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GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS
ENGLISH READERS MD STUDENTS.
EDITED BT
GEORGE S. MORRIS
KAI^T^S ETHICS.
'^
I
GRIGGS'S
PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSICS.
Under tlio editorial supervision of Prof. G. S. Morris.
De^mtcd to a Critical Exposition of the Master-
pieces of German Thought.
Kant's Critique of Pure Season. By Prof. G.
S. Morris, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan.
$1.2.5.
Schelling's Transcendental Idealism. By
Prof. .loHN Watson, LL.D., of (^iicuu'i- I'liiversity,
Kingston, Canada. S1-~'T-
Fichte's Science of Knowledge. By Prof. C.
C. EvERKTT. U.D , of Harvard I'liiversity. $1.35.
Hegel's -ffisthetics. By Prof. J. S, Kedney,
S.T.D., of tlie Seabury Divinity School. %\:Si.
Kant's Ethics. By President Noah Porter, D.D.,
LL.D., of Yale College. $1.25.
OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION.
A handy series of the great German thinkers ; of
much interest and great convenience to scholars and
to the more general reader.— Cmcjwwa^i Com. Gazette.
This series offers an exceedingly valuable compen-
dium of German philosophic thought, valuable in any
tongue, and especially so iu the English, in which
there is nothing to compare with it.— Gfiicago Times.
These excellent books, as remarkable for ability as
for clearness, will do much to clear the way and make
the mastery of the German systems a comparatively
easy task.— xVeii' York Examiner.
KANT'S ETHICS.
A CRITICAL EXPOSITION.
By NOAH PORTER,
PRESIDENT OF TALE COLLEGE.
CHICACiO:
C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.
1886.
Copyright, 1886.
By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY
I KKIGHT &■■ LEONARD . t
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO
3 1822 02711 9890
THIS VOLr:ME IS INSCRIBED
PRESIDENT MAKK HOPKINS, D.D., LLD.,
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF HIS EMINENT SERVICES TO
ETHICAL SCIENCE,
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.
PEEFAOE.
r I IHE essay now given to the public has been
-*- promised for several months, but was written
for the most part as a vacation exercise during the
last summer. Its theme is Kant's Theory of Ethics,
as contrasted with his practical teachings, so far as
the former is distinctive of his school. For this rea-
son it is chiefly concerned with the two treatises in
which this theory is explained and defended, viz.:
Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785;
Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, 1788.
As its title imports, this treatise is both expository
and critical. In expounding Kant's ethical theory to
English readers, the writer has thought it best to
state this theory very largely in Kant's own lan-
guage, with such comments as might be required
to make it intelligible. He has done this for two
reasons, that he might be entirely just to Kant him-
self, and that he might aid the unpractised student in
the somewhat discouraging task of interpreting the
German philosopher. For both these reasons he has
Vlii PREFACE.
often retained Kant's peculiar and frequently highly-
technical phraseology in order that, by mere repe-
tition, it might become familiar, while yet he has
sought to give its meaning in current English, that
the student might acquire facility in interpreting the
Kantian dialect by its English equivalents. He does
not assert that in every case he has been successful in
the last-named attempt. The English text, which
he has invariably used, is that of the generally ap-
proved translation of Professor Abbott, of Trinity
College, Dublin.*
The critical remarks of the author are usually
given as a running commentary upon the text with
the important exception of §§ 21-33, in which the
exposition covers §§ 21-26 and the criticism §§ 27-33.
These comments suppose some familiarity with eth-
ical theories, and the criticisms and schools to which
they have given rise, although the writer has scru-
pulously avoided all personal and partisan ref-
erences, and endeavored to confine himself to his
appropriate functions as the expounder and critic of
his author.
Besides the expository and critical matter thus
* Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and other works on the
Theory of Ethics. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. M. A.,
etc. London ; Longmans, Green & Co., 1879.
PREFACE. IX
described the reader will find a brief general intro-
duction, together with a summary or condensed
review of the distinctive positions taken by Kant
upon the most important topics as compared with
those of other — principally English — writers, and
some brief strictures upon Kant by a few German
critics.
The preparation of this essay has cost the writer
some Labor, but the labor has brought its own
rewai"d. He trusts that the result will be useful as
an aid to those students who are interested in the
study of ethical theories, and who appreciate the
practical significance of such theories at the present
time.
N. P.
Yale College, Dec. 1, 1885.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
Plan and reasons for the treatise .... 1
Relation of the Kantian Ethics to the Meta-
physics 2
Not necessary to expound the Metaphysics at
length 3
Salient features of the same 3
Kant"s important services to modern thought . 5
Especially upon Theology and Ethics ... 6
Their effect upon Faith in the Supernatural . 7
Influence upon speculation and literature in
England and America 8
Difficulties in criticisingf the same .... 11
CHAPTER I.
PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES.
Titles of Ethical Treatises 13
The Critique of Pure Reason 14
The Prolegomena 15
xii COKTENTS.
Relation to Ethics l(i
Critique of Pare Reason — Fundamental ques-
tion of 18
Phenomena vs. Things in themselves ... 19
Noumena . 20
Limits of human knowledge 21
Disappointment 22
Promised deliverance 22
Elements of Kant's Constructive Ethics . . 23
Three important questions proposed by Kant . 25
Plausibility of his solution ,26
Obligation to consistency 28
This solution preliminary and imperfect . . 29
Principles relative and absolute .31
Fundamental principles of Ethics readily un-
derstood and assented to 38
In speculative principles, Kant claims only a
relative authority 34
Danger of confounding speculative and ethical
principles 36
We proceed next to the examination of his
formal motives .....,.».. 37
CHAPTER II.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSICS
OF MORALS.
The Metaphysics of Morals tentative only . 38
A Metaphysics of Morals possible o » o . 39
CONTENTS. XIU
Preliminary sketch of the author's system . . 41
Division of topics in the Grundlegung . . - 42
Import of his opening sentence ..... 43
Kant's interpretation of the " Good-will " . . 45
(1) An act from inclination, not an act of
duty 4-")
(2) The maxim, not the end, determining
moral worth .4(3
(o) Respect for the law essential to duty . 4(i
The content or import of the moral law . , 47
Kant's scepticism in respect to speculative
truth 49
Criticism of Kant's first sentence .... 50
Diverse meanings of " Good-will " . . . , 51
Kant's defective conception of his opponents'
doctrines 54
Kant's limited and low conception of hapi)i-
ness 55
Gratification of the Reason 5(3
Kant's defective conception of duty and obliga-
tion . 57
Other oversights of Kant ....... 58
Kant's second error 60
Third mistake. Respect for the law a sensibil-
ity .... 61
Conceded to be an " obscure feeling " - . . 61
Criterion of an act of duty ... .62
Second section of Kant's treatise . . 64
Kant's first position, that every ideal must be
actual . o . 64
XIV CONTENTS.
Whence is the moral ideal derived ? Kant and
his critics 66
Kant overlooks the sensibility as an element of
the ideal 67
Right action defined in the most general way
as reasonable action 69
A perfect will excludes obligation .... 70
The categorical and hypothetical imperative . 71
Kant's defective conception of happiness . . 73
Kant adopts the criterion of consequences as a
practical rule 76
Relation of the moral ideal to the actual, in
man 79
A life according to nature 82
He analyzes human nature before he is aware 83
Discovers ends of action and personality . . 84
But does not formally abandon the categorical
imperative 87
And yet he practically shifts his ground . . 88
Rationality does not exclude relations to the
sensibility 90
Kant's views of the will indefinite .... 92
The personal Ego overlooked 94
Transition from the Metaphysics of Morals to
the Critique of Practical Reason .... 95
Kant returns to the will and moral freedom . 97
The man noumenal and man phenomenal . . 100
Kant's " Freedom " still more exactl}^ defined . 102
Kant concedes that the moral law affects the
sensibilities '= . 104
CONTENTS. XV
CHAPTER III.
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON.
Preface and Introduction .... = . 108
Practical, not pure and practical .... 109
The practical reason supplies an a priori ele-
ment 110
Reply to a criticism Ill
Twofold function ascribed to the will . . . 113
Vacillating and uncertain classification of the
psychical powers 115
^ Kant's indefinite conceptions of the will . .116
Knowledge of every sort begins with judgments,
not concepts r . . 118
Principles of practical reason defined » . . 119
Every motive must address the reason . , . 120
Empirical principles defined 121
Material practical principles defined . . . 123
Practical principles formal, and not material . 124
Two problems proposed ...... = 125
Autonomy and heteronomy of the will . . . 127
Ill-desert analyzed 128
The contrast stated between the pure and the
practical reason .129
How can we apply the commands of the prac-
tical reason to the world of sense . . . .loo
The object and effect of the practical reason » 134
The typic of the pure practical reason . . <. 137
The motives of the pure practical reason . . 139
XV] CONTENTS.
Obligation and respect for the law .... 140
Acting according to duty, and from a sense of
duty 142
Import of a command to love 143
Apostrophe to Duty 145
Personality here recognized for the first time . 146
Reasons why the practical reason admits a sin-
gle systematic form only ...... 148
Appeal to the universal consciousness . . . 149
Difference between physical and psychical
causes 151
Relations of man, the nounienon, to time and
space 154
Dynamical and mathematical categories . . 154
The dialectic of the practical reason . . .156
Anticipation of moral satisfaction not moral . 158
Self-contentment conceded to be ethically legit-
imate 160
The primacy of the practical above the specula-
tive reason 162
How far have they a common root .... 163
Argument for immortality 164
This argument assumes design as objectively
true 166
Argument for God's existence 166
Difference between rational and moral ends . 168
New argument attempted 170
Can the practical be independent of the specu-
lative reason 172
DifiFerenee between a hypothesis and a postulate 174
CONTENTS. Xvii
Kant's argument reduced to — what . . . 175
Methodology of the practical reason . . . 176
The starry heavens and the moral law . . . 177
Practical needs are supreme and isolated . . 179
<^ Comments on the conclusion 180
CHAPTER IV.
A CRITICAL SUMMARY OF KANt's ETHICAL THEORV.
The practical reason briefly described . . . 184
Whence its authority 186
How related to Butler's Principle of Reflection 186
Kant's objective rule of duty 190
Good and ill- desert according to Kant and
Butler . 191
Kant's doctrine of freedom .....= 193
Freedom of the Ego noumenon ..... 195
Relation of Kant's Ethics to speculative truth . 198
Ethical grounds for Belief in Immortality . » 199
Further remai'ks upon the Categorical Impera-
tive . , . o 201
Personality essential to obligation .... 202
Sense of authority complex and derived . 204
The two explanations contrasted . . . . = 205
Kant's explanation of the moral law % . ? .201 —
Kant's view of conformity to man's moral
nature 209
Further criticism of Kant's doctrine of the will 210
XV CONTEN"TS.
Kant's late and inadequate recognition of pur-
pose , . 212
Kant's failure to do justice to personality . . 214
His depreciation of the emotions and the sensi-
bility 216
The intellectual application of Kant's Ethics . 220
Authority of experience in ethical questions . 221
Kant's Ethics and the Christian, contrasted . 224
Relations to Theistic and Christian truth . , 226
CHAPTER V.
BRIEF NOTICES FROM A FEW OF KANt's GERMAN
CRITICS.
Introductory o . 232
Schiller's comments on Kant's Ethics . . . 233
Schleiermacher and Lotze ...... 239
Trendelenburg's strictures on Kant . . o . 243
IJSTTRODUCTORY.
§ 1. The title of this treatise describes its pur-
pose. It proposes, first to interpret and
Plan and
then to criticise the principal features of Reasons for
Kant's ethical system. Ft proposes the
one in order to effect the other. This method is
appropriate to the examination of every philosoph-
ical writer and every philosophical system; and so
emphatically, that a skilful interpretation is often
of itself the most satisfactory criticism, as it is al-
ways the most effective preparation for the same.
This is preeminently true of every division of the
Kantian philosophy, of those even which seem to be
the least speculative. It might seem at first thought
that the Kantian Ethics, like ethics in general or
the principles of any individual ethical system,
must be so far independent of any special meta-
physical theories as to involve no special difficulty of
either interpretation or criticism. This is only true
of a few of Kant's leading positions, when inter-
preted in their practical spirit and enforced with
2 IXTRODUCTOKY.
a certain imaginative fervor. On the other hand, it
Relation of is most obvious that whatever is espe-
tiu- Kantian ^j^jj ^^^ characteristically Kantian in
Ethics to the ■' •'
Metaphysics^, ethics is either founded on the Kantian
Metaphysics, or else is applied in its service. Not
unfrequently Kant's ethical positions seem to be
assumed, almost to be devised, either to support or
to supplement some cardinal point in his philosophy.
Whatever in the Ethics is peculiar in scientific form
or principle, in terminology or logical cohei'ence,
will be found to be ultimately connected with the
Kantian Metaphysics. It follows that the student
will find it impossible to understand or to criticise
the Ethics of Kant unless he constantly keeps in mind
or often refers to the leading principles of his phil-
osophy, either as furnishing the foundations on
which the Ethics rest or as responsible for the defects
which they seek to supplement. Unless we are
greatly mistaken, his ethical system is made to fulfil
both functions, paradoxical as this may seem, being
used at one time as the foundation and at another as
the complement of his metaphysics — now as the base
which supports the pillars of the springing arch, and
then as the keystone which crowns and holds it
together. It cannot be denied, we think, that the
place which ethics occupy in Kant's theory of knowl-
INTRODUCTORY, 3
edge is unique and almost paradoxical, and that
consequently his system is invested with a special
fascination for the careful student of modern specu-
lation.
§ 2. The reader will not infer that the author
proposes first to interpret Kant's entire Not Necessary
speculative system in order that he mav '° ^f,^"""^
I J " the Metaphys-
explain or criticise his Ethics. To do so ics at Length.
would be entirely gratuitous, after this work has
been done so well by the editor of the present
series and by other writers. But he could not avoid
the distinct recognition of the relations of the one to
the other, so far as this is required, in order to make
the Ethics intelligible in both their weakness and
strength. He could not but notice that the two are
constantly and often inextricably intertwined to-
gether. The peculiar and oftentimes the strongly
marked terminology of both ethics and philosophy
makes it still more necessary to study the one by the
light of the other. There is no use in disguising the
fact that Kant's terminology is always technical in
the extreme, and sometimes absolutely barbarous.
Indeed, few writers, ancient or modern.
Salient
of such marked ability, who have had so Features of
, , 1 • i 11 • n the Same.
reasonable a claim to ask a hearing from
their generation, have so completely cut themselves
4 INTKODUCTORY.
off from the generations of philosophers who went
before them by the adoption of an artificial and
novel diction as Immanuel Kant has done. By
this alone he could not but separate himself from
the earlier thinking of his own youth and early
manhood, as also from the thinking of his own gen-
eration, and at the same time load himself with
the Herculean task of constructing and forcing
upon his readers a peculiar and artificial termi-
nology of his own. No writer of modern times, at
least no one who has written so voluminously and so
ably as Kant, has made so few references or allusions
to the great philosophic thinkers of other times and
to their opinions. That he had thought earnestly
upon the same themes which had occupied their at-
tention is abundantly evident; but for some reason
or other he seems to have scorned to put himself en
rapport with these great thinkers, or to hold with
them any intimate relations of either indebtedness
or repudiation. Whether it was owing to the depth
of the dogmatic slumber in which Wolf had over-
whelmed his spirit, or the suddenness and complete-
ness of his awakening by Hume, or the delirious
intoxication and delight with which his own im-
agined discoveries seemed to inspire him, whatever
was the cause or the occasion, it is certain that he
INTRODUCTORY, 5
spake to his generation in a strange philosophical
dialect which it has been difficult for many of his in-
terpreters to master, and which some have rashly but
not unnaturally concluded was scarcely worth the
mastering. But notwithstanding the uncouthness
of the dialect which Kant employed, he compelled
his generation to listen to his words and to attempt
to solve the problems which he proposed. Many
professed not to understand his meaning, and many
complained with reason of the strangeness and
harshness of his terminology, but those who listened
could not escape the obligation to answer those of
his questions which they could not fail to understand.
§ 3. Another excellent thing he accomplished :
He made the men of his time under- Kant's impor-
stand that certain of the questions which tan»;^Services
■^ to Modern
he propounded must be answered after Thought.
a way to which they had not been accustomed
befoi'e.* As the result of his teachings and argu-
ments, Speculative Science discovered new necessi-
ties, even though she felt herself unable to satisfy
them. First of all, Philosophy was forced to confess
* Daher wird man, wo es sich um die Principien, die eigentliche
Anfgabe der Philosophie, handelt, nie vor Kant vorbeigehen diirfen.
Mag man in der Lusting des Problems von Kant abweichen miissen,
man wird immer von Kant lernen, wie man es zuniichst anfzufassen
und anzufassen. A. Trendelenburg, Hist. Beitr. zur Philos., iii, 172.
6 INTRODUCTORY.
that she could not ignore Theology. Religions un-
Pispeciaiiy belief was taught that the shallows in
Theoio'^y which it had been content to wade were
and Ethics. bordered b}" a deep and boundless sea.
As Faith was driven from one of its fancied strong-
holds to another, it was seemingly to seek and to
find its refuge only in ethical convictions and
ethical authorit}'. Whatever impression was made
by Kant's speculative system, its ethical tone was
felt to be lofty and commanding in its every
strain. Wherever the Kantian philosophy was
accepted, a noble and high-toned Stoicism took the
place of the prevalent sensual and self-indulgent
Epicureanism. Self-sacrifice and self-control were
honored, and self-indulgence was put to shame.
The old and sterner German virtues came to the
front, which had been systematically dishonoi'ed by
the corrupting sensualism of Voltaire in the youth-
ful court of the Great Frederick, and the scarcely
less debauching sentimentalism of Rousseau. The
new German literature, certainly the better part of
it, such as was represented by Schiller and his
school, was animated by a genuine, if it was an
oversti-ained and romantic, ethical fervor. It is
almost universally acknowledged, and cannot be
denied, that it was in the Kantian school that the
INTROnrCTORY. 7
seeds were sown of those better aspirations of patri-
otism and self-control, of heroism and of faith,
which were first so nobly tested in the war of the
liberation and which in our own time triumphed so
conspicuously in the resuscitation of Germany and
its final consolidation in the New German Empire.
The influence of the Kantian Ethics upon faith
in the supernatural and in the Christian Their Effect
verities seemed at first less favorable "''°"
in the
than upon faith in human duty and supernatural,
patriotic self-sacrifice. This may be largely ascribed
to the weakness of theology itself, which required
a radical disintegration before it could rise to a
newer and better life. Whatever may have been
true of the immediate effects of the Critical Phil-
osophy, it cannot be denied that so soon as super-
natural Christianity rallied from its shallow nat-
uralism, as it did in fact at the call of many
earnest thinkers, it assumed a loftier ethical tone
and proposed to itself a more positive and elevated
spiritual ideal than ever before. It was doubtless
true that Kant was forced by the logic of his own
ethical system to dispense with and openly to dis-
honor the supernatural and the personal as of com-
paratively little consequence in the Christian his-
tory, and as even a corrupting element : but the
8 INTRODUCTORY.
final eflfect of his teachings, whether by action or
reaction, has invested its supernatural facts to those
who received them with a profounder spiritual sig-
nificance and clothed them with new spiritual power.
It may be conceded that for one or two generations
the Kantian Ethics have been used as a weapon of
effective assault upon historic Christianity in Ger-
many, England, and America, while yet it may be
asserted with undoubted truth, that his earnest and
practical ethical spirit has animated the defenders
of historic Christianity with higher and nobler con-
ceptions of its spiritual import and enabled them
the better to understand and defend it as both the
necessity and the strength of modern thought.
§ 4. It will not fail to occur to many of my read-
, ^ ers that the Kantian Ethics became a
Influenceupon
Speculation significant power in English thought and
and Literature
in England feeling long before the Kantian Meta-
physics had begun to be appreciated or
understood. The eloquent Coleridge is usually cred-
ited with having been the earliest effective exponent
of both. Some literary critics would find in the
awakened interest in the romantic school of Ger-
man poetry, the first effect of the Kantian impulse.
Even if this were so, Coleridge was foremost even in
responding to this awakening power and finding in
IN-TBODUCTORY. 9
it a more profound and wide-reaching significance.
If, however, we limit ourselves to ethics proper
we can find no writer who so distinctly and fer-
vently insisted as did Coleridge on the need of a
better speculative system than that which had been
accepted in England, and who also taught that Kant
provided for this better system in his distinction be-
tween the Reason and the Understanding. The
voice of Coleridge was indeed the voice of one cry-
ing in the wilderness, bewildering indeed at times,
even when inspiring, as is the voice of every
prophet, but it was loud and clear in its denuncia-
tion of the ethics taught in the English Universities
and embodied in Paley's popular text-book. The
present readers of Coleridge's criticisms of Paley
and his expositions of Kant, find the last seriously
defective in scientific exactness, representing Jacobi
rather than Kant; but if they have attained to even
a slight measure of the historic sense they cannot
fail to acknowledge the signal service which he ren-
dered in defending the nobler features of the system
taught by Jacobi's great master. Carlyle. as a rep-
resentative of Kant, was somewhat later than Cole-
ridge, and far less philosophical than he in his pre-
tensions and his achievements, though perhaps he was
equally fervent in his practical aims. It is of little
10 INTRODUCTORY.
consequence which of the two was the more efficient
in introducing the new Ethics to the English public,
or how large was the share which James Marsh,
George Ripley, and Ralph Waldo Emerson might
claim in furthering the same general movement in
America. Most intelligent readers know that what
after Kant was called the Transcendental Ethics
attracted the attention and enlisted the sympathy
of a large following in both England and the United
States, and made itself felt in their literature and
their criticism, in their politics, and their theology.
This movement led many to new theories of man's
moral nature, to new definitions and principles in
speculative ethics, and was followed by the most
important consequences in their modes of thinking
and feeling in respect to the most vital questions
of speculative and practical interest.
We may say indeed that the Kantian Ethics when
conceived in this somewhat indefinite signification
has had a far more positive and wide-spread influ-
ence in both England and America than the Kantian
Metaphysics. The latter has, indeed, of late, through
translations and comments, received much attention
from speculative thinkers for its own sake and as
a preparation for and transition stage to the later
schools of German speculation. The former, the
INTRODUCTORY. 11
Ethics, has not so frequently been fonnaliy ex-
pounded or carefully criticised, while yet it has
been accepted by very many in a positive but rather
indiscriminating w^ay, as being in its distinctive
features eminently worthy of confidence and the
noblest work of its eminent defender. The Kantian
Ethics as a speculative system or as related to the
Kantian metaphysics has rarely, if ever, been the
subject of careful and thorough criticism by any
English writer. For this reason, if for no other, it
is at present the more inviting theme for both critic
and reader.
The treatment of this subject is not without its
difficulties. Some of these difficulties
Ditticiilties
have already been suggested. Others in Criticising
.,, 1,1 1 1 the Same.
Will make themselves known as we pro-
ceed. Kant is a writer whom it is not always easy
to interpret to an English reader, even if his philo-
sophical position, his terminology, and his German
style presented no peculiar embarrassments. His
system, if he can be said to have a system, is by no
means so coherent or so closely stated as his uncrit-
ical admirers contend, and as some of his commen-
tators insist. Let us expect, then, that serious diffi-
culties in understanding and criticising him will be
manifest as we proceed, and let the expectation
12 IXTRODUCTORY.
arouse us to resolute effort. Of one thing the earnest
student may be confident, and that is that the ques-
tions which Kant proposes are invested with an
interest and importance which cannot easily be over-
estimated. Whether or not these questions are all
rightly handled, or whether the solutions for which
Kant contends are satisfactory or disappointing —
they are all discussed in a manly temper, and with
an effort at thoroughness which puts to shame every
solicitation of indolence and every incitement of pas-
sion or partisanship.
KANT'S ETHICS.
CHAPTER I.
PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES — THEIR
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
§ 5. Kant's ethical system may be found in the
following treatises, which were published
Titles of
in the order and at the times which are Ethical
. ,. ,111 Treatises.
indicated below.
1. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785,
usually translated as The Fundamental Principles
of the Metaphysics of Morals.
2. Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, 1788, Cri-
tique of the Practical Reason.
3. Die Metaphysik der Sitten, 1797, The Meta-
physics of Morals (in two parts, respectively of
Rights, and Duties).
In order to appreciate fully the relations of these
treatises to Kant's speculative system, the reader
should scrutinize them in connection not only with
one another, but with the Critique of Pure Reason,
with which he astonished the world in 1781, and
13
14 kant's ethics.
also with his Prolegomena to Every Possible Future
System of Metaphysics, which was published two
years after, i.e., two years before his first treatise
upon Ethics. The treatise entitled The Critique of
the Faculty of Judgment (Die Kritik der Urtheils-
Kraft) also contains some special ethical matter.
In all these treatises Kant endeavors to be consistent
with himself, aiming in each to be true to the
fundamental principles which he had laid down in
respect to the sources, the authority, and the im-
port of every description of knowledge. In the
Critique of Pure Reason, published four years before
his first ethical treatise, he says very little of morals,
although it is evident from the little that he does
say that he had anticipated very distinctly the difii-
cult questions which would be forced upon his atten-
tion by the logic of his philosophical theory; that he
faced them resolutely, and to some extent anticipated
the solutions which he subsequently expanded and
defended in his formal treatises on Ethics proper.
§ 6. The Critique of Pure Reason, it hardly
need be said to those who have read a
The Critique
of Pure few pages, is painfully thought and
often painfully expressed, apparently to
the writer and certainly to the reader. It is charac-
teristic of this volume that in it Kant seems to
PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 15
be a seeker, rather than a finder, of" trutli in liis
aims and his processes; that at many points and
turns he seems more or less uncertain of his own
position, and to take unwearied pains — not always
successfully — both in thinking himself clear and in
expressing his meaning clearly to others. The
probable and even possible inferences which might
be derived from his doctrines by his inquirers and
antagonists seem to intrude upon his attention at
every step, and he is constantly tempted to pause
and turn aside from his onward course to explain or
overcome these objections and difficulties.
§ 7. In the Pi'olegomena, written two years after-
ward, he writes in a different tone — rpj^^
assuming and maintaining a different Prolegomena,
attitude. Throughout this work his air is that of
a combatant who is sure of his position and con-
fident of victory. He writes like the discoverer
of an " open sesame" to all future metaphysics of
whatever sort, which he has only need to shout
and at once every secret metaphysical door will
fly open. Instead of inquiring, he propounds; in-
.stead of arguing, he explains. The very title of
his treatise indicates his position and his feelings, it
being a triumphant proclamation of what had been
found by himself to be necessary for all future
1(> kaxt's ethics.
metaphysicians by the experiences and failures of
those who have gone before. The style and diction
are in full sympathy with this new attitude. The
writer is simple, cheerful, and almost defiant in his
tone. His opinions are propounded, not inferred.
He does not delay to answer objections: he scarcely
notices them. He simply lays down the law, as one
who is justified in speaking with authority.
The Prolegomena is confined to speculative meta-
Relation to physics, and leaves all ethical questions
Ethics. untouched. But the Critique had fur-
nislied some distinct anticipations of Kant's ethical
system. To these he was impelled by the desire to set
aside the objections which might be urged against his
speculative conclusions so far as these had been
reached, viz.: that speculative knowledge, as such, is
only trustworthy or valuable so far as it can explain
the possibility of experience: urging that if it be
true that neither the Soul, nor the Kosmos, nor God
can be reached by the pure reason, then it follows
that ethics must be the final arbiter which alone
can give us solid reality of any sort, especially con-
cerning the Soul in its relations to the future life
and the Supi'eme.
The way in which ethics can render this service is
explained by Kant at some length in the second
FHIXCIPAL ETHICAL TKEATISES. 17
chapter of the Transcendentale Methodenlehre,
Zweites Hauptstiick, in which he outlines the ethi-
cal system whicli lie developed four and seven years
afterward in the classical ethical treatises already
named {cf.%% 5, 11, 12).
This preliminary outline deserves a brief notice,
if for no other reason, because it serves to explain
the original transition or connecting bridge which
was designed in the mind of Kant to transfer his
readers from his speculative to his ethical theory.
It may l)e compared to the rough outline or hast}^
sketch of what afterward became an elaborate
drawing, or, more exactly, to the germ of what
afterward grew into a fully developed gi-owth. We
prefer to explain these relations here, in order that
the intimate dependence of the two parts of Kant's
system may be made more clear. We do not care to
decide which of these theories was first developed,
or was first suggested to his own mind. We very
well know which was first drawn out in the detail
of explanation and defence, lint inasmuch as we
find this ethical germ snugly imliedded in this spec-
ulative environment, we shall find it convenient first
to explain this environment, that we may analyze the
germ itself, and follow its subsequent development.
§ 8. It is well known that the question with
18 kant's ethics.
Critique of which Kant sets off in his Critique of
Pure Reason p^^.^ jieASon is this : Are synthetic
Fundamental •'
Question of. Jiidf/nteiifs (i pHori possible? Are there
such judgments, and how are the}' to be accounted
for? The first of these questions is, in Kant's view,
answered in the asking. No one will deny that there
must be such judgments. Otherwise there could be
no science, no mathematics, no logic, no physics, and
no psychology.* Every one of these sciences may
be traced back to certain comprehensive judgments
which are synthetic, i.e., to propositions of which
the predicate is not contained in nor implied by
the subject, but in which it is affirmed of or super-
added to it by a direct and intuitive affirmation.
As such an affirmation enlarges one's knowledge, it is
called si/iitJietir, in contrast to one which merely an-
alyzes or expands the import already affirmed of its
subject, and as it does this by a direct assent of the
intellect without the intermediation of reasoning, it
is called a priori. Examples of such knowledge are:
Two right lines cinniot inclose a space. All bodies
are extended. Evenj event is caused. Psi/chical phe-
* The advocates of the doctrine (hat ethics furnislies the foundation
for speculative truth of every kind might tiud in tliis argument tlie
justification of their position thus: inasmucli as without science man
cannot live a human life — llie life worthy of a man, to which his higher
aspirations, faith, and convictions c()ini)el liim — it follows that these
synthetic speculative judgments must be true.
PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 19
nomena are experienced hi siicressio)/. The possibili-
ty of such propositions is still further explained by
ultimate data, which are given by and to the pure
reason, in connection with the operations of intui-
tion, as these are exemplified in the outer and inner
sense and in the higher processes of reasoning.
These data are the forms of Sense, which are Space
and Time, the Categories of the Understanding, and
the three Ideas of the Reason, viz.: the Soul, the
Kosraos, and God. Without these a priori relations
and the concepts and propositions that depend on
them, Kant argues at length there can be no ra-
tional knowledge. In every description and degree
of knowledge, even in the lowest, more or fewer of
these a priori elements are recognized or implied.
§ 9. It is also to be noticed as a capital feature
of Kant's system that the materials of
Phenomena
knowledge, i.e., its a posteriori elements vs. Things in
. T he ni Strives
given by experience, as contradistin-
guished from those relations which are given
a priori, are assumed to he pheiiomeHa — spiritual
or corporeal — but are not things at all, i.e., not
things in tJieniselres. When we face the sense-
world, we do not discern things or realities, but only
phenomena, as sights, feels, and smells, etc. So in
the spirit world we are conscious only of sensations,
20 KANT'8 ETH10!5.
imaginations, and thoughts, but not of oitrsclres as
seeinof, hearing, reineiahering, or imagining. Wliat
men are accustomed to conceive as realities by emi-
nence, i.e., the realities of the material world, and
mayhap in the view of some, the realities of spirit —
these are only phenomena as contrasted with things
in themselves, i.e., solid realities. These phenomena
we connect in groups, by sense-forms and thought-
categories, calling a group of sense-phenomena a
tree, a house, or a horse, uniting them as substance
and attribute, as cause and eifect, etc., but never
at all reaching things in themselves, Dinge an sick.
These remain ever beyond our reach, ever eluding
our grasp. The nearest semblance of real oneness
which we can come to is some unity of apperception
which we can revive or modify after an order or
scheme of the imagination derived from time and
space relations.
In contrast with these sense-objects and sense-
groups of phenomena we grasp after
° Noumena.
Noumena, i.e., intelligible realities, as
possible and actual. We come nearest to these
when we seem to be conscious of our own Ego or
self, but even then we find that what we seize is
but an illusion — an illusion of thought or a
figure of speech. However imposing and compli-
PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 21
cated these may seem to be, they are only plic-
)ioiii('Ha, suggesting, it may be, the iioiniiriKt. the
tilings which can never be reached. When, however,
we rise to the highest forms of knowledge, other a
priori elements present themselves and seem to be
required to make possible our highest moods of ex-
perience, possible or rational. These are the so-
called Ideas of the Reason, viz.: the Soul, the orderly
Kosmos, and the Self-existent, or the Absolute: God!
Without each and all of these a priori elements, we
can neither employ nor apply the lessons of expe-
rience, we can attain neither speculative knowledge
nor practical wisdom. And yet, for all this, we
have no scientific authority for believing any of
these objects of thought to be real, although we can-
not avoid reasoning and acting as if they were so.
i; 10. This is a brief statement of Kant's specu-
lative system and the position into which
Limits of
it brings man in respect to his con- Human
fidence in the speculative reason. Phe-
nomena are known and knowable, and only phe-
nomena, phenomena external and internal — never
things in themselves. Noumena are neither knowa-
ble nor known. Phenomena are connected with one
another by I'elations a priori of space and time, also
by the relations of thought, making complete the
22 kant\s ethics.
semblances but never revealing the realities of either
things or spirits. Both these again can be con-
nected, i.e., regulated by the ideas suggested by the
mental and material universe, both being dependent
on and united by. the uncreated God. while yet these
ideas are vouched for by no absolute and <i priori
certainty.
It hardly need be said that this outcome of
Di a D int- Kent's Critique is, so far, the exact
ment. opposite of what would be anticipated
from the purposes and promises with wiiich he
began. It would seem from the confidence of
his promises at the outset, that he was about to
introduce us to a wide range of spiritual knowledge,
knowledge which should be equally clear and posi-
tive on the spiritual and on the material side. Al-
lured by these promises, we yield ourselves submis-
sively and confidently to his guidance, following
him step by step ; but at each step our footing be-
comes less firm, the path itself sinks deeper and
deeper, and at the end we hardly know whether it is
treacherous marsh or iridescent cloud-land on which
we seem now to tread and then to fly. But just as
we are overwhelmed in the mire of uncertainty or
n . . are entangled most hopelessly in the net-
Promised ° i »
Deliverance, work of a priori relations, to which we
PRINCIPAL ETIIICAJ. TREATISES. 23
cling for deliverance, to tind that they do nothing
but hold themselves together, we are hailed by our
guide with words of cheer in the Kanon of Pure
Reason. Under this title he ventures to assure us
that his ethical system will remove all the difficulties
in which criticism had involved us, that it will bring
light and solidity and certainty both to our knowl-
edge and our faith, that it will give back to us
material things and spiritual entities, God and
Immortality, all of which had seemed to take their
flight at his conjuring wand — in other words, that
tlie Critique of Practical Reason will by the authority
of its simple imperative deliver us from the sjDirit of
doubt with which the criticism of the speculative
reason had overwhelmed us.
i; 11. The elements of this would-be construc-
tive ethics are briefly as follows: Fii'st Elements of
of all. our teacher advises us that it is ^^"*^ ,.
