Books: The Critique of Practical Reason

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It is an old formula of the schools: Nihil appetimus nisi sub
ratione boni; Nihil aversamur nisi sub ratione mali, and it is used
often correctly, but often also in a manner injurious to philosophy,
because the expressions boni and mali are ambiguous, owing to the
poverty of language, in consequence of which they admit a double
sense, and, therefore, inevitably bring the practical laws into
ambiguity; and philosophy, which in employing them becomes aware of
the different meanings in the same word, but can find no special
expressions for them, is driven to subtile distinctions about which
there is subsequently no unanimity, because the distinction could
not be directly marked by any suitable expression. *

* Besides this, the expression sub ratione boni is also ambiguous.
For it may mean: "We represent something to ourselves as good, when
and because we desire (will) it"; or "We desire something because we
represent it to ourselves as good," so that either the desire
determines the notion of the object as a good, or the notion of good
determines the desire (the will); so that in the first case sub
ratione boni would mean, "We will something under the idea of the
good"; in the second, "In consequence of this idea," which, as
determining the volition, must precede it.

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 5}

The German language has the good fortune to possess expressions
which do not allow this difference to be overlooked. It possesses
two very distinct concepts and especially distinct expressions for
that which the Latins express by a single word, bonum. For bonum it
has das Gute [good], and das Wohl [well, weal], for malum das Bose
[evil], and das Ubel [ill, bad], or das Well [woe]. So that we express
two quite distinct judgements when we consider in an action the good
and evil of it, or our weal and woe (ill). Hence it already follows
that the above quoted psychological proposition is at least very
doubtful if it is translated: "We desire nothing except with a view to
our weal or woe"; on the other hand, if we render it thus: "Under
the direction of reason we desire nothing except so far as we esteem
it good or evil," it is indubitably certain and at the same time quite
clearly expressed.

Well or ill always implies only a reference to our condition, as
pleasant or unpleasant, as one of pleasure or pain, and if we desire
or avoid an object on this account, it is only so far as it is
referred to our sensibility and to the feeling of pleasure or pain
that it produces. But good or evil always implies a reference to the
will, as determined by the law of reason, to make something its
object; for it is never determined directly by the object and the idea
of it, but is a faculty of taking a rule of reason for or motive of an
action (by which an object may be realized). Good and evil therefore
are properly referred to actions, not to the sensations of the person,
and if anything is to be good or evil absolutely (i.e., in every
respect and without any further condition), or is to be so esteemed,
it can only be the manner of acting, the maxim of the will, and
consequently the acting person himself as a good or evil man that
can be so called, and not a thing.

However, then, men may laugh at the Stoic, who in the severest
paroxysms of gout cried out: "Pain, however thou tormentest me, I will
never admit that thou art an evil (kakov, malum)": he was right. A bad
thing it certainly was, and his cry betrayed that; but that any evil
attached to him thereby, this he bad no reason whatever to admit,
for pain did not in the least diminish the worth of his person, but
only that of his condition. If he had been conscious of a single
lie, it would have lowered his pride, but pain served only to raise
it, when he was conscious that he had not deserved it by any
unrighteous action by which he had rendered himself worthy of
punishment.

What we call good must be an object of desire in the judgement of
every rational man, and evil an object of aversion in the eyes of
everyone; therefore, in addition to sense, this judgement requires
reason. So it is with truthfulness, as opposed to lying; so with
justice, as opposed to violence, &c. But we may call a thing a bad [or
ill) thing, which yet everyone must at the same time acknowledge to be
good, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. The man who submits to
a surgical operation feels it no doubt as a bad thing, but by their
reason he and everyone acknowledge it to be good. If a man who
delights in annoying and vexing peaceable people at last receives a
right good beating, this is no doubt a bad thing; but everyone
approves it and regards it as a good thing, even though nothing else
resulted from it; nay, even the man who receives it must in his reason
acknowledge that he has met justice, because he sees the proportion
between good conduct and good fortune, which reason inevitably
places before him, here put into practice.

