The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Memoir of Kant.
• I. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
• Preface.
• First Section.: Transition From the Common Rational Knowledge of Morality to the Philosophical.
• Second Section.: Transition From Popular Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysic of Morals.
• Third Section.: Transition From the Metaphysic of Morals to the Critique of Pure Practical Reason.
• II. Critical Examination of Practical Reason.
• Preface.
• Introduction.
• Of the Idea of a Critique of Practical Reason.
• Part First.: Elements of Pure Practical Reason.
• Book I.: The Analytic of Pure Practical Reason.
• Book II.: Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason.
• Part Second.: Methodology of Pure Practical Reason.
• Methodology of Pure Practical Reason.
• Conclusion.
• III. Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals; and Preface to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics.
• Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals.
• Preface to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics.
• Introduction to Ethics.
• On Conscience.
• IV. First Part of the Philosophical Theory of Religion.
• Of the Indwelling of the Bad Principle Along With the Good; Or, On the Radical Evil In Human Nature.
• I.: Of the Original Incapacity For Good In Human Nature.
• II.: Of the Propensity to Evil In Human Nature.
• III.: Man Is By Nature Bad.
• IV.: On the Origin of the Evil In Human Nature.
• General Remark.1on the Restoration of the Original Capacity For Good to Its Full Power.
• Appendix.
• I.: —on a Supposed Right to Tell Lies From Benevolent Motives. 1
• II.: —on the Saying “necessity Has No Law”.

INTRODUCTION to THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS.

I.

of the relation of the faculties of the human mind to the moral laws.

THE appetitive faculty is the faculty of being by means of one’s ideas the cause of the objects of these ideas. 1 The faculty which a being has of acting according to its ideas is Life. Firstly—Desire or aversion has always connected with it pleasure or displeasure, the susceptibility to which is called feeling. But the converse does not always hold; for a pleasure may exist which is not connected with any desire of the object, but with the mere idea which one frames to one’s self of an object, no matter whether its object exists or not. Secondly—The pleasure or displeasure in the object of the desire does not always precede the desire, and cannot always be regarded as its cause, but must sometimes be looked on as the effect thereof.

Now, the capability of having pleasure or displeasure in an idea is called feeling, because both contain what is merely subjective in relation to our idea (10), and have no relation to an object so as to contribute to the possible cognition of it 1 (not even the cognition of our own state); whereas in other cases sensations, apart from the quality which belongs to them in consequence of the nature of the subject (ex. gr. red, sweet, etc.), may yet have relation to an object, and constitute part of our knowledge; but pleasure or displeasure (in the red or sweet) expresses absolutely nothing in the object, but simply a relation to the subject. Pleasure and displeasure cannot be more closely defined, for the reason just given. We can only specify what consequences they have in certain circumstances so as to make them cognizable in practice. The pleasure which is necessarily connected with the desire of the object whose idea affects feeling may be called practical pleasure, whether it is cause or effect of the desire. On the contrary, the pleasure which is not necessarily connected with the desire of the object, and which, therefore, is at bottom not a pleasure in the existence of the object of the idea, but clings to the idea only, may be called mere contemplative pleasure or passive satisfaction (11). The feeling of the latter kind of pleasure we call taste. Accordingly, in a practical philosophy we can treat this only episodically, not as a notion properly belonging to that philosophy. But as regards the practical pleasure, the determination of the appetitive faculty which is caused, and therefore necessarily preceded by this pleasure, is called appetite in the strict sense, and habitual appetite is called inclination. The connexion of pleasure with the appetitive faculty, in so far as this connexion is judged by the understanding to hold good by a general rule (though only for the subject), is called interest, and hence in this case the practical pleasure is an interest of inclination. On the other hand, if the pleasure can only follow an antecedent determination of the appetitive faculty, it is an intellectual pleasure, and the interest in the object must be called an interest of reason. For if the interest were one of sense, and not merely founded on pure principles of reason, sensation must be joined with pleasure, and thus be able to determine the appetitive faculty. Although where a merely pure interest of reason must be assumed, no interest of inclination can be substituted for it, yet in order to accommodate ourselves to common speech, we may admit an inclination even to that which can only be the object of an intellectual pleasure—that is to say, a habitual desire from a pure interest of reason. This, however, would not be the cause but the effect of the latter interest, and we might call it the sense-free inclination (propensio intellectualis). Further, concupiscence is to be distinguished from the desire itself as being the stimulus to its determination. It is always a sensible state of mind, but one which has not yet arrived at an act of the appetitive faculty.

