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Page 33
When practical reason thinks itself into a world of understanding,
it does not thereby transcend its own limits, as it would if it
tried to enter it by intuition or sensation. The former is only a
negative thought in respect of the world of sense, which does not give
any laws to reason in determining the will and is positive only in
this single point that this freedom as a negative characteristic is at
the same time conjoined with a (positive) faculty and even with a
causality of reason, which we designate a will, namely a faculty of so
acting that the principle of the actions shall conform to the
essential character of a rational motive, i.e., the condition that the
maxim have universal validity as a law. But were it to borrow an
object of will, that is, a motive, from the world of understanding,
then it would overstep its bounds and pretend to be acquainted with
something of which it knows nothing. The conception of a world of
the understanding is then only a point of view which reason finds
itself compelled to take outside the appearances in order to
conceive itself as practical, which would not be possible if the
influences of the sensibility had a determining power on man, but
which is necessary unless he is to be denied the consciousness of
himself as an intelligence and, consequently, as a rational cause,
energizing by reason, that is, operating freely. This thought
certainly involves the idea of an order and a system of laws different
from that of the mechanism of nature which belongs to the sensible
world; and it makes the conception of an intelligible world
necessary (that is to say, the whole system of rational beings as
things in themselves). But it does not in the least authorize us to
think of it further than as to its formal condition only, that is, the
universality of the maxims of the will as laws, and consequently the
autonomy of the latter, which alone is consistent with its freedom;
whereas, on the contrary, all laws that refer to a definite object
give heteronomy, which only belongs to laws of nature and can only
apply to the sensible world.
But reason would overstep all its bounds if it undertook to
explain how pure reason can be practical, which would be exactly the
same problem as to explain how freedom is possible.
For we can explain nothing but that which we can reduce to laws, the
object of which can be given in some possible experience. But
freedom is a mere idea, the objective reality of which can in no
wise be shown according to laws of nature, and consequently not in any
possible experience; and for this reason it can never be
comprehended or understood, because we cannot support it by any sort
of example or analogy. It holds good only as a necessary hypothesis of
reason in a being that believes itself conscious of a will, that is,
of a faculty distinct from mere desire (namely, a faculty of
determining itself to action as an intelligence, in other words, by
laws of reason independently on natural instincts). Now where
determination according to laws of nature ceases, there all
explanation ceases also, and nothing remains but defence, i.e., the
removal of the objections of those who pretend to have seen deeper
into the nature of things, and thereupon boldly declare freedom
impossible. We can only point out to them that the supposed
contradiction that they have discovered in it arises only from this,
that in order to be able to apply the law of nature to human
actions, they must necessarily consider man as an appearance: then
when we demand of them that they should also think of him qua
intelligence as a thing in itself, they still persist in considering
him in this respect also as an appearance. In this view it would no
doubt be a contradiction to suppose the causality of the same
subject (that is, his will) to be withdrawn from all the natural
laws of the sensible world. But this contradiction disappears, if they
would only bethink themselves and admit, as is reasonable, that behind
the appearances there must also lie at their root (although hidden)
the things in themselves, and that we cannot expect the laws of
these to be the same as those that govern their appearances.
The subjective impossibility of explaining the freedom of the will
is identical with the impossibility of discovering and explaining an
interest * which man can take in the moral law. Nevertheless he does
actually take an interest in it, the basis of which in us we call
the moral feeling, which some have falsely assigned as the standard of
our moral judgement, whereas it must rather be viewed as the
subjective effect that the law exercises on the will, the objective
principle of which is furnished by reason alone.
* Interest is that by which reason becomes practical, i.e., a cause
determining the will. Hence we say of rational beings only that they
take an interest in a thing; irrational beings only feel sensual
appetites. Reason takes a direct interest in action then only when the
universal validity of its maxims is alone sufficient to determine
the will. Such an interest alone is pure. But if it can determine
the will only by means of another object of desire or on the
suggestion of a particular feeling of the subject, then reason takes
only an indirect interest in the action, and, as reason by itself
without experience cannot discover either objects of the will or a
special feeling actuating it, this latter interest would only be
empirical and not a pure rational interest. The logical interest of
reason (namely, to extend its insight) is never direct, but
presupposes purposes for which reason is employed.
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