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 10}

No doubt our weal and woe are of very great importance in the
estimation of our practical reason, and as far as our nature as
sensible beings is concerned, our happiness is the only thing of
consequence, provided it is estimated as reason especially requires,
not by the transitory sensation, but by the influence that this has on
our whole existence, and on our satisfaction therewith; but it is
not absolutely the only thing of consequence. Man is a being who, as
belonging to the world of sense, has wants, and so far his reason
has an office which it cannot refuse, namely, to attend to the
interest of his sensible nature, and to form practical maxims, even
with a view to the happiness of this life, and if possible even to
that of a future. But he is not so completely an animal as to be
indifferent to what reason says on its own account, and to use it
merely as an instrument for the satisfaction of his wants as a
sensible being. For the possession of reason would not raise his worth
above that of the brutes, if it is to serve him only for the same
purpose that instinct serves in them; it would in that case be only
a particular method which nature had employed to equip man for the
same ends for which it has qualified brutes, without qualifying him
for any higher purpose. No doubt once this arrangement of nature has
been made for him he requires reason in order to take into
consideration his weal and woe, but besides this he possesses it for a
higher purpose also, namely, not only to take into consideration
what is good or evil in itself, about which only pure reason,
uninfluenced by any sensible interest, can judge, but also to
distinguish this estimate thoroughly from the former and to make it
the supreme condition thereof.

In estimating what is good or evil in itself, as distinguished
from what can be so called only relatively, the following points are
to be considered. Either a rational principle is already conceived, as
of itself the determining principle of the will, without regard to
possible objects of desire (and therefore by the more legislative form
of the maxim), and in that case that principle is a practical a priori
law, and pure reason is supposed to be practical of itself. The law in
that case determines the will directly; the action conformed to it
is good in itself; a will whose maxim always conforms to this law is
good absolutely in every respect and is the supreme condition of all
good. Or the maxim of the will is consequent on a determining
principle of desire which presupposes an object of pleasure or pain,
something therefore that pleases or displeases, and the maxim of
reason that we should pursue the former and avoid the latter
determines our actions as good relatively to our inclination, that is,
good indirectly, i.e., relatively to a different end to which they are
means), and in that case these maxims can never be called laws, but
may be called rational practical precepts. The end itself, the
pleasure that we seek, is in the latter case not a good but a welfare;
not a concept of reason, but an empirical concept of an object of
sensation; but the use of the means thereto, that is, the action, is
nevertheless called good (because rational deliberation is required
for it), not however, good absolutely, but only relatively to our
sensuous nature, with regard to its feelings of pleasure and
displeasure; but the will whose maxim is affected thereby is not a
pure will; this is directed only to that in which pure reason by
itself can be practical.

This is the proper place to explain the paradox of method in a
critique of practical reason, namely, that the concept of good and
evil must not be determined before the moral law (of which it seems as
if it must be the foundation), but only after it and by means of it.
In fact, even if we did not know that the principle of morality is a
pure a priori law determining the will, yet, that we may not assume
principles quite gratuitously, we must, at least at first, leave it
undecided, whether the will has merely empirical principles of
determination, or whether it has not also pure a priori principles;
for it is contrary to all rules of philosophical method to assume as
decided that which is the very point in question. Supposing that we
wished to begin with the concept of good, in order to deduce from it
the laws of the will, then this concept of an object (as a good) would
at the same time assign to us this object as the sole determining
principle of the will. Now, since this concept had not any practical a
priori law for its standard, the criterion of good or evil could not
be placed in anything but the agreement of the object with our feeling
of pleasure or pain; and the use of reason could only consist in
determining in the first place this pleasure or pain in connexion with
all the sensations of my existence, and in the second place the
means of securing to myself the object of the pleasure. Now, as
experience alone can decide what conforms to the feeling of
pleasure, and by hypothesis the practical law is to be based on this
as a condition, it follows that the possibility of a priori
practical laws would be at once excluded, because it was imagined to
be necessary first of all to find an object the concept of which, as a
good, should constitute the universal though empirical principle of
determination of the will. But what it was necessary to inquire
first of all was whether there is not an a priori determining
principle of the will (and this could never be found anywhere but in a
pure practical law, in so far as this law prescribes to maxims
merely their form without regard to an object). Since, however, we
laid the foundation of all practical law in an object determined by
our conceptions of good and evil, whereas without a previous law
that object could not be conceived by empirical concepts, we have
deprived ourselves beforehand of the possibility of even conceiving
a pure practical law. On the other hand, if we had first
investigated the latter analytically, we should have found that it
is not the concept of good as an object that determines the moral
law and makes it possible, but that, on the contrary, it is the
moral law that first determines the concept of good and makes it
possible, so far as it deserves the name of good absolutely.