Constructive
of comparatively little consequence what Ethics,
our speculative views may be, even in respect to
the most important subjects. We ought not to
be seriously disturbed by speculative criticism of
any sort, inasmuch as after all our chief concern is
with what we should he and do, not with what we
can kiioir. The questions which we need most to
settle are practical questions, and concern the free-
24 KA^■TV KTIIICS.
dom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the
existence of God. inasmuch as these atfect what we
can do in the exercise of our freedom. As this free-
dom is intelligent, its impulses must be stimulated
and directed by enlightened reflection on the motives
which impel it to action. Hence, if there be free-
dom there must be knowledge of what is profitable
and useful and desirable, not of what merely seems
to be. but of what (icfiialh/ Is. It also implies the
knowledge of what ought to be done — consequently
that which if it ought, inai/ be done. Both these
descriptions of motives are Jairs or imperatives, either
the imperative of interest, saying: If you will gain
this or that, do so or so; or the imperative of free-
dom, telling us what ought to be done, and therefore
implying that it can be done, in the exercise of man's
highest prerogative. That is. so far as the direction
of conduct is concerned, it is of no consequence
whether what seems to be actually is what it ap-
pears to be. or whether we can know what it is, or
whether anything is, m the sense of reality, pro-
vided we are confronted with the imperative. Do this
or tJiat.
With the mutual relations of these two kinds of
law we have nothing to do, so long as the law of
duty unconditionally presents what ive oax/ld to do.
PRINCIPAL ETHI(A]> TREATISES. '40
Xor is it of any consequence whether they are or
are not reconcilable, or whether they have any com-
mon root. The prescription of reason still remains
supreme. Do flxft ichir/i is rif/lif.
^ 12. In respect to our highest good, however, or
the sintiiiuim boHiiin, the question of Ti,ree impor-
the mutual relations of what is and ^f " Q^e^^^io"^
1 ropof e« by
ought to be, is most important. The Kam.
satisfactory answer to this turns upon the three
inquiries: What am I knoir'f Wlmt oii(/lif I to do?
]VJt((t tiiai/ I hope fofi:'
TJie first of these questions had been partially but
unsatisfactorily answered in the terms: I can know
only phenomena, not nouinena or things m them-
selves. I can also know their relations in some
sense, provided it be not what might be called their
nature or essence. TJie second, being practical, can-
not be answered in terms of intellectual knowledge,
inasmuch as intellectual knowledge only gives us an
acquaintance with phenomena, but never with reali-
ties or things in themselves. The third, however,
is both practical and theoretical, and in fact is
answered thus: You can know that the something
which you hope for will be, because it ought to be.
You can know there is a God and a future life,
because both must be, in order that virtue may be
26 rant's ethics.
rewarded and vice may be punished; or, in other
words, that what ought to be must be. In other
words, tlie problem of knowledge, which, as a prob-
lem of the speculative reason, has hitherto been un-
solved, and baffled all our attempts to explain it, is
settled by the impei-ative demands of the practical
reason. The comprehensive principle which is the
basis of all practical knowledge, and indirectly of
all knowledge whatever, is the principle that the
virtuous ought to be happy. They cannot be happy
unless there is another life. They cannot be happy
unless God exists to reward them and to punish the
bad ; or, more comprehensively, unless certain sem-
blances or phenomena of things are conformed to
things as they are, i.e., to things in themselves.
§ 13. Whatever on second thought we may think
Plausibility of ^^ ^^^^^ argument, it cannot be denied
His Solution. ^Ij^i- ^^ ^j.^^ yjg^y -^ gggi^^j. plausible, and
for the reason that it recognizes moral relations
a.s 2) I'ctcti call 1/ supreme — and if ethical relations are
practically supreme, they are not only themselves
speculatively true, but they impart authority and
validity to certain relations and things which are
purely speculative. When tried by the criterion
of the realities of common sense, w^hich holds to
the possibility of the knowledge of nouinena, at
PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 37
least in the world of spirit, which recognizes a
community of relations between the intellectual
and the ethical universe, common sense asserts
that the ethical and the emotional stand high-
est of all rational considerations as grounds of
truth and evidences of realit3\ But when viewed
against the background of the Kantian scepticism,
which limits all knowledge to phenomena, and.
after denying the capacity of reason to discover the
objective truth which it yet asserts must be as-
sumed, comes in to help reason out of the ditch into
which it had plunged it, by requiring it to abandon
its own appropriate functions, the argument is not
likely to be so readily welcomed as a helper. The
blow which first strikes a man to the earth, if it is a
blow of dishonor, is far more likely to be remem-
bered and resented than the helping hand which is
subsequently moved in condescending pity to lift
him up. Unsophisticated and logical common sense
suggests the thought that if the mind be as limited
in the range and authority of its knowledge as
Kant has written a long book to persuade us is true,
then we can know only the relations of phenomena,
in ever\' form or method of reasoning, the specula-
tive and practical alike. Likewise when I reason
that T shall live another life because I ought to be
28 rant's hthkjs.
rewarded or punished, and shall find a God living to
deal with me iiccordiiig to my deserts, then I have
already assumed tlx' i-cality of two uoiimeiia at
least, if not Ihe reality of three; certainly that of the
conscious Ego and God the rewarder, and, it would
seem, of the Kosmos, as a permanent noumenon,
with its changing phenomena of a here and a
hereafter.
i; 14. I)i»nl)l less Kant easily persuaded l)imself,
oiiiiKiitioii t.. "^^ ^^^ many of his readers, that he re-
CoiiHisteiicy. li^ves himself from this a[)parent in-
consistency by his view of the superior character
of ethical relations. But he cannot thereby evade
the obligation- to be consistent with himself. He
tells us, indeed, thnt the practical reason not
only affirms certnin relations of conduct, by syn-
thetic judgments h priori, but that it also en-
forces them in the f(jriiis of command. He asserts,
moreover, that these commands involve relations of
merit and demerit, and that these i-o([uire a being
who is able and willing to enforce them. Hut he
forgets altogethei' to recognize the truth that in all
these assertions he lias overstepped the limits within
which he had entrenclKid hiinsell: Ihat every one of
these ethical demands supposes noumcna in the form
of personal beings — that only the Ego as an exist-
PKIXCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 20
ing being, and not at all as a phenomenon, can
respond to a command or apprehend merit or a pos-
sible iiii mortality, and that all the plausibility that
his argument gains when regarded as a proof for the
Ego, or a future life, or an existing God. is derived
from the dexterity, or, rather, we should say. the
unconsciousness, with which at the critical or turn-
ing points of his argument Kant adroitly substitutes
the noumenal for the phenomenal, and interchanges
the relations which are appropriate to each. That
moral relations and moral interests may be the most
convincing of all in respect to the continued exist-
ence of the soul, and that the moral constitution of
the soul may be the one transparent medium
through wliich we gain and keep our faith in the
moral pei'fection and righteous government of God.
are both most important truths. These truths lend
color and plausibility to Kant's ethical remedy
against the scepticism he had created: but they
cannot in the least justify or alleviate the sugges-
tion of the scepticism with which he had pi-eviously
cut the nerve of our confidence in every description
of truth, whether rational or ethical,
ii 1"). It should be remem])ered that
This Soliilion
this exposition and defence which Kant Pi-ciiminaiy
has furnished of his ethical theorv is '
30 rant's ethics.
merely an anticipation of what he subsequently
expounded at lengtli in his two principal treatises.
As we have already stated, the attitude which he
assumed with respect to his ethical system became
more positive and assured after the publication of
the first Critique. His statements became more and
more dogmatic, his defences more assured, and his
illustrations more complete. He never, however,
parts with his intellectual dignity, or loses aught of
the most complete self-respect or reverence for his
own pei'sonal uprightness.
Thus far we have been occupied with these ethical
anticipations only, as we find them in the Critique
of Pure Reason. It was four years after its publi-
cation that he took a more positive attitude, and
gave to the world the Fundamental Principles of the
Metaphysics of Morals. Die Grundlegung zur Meta-
physik der Bitten. ITS-"). In this treatise he proposes
to himself the task of positively determining what
are the ultimate grounds or fundamental ejements
of moral science, as preliminary to the Critique
of Practical Reason. So far as the titles of these
two works would indicate a ditference in them as
objects or products of thought, the first would be
an analytic search for the principles of the science
of dutv. and the second a critical examination of
PRINCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 31
those functions of the same reason which originate
and sustain these principles or conclusions. The
second treatise, which in a sense was a supplement,
or completion, of the first, was published in 1788,
three years later.
§ 16. In scrutinizing these treatises, we need to
be reminded, first, that it is not easy Kanfs
under any circumstances to thread our j^""thVaiui
way through the mazes of Kant's anal- Absolute,
yses and argumentations. Especially is this true
of his ethical writings, for the reason that man}^ of
the underlying practical truths which give color
and dignity to his discussions are so elevated and
weighty, and in their applied signification seem
so axiomatic and self-evident. Whether or not they
are scientifically exact, they are unquestionably in
some practical signification clothed with the highest
authority. Hence, in reading Kant's ethical writ-
ings, we are often exposed to the danger, and this
is often serious, of confounding popular with scien-
tific propositions, and of attaching a metaphysical
import and philosophical authority to distinctions and
propositions that are simply practical, and popular.
To avoid this danger, the following observations ma}'
not be out of place.
A sharp distinction should be made and held
32 Kant's ethics.
between those metaphysical principles* which are
relatively and those which are absolutely primitive
and fundamental, i.e., between those propositions
which are axiomatic to one science and a group of
sciences, on the one hand, and those which, on the
other, are fundamental to all the sciences and to
scientific thinking as such. For example, it will not
be questioned that a few physical sciences rest upon
certain principles which are peculiar to themselves,
and yet are common to them all. The relations
being common, the concepts and principles are com-
mon. When grouped together, they constitute the
metaphysics which is common and fundamental
alike to all the physical sciences, as mechanics,
optics, chemistry, etc. Similarly, each individual
science has its own metaphysics, and we speak briefly
and confidently of the metaphysics of mathematics,
of chemistry, etc. Similarly, we speak of the meta-
physics of the organic or vital sciences in common,
and of the metaphysics of plant and animal life in
special. Similarly, it may be supposed that there
may be special and general metaphysics of all spirit-
ual beings in common, and of the intellectual, emo-
tional, and voluntary activities in particular.
*Por variety in the signififatioii of Principles see Porter: Iliunan
Intellect, § 514.
PKlJSrCIPAL ETHICAL TKEATISES. 33
§ 17. We observe here that the special meta-
physical principles which are funda- Fnndamentai
Principles
mental to ethics have the very peculiar of Ethics
attraction of beino- easilv apprehended ''^"'^^'^^'"'^*"'"
" .'11 gtood and
by, and, so to speak, accessible to, all Assented to.
men. They commend themselves to the assenting
convictions of all. More than all, they appeal to
the emotions of mankind, and to the emotions
which are the strongest and most tender. They
are clothed with the most sacred authority, and
evoke the noblest and the most disinterested of
the affections. For these reasons it often happens
that men who deny all other axioms, because per-
haps they cannot understand them for the general
or abstract language in which they are phrased,
cannot withhold their assent to the axioms of eth-
ical truth, and, for the simple reason that these
are the only principles with which they are familiar
and which they can understand, are ready to ac-
cept them as the only truths which are invested
with self-evident certainty. Hence, should the de-
mand be made upon them in view of the obscurity
or the uncertainty of all other fundamental truths,
to accept ethical truths as the possible foundations of
all the rest, the demand finds a comparatively ready
response. Every other special mpta[)hysics is to their
3
34 • K A NT's ETHICS.
mind more or less abstract and unfamiliar, whether
it be the metaphysics of mathematics, or chem-
istry, or physics, etc. The same is true of general
metaphysics, i.e., the metaphysics of everything
that is knowable, whether subdivided into spirit and
matter, or generalized as being, finite and infinite.
B);t the special axioms of duty, the truths and laws
which are suggested on all occasions and enforced by
universal experience, these are so clear, so severe,
and so true that no man can question them. What-
ever else a man may question, he will never question
these "truths which wake to perish never."' It is
not surprising that the mind which is shaken by
every other scepticism should not only rest upon
ethical truths as unshaken, but should also accept
these as giving authority to truth of ever}^ kind, and
as being themselves the cornerstones of all knowl-
edge and the tests of all our other faiths, whether in
man, or nature, or God.
§ 18. We should never lose sight of the fact that
, , . the speculative metaphysics of Kant, as
In Speculative ^ ^
Principles presented in the Critique of Pure Rea-
Kant Claims
Oniya Relative SOU, not onlv failed to procure assent to
ion y. itself as thoroughly trustworthy, but
formally renounced for itself any other than a partial
and relative supremacy. While its able expounder
PRIXCIPAL ETHICAL TREATISES. 35
contended for the necessity of assuming certain fun-
damental principles of the speculative reason as the a
priori conditions of all knowledge, he as deliberately
and scientifically contends that this necessity is
simply subjective and carries with it no objective
reality. The forms and categories and ideas which
enter into the very structure of all scientific knowl-
edge, are held by him to be simply necessary to make
experience possible and science trustworthy. The
a priori or metaphysical elements are necessary,
otherwise common experience and reasoned science
would be impossible. But as to whether these sub-
jective elements have also any objective reality, he
teaches us that we can neither affirm nor deny. It
is not surprising that under the pressure of this
necessity he should have reverted to the sacred rela-
tions of dut}' as the sheet anchor of both science
and faith, that in this desperate need the practical
axioms of prudence and duty should take occasion
to assert their superior attractiveness and authority,
nor that the appeal should also be made to them
as competent to clear up whatever else seemed ob-
scure, and to restore the faith in scientific truth
I?
which had been deliberately undermined. In other
words, it is not surprising that the axioms of a
special science should have been generalized so
36 rant's ethics.
broadly as to serve as a speculative basis lor the
entire truth of the sciences in general, and that the
fundamental truths of ethics should be accepted as
fundamental, not only to the successful conduct of
life, but to every description of knowledge whatever.
§ 19. The reasons why such a transfer and con-
fusion of in'inciples and of thoucrht
Danger of Con- '■ '■ ^
founding would be plausible, have already been
Speculative
and Ethical e.xplained. That Kant had sought to
""^'^"'''' prove the objective untrustworthiness
of any and every form of purely speculative meta-
physics, has been made sufficiently clear. As we
have already explained, it is no part of our duty to
discuss at any length the question whether these
attempts to weaken our confidence in this trust-
worthiness were successful. That inquiry must be
transferred to the critical examination of his specu-
lative system. Nor have we as yet attempted to
show that his effort to substitute an ethical for a
rational metaphysics was a failure. We have only
suggested certain reasons why ethical or practical
principles might readily be accepted by many stu-
dents and readers as fundamental.for all knowledge,
when there was no occasion to resort to them, on
the one hand, nor any demonstrated capacity in
them to meet the demand, on the other. It was
PRINCIPAL P:THICAL TREATISES. 37
Kant who attempted to show that they could meet
the supiK)sed exicjenev. It is our first „, „
1 ' o . \\ Q Proceed
duty to inquire whether he was sue- ^ext to the
Examination
cessful. But all this is preliminary to of His Formal
our formal examination of Kant's ethi- ^
cal system as a whole. This examination, we may
expect, will develop the weakness and strength of
his exposition of his views upon every point. Our
critical comments, thus far, have been confined to
the brief anticipations of his ethical theory which we
find in the Critique of Pure Reason.*
The detailed exposition of Kant's ethical system is
found in the two treatises already referred to. We
begin with the first.
* Transceudentale Methodenlclire, 2tes Hauptstiick.
CHAPTER II.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE
METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. *
§ 20. This treatise does not profess to be a com-
The Metaphys- plete discussion of all the metaphysical
ics of Morals ... i • i n i i ^ ^
Tentative principles which are rundamental to
*-*"'y- practical and scientific ethics. It is
rather a statement of its more important prob-
lems, i.e., such as are preliminary to a critical ex-
amination of the practical reason or the so-called
moral faculty, and to a completed and ration-
alized system of duties and precepts as a final
result. The treatise also supposes the reader to be
acquainted with the author's speculative system as
expounded in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the
distinctions which that treatise labors to establish.
The writer had certainly a right to assume that
the doctrines which he had so elaborately ex-
pounded in his magnum opus had by this time
become familiar to every reader of the later trea-
tise, and he does not hesitate to proceed upon this
assumption. In this way we explain and excuse the
brevity and the abruptness of some portions of this
* Grnndlegung ziir Metaphysik der .Sitten.
38
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 30
his first ethical essay, and the apparent obscurity of
some of its allusions.
§ 21. In the preface Kant directs the attention
of the reader to the fact that all knowl-
A Metaphysics
edge is either /'or/^(f/i or material — the o^'^^ora.i^
Possible.
formal concerning itself with the uni-
versal laws or relations of thought, without re-
spect to its objects, while the material respects the
varying properties of existing things as either phys-
ical, i.e., necessar}'', or spiritual, i.e., free. He also
notices that the laws which respect either may re-
spect events as they are or as they ought to be; thus
giving the distinction between physics and ethics.
Then again, we call philosophy empirical so far as it
is based on experience, and metaphysical when it
rests on a priori principles. Consequently, physics
and ethics may be either empirical or pure, so far
as they rest upon either.
These distinctions being established, the writer
proposes the question whether it is possible to estab-
lish a system of ethics that shall be a purely rational
science, and as such " perfectly cleared of every-
thing which is only empirical and which belongs to
anthi'opology."* To this he replies, that such a
* We notice here once for all that the doctrine which Kant so
often refers to and so often rejects under this title, was the current
40 K ant's ethics.
[ihilosophy is possible " is evident from the common
idea of duty and of the moral law/' For example,
the precept, " Thou shalt not lie,"' is not valid for
man alone as man. but also for other rational
beings, and consequently its basis is not to be sought
in man's human nature, nor in his circumstances.
" but a priori simply in the conceptions of the pure
reason. * * * Though this or any other precept
which is founded on mere experience may be in cer-
tain respects universal, yet so far as it rests on an
empirical basis, even only as to its motive, such a
precept, though it may be called a practical rule,
can never be called a moral law * * * Moral
philosophy when applied to man does not borrow
the least thing from the knowledge of man himself
{i.e., from anthropology) but gives laws (/ priori to
him as a rational being. * * * a metaphysics of
moi'als is therefore indispensably necessary, not
merely for speculative reasons, * * * but also
because morals themselves are liable to all sorts of
corruption so long as we are without that clue and
theory received from the aucient schools, that a life of virtue or
moral excellence is "a life according to nature," human nature being
understood by this term. It is singular that Kant should have over-
looked the possible reply to his oft-repeated strictures; that it was
human nature g?/a-rational, that was intended, and that the ideal of
aspiration and the norm of judgment was never the emotional or
the passionate, or, as Kant would <:all it, the empirical, in man.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 41
supreme canon by which to estimate them correctly.
For in order that an action should be morally good,
it is not enough that it should conform to the moral
law, but it should also be done for the ml;e of tlie
law.''
In order to make it clear that the author's theory
of ethical ideas diifers from that which was current
in his time, he calls attention to the doctrine of
Wolf in his Propa?deutic, who contends for the free-
dom of the will as the foundation of moral concepts,
but, in the judgment of Kant, overlooks altogether
the point that it is with acts of pure will, as such,
that moral freedom is especially concerned; in other
words, that the subjective element of freedom, as
such, is not the preeminently ethical element, but
that what is distinctively ethical is the a priori,
motive with which the will is confronted by and from
the reason.
§ 22. In these terms and statements the author
vaguely sketches the theory which he preliminary
proposes to explain and defend at length ^^"i,*!',,'!'!."^ ^^"^
in respect to the fundamental concep- ^vstem.
tions*of scientific morality, and more than vaguely
hints what that theory will inevitably prove to be.
The chief points which he has thus far explicitly
stated, seem to be the following: That moral relations
42 kant's ethics.
are discerned b}' the reason, and by the reason only,
and consequently have no discernible or necessary
relation to the empirical or emotional nature, which
neither enters into their essence nor imparts to them
authority. It follows, as it would seem, that he
holds that neither the nature of man as man nor as
a sensitive, rational being furnishes the ground or
enters into the definition of ethical conceptions, but
that these distinctive elements are simply a priori,
i.e., are a peculiar class of relations, which are dis-
cerned and enforced by the practical reason inde-
pendently and alone. All this is vaguely assumed
in the preface, or intimated as certain to be. the
result of the subsequent discussion. It is also man-
ifest even to the superficial reader that this preface
was written after the essay, and cannot be fully
appreciated till the essay shall have been read, de-
pending as it does for its interpretation and enforce-
ment upon the subsequent discussions of which it
gives an indefinite outline or an obscure anticipa-
tion. It concludes with the programme in which
the author proposes, (1) to proceed from
Division of
Topics in the the common to the philosophical knowl-
Grundlegung. ,
edge ot morals, (2) irom popular,
i.e.., g'Ma.si - rational, morals to its metaphysics,
and (3) from its metaphysics to the Critique of
THE METAPHYSICS OF MOKALS. 43
the Pure Practical Reason — the second treatise,
for which this is the introduction. This pro-
gramme, in a general way, is adhered to by the
author with no great rigor of method: as is
manifest from the digressions and anticipations
which characterize his always somewhat rambling
discussion.
§ 23. The hrst section of the treatise
Import of his
opens with the memorable and often opening
, - _ , . Sentence.
quoted utterance, that JNothing can
possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it,
which can be called good without qualification, except
a good will." If character is compared with gifts of
nature, as intelligence, courage, and gifts of fortune,
as riches, health, or contentment, all these are de-
fective, " if there is not a good will to correct their
|)ossible perversion and to rectify the whole princi-
ple of acting, and adapt it to its end." A man
who is endowed with every other good can never
give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator.
unless he possesses a good will. " Thus a good will
appears to constitute the indispensable condition of
being worthy of happiness. * * * Moreover, a
good will is good, not for what it effects, but for
what it intends, even when it fails to accomplish its
vurposes, * * * as when a man wills the good
44 rant's ethics.
of anothev and is impotent to promote it, or actuall}'
effects just the opposite of what he proposes or
wills."
The author anticipates that this last proposition
may seem extravagant, and for this reason he sub-
jects it to a careful scrutinj^ He urges that if
happiness,* as such, were the chief purpose of na-
ture, this end would have been more effectually pro-
vided for by a simple instinct impelling directly and
invariably to this end, instead of being left to the
fallibility of the individual reason and the caprice of
the individual will. The actual arrangements of
nature, as we find them, would seem to indicate that
they all suppose adaptation to the occasions and ser-
vice of a good will as a good in itself. This good
will as a good in itself must be "'the supreme good
and the condition of every other, even of the desire
of happiness," though it is not the sole or the com-
plete good, inferior and accidental goods being
often connected with or separated from this as the
supreme.
§ 28. Kant proceeds to reason if we seek to
* As though happiness, as sucli. or the production of happiness, had
ever been supposed to have any niorjl excellence, or anything short of
the i>o^(7)i«ri/ production of happiness, and of the hiirhest happiness at
that. .\s though all moralists who are worth considering had not em-
pliasi/ed the good will, or tlic willing of good, as the supreme excel-
lence.
THE METAPHYSICS OF ilOKALS. 45
define this '"good will" — in other words, to define
an act of duty — we must first set aside
Kanfs liitiT-
all those actions which are inconsistent prutation of
the Good Will.
with duty. JNone oi these can proceed
from a "good will.'' We shall also exclude all those
acts which are consistent with duty, and yet are
done from incliiiafion oiihj, and not with a conscious
recognition of them as morally good, (i) An Act
T 1 -i. • J 1 ii from Inclina-
in every such case, it is assumed by the .. „ ^
•' ' -^ tion Not an
author that the act cannot be an act of -'^ct of Dnty.
duty at all. As, for example, a trader is honest
from good policy only, or a man preserves his
life as duty requires, but not because duty re-
quires; or, though to be beneficent where we can
be is a duty, yet if a man is beneficent because of
the delight which follows to his pathological or emo-
tional nature, his acts are not acts of duty, "' For
the maxim of conduct here wants the moral import,
namely, that such actions be done from diit)/, not
from inclination. * * * It is in this manner, un-
doubtedly, that we are to understand those passages
of Scripture, also, in which we are commanded to
love our neighbor, even our enemy. For love,* as an
* We notice here that Kant doeir not recoirnize the i)ossibiIity that
love, or any affection or emotion, shonld be impelled or regiil;ited Ijy the
will, but conceives of the will as the controller of the actions only, j.^".,
the bodily actions. Consequently, the comprehensive law, '-Thou shall
/ove the Lord thy God," becomes to him impossible and nnnieanint.'.
46 KAXT's ETIIIUS.
afiPection. cannot be commanded, but only beneficence
for duty's sake, even though we are not impelled to
it by any inclination, nay, are even repelled by a
natural and unconquerable aversion. It is prac-
tical love, and not pafJiolof/ical, a love which is seated
in the will, and not in the propensions of sense; in
principles of action, and not of tender sympathy;
and it is this love only which can be commanded."
§ 24. The second proposition is, " that an action
(2)The Maxim, done from duty derives its moral worth,
no^ u> IK. ^^^|. £j.Qj^^ j.|jg purpose which is to be at-
Moral Worth, tained by it,"' but from the maxim by
which it is determined, and that its moral character,
therefore, does not depend on the purpose being
realized, but merely on the " principle of the voli-
tion " which has produced the action. Such a prin-
ciple is formal or a priori, as contrasted with a
spontaneous or material spring of action.
We observe here that by maxim Kant means the
action in the mind of the individual, the intended
object, when expressed as purposed by the individual,
and thus indicating the rule by which he is in fact
controlled.
(3) Respect S 25. The third proposition derived
.?' ^!-. ,'r from the foregoing is, that "dutv is the
Essential to o f? ■
Duty. necessity of acting from respect for the
THE METAPHYSICS 0f""M0RALS. 47
law. I may have an inclination for an object as
an effect of my action, but I cannot have respect
for it, just for this reason, that it is an effect and
not an energy of will. * * * Jt is onlij what is con-
nected with the will as a principle, but by no means
as an effect — what does not subserve my inclination,
but overpowers it, or, at least, in case of choice ex-
cludes it from its calculation — in other words, it is
simply the law of itself, which can be an object of
respect, and hence a command.
•■ But what sort of law can there be, the very
thought of which must determine the The Content
will, without reference to any effect? °^j™_'*°j'^^^j
* * * Every impulse, as such, has Law.
been set aside from being a principle. Nothing
remains but the universal conformity of action
to law in general." In other words, " I am never
to act otherwise than so that I could also will
that my maxim should become a universal law."
What the author intends by this very abstract state-
ment he illustrates by an example: I ask, may I ever
when in distress make a promise, with the intention
not to keep it? We do not ask, Is it never prudent,
but is it ever right, thus to do? For myself it may
be safe and advantageous, not only in a single in-
stance, but in every case. There is a short way to
48 kant's ethics.
decide the question, " whether a lying promise is
ever consistent with duty," and that is to ask
whether such a rule of action can ever be made
a universal law. Though I can will a lie, I can-
not will that lying should be a universal law.
Why this should be, Kant does not here attempt
to explain. He would even assert that no explan-
ation of this unfitness "" to become a law is pos-
sible. This remains as an unsolved problem, and
yet somehow we know that a law, to be moral, must
be such as can enter into universal legislation; also
that it must extort or command respect, and that this
respect takes precedence over and sets aside what-
ever is recommended by inclination. Moreover, the
necessity of acting from pure respect to the law
constitutes duty, and is the condition of that good
will which is a good in itself, and consequently is
the only thing which can be styled good without
qualification.
In concluding the first section, the author adverts
to the fact that the practical reason reveals its dis-
tinctions with a simplicity and an authority which
are strikingly contrasted with the maxims and pvin-
*" Fitness to become a law," it should bo observed, is no adap-
tation that is founded in the nature of man, indi\idually or socially;
Kant says of it, that it is purely rational, whatever this may be, ami
moreover, that it extorts and commands respect.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 4.9
ciples taught by the speculative reason. Conse-
quently, to accept the first, he urges, is eminently
safe and wise, even when they seem to be inconsis-
tent with the teachings of the last. And yet we are
impelled by a necessity which we cannot resist to
attempt to reconcile the two, but always with a
tenacious faith in the superior commands of the
practical reason.
§ 26. We have already adverted {cf. § 10) to the
(/i<c/s«-sceptical mood in respect to the ,, . ,
^ >■ - Kant s Scep-
trustworthiness of speculative truth, ticism in
Respect to
with its forms and its categories, with speculative
its ideas, phenomena, noumena. and all,
into which Kant had brought himself and would
fain bring his reader, as the outcome of the
Critique of Pure Reason. We have also ex-
plained the deliverance from these entanglements
which he anticipated as possible through the cate-
gorical imperative of duty, as implied in and en-
forced by the practical reason. The principal
elements of this concept of dut}- have been given
in this first section, as he conceives them to occur
in the experience of unreflecting men. To these
experiences, as we have seen, he makes his final
appeal. Whether his analysis of these experiences
is satisfactory in all these particulars remains to be
50 kaxt's ethics.
seen, as we seek to subject it to careful criticism
before we proceed to an examination of the ampler
discussions which follow. We do this at once be-
cause this section presents in a brief but popular
form many of the distinctive features of Kant's
entire theor}', the fallacy of which, when detected
and exposed, may aid the reader in detecting similar
errors in the subsequent arguments, and especially
may sharpen his discernment to distinguish between
a popular and a scientific metaphysics of ethics.
§ 27. Thus far have we been content to explain
Kant's argument. We begin our criti-
Criticism of
Kant's First cism with Kaut's first sentence, an ut-
Sentence. , i • i i i i • />
terance which has become classic rrom
its fervid tone, and which, when rightly inter-
preted, expresses an important practical truth.
''Xofhhtg can jwssibli/ be conceired in the icorld, or
even out of it, which can he called good ivithout
qualification, except a good iriJI.'' To this propo-
sition, as an utterance of practical ethical truth in
popular language, the adherent of almost every
ethical theory would give his ready and fervent
assent. But as uttered by Kant, it expresses the
metaphysical principle (in technical language) that
moral goodness has no relation to any other good-
ness; that it is not only superior in quality to
THE METAPHYSICS OP MORALS. 61
every other, but cannot properly be classed or com-
pared with any other. As accepted with equal posi-
tiveness and fervor, as it may be and often is, by
those who dissent from Kant, it asserts the incom-
parable and unquestioned superiority of the moral
among the other kinds of good with which it can,
and, as it would seem, iinist be compared, in order
that its supremacy may be manifest. As applied by
Kant, it asserts that there is but one real good,
"good without qualification,"' and that is moral
good, which cannot be defined in terms of any other,
and which certainly cannot be classed with any
other, and as it would seem can be compared with
no other. As assented to by those who dissent from
Kant's philosophy, it would require them to substi-
tute the phrase, "the supreme good," for "good
without qualification," meaning by " supreme " the
"best in quality or kind,'' as distinguished from
the most energetic or intense.
§ 28. The "good will'" which either is or brings
so great a good, in the view of those who
Diverse
dissent from Kant, is an act or state of Meanings of
the will, a voluntary choice or love of
the highest or supreme natural good, which for
this reason is both logically and actually superior to
every other, "a good without qualification,"" "a
52 KANT*S ETHICS.
good beyond compare." The difference between the
two positions is explained by the fact that, according
to Kant, the good will is determined by no impulse
of or motion in, the sensibility, eitlier felt or dis-
cerned, but by the simple authority' of the reason,
which utters its dictum or command without a
reason. Hence the good will which is recognized
(as "a good without qualification'" is a will deter-
mined hy the reason onJij, not merely in spite of
certain lower impulses of the sensibility, but inde-
pendently of any motives whatever which are ad-
dressed to any sensibilities that are higher. Ac-
cording to the dissentients from Kant, a good v^^ill
is an act or state of will which responds to a mo-
tive that addresses the highest or best natural sen-
sibility. The choice of such a good, but not the
chosen good, is the morally good will.
It would seem that when Kant's proposition was
thus fully and fairly stated, it would at least fail to
command unquestioning assent, if it did not in
many eases elicit a positive dissent. And yet it is
not difficult to understand why it should frequently
seem to be axiomatic and self-evident. It strikes
the key-note of Kant's ethical system, revealing its
apparent strength and its real weakness. It finds
its apparent strength in its homage to the higher
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 53
impulses, which it would fain exalt so high that they
should seem to rise above the region of the sensibil-
ities proper, and to float in the empyrean of the pure
reason. It finds additional plausibility in the em-
phasis which it lays upon the will as the centre and
source of all human responsibility, when contrasted
with the sensibility and intellect, either or both. Its
weakness lies in its oversight of the fact that it is
only through the sensibilities that the will can act
morally at all, by energizing and controlling them —
this oversight involving the depreciation and almost
the contemptuous disesteem of the feelings as psy-
chical experiences, and justifying the inference that
the emotional or pathological in man's nature, even
when animated and controlled by the will, is not
only not moral, but is positively immoral in its
functions and its products.
The opponents of Kant find no difficulty in assent-
ing to every one of his utterances as true and im-
portant, so long as they read between the lines their
own interpretation of the terms and propositions.
But while they accept with all their hearts his lead-
ing propositions when thus modified, they must pro-
test against the dishonor done to the sensibilities as
either an immoral or an unethical element of char-
acter. They would say emphatically, while it is
54 KAKTS ETHICS.
true that mere sensibility, except as it is penetrated
and directed by the will, has no ethical character
whatever, it is equally true — a fact which Kant
overlooks, and would almost seem to deny — that an
act of mere will, except as it animates and controls
the sensibility, is equally unethical. Thej^ accept
the doctrine that " a good will is not good because of
what it performs or eflfects, nor b}' its aptness for
the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by
virtue of the volition," and yet reject the inference
that it is ''good in itself," if this implies that no
good, i.e., no sentient good, is in fact intended, pro-
posed as a maxim, felt as a motive, or obeyed as a
law, by this masterful good icill.
§ 29. As we follow the argument of Kant, it
Kant's Defect- would seem as though he was led to
ive Conception 1,1 n pi- 1 •
of His Oppon- ^i^i^P^ct the soundness or his exclusion
ents' Doctrine, gf sentient good as an essential ele-
ment of the satisfactory definition of a good will,
when he urges that, were happiness the end of man's
existence it were better and more economical for na-
ture to bestow happiness on him without the hazard
of freedom, taking on herself the choice not only of
the ends of human life, but also of the means for
their attainment, and with wise forecast intrusting
both to " instinct" — as though anyone had contended
THE METAPHYSICS OV MORALS. 65
or dreamed that any single element could constitute
the " good will." How could he overlook the fact
so often emphasized by himself, that the element of
freedom must be prominent in the intelligent
choice — as we say between higher and lower forms
of natural good — in order to impart to it a qual-
ity so peculiar that it alone could deserve to be
called "good in itself"? Is it not Kant himself who
contends that if nature would adapt means to an end,
" its true destination must be to produce a will, not
merely as a means to something else, but good in
itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary"?
