Books: The Critique of Practical Reason
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Immanuel Kant >> The Critique of Practical Reason
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IV. THEOREM II.
A rational being cannot regard his maxims as practical universal
laws, unless he conceives them as principles which determine the will,
not by their matter, but by their form only.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 45}
By the matter of a practical principle I mean the object of the
will. This object is either the determining ground of the will or it
is not. In the former case the rule of the will is subjected to an
empirical condition (viz., the relation of the determining idea to the
feeling of pleasure and pain), consequently it can not be a
practical law. Now, when we abstract from a law all matter, i.e.,
every object of the will (as a determining principle), nothing is left
but the mere form of a universal legislation. Therefore, either a
rational being cannot conceive his subjective practical principles,
that is, his maxims, as being at the same time universal laws, or he
must suppose that their mere form, by which they are fitted for
universal legislation, is alone what makes them practical laws.
REMARK.
The commonest understanding can distinguish without instruction what
form of maxim is adapted for universal legislation, and what is not.
Suppose, for example, that I have made it my maxim to increase my
fortune by every safe means. Now, I have a deposit in my hands, the
owner of which is dead and has left no writing about it. This is
just the case for my maxim. I desire then to know whether that maxim
can also bold good as a universal practical law. I apply it,
therefore, to the present case, and ask whether it could take the form
of a law, and consequently whether I can by my maxim at the same
time give such a law as this, that everyone may deny a deposit of
which no one can produce a proof. I at once become aware that such a
principle, viewed as a law, would annihilate itself, because the
result would be that there would be no deposits. A practical law which
I recognise as such must be qualified for universal legislation;
this is an identical proposition and, therefore, self-evident. Now, if
I say that my will is subject to a practical law, I cannot adduce my
inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of
determination fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so
far from being fitted for a universal legislation that, if put in
the form of a universal law, it would destroy itself.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 50}
It is, therefore, surprising that intelligent men could have thought
of calling the desire of happiness a universal practical law on the
ground that the desire is universal, and, therefore, also the maxim by
which everyone makes this desire determine his will. For whereas in
other cases a universal law of nature makes everything harmonious;
here, on the contrary, if we attribute to the maxim the universality
of a law, the extreme opposite of harmony will follow, the greatest
opposition and the complete destruction of the maxim itself and its
purpose. For, in that case, the will of all has not one and the same
object, but everyone has his own (his private welfare), which may
accidentally accord with the purposes of others which are equally
selfish, but it is far from sufficing for a law; because the
occasional exceptions which one is permitted to make are endless,
and cannot be definitely embraced in one universal rule. In this
manner, then, results a harmony like that which a certain satirical
poem depicts as existing between a married couple bent on going to
ruin, "O, marvellous harmony, what he wishes, she wishes also"; or
like what is said of the pledge of Francis I to the Emperor Charles V,
"What my brother Charles wishes that I wish also" (viz., Milan).
Empirical principles of determination are not fit for any universal
external legislation, but just as little for internal; for each man
makes his own subject the foundation of his inclination, and in the
same subject sometimes one inclination, sometimes another, has the
preponderance. To discover a law which would govern them all under
this condition, namely, bringing them all into harmony, is quite
impossible.
V. PROBLEM I.
Supposing that the mere legislative form of maxims is alone the
sufficient determining principle of a will, to find the nature of
the will which can be determined by it alone.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 55}
Since the bare form of the law can only be conceived by reason, and
is, therefore, not an object of the senses, and consequently does
not belong to the class of phenomena, it follows that the idea of
it, which determines the will, is distinct from all the principles
that determine events in nature according to the law of causality,
because in their case the determining principles must themselves be
phenomena. Now, if no other determining principle can serve as a law
for the will except that universal legislative form, such a will
must be conceived as quite independent of the natural law of phenomena
in their mutual relation, namely, the law of causality; such
independence is called freedom in the strictest, that is, in the
transcendental, sense; consequently, a will which can have its law
in nothing but the mere legislative form of the maxim is a free will.
VI. PROBLEM II.
Supposing that a will is free, to find the law which alone is
competent to determine it necessarily.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 60}
Since the matter of the practical law, i.e., an object of the maxim,
can never be given otherwise than empirically, and the free will is
independent on empirical conditions (that is, conditions belonging
to the world of sense) and yet is determinable, consequently a free
will must find its principle of determination in the law, and yet
independently of the matter of the law. But, besides the matter of the
law, nothing is contained in it except the legislative form. It is the
legislative form, then, contained in the maxim, which can alone
constitute a principle of determination of the [free] will.
REMARK.