This remark, which only concerns the method of ultimate ethical
inquiries, is of importance. It explains at once the occasion of all
the mistakes of philosophers with respect to the supreme principle
of morals. For they sought for an object of the will which they
could make the matter and principle of a law (which consequently could
not determine the will directly, but by means of that object
referred to the feeling of pleasure or pain; whereas they ought
first to have searched for a law that would determine the will a
priori and directly, and afterwards determine the object in accordance
with the will). Now, whether they placed this object of pleasure,
which was to supply the supreme conception of goodness, in
happiness, in perfection, in moral [feeling], or in the will of God,
their principle in every case implied heteronomy, and they must
inevitably come upon empirical conditions of a moral law, since
their object, which was to be the immediate principle of the will,
could not be called good or bad except in its immediate relation to
feeling, which is always empirical. It is only a formal law- that
is, one which prescribes to reason nothing more than the form of its
universal legislation as the supreme condition of its maxims- that can
be a priori a determining principle of practical reason. The
ancients avowed this error without concealment by directing all
their moral inquiries to the determination of the notion of the summum
bonum, which they intended afterwards to make the determining
principle of the will in the moral law; whereas it is only far
later, when the moral law has been first established for itself, and
shown to be the direct determining principle of the will, that this
object can be presented to the will, whose form is now determined a
priori; and this we shall undertake in the Dialectic of the pure
practical reason. The moderns, with whom the question of the summum
bonum has gone out of fashion, or at least seems to have become a
secondary matter, hide the same error under vague (expressions as in
many other cases). It shows itself, nevertheless, in their systems, as
it always produces heteronomy of practical reason; and from this can
never be derived a moral law giving universal commands.

Now, since the notions of good and evil, as consequences of the a
priori determination of the will, imply also a pure practical
principle, and therefore a causality of pure reason; hence they do not
originally refer to objects (so as to be, for instance, special
modes of the synthetic unity of the manifold of given intuitions in
one consciousness) like the pure concepts of the understanding or
categories of reason in its theoretic employment; on the contrary,
they presuppose that objects are given; but they are all modes
(modi) of a single category, namely, that of causality, the
determining principle of which consists in the rational conception
of a law, which as a law of freedom reason gives to itself, thereby
a priori proving itself practical. However, as the actions on the
one side come under a law which is not a physical law, but a law of
freedom, and consequently belong to the conduct of beings in and
consequently the consequently belong to the beings in the world of
intelligence, yet on the other side as events in the world of sense
they belong to phenomena; hence the determinations of a practical
reason are only possible in reference to the latter and, therefore, in
accordance with the categories of the understanding; not indeed with a
view to any theoretic employment of it, i.e., so as to bring the
manifold of (sensible) intuition under one consciousness a priori; but
only to subject the manifold of desires to the unity of
consciousness of a practical reason, giving it commands in the moral
law, i.e., to a pure will a priori.