The appetitive faculty which depends on concepts, in so far as the ground of its determination to action is found in itself (12), not in the object, is called a faculty of doing or forbearing as we please. In so far as it is combined with the consciousness of the power of its action to produce its object, it is called “elective will” [Willkühr = arbitrium]; if not so combined, its act is called a wish.1 The appetitive faculty, whose inner determining principle, and, consequently, even its “good pleasure” (Belieben), is found in the reason of the subject, is called the Rational Will [Wille]. Accordingly the Rational Will is the appetitive faculty, not (like the elective will) in relation to the action, but rather in relation to what determines the elective will [Willkühr] to the action; and it has properly itself no determining ground; but in so far as it can determine the elective will, it is practical reason itself.

Under the will may be included the elective will [Willkühr], and even mere wish, inasmuch as reason can determine the appetitive faculty; and the elective will, which can be determined by pure reason, is called free elective will. That which is determinable only by inclination would be animal elective will (arbitrium brutum). Human elective will, on the contrary, is one which is affected but not determined by impulses. It is accordingly in itself (apart from acquired practice of reason) not pure; but it can be determined to actions by the pure will. Freedom of the elective will is just that independence of its determination on sensible impulses: this is the negative concept of it. The positive is: the power of pure reason to be of itself practical. Now this is possible only by the subordination of the maxim of every action to the condition of fitness for universal law. For being pure reason it is directed to the elective will, irrespective of the object of this will. Now it is the faculty of principles (in this case practical principles, so that it is a legislative faculty) (13); and since it is not provided with the matter of the law, there is nothing which it can make the supreme law and determining ground of the elective will except the form, consisting in the fitness of the maxim of the elective will to be a universal law. And since from subjective causes the maxims of men do not of themselves coincide with those objective maxims, it can only prescribe this law as an imperative of command or prohibition.

These laws of freedom are called, in contradistinction to physical laws, moral laws. In so far as they are directed to mere external actions and their lawfulness, they are called judicial; but when they demand that these laws themselves shall be the determining ground of the actions, they are ethical, and in this case we say—the agreement with the former constitutes the legality, agreement with the latter the morality of the action. The freedom to which the former laws relate can only be freedom in its external exercise; but the freedom to which the latter refer is freedom both in the internal and external exercise of the elective will in as far, namely, as this elective will is determined by laws of reason. Similarly, in theoretic philosophy we say, that only the objects of the outer senses are in space, while the objects both of the external and of the internal sense are in time; because the ideas of both are still ideas, and for this reason all belong to the inner sense. Just so, whether we regard freedom in the external or the internal exercise of the elective will, in either case its laws, being pure practical laws of reason governing free elective will generally, must be also its internal grounds of determination; although they need not always be considered in this point of view.

II.

of the conception and the necessity of a metaphysic of ethics.

(14) It has been shown elsewhere that for physical science which has to do with the objects of the external senses we must have à priori principles; and that it is possible—nay, even necessary—to prefix a system of these principles under the name of metaphysical principles of natural philosophy to physics, which is natural philosophy applied to special phenomena of experience. The latter, however (at least when the question is to guard its propositions from error), may assume many principles as universal on the testimony of experience, although the former, if it is to be in the strict sense universal, must be deduced from à priori grounds; just as Newton adopted the principle of the equality of action and reaction as based on experience, and yet extended it to all material nature. The chemists go still further, and base their most universal laws of combination and dissociation of substances by their own forces entirely on experience, and yet they have such confidence in their universality and necessity that, in the experiments they make with them, they have no apprehension of error.

It is otherwise with the moral laws. These are valid as laws only so far as they have an à priori basis and can be seen to be necessary; nay, the concepts and judgments about ourselves and our actions and omissions have no moral significance at all, if they contain only what can be learned from experience; and should one be so misled as to make into a moral principle anything derived from this source, he would be in danger of the grossest and most pernicious errors.

