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• List of Works Comprising Kant’s System.
• Preface to the Third Edition.
• Introduction.
• Book I.: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Ethics. 1
• Chapter I.: Transit From the Common Popular Notions of Morality to the Philosophical.
• Chapter II.: Transit From Common Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysic of Ethics.
• Chapter III.: Transit From the Metaphysic of Ethics to an Inquiry Into the À Priori Operations of the Will.
• Book II.: Inquiry Into the À Priori Operations of the Will. ( Extracted From the “ Critik of Practical Reason. ”)
• Chapter I.: Analytic of Principles.
• Chapter II.: On the À Priori Spring of the Will.
• Chapter III.: Dilucidation of the Foregoing Analytic.—on Freedom and Necessity.
• Book III.: Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Jurisprudence.
• Preface.
• Introduction to the Metaphysic of Ethics.
• Introduction to the Metaphysic of Law.
• Appendix to the Introduction. of Law Equivocal.
• General Division of Jurisprudence.
• Book IV.: The Metaphysical Elements of the Doctrine of Virtue.
• Introduction.
• Elementology of Ethics. of the Duties Owed By Man to Himself.
• Introduction.
• Part I.: Of the Duties of Perfect and Determinate Obligation.
• Part II.: Of the Indeterminate Moral Duties Owed By Man to Himself In Regard of His End.
• Of the Moral Duties Owed By Mankind Toward His Fellow-men.
• Chapter I.: Of the Duty Owed to Others, Considered Simply As Men.
• Conclusion of the Elementology.
• Appendix.
• Methodology of Ethics.
• Part I.: Didactic of Ethics.
• Part II.: The Ascetic Exercise of Ethics.
• Conclusion of the Ethics. Religion, As a Doctrine of the Duties Owed to God, Falls Beyond the Boundary of Pure Moral Philosophy.

CONCLUSION OF THE ETHICS.

RELIGION, AS A DOCTRINE OF THE DUTIES OWED TO GOD, FALLS BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF PURE MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

Although the last result obtained in our inquiry into the reach and extent of the à priori operations of human understanding was, that speculative reason declared the existence of God problematical; yet the belief in God being here admitted, and it being further admitted that the doctrine of religion is an integral part of the general system of the offices,* the question now raised respects the determining the boundary of the science whereof it is part. Are we to regard it as belonging to morals (to law in no event, for the rights of man cannot comprehend it)? or is it to be considered as falling out of and beyond the domains of pure moral philosophy?

The formal of religion, explained to be “the aggregate of our duties,as if they weredivine commandments,” belongs to the philosophy of morals; since it expresses singly the relation obtaining betwixt reason and that idea of God itself evolves, and the duty to have religion is not thereby made any duty owed by us toward God, as a being existing out of and beyond our own ideas; for we expressly abstract from such existence.* That all human duties must be cogitated agreeably to this form (by referring them to a divine à priori Will), rests on a ground subjectively logical only. We cannot easily depicture to ourselves in thought, obligation (ethical necessitation), except by figuring to ourselves another and His will—God, whose vicegerent is our universally legislative reason;* but this duty in relation to the Divinity (strictly in relation to the idea we frame to ourselves of such a Being), is a duty owed by mankind to himself; i.e., is not an objective duty to perform certain services to another, but a subjective obligation only, to strengthen the ethic springs of our own legislative reason.

As for the matter of religion, as a whole of duties toward God, and of the worship to be rendered Him, such obligations would be particular, not emanating from universally legislative reason. They could not upon this account be cognisable à priori, but could be known by experience and observation singly, that is, they would be duties of revealed religion, rested on divine commandments in the proper sense of the words; and such duties would require to set forth, not the bare idea of the Godhead for our practical behoof, but the existence of this Being as given mediately or immediately in observation and experience. A religion of this kind, however, how well founded soever it may be, can never constitute a part of pure moral philosophy.

Religion, therefore, considered as the doctrine of the duties owed toward God, falls far beyond all limits of pure ethics; and these remarks are subjoined here in justification of the present treatise, where the author has not, with a view to its completeness, inserted, as is usual, any religious duties.

There may undoubtedly be a doctrine of “religion within the limits of pure reason,” where it is not affirmed that the positions were originated at first by reason (for this might be too much presumption, p. 8, Vorrede Streit d. Facultäten, T.), but rest in part on historical documents and the tenets of a revelation, and where we treat only of the harmony of this last with what is taught by pure practical reason. But neither is this kind of doctrine of religion pure, but is mixed and applied to the Critique of a given document; and for this, ethics, as pure practical philosophy, can afford no room.

