|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 27
How such a synthetical practical a priori proposition is possible,
and why it is necessary, is a problem whose solution does not lie
within the bounds of the metaphysic of morals; and we have not here
affirmed its truth, much less professed to have a proof of it in our
power. We simply showed by the development of the universally received
notion of morality that an autonomy of the will is inevitably
connected with it, or rather is its foundation. Whoever then holds
morality to be anything real, and not a chimerical idea without any
truth, must likewise admit the principle of it that is here
assigned. This section then, like the first, was merely analytical.
Now to prove that morality is no creation of the brain, which it
cannot be if the categorical imperative and with it the autonomy of
the will is true, and as an a priori principle absolutely necessary,
this supposes the possibility of a synthetic use of pure practical
reason, which however we cannot venture on without first giving a
critical examination of this faculty of reason. In the concluding
section we shall give the principal outlines of this critical
examination as far as is sufficient for our purpose.
SEC_3
THIRD SECTION
TRANSITION FROM THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS TO THE
CRITIQUE OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON
The Concept of Freedom is the Key that explains the Autonomy of
the Will
The will is a kind of causality belonging to living beings in so far
as they are rational, and freedom would be this property of such
causality that it can be efficient, independently of foreign causes
determining it; just as physical necessity is the property that the
causality of all irrational beings has of being determined to activity
by the influence of foreign causes.
The preceding definition of freedom is negative and therefore
unfruitful for the discovery of its essence, but it leads to a
positive conception which is so much the more full and fruitful.
Since the conception of causality involves that of laws, according
to which, by something that we call cause, something else, namely
the effect, must be produced; hence, although freedom is not a
property of the will depending on physical laws, yet it is not for
that reason lawless; on the contrary it must be a causality acting
according to immutable laws, but of a peculiar kind; otherwise a
free will would be an absurdity. Physical necessity is a heteronomy of
the efficient causes, for every effect is possible only according to
this law, that something else determines the efficient cause to
exert its causality. What else then can freedom of the will be but
autonomy, that is, the property of the will to be a law to itself? But
the proposition: "The will is in every action a law to itself," only
expresses the principle: "To act on no other maxim than that which can
also have as an object itself as a universal law." Now this is
precisely the formula of the categorical imperative and is the
principle of morality, so that a free will and a will subject to moral
laws are one and the same.
On the hypothesis, then, of freedom of the will, morality together
with its principle follows from it by mere analysis of the conception.
However, the latter is a synthetic proposition; viz., an absolutely
good will is that whose maxim can always include itself regarded as
a universal law; for this property of its maxim can never be
discovered by analysing the conception of an absolutely good will. Now
such synthetic propositions are only possible in this way: that the
two cognitions are connected together by their union with a third in
which they are both to be found. The positive concept of freedom
furnishes this third cognition, which cannot, as with physical causes,
be the nature of the sensible world (in the concept of which we find
conjoined the concept of something in relation as cause to something
else as effect). We cannot now at once show what this third is to
which freedom points us and of which we have an idea a priori, nor can
we make intelligible how the concept of freedom is shown to be
legitimate from principles of pure practical reason and with it the
possibility of a categorical imperative; but some further
preparation is required.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|