If the science of morals were nothing but the science of happiness, it would be unsuitable to look out for à priori principles on which to rest it. For however plausible it may sound to say that reason could discern, even before experience, by what means one might attain a lasting enjoyment of the true pleasures of life, yet everything which is taught on this subject à priori is either tautological or assumed without any foundation. It is experience alone that can teach us what gives us pleasure (15). The natural impulses to nutrition, to the propagation of the species, the desire of rest, of motion, and (in the development of our natural capacities) the desire of honour, of knowledge, &c., can alone teach, and moreover teach each individual in his own special way, in what to place those pleasures; and it is these also that can teach him the means by which he must seek them. All plausible à priori reasoning is here at bottom nothing but experience raised to generality by induction: a generality, too, so meagre that everyone must be allowed many exceptions, in order to make the choice of his mode of life suitable to his special inclination and his susceptibility for pleasure; so that after all he must become wise only by his own or others’ loss. It is not so with the doctrines of morality. They are imperative for everyone without regard to his inclinations, solely because and so far as he is free, and has practical reason. Instruction in its laws is not drawn from observation of himself and his animal part; not from perception of the course of the world, from that which happens and from the way in which men act (although the German word “sitten,” like the Latin mores, signifies only manners and mode of life); but reason commands how men should act, even although no instance of such action could be found; moreover, it pays no regard to the advantage which we may hereby attain, which certainly can only be learned by experience. For although it allows us to seek our advantage in every way that we can; and in addition, pointing to the testimony of experience, can promise us, probably and on the whole, greater advantages from following its commands than from transgression of them, especially if obedience is accompanied by prudence, yet the authority of its precepts as commands does not rest on this (16). Reason uses such facts only (by way of counsel) as a counterpoise to the temptations to the opposite, in order, first of all, to compensate the error of an unfair balance, so that it may then assure a due preponderance to the à priori grounds of a pure practical reason.

If, therefore, we give the name Metaphysic to a system of à priori knowledge derived from mere concepts, then a practical philosophy, which has for its object not nature but freedom of choice, will presuppose and require a metaphysic of morals: that is, to have it is itself a duty, and, moreover, every man has it in himself, though commonly only in an obscure way; for without à priori principles how could he believe that he has in him a universal law-giving? Moreover, just as in the metaphysic of natural philosophy there must be principles touching the application to objects of experience of those supreme universal laws of a physical system generally: so also a metaphysic of morals cannot dispense with similar principles; and we shall often have to take the special nature of man, which can only be known by experience, as our object, in order to exhibit in it the consequences of the universal moral principles; but this will not detract from the purity of the latter nor cast any doubt on their à priori origin—that is to say, a Metaphysic of Morals cannot be founded on anthropology, but may be applied to it.

The counterpart of a metaphysic of morals, namely, the second subdivision of practical philosophy generally, would be moral anthropology, which would contain the subjective conditions favourable and unfavourable to carrying out the laws of the power in human nature. It would treat of the production, the propagation, and strengthening of moral principles (in education, school and popular instruction) (17), and other like doctrines and precepts based on experience, which cannot be dispensed with, but which must not come before the metaphysic, nor be mixed with it. For to do so would be to run the risk of eliciting false, or at least indulgent moral laws, which would represent that as unattainable which has only not been attained because the law has not been discerned and proclaimed in its purity (the very thing in which its strength consists); or else because men make use of spurious or mixed motives to what is itself good and dutiful, and these allow no certain moral principles to remain; but this anthropology is not to be used as a standard of judgment, nor as a discipline of the mind in its obedience to duty; for the precept of duty must be given solely by pure reason à priori.

Now with respect to the division to which that just mentioned is subordinate, namely, the division of philosophy into theoretical and practical, I have explained myself sufficiently elsewhere (in the Critical Examination of the Faculty of Judgment), 1 and have shown that the latter branch can be nothing else than moral philosophy. Everything practical which concerns what is possible according to physical laws (the proper business of Art) depends for its precept on the theory of physical nature; that only which is practical in accordance with laws of freedom can have principles that do not depend on any theory; for there can be no theory of that which transcends the properties of physical nature. Hence by the practical part of philosophy (co-ordinate with its theoretical part) we are to understand not any technical doctrine, but a morally practical doctrine; and if the habit of choice, according to laws of freedom, in contrast to physical laws, is here also to be called art, we must understand thereby such an art as would make a system of freedom like a system of nature possible; truly a divine art, were we in a condition to fulfil by means of reason the precepts of reason, and to carry its Ideal into actuality.