Here the question cannot but suggest itself, if reason
was absolutely necessary to this good will, why might
not freedom also be necessary (contrary to his sup-
position of instinct), and if freedom and reason,
why might not sensibility be also required, with its
capacity for and its impulses toward higher and
lower natural good, even though it must also be vol-
untary and directed by reason in order to obtain an
ethical value and to rise to the unmatched excel-
lence of " the good will."
§ 30. But from the position that the " good
will" is a "good in itself," Kant easily Kant's Limited
glides into the conclusion that it must !^"*^ °Z *
° Conception of
control every other good, even " the Happiness.
56 rant's ethics.
desire of happiness," as though these two could
in any sense be coordinate or come into conflict.
We notice here, and intreat our readers never to
lose sight of the fact, that " happiness " and the
•' desire of happiness," are invariably used by Kant
in a special and sensuous import, being limited to
the animal and other lower affections as contrasted
with the rational and higher. It will hardly be cred-
ited, and yet it is true, that an analyst and observer
^ ^ . so acute as Kant fails to discern that
Gratification
"ftiie "the gratification of the reason'' in-
Reasoii.
volves the existence of one at least of
the higher classes of sensibilities as springs or
motives of action, implying the possibility of a
peculiar kind of happiness, and this although imme-
diately in this connection he observes that " the rea-
son recognizes the establishment of a good will as its
highest practical distinction, and in attaining this
purpose is capable of a satisfaction of its oivn pecu-
liar kind, viz. : that derived from the attainment of
an end which again " is determined by the reason
only, notwithstanding that this may involve many a
disappointment to the ends of inclination." No
language, it would seem, could be more explicit in
asserting that the reason and '' inclination " have each
its appropriate sensibility, dependent on its special
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 57
conditions, indeed, and its peculiar laws, but both be-
ing capacities for emotion and involving enjoyment
or suffering of differing kinds and degrees. There
can be no escape from this interpretation, unless the
satisfaction peculiar to reason is limited to that
which follows voluntary action. But in such case it
could not be brought into competition with inclina-
tion proper, and would have no meaning for Kant's
argument. There can be no escape from the conclu-
sion that Kant implicitly, if not avowedly, more than
once recognizes a natural happiness which reason
gives and which competes with inclination, even if
he did not explicitly recognize the ethical principle
of Aristotle, that one of the conditions of rational
satisfaction is the attainment of the end or purpose
of one's being, or the acting according to nature, —
which last Kant uniformly interprets as involving
empirical as opposed to ethical relations.
§ 31. The next topic which is discussed by Kant
is the conception of duty. The first j^^^^^,
characteristic which he notices is that Defective
Conception
duty implies an activity of the will of Duty and
■ . 1 • 1 Ti • r Obligation.
against conscious hindrances. It is a fa-
vorite and an oft-repeated doctrine of his that an act
of duty must be positively indifferent or disagree-
able to the natural sensibilities. He even formally
58 rant's ethics.
defines " Duty as a compulsion to a purpose or aim
unwillingly adopted." Moreover, unless an act is
performed from a sense or motive of simple duty,
whether the person is or is not impelled by inclina-
tion, the act is not morally good. For this reason,
those acts to which we are impelled by strong nat-
ural sensibility, may fail to be morally good in spite
of this fact, and, in a sense, in consequence of it.
All of which is true, but not for the reason given
or assumed, that the element of sensibility is a
vitiating element, but because it is the rolmitanj ele-
ment alone which determines the moral quality of
the action, not as antagonistic to sensibility of every
sort, but as it selects between the lower or higher
natural sensibility, i.e., chooses between the higher
and lower natural good. It is also worthy of
notice that Kant fails altogether to discriminate
between internal and external acts of duty, usually
limiting duty to the latter, i.e., to the henejicent act
as contrasted with the benevolent volition — limiting
the sensibility to acts only as thus defined and con-
ceived, and appropriating the voluntary and re-
sponsible to the internal.
In still further elucidation of his
other
Oversights theory, he observes that right actions
must "be done from dutv, not from in-
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 59
clination," as though it were not equally true and no
paradox to say, that if such acts were not done from
inclination, i.e.^ were not voluntary or volitionized,
they would not be acts of duty at all.
Under the necessities of his theory, he does not
hesitate to affirm that those passages in the Scrip-
tures which command us to love our neighbor and
even to love our enem}^ do not respect the feelings
or volitions of benevolence, but only the duties of
beneficence, for the reason that love and forgiveness
cannot be the subject of a command, practical and
not pathological love alone being a matter of duty.
We need use no words to explain how inadequate
is this view of the reach and import of the moral
law as explained in the Scriptures, which not only
insist that love is the fulfilling of the law, but
that if love is wanting, though every conceivable
act of beneficence should be performed, not a single
act of duty is done. The truth which misled the
author is the commonplace truth that duty, if it be
ethical and genuine, must show itself in acts, else it
is hypocritical or hollow, and hence acts, as well as
purposes and feelings, are insisted on as the exter-
nal and bodily stuff of which duty is made and
through which it is manifested. The truth which
Kant caricatures is that the will, as distinfjuished
60 kant's ethics.
from the sensibility, is the only possible subject of
the law of duty, and that what the sensibilities are
in their impulsive energy and proportionate energy,
depends partly on the individual temperament and
culture. For this reason, and for this alone, the
acts and not the feelings are the measures and prac-
tical tests of duty.
§ o2. Kant's second iiroposition concerning duty
Kaiifs ^•''' ^''^^ ^^ derives its moral worth, not
Second Error. fj-Qm the purpose or end which is to be
attained b}^ the act, but from the principle of the
volition wliich pervades it. If he means that the
actual fulfilment or execution of the volition does
not decide its moral quality, he asserts an impor-
tant truth, but if he means, as his words would
imply, that the subjective moral character of the
act of duty is not determined by what we object-
ively intend or morally prefer, he commits a se-
rious speculative and practical error. The contrast
which he sets up. between the principle of the will
and the expected or chosen end in the act proposed
or its result, cannot hold. To call the one formal
and a priori and the other material does not avail
except to the ear.
Kant's third proposition respecting duty is thus
expressed: "Duty is the necessity of acting from
THE METAPHYSICS OF MOEALS. 61
respect to the law." In this definition respect is
opposed to inclination, the one being ^^.^^
concerned with the regulation of the en- Mistake.
Respect for
ergy of the will, or the activity itself, the Law a
and the other with the anticipated
effect of an act. That respect on the one hand, and
desire or inclination on the other, are properly con-
trasted we do not deny, but we deny altogether that
respect is not pathological and emotional, albeit that
both as sensitive and impulsive it is distinguished
from the lower sensibilities. We dissent from
Kant's assertion that we cannot have respect for a
feeling or an inclination in ourselves and others,
although we grant that, to become an object of re-
spect, such a feeling must be vivified by the will
and the product of self-command; but the response
of respect which it exacts is none the less emotional
in its nature.
§ 33. It is interesting to notice that at this
stage of the development of Kant's
Conceded to be
theory, with the first introduction of an " obscure
Feeliu"'."
" respect for the law" as an essential ele-
ment or condition of duty, he recognizes the objec-
tion as possible that this respect for the law must in
some sort be an " obscure fed'oKj."' This difficulty
he attempts to evade by explaining the nature of the
62 kant's ethics.
feeling by the object which occasions it, as a concept
of the reason, " the law only, and that the law which
we impose on ourselves." All which does not tend
to take respect out of the category of feeling, but
only fixes it more firml}^ within it! Let it be ob-
served here that it is with the subjective state of
the man that we are concerned, not at all with the
object which occasions it.
Leaving this difficulty unsolved, it being assumed
that the law as such commands respect,
Criterion of
an Act of our author proceeds to inquire, What
kind of a law is that which is clothed
with this moral authority? To this question he
replies, Only a law which is fitted to be a universal
maxim, I.e., " I am never to act otherwise than so
that I could will that my maxim should become a
universal law." This position he illustrates at length
in answer to the question whether it is ever right to
make a promise with the intention never to keep it,
giving a variety of reasons why any other rule of
conduct than the one which in this case he approves
would be unfit to be a universal law. These reasons
we need not state. It is enough to say of them that
they are all considerations of coiiipa/ibiliti/ or incoiit-
patiJtHihj irifli liKiiiiiH irell-hciiKj. In this case at
least, so far as the reasoning of the author has an}'
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 63
meaning, the fitness of a course of conduct to be a uni-
versal law is argued on grounds of its tendencies, or
the consequences, good or ill, to the natural sensibili-
ties, if the conduct supposed were occasionally or con-
stantly put in practice. The self-asserting and self-
asserted majesty of the law, which will bye-and-bye
emerge in the autocratic grandeur of the categorical
imperative, is here by the author's own showing rep-
resented as simply an appeal to that instinctive desire
for or sympathy with universal well-being, which is
supposed to be dominant in every human breast. In
all this it is also assumed that the human reason dis-
cerns certain ends which are revealed in this consti-
tution of man, individual and social, and which are
capable of being recognized by every thinking being,
as laws to his own will and to that of his fellow man.
It also supposes that with the well-being of the uni-
verse and its necessary conditions every man has a dis-
interested sympathy, latent or active, and so becomes
a lawgiver to himself as he interprets these ends
and designs, and recognizes nature and God as impos-
ing and confirming them as moral law. This law is
eminently reasonable and self-confessed, and there-
fore is responded to with emotions of honor and
respect, which are none the less sensibilities because
64 kant's ethics.
attended, when the reflecting judgment comes in.*
with self-ministered and self-inflicted joys and pains.
§ 34. Thus far we have followed Kant in his
attempt to effect a transition from the
Second Sec-
tion of Kanfs " common rational knowledge " of mo-
rality to the philosophical, within the
domain of common intelligence. We proceed next
to the second section, in which he treats of the trans-
ition from the popular philosophy to the metaphysics
of morals, proposing hereafter to interpret and criti-
cise him point by point — changing our method to
that of a running criticism.
The first position which Kant takes, and to the
Kanf<Fir'<t discussiou of which he devotes several
Position, that pages, is that no example of ideal moral
Every Ideal .
must Be perfection has ever been actually dis-
covered in any single individual. He
contends that not only has no perfect human being
ever been known actually to exist, from whose exam-
ple an ideal of moral excellence could be derived
and by which it could tested, but it may be ques-
tioned whether any (single) example of a single
*Ho\v he comes to be a lawgiver to himself and incidentally to
others, we do not here inquire. It is enough that we know that the
fact is unquestioned. We are only concerned here with the po-iition
that the respect which is exacted is a sensibility fnuiuled on the knowl-
edge of the natural desirableness of that conduct which men call duty
in feeling and in act.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 65
perfectly morally good action can be found in the
history of man. The inference suggested does not
hold, even if the supposition be allowed. It is tena-
ble only against the theory that the ideal of duty can
only be derived from some example of its realization,
which is very different from the position, that a moral
ideal cannot be constructed or proposed from the actual
facts, i.e., the possibilities or constitution of human
nature. It does not follow that the ideal of moral
goodness is any the less actual as an ideal, or any the
less excellent or desirable, because it may have never
been realized, provided it be true that its elements
are found in man's actual capacities. Its elements
as an ideal may have been derived froiy human nat-
ure and verified in human experience, even though
its realization may have never been observed or es-
tablished as a fact. The only truth that we need to
enforce is that the ideal of moral goodness is derived
from reason and is proposed to and enforced upon
the will. This ideal cannot, however, be proposed as
an object of choice or action. Men choose objects,
not volitions. Though the object of moral choice is
related to the act by which it is chosen, the moral
act itself is not chosen. Moral excellence does not lie
in what is chosen, but in the act or response of choos-
ing or the eflfeet of having chosen. But whether act
5
66 kant's ethics.
or effect, in both cases it is subjective, however this
actual or anticipated state may be related to its
object, or color or affect that object.
The only question between Kant and his critics
. , is, from what source is this moral ideal
W hence is the
Moral Ideal derived? This question Kant would
Derived?
Kant, and His answer by saying. From the reason only,
by an imperative dictum proposed to
the will. His critics would say, From a correct in-
terpretation of the relations of the voluntary sensi-
bilities to one another, as proposed to the will,
through the respective objects which excite them.
Of this tbeor}^ Kant takes a brief notice in pass-
ing, to return to it more fully at length, represent-
ing it as having been held under the titles of " the
special distinction of human nature (including, how-
ever, the idea of a rational nature generally) at one
time perfection, at another happiness, here moral
sense, there fear of God, a little of this, and a little of
that, in marvellous mixture, without its occurring
to the upholders* of these theories to ask whether the
principles of morality are to be sought in the knowl-
edge of human nature at all (which we can have
* It may not be amiss to observe in passing that in none of his eth-
ical writings does Kant evince an exact and critical knowledge of the
writers whose systems he criticises, as those of Aristotle. Wolf, or
Shaftesbury, although he prosecutes an active polemic against each of
them in turn.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 67
only from experience), oi', if this is not so, if these
princii^les are to be found altogether (i priori^ free
from everything empirical, in pure rational con-
cepts only and nowhere else, not even in the small-
est degree," etc.
Not only does he express his dissatisfaction with
these theories, but he shadows forth the outlines of
his own as in his view altogether original. He re-
peats the injunction that a pure ethics must be con-
structed by reason alone, and, " unmixed with any
foreign addition of empirical attraction,"' must give
us " the pure conception of duty," and that " the
conception of the moral law exercises on the human
heart by way of reason alone an influence so much
more powerful than all other springs which may be
derived from experience." This prepares us for
what follows.
Having made so much of reason, Kant very prop-
erly begins with a definition of reason and of ra-
tional beings in their ethical relations. Rational
beings are such as have the power of acting accord-
ing to laws as intelligently apprehended. To be
able to act thus, man must be endowed j^^^^^ q^.^^.
with will. It deserves attention that '""^s the Sen-
sibility as an
Kant's conception of the will includes Element of the
two elements only, Intelligence and Ac-
68 rant's ethics.
tion, overlooking any effect on the sensibilities as
such, or any rational relations which pertain to the
feelings, as a condition of action, or a criterion of
character. What action is, i.e., what ethical or re-
sponsible action is, he nowhere exactly defines. The
term " action " is constantly employed, indeed, but
action of what kind? Not bodily action, as it would
seem, for in bodily action by itself there is no moral
significance and can be no moral responsibility.
Not intellectual action only, for here freedom has no
place. Is it perhaps emotional action? Certainly it
is not any mere passive sensibility. But no other is
recognized in the Kantian analysis, the sensibility as
such not being conceived as admitting of any volun-
tary direction or any rational reasons of higher or
lower, and consequently of any ethical relations by
being subject to the will.* Certainly the possibility
of such a relation is at least ignored. Were this
allowed, it would imply some possible relation of
reason to the sensibility, and make right and wrong
to depend on that blending of the rational and the
* It should never be forgotten that the will as conceived by Kant
was the power to act, i.e., the capacity for impulse or desire. To Icnow,
to feel, and to act, — internally as well as with the body — were the three
functions of man which he recognized. The power to choose between
impulsive sensibilities was not distinctly conceived by him as possible,
hence his incapacity to recognize any conflict except a conflict be-
tween reason and feeling. Hence his paradoxical statement that the
moral law respects the acts only, and not the feelings.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 69
emotional, i.e., of the a priori and the empirical,
against which Kant constantly protests, as impossi-
ble, and under the rejection of which his theory con-
stantly labors.
§ 36. After this imperfect analysis of the relation
of the reason to the springs or impulses jj. j^^^ Action
of action and of the nature of action Defined in the
Most Genei'al
itself, we are told, in the most general wayasReason-
,,,.,, , . . , . able Action.
way, that right action is reason put in
practice and that action or conduct controlled by
reason is practical reason, reason being required not
merely to apprehend whatever should be done, but to
apprehend it in its principles. In case reason infal-
libly and actually determines the conduct, the ac-
tions made objectively necessary to the intellect are
subjectively necessary to this will. That is, we sup-
pose, the convictions of the reason actually control
the impulses without conflict or friction, and the
reasonable is actually responded to by the active im-
pulses, called by Kant the will. But if the will
is not thus subjectively determined by these objec-
tive conditions without conflict, the determination of
such a will is ohligatory. This can occur only when
the sensibilities resist the I'eason. In case the sensi-
bilities are reluctant, the objective principle becomes
a command and the formula is imperative, all impera-
70 kaxt's ethics.
tives being expressed by the word oiKjld. Every im-
perative does indeed say that something w^ould be
good, were it done or not done, but it says this to a
will which does not actually conforni to the good as
thus conceived. The obligatory, moreover, is distin-
guished from the pleasant, in that the pleasant
influences the will only by means of sensations
from merely subjective causes which are valid only
for the sensibility of this or that individual, while
the obligatory is recognized as a principle of the
reason which holds equally for all men.
§ 37. A perfectly good will, Kant proceeds to
expound, would invariably be subiect to
A Perfect Will ^ ' J J
Excludes all the objective laws of the reason, but
could not be conceived as ohliged to act
lawfully, because by its subjective constitution it is
of itself already determined by the objectively good *
without any counteracting impulses. No impera-
tives are possible, or have any significance for the
desires of a holy will. The conception of obliga-
tion is here totally out of place, because such a will
* It were better to say, and this would reconcile Kant with his dis-
senters and critics, that the moral imperative as imperative does not
contemplate solel)' the anticipated sentient good, simply as good, but
anticipates what the choice would be as morally good. But then,
what would be chosen? not the choice, but the object of choice. But
is the object chosen morally good, or is it the choice that is morally
good ?
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 71
is already in harmony or unison with the objective
law and no conflict or dissent is conceivable.
§ 38. In order to enforce still further his concep-
tion of the authority of the moral law, The Cate-
Kant introduces and exj^ands the dis- H^potiietjcai
tinction between the hypothetical and imperative.
the categorical imperative. In the first case, the ac-
tion concerned is a good as a means of something
else; in the second, it is good in itself. In either case,
it is a good which determines the will. It would
seem that "the good in itself" and "the good with
respect to something else '" are tacitly conceived by
the author as holding some sort of a relation to one
another, else they would not be conceived as included
under the common genus of a good or goods. If
this were conceded, must not this generic conception
be synonymous with the desirable in the largest or
widest sense of the term, and if both objects are desir-
able must they not both in some way affect and move
the sensibilities?
The distinction set up between the categorical and
the hypothetical imperative is so obvious as scarcely
to need comment or explanation. There are im-
peratives of skill, which simply require and in a
sense command that if a man will accomplish a
given purpose, he must gain some capacity by
72 kant's ethics.
training of the band or of the eye. There is also
a common end which may be supposed to be uni-
versal with all rational beings, and that end is
happiness. For this reason the hypothetical im-
perative, whether in its narrow or more extended
application, is expressed in the form of an asser-
tion, rather than in that of command. Skill in
the choice and use of means to this common end,
i.e., to man's highest well being, Kant contends, is
prudence in a broader or a narrower sense. Dis-
tinguished from both of these, sharply and strongly,
is the categorical imperative, which proposes certain
actions (actions in the broadest sense of the term, as
activities of feeling or will and even of disposition
and character, and impulses and dispositions involv-
ing habits) without any condition in its implied or
express reference to any end. This imperative, as
Kant insists, concerns not any matter or any in-
tended or implied result of an action, but only the
form and principle of the action, i.e., the intention
or disposition itself, be its tendency or operation
what it may. This imperative is the sole imperative
which morality recognizes. Hence, in his view, we
have three kinds of obligation, involving rules of
skill, counsels of prudence, and laws of morality,
the first two being conditional, and the last manda-
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. ?3
tory. The first two labor under the disadvantage
that we cannot always satisfactorily determine the
conditions of human happiness for ourselves or for
others. To a greater or less extent, our conclusions
in regard to them are conjectural and at the best
are invested with a higher or lower degree of proba-
bilit3^ But the mandates of duty are unconditional
and imperative. The first say, Do this or that if you
would be happy; the last, Do this because the act is
reasonable, i.e., is morally right, or, In the name of
reason do it, or simply, Do it.
§ 39. This contrast between the two classes of
imperatives is expanded by Kant at Kaut's
great length in illustrations which we „ ,. ,
° » Conception of
need not repeat. His argument is open Happiness,
to a single but important critical observation, viz.:
That the author in his conceptions of possible and
actual happiness confines himself altogether to the
external consequences of actions and makes not the
least recognition of that subjective good or hap-
piness which attends the exercise of a voluntary
impulse or feeling. Had he done JT5stice to this dis-
tinction he would have found it easy ;.to distinguish
between prudence and morality in terms of volition-
ized sensibility — pn;dence respecting the external
consequences of a volition, and morality the internal
74 K A NT's ETHICS.
affections. The possibility of any other terms of
contrast seems not to have occurred to the author
at this stage of his inquiries. He subsequently
recognizes this possibility, but in the treatise before
us, he finds no alternative possible except between
the external reward of the virtuous will, which he
limits to the matter of conduct, and the categorical
command of the reason, which he terms its form,
while the form contemplates rational or logical rela-
tions only.
As Kant proceeds with his argument in support
of this contrast, he acknowledges that the difficul-
ties thicken about him. He concedes that we can-
not appeal to experience as our arbiter, because our
convictions are not grounded in experience. But on
the other hand, our conviction of the truth of this
distinction is confirmed by human experience and is
necessary in order that experience may be possible.
Unless the categorical imperative were actually en-
forced, there could be none of that morality which
we find to be both real and influential and neces-
sary. But he reasons from the analogies of the
speculative reason, that if a priori speculative prin-
ciples must be assumed as the ground and explana-
tion of speculative science, it is reasonable to sup-
pose that ethics should rest in like manner on
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 75
ultimate a priori principles of its own. He urges
that if we find it difficult to conceive the possibility
of the one class of axioms, it ought to be no matter
of wonder that the fundamental axioms of ethics
should occasion equal and similar embarrassment,
forgetting that the difticulties of speculative philos-
ophy had already driven him, tentatively, at least,
into the domain of the practical reason as a city of
refuge, and that the axioms of morals had been
accepted as truth and invested with a sacred and
final authority in both spheres.
We have already adverted to the views of the
relations between ethical and speculative science,
which are conspicuously characteristic of Kant, and
to the changes in these views which can be traced in
his successive treatises. It is a matter of constant
surprise that the unsatisfactory workings of his
doctrine of tlie d priori ideas and principles of the
speculative reason did not awaken the suspicion that
the difficulties attendant upon the new set of simi-
lar principles which he provided for ethics might
indicate some common weakness latent in both. It
could give little satisfaction to Kant himself to con-
fess that " the difficulty of discerning the possi-
bility of the categorical imperative is a very pro-
found one," and ." it is an a priori synthetical
76 KANT S ETHICS.
practical proposition, and as there is so much diffi-
culty in discerning the possibility of speculative
propositions of this kind, it may be readily supposed
that the difficulty will be no less with the practical."
§ 40. But he proceeds to say, if we cannot ex-
Kant Adopts plain the possibility of the categorical
the Criterion . . i o • ; •
ofConse- imperative, we can denne its import,
quencesasa ^^^ j^j^-g ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ follows: " Act
Practical
Rule. only on that maxim whereby thou canst,
at the same time, will that it should become a uni-
versal law," or, inasmuch as the laws by which effects
are produced characterize nature, he amends it thus:
" Act as if the maxims of thy action were to be-
come by thy will a law of nature." Here we notice
as before, that both in form and by every one of
the examples employed in illustration, the tests of
right conduct and of the law of duty are found by
Kant in the effects of conduct or in the tendencies of
conduct to affect human well-being, and that the
euphemistic phrases of the fitness of a rule to be-
come a universal law can signify nothing less than
the tendencies of conduct with respect to individual
and social welfare. Thus interpreted, the form of
the moral law would respect the intentions or the
voluntary purposes or the sensibilities as animated
and controlled by the will, or as thus brought into
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 77
mutual relations — these relations being always the
same in matters which come under the categorical
imperative, i.e.. which affect the disposition and
the character, while the matter of human action,
inasmuch as it pertains to the external and varia-
ble, the outward and prudential, is capable of found-
ing onl}^ probable and proximate and to some extent
variable rules of conduct.
After laying down the principle cited above, Kant
proceeds to illustrate it by four examples. The first
example is that of a man who is prompted by de-
spair to commit suicide : the second, of one who
under extreme necessity borrows money, falsely
promising to repay it ; the thii'd, of one who
wastes in self-indulgent sloth, superior capacities for
usefulness to his fellow-men ; the fourth, of a man
who indulges selfish indifference to the miseries of
mankind. The conduct of each of these persons is
universally condemned as morally wrong, and why?
Because it is not fitted to be a universal law; but
why? Because of its more or less certain effects or
tendencies, were it to be accepted and acted on by all
men. That Kant should be so utterly unconscious
of the logic of his own arguments is sufficiently sur-
prising. It is still more strange that he should be
totally unaware that in every one of the examples
78 kant's ethics.
which he cites, he makes use of " tendency to promote
the general welfare " under the fair title of " fitness
to be a universal law of nature." Similarly, in en-
forcing the duty of cultivating one's gifts, he urges
that "as a rational being he necessarily wills that his
faculties be developed, since they serve him for all
sorts of possible purposes and have been given him
for this end." The most superficial reader does not
need to be told that here is an argument from the
adaptations of nature with respect to the end for
which man's endowments are given, which, as an ul-
timate ground of moi-al obligation, had already been
formally repudiated by Kant as beyond man's ca-
pacity to decide or even to surmise.
Still more grossly does he offend against his pro-
fessed principles and the entire spirit of his moral
teachings, when in the fourth case supposed, he ar-
gues that a man cannot justify himself in indiffer-
ence to the sorrows and wants of his fellow-men, for
the reason that " a will that resolved this would con-
tradict itself, inasmuch as many cases might occur
in which one would have need of the love and sym-
pathy of others and in which by such a law of nat-
ure, springing from his own will, he would deprive
himself of all hope of the aid he deserves." How
strangely do these words sound from Kant ! What
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 79
a plump descent into selfish utilitarianism is made
by the usually high-toned Kant ! One would hard-
ly have expected this of him. How singular that so
acute a critic as Kant should first explain the ten-
dency of sympathy to beget sympathy as a simple
consistency of reason with itself, involving no rela-
tions of feeling ! How unconsciously also does he
descend from this thin air of his transcendental
axioms into earthly considerations of self-regarding
l)rudence, without being aware of the downward
plunge, and least of all that he has substituted the
impulse from self-interest oi* man's instinctive desire
of happiness, for a harmony of reason with itself,
which, if it means anything, can only be the logical
law of identity !
^ 41. Thus far our philosopher pei'suades him-
self that he has been concerned with the Relation of the
categorical intiierative in its ideal nat- "'^" ^ '^^ !°
^ ^ the Actual in
uve, without deciding whether it is Man.
ever actualized in man. And how does he decide this
question? Not, as it would seem, by any inquiry
of fact, but by some process or assumption o priori.
lest the '■ critical method "' should not be main-
tained. Kant does not hesitate to assert that what
man is. whether he is, or is not, a rational or moral
being, has nothing to do with deciding this question.
80 kant's ethics.
He contends most persistently that we may not as-
sume that the essential constituents of manhood
throw any light upon the essential elements of
moral responsibility or the nature and grounds of
moral obligation or the moral law. He urges that
since moral laws ought to hold good for every ra-
tional creature, they must all be derived from the
general concept of a rational being. " and in doing
so. we must not make its principles." i.e., the princi-
ples of the moral law, to be " dependent on the par-
ticular nature of human reason." What the author
understood by this distinction between " the general
concept of a rational being"' and "the particular
nature of human reason "' is not so clear as it is that
he intended to disparage and reject anj'' analysis of
the nature of man as the foundation of. or prelim-
inary to, the determination of moral conceptions in
general. We may presume that what he intends by
the phrase, " the particular nature of human rea-
son," is that modification of the rational powers
which is occasioned by the emotions and their rela-
tions to the higher powers. What he would insist
on is that moral law is the same for all moral be-
ings, and that all moral beings have a common moral
nature {i.e., as he interprets this, a common rational
nature), to the exclusion of whatever is peculiar to
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 81
the individual oi* the race, in the way of sensibilities
or the relations which they involve. This may be
admitted; but when he would leap to the conclusion
that the moral relations are rational only, not mere-
l}^ in their form but in their matter, so that neither
emotion nor will is required to constitute a moral
being, he takes a leap in which few will follow him,
and in which, as it would seem, on second thought
he would scarcely follow himself. It would seem
that no one would contend more earnestly than he
that the moral law, as rational, must presuppose a
will in every being over whom it has authority; and
that without a will, whether in man or any other
being, reason would neither discover nor enforce
moral relations of any kind. But if a moral being
must be endowed with a will, in order that it may be
moral, why may it not be equally necessary that he
should be endowed with sensibility also, and why may
not the several sensibilities stand in certain natural,
even rational, relations to one another, such as might
be the conditions of the moral? Why. not only may
' it not be true, but why must it not be true, that
a sensitive nature is the essential condition and me-
dium for voluntary, i.e., for moral, action and moral
responsibility? Kant reasons well when he reasons
that certain sensibilities, such as might be supposed
G
82 rant's ethics.
peculiar to human beings, are in no sense essential
to moral responsibility, e.g., some of the human ap-
petites or tastes, such as are dependent on the body
or the special physiological constitution of the hu-
man race. But Kant reasons incorrectly when he
excludes, as accidents of humanity and as non-es-
sential to the discernment and enforcement of the
moral law, every species of sensibility whatever as
the possible subject of rational discrimination and
moral relationship.
§ 42. Doubtless in this critical polemic Kant
had in mind the definition given by
A Life » ''
According to the ancieiits of moral perfection as a
Nature
life according to nature. He frequently
criticises this doctrine and protests against it, as
involving a limited or a varying standard and
as inconsistent with his doctrine of the uncondi-
tioned and positive character of the practical reason.
It would seem that he might have noticed the truth
to which we have adverted, viz. : that in respect of
monal relations, reason supposes sensibility and its
relations, as truly as it does the will, and that with-
out sensibility there can be no aim or purpose for
reason in the practical sense of lawgiving end.
Perhaps also — in all probability it was true in fact
— what Kant had in mind in his protest against the
THE METAPItTSICS OE MORALS. 83
psychological study of human nature, was to express
his dissent from the doctrines of the moral sense, as a
mere accident of human nature, or an arbitrary ele-
ment in its constitution, such as would make morality
to be a matter of feeling or taste and in opposition
to which he would set up the universal reason as
the lawgiver of ethical truth and ethical authority;
overlooking the fact that in doing this he must
reduce reason to the mere relationships of formal
logic, without any practical significance of value or
worth.*
§ 43. And yet he cannot confine himself to
these relationships. Sooner than he is Analyzes Hu-
,, . , , J. 1 • man Nature
aware, or rather without being aware ^,gj.^j^g pj^ j^
of what he does, he finds himself fol- ^^'^f^.
lowing the method of a psychological analysis of the
nature and processes of reason which he had seemed
to set aside, and proposing to himself the ques-
tion, Why must all rational beings judge of their
actions by maxims imposed on themselves as univer-
sal laws ? This question he answers thus: All
* The fact is worth noticing, that while Butler, on the one kand,
insists as positivelj' as does* Kant that the distinctive feature of the
moral faculty in man is its authority, he affirms as positively, on the
other hand, that the moral relations are discovered by a reflective
study of the nature of man. We may say that metaphysically Butler
agrees with Kant, while psychologically he dissents from him most
widely. {Of. § 94.)
84 . Kant's ethics.
rational beings mu.st not only approve as rational
the means which are adapted to ends, but also
the ends which these means subserve. In other
words, the subjective grounds of rational actions are
desires; their objective grounds are motives. The
hypothetical imperative respects the means, the cat-
egorical, the ends of our actions. " All objects of
the inclinations have only conditional worth," inas-
much as we might suppose these inclinations not to
exist, in which case their objects would have no
Discovers worth. Rational beings are indicated
and Person-"'^ ^^ nature as being ends in themselves,
aiity. and are consequently called persons
who can never be regarded as means only, but
possess absolute and independent worth. An end
in itself becomes invested with the authority of
a categorical imperative, the foundation of which
is the principle: " A rational nature exists as an end
in itself," and from this the imperative follows:
" So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own
person or in that of every other, in every case as an
end, withal never as a means only," — the postulate,
as it would seem, being assumed that every rational
being regards his existence as I do my own, and
that, in the arrangements of nature and of rea-
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 85
son, the realization of the ends of each is compatible
with the same by othei's.
The attentive and critical reader will not fail to
have noticed that in these last assumptions Kant
has abandoned forever the ground which he had
taken in respect to the impossibility of deriving the
categorical imperative from a critical examination of
the constitution of man and the purposes of nature
with respect to man as individual and social. In every
one of these assumptions, on the other hand, he affirms
the possibility that the ends provided in the consti-
tution of every rational being should be discerned,
as also the compatibility of the well-being or ra-
tional welfare of the individual with that of the
community. In other words, Kant has returned
to the doctrine of the ancients, that the moral
law is summed up in the rule to act according to
nature, and that man's nature can be discerned
and interpreted, if, indeed, its supreme end and
adaptations can be understood.
These postulates being assumed, we need not ex-
plain how they are applied in detail in enforcing
special classes of duties. The examples selected by
Kant for illustration are the same as those previ-
ously used, viz.: (1) The duty of rejecting suicide;
(2) Of keeping one's promises; (3) Of living an
S6 K A NT's ETHICS.
elevated personal life; (4) Of living a life devoted
to the welfare of others. We need use no argu-
ment to show how the assumptions given above
explain and enforce the several duties as they arise,
and how they cannot be enforced without these, and
how they are enforced by Kant himself after this
very theory.
We agree altogether with Kant, that our faith in
each of the several postulates which have been
stated in respect to the constituents and the har-
mony of a universe of rational and voluntary per-
sons, is an original and necessary belief. But we
disagree altogether with him v/hen he seems now
and then to argue that our faith in these categories
rests upon the authority of the practical reason
as it commands this faith as a duty, except in the
vague and popular acceptation, that every man
acknowledges the intellectual supremacy of his ra-
tional convictions. The speculative and the practi-
cal reason cannot both be the ultimate foundations
of our philosophical and ethical convictions, respect-
ively, notwithstanding that Kant seems to inter-
change his allegiance to each, without being con-
scious of the incompatibilit}^ of making each in
its turn the cornerstone of his philosphical creed.
In the present case he argues from the position,
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORA^ g9
that the principle that every human, and, ii--.nd
every rational, being is an end in and for itself, is not
borrowed from experience, but is an original and
rational axiom. We agree with him in this, and also
in the doctrine that this principle is essential alike
to rational philosophy and sound ethics. We disa-
gree with him in the occasional assertion, and in the
general tendency of his argument, that this belief
has its foundation, not in the speculative, but in the
practical reason. From this rational postulate which
we hold in common, it follows, that the ethical will
or command of duty, which every man accepts and
imposes on himself, is a universally legislative law,
every moral agent being at once the giver and sub-
ject of the law as he imposes and accepts it for him-
self and also imposes it on and exacts it from every
other rational being.