Remark.—All the ethical relations obtaining betwixt Intelligents, and involving a principle of the mutual harmony of their wills with one another, may be reduced and classed along with the emotions of love and reverence; and where the principle is practical, the will’s determination upon the former points to the end of the other person, but upon the latter to his right. If now there be such a Person as to have rights only, and no duties, toward others (God), and the others, conversely, owe merely duties and have no rights, then is the principle of the ethic relation betwixt them transcendent; whereas that of man to man, whose wills reciprocally limit one another, is immanent.

The end of the Godhead in creating, and His providence of man, we can only depicture to ourselves as an end of love, i.e., that He wills their happiness; but the principle of His will in regard of the reverence (awe) we owe Him, which limits the operations of the principle pointing to the end willed, i.e., the principle of His divine rights, can be no more than that of justice; we might, speaking as we must do after the fashion of men, lay down this position, that God created His intelligent universe that He might have somewhat to love or be loved by in turn. But then, again, as extensive, nay, more so (for the principle is restrictive, and conditions the end), is the demand, which, even our own reason tells us, divine justice, as punitive, may challenge. A reward cannot be expected, on the score of justice, from the Supreme Being, by Intelligents who have no rights, but only duties: they can only hope for it from His benignity and Love; for wages there can be no claim; and a remunerative justice is a contradiction in the relation of God to man.

There is, however, in the idea of the judiciary function of a Being exalted beyond the possibility of any infraction of His ends, somewhat hard to be reconciled with the relation of man to God, viz., the idea of a lesion committed against the Sovereign Majesty of the Governor of the World, where the question is not of the violations of the rights of man, perpetrated by mankind upon one another, and which God might as Judge avenge; but of a lesion which, it would seem, affected the rights of God Himself; an idea altogether transcendent, i.e., which goes quite beyond the range of any punitive justice we as men can instance, and presents surd and impossible principles not capable of being brought to coincide with those employed in everyday life, and which, therefore, are for our reason blank and empty.

This idea of divine punitive justice has been personified. It is not a particular being who dispenses it, for then it would be found contrary to the principles of justice; but justice itself cogitated in substance (called eternal justice), which, like fate in the old poets, is even above Jupiter, announces her law with an iron indeflectible necessity, the grounds of which we are unable to explore.—Of this, examples. Punishment, according to Horace, never leaves out of her sight the culprit who stalks audaciously away before her, but limps unremittingly after him until she overtake him.—Innocent blood cries for vengeance.—Crime cannot remain unavenged; and if the transgressor suffer not, yet his iniquities are visited on his posterity; or if vengeance is not in this life inflicted, it must in another, after death, which is expressly postulated and believed in, that the demand of eternal justice may be satisfied.—I will tolerate no blood-guiltiness to come over my land, said once a well-thinking prince, by granting pardon to a malignant assassinating duellist, for whom ye entreat my grace.—The debt of sins must be discharged, even though an innocent were required for a sacrifice (in which event his sorrows could not be called punishment, he having transgressed no law): hence we see, that the justice to which we attribute such decrees, is not a person administering a judiciary function (for he could not speak thus without violating the rights of others), but that bare justice as a transcendent principle, and cogitated to an invisible subject, defines the right of this personified Being. All which is in harmony, no doubt, with the formal of the principle of creation, but is contrary to its matter, the end, which must still be the happiness of mankind; for, on account of the vast multitude of criminals who allow their catalogue of sins to run on increasing, this principle of punitive justice would come to put the end of creation, not in the love of the Creator (as we cannot but think it), but in the rigid maintenance of his right (i.e., would make his right itself the end of the creation, called—the glory of God); and yet, since this justice is only a negative principle limitary of the other (benevolence), to affirm this, is contrary to the principles of practical reason, or seems to be so; for in such event, practical reason would hold that there could have been no room for creation, leading to results so contrary to the design and intention of the Author, whose end we can only depicture to ourselves to have been that of love.

Ethics then can, as pure practical philosophy, based on man’s own inward legislation, treat singly of the relation obtaining betwixt man and man, and this is for us the alone comprehensible; but as for relations obtaining betwixt God and man, these far transcend all our powers of knowledge, and are absolutely incomprehensible: and this confirms what we advanced above, that Ethics could not extend itself beyond the boundary of the duties owed by mankind to one another.

morrison and gibb, edinburgh, printers to her majesty’s stationery office.

[* ]Ref. 8, from p. 147.—C.

[* ]Ref. 8, from p. 147.—C.

[* ]Ref. 8, from p. 147.—C.