III.

of the subdivision of a metaphysic of morals.1

All legislation (whether it prescribes internal or external actions, and these either à priori by pure reason or by the will of another) involves two things: first, a law, which objectively presents the action that is to be done as necessary, i. e. makes it a duty; secondly, a spring, which subjectively connects with the idea of the law the motive determining the elective will to this action; hence, the second element is this, that the law makes duty the spring. By the former the action is presented as duty, and this is a mere theoretical knowledge of the possible determination of the elective will, i. e. of practical rules; by the latter, the obligation so to act is connected with a motive which determines the elective will generally in the agent.

Accordingly, all legislation may be divided into two classes in respect of the springs employed (and this whether the actions prescribed are the same or not: as, for instance, the actions might be in all cases external) (19). That legislation which at once makes an action a duty, and makes this duty the spring, is ethical. That which does not include the latter in the law, and therefore admits a spring different from the idea of duty itself, is juridical. As regards the latter, it is easily seen that this spring, which is distinct from the idea of duty, must be derived from the pathological motives of choice, namely, the inclinations and aversions, and amongst these from the latter, since it is a legislation, which must be constraining, not an invitation, which is persuasive.

The mere agreement or disagreement of an action with the law, without regard to the motive from which the action springs, is called legality; but when the idea of duty arising from the law is also the motive of the action, the agreement is called the morality of the action.

Duties arising from forensic legislation can only be external duties, because this legislation does not require that the idea of this duty, which is internal, shall be of itself the motive of the elective will of the agent; and as it, nevertheless, requires a suitable spring, it can only connect external springs with the law. On the other hand, ethical legislation, while it makes internal actions duties, does not exclude external actions, but applies generally to everything that is duty. But just because ethical legislation includes in its law the inner spring of the action (the idea of duty), a property which cannot belong to the external legislation; hence ethical legislation cannot be external (not even that of a divine will), although it may adopt duties which rest on external legislation, and take them regarded as duties into its own legislation as springs of action.

(20) From hence we may see that all duties belong to Ethics, simply because they are duties; but it does not follow that their legislation is always included in Ethics: in the case of many duties it is quite outside Ethics. Thus Ethics requires that I should fulfil my pledged word, even though the other party could not compel me to do so; but the law (pacta sunt servanda) and the corresponding duty are taken by Ethics from jurisprudence. Accordingly, it is not in Ethics but in Jus that the legislation is contained which enjoins that promises be kept. Ethics teaches only that even if the spring were absent which is connected by forensic legislation with that duty, namely, external compulsion, yet the idea of duty would alone be sufficient as a spring. For if this were not so, and if the legislation itself were not forensic, and the duty arising from it not properly a legal duty (in contrast to a moral duty), then faithfulness to one’s engagements would be put in the same class as actions of benevolence and the obligation to them, which cannot be admitted. It is not an ethical duty to keep one’s promise, but a legal duty, one that we can be compelled to perform. Nevertheless, it is a virtuous action (a proof of virtue) to do so, even where no compulsion is to be apprehended. Law and morals, therefore, are distinguished not so much by the diversity of their duties, but rather by the diversity of the legislation which connects this or that motive with the law.

Ethical legislation is that which cannot be external (although the duties may be external); forensic legislation is that which can be external. Thus to keep one’s contract is an external duty; but the command (21) to do this merely because it is a duty, without regard to any other motive, belongs only to the internal legislation. Accordingly, the obligation is reckoned as belonging to Ethics, not as being a special kind of duty (a special kind of actions to which one is bound)—for in Ethics as well as in law we have external duties—but because in the supposed case the legislation is an internal one, and can have no external lawgiver. For the same reason duties of benevolence, although they are external duties (obligations to external actions), are yet reckoned as belonging to Ethics because the legislation imposing them can only be internal. No doubt Ethics has also duties peculiar to itself (ex. gr. duties to ourselves), but it also has duties in common with law, only the kind of obligation is different. For it is the peculiarity of ethical legislation to perform actions solely because they are duties, and to make the principle of duty itself the adequate spring of the will, no matter whence the duty may be derived. Hence, while there are many directly ethical duties, the internal legislation makes all others indirectly ethical.

IV.

preliminary notions belonging to the metaphysic of morals.
(Philosophia practica universalis.)