We may not conclude, as we have already inti-
mated, that Kant, in using this Ian- ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^
guage and availing himself of these re- Formally
" " ° _ Abandon the
lations, has formally abandoned his dis- categorical
tinctive position, that the law of duty
is a simple and categorical command, which never
appeals to the speculative reason, and takes no ac-
count of the feelings or the relations which they
involve, but is derived from the authority of the
88 K A NT's ETHICS.
practical reason alone. On the contrary, he returns
to it anew, and enforces it by additional arguments
under a new appellation of the aiUonomij of the will,
or the direct or sovereign authority of duty as a
rational law, as contrasted with its heteronomy, or
subjection to some other impulse besides itself. And
yet here he insists as before tlmt duty does not rest
on the feelings or inclinations, but on the relations
of rational beings to the end of their being and
actions.
§ 44. In arguing from rational ends to person-
And yet He ality, our author treads upon ground
siilfts'^HiJ which is new to him. though not new
Ground. ^q Aristotle or other philosophers wlio
had recognized the ends of human nature as a
fruitful and fundamental conception in ethical phil-
osophy. But while he acknowledges the reality of
^finality, he does not, however, discuss its nature or
its authority; he simply assumes its trustworthiness
and its fruitfulness, without even recognizing the fact
tliat in his speculative system it had previously met
with a most inhospitable reception at his hands; his
aim being apparently to reconcile it with the views
which he had already expounded. He first reasserts
that the will is conceived as a faculty of determining
itself to action in accordance with the conception of
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 89
certain laws. And such a faculty can only be found
in rational beings. Then, for the first time in the
treatise he says, " Now what serves the will as the
objective ground of its self-determination is the end,
and if this is assigned by reason alone it must hold
for all rational beings." Here again we have either
the studied or the unconscious assertion that if ends
are rational and discerned by the reason they exclude
all elements of feeling, and, it would seem, all appeals
to the will. As if to secure this main position by
every possible consideration, he makes a distinction
between a spring or subjective ground of desire and a
motive as an objective ground of volition, in order to
enforce the distinction between subjective and ob-
jective ends, and again between practical precepts
or motives as being formal, when abstracted from
all subjective ends, and material when they assume
and addi-ess such ends. He insists that all ends
which are derived from the effects of actions are
relative and occasion the hypothetical imperative,
while all motives that have absolute worth suppose
no springs of action or desire, but are simply ra-
tional and formal, and enforced by the categorical
imperative. That there are such motives, he argues
from the distinction between things which have '' a
relative value as means," and rational beings which
()0 KANT^S ETHICS.
are "called persons" "because their very nature
points them out as ends in themselves " having abso-
T?.f oif l^^te worth. We assent to this distinc-
does not fjon, and recQcrnize its supreme import-
Exclude Eeia- ^ '■
tionstothe ance in ethics, but we raise these ques-
tions: Whether a person who is an end
to himself, for that reason finds no interest in the
several ends, even the highest, which inspire his ac-
tions; — whether the fact that he assumes these ends
to be final and supreme in the kingdom of ends, and
is interested in them as such, is inconsistent with the
fact, or rather explains the fact, that they are em-
phatically and supremely rational; — whether, on the
contrary, the fact that they are rational does not
arise from the fact that they are distinctively and
emphatically moving of or motiving to the respon-
sive sensibility ; whether, in short, a rational na-
ture, in the sense of an insensitive nature, can be
an end to itself; and finally, whether the persistent
attempts of Kant to interpret the rational as exclud-
ing the emotional are not invariably mere flights of
language in the excitement of which the analyst
leaves his logic behind.
We argue the question still further, whether the
phrase. " a kingdom of ends," which is rightly con-
ceived as a community of rational beings acting in
THE METAPHYSICS OF MOKALS. 91
hai'mony with and subordination to one another,
according to claims of duty and on grounds of
duty — whether such a kingdom could be assumed
unless the value and the worth of its constituent
elements were capable of being translated into terms
of feeling,/.^., unless they interested the human sen-
sibilities.
The further questions also suggest themselves,
What is the relation of the will as autonomous, or
self-law-giving, to the practical reason and its cat-
egorical imperative y Are the will and practical rea-
son regarded by Kant as faculties of the soul, and if
so, what are the appropriate functions of each?
What are the relations of the motives which each is
said to present as objective, when contrasted with
the springs of action which are confessedly subjec-
tive? Can there be a moving object, whether sensi-
tive or rational, which does not also arouse or inter-
est the feelings, and if so, is not the contrast between
the higher and lower motives to be found solely in
the natural quality of the emotions and desires which
they excite, as also in the results which they accom-
plish, and consequently in their relative value, in-
volving their natural and moral worth?
§ 45. What are Kant's views of the will in
these applications it is not easy to determine. We
93 kant's ethics.
ask, again and again, Does he mean by
Kant's Views
of the Will the will an endowment or faculty of
Indelinite. •■ t i. -^i .1
human nature coordinate with the rea-
son or the intellect, and possibly — why not? — with
the sensibility, or does he absorb the reason into the
will by making the person to be the reasonable will,
and leave the sensibility unconsidered at all, regard-
ing it as a pariah in the spiritual organism of forces
and ends? The latter seems to be the view which
he would take. That he usually connects and almost
blends the reason with the will is evident from the
terminology and logic of his argument. As we have
already noticed, the will, whose autonomy and hete-
ronoray he discusses, is another name for the moral
person as self-regulating in the one instance, i.e., as
finding the moral law in his own internal constitu-
tion, whatever that may be; or, in the other, as deriv-
ing both law and impulse from any source motives
which may address some inferior sensibility. The
use of this peculiar phraseology adds nothing to his
argument, and it need detain us no longer than to
direct the attention to the singular indefiniteness of
meaning which Kant attaches to the term " will," and
by which he mystifies his reader without adding either
to the clearness or the force of his own theoiy.
It is not exactly true or just to say that Kant
THE METAPHYSICS OF MOKALS. 03
finds no reason foi' using the phrase, "the hete-
ronomy of the will," inasmuch as under this gen-
eral title he subjects to a brief review the several
theories of morals in which he finds this doctrine
to be exemplified. All these theories in his view
are either empirical or rational, the first being
founded on simple feeling, either physical or
moral, or the principle of happiness; and the last on
the principle of perfection, either as a rational
conception of a possible ideal, or as exemplified
in or enforced by the will of God. Under the
first is classed the theory of ultimate happiness
and the theory of the moral sense; under the sec-
ond, the theories of perfection as a rational con-
ception and as divinely commanded. Of the ulti-
mate grounds of obligation which he thinks are
found in each of these pairs of theories, the author
rejects the doctrine of ultimate happiness as being
selfish and arbitrary, for the reasons already given.
The theory of a moral sense he rejects as depend-
ent on an arbitrary constitution, though he lands
it as unselfish, while the theory of the divine com-
mand he condemns as being arbitrary and change-
able.
Here the author ends his argument, having proved
to his own satisfaction that the universally receivil
94 kant's ethics.
doctrines of practical morality imply the categorical
imperative and the autonomy of the trill. These two
metaphysical foundations of morals he accepts as
established by this analysis.
§ 46. We have already in passing noticed the ob-
jections which might be urged to the use
E^o Over- o^ these and kindred phrases, in place of
looked. ^jjg personal Ego, which in our view
can alone be accepted as the moral lawgiver over
the individual will, or can enforce the moral law of
the consenting universe. The scepticism and denials
of Kant's speculative theory in respect to iioumena,
both material and psychical, had unfortunately cut
him off from the possibility of recognizing the per-
sonal Ego as anything more than a logical fiction,
and the attempt to find a substitute for it in the
categorical imperative of the practical reason can
only be regarded as a logical makeshift such as might
give plausibilit}^ to the platitudes of a sentimental
morality or the Protean forms of some imaginative
metaphysical hy|)olhesis.
The unsatisfactory character of the new elements
in Kant's system, which we have noticed, is made
especially manifest in his attempts to solve the four
practical questions which he had previously pro-
posed. Kant's second attempt to answer these
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 95
questions in the terms of his enlarged theory de-
cisively proves that what he calls rationality and the
doctrine of ends involve sensibility, and that the
highest ends always imply the demands of tlie
noblest feelings — in short, that worth and value are
terms which can have no import, unless the emo-
tions are appealed to.
In the tliifd or last section, Kant attempts to
effect a transition from the Metaphys- Transition
ics of Morals to the Critique of Practical fi^o'" the Meta-
physics of
Reason. That is, he attempts to show Morals to the
, , . , • , 1 J 1 • 1 , Critique of
how the conceptions which he thinks he Practical
has discovered to be essential to moral ^''^^°"-
science as such, may be justified by a critical exami-
nation of the Practical Reason. By the practical rea-
son he must understand the human intelligence as
concerned with ethical conceptions, or the reason so
far as it deals with human action. It will be re-
membered that Kant has hitherto persistently
refused to find in the constitution of human nature
the ultimate explanation for ethical phenomena or
ethical ideas, for the reason that this process would
seem to found scientific truth, which in its nature is
permanent and universal, upon what might be con-
sidered as the arbitrary and mutable constitution of
man. As contrasted with this source of knowledge
96 K A NT's ETHICS.
and its results, Kant proposes the critical method,
which should test the pure rational faculty by means
of its products in human knowledge, and infer the
nature and authority of human reason from these
products. Kant's problem would be as follows:
Given a certain kind of knowledge as trustworthy
and universally accepted, to examine its elements or
products and find in them a method for interpreting
these truths and the warrant for accepting them.
Now, we find in science of every kind, and, indeed,
in all human experience, certain postulates and as-
sumptions which command intellectual confidence
and give law to human action. In these conceptions
and principles we find the vouchers for our inter-
pi'etation of the merit and authority of hximan
reason, both speculative and practical; the specula-
tive i-eason giving us the norms and principles of
speculative science, and the practical the faiths
which command and control our conduct. If now
our critical analysis of the metaphysical conceptions
of ethics is correct, we shall learn what are the
axioms and what is the nature of the practical
reason. There are not two Reasons in man, he
graciously informs us, however. Though we speak
of the Speculative and the Practical, the two are one
and the same, and the principles of the one must be
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 97
assumed to be consistent, if they are not identical,
with those of the other. Hence our question is
legitimate, " How can we effect a transition from
the metaphysical conceptions of morals as we find
them in human experience, to a critical and scien-
tific knowledge of the intellect ? " It should not be
forgotten here that Kant had already subjected the
scientific reason to a critical examination in his
first famous Critique, and had also written his con-
fident, if not defiant. Prolegomena to All Future Met-
aphysics. It ought not to surprise us that he should
imagine that these inquiries had already determined
the reach and trustworthiness of the same reason
when applied to ethical distinctions, and that he
should use their results to solve the difficulties and
answer the inquiries which he might encounter in
his analysis of ethical or practical phenomena.
We shall find that his explanations are not wanting
in ingenuity, even if they fail to produce conviction.
§ 47. Kant begins with the concept of the Will
and its freedom as the ground of its Kant Returns
autonomy. He finds that the will is a ."^j^^*j J,
causality peculiar to rational beings in Freedom,
being free from, or independent of, an}^ agency
foreign to itself. This definition of freedom is nega-
tive, however, and yet it involves the consequence
98 kant's ethics.
til at the will is a law to itself, finding "the reasons
for its action in its own nature. An absolutely
good will, moreover, is that whose maxim or act-
ually accepted rule or principle of action may
always be regarded as a universal law for all ra-
tional beings, every one of whom is also assumed to
be free.
But every such being, so far as- he is rational,
must also take an interest in duty, in order to re-
spond to its claims. As a sensitive being, he should
also have an intei'est in the actions which duty com-
mands, but the two interests are of a different sort.
The one of these interests, however, does not exclude
the other, the obligatory * not being incompatible
with the desirable.
The next point which is made by Kant is, that
while we are not directly conscious of freedom as a
psychological fact, and cannot in tJiis way prove it to
be an endowment of ourselves or others, or of human
nature, there are reasons why we must yet assume
it to be a universal endowment of ourselves and our
* Here the critical inquirer would doubtless iuterpoee with the
question, whether the response of the will to the imperative of the
reason, or to the original motive which is the ground of the moral
command, may not and must not be a response of feeling. This last,
we have already seen, Kant positively and pertinaciously denies,
saying, If reason recognizes or enforces any motion of sensibility, it
can no longer be reason, and if it appeals to desire, it will no longer
be an imperative.
THE METAfHYSICS OF MOKALS. 99
fellows. It is not interested feeling alone which
urges me to action, but there is an obligation to
take an interest, an ought which every rational
being must acknowledge. This holds for every
rational being so far as reason influences or controls
his acts. For all those beings wlio, like men, are
also endowed with sensibility, and in whom there is
not a ready res^jonse to reason, hut a reluctant sensi-
hiJitij, this objective rational necessity becomes an
ought, implying a can, while the subjective necessity
{e.g.. of the sensibility) differs from the objective.
These Kant bids us take as ultimate facts, though
we cannot explain them.
It is true that Kant here concedes that we can
and do take an interest in our own personal attain-
ments, i.e.. " We can be interested in being worthy of
happiness without the motive of participating in
the happiness." And yet, this experience, and the
prospect of it, is only an attestation of that human
weakness under which we are not, and cannot
be, independent of all consideration of happiness,
Kant is also aware that here is a circle from which
it is not easy to escape. It is the old difficulty of
conceiving that the action which is worthy of hap-
piness should not of itself be regarded as desirable,
and thus become an object of desire at the same time
100 kakt's ethics.
that it is clothed with oblij^'ation. So, also, he
admits that in the order of" ends and adaptation
we may conceive ourselves subject to moral law,
because we are convinced that we are free.
§ 48. Prom this dilemma we may perhaps deliver
The Man ourselves by asking whether it does not
* °"'"''"" arise from our looking at the same sub-
aiid Man *
Phenomenal, ject from dift'erent points of view — i.e., as
we consider ourselves as phenomenal so far as ob-
jects affect us, i.e., move our sensibilities, but as
tln'jifjs in themselves, so far as we respond to the
moral law — and whether the same object-matter
may not at one time address the feelings and at
another the reason. He avers that " We can
never know objects speculatively as they are in
themselves, but only as they affect us"; while
yet "Man must necessarily suppose something
else as their basis, namely, his Ego. whatever its
characteristics in itself may be. * * * In respect
to perceptions and the receptivity of sensations,
he may reckon himself as belonging to the world
of sense; but in respect to his pure activity, and
that which reaches consciousness immediately and
not through the affections of the senses, he must
reckon himself as belonging to the intellectual
world, of which, however, he has no further knowl-
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 101
edge" than that it is a fact. "Now man finds in
himself a faculty by which he distinguishes himself
from everything else, even from himself as affected
by objects, and that is reason." It follows that a
rational being regards himself and all his actions
from two points of view: "First, so far as he belongs
to the world of sense and finds himself subject to
the laws of nature (this being heteronoiiij/) ; secondly,
as belonging to the intelligible world, under laws
which, being independent of nature, have their
foundations, not in experience, but in the autonomy
of the reason only." So far as we conceive ourselves
free, we transfer ourselves into the world of under-
standing, and recognize the autonomy of the will;
whereas, so far as we consider ourselves as under
obligation, we regard ourselves as belonging to the
world of sense, but also to the world of understand-
ing, the sensibility resisting and the reason command-
ing. Now, it is evident if there were two worlds, of
sense and understanding respectively, they could
have no common relations and no bond of connection
whatever. "Since, however, the world of under-
standing contains the foundation of the world of
sense, and consequently of its laws also, and accord-
ingly gives laws to the will," the reason, here called
the understanding, assumes the right to command
103 Kant's ethics.
the sense-impulses by tlie catecrorical imperative.
Hei'e we encounter the reason, viz. : the practical
I'eason, with its synthetic imperative a priori. It
should be remembered, however, that obligation pre-
supposes the reluctant impulses of sense, and so in
every case there must be conflict between the two,
since obligation can only be felt when the autonomous
will encounters the resisting sensibility. It is not to
be forgotten, however, that the reason not only asserts
its natural authority as reason over sense, but that,
as this authority is responded to as a fitness to be a
universal law, it awakens the feeling of respect, it
being always remembered, however, that the rela-
tion of fitness to control precedes and occasions, but
never follows, the feeling of worth or desirableness.
§ 49. It should also be observed that the freedom
of the will, according to Kant, is not psy-
Freedom chologically conceivcd as the capacity to
still More
Exactly choose between two or more objects which
address the sensibilities, but signifies
only that freedom from the impulses of the feelings,
which necessarily belongs to any act ivhich responds
to the commands of reason. The will itself is the
capacity to respond to these commands, independ-
ently of, i.e.., with freedom from, the impulses of sense.
The evidence for the reality of freedom is found
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 103
not in the testimony of consciousness, but solely in
the fact that it is implied by the commands of reason,
and is accepted by the mind as an a priori truth.
The order of thought by which this freedom is
assented to, and the subject-matter of which it is
affirmed, may be thus stated. The practical reason
proposes to the will a maxim that is fit to be a
universal law. The man addressed, so far as he
is reason, assents, therein exercising his practical
capacity to know things as they are, and hence the
law is invested with final and supreme authority.
So far as the sensibility is concerned, it apprehends
and assents to objects as they aifect the feelings,
the objects varying with the varying sensibility
which they address. Hence the man oscillates be-
tween the proper self, the self of the reason, and the
self of the sensibilities, the noumenal and the phe-
nomenal. The reason, however, has no proper
knowledge of entities in a positive form, such knowl-
edge being limited to the senses, the reason presup-
posing another order of existence, which is super-
sensible, and by this very circumstance is exempt
from the law of cause and effect.
It would seem from this statement that reason
gives the knowledge of things in themselves so far
as that they exist, but gives us no knowledge of what
104 kant's ethics.
the}' are, because this would imply a knowledge of
the laws under which they act as phenomena, iu
obedience to the relations of cause and effect. This
apparent contradiction was recognized by Kant, but
he attempts to set it aside by the consideration that
behind the appearance or the phenomena of the
sensibility, as obeying the law of natural causation,
there must lie at their root (though hidden) the
things in themselves, which we cannot expect will
be governed by the same laws.
§ 50. While thus Kant cannot and does not pro-
Kant fess to explain the freedom of the will
that the ^^Y farther than by showing that it is
Moral Law ^^^^ impossible, he urges that we cannot
Affects the i o
Sensibilities, explain another fact equally undeniable,
i.e., the fact that the moral law affects the sensibil-
ities of men. That man takes some interest in this
law he does not deny, although he i-ejects the doc-
trine, in whatever form it may be held, that this
interest is the foundation of the moral judgments,
or their authority. He insists, however, that the
reason has the power to infuse a pleasure into the
soul at the fulfilment of duty, i.e., directly to affect
the sensibility painfully or pleasantly. How this
can be he does not explain. Indeed, he asserts that
such a fact must be inexplicable {i.e., the fact that
THE METAPHYSICS OF MOKALS. 105
a thought can awaken pleasure or pain). The exist-
ence of such a causal power is itself incapable of any
solution. The only suggestion which he can give is
that the sensibility, with the phenomenal in general
and all its relations, is necessarily subordinated to
the thing in-itself and its possible relations. And
yet of the thing-in-itself with its interior and e.x-
terior relations, we confessedly know nothing beyond
the phenomenal effects in which it is manifested
under the laws of cause and effect. It were most
presumptuous, however, he suggests, for us to assert
that it has no other laws than these. The authority
of the moral law, the suitableness of its maxims to
be universal, the reasonableness of " a kingdom of
ends," all require the reality of moral freedom as
their subjective counterpart.
He urges that these ultimate facts in the actual or
possible constitution of things must all be assumed.
They cannot be explained, but they are themselves
necessary in order to explain the phenomena of
human experience. It cannot be reasonably urged
against them, that they are unconditioned or inde-
pendent, for wherever we go we must encounter
certain ultimate facts or truths, whether these are
found in the will of the Creator, the constitution of
things, or the behests of reason. Similarly, Kant
106 Kant's ethics.
would say that he refers us to the practical reason
as the ultimate and the unconditioned moral element
in the careful critique of which he expects to find
the solution of all the problems of ethics, as by the
examination of the pure I'eason he had essayed to
explain the ultimate asseverations of speculative
truth.
Here he leaves us, at the end of his attempt to
bring into distinct apprehension and bold relief the
principal metaphysical concepts which are at the
foundation of ethical science. These concepts, thus
developed by the analytic method, he proposes sub-
sequently to explain by a critical examination of the
pi'actical reason, which should render a service to
ethics similar to that which he had hoped to derive
from the Critique of Pure Reason in the interest of
speculative science.
The conclusion which he reaches, and in which he
rests for the time, is the following: Though we
cannot explain or reconcile the ultimate concepts
or assumptions of the practical reason and the sci-
ence of ethics, we can explain their incomprehensibil-
ity. This incomprehensibility is similar to that
which had been reached in the Critique of Pure
Reason, as characteristic of the principles of specula-
tive science. It arises from the axiomatic or dosrmatic
THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALS. 107
character of certain irreconcilable or unadjustable
a priori elements, all of which must necessarily be
assumed in order to explain the possibility of human
experience — the experience in the one case being
the experience of knowledge, in the other the expe-
rience of duty.
Whether the Critique of Practical Reason, when
prosecuted, will fulfil the anticipations of its author,
whether it will be equally successful with this pre-
liminary essay on the Metaphysics of Morals, or
more so, remains to be seen. We must look forward
with interest to its solution of the problem which it
has imposed upon itself, viz.: to find in the postu-
lates of the practical reason not merely the synthetic
principles a priori which shall serve as a foundation
for ethical science, but which shall also, through
ethics, peiform the additional service which the
Critique of Pure Reason has shown to be so neces-
sary, and yet so impossible, for speculative philoso-
phy.
CHAPTER III.
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON.*
§ 51. The reader of the preface to this treatise
Preface and should not fail to keep in mind the fact
Introduction, ^j^^^ -^ ^^^^ published seven years after the
Critique of the Pure Reason, and three years after
the Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics oif
Morals. Its author might very reasonably suppose
that his readers were familiar with both these trea-
tises, and the place of each in the development of
his philosophical system. The remarks made in
both preface and introduction are obviously designed
to recall distinctly, and to reimpress forcibly the
conclusions which he supposed himself to have
reached, involving, as the attempt necessarily did, a
short review of his entire system, and a series of
short and sharp statements of its distinctive prin-
ciples. No one who reads these two papers atten-
tively can doubt what his leading positions were in
respect to the most important questions which he
had proposed to consider and answer.
* Die Kritilc der Pralitisclien Vernunft.
108
THE CRITIQUE OF PKACTICAL REASON. 109
He begins by explaining why he entitles the pres-
ent treatise the Critique of the Practical
Practical, not
Reason, and not the Critique of the Pure Pure anA
Practical Reason, and gives the follow-
ing: That if there is or can be a reason that is truly
practical, it must necessarily be pure, that, is a
priori in its positions, inasmuch as it must begin
with an ultimate, actual fact, the fact of freedom,
and this in its very nature is involved in an uncon-
ditioned and an unconditional imperative. Now,
the Critique of the Pure Reason, the author proceeds
to urge, has shown by its analysis of all higher
human knowledge that it must involve an a priori
element, called the unconditioned. And yet of this
t( priori element, the speculative reason does not
and cannot affirm objective reality.
Qncere, here and always: Why does it not? Does
it not in fact? Why does not the analysis which
shows the unconditioned to be subjectively necessary
in order to the completion and trustworthiness of
human knowledge, and particularly of human sci-
ence — why does not this very analysis involve and
justify the belief that this, being unconditioned, is
also an objective fact?
P)ut it being assumed that this essential a priori
element must be furnished, we find that it is sup-
110 kaxt's ethics.
plied by the practical reason, viz. : the element of free-
, „ . , dom, which, speculatively or in its scien-
The Practical '■ •'
Reason titic or philosophical relations, is the un-
Siipplies an
a jmori conditioned, since it is ideally involved in
the categorical imperative of duty. But
freedom (if not ideally, at least practically) implies
Cxod and immortality, if it is to be accepted as a fact.
Hence we have the basis of all a priori knowledge in
that unconditioned fact of freedom which is implied
in the moral law, inasmuch as the elements of trust-
worthy speculative knowledge rest on faith in duty,
this being given as objectively true, with the subjec-
tive freedom which it implies. That which was a
problem becomes an actual fact — amplifying itself
as the Soul, God, and Immortality. In this way,
through the medium and by the authority of the
practical reason, we establish the authority of these
speculative ideas of the pure reason.
Moreover, we explain by means of our critical an-
alysis of the speculative reason, why the practical
reason should be able to supply to the speculative an
element which it confesses to be wanting to itself.
The Critique of the Pure Reason has shown that two
kinds of knowledge are supposable, viz. : the knowl-
edge of phenomena, i.e., of things as conditioned by
sense-forms, the categories, and in a certain sense
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. Ill
by ideas — i.e., the knowledge of things as they ap-
pear — and the knowledge of noumena, i.e., of things
as they really are. This last confessedly cannot be
gained by the speculative reason, but if it can be
assured by the practical reason, this last consequently
deserves to be accepted as pure so far as it is practi-
cal, and because it is practical.
To the analysis of the practical reason as thus
outlined, the author adds that his previous treatises
are preliminary, both the speculative and the practi-
cal — the speculative as justifying the critical method
and its postulates, and the ethical as defining or
vouching for its subject-matter. Under the first are
included the famous Critic^ue and the Prolegomena,
and under the last the Metaphysics of Morals.
§ 52. He notices, next in order, a criticism of this
last work which he deems worthy of his Reply to a
attention, viz.: that he did not begin his Criticism,
discussion with a definition of good, and also that he
did not define the faculty of desire. The objections
of the critic seem to us well taken, and to spring
into the face of the writer at almost every turn of
the subsequent discussion. We shall have frequent
occasion to refer to both as we proceed, and there-
fore say here only in passing, that the attempt of
Kant to meet these objections seems to increase
li-2 rant's ethics.
rather than relieve the difficulty. The objections
seem to strike the ke^^-note of the error which
pervades his entire theory of the relations of
the sensibility to the will, and of both to the
intellect (or moral reason, as it is often called)
in its ultimate ethical concepts and judgments.
To this error we have had occasion previously to
advert, viz. : the error that because the experiences
of feeling and of voluntary affection are in their
very nature personal and empirical, they cannot
hold any relations to the will or to one another,
inasmuch as the voluntary are rational and per-
manent, and involve authority and obligation. The
grossness of this error is manifest in the absurd-
ity of Kant's attempt in the note, to define desire
and pleasure by merely intellectual concepts and
rational relations. We notice this error at the out-
set, and forewai-n the reader that it will be repeated
in form or in fact scores of times in the treatise.
For the present he must content himself as well as
he may with the following: "'The faculty of desire
is the being's faculty of becoming by means of its
ideas the cause of the actual existence of the objects
of these ideas." Our objection to this would be that
it does not conform to the facts of conscious experi-
ence. Tt seems but little better than trifling to say
THE CKITIQUE OF PKACTICAJ, UEASOX. 113
that in desire the soul by means of its ideas becomes
the cause of the objects of these ideas. One does not
need to be told by Kant that this definition, with
others. '" is composed only of terms belonging to
the understanding, i.e.. of categories which contain
nothing empirical.'" So much for the preface. The
remaining topics, though instructive and interesting,
do not relate to Kant's Ethics, directly or indirectly,
and are beside our purpose.
§ 53. In the brief introduction which follows,
two points deserve special attention in
the two-fold function which the author Function
asserts for the will. According to the Ascribed to
" the Will.
first, "the will is a faculty either to pro-
duce objects corresponding to ideas," or, according to
the second, " to determine ourselves to the effecting
of such objects (whether the physical power is sufli-
cient or not)." This twofold definition is not unfa-
miliar in our English nomenclature, Sis first, the capa-
city to accomplish physical effects of any kind, either
muscular or corporeal in ourselves or others, in the
world of matter with which our bodies are con-
nected, or even in the world of spirit, so far as other
spirits are subject to any agency of our own ; and
second, the capacity to pi'oduce effects which are
114 K ant's ethics.
purely spiritual and in the domain of feeling, by a
direct energy of volition.
According to Kant, the agent in either case is not
the will, but reason — reason being conceived of as
the agent which acts on the will, and in one of the
two ways, either under "empirical conditions," as
when motives of sense or desire solicit or take
possession of the will, or when the motive or com-
mand of duty appears as the categorical imperative,
in some empirical form indeed, or, we should say, in
some concrete example, but still as exemplifying
some relation of duty. But this command of reason
supposes freedom, or the capacity of unconditioned
action. What this freedom is, as a psychological
endowment or act, Kant does not attempt to explain.
He does not even afifirm it of the will as a power to
choose, and scarcely recognizes the will as a faculty
of the soul at all. He discu.sses freedom, not as per-
taining to an activity of the spirit, but simply as
involving a special metaphysical relation of ideas,
giving the unconditioned in objective thought.
The recognition of this double aspect or effect of
the will's supposed response to reason, either in
internal, i.e., ethical, results, or in those which are
bodily and mechanical, is most important, and it is
surprising that more of it is not made by Kant.
'ISE CRITKiUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 115
The oversight is but one of many examples of his
neglect of the psychological aspects of his themes in
favor of the metaphysical. We note a still more
serious defect in his failure to see that reason may
be as truly a moving and constraining force with
the freely acting v^^ill, when it addresses the feelings
and urges the claims of the sensibilities, as when it
confronts the will with what Kant calls ideas, or the
commands of the reason. As we have already in-
timated, the assumption is utterly unwarrantable on
which Kant's entire theory rests, that the feelings,
as related to one another and to the highest and best
achievements of man, are empirical as contrasted with
the truly ra.tional. Moral freedom, or what Kant
calls the unconditioned, is just as compatible with
those rational concepts of the natural or pathological
feelings which the moral will can make supreme, as
with those concepts which are derived from intel-
lectual objects or their relations.
§ 54. The indefinite and vacillating conceptions
of Kant in respect to this topic can only Vacillating
be explained by the fact that in his classification
times, and even since, the will has been °5 ^^^
Psychical
conceived and defined in so indefinite Powers.
and vacillating a fashion. The powers of the soul
have often been held to be only two, viz.: to Know
116 KANT^S ETHICS.
and to Feel, while under feeling has been included
every state that has to do with action, whether
internal or external. When an improvement has
been made upon this classitication, and a threefold
division introduced, founded on " to Know, to Feel,
and to Act," as three separate functions, great inde-
terminateness has still been attached to the meanings
of both feeling and action. It has not been decided
whether desire belonged partly or wholly to action,
or whether it partly pertained to feeling and partly
to will. Those who denied freedom, or did not
emphasize freedom, have made desire equivalent to
action or impulse. Even since the three designa-
tions, to Know, to Feel, and to Choose, were intro-
duced, to Know and to Will have been recognized
as the two leading powers, and at times have pre-
occupied for analysts the entire psychical arena.
§ 55. It is also worthy of notice, as essential to a
correct interpretation of Kant's reason Kant's
ing, that Kant's use of the word " will "' ^"definite
Conceptions
is conspicuously indefinite and variable, "f 'hewni.
Now he seems to make it the capacity for ethical
choice, whether as a special form of psychological
activity which is purely spiritual, or whether it
passes over into a corporeal effect. Then again,
which is still more surprising, he repre.sents the
THE CRITIQL'E OF PRACTICAL REASON. 117
will as the giver or enforcer of the moral law,
as when he speaks of it as the autonomous, as
contrasted with the heteronomous will, making it
synonymous with the practical reason — now the
giver of and then the respondent to the law of one
or both. In this brief introduction a distinction is
made between '"the empirically conditioned reason,'
on the one hand, "claiming exclusively to furnish the
ground of determination of the will," and the "pure
reason," on the other. This can only be understood
by apprehending the diiferent senses in which the
term "reason" is used, prominent among which is
the sense in which it is used as the lawgiver to the
moral, i.e.. the free will, which again is distin-
guished from the sensibility with its strong impulses,
passionately and passively yielding to the excite-
ments of sense.
In the conclusion of his brief introduction, the
author adds an important remark, the full import
of which might easily escape the attention of the
reader. He says: "The order in the subdivision of
the analytic will be the reverse of that in the
Critique of the Pure Speculative Reason. For in
the present case we shall commence with the prin-
ciples and proceed to the concepts, and only then, if
possible, to the senses; whereas, in the case of the
118 Kant's ethicj,.
speculative reason," i.e., as analyzed in his famous
Critique, "" we began with the senses, and had to end
with the iH'inciples."
§ 56. This remark of Kant suggests the inquirj"
whether knowledge of every kind, begin-
Knowledge ° j ' o
of Every Sort ning with the sense-perceptions and end-
Begins with
Judgments. iug with the intuitions of the reason, is
not Concepts. ,• ■ \ ^ c t. • iii -j-
not invariabh' lirst given to the mind in
the form of propositions or principles, which are
subsequently analyzed into percepts, concepts, or
ideas; and whether the sceptical distrust with which
Kant invested all the processes of the speculative
faculty, and which he seeks to overcome by such
manifold and unnatural ways of resort to the prac-
tical reason, would not have been rendered un-
necessary by the distinct recognition, on his part, of
the truth which he limits to the practical reason,
viz.: that knowledge of every kind is originally given
in the form of judgments, involving the concepts,
which are expressed in propositions by manifold
relations. These relations, when subsequently ana-
lyzed and generalized b}^ the critical judgment, are
revealed as the a priori bonds by which concepts are
united, and these, again, are mentally isolated and
analyzed as forms of sense, categories of the under-
standing, and ideas of the reason, which are also
THE ClilTIQUE OP PRACTICAL KEASON. 119
assumed psychologically as the subjective conditions,
and metaphysically as the objective forms of all
human know^ledge. Such a correction of Kant's
theory would justify our confidence in the specu-
lative reason, and might have saved Kant the neces-
sity of resorting to the practical reason as a make-
weight or a make-shift for his imperfectly or rnis-
conceived pure reason.
§ 57. Following Kant still further, we find that
the first chapter of the Critique treats of principles of
the principles of pure practical reason, J^'^^^'^^
and begins with a definition of practical Defined,
principles, as " propositions which contain a general
determination of the will, having under it (itself)
several practical rules." The phrase allgemeine
Besthnnmiig des Willens is sufficiently abstract and
indefinite. It certainly does not mean a moving force
or agency which actually effects a right or wrong con-
dition of will, and we conclude that it must signify
any accepted maxim or rule which characterizes or
defines the will as morally good or evil, /.p., in a gen-
eral way, admitting, of course, sundry subordinate
particulars, or varieties of individual character. Or
more exactly, it is any universal rule which by be-
ing adopted expresses the moral character of the will.
The remark appended, that some motive to such a
120 kakt's ethics.
state or activity of the will must always be assumed
to be possible, is unquestionably correct.