Thus freedom and an unconditional practical law reciprocally imply
each other. Now I do not ask here whether they are in fact distinct,
or whether an unconditioned law is not rather merely the consciousness
of a pure practical reason and the latter identical with the
positive concept of freedom; I only ask, whence begins our knowledge
of the unconditionally practical, whether it is from freedom or from
the practical law? Now it cannot begin from freedom, for of this we
cannot be immediately conscious, since the first concept of it is
negative; nor can we infer it from experience, for experience gives us
the knowledge only of the law of phenomena, and hence of the mechanism
of nature, the direct opposite of freedom. It is therefore the moral
law, of which we become directly conscious (as soon as we trace for
ourselves maxims of the will), that first presents itself to us, and
leads directly to the concept of freedom, inasmuch as reason
presents it as a principle of determination not to be outweighed by
any sensible conditions, nay, wholly independent of them. But how is
the consciousness, of that moral law possible? We can become conscious
of pure practical laws just as we are conscious of pure theoretical
principles, by attending to the necessity with which reason prescribes
them and to the elimination of all empirical conditions, which it
directs. The concept of a pure will arises out of the former, as
that of a pure understanding arises out of the latter. That this is
the true subordination of our concepts, and that it is morality that
first discovers to us the notion of freedom, hence that it is
practical reason which, with this concept, first proposes to
speculative reason the most insoluble problem, thereby placing it in
the greatest perplexity, is evident from the following
consideration: Since nothing in phenomena can be explained by the
concept of freedom, but the mechanism of nature must constitute the
only clue; moreover, when pure reason tries to ascend in the series of
causes to the unconditioned, it falls into an antinomy which is
entangled in incomprehensibilities on the one side as much as the
other; whilst the latter (namely, mechanism) is at least useful in the
explanation of phenomena, therefore no one would ever have been so
rash as to introduce freedom into science, had not the moral law,
and with it practical reason, come in and forced this notion upon
us. Experience, however, confirms this order of notions. Suppose
some one asserts of his lustful appetite that, when the desired object
and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible. [Ask
him]- if a gallows were erected before the house where he finds this
opportunity, in order that he should be hanged thereon immediately
after the gratification of his lust, whether he could not then control
his passion; we need not be long in doubt what he would reply. Ask
him, however- if his sovereign ordered him, on pain of the same
immediate execution, to bear false witness against an honourable
man, whom the prince might wish to destroy under a plausible
pretext, would he consider it possible in that case to overcome his
love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to
affirm whether he would do so or not, but he must unhesitatingly admit
that it is possible to do so. He judges, therefore, that he can do a
certain thing because he is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes
that he is free- a fact which but for the moral law he would never
have known.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 65}
VII. FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF THE PURE PRACTICAL REASON.
Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold
good as a principle of universal legislation.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 70}
REMARK.
Pure geometry has postulates which are practical propositions, but
contain nothing further than the assumption that we can do something
if it is required that we should do it, and these are the only
geometrical propositions that concern actual existence. They are,
then, practical rules under a problematical condition of the will; but
here the rule says: We absolutely must proceed in a certain manner.
The practical rule is, therefore, unconditional, and hence it is
conceived a priori as a categorically practical proposition by which
the will is objectively determined absolutely and immediately (by
the practical rule itself, which thus is in this case a law); for pure
reason practical of itself is here directly legislative. The will is
thought as independent on empirical conditions, and, therefore, as
pure will determined by the mere form of the law, and this principle
of determination is regarded as the supreme condition of all maxims.
The thing is strange enough, and has no parallel in all the rest of
our practical knowledge. For the a priori thought of a possible
universal legislation which is therefore merely problematical, is
unconditionally commanded as a law without borrowing anything from
experience or from any external will. This, however, is not a
precept to do something by which some desired effect can be attained
(for then the will would depend on physical conditions), but a rule
that determines the will a priori only so far as regards the forms
of its maxims; and thus it is at least not impossible to conceive that
a law, which only applies to the subjective form of principles, yet
serves as a principle of determination by means of the objective
form of law in general. We may call the consciousness of this
fundamental law a fact of reason, because we cannot reason it out from
antecedent data of reason, e.g., the consciousness of freedom (for
this is not antecedently given), but it forces itself on us as a
synthetic a priori proposition, which is not based on any intuition,
either pure or empirical. It would, indeed, be analytical if the
freedom of the will were presupposed, but to presuppose freedom as a
positive concept would require an intellectual intuition, which cannot
here be assumed; however, when we regard this law as given, it must be
observed, in order not to fall into any misconception, that it is
not an empirical fact, but the sole fact of the pure reason, which
thereby announces itself as originally legislative (sic volo, sic
jubeo).