The concept of Freedom is a pure concept of the reason, and on this account it is as regards theoretical philosophy transcendent, that is, a concept for which there is no corresponding example in any possible experience, which therefore forms no object of any theoretic knowledge possible to us, and is valid not as a constitutive, but simply as a regulative principle of pure speculative reason, and that a negative one; but in the practical exercise of reason it proves its reality by practical principles (22), which, being laws of a causality of pure reason, determine the elective will independently on all empirical conditions (sensible conditions generally), and prove the existence of a pure will in us in which the moral concepts and laws have their origin.

On this concept of freedom, which (in a practical aspect) is positive, are founded unconditional practical laws which are called moral, and these, in respect of us, whose elective will is sensibly affected, and therefore does not of itself correspond with the pure will, but often opposes it, are imperatives (commands or prohibitions), and, moreover, are categorical (unconditional) imperatives, by which they are distinguished from technical imperatives (precepts of art), which always give only conditional commands. By these imperatives certain actions are permitted or not permitted, that is, are morally possible or impossible; some, however, or their opposites, are morally necessary, that is, obligatory. Hence arises the notion of a duty, the obeying or transgressing of which is, indeed, connected with a pleasure or displeasure of a peculiar kind (that of a moral feeling), of which, however, we can take no account in the practical laws of reason, since they do not concern the foundation of the practical laws, but only the subjective effect in the mind when our elective will is determined by these; and they may be very different in different persons without adding to or taking from the validity or influence of these laws objectively, that is, in the judgment of the reason.

The following notions are common to both parts of the Metaphysic of Morals:—

Obligation is the necessity of a free action under a categorical imperative of reason. The Imperative is a practical rule by which an action in itself contingent is made necessary; it is distinguished from a practical law by this (23), that while the latter exhibits the necessity of the action, it takes no account of the consideration whether this already inheres by an internal necessity in the agent (say, a holy being), or whether, as in man, it is contingent; for where the former is the case there is no imperative. Accordingly, the imperative is a rule, the conception of which makes necessary an action that is subjectively contingent, and hence represents the subject as one who must be constrained (necessitated) to agreement with this rule. The categorical (unconditional) imperative is one that does not command indirectly through the idea of an end that can be attained by the action, but immediately, through the mere conception of this action itself (its form), thinks it as objectively necessary and makes it necessary.

No example of an imperative of this kind can be supplied by any other practical doctrine but that which prescribes obligation (the doctrine of morals). All other imperatives are technical and conditioned. The ground of the possibility of categorical imperatives lies in this, that they refer to no other property of the elective will (by which any purpose could be ascribed to it), but only to its freedom. An action is allowed (licitum) which is not contrary to obligation; and this freedom which is not limited by any opposed imperative is called right of action (facultas moralis) [Befugniss]. Hence it is obvious what is meant by disallowed (illicitum).

Duty is the action to which a person is bound. It is therefore the matter of obligation, and it may be one and the same duty (as to the action), although the obligation to it may be of different kinds.

The categorical imperative, since it expresses an obligation in respect of certain actions, is a moral practical law. But since obligation contains not only practical necessity (24) (which law in general expresses), but also constraint, the imperative mentioned is either a law of command or of prohibition, according as the performance or omission is represented as duty. An action which is neither commanded nor forbidden is merely allowed, because in respect of it there is no law limiting freedom (right of action), and therefore also no duty. Such an action is called morally indifferent (indifferens, adiaphoron, res meræ facultatis). It may be asked: are there any such, and if there are, then in order that one may be free to do or forbear a thing as he pleases, must there be, besides the law of command (lex præceptiva, lex mandati) and the law of prohibition (lex prohibitiva, lex vetiti), also a law of permission (lex permissiva)? If this is the case, then the right of action would not be concerned with an indifferent action (adiaphoron); for if such an action is considered according to moral laws, it could not require any special law.

An action is called a deed, in so far as it comes under laws of obligation, and, consequently, in so far as the subject is regarded in it according to the freedom of his elective will, the agent is regarded as by such an act the author of the effect, and this, along with the action itself, may be imputed to him if he is previously acquainted with the law by virtue of which an obligation rests on him.