§ 58. The added remark that such a motive must
address the reason onlv, as contradistin-
Every Motive
must Address guished from the feelings, i.e., must be
the Reason.' . , i -.i ,1 ,1
rational as contrasted with the patho-
logical, implies that a motive furnished by reason
must exclude the feelings as such, or any relations
to them. We have already observed that such an
assumption or assertion would be emphatically re-
jected by many of Kant's critics. No one, however,
would deny for this reason that certain practical
principles are universal, inasmuch as all would con-
tend that it is always reasonable that the lower
natural feelings should give way to the higher, as
also the injurious to the beneficent. All men would
also assert that physical laws differ from moral laws,
and that moral laws are in their nature imperative,
though on a different theory from Kant's. All will
agree with him that the moral law is both internal
and external, that is, determines or commands both
the internal state of the will and the bodily or
external actions which the will controls. Certain
moral laws are also categorically imperative so far
as they suppose certain conditions to be common to
all men, and concern themselves with those internal
THE CRITIQUE OF I'RACTICAL REASON. 121
states of the will which are within the reach of all
men. So far as it may be supposed that the condi-
tions which respect the outward conduct are varia-
ble, the moral law proper concerns itself universally
with the internal states of the will, and with them
only. So far as these purposes or feelings require a
single course of action, so far is the rule of action
uniform and fixed. In all these general positions the
practical theory of Kant may be accepted by those
who reject altogether his doctrine of a blind cate-
gorical imperative which assumes dictatorially to
guide and control the moral reason.
In Theorem I. we find the following: "All practical
principles which presuppose an object of
^ ^ lit- J Empirical
the faculty of desire as the ground of the Principles
determination of the will are empirical,
and can furnish no practical laws." Two reasons
are given for this position : F/'i'st, The desire precedes
the rule, and is founded on a pleasure actually expe-
rienced. Now, it is impossible to know befoi'ehand
what any pleasure will be, and consequently we must
try a pleasure before we prescribe a law for or against
it. To this we reply: The law of duty prescribes an
affection as voluntary, in comparison with some
other one or more affections also voluntary, i.e, an
affection of some class, in competition with one of
122 KANT*S ETHICS.
another as a class. On any theory, it supposes we
know the natural excellence or desirableness of such
aifections. It supposes this even on the theory of
the categorical imperative, which commands the act,
as distinguished from a feeling, i.e., makes it mor-
ally binding because by some sort of experience it
knows it to be naturally good, i.e., fit to he a uni-
versal ride. The first experience in the order of
time is that an action, say, of love or pity or self-
sacrifice, is naturally good. The knowledge of this
natural excellence is derived from some source be-
fore it is enforced by a moral command. Kant says,.
indeed: "It is impossible to know a- priori of any
idea whether it will be connected with pleasure or
pain, or be indifferent.''" That is true, and for this
very reason we must wait till we know whether it
is connected with pleasure or pain, either by em-
pirical experience or by testimony, before we can
decide whether it comes under the law. If this is
so, why then must or may we not know the rela-
tions of actions emjjirically before we know them
morally, or, as Kant would say, before we know
them formally?
He adds in the second place, that pleasure and
pain cannot hold in the same degree for all rational
beings, and hence cannot be the foundation of a law.
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 123
We answer: If they do not hold in the same degree,
that is, are not equally intense or strong, they can be
the same to all men in their relative natural value
so far as quality is concerned, i.e., natural quality.
Otherwise the beings concerned with them do not
belong to the same species, and consequently cannot in
any sense accept the same moral law on grounds of
reason. In Kant's terminology, unless the relations
of the empirical endowments of men are the same,
their moral relations could not be formally the
same, inasmuch as the formal cannot be known in
psychological experience, except as it is exemplified
in the empirical, i.e., cannot be proposed as a rule or
standard, except it presents an ideal which has rela-
tions to the actual nature of the being on whom
and by whom it is self-imposed.
§ 59. Theorem II. is that " all material practical
principles, as such, are of one and the Material
same kind, and come under the general "'' !*^^
' ° Principles
principle of self-love or private happi- Defined,
ness."
In support of this position he contends that there
is no distinction possible between the desires, as
higher and lower; that the reason, as an impulse or
a motive, neither appeals to nor satisfies any desires
whatever, and, moreover, that pure reason " must
134 kant's ethics.
be able to determine the will by the mere form of
the practical rule, without supposing any feeling."
But he adds: ''Then only when reason itself deter-
mines the will (not as the servant of the inclina-
tion), is it really a higher desire, to which that
which is pathologically determined is subordinate,
and is really and even specifically distinct from the
latter, so that even the slightest admixture of the
motives of the latter impairs its strength and supe-
riority"; and still more positively: "Reason, with
its practical law, determines the will immediately,
not by means of an intervening feeling of pleasure
and pain, not even of pleasure in the law itself; and
it is only because it can, as pure reason, be practical
that it is possible for it to be legislative."
These assertions need no comment except to refer
the reader to the concession made by Kant in the
passage cited above, that reason acts through a
higher desire whenever it in fact determines the
will.
§ 60. In Theorem III. he repeats the position that
Practical every one of the maxims cited is a practical
nncip es universal law in form only, as contrasted
tormal, and •' '
not Material. ^Jth matter. Form is also frankly and
forcibly defined to be fitness for universal legisla-
tion. This fitness is illustrated by examples of the
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 135
workings of the four previously supposed rules of con-
duct in respect to human welfare. If these instan-
ces mean anything they justify the interpretation
that Kant's formula of universal legislation is always
to will such a purpose or voluntaiy desire as would
produce acts which promote the highest well-being
of man. {Cf. § 40.)
§ 61. Two problems are then proposed. The first
is, to find the nature of the will that can Two Problems
be determined b}^ such a law, and the Proposed,
answer is only such a will as is free from natural
causality, i.e., the will as such; in simple English,
the will as a purpose or voluntary desire when con-
trasted with the manifestation or execution of its
volition in words or bodily acts. The second prob-
lem is, "given such a will, to find a law competent
to determine it necessarily," which is solved by the
discovery of a supposed unconditioned practical law.
To this is appended the remark, which not unfre-
quently occurs in the discussion, that the possibility
of freedom would never have been dreamed of and
its reality never accepted as a fact, had not the
moral law enforced obligations which implied its
possibility and reality. Physical science does not
know it, nor does the experience of common life. It
is ethical experience only which implies and affirms
126 kant's ethics.
it. In Kant's own language, man "judges, there-
fore, 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." This is true with a qualifica-
tion. We may concede that man would in fact know
no freedom except through his moral experiences,
but instead of holding with Kant that man knows
he is free because he knows he ought, we contend
that he believes that he ought because he knows he is
free. Kant's position is still more explicitly assert-
ed in the remark that follows, to which is added a
corollary, which asserts that the moral law extends to
all moral beings, with this important exception, that
for the Infinite Being an act becomes holiness which
in created beings would be obedience, inasmuch as
that obedience of which the con-elate is obligation,
is possible only when there is struggling disinclina-
tion. In all finite beings, therefore, in whom virtue
always involves a conflict and who always reluctate
in opposing desire, its triumphs are progressive but
never complete. This is the logical and the accepted
outcome of Kant's theoiy of obligation, and needs
no further comment here. {Cf. § 37.)
4; 62. Theorem TV. treats of the Autonomj^ and
Heteronomy of the will, with the same results as in
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 127
the first treatise. {Cf. § 45.) Special stress is laid
upon the now familiar principle that the
^ Autonomy and
authority of the moral law lies not in its Heteronomy
of the Will.
matter, but m its form, and that the latter
consists in its fitness to be universal. As previously,
so here, the examples find all their interest and force
as illustrations of the adaptation of right purposes
and conduct to promote the welfare of man. Apart
from such tendency or fitness, as implied in every
example cited by Kant, that is, as he would insist,
apart from the inatfer, and regarded as a merely
formal element, the condition of universal fitness can
only require logical consistency, and can signify or
imply nothing more.
In the remarks which follow, Kant recognizes the
fact that happiness may be the object of every hu-
man being, and that all men find a rational sym-
pathy in the happiness of others, and both these
must be assumed in order to make the law of duty
practical or efficient, while he insists that inasmuch
as these elements are material and not formal they
can neither originate nor enforce the law of duty.
That this extreme position is necessary to his view of
the authority of the law, as the categorical impera-
tive, is sufficiently clear.
in Remark 2, he seeks to reinforce his previous
128 rant's ethics.
arguments by the consideration that while men know
what duty is with unquestioning convictions, they find
it difficult to decide the questions which relate to hap-
piness, overlooking entirely the point that questions
of duty are clear only so far as the purpose or inter-
nal volition or state is concerned, while questions of
happiness (and, we might add, of duty, so far as they
depend on questions of happiness) turn on contin-
gent and doubtful matter, viz. : on changing circum-
stances. It is sufficient to say that no ethical system,
whatever its professions, can usually go a whit far-
ther than the purposes or intentions in laying down
axiomatic principles or rules of duty. Directions
for the conduct generally admit of qualifications and
exceptions.
§ 63. Ill-desert is next noticed, which is the ra-
iii-desert tional prerogative of moral volition when
Analyzed. j^ transgresses the moral law, right-
eously to suffer evil. This property is treated as
original, and, as we should infer by the logic of Kant,
it must be directly enforced by the categorical imper-
ative. {Cf. §94 on Bishop Butler.) By what reason-
ing or through what relation it is proved that the
purpose (or rather the man) which is not conformed
to the law which is fit to be universal, deserves to
suffer evil, is not explained. It is only assei-ted that
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 129
were this not true, the conception of justice would
be impossible.
The theory of a moral sense is next referred to.
This Kant seems to have known imperfectly, as it
was held by Hutcheson and Shaftesbury. It is, of
course, summarily set aside because it uses feeling
where reason alone is appropriate. The theory of
perfection which was taught by Wolff before and in
Kant's day is also noticed, but it is dismissed as em-
pirical, even when held in the form of man's highest
dignity as suitable to the end of human existence,
and for the reason that it supposes an empirical
knowledge of human nature, and therefore must
rest on a material, as contrasted with a formal, prin-
ciple of legislation.
§ 64. After this analysis, the author proceeds to
gather up and in a sense to restate the The Contrast
results which it seems to justify in the ^je't^veen the
contrast which it discovers between the ^^^""^ '"'^
the Practical
pure and practical reason. Reason.
The speculative reason gives us no principles a
priori, but only time and space as a priori forms,
necessary to the sense-perceptions. Besides these it
gives no knowledge of noumena or things in them-
selves, but only of objects of possible experience as
connected by a priori cateyorics. It established, how-
130 kaxt's ethics.
ever, the necessity of thinking certain HOioneini, and
thus provided negatively for freedom, /.e., for the be-
lief of something more than sense experience as such,
but without any positive knowledge concerning it.
It pointed to facts and relations beyond the world of
sense, to freedom, not merely in a negative, but also
in a positive sense, as supposed and implied in the
moral law. This introduced into sensible nature a
nature that is super-sensible, or, as we may say, con-
nects an autonomy of pure practical reason with the
heteronomy of nature, the one controlling and in-
fluencing the other without interfering with the
laws of either — the moral also proposing the control
of the rational or sensible by its own laws, so as to
produce the siimmum homim.
For the truth of this analysis Kant appeals to ex-
perience. The moral imperative, he asserts, obliges
everyone to speak the truth, to preserve his own
life, etc. These acts are not, however, taught by
nature as inductions or lessons of experience, but by
sundry higher laws as ideals which can only be ac-
tualized in experience. Here also, he says, we notice
the difference between the laws of a system to which
the will is subject and of a system which is subject
to a will. In the one case the objects are the causes
of the ideas that determine the wall, in the other the
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON". 131
will is the cause of the objects. Hence the two
problems; the first, how the pure reason can cog-
nize objects a priori, the second, how it can deter-
mine objects a priori The first has been determined
by the answer — only so far as to show how sense-ex-
perience is possible by a priori intuitions, and with-
out the knowledge of things in themselves. The last
does not explain how experiences of desire are pos-
sible, for these have also been provided for — but only
how reason can determine the maxims of the will. It
does not point to an a priori intuition, as in the case
of the speculative reason; it relates to the states of
the will only, separately from their manifestations
in sense-activity, inasmuch as any realization of an
act or state by the sensibility would carry us into
the field of the speculative reason.
In answering these several questions, the critical
philosophy begins with certain practical laws or
rules of duty as real. Instead of the receptive forms
of intuition (the a priori element in sense-perception)
it assumes the concept of freedom, inasmuch as prac-
tical laws of any kind are only possible on the sup-
position of freedom. We do not explain how free-
dom is possible, but finding the law of duty as a
fact, we know that it implies freedom as a fact.
The one is an essential element, and in that sense a
133 Kant's ethics.
condition of the other. This finishes the exposition
of the fundamental principle of the practical reason.
ItH deduction, that is, the justification of its va-
lidity, is not so easy as is that of the principles of
the speculative reason. These last are confirmed by
an appeal to experience. But in morals we cannot
refer to actual experience, but only to the ideal, i.e.,
to what ought to be. To another fact, however, we can
refer. The fact of freedom, which even the specu-
lative reason was obliged to assume as possible in
the form of the unconditioned, is now enforced as
the condition of that law of duty, which is imposed
by the practical reason. In this way, what was a
negative but necessary speculative conception gains
objective reality for ethics, and the reason, from a
transcendent position or use, passes to one that is
immanent — i.e., which is applicable to the feelings
and the actions as phenomena.
In the world of sense every cause is a conditional
cause, and yet in every series an unconditioned ele-
ment is supposable. We saw that while in the
sphere of phenomena freedom is inconceivable and is
excluded from positive knowledge, it may still be pos-
sible in the woi'ld of uoumena. But what was thus
conceived as simply possible is now recognized and
enforced by the practical reason as a condition of the
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 133
law of duty, and is therefore accepted as true. A
causa HOHineKon, i.e., a free cause, is not directly
known, and cannot even be conceived by the specula-
tive reason, and yet it can be believed and assumed
as implied in the imperative of the practical reason.
§ 65. The preceding suggests the question again,
How can we reconcile the extension, be- pj^^, p,,,^ y^^
yond its appropriate limits, of the knowl- Apply the
Commands of
edge thus gained by the practical reason, the Practical
Reason to the
i.e., from nouraena to the objects and world of
Sense?
phenomena of the sensible world?
In reply to this question, as formally stated, the
author refers to Hume's celebrated argument, that
the law of causation involves no objective necessity,
and is the mere product of association, so far as this
can be applied to make experience possible. He
concedes that so far as phenomena are concerned,
this may hold good, while yet it does not extend to
noumena or the intelligible world. He contends
that the conclusions which we have reached in re-
spect to the reality of freedom, as implied by the
necessities of the practical reason, simply establish
the fact, and consequently its possibility, but do not
provide for the determination of any one of its
laws, such laws being possible only in the sphere of
phenomena. And yet we can know freedom so far as
134 rant's ethics.
it intrudes into a.nd inodifie.s plienoniena, although
we cannot subject it to laws, for to do so would be
to make it cease to be freedom. But we gain this
much: if we find no incompatibility between the two
spheres, we can accept the one as consistent with the
other. We even do more: we hold that both are
necessary — the one to make experience possible, i.e,
possible to speculative reason in the realm of con-
crete and sensible phenomena, and the other to
make noumena, though unconditioned, to be not
only intelligible, but necessary to our reason, i.e., to
our practical reason, so far as it imposes on us the
law of duty, thereby involving freedom.
§ 66. Chapter II. is entitled. The Concept of an
The Object Object of Practical Reason; or, as it
the^Pr^cHcaf "^^^^^^ '^^ interrogatively expressed. With
Reason. what kind of objects does the practical
reason concern itself, and what kind of products can
it bring to pass by its appropriate activity?
The answer to this question is brief, viz.: The
object or effect produced is in no sense physical: it
is simply moral, i.e.^ morally good or evil; or, as
Kant would say, simply good or evil, inasmuch as
he acknowledges no relation between sentient good
and evil, on the one hand, and the moral on the
other. In our English terminology we should say it
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASOJiT. 135
was simply psychical, a state of the will existing for
and provided by the will alone; equally good or
bad, whether passing over to any outward act oi- no.
Kant urges that these two kinds of good must be
derived from different sources — the first from the
sensibilities, and the second from the commands of
the moral reason, as their originator — and that each
is independent of the other. If the contrary were
true, i.e.. if moral good and evil were that which
produces pleasure and pain, he iirges that experience
would be necessary to tell us which is good or evil,
because it is only by experience that we can learn
the cause of either. The maxim of the schoolmen.
Nihil apj)t'fii)iiis iiii^i si(h rafio)ie boiii, is often cited
to sustain this view. But Kant contends that this
adage is misleading by reason of the ambiguity of
the word bonum, which may mean either sentient or
rational, i.e., moral, good. If both senses are in-
cluded, then the term is ambiguous; if only the first,
then it is false. Well and ill refer to the pleasant
or unpleasant, as determined by the sensibility; but
good or ei'il pertains to the will as determined by the
reason. It is true that man is a rational being, and
as such must use his reason to judge between means
and ends, and in this sense to judge between sentient
good and evil; but he also uses this power in the
136 kaxt's ethics.
higher function of judging of that which is good
and evil of itself, I.e., morally right or wrong. In
the decision of this question, we observe we are
compelled to select between two alternatives. We
must either, on the one hand, accord to the reason
itself the capacity to originate a rational principle,
which it applies as a law. which law directly deter-
mines the will, as by its choice or rejection it becomes
morally good or evil. But if we take this position,
we must adopt an apparent paradox, viz.: that the
concept of moral good and evil is not determined
before the moral law, but is determined after it and
by means of it. The other alternative is for us to
accept the necessity of defining good and evil in
terms of sensibility, and so, as Kant reasons, make
both the products of experience.
Moral distinctions, however, he next proceeds to
say, pertain only to the states of the will itself, as dis-
tinguished from their effects in any forms of external
action. But the external actions being phenomena
of sense, moral experience must come under at least
one of the categories, i.e., of causality as exemplified
in the will or voluntary action. So far as they are
manifested in the forms of external action, they
must also appear in or take form from all the cate-
gories. The relations of these moralized categories
TUK CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL KKA80N. 13T
to one another are explained at some length, but as
this point seems not to be material to the essential
features of Kant's theory, we pass it over.
§ 67. What Kant calls the Typk of the pure
practical reason presents some important The Typic
and interesting features. The objects of" ^ *j*j ^"*^
the will are either good or evil according Reason,
as the practical reason determines the choice of them
by the will to be either morally right or wrong. In
other words, says Kant, the will is pronounced by
the practical reason right or wrong according as it
chooses this or that object, the objects chosen them-
selves thereby becoming right or wrong. Inasmuch,
however, as these moral states, or free acts, go over
into the sphere of the sensible world which obeys
physical laws, the question is at once suggested. How
such external actions can be morally right or wrong.
As a sensible event, such an action can be conceived
as explained by the schematism of the imagination,
though it is the product of freedom, but it is not
easy to see how a material or sensible event can take
on or be penetrated by moral quality, obe^ung as it
must the physical conditions of existence. This diffi-
culty of Kant's own suggestion it would seem to be
difficult for him to answer, but he attemjjts it by
asserting that " the understanding for the purposes
138 kaxt's ethics.
of judgment can provide not a scheme of the sensi-
bility, but a law" such "as can be exhibited in
concreto in objects of the senses." " The rule of the
judgment according to laws of practical reason is
this: Ask yourself whether, if the action you pro-
pose 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." He then
refers to the four cases of obvious immorality
(which he had cited more than once), contending that
the acts supposed would be wrong, not simply be-
cause of the etiects or consequences which would fol-
low were the immoral acts in question accepted as
laws of nature, but that such laws would in a sense
be types of the moral principles required in their
several cases. He reasons, whatever his reasoning-
may signify, that we must hold the moral law to be
the type of a natural law, so as to guard it against
that empiricism which judges of conduct by conse-
quences, and yet, on the other hand, we must defend
ourselves against the mysticism which holds our
judgments aloof from and above all consideration of
the tendencies and eflFects of conduct. Truly a wise
precaution on his part, but how the desirhrota can
be provided by his theory it is not so easy to dis-
cover.
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 139
§ 68. Chapter III., of the motives of pure practi-
cal reason, is one of the most instructive The Motives
in the treatise, giving, as it does, a series ° ^. ^^^
' o =' Practical
of very lucid statements of the practical Reason,
working of Kant's theory and anticipating many of
the objections and difficulties which he could not but
foresee would be urged against it. The first sen-
tence is at once forcible and comprehensive: "What
is essential in the moral worth of actions is that the
moral law should directly determine the will." It
must do this '" directly." with no intervention of
feeling, inasmuch as this would make the act not to
be done for the sake of the law, and thus eviscerate
it of its morality. If we understand by motive the
subjective ground of an act whose objective ground
is not reason, then the Divine Will cannot be influ-
enced by motives, and if the motive of the human
being is the moral law alone, " the objective princi-
ple of determination must always and alone be also
the subjectively sufficient determining principle.*"
We cannot show how a law can directly determine
the will, for tliat were to explain the mystery of free
will. But we need to clear its action from every in-
fluence upon the feelings, which can only hinder or
divide it.
§ 69. We observe, then, that the moral law acts
140 kant's ethics.
on the will not only without the cooperation of the
sensibilities, but often, if not always, in
Obligation
and Respect resistance to them. When this last hap-
for the Law. . /. i ■ i • i •
pens, it checks the leelmg which it over-
comes, producing as a consequence indirectly and
negatively another feeling, which is painful and is
the only feeling, the nature and actuality of which
ma}^ be understood a priori, viz. : the feeling of obli-
gation. All the inclinations as such tend to happi-
ness and are classed as ministering to selfishness or
to self-conceit. Selfishness is checked by the reason,
which prescribes rational welfare, self-conceit is
summarily set aside and rejected. The capacity of
reason thus to humble selfish vanity is also known
a priori and awakens respect for the law, a feeling
which, he tells us, is not empirical, but is known
a priori, being a feeling which is directly produced
by an intellectual cause. The strong tendency to
make a subjective into an objective determining
principle is checked and humiliated by the moral
law, for which respect is at once awakened as supe-
rior to any pathological experience or affection.
Thus, by means of this negative operation of repres-
sion, there is awakened a positive emotion in opposi-
tion to self-love. Doubtless, Kant gladly availed him-
self of the opportunity to interpose at this point the
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 141
following remark: " No special kind of feeling need
be assumed for this under the name of a practical or
moral feeling as antecedent to the moral law and
serving as its foundation." This negative effect is
pathological. So far as the individual as a sensitive
being is concerned, it is also humiliating, and so far
as the law is concerned, it is respect, which may be
indirectly called moral feeling. The effect produced,
liowever, is not pathological, but practical, and the
respect for the law is not a motive to morality, but
is morality itself subjectively considered as a mo-
tive. This respect and all which it involves cannot
hold good of the Supreme Being or any being who
like Him is incapable of sensibility. As for respect,
it need not be said it applies to persons only and not
to things, i.e., to persons as exemplifying the moral
law. Respect for the law may become an interest
in so far as it impels us by desire to live a life gov-
erned by itself as an objective motive, and also in
the technical sense a maxim, but in these effects it
can be applied only to imperfect and sentient beings.
And yet the interest awakened is in some se)ise
moral, just as the feelings are called moral by
courtesy. An action determined by the law against
inclination is duty, and duty includes practical ob-
ligation, i.e.. a deterniiuMtion against reluctant feel-
142 kajs't's ethics.
ing. The feeling of elevation at being animated by
such a motive involves self-approbation. In this way
Kant very rapidly dispones of some of the most im-
portant and characteristic ethical emotions.
§ 70. The difference between acting according to
duty and from a sense of duty, Kant
Acting ''
According to continues, is obvious from the principles
Duty and
from a Sense laid dowu, and is itself most important.
" ^' The first, i.e., legality, is possible if the
inclinations determine the will; the second, only
when the moral law is the objective motive. For a
perfect being the moral law is a law of holiness;
for a being morally imperfect, it is a law of duty.
" It is a very beautiful thing to do good to men
from love to them and from sympathetic good will,
or to be just from love of order; but this is not the
true moral maxim of conduct which is suitable to
our condition among rational beings, as iHe)i, when
we pretend with fanciful pride to set oui'selves above
the thought of duty, like volunteers; and, as if we
were independent of the command, to want to do of
our own good pleasure what we think we need no
command to do. * * * Duty and obligation are
the only names that we must give to our relations
to the moral law."
§ 71. The njoral law commands love to God and
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL KEASOX. 143
our neighbor, but it commands neither as an affec-
tion. " To love God means in this sense
Import of a
to like to do His commandments; to love Coinmand
one's neighbor, to like to practice all
duties to him." But this is not a command to have
the disposition in question, but to " endeavor after
it. * * * That law of all law^s," viz.: the law of
love, exhibits the moral disposition in its perfection
as a moral ideal of holiness, when it shall have out-
grown the relation of duty and obligation.
After enlarging upon this theme, Kant adds that
these remarks are not so much designed to oppose
religious fanaticism as that moral fanaticism which
imagines that human virtue ought not to be mili-
tant, but to be already perfect in holiness.
"Now, if we search we shall find for all actions
that are worthy of praise a law of duty which com-
mands, and does not leave us to choose what may be
agreeable to our inclinations. This is the only way
of representing things that can give a moral train-
ing to the soul, because it alone is capable of solid
and accurately defined principles.
" If fanaticism in its most general sense is a
deliberate overstepping of the limits of human rea-
son, then moral fanaticism is such an overstepping
of the bounds that practical pure reason sets to
144 kant's ethics.
mankind, in that it forbids us to place the subjective
determining principle of correct actions, that is,
their moral motive, in anything but the law itself,
or to place the disposition which is thereby brought
into the maxims in anything but respect for this
law; and hence commands us to take, as the supreme
vital principle of all morality in men, the thought
of duty, which strikes down all arrogance, as well as
vain self-love.
"If this is so, it is not only writers of romance or
sentimental educators (although thej'^ may be zeal-
ous opponents of sentimentalism), but sometimes
even philosophers; nay, even the severest of all, the
Stoics, that have brought in moral fanaticism, in-
stead of a sober but wise moral discipline, although
the fanaticism of the latter was more heroic, that of
the former, of an insipid, effeminate character; and
we may, without hypocrisy, say of the moral teach-
ing of the Gospel, that it first, by the purity of its
moral principle, and at the same time by its suit-
ability to the limitations of finite beings, brought
all the good conduct of men under the discipline of
a duty plainly set before their eyes, which does not
permit them to indulge in dreams of imaginary
moral perfections; and that it also set the bounds of
humility (that is, self-knowledge) to self-conceit as
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 145
well as to self-love, both of which are ready to mis-
take their limits.
"Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name, that
dost embrace nothing charming or insin- Apostrophe
uating, but requirest submission, and ^oDuty.
yet seekest not to move the will b}' threatening
aught that would arouse natural aversion or terror,
but merely boldest forth a law which of itself finds
entrance into the mind, and yet gains reluctant
reverence (though not always obedience), a law
before which all inclinations are dumb, even though
they secretly counter- work it! What origin is there
worthy of thee, and where is to be found the root of
thy noble descent, which proudly rejects all kindred
with the inclinations; a root to be derived from
which is the indispensable condition of the only
worth which men can give themselves?
" It can be nothing less than a power which ele-
vates man above himself which can enable a man
to appreciate the obligation and elevation of such a
life. * * * This power is nothing but personal if ij,
tliat is, freedom and independence of the mechanism
of nature, yet, regarded as a faculty of a being who is
subject to special laws, namely, pure practical laws
given by its own reason, so that the person, as be-
longing to the sensible world, is subject to his
10
146 rant's ethics.
own personality as belonging to the intelligible
world."
§ 72. It is worthy of notice that prrsonalittj is
here recognized for the first time in
Personality ^, ,, ,, • , , ,• mi j
Ht-reRecog- Kant s ethical treatises, ihe pregnant
nizedforthe i^^pQ^t of this vecuIiuiH of human nature
First Time. '■ ^
and prime essential of responsibility,
seems to have occurred to him late in his researches,
especially in its relations to freedom and duty, and
to have scarcely unfolded its enormous significance
in respect to those ideas and emotions which are dis-
tinctively ethical. This late recognition is still
more significant, in view of the fact that in all the
assumptions and conclusions of the Critique of Pure
Reason the Ego is regarded as a very evanescent
though potent noumenon, which might possibly be
recognized as a " logical" experience capable of ren-
dering a questionable though important service in
cases of need. No sooner is it once fairly introduced
than it expands itself into an abundant and definite
import of means and ends, involving some of the most
important social relations and pointing toward the
most important ethical experiences. Under the ex-
citement of this new and thrilling discovery, Kant
seems to forget all questionable metaphysics and to
THE CRITIQUE OP PRACTICAL REASON. 147
break out into other eloquent and elevating pas-
sages such as we cannot forbear to cite.
"On this origin are founded many expressions
which designate the worth of objects according to
moral ideas. The moral law is hohj (inviolable).
Man is indeed unholy enough, but he must regard
humanity in his own person as holy. In all creation
everything over which one has any power can only be
used merely as means; man alone, and with him
every rational creature, is an end in himself. By
virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the sub-
ject of the moral law, which is holy. Just for this
reason every will, even every person's own indi-
vidual will, in relation to itself, is restricted to the
condition of agreement with the autonomy of the
rational being; that is to say, that it is not to be
subject to any purpose which cannot accord with a
law which might arise from the will of the imssive
subject himself; the latter is, therefore, never to be
employed merely as means, but as itself also, concur-
rently, an end. We justly attribute this condition
even to the Divine Will, with regard to the rational
beings in the world, which are His creatures, since
it rests on their personality, by which alone they are
ends in themselves.
" This respect-inspiring idea of personality, which
148 Kaxt's ethics.
sets before our eyes the sublimity of our nature (in
its higher aspect), while at the same time it shows
us the want of accord of our conduct with it, and
thereby strikes down self-conceit, is even natural to
the commonest reason, and easily observed. Has not
every even moderatelj' honorable man sometimes
found that where by an otherwise inoffensive lie he
might either have withdrawn himself from an un-
pleasant business, or even have procured some ad-
vantages for a loved and well-deserving friend, he
has avoided it solely lest he should despise himself
secretly in his own eyes?"
§ 72. In the Analysis of Pure Practical Reason,
the writer raises the inquiry why it must
the Practical have this and no other systematic form,
a sinX^ '^''"''' ^^^^" compared with the speculative sys-
Systematic tem, which is founded on a similar faculty
Form Only.
of knowledge. Both kinds of reason are
alike in that both are pure, or a priori. They differ
in that in the theoretic we begin with the intuitions,
i.e., with the sensibility, and. proceeding to concepts,
end with principles. The practical reason begins
with doing, instead of with knowing, i.e., with a will
which is a causality, and therefore assumes practical
principles a priori, and out of these it constructs its
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 149
concepts, i.e., beginning with principles, it ends with
concepts.*
§ 73. In further support of the contrast which
Kant observes between the Sciences of Appeal to the
Truth and of Duty, he appeals to the ^'niver.ai
^ '^'- Conscious-
universal consciousness of man, to decide "^ss
whether it does not recognize the moral law as alto-
gether a priori, and whether its authority is not
characterized by a peculiar kind of sentiment which
always follows, but never precedes, the regulation
of the practical reason. He is careful to remind
us, however, that we do not, for this reason, re-
nounce all claim to happiness on the simple author-
ity of duty, nor do we altogether take no account of
happiness. On the other hand, he urges that it is
our duty to provide for our happiness for other
* We notice here that the dissentients from Kant would say, that
theoretic and practical knowledge are alike In beginning with proposi-
tions and ending with concepts, although some of these principles, in
both, are a priori and others a posteriori. They would also contend
that the materials of the two differ in that, in the one case, they are
facts of sense and facts or phenomena of spirit as controlled by fixed
laws, while in the other they are activities of spirit as controlled by the
will. These dissimilar phenomena, moreover, indicate laws and pur-
poses which justify scientific indications, on the one hand, of physical
or permanent laws in the realms of both matter and spirit, and which
also suppose moral laws, on the other, so far as freedom and knowl-
edge make these possible. As against Kant, we contend that the differ-
ence between the operations of pure and practical reason lies in the
difference in material in the two cases, and not, as Kant contends, in
a difference in the method or logic appropriate to each.
150 KANT^S ETHICS.
reasons than those of conscience, but it is never our
duty to be happy as such, or to obey any law of
duty in view of its known relation to our well-
being.
He also adds: The possibility of this ethical
knowledge cannot be demonstrated a priori. All
that we can do is to show that it cannot be shown to
be inconsistent with empirical knowledge. He em-
phasizes the fact that there are those who explain
freedom on empirical principles, and treat freedom
as a psychological fact, attested by an inspection of
the soul and its phenomena, and not as a transcen-
dental predicate of an agent operating in the world
of sense; but he objects that they thereby deprive the
soul of all knowledge of a supersensible, i.e., of a
noumenal world.
From all these difficulties Kant would deliver us,
as we have seen, by the, to him, familiar distinction
between things in themselves and phenomena in
time, although he contends at the same time that that
which is transcendently free can also produce sensi-
ble effects in the world of sense, under the relations
of time, and after laws of physical causation.
§ 74. Others, he urges, would relieve us from this
difficulty by distinguishing the causes that are con-
cerned, calling the one mechanical and the other
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASOK. 151
spiritual or psychical. Mechanism, he replies, does
not designate the nature of the material _ ^
° Difference
which operates, but the laws of its work- between
Physical and
ing. An automaton is an automaton, p><ychicai
whether it is material or spiritual in its
structure. Moreover, we should remember that, so
far as consciousness decides, it attests that so far as
the relations of time and the senses are concerned,
we are under the law of necessity; but so far as we
are conscious of ourselves as noumena., or things, itt
themselves, we are certain that we are free. He
adds, what a man is in himself is his character —
that permanent something to which he imputes his
several acts — and with this distinction all the phe-
nomena of common life are in complete harmonj^
"It may, therefore, be admitted that if it were
possible to have so profound an insight into a man's
mental character, as shown by internal as well as
external actions, as to know all its motives, even the
smallest, and likewise all the external occasions that
can influence them, we could calculate a man's con-
duct for the future with as complete certainty as a
lunar or solar eclipse; and nevertheless, we may
maintain that the man is free. In fact, if we were
capable of a further glance, namely, an intellectual
intuition of the same subject (which, indeed, is not
152 rant's ethics.
granted to us, and instead of it we have only the
rational concept) then we should perceive that this
whole chain of appearances in regard to all that
concerns the moral law depends on the spontaneity
of the subject as a thing in itself, of the determina-
tion of which no physical explanation can be given.
