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Page 13
Now all imperatives command either hypothetically or
categorically. The former represent the practical necessity of a
possible action as means to something else that is willed (or at least
which one might possibly will). The categorical imperative would be
that which represented an action as necessary of itself without
reference to another end, i.e., as objectively necessary.
Since every practical law represents a possible action as good
and, on this account, for a subject who is practically determinable by
reason, necessary, all imperatives are formulae determining an
action which is necessary according to the principle of a will good in
some respects. If now the action is good only as a means to
something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is
conceived as good in itself and consequently as being necessarily
the principle of a will which of itself conforms to reason, then it is
categorical.
Thus the imperative declares what action possible by me would be
good and presents the practical rule in relation to a will which
does not forthwith perform an action simply because it is good,
whether because the subject does not always know that it is good, or
because, even if it know this, yet its maxims might be opposed to
the objective principles of practical reason.
Accordingly the hypothetical imperative only says that the action is
good for some purpose, possible or actual. In the first case it is a
problematical, in the second an assertorial practical principle. The
categorical imperative which declares an action to be objectively
necessary in itself without reference to any purpose, i.e., without
any other end, is valid as an apodeictic (practical) principle.
Whatever is possible only by the power of some rational being may
also be conceived as a possible purpose of some will; and therefore
the principles of action as regards the means necessary to attain some
possible purpose are in fact infinitely numerous. All sciences have
a practical part, consisting of problems expressing that some end is
possible for us and of imperatives directing how it may be attained.
These may, therefore, be called in general imperatives of skill.
Here there is no question whether the end is rational and good, but
only what one must do in order to attain it. The precepts for the
physician to make his patient thoroughly healthy, and for a poisoner
to ensure certain death, are of equal value in this respect, that each
serves to effect its purpose perfectly. Since in early youth it cannot
be known what ends are likely to occur to us in the course of life,
parents seek to have their children taught a great many things, and
provide for their skill in the use of means for all sorts of arbitrary
ends, of none of which can they determine whether it may not perhaps
hereafter be an object to their pupil, but which it is at all events
possible that he might aim at; and this anxiety is so great that
they commonly neglect to form and correct their judgement on the value
of the things which may be chosen as ends.
There is one end, however, which may be assumed to be actually
such to all rational beings (so far as imperatives apply to them,
viz., as dependent beings), and, therefore, one purpose which they not
merely may have, but which we may with certainty assume that they
all actually have by a natural necessity, and this is happiness. The
hypothetical imperative which expresses the practical necessity of
an action as means to the advancement of happiness is assertorial.
We are not to present it as necessary for an uncertain and merely
possible purpose, but for a purpose which we may presuppose with
certainty and a priori in every man, because it belongs to his
being. Now skill in the choice of means to his own greatest well-being
may be called prudence, * in the narrowest sense. And thus the
imperative which refers to the choice of means to one's own happiness,
i.e., the precept of prudence, is still always hypothetical; the
action is not commanded absolutely, but only as means to another
purpose.
* The word prudence is taken in two senses: in the one it may bear
the name of knowledge of the world, in the other that of private
prudence. The former is a man's ability to influence others so as to
use them for his own purposes. The latter is the sagacity to combine
all these purposes for his own lasting benefit. This latter is
properly that to which the value even of the former is reduced, and
when a man is prudent in the former sense, but not in the latter, we
might better say of him that he is clever and cunning, but, on the
whole, imprudent.
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