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 15}

These categories of freedom- for so we choose to call them in
contrast to those theoretic categories which are categories of
physical nature- have an obvious advantage over the latter, inasmuch
as the latter are only forms of thought which designate objects in
an indefinite manner by means of universal concept of every possible
intuition; the former, on the contrary, refer to the determination
of a free elective will (to which indeed no exactly corresponding
intuition can be assigned, but which has as its foundation a pure
practical a priori law, which is not the case with any concepts
belonging to the theoretic use of our cognitive faculties); hence,
instead of the form of intuition (space and time), which does not
lie in reason itself, but has to be drawn from another source, namely,
the sensibility, these being elementary practical concepts have as
their foundation the form of a pure will, which is given in reason
and, therefore, in the thinking faculty itself. From this it happens
that as all precepts of pure practical reason have to do only with the
determination of the will, not with the physical conditions (of
practical ability) of the execution of one's purpose, the practical
a priori principles in relation to the supreme principle of freedom
are at once cognitions, and have not to wait for intuitions in order
to acquire significance, and that for this remarkable reason,
because they themselves produce the reality of that to which they
refer (the intention of the will), which is not the case with
theoretical concepts. Only we must be careful to observe that these
categories only apply to the practical reason; and thus they proceed
in order from those which are as yet subject to sensible conditions
and morally indeterminate to those which are free from sensible
conditions and determined merely by the moral law.

Table of the Categories of Freedom relatively to the Notions of Good
and Evil.

I. QUANTITY.

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 20}

Subjective, according to maxims (practical opinions of the

individual)

Objective, according to principles (Precepts)

A priori both objective and subjective principles of freedom

(laws)

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 25}

II. QUALITY.

Practical rules of action (praeceptivae)

Practical rules of omission (prohibitivae)

Practical rules of exceptions (exceptivae)

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 30}

III. RELATION.

To personality To the condition of the person.

Reciprocal, of one person to the others of the others.

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 35}

IV. MODALITY.

The Permitted and the Forbidden

Duty and the contrary to duty.

Perfect and imperfect duty.

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 40}

It will at once be observed that in this table freedom is considered
as a sort of causality not subject to empirical principles of
determination, in regard to actions possible by it, which are
phenomena in the world of sense, and that consequently it is
referred to the categories which concern its physical possibility,
whilst yet each category is taken so universally that the
determining principle of that causality can be placed outside the
world of sense in freedom as a property of a being in the world of
intelligence; and finally the categories of modality introduce the
transition from practical principles generally to those of morality,
but only problematically. These can be established dogmatically only
by the moral law.

I add nothing further here in explanation of the present table,
since it is intelligible enough of itself. A division of this kind
based on principles is very useful in any science, both for the sake
of thoroughness and intelligibility. Thus, for instance, we know
from the preceding table and its first number what we must begin
from in practical inquiries; namely, from the maxims which every one
founds on his own inclinations; the precepts which hold for a
species of rational beings so far as they agree in certain
inclinations; and finally the law which holds for all without regard
to their inclinations, etc. In this way we survey the whole plan of
what has to be done, every question of practical philosophy that has
to be answered, and also the order that is to be followed.

Of the Typic of the Pure Practical Judgement.