In default of this intuition, the moral law assures
us of this distinction between the relation of our ac-
tions, as appearances to our sensitive nature, and the
relation of this sensitive nature to the supersensible
substratum in us. In this view, which is natural to
our reason, though inexplicable, we can also justify
some judgments which we passed with all conscien-
tiousness, and which yet, at first sight, seem quite
opposed to all equity. There are cases in which
men, even with the same education which has been
profitable to others, yet show such early depravity,
and so continue to progress in it to years of man-
hood, that they are thought to be born villains, and
their character altogether incapable of improvement;
and nevertheless they are judged for what they do
or leave undone, they are reproached for their faults
as guilty, nay, they themselves (the children) regard
these reproaches as well founded, exactly as if, in
spite of the hopeless natural quality of mind
ascribed to them, they remained just as responsible
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 153
as any other man. This could not happen if we did
not suppose that whatever springs from a man's
choice (as every action intentionally performed un-
doubtedly does) has as its foundation a free caus-
ality, which from early youth expresses its char-
acter in its manifestations, i.e., outward actions.
These, on account of the uniformity of conduct,
exhibit a natural connection, which, however, does
not make the vicious quality of the will necessary;
but, on the contrary, is the consequence of the evil
principles, voluntarily adopted and unchangeable,
which only make it so much the more culpable and
deserving of punishment."
Here, however, another difficulty is interposed,
unless it is escaped by the theory of the author that
time and space are not realities, but are only forms
of sense. If they were realities and man were created
with a sense-organization conformed to them as such,
then all his acts in time and space would be the neces-
sary effects of his nature as adapted to this environ-
ment, even if we should accord to him as a nou-
menon moral freedom, inasmuch as in such a case
his acts would be the necessary products of his cir-
cumstances.
§ 75. From this difficulty we can deliver our-
selves by supposing that man is created as a noume-
154 KANT*S ETHtCS.
non. and with no real relations to time and space,
„ , ,. , if indeed neither time nor space has any
Relations of '■ •'
Man the reality, both being simply forms of sense.
Noiimenon
It) Time and Hence his responsibility can not extend
pace. ^^ j^._^ ^^^^ ^^ related to either. This
solution of a serious diflficulty. Kant urges, not
only relieves us from the direct presence of a per-
plexing dilemma, but indirectly confirms our faith in
the original assumption, which was made in the
Critique of Speculative Reason, that space and time
are only forms of sense, but are not realities or
things in themselves. This relief is confirmed by a
direct appeal to the practical reason and the testi-
mony which it gives, that man is only responsible for
what he is in himself, by his free and spiritual activ-
ity, and so far is independent of his Creator.
Another incidental argument in support of the
Dynamical view that freedom is not inconsistent
audMathe- ^^-^j^ ^j^^ doctrine of the categories is
matical °
Categories. this: That while the mathematical cate-
gories are simply analytic, asserting nothing in the
predicate which is not contained in the subject, the
dynamical are synthetic and in their very nature
introduce new matter. This allows us to suppose
the unconditioned to come in and interact with or to
act upon the conditioned, and produce new effects,
THE CRITIQUE OF PKACTICAL REASON. 155
and to connect together two kinds of causality, the
tixed and the free. This indirect confirmation of his
doctrine of the categories is welcomed by Kant with
the following interesting comment:
" Let me be permitted on this occasion to make
one more remark, namely, that every step that we
make with pure reason, even in the practical sphere
where no attention is paid to subtile speculation,
nevertheless accords with all the material points of
the Critique of the Theoretical Reason as closely and
directly as if each step had been thought out with
deliberate purpose to establish this confirmation.
Such a thorough agreement, wholly unsought for,
and quite obvious (as anyone can convince himself,
if he will only carry moral inquiries up to their
principles), between the most important propositions
of practical reason and the often seemingly too sub-
tile and needless remarks found in the Critique of
the Speculative Reason occasions surprise and aston-
ishment, and confirms the maxim already recognized
and praised by others: namely, that in every scien-
tific inquiry we should pursue our way steadily with
all possible exactness and frankness without caring
for any objections that may be raised from outside
its sphere, but as far as we can, should carr3' out our
inquiry truthfully and completely by itself. Fre-
156 kant's ethics.
quent observation has convinced me that when such
researches are concluded, that which in one part of
them appeared to me very questionable, considered
in relation to other extraneous doctrines, when I left
this doubtfulness out of sight for a time, and only
attended to the business in hand until it was com-
pleted, at last was unexpectedly found to agree per-
fectly with what had been discovered separately
without the least regard to those doctrines, and
without any partiality or prejudice for them. Au-
thors would save themselves many errors and much
labor lost (because spent on a delusion) if they could
only resolve to go to work with more frankness."
§ 76. From the Analytic of Pure Practical Rea-
son, Kant proceeds to its Dialectic, that
The Dialectic ^
of thePracti- is, to the explanation and removal of the
illusions which necessarily pertain to our
inquiries. These illusions, according to Kant, are
incidental to their anal3'ses, as to those of the specu-
lative reason, and for a similar reason, viz.: that
neither the practical nor the speculative can pene-
trate to the knowledge of things in themselves, and
yet both are prone to mistake the knowledge of the
sum of the conditions of phenomena for the properly
unconditioned. The only relief we can find is b}^ the
discovery of the grounds of each, and the fact that we
THE CKITIQL'E OF PRACTICAL REASON. 157
mistake the one for the other. Under this misleading
tendency in ethics men have substituted the gratifi-
cation of the inclinations, under the title of the sum-
niiim boiniin, for that which is good in itself as given
b}^ the practical reason. We have already seen that
the moral law is the sole determining principle of
the will, as law, not as good, simply from its form or
fitness to serve as a universal principle. The siwi,-
Duon hoinnii may be, in fact, involved in it, but the
moral law is to be obeyed as law, and not to be
sought as good. Otherwise we introduce heter-
onomy into the will. 80 if the SKniniidii hoiuon in-
cluded the moral law as conditional to itself, then
the good, and not the law, would give it force over
the will. How then shall Ave rightly conceive and
define the two in their mutual relations? This is
attempted in Chapter II, in which Kant first re-
marks that sumtnum may mean supreme, i.e., ulti-
mate, or complete, i.e., entire. The first is depen-
dent on no other ; the second is wanting in nothing.
Virtue has been already shown to be Avorthy of hap-
piness, and in this sense it is not happiness, nor does
it involve happiness, but only desert of the same,
virtue being the condition of happiness, but still
happiness as dependent on virtue. The one is not
identical with the other through an analvtical con-
158 kant's ethics.
nection, neither as the Epicureans nor as the Stoics
connected the two, but virtue must first exist, by the
free activity of . the will, in order that happiness
should either be discerned or enjoyed, and this by an
a priori necessity. This involves an antinomy of
the practical reason, viz.: (1) either the desire of
happiness must be the motive to the maxims of vir-
tue, or (2) the maxims of virtue must be the causes
of happiness. The first is impossible, Kant would
contend, as has been abundantly shown ; the second
also, because happiness in this world depends on
other knowledge than ethical, and the observance of
other laws. The antinomy seems at first insoluble.
It is solved, however, by a resort to the always con-
venient distinction between things in themselves
and phenomena. The first proposition given above,
that the desire of happiness produces virtue, is abso-
lutel}^ false ; the second is not false absolutely, but
only so far as the moral holds relations to the sensi-
ble world, that is conditionally; it may. therefore,
be true, so far as this sensible world is viewed as
controlled by a superior will.
§ 77. But here, again, the author warns his read-
Anticipation ers against confounding the influences
s f °t-^t which proceed from the anticipated
Not Moral. pleasure that follows virtue Avith the
THE CRITIQUE OF PKACTICAL KEASON. 159
legitimate iiiiiuence which the moral law exerts
directly on the will.
"Now the consciousness of a determination of the
faculty of desire is always the source of a satisfac-
tion in the resulting action ; but this pleasure, this
satisfaction in oneself, is not the determining prin-
ciple of the action; on the contrary, the determina-
tion of the will directly by reason is the source of
the feeling of pleasure, and this remains a pure
practical, but not a sensible, determination of the
faculty of desire. Now, as this determination has
exactly the same effect within, in impelling to activ-
it}^ that a feeling of the pleasure to be expected
from the desired action would have had, we easily
look on what we ourselves do as something which
we merely passively feel, and take the moral spring
for a sensible impulse, just as it happens in the so-
called illusion of the senses (in this case in the inner
sense).
"Respect, not pleasure or enjoyment of happiness,
is something for which it is not possible that reason
should have any a)itecedent feeling as its foundation
(for this would always be sensible and pathological);
and consciousness of immediate obligation of the
will by the law is b}' no means analogous to the
feeling of pleasure, although in relation to ik^
160 rant's ethics.
faculty of desire it produces the same effect, but
from different sources. It is only by this mode of
conception, however, that we can attain what we
are seeking, namely, that actions be done not merely
in accordance with duty (as a result of pleasant
feelings), but from duty, which must be the true
end of all moral cultivation."
§ 78. Will it be believed that immediately on
writing these words our critical phi-
Self -con tent- ° '
ment Con- losopher recovers his thoughts and asks:
ceded to
be Ethically " Have we not, however, a word which
Legitimate. j j. • j. i •
does not express enjoyment, as happiness
does, but indicates a satisfaction in ones existence,
an analogue of the happiness which must necessarily
accompany the consciousness of virtue? Yes! this
word is seIf-contentine)it, which in its proper signifi-
cation always designates only a negative satisfaction
in one's existence, in which one is conscious of need-
ing nothing. Freedom, and the consciousness of it,
as a faculty of following the moral law with un-
yielding resolution, is independent of inclinations,
at least as motives determining (though not affect-
ing) our desire; and so far as I am conscious of this
freedom in following my moral maxims, it is the
only source of an unaltered contentment which is
necessarily connected with it, and rests on no special
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 161
feeling. This may be called intellectual content-
ment. The sensible contentment (improperly so
called) which rests on the satisfaction of the inclina-
tions, however delicate they may be imagined to be,
can never be adequate to the conception of it. For
the inclinations change; they grow with the indul-
gence shown them, and always leave behind a still
greater void than we had thought to fill. Hence
they are always burdensome to a rational being, and
although he cannot lay them aside, they wrest from
him the wish to be rid of them. Even an inclination
to what is right {e.g., to beneficence), though it may
much facilitate the efficacy of the moral maxims,
cannot produce any. For in these all must be
directed to the conception of the law as a determined
principle, if the action is to contain morality, and
not merely legality.
" Freedom itself becomes in this way (namely,
indirectly) capable of an enjoyment which cannot
be called happiness, because it does not depend on
the positive concurrence of a feeling, nor is it, strictly
speaking, hliss. since it does not include complete
independence on inclinations and wants; but it re-
sembles bliss in so far as the determination of one"s
will, at least, can hold itself free from their influ-
ence; and thus, at least in its origin, this enjoyment
11
162 kant's ethics,
is analogous to the self-sufl&ciency which we can
ascribe only to the Supi-eme Being."
§ 79. Chapter III. opens a topic of marvellous in-
The Primacy terest, viz.: the primacy of pure practical
Practical reason in its union with the speculative
above tiie reason. The brief remarks which the au-
Speculative
Reason. thor offers are admirable for their practi-
cal good sense, however unsatisfactory some of them
may seem for the want of scientific exactness. We
accept with thanks what he says in the following, when
it is popularly or practically interpreted: "But if
pure reason of itself can be practical, and is actually
so, as the consciousness of the moral law proves, then
still it is only one and the same reason which, whether
in a theoretical or a practical point of view, judges
according to a priori principles; and then it is clear
that although it is in the first point of view incom-
petent to establish certain propositions positively,
which, however, do not contradict it, then as soon as
these propositions are inseparably attached to the
practical interest of pure reason, it must accept
them, though it be as something offered to it from a
foreign source, something that has not grown on its
own ground, but yet is sufficiently authenticated;
and it must try to compare and connect them with
everything that it has in its power as speculative
THE CRITIQUE OP PRACTICAL REASON. 163
reason. It must remember, however, that these are
not additions to its insight, but yet are extensions of
its employment in anothei", namely a practical
aspect; and this is not in the least opposed to its
interest, which consists in the restriction of wild
speculation.
" Thus, when pure speculative and pure practical
reason are combined in one cognition, the latter has
the primacy, provided, namely, that this combination
is not contingent and arbitrary, but founded a priori
on reason itself, and therefore necessary."
§ 80. The practical wisdom and the catholic lib-
erality of these views are obvious to any
How Far
candid mind. The only question which Have the Two
they might suggest would be in what ^^^°'J'°'°°
respects the practical reason differs from
the speculative, and wherein they spring from a
common root of a priori truths. If they are so
nearly akin as to be in substance the same, how can
it be that the categorical principles of the two are
held by Kant to differ so widely, and by what au-
thority does the practical reason supplement the
speculative in so many important particulars? As
Kant appeals to the authority of the practical rea-
son as supreme in the chapters which follow, we are
tempted to ask whether the speculative does not in
164 K ant's ethics.
fact play as important a role as the practical in sup-
port of the vital truths which he proceeds, in the
next chapter, to present in order as " Postulates of
the Pure Practical Reason."
§ 81. IV. The first of these is the immortality
Argument for of ^^^^ soul. Kaut's argument that this
Immortality, j^ demanded by the " practical reason " is
as follows. A will controlled by the moral law will
of necessity require the realization of the sunimum
bonum. But in such a will there must be the com-
plete accordance of the feelings {dispositions, Gesinn-
ungeii) with the moral law. This must be practicable,
or it would not be required. But such a perfection
is holiness, of which no rational being in the condi-
tions of sense-existence is capable. It can be found
only in his pi'ogress ad Injinitum toward this ideal.
But this progress involves actual immortality, or an
endless duration of the existence and personality of
the rational being who is the subject of the law of
duty; the sit 1)1 nuoH bonum required by the moral law
being attainable only on condition of the soul's actual
experience of an endlessly continued, i.e., an immor-
tal existence, or rather a long-continued existence
which has no raison d'etre after moral perfection has
been attained and the service of duty has been
exchanged for the raptures of holy love.
thp: ckitique of practical reason. I(i5
This argument needs only a brief comment. It
assumes that whatever is demanded by the moral
law will in every case be realized, i.e., that all moral
ideals must sooner or later be fulfilled in fact or
tendency. The assumption is set aside by the plain
fact of experience that these ideals in many cases
are not made good. The underlying principle can-
not be accepted as a postulate which admits of no
exception, and if the postulate fails, the conclusion
derived from it must fail also.
What gives plausibility to the argument is the
appeal to purpose or final cause, which may be sup-
posed to underlie this verbal argument of Kant.
Thus interpreted, the argument would be as follows:
Perfect holiness, in some moral beings, at least,
must be the final issue of the system of moral
influences by which men are disciplined. Such holi-
ness, it may be conceded, requires for its consum-
mation a long-continued, i.e., a practically endless
existence. Therefore, in this sense, and by this
logic, the conscience, or moral reason, demands and
insures an immortal existence to some moral beings,
and perhaps to all.
§ 82. Admitting that this argument, stated in
this form, is valid, it should be observed that it rests
solely on the relation of purpose or final cause.
166 kaxt's ethics.
which is a category of the pure reason, if of either ;
and derives all its logical or rational force
This Argil- °
ment Assumes from a relation which Kant's practical
Design as
Objectively rsason does not recognize, viz.: the re-
lation of adaptation. The subject-matter
of the argument is ethical, indeed, but the logic
is altogether speculative. The necessity of ap-
pealing to the practical reason for a logic which the
speculative reason fails to present, is so far from
being made good that, on the other hand, the val-
idity of speculative logic with its rational categories
is made more conspicuous by the very argument
which is introduced in its place from the sol-disant
practical reason alone. Moreover, the grand con-
summation which both these ponderous Critiques
were constructed to achieve, viz. : that the categories
of the speculative reason are failures except so far as
the}' are enforced by the practical reason, is brought
to nothing by the very argument for immortality,
with which this latter would triumphantly reinfoi'ce
our philosophy and our faith.
§ 83. Kant's argument for the existence of God
from the practical reason is closely allied
Argument
for God's to his argument for man's immortality.
The moral reason commands man to real-
ize the first element of the summurn boinon, i.e.,
THE CRITIQUE OP PRACTICAL REASON. 167
moral perfection, or, as Kant terms it, holiness, in
the sense of a cheerful and loving acquiescence in
the law of duty. But such holiness is only possible
on the supposition of the continued, i.e., the im-
mortal, existence of the human sou). It follows that
if man is a moral, he must be an immortal being.
But the same moral law, in its demand of the reali-
zation of the summum bonum as a duty, also requires
that the moral being, so far as he is sentient, should
be made happy, not on the ground that the con-
ception of holiness includes in its contents any rela-
tion whatever to sentient enjoyment, but on the
ground that moral goodness in its very essence or
nature involves desert of sentient good, i.e., worthi-
ness to be happy. This, according to Kant, is the
second or completing half of the conception which is
enforced by its demand.
This being assumed, he proceeds to reason thus:
The moral law% in demanding this of the moral will
— this desert of happiness — assumes the possibility
that this desideratum should be realized. But this
implies that a being exists who is both able and dis-
posed to reward the good; i.e., it implies the exist-
ence of God. " It was seen to be a duty for us to
promote the summum bonum, consequently it is not
merely allowable, but it is a necessity connected
168 kant's ethics.
with duty as a requisite that we should presuppose
the possibility of this f^innmum honum, and as this is
possible only on condition of the existence of God, it
inseparably connects the supposition of this with
duty, that is, it is morally necessary to assume the
existence of God."' That we should presuppose this
possibility. Kant reasons, follows from the obligation
to promote the sum mum honum in its double form of
moral and natural good, but the realization of this
possibility seems also to require that we suppose
a supreme intelligence. As a principle of ex-
planation for the speculative reason, this may be
called a hypothesis, but when viewed in the light
of the moral significance of the imperative of the
moral law, it may be called faith.
§ 84. In this argument, if it can be called an
Difference argument, Kant overlooks the obvious
etween distinction between the proposition that
Rational and ^ ^
Moral Ends, the universe is controlled and, so to
speak, administered by an intelligent being for
rational ends, and the truth that he administers it
for moral ends, and is, therefore, a moral being, as
is I'equired by our faith in duty, and our rational
inferences from this faith. We cannot forget that,
in the Critique of the Pure Reason he had criticised
the principal speculative arguments for the existence
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 169
of God, and had found in them all, the common
weakness that, in his view, pertains to all the specu-
lative relations of the unconditioned, whether viewed
in idea or in fact. In the Critique of the Practical
Reason he had proposed to supply this defect, and to
furnish the materials and to explain the processes
which through our moral faith should establish God
to our speculative reason, and thus supplement all
the defects and JactDue which the latter was so quick
to discover, but so impotent to supplement or to
overcome. How does he succeed in these promises,
long deferred and stoutly maintained? We are
compelled to say that the import of the promise
seems almost to have been forgotten, in the seeming
effort to fulfil it. All that Kant even attempts to
prove is, that the moral law, in imposing or assert-
ing the truth that moral goodness deserves to be
rewarded, requires for this end a moral being who
is able and willing to effect its behests. As if there
were no difference between what ought to be and
what actually is, and as though the moral law, as
ideal and mandatory, were not conspicuous in en-
forcing this distinction. Meanwhile, the point is
certainly overlooked, that the apparent force of the
argument is derived from the assumption that there
is a rational and almighty Intelligence behind the
170 KANTS ETHICS.
sensible universe, in respect to whom, provided we
are assured that He exists, it may be argued that He
is moral, and will enforce the behests of the moral
law. But we have been waiting all this while under
the questioning, not to say the sceptical, suggestions
of the first Critique, to know whether we may trust
our speculative reason confidently enough to know
whether God actually exists. Meanwhile, we have
been told that the practical reason would remove
and settle all these questionings. It is somewhat
tantalizing, after all this delay, to be informed that
all that it can do for us is to make it clear that if
there is a God, "He is a rewarder of those who
diligently seek Him"; but that all we can know of
God, in fact, is included in certain moral necessities
of man, and whatsoever these may imply.
§ 85. Our philosopher is not content with leaving
this topic here. He seems to be fully
New ^ ;
Argument aware that he has not entirely cleared it
up to the satisfaction of his readers, and
perhaps not completely to his own. After a few
remarks in respect to the teachings of the ancient
religions, and particularly the Christian, he seeks to
make his views more clear in respect to the postu-
lates of pure practical reason in general, viz.: im-
mortality, freedom, and God. The first, as has
THE CRITIQUE OF PIIACTICAL REASOX. 171
already been explained, is derived from the duty
enjoined completely to fulfil the moral law, or to
attain that holiness which can only be achieved by a
continued and practically endless future existence.
The second, freedom, is implied in that practical in-
dependence of all motives of sense which is involved
in obeying a rational law. The third, the existence
of God, is implied in the realization of the summam
honum by the sole agency which is conceivable as
adequate to its achievement — that of the Supreme.
These ethical postulates of the practical reason lead
to inferences which the speculative reason necessarily
proposes to itself, but cannot solve. Should it
attempt to do either, it must fall into paralogisms,
and therefore it must content itself with knowing of
each that there is a something ethically related to
the moral nature, or law and destiny of man, of
which it knows that its moral needs require so much
and nothing more.
" Is our knowledge, however, actually extended in
this way by pure practical reason, and is that itniiid-
nent in practical reason, which for the speculative
was only transcendent? Certainly, but only m a
practical point of view. For we do not thereby take
knowledge of the nature of our souls, nor of the
intelligible world, nor of the Supreme Being, with
172 rant's ethics.
respect to what they are in themselves; but we have
merely combined the conceptions of them in the
practical concept of the sitDDHHin honum as the object
of our will, and this altogether a priori., but only
by means of the moral law, and merely in I'eference
to it, in respect of the object which it commands.
But how freedom is possible, and how we are to
conceive this kind of causality theoretically and
positively, is not thereby discovered; but only that
such a causality is postulated by the moral law and
in its behoof. It is the same with the remaining
ideas, the possibility of which no human intelligence
will ever fathom, but the truth of which, on the
other hand, no sophistry will ever wrest from the
conviction even of the commonest man."
§ 86. This attempt at explanation suggests to
Can the ^^^^ critic himself'the following pertinent
Practical be inquirv (VII): '" How is it possible to
Independent
oftheSpecu- couceive an extension of pure reason in
lative Reason? ,• i • l f • ^
a practical point oi view, unless its
speculative knowledge is also at the same time en-
larged? '" This question he answei*s as follows: The
warrant for practically extending a pure cognition
must be furnished by some purpose or end enforced
on the will by the categorical imperative. " Thus,
by the practical law, which commands the existence
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 173
of the highest good possible in a world, the possi-
bilit}^ of those objects of pure speculative reason is
postulated and the objective reality which the latter
could not assure them." That is, the theoretical
knowledge is enlarged, but only so far as the practi-
cal necessities require. But this extension gives no
warrant for making any theoretical use of the same.
Nothing i? gained except that these concepts exist
and have their possible objects. These three ideas
are in themselves not cognitions of fact, but they are
concepts in which there is nothing impossible.
Being necessary conditions of objects that are mor-
ally imperative, they become real without our know-
ing how they are intellectually or rationally related
to our conception of them. In a word, we know that
they are, but do not know what they are in any real
sense so that we can define them completely or
derive from them any other than certain limited
practical inferences. To the speculative reason they
are transcendent and I'egulative only. When the
categories are to be applied to these ideas, it is not
possible to find any existing objects for them by in-
tuition, but only for the concepts which are involved
in the siiniinuin hoiiiint which the practical reason
requires. It will be observed that the limitations
enforced upon the speculative reason are not limita-
174 K A NT's ETHICS.
tions in the number of the relations or properties
affirmed, but in the kind of those which can possibly
be asserted of them. Were the first true, the defect
of ethical concepts would be a defect of degree only;
whereas the defect is owing to the nature of the
subject-matter, which refuses to be classed with the
relations or methods that belong to any objects which
are subjected to the forms or intuitions of space or
time.
§ 87. The requirement or ground of belief in
^,.^ each of these cases is peculiar (VIII),
Diflfereiice ' ^ '
between a "A want or requirement of pure reason
Hypothesis
and a in its Speculative use leads only to a
hypothesis, that of pure practical reason
to a postulate.'''' In the one case I suppose or find a
set of facts which I explain to my reason. In the
other, I find a duty, the possibility of which requires
certain conditions, as God, freedom, and immortality.
The duty is independent of these conditions, but the
disposition to perforin it presupposes that its perfect
realization is possible, as a fact, with all that this
realization implies.
It would seem at first that this doctrine implies
that a rational faith is in so far a matter of com-
mand. Let it be observed, then, that the first ele-
ment, duty as duty, is the subject of a command, but
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 175
only while the second, the possibility of the realiza-
tion of the happiness which duty merits, is a ques-
tion in respect to which a doubt is possible. The
mind which is rightly disposed will accept but one
conclusion. This faith " may at times waver in the
well disposed, but can never be reduced to unbelief."
§ 88. If this is the conclusion which Kant reaches,
it would seem to lower our faith in these
Kant's Argu-
three supreme conditions of the suminnm ment Reduced
honum to a simple hypothesis which is
highly probable because it is enforced by our noblest
aspirations. As against this objection, Kant care-
fully defines the limitations of our cognitive faculties,
both speculative and practical, which are taught in his
speculative and practical treatises. This exposition
is given in the concluding Chapter IX. under the
title, " Of the Wise Adaptation of Man's Cognitive
Faculties to his Practical Destination," and consists
of the following suggestions: Were our capacities
for speculative and practical knowledge less limited
than they are, could we completely understand the
nature of things by our speculative and practical
reason, including God and all his relations to nat-
ure and to man; we should live and act in the con-
stant and living presence of these astounding and
comprehended truths. It may be supposed that in
176 rant's ethics.
such a case we should necessarily and constantly
conform our characters and conduct to these over-
whelming realities. But such a conformity would be
mechanical, necessary, perhaps interested and selfish,
and at the best it would fail of that nol^le and disin-
terested virtue which the present limitations of our
knowledge render possible and even necessary. We
conclude, then, that for the purposes of moral disci-
pline and culture these limitations are wisely adapted
to man's true well-being, and in this wise adaptation
we find an additional evidence that our theory is
true.
§ 89. The second and concluding part of this
Critique is entitled "The Methodology of
Methodology
ofthePrac- Pure Practical Reason," and is a brief
treatise on the best practical methods by
which the practical reason may be instructed and
trained. In it the author reiterates in a practical
form the doctrines of his treatise, that morality
must be disinterested and self-centred, authoritative
and unselfish, and that whether it can be success-
fully imparted will depend largely on the method by
which it is inculcated and exemplified by teachers
and writers, by parents and guai-dians. In this dis-
cussion he presses very hard upon sentimental and
selfish moralists because, in his opinion, they use flat-
THE CRITK^UE OF PKACTICAL REASON. 177
tery and employ mercenary appliances, and fail to
set forth duty in its majestic and self-asserting
authority, and to invest it with its simple dignity and
grace.
The discussion ends with the following celebrated
and oft-quoted meditation:
"Two things fill the mind with ever new and
increasing admiration and awe, the oft- The starry
ener and the more steadily we reflect on ^J*!f"''
•' and the
them : the starry heavens above and the Moral Law.
moral law within.* I have not to search for them
and conjecture them as though they were veiled in
darkness, or were in the transcendent region beyond
my horizon. I see them before me, and connect
them directly with the consciousness of my exist-
ence. The former begins from the place I occupy in
the external world of sense, and enlarges my con-
nection therein to an unbounded extent with worlds
* It is possible that Wordsworth's Ode to Duty may have been
inspired by these thoughts, particularly the following:
"Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face.
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong:
And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong."
Or, which is still more probable, both may have been unconsciously
suggested by Psalm xix, vss. 1, 7, 8.
13
178 kant's ethics.
upon worlds and systems of systems, and. moreover,
into limitless times of their periodic motion, its be-
ginning and continuance. The second begins from
my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in
a world which has true infinit}', but which is trace-
able only by the understanding, and with which I
discei'n that I am not in a merely contingent, but in
a universal and necessary connection, as T am also
thereby with all those visible worlds. The former
view of a countless multitude of worlds anni-
hilates, as it were, my importance as an animal
creature, which, after it has been for a short time
provided with vital power, one knows not how, must
again give back the matter of which it was formed
to the planet it inhabits (a mei-e speck in the uni-
verse). The second, on the contrary, infinitely ele-
vates my worth as an intelligence by my personality,
in which the moral law reveals to me a life inde-
pendent on animality, and even on the whole sensi-
ble world, at least so far as may be inferred from
the destination assigned to my existence by this law,
a destination not restricted to conditions and limits
of this life, but reaching into the infinite.
" But though admiration and respect may excite to
inquiry, they cannot supply the want of it. What,
then, is to be done in order to enter on this in a
THE CRITIQUE OP I>RACTlCAL KEASOK. 179
useful manner, and one adapted to tlie loftiness of
the subject? Examples may serve in this as a warn-
ing, and also for imitation. The contemplation of
the world began from the noblest spectacle that the
luiman senses present to us, and that our under-
standing can bear to follow in their vast reach, and
it ended in — astrology. Morality began with the
noblest attribute of human nature, the development
and cultivation of which give a prospect of infinite
utility, and ended in — fanaticism or superstition."
§ 90. The answer which we should give to this
pregnant inquiry of Kant is the exact practical
opposite of the conclusion which he de- g^prem^g^and
rives from the critique to which he has if'olated.
subjected the practical reason. We should say that
ethical phenomena and laws are as truly the subjects
of scientific investigation as those which are physical.
Misdirected agencies and imaginative theories in both
lead to mischief of every species. It is only as we
understand the nature of the subject-matter of both
that we can adopt a true method for either. With
this interpretation we should heartily adopt his
parting words: "In one word, science (critically
undertaken and methodically directed) is the nar-
row gate that leads to the true doctrine of prac-
tical wisdom, if we understand by this not merely
180 KANT^S ETHICS.
what one ought to do, but what ought to serve
teachers as a guide to construct well and clearly
the road to wisdom which everyone should travel,
and to secure others from going astray. Philoso-
phy must always continue to be the guardian of this
science, and although the public does not take any
interest in its subtle investigations, it must in the
resulting doctrines which such an examination first
puts in a clear light."
§ 91. This rhapsodical conclusion of this elaborate
Critique reminds the reader of the title
Comments
on the of the last chapter of Dr. Johnson's
Rasselas, viz. : " The Conclusion in Which
Nothing is Concluded." The imaginative meditation
of the eloquent writer upon the starry heavens and
the law of duty is both impressive and elevating; but
the vague replies to our most serious questionings
with which it puts us off, and its indefinite resolu-
tion of our philosophic doubts, only serve to aggra-
vate the keenness of our disappointment. The first
of these treatises which we have reviewed, the
Grrundlegung, had professed only to prepare our
way for moi'e exact analyses and more scientific
inquiries. It left us with the equivocal consolation
of being at least made fully acquainted with the
reasons why the ultimate concepts and axioms of
THE CRITK^LK OF PRACTICAL REASON. 181
ethical science must in some sense be ultimate and
incomprehensible. But notwithstanding this dis-
couraging intimation, we were encouraged to hope
that the Critique of the Practical Reason might not
only clear up the incomprehensibilities into which
the earlier ethical treatise had plunged us, but that it
might redeem the hope or promise which had cheered
us on our thorny path, viz.: that the analysis of the
practical reason, in dissipating its own difficulties,
would restore our confidence in the decisions of the
speculative reason. But, alas I at the end of our toil
we are informed that the axioms of ethical faith are
rooted only in our own ineradicable conviction of
their i^ractical importance, and that they scarcely
seem capable of either scientific formulation or phil-
osophic adjustment; while the practical reason
itself is so far from going farther than this, or
from rendering its proifered and promised aid to the
speculative, that it can best satisfy its own needs
and that of its elder sister by looking up to the
heavens in an attitude of wondering worship, and
down into the heart of man in reverent faith. We
confess ourselves surprised at this conclusion, after
the long trial to our patience from the scholastic
terminology, the acute criticism, and the sharp in-
sight with which these treatises superabound, all of
182 kant\s p:THicft.
which had prepared us to hope that all these prepa-
rations would have given us something more than
this effusion of the imagination, truthful and eloquent
though it be.
The conclusion also suggests a thought which, in
our opinion, is of no inconsiderable importance as an
explanation of the charm with which Kant's original
researches continue to be invested, and of their
power to excite and hold the minds of men long
after the original questions, as Kant proposed them,
had taken new forms, and been expressed in new
terminology. Kant's extraordinary power to attract
and hold his readers seems to lie in that rare combina-
tion of metaphysical acuteness with imaginative verve
and inspiration, by which he is distinguished. Not
unfrequently he seems to lose himself and to bewilder
his readers in the entangled maze of his over-refined
analyses and his barbarous terminology. On other
occasions he sinks in helpless discouragement under
the weight of those transcendental ideas which his
philosophy is forced to recognize, but is incapable of
defining and defending by his own chosen termi-
nology. In these extremities, however urgent, his
imagination never fails to find language in which to
give expression to those faiths which he has the
magnanimity to confess are "the light of all our see-
THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON". 183
ing," while his glowing rhetoric lights up the thorn-
iest maze of abstract reasoning with a radiance which
extorts the wonder of the admiring reader, even when
the argument, thus illuminated, fails to commend it-
self to his cooler judgment. For this reason, among
many others, it seems to us that the watchword. '''Back
to Kant,'' will long be repeated and responded to
even by those students of philosophy who find no
occasion to accept Kant as their master.
CHAPTER IV.
A CRITICAL SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL
THEORY.
§ 92. AVe begin with Kant's doctrine of the
The Practical pfcictical veasoH. The introduction of
eabon ^j^j^ appellation by Kant excited wonder
Described. and Called forth criticism from many
quarters. How can there be two sorts of reason,
was asked by his critics, and with what propriety
can reason be designated as practical at all? In
answer to these queries, Kant denied that be held to
two kinds of reason, but sought to justify the double
application of the term by explaining that it was
occasioned by the difterence in the subject-matter*
with which reason has to do, and the consequent
difference in the relations or attributes which it is
supposed to discern. While the speculative reason is
concerned with the attributes of fact or truth, the
*It is pertinent here to ask, however, whether, according to Kant's
own analj'sis, oliligation, or the nucleus of the same, must not first be
experienced or felt, before It is discerned, i.e., whether some form of
sensibility and its relations, rather than the intellect, does not fur-
nish the objective material oi moral distinctions, contrarilj' to his
entire thcorv.
184
SUMMARY OF KANT*S ETHICAL THEORY. 185
practical is limited to attributes of action and of
duty; the one affirming what is true and should be
assented to, the other what should be done or effected ;
the first implying knowledge , and the second obi iff a-
tioii. It may be questioned, however, whether the
language which he used, and the illustrations and
arguments which he employed were not all fitted to
leave the impression that the diff"erence was in no wise
limited to the objective matter of intellectual assent;
but was also extended to the subjective character of
the processes by which ethical truth is responded
to or obeyed. At all events, it is certain that Kant
intended that, as in the phenomena of speculative
reason the intellect alone is concerned only with
relations of fact or truth, so the practical reason im-
plies only relations to the will, and enforces relations
of duty. It would follow that the will, being the
necessary correlate of the intellect, acting as the
practical reason, both logically and actually, might
also occasionally be used by Kant interchangeably
Avith it — the practical reason discerning and enforc-
ing obligation for and upon the will, and the will
subjectively responding to this relation in its free-
dom under a sense of mere authority.