COROLLARY.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 75}
Pure reason is practical of itself alone and gives (to man) a
universal law which we call the moral law.
REMARK.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 80}
The fact just mentioned is undeniable. It is only necessary to
analyse the judgement that men pass on the lawfulness of their
actions, in order to find that, whatever inclination may say to the
contrary, reason, incorruptible and selfconstrained, always
confronts the maxim of the will in any action with the pure will, that
is, with itself, considering itself as a priori practical. Now this
principle of morality, just on account of the universality of the
legislation which makes it the formal supreme determining principle of
the will, without regard to any subjective differentes, is declared by
the reason to be a law for all rational beings, in so far as they have
a will, that is, a power to determine their causality by the
conception of rules; and, therefore, so far as they are capable of
acting according to principles, and consequently also according to
practical a priori principles (for these alone have the necessity that
reason requires in a principle). It is, therefore, not limited to
men only, but applies to all finite beings that possess reason and
will; nay, it even includes the Infinite Being as the supreme
intelligence. In the former case, however, the law has the form of
an imperative, because in them, as rational beings, we can suppose a
pure will, but being creatures affected with wants and physical
motives, not a holy will, that is, one which would be incapable of any
maxim conflicting with the moral law. In their case, therefore, the
moral law is an imperative, which commands categorically, because
the law is unconditioned; the relation of such a will to this law is
dependence under the name of obligation, which implies a constraint to
an action, though only by reason and its objective law; and this
action is called duty, because an elective will, subject to
pathological affections (though not determined by them, and,
therefore, still free), implies a wish that arises from subjective
causes and, therefore, may often be opposed to the pure objective
determining principle; whence it requires the moral constraint of a
resistance of the practical reason, which may be called an internal,
but intellectual, compulsion. In the supreme intelligence the elective
will is rightly conceived as incapable of any maxim which could not at
the same time be objectively a law; and the notion of holiness,
which on that account belongs to it, places it, not indeed above all
practical laws, but above all practically restrictive laws, and
consequently above obligation and duty. This holiness of will is,
however, a practical idea, which must necessarily serve as a type to
which finite rational beings can only approximate indefinitely, and
which the pure moral law, which is itself on this account called holy,
constantly and rightly holds before their eyes. The utmost that finite
practical reason can effect is to be certain of this indefinite
progress of one's maxims and of their steady disposition to advance.
This is virtue, and virtue, at least as a naturally acquired
faculty, can never be perfect, because assurance in such a case
never becomes apodeictic certainty and, when it only amounts to
persuasion, is very dangerous.
VIII. THEOREM IV.
The autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and
of all duties which conform to them; on the other hand, heteronomy
of the elective will not only cannot be the basis of any obligation,
but is, on the contrary, opposed to the principle thereof and to the
morality of the will.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 85}
In fact the sole principle of morality consists in the
independence on all matter of the law (namely, a desired object),
and in the determination of the elective will by the mere universal
legislative form of which its maxim must be capable. Now this
independence is freedom in the negative sense, and this
self-legislation of the pure, and therefore practical, reason is
freedom in the positive sense. Thus the moral law expresses nothing
else than the autonomy of the pure practical reason; that is, freedom;
and this is itself the formal condition of all maxims, and on this
condition only can they agree with the supreme practical law. If
therefore the matter of the volition, which can be nothing else than
the object of a desire that is connected with the law, enters into the
practical law, as the condition of its possibility, there results
heteronomy of the elective will, namely, dependence on the physical
law that we should follow some impulse or inclination. In that case
the will does not give itself the law, but only the precept how
rationally to follow pathological law; and the maxim which, in such
a case, never contains the universally legislative form, not only
produces no obligation, but is itself opposed to the principle of a
pure practical reason and, therefore, also to the moral disposition,
even though the resulting action may be conformable to the law.
REMARK.
Hence a practical precept, which contains a material (and
therefore empirical) condition, must never be reckoned a practical
law. For the law of the pure will, which is free, brings the will into
a sphere quite different from the empirical; and as the necessity
involved in the law is not a physical necessity, it can only consist
in the formal conditions of the possibility of a law in general. All
the matter of practical rules rests on subjective conditions, which
give them only a conditional universality (in case I desire this or
that, what I must do in order to obtain it), and they all turn on
the principle of private happiness. Now, it is indeed undeniable
that every volition must have an object, and therefore a matter; but
it does not follow that this is the determining principle and the
condition of the maxim; for, if it is so, then this cannot be
exhibited in a universally legislative form, since in that case the
expectation of the existence of the object would be the determining
cause of the choice, and the volition must presuppose the dependence
of the faculty of desire on the existence of something; but this
dependence can only be sought in empirical conditions and,
therefore, can never furnish a foundation for a necessary and
universal rule. Thus, the happiness of others may be the object of the
will of a rational being. But if it were the determining principle
of the maxim, we must assume that we find not only a rational
satisfaction in the welfare of others, but also a want such as the
sympathetic disposition in some men occasions. But I cannot assume the
existence of this want in every rational being (not at all in God).
