mental disposition conformed to it and made necessary by
it, to promote the practically possible summum bonum, this
pre-supposes at least that the latter is possible, for it would be
practically impossible to strive after the object of a conception
which at bottom was empty and had no object. Now the above-mentioned
postulates concern only the physical or metaphysical conditions of the
possibility of the summum bonum; in a word, those which lie in the
nature of things; not, however, for the sake of an arbitrary
speculative purpose, but of a practically necessary end of a pure
rational will, which in this case does not choose, but obeys an
inexorable command of reason, the foundation of which is objective, in
the constitution of things as they must be universally judged by
pure reason, and is not based on inclination; for we are in nowise
justified in assuming, on account of what we wish on merely subjective
grounds, that the means thereto are possible or that its object is
real. This, then, is an absolutely necessary requirement, and what
it pre-supposes is not merely justified as an allowable hypothesis,
but as a postulate in a practical point of view; and admitting that
the pure moral law inexorably binds every man as a command (not as a
rule of prudence), the righteous man may say: "I will that there be
a God, that my existence in this world be also an existence outside
the chain of physical causes and in a pure world of the understanding,
and lastly, that my duration be endless; I firmly abide by this, and
will not let this faith be taken from me; for in this instance alone
my interest, because I must not relax anything of it, inevitably
determines my judgement, without regarding sophistries, however unable
I may be to answer them or to oppose them with others more
plausible. *(2)
* But even here we should not be able to allege a requirement of
reason, if we had not before our eyes a problematical, but yet
inevitable, conception of reason, namely, that of an absolutely
necessary being. This conception now seeks to be defined, and this, in
addition to the tendency to extend itself, is the objective ground
of a requirement of speculative reason, namely, to have a more precise
definition of the conception of a necessary being which is to serve as
the first cause of other beings, so as to make these latter knowable
by some means. Without such antecedent necessary problems there are no
requirements- at least not of pure reason- the rest are requirements
of inclination.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 90}
*(2) In the Deutsches Museum, February, 1787, there is a
dissertation by a very subtle and clear-headed man, the late
Wizenmann, whose early death is to be lamented, in which he disputes
the right to argue from a want to the objective reality of its object,
and illustrates the point by the example of a man in love, who
having fooled himself into an idea of beauty, which is merely a
chimera of his own brain, would fain conclude that such an object
really exists somewhere. I quite agree with him in this, in all
cases where the want is founded on inclination, which cannot
necessarily postulate the existence of its object even for the man
that is affected by it, much less can it contain a demand valid for
everyone, and therefore it is merely a subjective ground of the
wish. But in the present case we have a want of reason springing
from an objective determining principle of the will, namely, the moral
law, which necessarily binds every rational being, and therefore
justifies him in assuming a priori in nature the conditions proper for
it, and makes the latter inseparable from the complete practical use
of reason. It is a duty to realize the summum bonum to the utmost of
our power, therefore it must be possible, consequently it is
unavoidable for every rational being in the world to assume what is
necessary for its objective possibility. The assumption is as
necessary as the moral law, in connection with which alone it is
valid.
In order to prevent misconception in the use of a notion as yet so
unusual as that of a faith of pure practical reason, let me be
permitted to add one more remark. It might almost seem as if this
rational faith were here announced as itself a command, namely, that
we should assume the summum bonum as possible. But a faith that is
commanded is nonsense. Let the preceding analysis, however, be
remembered of what is required to be supposed in the conception of the
summum bonum, and it will be seen that it cannot be commanded to
assume this possibility, and no practical disposition of mind is
required to admit it; but that speculative reason must concede it
without being asked, for no one can affirm that it is impossible in
itself that rational beings in the world should at the same time be
worthy of happiness in conformity with the moral law and also
possess this happiness proportionately. Now in respect of the first
element of the summum bonum, namely, that which concerns morality, the
moral law gives merely a command, and to doubt the possibility of that
element would be the same as to call in question the moral law itself.
But as regards the second element of that object, namely, happiness
perfectly proportioned to that worthiness, it is true that there is no
need of a command to admit its possibility in general, for theoretical
reason has nothing to say against it; but the manner in which we
have to conceive this harmony of the laws of nature with those of
freedom has in it something in respect of which we have a choice,
because theoretical reason decides nothing with apodeictic certainty
about it, and in respect of this there may be a moral interest which
turns the scale.
I had said above that in a mere course of nature in the world an
accurate correspondence between happiness and moral worth is not to be
expected and must be regarded as impossible, and that therefore the
possibility of the summum bonum cannot be admitted from this side
except on the supposition of a moral Author of the world. I
purposely reserved the restriction of this judgement to the subjective
conditions of our reason, in order not to make use of it until the
manner of this belief should be defined more precisely. The fact is
that the impossibility referred to is merely subjective, that is,
our reason finds it impossible for it to render conceivable in the way
of a mere course of nature a connection so exactly proportioned and so
thoroughly adapted to an end, between two sets of events happening
according to such distinct laws; although, as with everything else
in nature that is adapted to an end, it cannot prove, that is, show by
sufficient objective reason, that it is not possible by universal laws
of nature.
Now, however, a deciding principle of a different kind comes into
play to turn the scale in this uncertainty of speculative reason.
The command to promote the summum bonum is established on an objective
basis (in practical reason); the possibility of the same in general is
likewise established on an objective basis (in theoretical reason,
which has nothing to say against it). But reason cannot decide
objectively in what way we are to conceive this possibility; whether
by universal laws of nature without a wise Author presiding over
nature, or only on supposition of such an Author. Now here there comes
in a subjective condition of reason, the only way theoretically
possible for it, of conceiving the exact harmony of the kingdom of
nature with the kingdom of morals, which is the condition of the
possibility of the summum bonum; and at the same time the only one
conducive to morality (which depends on an objective law of reason).
Now since the promotion of this summum bonum, and therefore the
supposition of its possibility, are objectively necessary (though only
as a result of practical reason), while at the same time the manner in
which we would conceive it rests with our own choice, and in this
choice a free interest of pure practical reason decides for the
assumption of a wise Author of the world; it is clear that the
principle that herein determines our judgement, though as a want it is
subjective, yet at the same time being the means of promoting what
is objectively (practically) necessary, is the foundation of a maxim
of belief in a moral point of view, that is, a faith of pure practical
reason. This, then, is not commanded, but being a voluntary
determination of our judgement, conducive to the moral (commanded)
purpose, and moreover harmonizing with the theoretical requirement
of reason, to assume that existence and to make it the foundation of
our further employment of reason, it has itself sprung from the
moral disposition of mind; it may therefore at times waver even in the
well-disposed, but can never be reduced to unbelief.
{BOOK_2|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 95}
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