A Person is the subject whose actions are capable of imputation. Hence moral personality is nothing but the freedom of a rational being under moral laws (whereas psychological personality is merely the power of being conscious to oneself of the identity of one’s existence in different circumstances). Hence it follows that a person is subject to no other laws than those which he (either alone or jointly with others) gives to himself.

(25) That which is not capable of any imputation is called a Thing. Every object of free elective will which is not itself possessed of freedom is, therefore, called a thing (res corporalis).

A deed is Right or Wrong in general (rectum aut minus rectum), according as it is consistent or inconsistent with duty (factum licitum aut illicitum), no matter what the content or the origin of the duty may be. A deed inconsistent with duty is called transgression (reatus).

An unintentional transgression, which, however, may be imputed, is called mere fault (culpa). An intentional transgression (that is, one which is accompanied by the consciousness that it is transgression) is called crime (dolus). That which is right according to external laws is called just (justum); what is not so is unjust (injustum).

A conflict of duties (collisio officiorum seu obligationum) would be such a relation between them that one would wholly or partially abolish the other. Now as duty and obligation are notions which express the objective practical necessity of certain actions, and as two opposite rules cannot be necessary at the same time, but if it is a duty to act according to one of them, it is then not only not a duty but inconsistent with duty to act according to the other; it follows that a conflict of duties and obligations is inconceivable (obligationes non colliduntur). It may, however, very well happen, that in the same subject and the rule which he prescribes to himself there are conjoined two grounds of obligation (rationes obligandi), of which, however, one or the other is inadequate to oblige (rationes obligandi non obligantes), and then one of them is not a duty. When two such grounds are in conflict, practical philosophy does not say that the stronger obligation prevails (fortior obligatio vincit), but the stronger ground of obligation prevails (fortior obligandi ratio vincit).

(26) Binding laws, for which an external lawgiving is possible, are called in general external laws (leges externæ). Amongst these the laws, the obligation to which can be recognized by reason à priori even without external legislation, are natural though external laws; those on the contrary which, without actual external legislation, would not bind at all (and, therefore, would not be laws), are called positive laws. It is possible, therefore, to conceive an external legislation which would only contain [positive] 1 laws; but then a natural law must precede, which should supply the ground of the authority of the lawgiver (that is, his right to bind others by his mere will).

The principle which makes certain actions a duty is a practical law. The rule which the agent adopts from subjective grounds as his principle is called his Maxim; hence with the same laws the maxims of the agents may be very different.

The categorical imperative, which only expresses in general what obligation is, is this: Act according to a maxim which can at the same time hold good as a universal law. You must, therefore, examine your actions in the first place as to their subjective principle; but whether this principle is also objectively valid can only be recognized by this, that when your reason puts it to the test of conceiving yourself as giving therein a universal law, it is found to be adapted to this universal legislation.

The simplicity of this law, compared with the great and manifold requirements which can be drawn from it, must at first appear surprising, as must also the authoritative dignity it presents, without carrying with it perceptibly any motive.

(27) But when, in this astonishment at the power of our reason to determine choice by the mere idea of the fitness of a maxim for the universality of a practical law, we learn that it is just these practical (moral) laws that first make known a property of the will which speculative reason could never have arrived at, either from à priori grounds or from experience—and if it did arrive at it could by no means prove its possibility, whereas those practical laws incontestably prove this property, namely, freedom—then we shall be less surprised to find these laws, like mathematical axioms, undemonstrable and yet apodictic, and at the same time to see a whole field of practical cognitions opened before us, in which reason in its theoretic exercise, with the same idea of freedom, nay, with any other of its supersensible ideas, must find everything absolutely closed to it. The agreement of an action with the law of duty is its legality (legalitas); that of the maxim with the law is its morality (moralitas). Maxim is the subjective principle of action, which the subject makes a rule to itself (namely, how he chooses to act). On the contrary, the principle of duty is that which Reason commands him absolutely and therefore objectively (how he ought to act). The supreme principle of the order is therefore: Act on a maxim which can also hold good as a universal law. Every maxim which is not capable of being so is contrary to morality.

Laws proceed from the Rational Will; maxims from the elective will. The latter is in man a free elective will. The Rational Will, which is directed to nothing but the law only, cannot be called either free or unfree, because it is not directed to actions, but immediately to the legislation for the maxims of actions (and is therefore practical reason itself). Consequently it is absolutely necessary, and is even incapable of constraint. (28) It is therefore only the elective will that can be called free.