The matter, then, of the maxim may remain, but it must not be the
condition of it, else the maxim could not be fit for a law. Hence, the
mere form of law, which limits the matter, must also be a reason for
adding this matter to the will, not for presupposing it. For
example, let the matter be my own happiness. This (rule), if I
attribute it to everyone (as, in fact, I may, in the case of every
finite being), can become an objective practical law only if I include
the happiness of others. Therefore, the law that we should promote the
happiness of others does not arise from the assumption that this is an
object of everyone's choice, but merely from this, that the form of
universality which reason requires as the condition of giving to a
maxim of self-love the objective validity of a law is the principle
that determines the will. Therefore it was not the object (the
happiness of others) that determined the pure will, but it was the
form of law only, by which I restricted my maxim, founded on
inclination, so as to give it the universality of a law, and thus to
adapt it to the practical reason; and it is this restriction alone,
and not the addition of an external spring, that can give rise to
the notion of the obligation to extend the maxim of my self-love to
the happiness of others.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 90}
REMARK II.
The direct opposite of the principle of morality is, when the
principle of private happiness is made the determining principle of
the will, and with this is to be reckoned, as I have shown above,
everything that places the determining principle which is to serve
as a law, anywhere but in the legislative form of the maxim. This
contradiction, however, is not merely logical, like that which would
arise between rules empirically conditioned, if they were raised to
the rank of necessary principles of cognition, but is practical, and
would ruin morality altogether were not the voice of reason in
reference to the will so clear, so irrepressible, so distinctly
audible, even to the commonest men. It can only, indeed, be maintained
in the perplexing speculations of the schools, which are bold enough
to shut their ears against that heavenly voice, in order to support
a theory that costs no trouble.
Suppose that an acquaintance whom you otherwise liked were to
attempt to justify himself to you for having borne false witness,
first by alleging the, in his view, sacred duty of consulting his
own happiness; then by enumerating the advantages which he had
gained thereby, pointing out the prudence he had shown in securing
himself against detection, even by yourself, to whom he now reveals
the secret, only in order that he may be able to deny it at any
time; and suppose he were then to affirm, in all seriousness, that
he has fulfilled a true human duty; you would either laugh in his
face, or shrink back from him with disgust; and yet, if a man has
regulated his principles of action solely with a view to his own
advantage, you would have nothing whatever to object against this mode
of proceeding. Or suppose some one recommends you a man as steward, as
a man to whom you can blindly trust all your affairs; and, in order to
inspire you with confidence, extols him as a prudent man who
thoroughly understands his own interest, and is so indefatigably
active that he lets slip no opportunity of advancing it; lastly,
lest you should be afraid of finding a vulgar selfishness in him,
praises the good taste with which he lives; not seeking his pleasure
in money-making, or in coarse wantonness, but in the enlargement of
his knowledge, in instructive intercourse with a select circle, and
even in relieving the needy; while as to the means (which, of
course, derive all their value from the end), he is not particular,
and is ready to use other people's money for the purpose as if it were
his own, provided only he knows that he can do so safely, and
without discovery; you would either believe that the recommender was
mocking you, or that he had lost his senses. So sharply and clearly
marked are the boundaries of morality and self-love that even the
commonest eye cannot fail to distinguish whether a thing belongs to
the one or the other. The few remarks that follow may appear
superfluous where the truth is so plain, but at least they may serve
to give a little more distinctness to the judgement of common sense.
{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_1 ^paragraph 95}
The principle of happiness may, indeed, furnish maxims, but never
such as would be competent to be laws of the will, even if universal
happiness were made the object. For since the knowledge of this
rests on mere empirical data, since every man's judgement on it
depends very much on his particular point of view, which is itself
moreover very variable, it can supply only general rules, not
universal; that is, it can give rules which on the average will most
frequently fit, but not rules which must hold good always and
necessarily; hence, no practical laws can be founded on it. Just
because in this case an object of choice is the foundation of the rule
and must therefore precede it, the rule can refer to nothing but
what is [felt], and therefore it refers to experience and is founded
on it, and then the variety of judgement must be endless. This
principle, therefore, does not prescribe the same practical rules to
all rational beings, although the rules are all included under a
common title, namely, that of happiness. The moral law, however, is
conceived as objectively necessary, only because it holds for everyone
that has reason and will.
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