§ 93. It is also a fundamental truth with Kant,
and oft repeated by him, that the authority of its
186 kant\s ethics.
commands is not derived from the goodness of that
Whence Its which is Commanded; but that an act
Authority. ^^ morally good because it is commanded
by the reason. No action is commanded because it is
good, or as being good; but it is good because and
in so far as it is enforced by the practical reason,
it being first simply commanded and accepted as
morally right, and thereby becoming morally good.
It is not enforced as morally right, because it is
desirable, or excellent, or good; but is good because
it is enforced as right by the reason. The sense of
obligation, moreover, it should be noticed, in all
cases supposes a reluctant, even though it be an
obedient will. A being who responds to the judg-
ments of the practical reason without a conflict, —
showing that his emotional and active nature is
already in harmony with the moral law, — has no
sense of obligation, however complete his holiness,
and the decisions or judgments of the practical
reason do not assume for him the power or force of
law. Such a man is a holy, but not a virtuous man.
§ 94. The practical reason of Kant seems at first
How Related thought to be identical with the " supe-
to Butler s ^.•^^, p^.^j^g^-^jg Qf reflection or conscience "
Principle or '^ •■
Reflection. of Bishop Butler, whose functions are
thus defined; it "distinguishes between the internal
SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 187
principles of his heart''; it "passes judgment upon
himself" and other men; it "'pronounces determin-
edly some actions to be in themselves just, right, and
good," etc., "without being advised with"; it ''un-
questionably exerts itself, and approves or condemns
him the doer." Butler recognizes in these features
" a prerogative or natural supremacy of this moral
faculty," or, as he once calls it, "the moral reason,"
and contends that "we may have a clear conception
of the superior nature of our inward principles to one
another," and gathers the result of his analysis into
the pregnant conclusion that "this is a constituent
part of the idea — that is, of the faculty itself — and
to preside and govern from the very economy and
constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength
as it has right, had it power as it has manifest
authority, it would absolutely govern the world."
These and other assertions of Butler seem to be
almost literal translations of the language of Kant
in respect to the practical reason and the categorical
imperative. It is worthy of notice, however, that
Butler finds in these doctrines only illustrations and
confirmations of the truth held by the best Greek
schools, that the nature or constitution of man is the
norm or standard by which moral distinctions are
tested and enforced, and that the rule " to follow
188 rant's ethics.
nature," or "to live according to nature," was in his
view broad enough to provide for every special
ethical direction. While Butler appears to agree
with Kant in holding the categorical imperative, he
differs from him in finding the enforcement of its
authority in the constitution of man as its powers
and ends are interpreted by himself. That is to say,
as against Kant, he founded the authority of con-
science on the matter of its commands, as contrasted
with their mere /orw. This difference, expressed in
other language, would be as follows: While Kant
begins with a simple dictum of authority, Butler
explains and enforces this authorit}^ as an interpre-
tation of the ends of reason, as manifested in the
constitution of the soul and the universe of God,
and enforced by their ultimate authority. Instead
of a categorical imperative, Butler furnishes an
imperative that is hypothetical, enforcing its dicta
with the implied condition. If you would act accord-
ing to the nature of things, or the ends for which
you exist, you will do or avoid so and so. It is
true, he assumes the nature of man to be so and
so. Eveiy occasion of doubt will bring up the ques-
tion. Is this nature such as you assume it to
be? By what methods or tests we are to discover
and determine this nature, with its subordinate
SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 189
or supi*erne ends, Butler does not explain. Indeed,
he attempts no analysis or explanation, or ver\'
scantily, of what he means by conformity to nature,
being content with a few positive and disconnected
utterances, which he does not attempt to reconcile
or adjust with one another, either by psychological
introspection or metaphysical analysis.
The very elaborate preface to his sermons is in-
structive and suggestive in respect to all the points
to which we have referred, and particularly the gen-
eral truth that he relies on the analysis of man's
nature for the determination of the purposes for
which it exists, and the normal uses to which it should
be applied. It is particularly worthy of notice that
the authority of this "superior principle of reflec-
tion " is partially explained by its being other than a
" propension " or impulse. It is true that Butler, like
Kant, in words attaches to a simple thought-object
a lawgiving power over an impulse, and there leaves
the analysis of obligation; but he does not, like
Kant, exalt a metaphor into a theory, and hyposta-
size an abstraction into a fancied personality, called
the categorical imperative. In this he may have
been Kant's inferior as a poet, but he was his superior
as a philosopher.
§ 95. The next question is. What rule of duty is
190 kant's ethics.
imposed by the moral reason? It is one thing to
determine that there is a moral law so
Kant's Ob-
jective Rule far as this is implied in the reality of the
of Duty. , • 1
practical reason, and another to determine
what this law requires, or what is its import. This
question Kant proposes, and labors earnestly to an-
swer. He is also clearly aware that it is a question
which moralists of all the schools have labored ear-
nestly to answer, some saying, Do that which will
make j^ou perfect or happy, or that which will ac-
cord with human nature, or that which will please
God. Indeed, it is with the answers to this question
that all theories of morals are chiefly concerned.
The answer which Kant gives is simply: That conduct
is right which when accepted as a maxim, i.e., an ac-
cepted or working rule, is fit to be universal. In other
words, universality or universal fitness {for wJiat is
not said) is the one criterion which should test every
moral law. The application of this criterion, as we
have seen, is illustrated by several supposed cases.
But all of these supposed cases are not only varied
examples of adaptation to an end, but of an adapta-
tion to an end which is presumed to be naturally
good, involving as the or as a fundamental relation,
that of adaptation to natural well-being as an end
or law. If it were urged that Kant's criterion, as
SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEORY. 191
he insists, involved nothing which is worthy to be
called matter, then the j^i-inciple would be merely
formal, as he contends it ought to be — and this, the
identical proposition that like every fundamental or
original axiomatic criterion it should be universally
applicable. This, as we have seen", would be a very
safe but a very useless proposition, which would
impart no information and be exposed to no denial.
§ 96. The next element of moral quality which
requires attention is qood or ill-desert.
'■ ^ Good and
The practical reason, according to Kant, m-desert ac-
cording to
not merely commands to duty, but it Kant and
teaches or declares that the obedient
will is deserving of good as a reward. While
the authority of its command can in no sense
be possibly derived from the natural good which
lies beneath or follows after the virtuous act that
is required, yet if this command is obeyed, the
conclusion follows with equal positiveness. that the
obedient act and the obedient man deserve only
good. In this way do we gain our completed con-
ception of the sumniuiH bonuin as including, _yi!">',s^, the
good will, which is itself the supreme and ultimate
good which is to be followed for its own sake and
obeyed for its autocratic authority, and next, the
reward which it merits, which completes the circle
193 kant's ethics.
of possible blessings as involving every kind of good
that is conceivable, i.e., the snmmtim honum. No
reason is given for this connection of natural with
moral good as its reward. Its propriety with its
consequent authority, according to Kant, is to be
accepted as an ultimate fact.
In this doctrine Kant also reminds us of Butler,
when he says, " Our sense or discernment of actions
as morally good or evil, implies in it a sense or dis-
cernment of them as of good or ill-desert" (Diss. II.);
" Upon considering them or viewing together our
notion of vice and of misery, there results a
third, that of ill-desert." These judgments, like the
others, according to Butler, are not, as was taught
by Kant, original and inexplicable, but " Our per-
ception of vice and ill-desert arises from and is the
result of a comparison of actions ivith the nature
and capacities of the agent.'''' By what process or on
what grounds he would connect the two. or what is
involved subjectively or objectively in the act of
comparison is not explained by Butler. Nor is this
necessary for our purposes. It is enough that we
notice that he grounds the connection of the two
upon the consideration of the end for which the
moral being exists, and to which his powers are
adapted; in other words, that the relation of good
SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEORY. 103
01- ill-desert is derived from the relation of fitness or
suitableness to the end or intention or idea of nat-
ure, and is not, as is held by Kant, an original or
axiomatic truth of the practical or moral reason. In
other words, so far as good or ill-desert is con-
cerned, Butler derives the concept of moral from
that of natural good, which Kant so positively repu-
diates, both in form and in fact.
§ 97. The will, as related to the practical reason,
according to Kant, is the capacity in man
Kant's
to determine himself to action by the ap- Doctrine of
prehension of the laws which the reason
imposes. So far as this will is not determined by
any of the natui'al impulses of the sensibility, but
obeys the behests of the practical reason, it is called
free, i.e., free from sense or material motives. Yet
in being free from these laws it accepts and obeys
the moral law.
Natural law, however, it should be remembered,
pertains only to phenomena, and not to things in
themselves. It is apprehended of and enforced upon
phenomena as they occur under the form of time, in
order to make experience possible. On the other
hand, the power to accept and. so to speak, to en-
force moral law, pertains to things in themselves,
or noiimeiKi, of which causative power is affirmed,
13
194 kant's ethics.
but not relations of time. Through the practical
i-eason we reach reality, the Ding an sich, the Ego,
or the soul, the nature and reality of which we
have previously striven in vain to discover. This
reality, however, is not given directly to conscious
experience or intuition, but it is given hnpliedly
so far, and so far only, as reality is involved in the
moral law. We do not assert freedom as a posi-
tive endowment of which we are immediately con-
scious, but we discern freedom as logically involved
in the conscious fact of obligation. We do not say,
I can, therefore I ouf/Jit, to choose so and so. i.e., to
exercise or assert^ my freedom, but / otifflit, fJtereforc
I can.
We are reminded here of the familiar lines of
Emerson, which were doubtless inspired by some of
the memorable and spirit-stirring utterances of
Kant:
"So nigh is grandeur to oiu" dust,
So near is God to luaii.
When duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'
The youth replies, 'I can.'"
The meaning of the poet, at first thought, seems to
be obvious, but on a second reading the question
might still arise, whether he did not after all have a
glimmering reference to the Kantian interpretation,
SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 195
and find in its paradox a poetic mystery. Some
would say the more paradoxical the statement the
more profound the truth. But on second thought
most readers will hnd in its stirring appeal the ut-
terance of the most solid of truths, that of a sense of
inward power aroused by the trumpet call of duty.
It should be observed that the will is also called
by Kant the practical reason, because the truth
which it assumes and enforces is the moral law, in-
volving the idea of duty, which this will acknowl-
edges by its subjective assent to its authority, even
when it disobeys its commands. This moral law
with its objective authority, moreover, is distin-
guished from a mere maxim of the will, which
may be defined as an}^ special rule which is in fact
accepted by the individual man for himself, and
which may be more or less completely conformed
to this comprehensive rule or law. {Cf. §57.)
§ 98. Fi'eedom as the ground of responsibility is
onlv apnlicable to the noumenon or thing-
^ Freedom
in-itself, it being excluded from phenom- in the Ego
en a by the fact that these only obey the
law of causation. And yet Kant inconsistently con-
tends that causation can connect the noumenon with
phenomena for the reason that being one of the
categories, it may be applied to phenomena as such;
196 Kant's ethtos.
overlooking, as it would seem, that it is only between
phenomenon and phenomenon that any of the cate-
gories apply. In this way he finds no incompatibility
between necessary law and supersensible freedom.
By the same rule he distinguishes between a perma-
nent or timeless character and a permanent moral
state, regarded as the product of will. He goes so
far as to affirm that, given a man's character, every
act of his could be"predicted as the certain and neces-
sary effect of his permanent moral character or
state ; while yet for this character man himself is
responsible, because as a noumenon he is its origina-
tor.* The freedom for which Kant contends in any
such application is obviously a conception entirely
diffei-ent from that which he had defined as responsive
to the imperative of reason, and therefore the negative
of an impulse of sense, and in that sense free; it
being a positive function which is recognized as the
ground of personal responsibility, and finds its war-
rant in that direct consciousness which Kant usually
treats with supercilious disdain.
The InteUiyibJe eliaracfer of the noumenon Ego.
as thus explained, is also used by Kant as the basis
and explanation of that characteristic disposition to
* Of. Kant's Lehre von rter Freiheit, etc., von Dr. Carl Gerhard.
Heidelberg: Georg Weiss. 1885.
SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEORY. 197
moral evil which lie recognizes as one of the conspic-
uous facts of human nature, and which forms the
subject of a special essay entitled, " Religion Inner-
halb der Grenzen der Reinen Vernunft." In this
essay he finds in his ethical theory a naturalistic or
physiological explanation of the theological doctrine
of man's natural sinfulness or depravity, finding in
the reluctance of the sensibility toward the good
the ground for the sense of obligation, as elsewhere
explained.* [Cf. §§ 25, 31, 38, 61, 69.)
* Dr. Kurd Lasswitz (Die Lehre Kaiits von der Idealitat des Raumes
und der Zeit, etc. Berlin: 1883, §§51-54) distinguishes tiie / or
Ego as first the determining agent of all its products or states, and
second as the determined product of its own activities. To the first
Ego neither the categories nor the time and space-forms have any
application. The second is two- fold, consisting of the self-conscions
Ego as known in its several states and objects — its Individual thoughts,
feelings, desires and resolves — and the objects given by sense-percep-
tion. Both the last are objects of experience, i.e., whether events or
beings, the experiences of consciousness or sense-perception, and both
obey the law of necessity. All that pertains to the Ego as a state or phe-
nomenon, i.e., as a tliought," or feeling, or conclusion, obeys the law of
causation as truly as do tliose agents which we call physical or material,
including as it does the entire realm,of determined psychical experience.
Behind and beneath this is the self-determined Ego,which by an activity
of its own originates the individual moral self that appears in con-
sciousness as a determined force, and gives character to all that con-
sciousness takes note of. The ingenious author insists that Kant in
this way intended to provide for two noumena in the Ego — the real,
active, self-determining Ego of moral freedom, and the second, which
is the complex, or content, of those objects and relations which con-
stitute experience and are given in consciousness. Of the first only
can freedom be affirmed; over the last the law of necessity prevails.
The distinction is apparently valid, and has been recognized by
others. Cf. Alfred Holder: Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntniss-
theorie. Tiibingen, 1874, i)p. 6()-64. Cf.'S. Porter: The Human In-
tellect, §§ 86, 96.
198 K A NT's ETHICS.
§ 100. We notice next the relations of Kant's
Relation of ethics to his Speculative philosophy. As
an b t 109 ^g have seen, in the soul's knowledge of
to Specula- ' =>
tive Truth. i^s own freedom is involved the discern-
ment of noumena or things in themselves, as con-
trasted with phenomena or events as they appear.
Through the knowledge of itself as free it breaks the
shell of appearances, which follow one after another,
and, so to speak, depend on one another after the
laws of nature; and knows itself, the Ego, as a thing-
in-itself It, moreover, knows itself as a cause pro-
ducing phenomenal effects of its own, yet without
disturbing the chain or connection of those causes
and effects which follow one another according to
natural laws. Its knowledge of the Ego does not,
however, involve an insight into its constitution or
endowment as a thing in itself, but only as capable
of free origination, and this so far only as the moral
law implies this power, its exercise, and its products.
AVith the capacity to respond to this law, personality
is implied, and a possible community of persons and
aims or ends of activity which are harmonious with
one another. Such a community or kingdom of
aims or ends was implied indeed in the statement or
definition previously given by Kant of the matter of
the moral law as a law which is fit to be universal.
SUMMARY OF KaKT^S tTHlCAL THEORY. 199
But fitness implies adaptation to an end, and tlie
capacity for harmony between the ends of each in-
dividual, as also a harmony with and subordination
to the highest end of each and all.
It appears from all this that the practical reason
in the Kantian system alone gives us reality or
things in themselves, so far as to justify some knowl-
edge of the soul as a noumenon. The moral law
which enforces duty by its command asserts the
reality of the Ego as a fact, the nature of which and
the law of which it knows only by those phenomena
or conscious experiences in which the soul makes
itself manifest as an ethical force.
§ 101. It also establishes the soul's immortality,
by the behests of the practical reason. Ethical
mi I • 1 • J.- • J. 1 Grounds for
ine categorical imperative is not only a ggij^j jj,
command that the soul should obey the immortality
moral law, wherein are implied its freedom and its
actual existence, but it insists that the obedient soul
shall be made happy simply because it so requires,
and therefore assumes that the soul deserves to
become so. So long as it feels obligation it is
under the dominion of sensibility, and consequently
there must ensue a constant strife between the
higher law of duty and the lower or emotional im-
pulses of sense and passion. So long as this struggle
200 kaxt's ethics.
eontinues, it will fail to attain that happiness which
the practical reason — the supreme arbiter — pro-
nounces that it deserves. But if it deserves this it
surely will attain it, because the practical reason
commands it. But if it shall attain a complete
harmony between resisting impulse and imperative
law, it must continue to exist and consequently for
all practical purposes it must be immortal and inde-
structible, i.e., superior to any of those natural laws
which control or effect those changes in phenomena
which occur in time.
If the practical reason requires or commands that
the soul should continue to exist, it by the same rule
demands that God should exist, in order that its own
behests concerning the rewards which goodness de-
serves should in fact be accomplished through Him.
Thus, by an ethical necessity, the reality of certain
nomnena or things in themselves and their more im-
portant relations are established, so far, at least, as
the practical concerns of man require. At the same
time the contrast is indicated and justified between
man's absolute ignorance of things in themselves, on
the one hand, with the exceptions provided for, and
the progressive yet limited knowledge which he
attains of their relations and phenomena under nat-
ural laws, on the other.
SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 201
§ 102. To the brief summary which we have
given of the leading principles of Kant's Further Re-
ethical system, we subjoin the follovvinof ^' "" , " "'"'"
critical remarks and queries. The first imperative,
which we select is the categorical impcrafirr which is
enforced and assented to by the practical reason,
as an essential attribute, property, or element of the
moral law. This is held by Kant to be original and
simple and comparable in this respect to any one of
those mathematical relations or concepts which we rec-
ognize as original. It is also capable of eliciting emo-
tions, or one, at least, viz. : that of esteem or respect.
The discerned relation of authority is on the one
side, and the felt emotion of obligation is on the
other. To the recognition of either of these ele-
ments as original, whether the objective or the sub-
jective, we object that they are unique, and there-
fore require an extraordinary claim upon our confi-
dence. This claim they are so far from justifying,
through their use in explaining " human experi-
ence,'' that they contradict the analogies of this ex-
perience, while the phenomena for which they are
required can be satisfactorily explained by being
resolved into other elements. We cannot conceive
of a mere fhongJit or Judf/menf of moral import,
whether in the general or the individual form, like
202 KANt\s ETHK-'li,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor," or, "Thou shall
relieve the hunger of A or B," that is capable of ue-
ing self-enforced and thus invested with moral au-
thority. The conception of authority seems w^holly
disparate with or unrelated to any mere thought or
judgment, or any hypostasized rational or intellectual
entity.
55 108. We accept the axiom as self-evident that
" obligation supposes an obliger,'' as an
Personality
Essential to analytic or axiomatic proposition, because
the word and the thought suppose a
person commanding and a i)erson responding, with
the correlate emotion of constraint. It would seem
to follow that the relation and the feeling it evokes
can belong only to one person as set over against
another, and under any conditions that might evoke
reverence or fear by command or direction. For
this reason it is held by a recent writer, Dr. James
Martineau,* that these cannot exist or hold except of
man as in contact with his fellow-man or as subject to
Grod's command. But man is not only a political and
a religious animal, he maintains an economy of organ-
ization and rule within himself. By his capacity for
self-consciousness or reflection he can give law to
himself as truly as, and far more completely than, he
*On the Relation between Ethics and Religion. London: 1883.
Cf. Types of Ethical Theory. London: 1885.
SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THEOJiY. 203
can give law to others. He can obey or disobey
himself, and reward or punish himself with his own
complacence or displacency, and therefore can hold
or bind himself to the feelings and acts which he ac-
knowledges to be right or wrong. It is only as we
remember that man is endowed with consciousness;
and that consciousness can be thus intensified into
reflection; and that man as self-conscious is thereby
capable of proposing and imposing ideal ends and
laws for himself as voluntary, as truly as for others;
and that he can respond to these ideals and laws by
his freely choosing will, and can also reflect upon his
choices and decide upon their conformit}' or noncon-
formity to the law self-imposed, and can reward or
punish himself by his own approval or condemnation
— it is only as we remember all these facts and relations
that we can ex[)Iain obligation and authority in their
highest significance, with the correlative emotions of
reverence and constraint. These emphatically moral
relations are emphatically personal relationships.
They are incapable of existing where personality is
wanting, and are capable of existing in their highest
and most perfect form only where personal relations
are most energetic and intense. These facts and re-
lations of human experience are not denied by Kant.
They are most distinctly recognized by him so soon
204 kaxt's ethics.
as they come prominently into bis field of view. At
a late period of his inquiries he defines a person
as one who is an end to and within himself, and
founds on this definition his doctrine of human
rights, when he faces the doctrine of rights; but
be overlooks personality altogether in his formal
exposition of moral obligation and authority, and the
categorical imperative. In the exposition of bis
ethical theory and the practical reason he loses sight
of the significance of personality, with its individual
will, its reflecting reason, and its interpreting power,
and only comes back to it after having asked leave of
the practical reason to justify bis belief in the re-
ality of this noumenon within his breast. {Cf. § 72.)
§ 103. If now it can be made good that the rela-
Sense of tion of authority itself, with its attendant
Complex and emotion, can be derived from and re-
Denved. solved iuto and explained by other known
endowments of man's nature, it follows that, neither
as intellectually apprehended nor as emotionally re-
sponded to, can it be accepted as an original relation or
ultimate experience. We mean, of course, when we
use language witrh any claim or effort for scientific
exactness. We know that as a poetic metaphor or
an imaginative expression, such a representation mav
be both significant and satisfying; but for this very
SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 205
reason it may be the more misleading when there
is any danger of its being mistaken for analytic
or exact terminology. If by the practical reason
we are undei-stood to mean the reflective reason
when it confronts voluntary activities, there can be
no objection to such an application of the term. But
if the categorical imperative is made to describe a
constraining force over the feelings or will, which is
supposed to be emitted or to proceed from an intel-
lectual judgment or proposition, instead of the activ-
ity of a living personality, then we cannot but call
it a metaphor and treat it as such.
§ 104. We prefer our own solution to the Kant-
ian, — if the latter deserves to be called
The Two
an explanation, and not a mere figure of Explanations
, , •, /. i 1 Contracted.
speech. — because it reiers us to known
human endowments which cannot be denied, and
recognizes their familiar activit}^ and their universal
prevalence, and because it fully explains a problem
which the Kantian theory does not attempt to solve,
but declares to be inexplicable, and which it then
proceeds to envelop in a cloud of imposing imagery,
and to speed on the winged woi'ds of a soaring
poetic diction. Our solution holds fast to the author-
ity of the moral reason and the moral law, as recog-
nized bv both Kant and Butler, So far as Butler
306 rant's ethics.
recognizes simple authority as the distinctive attri-
bute of the moral reason or the moral nature in the
way of personification, without any explanation of
the natural endowments which make it possible, so
far is he fairly open to criticism. So far as he
resolves the possession and use of this authority into
the nature of man as a reflective and voluntaiy
being, so far does he make his theory rational.
Another unique feature which remains to be noticed
in Kant's conception of obligation, is that he conditions
it entirely on the supposed resistance, reaction, or re-
luctance of the passions and emotions of the sentient
soul. So long as a struggle arises between the reluc-
tant passions and the imperative reason — not, be it
observed, between the lower and higher emotions,
for such a distinction is not admitted by Kant, but
between feeling and authority — then, and only then,
obligation will be felt. When the passions are all
at rest in perfected harmony, then a state of holiness
ensues, as contrasted with a condition of reluctant
but obedient virtue, and then obligation ceases to be
felt or known. " The perfected spirits of the just,"
according to Kant, have no sense or experience of
obligation. A paradoxical statement, like this, can
only be accounted for by the necessities of a one-
sided theory.
SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 207
§ 105. The next point to be considered is Kant's
conception and attempted definition of Kant's
the moral law. The practical reason, f^P ""^''""
'■ ' of the
according to Kant, confronts the will Moral Law.
with the categorical imperative. It authoritatively
commands the will, but to do or to be what? If it
meets the will which, whatever it may be, is cer-
tainly a power to do or become something, what does
it propose that it be or do? Whether it be in the gen-
eral command, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, or in the
concrete. Thou shalt will or give him food, there must
be a definite kind of feeling or doing proposed or com-
manded. What is this command? This question has
often been asked, and each answer represents a sepa-
rate theory in ethics. To this question, as we have
seen, Kant gives no answer except the mere formal
rule. See that your law be universal, or fit to be univer-
sal — that is, that it admit no exception — when it comes
to be applied. What Kant means by this criterion
he illustrates by the four oft-repeated suppositions
of temptation to personal degradation, to suicide, to
an idle and self-indulgent life, and to falsehood. We
have seen that in every one of these cases this unfit-
ness to be universal is exemplified b}'^ the tendency
of the conduct to hinder or mar human well-being.
This, Kant would say, is a mere accident of the
308 kant's ethics.
mattei-, with which we have nothing to do. It is onl}'-
with the actual necessity that the law should be uni-
versal that he is concerned, not at all with the fact that
the act should always conduce to human well-being.
If this be so, then it is the fact that the rule admits
no exception; that is, it is its formal universality
alone which gives it its binding force. But mere
universality, as such, when separated from univer-
sal results of blessing, would invest the law with no
moral authority. Rather would it be the farther
removed from such dignity, the more manifest it be-
came that, in its tendency to natural evil, it was con-
sistent with itself. Does not Milton truly tell us:
" * * * devil with devil damn'd
Finn concord holds; men only disagree."
The actual universality of a law, or the universal
approval of the same, can only be interpreted as
the evidence of its manifest tendency to promote
the well-being of those whom it concerns. It is
strange, indeed, that an eye usually so acute as was
Kant's should fail to penetrate so thin a disguise.
The examples selected by Kant, as explained by
himself, show that so far as the content of the moral
law is concerned, in each of the instances supposed,
it has solely to do with its bearing on human well-
being. Kant does not seem to be aware of this fact;
SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 209
for not only are these the only examples which he
quotes, but they are repeated by him again and
again, in oi'der to make clear what he thinks of the
content of the moral law, and the reasons for its
being of universal obligation. Considerations of this
sort constitute and exhaust his entire repertory of
reasons.
§ 106. Tills is very remarkable when considered
in connection with his constantly repeat- Kant's view
ed assertion that the nature of man can °^ 1^13"^'°'^'"' ^
never, as the ancients taught us, explain Moral Nature.
the content of the moral law, this being transient
matter, the product of arbitrary conditions, and
therefore inferior to tJie eternal forms of things,
which are supposed to be incapable of change and
dissolution. Kindred to this was the assertion, which
we shall have occasion to consider, that feeling, as
such, and anything which excites feeling, is transient
and unstable matter, and therefore incapable of
being the element or ground of any rule of duty.
The untenableness and the inconsistenc}' of Kant's
strictures upon the derivation of the moral law from
the constitution of human nature, and upon the defini-
tion by the Aristotelian and Stoic schools of virtue
as a life according to nature, and their rule of duty
as derived from the nature of things in general,
14
210 kant's ethics.
together with the dishonor which he puts upon feel-
ing as an uncertain and unstable element in the
construction of any ethical system, are eminently
chai'acteristic of his theory, and are continually pre-
senting themselves in one form or another, as
stones of stumbling to the ingenuous mind.
§ 107. Kant's doctrine of the will and of free-
Further Criti- dora is obscure and unsatisfactory. It is
cism of Kant's ■, ^ p • i_ • i- xi
Doctrine of Clear only SO tar as it is negative, t ree-
the Will. (Jqj^-^ j^ g^ condition opposed to that of be-
ing bound by natural laws, viz.: those laws which
govern phenomena and which are assumed a priori
to be necessary in order to make experience possible.
In contrast with the dominion of these laws, it is
asserted that the will is free; or rather it is con-
cluded that it must be free for the reason that man
ought to obey the moral law. The fact or truth of
freedom is not known by conscious intuition. Indeed
no positive activity is asserted of choice or selection
of one of two conflicting objects or between conflict-
ing natural impulses. The belief in freedom, what-
ever it may be, is in no sense direct and immediate.
It is uniformly held as an inference from another
fact or truth. The proposition which expresses our
faith is, We ought, therefore we can. The truth
that tve ought comes first and the truth that ire can
StTMMAilY OF KANt's ETHICAL THEORY. 211
comes last, as implied and enforced by the categori-
cal imperative of the practical reason. We know
that we can in knowing that we ought. But why or
how. we are not informed. It is pointedly denied,
however, that we are conscious that we are naturally
or morally free.
That there neither is nor can be any incompati-
bility between freedom and necessity is urged by
Kant, and reasoned by him on the ground that
necessity pertains to phenomena, while freedom can
belong only to noumena. We interpret phenomena
by causal relations under natural laws, in order to
make experience possible, that is, in order to explain
the past and adapt ourselves to the future. We in-
terpret freedom of noumena as being something more
and possibly exempt from natural laws, even though
we conceive of them as causal in their activity within
the world of phenomena. But while we know this
truth because the exigencies of the moral law force it
upon our assent, this is all that we know. We are
constrained by the reality of freedom, and accept it
as trustworthy simply because it is essential to the
assent which we cannot deny to the authority of the
categorical imperative.
The critic of Kant does not find it very difficult to
urge that Kant's axiom, wp oiu/Iit, tJtPrefore we can,
213 Kant's ethics.
is an analytic or identical proposition, asserting that
as the ground of our conviction of the fact of obliga-
tion, there is involved the discernment of the fact of
freedom. The circumstance that Kant is never con-
sciously responsible for any psychological, as distin-
guished from a metaphysical, analysis, does not
make it any the less difficult to suppose that he may
mistake the one for the other. But of this more in
another place.
§ 108. That Kant does scant justice to the range
„ ,, r . and import of those truths w^hich self-
Kant's Late ^
andinade- consciousness attests is still more strik-
quate Recog-
nition of ingly manifest from his scant recognition
urpose. ^^ ^^^^ ^^_ design as an element of person-
ality and a condition of moral obligation. Freedom
implies a choice of a supreme end when recognized
as fitted and designed to control free action, per-
sonal emotion, and individual activity. This im-
plies that a rational universe supposes a harmony to
be possible between the best acts of its constituent
members, and the best acts and results of all acting
together. In the enumeration of the categories of
the pure or the practical reason we find no distinct
recognition of this fundamental relation as such,
and consequently no provision for the use of the
same in the analysis or explanation of scientific or
SUMMAKY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY, 213
ethical truth. Consequently it is not surprising that
we find this relation nowhere recognized by Kant as
furnishing the explanation of the authority of the
moral law over the personal will.
We contend that the end for which one or more
forces or agencies exist, especially if it coiitrols the
combined or conspiring activity of many others, is
rightly conceived as exercising authority over all
these forces, and acting as a lawgiver and law-en-
forcer for them all. If we find any form of natural
good appearing to control unconscious existence or
instinctive action, it is regarded as invested with
authority and imposing the necessity of obedience.
If it is consciously recognized as fit to control the ac-
tions and results of one who obeys and disobeys its
behests, it is conceived as his ruler, which will not be
trifled with, as exercising a mastery which is none
the less an object of reverence even if the power
which it evokes is blind. If a man offends against
his own nature, i.e., his own living self, as represented
by the purpose which is the law for his being as to its
best possible achievements, he acknowledges its right
to command when he feels its power to condemn and
punish. If he attains any just idea of the excel-
lence of the good (the natural good) which he might
have achieved, and the badness of the loss which he
214 Kant's ethics.
has incurred, he invests such a purpose with author-
ity over his will as supreme, having a sacredness
which can be compared with no other. But in
order that these experiences may be possible these
psychological and metaphysical elements must be
recognized and applied. Kant fails in both, and
consequently fails in the explanation of attaining a
good or satisfactory theory of the most important of
ethical experiences, that of moral obligation. As if
to atone for his failure, he substitutes for it a fig-
ment of the poetic imagination, which he invests
with the borrowed drapery of factitious disinterest-
edness, doing violence at the same time to the most
sacred and inextinguishable of human aspirations,
the realization of its highest natural capacities of de-
sire and impulse, and displacing the rights of the
supreme reason by the pretended claims of a blind
impei'ative which owns no allegiance to the nature
of man, but authoritatively issues its unreasoned de-
mands, in response to which it requires an unemo-
tional and an unreasoning will.
§ 109. It is not to be wondered at, that in the
logical and natural consequence of this
° Kant's Failure
double defect — subjectively in respect to to do Justice
freedom, and objectively in respect to
purpose — Kant should fail to recognize the ethical
SUMMARY OP Kant's ethical theory. 215
significance of personality. In psychology he knows
no other Ego than a noumenon capable of the sole
function of reverently responding to an irrational
moral law, the authority of which it blindly respects
and freely though reluctantly follows, while in sci-
ence it is known by its reflex in a synthetic apper-
ception of the unity which it imparts to the objects of
knowledge. The self-conscious Ego, as a choosing
and loving being which knows its powers and possi-
bilities by its self-conscious judgment, and proposes
aims to itself which it imposes as laws ; which, as
will, chooses or refuses the good which is made possi-
ble by its capacities ; and which by these, as stand-
ards, measures and judges its acts and attainments —
of all this he knows nothing as the foundation of his
ethical conceptions or emotions, but, instead thei-eof,
gives us the dry scaffolding of a merely logical
hypostasis which he illumines with the weird light
of fantastic illustrations.
When he approaches the sphere of concrete real-
ities and touches the realm of the actual, it is not
surprising that he recognizes the importance and
significance of personality; especially when he treats
of the doctrine of human rights in his Metaphysik
der Sitten.
§ 110. Kant's dogmatic depreciation of the
^16 Kant's ethics.
emotions in his ethical theory is open to the most
„. ^ . decided criticism. From the beffinningr
His Deprecia- ° °
tion of the to the end of his expositions he excludes
Emotions
and the any recognition of the sensibilities in
' ' ^' faculty or manifestation, for the compre-
hensive reason that they are necessarily changeable
with the individual, and consequently are incapable
of any fixed relationships which involve permanent
and universal worth. In this general position, which
is constantly assumed or asserted, Kant overlooks
two considerations; the first that the sensibilities as
such are no matter of ethical valuation or authority,
but only the sensibilities as energized and regulated
by the will. It is not the positive strength of any
or all of the passions, as a natural or a hereditary
endowment, nor the relative intensity or energy of
any one when thus estimated, which is praise- or
blame-worthy, but it is the positive strength of one
or the relative energy of many as the expression of
the individual will, that constitutes character, and
is the object of ethical approval or condemnation.