Freedom of elective will, however, cannot be defined as the power of choosing to act for or against the law (libertas indifferentiæ) as some have attempted to define it; although the elective will as a phenomenon gives many examples of this in experience. For freedom (as it becomes known to us first through the moral law) is known to us only as a negative property in us, namely, the property of not being constrained to action by any sensible motives. Considered as a noumenon, however, that is, as to the faculty of man merely as an intelligence, we are quite unable to explain theoretically how it has a constraining power in respect of the sensible elective will—that is, we cannot explain it in its positive character. Only this we can very readily understand: that although experience tells us that man as an object in the sensible world shows a power of choosing not only according to the law but also in opposition to it, nevertheless his freedom as a being in the intelligible world cannot be thus defined, since phenomena can never enable us to comprehend any supersensible object (such as free elective will is). We can see also that freedom can never be placed in this, that the rational subject is able to choose in opposition to his (legislative) reason, even though experience proves often enough that this does happen (a thing, however, the possibility of which we cannot comprehend). For it is one thing to admit a fact (of experience); it is another to make it the principle of a definition (in the present case, of the concept of free elective will) and the universal criterion between this and arbitrium brutum seu servum; since in the former case we do not assert that the mark necessarily belongs to the concept, which we must do in the latter case. Freedom in relation to the inner legislation of the reason is alone properly a power; the possibility of deviating from this is an impotence. How then can the former be defined from the latter? (29) A definition which over and above the practical concept adds the exercise of it as learned from experience is a bastard definition (definitio hybrida) which puts the notion in a false light.

A Law (a moral practical law) is a proposition which contains a categorical imperative (a command). He who gives commands by a law (imperans) is the lawgiver (legislator). He is the author (auctor) of the obligation imposed by the law, but not always author of the law. If he were so, the law would be positive (contingent) and arbitrary. The law which binds us à priori and unconditionally by our own reason may also be expressed as proceeding from the will of a Supreme Lawgiver, that is of one who has only rights and no duties (namely, from the Divine Will). But this only involves the idea of a moral being whose will is law for all, without his being conceived as the author of it.

Imputation (imputatio) in the moral sense is the judgment by which any one is regarded as the author (causa libera) of an action, which is then called a deed (factum), and to which laws are applicable; and if this judgment brings with it the legal consequences of this deed it is a judicial imputation (imputatio judiciaria s. valida), otherwise it is only discriminating imputation (imputatio dijudicatoria). The person (whether physical or moral (who has right to exercise judicial imputation is called the judge or the court (judex s. forum).

What anyone does in accordance with duty beyond what he can be compelled to by the law is meritorious (meritum); what he does only just in accordance with the law is duty owed (debitum); lastly, what he does less than the law demands is moral demerit (demeritum). The legal effect of demerit is punishment (pæna); that of a meritorious act, reward (præmium) (30), provided that this, promised in the law, was the motive). Conduct which agrees with duty owed has no legal effect. Fair recompense (remuneratio s. repensio benefica) stands in no legal relation to the deed.

The good or bad consequences of an obligatory action, or the consequences of omitting a meritorious action, cannot be imputed to the agent (modus imputationis tollens).

The good consequences of a meritorious action, and the bad consequences of an unlawful action, can be imputed (modus imputationis ponens).

Subjectively considered, the degree of imputability (imputabilitas) of actions must be estimated by the greatness of the hindrances which have to be overcome. The greater the natural hindrances (of sensibility) and the less the moral hindrance (of duty), the higher the imputation of merit in a good deed. For example, if at a considerable sacrifice I rescue from great necessity one who is a complete stranger to myself.

On the other hand, the less the natural hindrance, and the greater the hindrance from reasons of duty, so much the more is transgression imputed (as ill desert). Hence the state of mind of the agent, whether he acted in the excitement of passion or with cool deliberation, makes an important difference in imputation.

