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Page 35
Here now is the extreme limit of all moral inquiry, and it is of
great importance to determine it even on this account, in order that
reason may not on the one band, to the prejudice of morals, seek about
in the world of sense for the supreme motive and an interest
comprehensible but empirical; and on the other hand, that it may not
impotently flap its wings without being able to move in the (for it)
empty space of transcendent concepts which we call the intelligible
world, and so lose itself amidst chimeras. For the rest, the idea of a
pure world of understanding as a system of all intelligences, and to
which we ourselves as rational beings belong (although we are likewise
on the other side members of the sensible world), this remains
always a useful and legitimate idea for the purposes of rational
belief, although all knowledge stops at its threshold, useful, namely,
to produce in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the
noble ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational
beings), to which we can belong as members then only when we carefully
conduct ourselves according to the maxims of freedom as if they were
laws of nature.
Concluding Remark
The speculative employment of reason with respect to nature leads to
the absolute necessity of some supreme cause of the world: the
practical employment of reason with a view to freedom leads also to
absolute necessity, but only of the laws of the actions of a
rational being as such. Now it is an essential principle of reason,
however employed, to push its knowledge to a consciousness of its
necessity (without which it would not be rational knowledge). It is,
however, an equally essential restriction of the same reason that it
can neither discern the necessity of what is or what happens, nor of
what ought to happen, unless a condition is supposed on which it is or
happens or ought to happen. In this way, however, by the constant
inquiry for the condition, the satisfaction of reason is only
further and further postponed. Hence it unceasingly seeks the
unconditionally necessary and finds itself forced to assume it,
although without any means of making it comprehensible to itself,
happy enough if only it can discover a conception which agrees with
this assumption. It is therefore no fault in our deduction of the
supreme principle of morality, but an objection that should be made to
human reason in general, that it cannot enable us to conceive the
absolute necessity of an unconditional practical law (such as the
categorical imperative must be). It cannot be blamed for refusing to
explain this necessity by a condition, that is to say, by means of
some interest assumed as a basis, since the law would then cease to be
a supreme law of reason. And thus while we do not comprehend the
practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, we yet
comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly
demanded of a philosophy which strives to carry its principles up to
the very limit of human reason.
THE END
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