While it is true, as Kant contends, that sensibility
or emotion, as such, is involuntary, accidental,
and arbitrary, and subject to all manner of caprices,
it is equally true that the emotions as volition-
ized are susceptible of constant relations with an
StJMMAKY OF KANT^S ^:THICAL THEORY. 217
ever-varying material, and that under an endless
variety of energy and activity there may be con-
stancy of proportion under the controlling energy
of the central will. Man's natural sensibilities of
every sort, his responsive loves and hatreds, his
sympathies and antipathies, seem as changeable and
capricious as the lawless wind; but whenever and so
far as they meet in conflict and measure their claims
by the highest possibilities of human nature, so far
do they admit a standard, a law, a sentence and its
execution; in other words, so far do they provide for
moral relations, making them both possible and
necessary. Tlie second consideration overlooked by
Kant is, that the will without sensibility is incapable
of stimulating or directing activity, lacking, as it
does, any material to regulate, and the motives which
might give life to the moral purposes, and warmth
and energy to the inner life. Kant's will, without
feeling, is simply a capacity for responding to duty
and inspiring to outward action by demand of the
reason, without involving the emotions. The re-
sponses of such impulses must consequently be
colorless and cold. Should the affections glow with
saintly or seraphic ardor, with self-sacrificing benev-
olence or heroic self-control, so far as the devotee of
duty finds in his conscious delight in the exercise of
218 KANT^S ETHICS.
any, even the highest sensibilities, an aniniating
impulse or a ground of satisfaction, as contradistin-
guished from the simple imperative of the moral
law, so far, according to Kant, would the morality
of his motives be weakened and dishonored, and the
purity of his affections be soiled and smirched.
Moreover, he teaches that a command to love, or to
exercise or indulge any emotion, is absurd in the
eye of reason, which could issue in no moral result
were it obeyed. The categorical imperative, he tells
us, requires acts, not feelings, for with feelings it
disdains to concern itself. It would seem when love
becomes most pure, according to Kant's own theory,
that it is no longer an activity of reluctant duty,
but an inspii'ation of aspiring holiness, but at that
instant it ceases to have any properly moral quality,
because it is swallowed up in an afflatus of emo-
tional sympathy. So far, too, as its subjective as-
pects are concerned, the form of virtue which Kant
would sanction and cultivate is manifestly apathetic
and unsympathizing. It is stoical rather than hu-
mane, self-relying rather than benevolent; if it is
self-governed and just, it is cold and hard. From
what we learn of Kant's personal character and his
domestic education, we are confirmed in the conclu-
sion which would be suggested by his speculative
SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 219
system, that bis own morale was chiefly concerned
with acts rather than with feelings, at the same time
that it was severe in its principles and uncompro-
mising in its requirements. His speculative and
practical views, as it would seem, were also largely
affected by his antagonism to the fanatical emotion-
alism of Rousseau, who was in his eyes the repre-
sentative of speculative and practical sentimentalism,
and very naturally found little favor with the ex-
pounder of the categorical imperative and the practi-
cal reason; It is beyond dispute or question that Kant
was the expounder and representative of an entirely
different practical theory, and it seems equally ob-
vious that the reaction which he represented was
equally extreme in the opposite direction from Rous-
seau. Nature, however, will have her revenges, and
so we observe that Kant does not always succeed in
overlooking or eliminating the element of feeling.
He is too honest and logical to the truth of human
experience entirely to overlook the AcJitiiiig, or es-
teem for the law, which he confesses is conspicuous
in human experience, although he strives to square
it with his theory by denying that it is properly an
emotion at all. The elevating and self-satisfied
peace of a good man he was too true to nature to
deny or overlook, and yet the dominant spirit of his
220 kant's ethics.
system was sharply and strongly antagonistic to
feeling or emotion of any kind, either as a specula-
tive or practical element.
§ 111. We notice the intellect nal services to which
Theinteiiec- the Kantian Ethics have been applied.
tuaiAppii- ^Yg jj^^g alreadv adverted to the impor-
cation of .,1
Kanfs Ethics, tance which Kant ckimed for his practi-
cal as a supplement to the speculative reason. We
have also stated the course of thought by which he
made it to command the soul on its allegiance to
duty to accept such truths as the existence and im-
mortality of the soul and the being of God. Such
positive and extraordinar}' claims for experiences
so commanding are imposing by reason of the con-
fidence with which they are urged and the impor-
tance of the truths which they are supposed to make
axiomatic. That the demands of duty extend to the
nse which we make of the intellect in its search for
truth is most obvious, and that the fidelity with
which we respond to these claims often determines
the results cannot be denied. But it does not follow
that the occasion for the interposition of the so-called
practical reason is precisely what Kant represents it
to be, or that the method by which it supplies the
needs of the speculative reason is that which his
theory of its nature supposes.
SUMMARY OF KANT'S ETHICAL THEORY. 221
§ 112. First of all there is, we conceive, a subtle
but fascinating haziness in the concep- Authority
tions of Kant and many other schools in °^ pj^^c'if"*^*^
respect to the evidence, authority, and Questions.
trustworthiness of experience, especially in our ethi-
cal activities. That is a simple haziness of thought,
if it be not sometimes a mystic dogmatism, which con-
ceives of experimental and ethical knowledge as in
its nature more positive and satisfying simply because
it is unlike the ordinary processes of the intellect
when applied to other than matters of faith and
duty. When it is said in common life that experience
will test ethical truth as nothing else besides, or
when it is declared that the honest conscience de-
cides many a sophistical doctrine to be incredible,
however plausible and unanswerable it may seem to
be; when it is said by Kant that it is in order that
experience may be possible that we are forced to ac-
cept and assert as a priori the forms of sense, the cate-
gories of the understanding, and the ideas of the rea-
son, we assume that the knowledge given and tested
by experience must be trustworthy, not directly be-
cause of its practical importance, but rather because
men will not trust the interests of their daily and
personal life to any other than to such satisfying evi-
dence as is sun-clear and sun-bright. It certainly
222 kant's ethics.
cannot be good logic or good sense to reason simply
that because men must live, or gain any other good,
therefore the knowledge which they must accept in
order to live must always be reliable, and that for
this reason the relations of time and space and the
other a priori conditions of experience must in some
sense be trustworthy. And yet it may be both good
logic and good sense to reason that our confidence in
any knowledge which is actually tx'usted in ex-
perience must be as clear and as self-evident as the
light. On the other hand, it may be true that to the
practical appeal, II faut vivre, the reply is sometimes
pertinent, Je nen vols pas la necessite.
Similarly, it sounds very satisfactory to say that the
practical reason of the conscience requires that we
believe in freedom, immortality, and God, because
the moral law commands us so to believe, and to rest
on the acceptance of this ignava ratio, that we must
discern facts or relations to be true, because other-
wise faith, and duty, and hope, would be impossible.
But this is the logic of Kant, and it is by buttresses of
this sort, if his meaning is rightly interpreted, that
he would support what he thinks to be the tottering
pillars of faith and conscience. That when opposed
to the analysis of speculation, Kant's ethical fervor
has often been efl:ective, when re-cast and re-inter-
SUMMAEY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 223
preted by the unreflecting good sense of many
readers, we do not deny. That he has often been a
most effective assertor of the speculative and practi-
cal authority of moral truth and religious verity,
we do not deny, but that this renders any the more
trustworthy his uncalled-for concessions of the limit-
ations of the speculative reason, and his equally un-
authorized extension of the functions of the practical
reason, we do not believe to be true. Notwithstand-
ing the fervor of his assertions of the authority of
ethical and his occasionally eloquent expositions of
spiritual truth, it may be seriously questioned
whether the honeycombed scepticism of his specu-
lative theory has not occasioned unmeasurably
greater mischief than his magniloquent and occa-
sionally really eloquent utterances for freedom and
immortality and God have been able to prevent or
to cure.
There cannot be the least objection to the trial of
every system of philosophical truth by ethical tests,
provided these tests are legitimately applied, but to
assume that there are two kinds of evidence which
have no common foundation and which require a dif-
ferent or an irreconcilable logic, the so-called logic of
the intellect and the logic of the conscience, is to
accept a fundamental logic which will be found to be
224 rant's ethics.
irreconcilable with either science or faith. In the
reasonings which we have emploj^ed in this treatise,
from the practical features and tendencies of Kant's
own system, to its speculative weakness or truth, we
constantly assume that what is speculatively true
will commend itself as such to the unsophisticated
common sense and permanent convictions of man-
kind, especially when these are tested by the trying
exigencies of practical life, because we believe that
all ethical and spiritual convictions stand on definite
and discernible speculative foundations.
This truth may suggest the last topic of criticism,
which is none other than the relations of Kant's
ethical and speculative system to the Christian ethics
and to theistic and Christian truth.
§ 113. The Christian ethics are characteristically
Kant's Ethics Severe, uncompromising, and authorita-
andthe ^-^^^ ^^ ^j^^ ^^^ hand, while they are
Contrasted. singularly sympathetic and tolerant,
charitable and humane, on the other. The Kantian
ethics are certainly no more elevated in their practi-
cal ideals than are the Christian; assuredly the}^ are
no more positive in asserting the authority of the
moral law. We may perhaps concede that the two
systems in spirit and requirements are equally rigor-
ous and uncompromising. But in respect to the
SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 225
gentler and the more sympathetic affections, they
scarcely belong to the same family. Emotion in all
its forms is the very soul of the Christian system.
Feeling is the consummate flower of Christian virtue
in all its varied hues of tenderness and sympathy.
In the theory of Kant sensibility has no place, except
a place of weakness and inferiority. It never is
recognized as capable of being strengthened and
hai'dened by the will, while in the Christian system,
if emotion be wanting, whether in its severer or its
gentler forms, its absence is considered a sign of
special defect. The tolerance and forgiveness of
Christian virtue is scarcely provided for by Kant's
speculative theory or his practical rules. Marcus
Aurelius is immeasurably more Christian in the char-
acteristically Christian emotions than is the unsympa-
thizing Kant, who is always stern, though sometimes
sublime in his rigid severity. So far as he relaxes at
all from the rigor of his ethical tone, he is either
evaporated into an imaginative sentimentalism which
rises above the range of human sympathies, or is crys-
tallized into a rigid stoicism which prides itself on
its formal perfection. For any practical application
to the affairs of common life, his teachings and spirit
are singulai'ly unfitted, and for this reason his ethics
have been known and practised chiefly among the
15
236 kant's ethics.
ranks of the artificially cultivated, while the Chris-
tian moralities have been most distinctl}^ recognized
and most effectually honored and most consistently
practised in the homes and societies of practical men,
who have been schooled to the ethics of common
sense, by the trials and conflicts of ordinary life.
§ 114. The relations of the Kantian ethics to the-
Reiatioiisto istic and Christian truth should not be
The^stic and overlooked. In the ethics of Kant, God
Christian '
Truth. is a scientific necessity, whose presence in
the moral universe is required, that He may bestow
upon the virtuous the reward which they deserve for
their obedience to the moral law. Inasmuch as the
practical reason not only commands obedience, but
pronounces that the obedient will deserves to be made
sensitively happy, some agent or agency is required
to execute its behests, and therefore God is demanded
and accepted by the faith of men. Inasmuch, how-
ever, as the good which He bestows is sentient good,
and this in the Kantian system is inferior to moral
good, the relative place which the Supreme holds in
His own universe is by necessity a secondary and
inferior one. He is artificially and awkwardly at-
tached to the practical reason, as a marshal or
sheriff', in order to enforce the moral law, and cannot
but suffer in the respect of those who believe in
SUMMARY OF KANT's ETHICAL THEORY. 227
Him, by reason of this single function, for which alone
He is made necessary to their faith. His entire
administration must consequently be weakened in
its acts and its functions by the circumstance that it
addresses the hopes and fears of men. in place of
their conscience and moral will, inasmuch as the
Kantian estimate of the emotional nature places it
out of all relation to the conscience, and degrades
the motives which it addresses to man's sensibility to
a confessedly inferior authority. Hence the natural
theism of Kant, which at first aspect seems to be
exalted to the highest supi'emacy over man, even to
the judgment seat of the conscience, and conse-
quently to stand on the firmest foundations, is prac-
tically and fatally weakened by this practical antag-
onism between duty and sensibility. The same
weakness makes itself more manifest when the
Kantian ethics encounters the Christian system in
its supernatural Personage, with His miraculous
doings and His authoritative commands, with His
personal affections, His promised rewai'ds, and His
threatened displeasure. While Kant affects no se-
crecy, and is chargeable with no affectation in the
homage which he renders to Christ as the embodied
ideal of moral perfection, as both the example and
the inspirer of the ethical life of Christendom, he at
328 kant's ethics.
the same time treats His claims as the pei'sonal
ruler of the world's life as did Herod of old, in-
vesting the rightful Lord of the moral universe with
a robe of mockery, and putting into his hands an
idle sceptre. The Christian history he is compelled by
the stress of his ethical system to hold to be impos-
sible, or needless, or unscientific. While as a sym-
bol the Christian history is worthy of all respect, yet
as a supernatural fact it is impossible, needless, or
mercenary. As a revelation it is simply impossible,
because the ideas and truths which it professes to
impart cannot be communicated unless the elements
are already in the possession of those to whom it
claims to make them known. If these elements are
already present, they cannot be enforced by super-
natural authority, inasmuch as their natural and in-
dependent energy cannot be increased by any extra-
neous additions. The axiomatically ethical and spir-
itual truth which is slumbering in every man's con-
science must be left to be developed, sooner or later,
by natural agencies, under the operation of existing
laws. This revelation is also useless. If adequate
agencies exist, the faith in the moral economy which
pervades the universe forces us to believe that no
supernatural interposition will be furnished when
natural appliances suffice. It is also demoralizing
SUMMARY OF KAXT's ETHICAL THP:OKY. 229
when contrasted with higher and purer intluences. All
conceivable supernatural influences, in the Kantian
judgment, address the personal sensibility and appeal
to the pathological emotions. Interesting as these
may be, and practically effective in the actual affaii's
of men, when ethically judged they must be relegated
to a lower plane than those which the practical reason
presents when it addresses man's autonomous will.
Indeed, properly speaking, these influences have no
ethical value, but are simply auxiliary to impressions
that have no place within the moral in men. If not
always anti-ethical, they are at least unethical. The
personal character of the Great Exemplar, though it
incarnated the ideal of human excellence, and so far
is transcendentally elevating, gains nothing in purely
ethical force by being real, but rather loses, inas-
much as it blends with the purely ethical the per-
sonal, which appeals to the affections rather than to
the conscience, and moves upon the self-centred im-
pulses rather than the simple sense of duty. What-
ever may be urged in support of tiie supernatural
power of the supernatural Christ can in no sense be
recognized among the highest influences, but must
be conceded to human weakness, and to the tem-
porary predominance of inferior impulses.
Kant does indeed find a great ethical truth in the
230 kant's ethics.
perversion of human nature, and in the predom-
inance and persistence of those lower impulses which
inwardly struggle against the law of duty, and make
the sense of obligation so potent and so fearful.
But he holds this tenet rather as a myth which illus-
trates what he conceives to be a subjective ethical
truth, than as having any other significance, while
the sacred history of redemption from this moral
depravity is to him only a mythic parable, made up
of the sensuous drapery of those great moral verities
which give it its interest and its power.
No fact is more notorious, and none more sig-
nificant, than that the Kantian Ethics have been a
significant and oftentimes a destructive element,
whether confessed or unconscious, in the many philo-
sophical and historical arguments which have been
urged against supernatural Christianity. It may be
added that the theory of ethics which does not need
a personal Deity to enforce the law of duty, because
the law of duty is self-sufficing, or which rejects Him
because, forsooth. His efficient authority must address
man's sensibility to the personal favor or displeasure
of his moral ruler, cannot but labor under a heavy
burden of disadvantage when it aspires to a faith in
a personal Father in Heaven, or the supernatural
Christ, by whom God is manifested to man through
SUMMARY OF KAXT^S ETHICAL THEORY. 231
human aftections and human sympathies, in order to
lift him to that moral perfection which reveals itself
as the ideal of every human soul that finds in the
end of its being the law of duty, and in its adjusted
and purified sensibilities the realization of that
blessedness which is the true spiritual life.
CHAPTER V.
BRIEF NOTICES FROM EMINENT GERMAN
CRITICS.
§ 116. It does not fall within tbe plan of this
essay to trace the fortunes of Kant's eth- introductory,
ical theory in Germany, or to exhibit the criticisms
which it has received from the several schools in
philosophy which in that country have succeeded one
another so rapidly during the present century.
Each one of these schools has given more or less
attention to ethics, but no one of them has given
such prominence to ethical relations as has Kant.
Certainly no one has sought as he did to make ethical
truth the foundation of speculative philosophy. On
the other hand, each one of these eminent leaders of
philosophical opinion made ethics subservient to his
special philosophy, making the pi-actical to sit at the
feet of the speculative reason. While ethics has
been held in unfeigned honor in all the modern
schools, she has never ventured to speak with such
positive authority through the categorical impera-
tive, or to stand as sponsor for every species of phi-
232
BRIEF NOTICES FROM GKUMAX CRITICS. '-iSS
losophical truth as she has done in the school of
Kant. It was not without an occasional earnest
pi'otest to the contrary that this was done in Kant's
own time. We give the impassioned language of
Schiller as an example of the response which Kant's
extreme onesidedness called forth from one of his
earnest admirers, and also as explaining the mis-
chievous practical reaction which was occasioned by
Kant's dogmatic extremes:
§ 117. " In Kant's moral philosophy the idea of
duty is represented with a harshness
Schiller's
which frightened away all the gentler comments on
p Tx* J • 1 J- -1 i. i. Kant's Ethics.
graces ot hie, and might easily tempt
a weak understanding to seek for moral perfection
in the way of a gloomy and monkish asceticism.
However earnestly the great philosopher may have
sought to guard himself against such a misrepre-
sentation, which to his free and noble spirit must
have been most offensive, he has yet given occasion
for it by the forcible and striking contrast between
the antagonistic principles, which he represents as
contending for the mastery of the human will. In
respect to the truth of his theory there can be no
question among thinking men after the arguments
which he has urged, and I scarcely know how one
would not sooner give up his manhood than adopt
334 K A NT's ETHICS.
any other conclusion than his. And yet, purely as
he proceeded to his task as an inquiry for the truth,
and satisfactorily as he conducted his argument
upon objective grounds, he still appears to me to
have been influenced by certain subjective reasons,
which, as I think, are easily explained by the cir-
cumstances of his times.
"The morality of his times as he found it, in both
theory and practice, must have outraged him, on the
one hand, by the gross sensualism of its practices,
and by the unworthy readiness of its philosophers to
sanction this corruption by their lax theories. On
the other hand, a scarcely less objectionable principle
of perfectibility aroused his opposition, which, in order
to realize an abstract idea of universal perfection,
was by no means sci'upulous in the selection of the
means. For these reasons he directed the most
cogent of his arguments toward the points where
the danger was most imminent and the reform was
most needed, and made it at once a solemn obligation
to attack sensuality, as well when with brazen front
it outraged all moral feeling as when it assumed
that imposing garb of high moral aims in which a
certain enthusiastic party spirit knew how to array
it. For it should be remembered that he had not
ignorance to instruct, but perverseness to reprove
BRIEF NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 235
and reclaim. The cure demanded rebuke, not flat-
tery or persuasion, and the more striking was the con-
trast which the truth presented to current maxims,
the more could he hope to arouse his age to reflec-
tion. He became the Draco of his time, because his
time was not worthy of a Solon, or capable of
receiving him. From the sanctuary of pure reason
he brought forth the moral law at once so little
known and yet so well known, held it up in its
austere sanctity before a degraded generation, and
cared not to ask whether it had eyes which could not
endure the brightness of its purity.
"But in what had the children of the household
offended so grievously that Kant cared only for the
servants? Because impure inclinations had usurped
the name of virtue, must the most disinterested
affections in the noblest hearts be brought under
suspicion? Because the moral weakling would in-
terpret the law of reason with a laxness which
makes it a plaything at his convenience, ought it for
this reason to be invested with a rigidity so extreme
as would only change the vigorous expression of
moral freedom into a more honorable form of bond-
age? Has not the truly moral man a freer choice
between self-esteem and self-contempt than the slave
of sense has between pleasure and pain? Is there in
236 rant's ethics.
the one case any less constraint for the pure will
than in the other for the will that is corrupt?
Must humanity itself be indicted and degraded by
the imperative form of the moral law, and must
the noblest assertion of its greatness become the
most abject confession of its weakness? Should not
this form of command have precluded the impression
that the obligation which man imposes on himself as
a rational being, and which for this very reason
alone is binding on himself, is reconcilable with his
feeling of freedom, and for this reason should it not
have avoided the appearance of a foreign and posi-
tive command, an appearance which by the radical
inclination to act against the same, that is charged
upon man, could with difficulty be set aside ? * * *
" Human nature is, in fact, a more closel}'^ com-
pacted whole than it is permitted to philosophei's
to allow it to appear, who seem to be unable to
accomplish anything except by the process of dissec-
tion. Never again can the reason reject, as un-
worthy of itself, those affections which the heart
confesses with joy, and which every man cannot but
exalt in his own esteem, even when he is himself
morally degraded. Were the emotional nature uni-
formly the depressed and never the cooperative
agency, how could it bring the lire of its own emo-
BKIEF NOTICES FEOM GERMAN" CRITICS. 337
tions even to that triumph which is celebrated over
itself ■? How could it be so active a participant in
the conscious experience of the pure spirit if it were
not so intimately interwoven with the same that
even the analytical understanding cannot, without
violence, sunder the two? The will, moreover, has
a more immediate connection with the capacity for
emotion than with that for knowledge, and it were
often most unfortunate if in every case it must first
adjust itself to the pure reason." — Veber Anmuth
und Wfirde*
We have given these extracts from Schiller because
they furnish a vivid and a truthful representation of
the impression which Kant's theory made upon an ar-
*0f this criticism of Schiller, Julius Miiller pertinently remarks:
" It will in any event remain as an example of a memorable error of a
noble mind that Kant could maintain that true virtue has nothing to
do with sympathizing benevolence toward man, or with the interest of
the feelings in man's welfare, and can only manifest itself in its
purity when it is attended by no pleasure in the object of our will.
And yet these consequences cannot be avoided if the essence of
morality is derived only from esteem for the moral law, and for the
reason that this law bears the formal characteristic of universal valid-
ity. Schiller's treatise, Ueber Anmuth und Wiirde, so far as it protests
against this rigor which petrifies the moral life, gives expression to the
aspirations of Christian truth; but in so far as it will not give up the
general principles of the Kantian moral law it is incapable of holding
fast to those truths, or of escaping a conflict with itself. An example
of this is furnished in its singular complaint against Kanfs morality,
that by the imperative form of the moral law (for the very reason
that it is a law asserting authority over freedom) humanity itself is
held to be degraded."— /Jie Christ liche Lehre von der SOnde, Ersfes
Buck, Erste Abfheilung, Zweifes Kajntel. _
338 rant's ethics.
dent admirer, who was yet an independent critic.
While Schiller did not attempt to refute Kant's meta-
physical analyses, he was convinced there was some
error in his practical conclusions, and indeed in the
actual working of his entire ethical theory. The re-
volt of his feelings against this theory was shared by
a very large proportion of the brilliant writers who
followed one another so rapidly, among whom Goethe
was as conspicuous for his philosophical insight as
for his wondrous imagination. That Kant should
have failed to convince this brilliant galaxy of ima-
ginative writers, who, while they were overpowered
by the acuteness and strength of his logic, and
dared not venture to meet him in the arena of
metaphysics, were yet confident that his analyses
must be either defective or false, goes very far to
prove that his ethics, though practically his strong-
est point, was in some particulars seriously defec-
tive, and especially for its stoical contempt of the
sensibilities. That Kant was animated by the
noblest purposes in his ethical teachings was freely
confessed by those who, like Schiller, were at once
his critics and admirers. That the extremest of his
one-sided paradoxes may admit of a qualified inter-
pretation whicli exalts them into important practical
truths may be acknowledged without hesitation by
BRIEF NOTICES FKOM GERMAN CRITICS. 239
those who reject them the more positively because
they see in them an incongruous alternation of im-
aginative flights into the empyrean of inspiring
truth and of patient mining along the dark and wind-
ing passages of bewildering metaphysics.
§ 117. The fact has already been adverted to,
that, with one or two important excep- schieiennacii-
tions, the theory of ethics has attracted ^^ ^^i Lotze.
much less attention since the days of Kant, as a part
of speculative philosophy, and least of all has it
been recognized, as it was by Kant, as furnishing to
speculative truth its sole and solid foundation. While
each of the great systems, as of J. G. Fichte, Schel-
ling, Herbart, and Hegel, has found as ample a place
for ethics in terms of reason or thought, as did
Kant, no one of these writers like him has made it
the cornerstone of our confidence in speculative
truth, or invested its dicta with supreme author-
ity. To Schleiermacher belongs the distinction of
producing an original system, which was derived
from or adjusted to the characteristic philosophy or
dialectic which was peculiar to himself. This dia-
lectic we have no space to describe, nor would it be
easy to do so. We speak of his ethics only as
dissenting from the ethics of Kant, in that it does
not limit its sphere to the imperative of duty as
240 rant's ethics.
such, but divides it into three distinct departments,
the doctrine of duties, or obligatory acts; of virtues,
or of ethical dispositions ; and of habits, or confirmed
character. That this classification must rest on a
broader psychological and philosophical basis than
Kant's practical reason, with its categorical impera-
tive and its autonomous will, is too obvious to
req.uire any illustration. Both Schleiermacher and
Herbart notoriously differ from Kant in their recog-
nition of the sensibilities as a prime factor in the
ethical experiences and judgments of man.
Hermann Lotze is another example of a writer
of competent knowledge, profound insight, and im-
partial judgment, from whose Microcosmus, B. V.,
Chap, v., § 3, we give the following, observing that
in this connection he also notices one or two con-
spicuous features of the later ethical systems:
" * * * There is no doubt something to praise in
the austerity with which pi'actical philosophy has
sought to free moral precepts from an indirect
reference to the personal interest of the agent; but
this austerity was wrong in seeking to undo the
plain and indissoluble connection between the notion
of pleasure — despised, and in most of its applica-
tions despicable — and the notion of worth in gen-
eral. When Kant believed that he had found a
BRIEF NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 241
universal formula for moral action, in opposition to
the aims of self-interest, he was candid enough to
admit that he had not discovered in it the precise
ground of its binding authority over us. And why,
in fact, do we consider it as a matter of course that
the maxims of our action must fit into a general sys-
tem of law? And which are the maxims which do
not thus fit in? Plainly those which, if generally
followed, would produce general disorder and the
frustration of all effort. But what is this acknowl-
edgment of the importance of order, and of the possi-
bility of carrying out our intention, if it is not either
(1) a grand and comprehensive utilitarian principle
taking the place of special and narrower ones, or
(2) the confession that maxims different from those
demanded would lead to general misery, and are,
therefore, to be rejected? Other systems, while
eschewing all pleasure, assure us that the moral law
is the one important thing; that the relation of a
finite being to the absolute, like that of any point of
the periphery to its centre, is a relation of subordin-
ation; that human will runs parallel to the develop-
ment of the infinite idea, and works for it. But
how if the absolute should not desire such a relation?
If the submission of the periphery caused only vex-
ation to the centre, could it be still maintained that
16
242 kant's ethics.
this relation was, notwithstanding, to be maintained
as unconditionally worthy in itself?
" This question should remind us that the sacred-
ness of the command depends upon the will of the
Supreme Being, upon His capacity of receiving
pleasure or pain from our obedience or disobedience,
and upon that relation of ourselves to Him, in virtue
of which we find our own blessedness in His pleasure.
If we eliminate from our conception of the Supreme
Being every trace of feeling, and transform our
conception into that of inflexible physical force, a
power which, though intelligent, is devoid of feeling,
we see at once that the subordination above referred
to is altogether without worth. * * *
" What is the meaning of saying that there may
be certain relations between diiferent wills, which
merit unconditional approbation? Is such a relation
to be found anywhere in the world? Are there any-
where wills which, apart from all feeling, actually
exist, and can enter into relation with one another?
And if it were so — if the world consisted of beings
that were m.erely intellectual and volitional, and of
which none, whether finite or infinite, could anyhow
or at any time be capable of feeling pain or pleasure,
in such a case what could be the significance of
those ideals of action which then would have no one
BftlEP NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 243
Ity whom they could be approved? As a matter of
fact, would it be an absolute moral requirement that
one existing condition, which caused neither pain nor
pleasure to anyone, should be replaced by another
condition which would likewise produce no increase
of well-being to anyone in the world? Must we
believe that the universe is so taken up with cere-
mony that it is concerned with nothing but the real-
ization of formal conditions? The too stern morality
to which we have referred may easily conceal from
itself these final results, the transformation of all
moral action into, as it were, a mere mechanical
putting together; for certainly no one is likely to
set up individual moral laws in which there does
not lurk some hidden reference to the pleasure
which is so much despised; in other departments of
life these extreme consequences do occasionally
appear."
§ 118. One of the most significant criticisms of
Kant's theory from a philosopher of a Trendeien-
modern German school has been fur- (^"/ig^jj^es
nished by the late eminent Adolf Tren- »" Kant.
delenburg, of Berlin. It may be found in bis His-
torische Beitrtige zur Philosophic, Dritter Band, Bei*-
lin, 1867. The title of the essay is, Der Widerstreit
zwischen Kant und Aristoteles in der Ethik.
244 Kant's ethics.
The first point which the author makes is, that
while Kant urges acute objections against those
philosophers who would derive the principles of
ethics from an anal3'sis of human nature, he alto-
gether omits the peculiar form in which this analy-
sis is applied by Aristotle. Whereas Aristotle has
recognized the inner purpose or end which controls
and explains the constitution of man and the activi-
ties to which it is destined as its highest and best
use, Kant only conceives of this as some external
result or achievement, activity, or skill, to which it
may be trained. Trendelenburg notices in passing
that in order to discover this supreme aim or pur-
pose of man's being or constitution, Aristotle would
have us resort to psychology, which Kant would
reject as involving the study of matter as distin-
guished from form, the accidental rather than the
essential, and therefore as unscientific.
Next, Kant insists that all material practical
principles must carry us over to the doctrine of
self-love or separate, i.e., individual, happiness. This
general assertion is met by Trendelenburg with the
general denial, that to found our principle in the mat-
ter or constitution of man does not necessarily involve
the founding it in separate happiness or the so-called
principle of self-love. It is the necessary relation
BRIEF NOTICES FROM GEK.MAX CRITICS. 245
of a morally good or right action to the realization
of the end of our being which enables us to exalt
this ideal into a principle which becomes controlling
and supreme. That its relations to the highest
happiness may be the medium by which we discern
the activity for which we are destined he concedes,
but that happiness is properl}' the end, he denies, but
would say the action indicated by the relative hap-
piness which it gives is such an end and becomes a
law. In brief, he dissents from Kant in his inter-
pretation of Aristotle, as to his estimate of the
psychological study of man's nature as the ground
of an ethical system, as to his judgment of the rela-
tion of the formal to the real, and as to his recogni-
tion of purpose and design as essential to the inter-
pretation of the nature of man, and of man's highest
or true happiness as the indication of the highest
and best activity, and as, consequently, the revealer
and enforcer of the moral law.
These principles are more distinctly and fully
developed in the second part of the essay, from
which we give the following:
Fii'st of all, the author notices that, inasmuch as
pleasure {die Lust), being the spring of the indi-
vidual life, tends to selfishness, while the good, the
bond of the common life, seeks the general well-
;i46 kant's ethics.
being, subordinating to it the individual interest,
the mutual relation of the two necessarily becomes
of the utmost ethical importance.
After sundry historical and critical notices, he
adds that pleasure, ever varied and changeable, can-
not for this reason be a guide in action and in life.
Neither the highest scale of mere enjoyment, as
such, nor any separate good, can serve as a guide or
impulse to the general good. Consequently the good
will must renounce all separate or selfish good as its
end or rule. But it does not follow from this that
the good will has no pleasure. Rather, over against
selfish good is set its esteem for the law, as that which
opposes selfish good, its pleasure being intellectual
in its occasion. Moreover, this esteem for the law
being general, and not individual in its occasion, is
not a transient feeling, but permanent in its expe-
rience, a disposition which cannot be content with
single actions, but is a permanent state of the will.
It also involves a superior object of love; for the
disposition and will are not cold abstractions, but
living activities, which are fixed on commanding
objects of good. In such a condition of the soul,
impulse and end, a good will and good actions, cor-
respond; pure pleasure in the good becomes the
constant characteristic of the good disposition.
BRIEF NOTICES FROM GERMAN CRITICS. 247
The crood man delicrhts in the law of God after the
n o
inward man. In the good disposition character con-
sists; and if character is energetic, it will have
pleasure in its principle.
It follows from this analysis that pleasure is at
once repelled and embraced; repelled as a ground,
and yet retained as a characteristic of virtue. We
cannot reconcile the difficulty by making, the good
man selfish in his virtiious joys. We rather resort
to the organic conception of nature and man, after
which one result or aim serves an end or aim still
higher than itself, and so on, the highest of all
giving law to all which is below. In the highest of
all we find the categorical shall, which at last is
found to proceed from a will, i.e., if one follows on
from the conditioned to the unconditioned, and at
last encounters a person. Here we meet the highest
for man in the universe of thought and will — the
man asserting I ought, the man responding I icill.
When we come back to the relations of pleasure
or happiness to these experiences, and ask for the
place which it holds, we find that it is a generic
term, and covers or includes a great variety of very
iinlike experiences, so unlike as to accept or endure
with difficulty any common appellation, yet all hav-
ing in common, a tendency to some special activity,
248 kant's ethics.
which tends in some way to the development or
upholding of man. In the two forms of pleasure
and pain are indicated the furtherance or hindrance
of the individual life. So far as pleasure and pain
look beyond, to their respective ends, these expe-
riences are secondary and the accomplishment of the
end is primary. In animals they are limited to the
individual well-being. But in ethics and with man
we go farther; we widen our conceptions so as to
include the common life. Personality and the state
are recognized, also the higher pleasures of art and
science and the divine in man.
The moral training of the will consists in learning
to find pleasure and pain in those activities and
objects which are befitting. Let no man think that
such a discipline can be achieved by the exclusion of
pleasure. The springs of action are wanting to the
will if the man does not embark in it his inmost
life, and does not find his pleasures from moral
living; not that he should be active for the sake of
pleasure, but should embark his inmost self, without
ceasing, in the good.
" These extracts from writers who are no longer
living will be sufficient for our purpose. The num-
ber of able critics in Germany who continue to
BKIEF KOTICES FUOM GERMAN CRITICS. 'HO
discuss Kant's ethical theory seems likely to increase
rather than to be diminished. The fascination
which brings each new generation to his feet to
listen to his teachings — either to accept or reject
them — seems of late to be intensified rather than to
be weakened. In one way or other, Kant seems likely
to continue to stimulate and to instruct the ablest
thinkers of the present day. The author of this
critical examination of his ethical system yields to
no one in his estimate of Kant's superior genius and
his quickening power. At the same time he is
profoundly of the opinion that the critical philoso-
phy, in order to exert its best influence, needs to
be thoroughly interpreted, and critically discerned.
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