[1]

[To this definition it has been objected, that “it comes to nothing as soon as we abstract from external conditions of the result of the desire. Yet even to the Idealist the appetitive faculty is something, although to him the external world is nothing.” Answer: Is there not such a thing as an earnest longing which yet we are conscious is in vain (ex. gr. Would to God that man were still living!), and which, though it leads to no deed, is yet not without results, and has a powerful effect not indeed on outward things, but within the subject himself (making him ill)? A desire being an effort (nisus) to be, by means of one’s ideas, a cause, still, even though the subject perceives the inadequacy of these to produce the desired effect, is always a causality at least within the subject. What causes the mistake here is this: that since the consciousness of our power generally (in the given case) is at the same time a consciousness of our powerlessness in respect to the outer world, the definition is not applicable to the Idealist, although as here we are speaking only of the relation of a cause (the idea) to the effect (feeling), the causality of the idea in respect of its object (whether that causality be internal or external) must inevitably be included in the conception of the appetitive faculty.”—Rechtslehre, Anhang (to second edition), p. 130.]

[1]

We might define sensibility as the subjective element in our ideas; for it is the understanding that first refers the ideas to an object; i. e. it alone thinks somewhat by means thereof. Now the subjective element of our idea may be of such a kind that it can also be referred to an object as contributory to the knowledge of it (either as to the form or the matter, being called in the former case intuition, in the latter sensation). In this case sensibility, which is the susceptibility to the idea in question, is Sense. Or again, the subjective element of the idea may be such that it cannot become a piece of knowledge, inasmuch as it contains merely the relation of this idea to the subject, and nothing that is useful for the knowledge of the object; and in this case this susceptibility to the idea is called Feeling, which contains the effect of the idea (whether sensible or intellectual) on the subject, and this belongs to the sensibility, even though the idea itself may belong to the understanding or the reason.

[1]

[This important distinction is here explicitly made for the first time. In the earlier treatises, the word “Wille” covers both significations. In writing the “Kritik,” Kant saw that much confusion of thought was traceable to the use of the same word for two very different things, and in that treatise he sometimes uses “Willkühr.” His use of the term is, of course, his own. In the last treatise in the present volume the word “Wille” occurs only once or twice. In default of an English word suitable to be appropriated to the signification of Kant’s “Willkühr,” I have adopted the compound term “elective will,” reserving “rational will” for “Wille.” Although the distinction has not been fixed in appropriate terms, it has been felt and more or less obscurely indicated by many moralists. Indeed it is implied in S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, ch. vii., where, for instance, in v. 15, the subject of θέλω is I as “Wille,” while that of ποιωˆ is I as “Willkühr.” Compare the words of Kant on the corrupt heart coexisting with the good “Wille,” p. 352.]

[1]

[“When Philosophy, as containing principles of the rational knowledge of things through concepts (not merely as Logic does, principles of the form of thought in general without distinction of its objects), is divided into theoretical and practical, this is quite right; but, then, the concepts which assign to the principles of this rational knowledge their object must be specifically distinct, otherwise they would not justify a division which always presupposes a contrast of the principles of the rational knowledge belonging to the different parts of a science.

Now there are only two kinds of concepts, and these admit as many distinct principles of possibility of their object, namely, physical concepts and the concept of freedom. Now as the former make possible a theoretical knowledge on à priori principles, whereas in respect of these the latter only conveys in its concept a negative principle (that of mere contrast); while on the other hand it establishes principles for the determination of the will, which, therefore, are called practical; hence philosophy is rightly divided into two parts, with quite distinct principles—the theoretical, which is natural philosophy, and the practical, which is moral philosophy (for so we name the practical legislation of reason according to the concept of freedom). Hitherto, however, there has prevailed a gross misuse of these expressions in the division of the different principles, and consequently also of philosophy; inasmuch as what is practical according to physical concepts has been assumed to be of the same kind as what is practical according to the concept of freedom; and thus with the same denominations of ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ philosophy, a division is made by which nothing is really divided (since both parts might have principles of the same kind).”—Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Einl, p. 8.]

[1]

The deduction of the division of a system: that is, the proof of its completeness as well as of its continuity, namely, that the transition from the notion divided to each member of the division in the whole series of subdivisions does not take place per saltum, is one of the most difficult tasks of the constructor of a system. It is even difficult to say what is the ultimate notion of which right and wrong (fas aut nefas) are divisions. It is the act of free choice in general. So teachers of ontology begin with the notions of something and nothing, without being aware that these are already members of a division of a higher notion which is not given, but which, in fact, can only be the notion of an object in general.

[1]

[The original has ‘natural.’ The emendation, which is clearly necessary, was suggested to me by Mr. Philip Sandford.]