{BOOK_1|CHAPTER_2 ^paragraph 45}

It is the notions of good and evil that first determine an object of
the will. They themselves, however, are subject to a practical rule of
reason which, if it is pure reason, determines the will a priori
relatively to its object. Now, whether an action which is possible
to us in the world of sense, comes under the rule or not, is a
question to be decided by the practical judgement, by which what is
said in the rule universally (in abstracto) is applied to an action in
concreto. But since a practical rule of pure reason in the first place
as practical concerns the existence of an object, and in the second
place as a practical rule of pure reason implies necessity as
regards the existence of the action and, therefore, is a practical
law, not a physical law depending on empirical principles of
determination, but a law of freedom by which the will is to be
determined independently on anything empirical (merely by the
conception of a law and its form), whereas all instances that can
occur of possible actions can only be empirical, that is, belong to
the experience of physical nature; hence, it seems absurd to expect to
find in the world of sense a case which, while as such it depends only
on the law of nature, yet admits of the application to it of a law
of freedom, and to which we can apply the supersensible idea of the
morally good which is to be exhibited in it in concreto. Thus, the
judgement of the pure practical reason is subject to the same
difficulties as that of the pure theoretical reason. The latter,
however, had means at hand of escaping from these difficulties,
because, in regard to the theoretical employment, intuitions were
required to which pure concepts of the understanding could be applied,
and such intuitions (though only of objects of the senses) can be
given a priori and, therefore, as far as regards the union of the
manifold in them, conforming to the pure a priori concepts of the
understanding as schemata. On the other hand, the morally good is
something whose object is supersensible; for which, therefore, nothing
corresponding can be found in any sensible intuition. Judgement
depending on laws of pure practical reason seems, therefore, to be
subject to special difficulties arising from this, that a law of
freedom is to be applied to actions, which are events taking place
in the world of sense, and which, so far, belong to physical nature.

But here again is opened a favourable prospect for the pure
practical judgement. When I subsume under a pure practical law an
action possible to me in the world of sense, I am not concerned with
the possibility of the action as an event in the world of sense.
This is a matter that belongs to the decision of reason in its
theoretic use according to the law of causality, which is a pure
concept of the understanding, for which reason has a schema in the
sensible intuition. Physical causality, or the condition under which
it takes place, belongs to the physical concepts, the schema of
which is sketched by transcendental imagination. Here, however, we
have to do, not with the schema of a case that occurs according to
laws, but with the schema of a law itself (if the word is allowable
here), since the fact that the will (not the action relatively to
its effect) is determined by the law alone without any other
principle, connects the notion of causality with quite different
conditions from those which constitute physical connection.

The physical law being a law to which the objects of sensible
intuition, as such, are subject, must have a schema corresponding to
it- that is, a general procedure of the imagination (by which it
exhibits a priori to the senses the pure concept of the
understanding which the law determines). But the law of freedom
(that is, of a causality not subject to sensible conditions), and
consequently the concept of the unconditionally good, cannot have
any intuition, nor consequently any schema supplied to it for the
purpose of its application in concreto. Consequently the moral law has
no faculty but the understanding to aid its application to physical
objects (not the imagination); and the understanding for the
purposes of the judgement can provide for an idea of the reason, not a
schema of the sensibility, but a law, though only as to its form as
law; such a law, however, as can be exhibited in concreto in objects
of the senses, and therefore a law of nature. We can therefore call
this law the type of the moral law.

The rule of the judgement according to laws of pure practical reason
is this: ask yourself whether, if the action you propose were to
take place by a law of the system of nature of which you were yourself
a part, you could regard it as possible by your own will. Everyone
does, in fact, decide by this rule whether actions are morally good or
evil. Thus, people say: "If everyone permitted himself to deceive,
when he thought it to his advantage; or thought himself justified in
shortening his life as soon as he was thoroughly weary of it; or
looked with perfect indifference on the necessity of others; and if
you belonged to such an order of things, would you do so with the
assent of your own will?" Now everyone knows well that if he
secretly allows himself to deceive, it does not follow that everyone
else does so; or if, unobserved, he is destitute of compassion, others
would not necessarily be so to him; hence, this comparison of the
maxim of his actions with a universal law of nature is not the
determining principle of his will. Such a law is, nevertheless, a type
of the estimation of the maxim on moral principles. If the maxim of
the action is not such as to stand the test of the form of a universal
law of nature, then it is morally impossible. This is the judgement
even of common sense; for its ordinary judgements, even those of
experience, are always based on the law of nature. It has it therefore
always at hand, only that in cases where causality from freedom is
to be criticised, it makes that law of nature only the type of a law
of freedom, because, without something which it could use as an
example in a case of experience, it could not give the law of a pure
practical reason its proper use in practice.

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