calls the paralogisms of rational psychology.) All knowing and
experience imply the unity of the self which knows. In actual
experience that unity is qualified by the nature of what it unites, but
we may try to think of it apart from and independent of this. This leads
to an attempt to know the self by asking what must be its nature if it
has the unity implied in knowing, and to argue that the soul is a
substance and simple, not affected by the changes in the matter which it
knows and therefore immortal.
The second division arises from the fact that in knowledge we are
concerned with series--a series of addings together and a series of
divisions, as of parts of space and time; a series of things arising one
from the other, as in causation; and a series of things in dependence
one upon the other. The _ideas_ of reason come from the thought of
these series completed, and produce what Kant calls antinomies. For if
we start with the thought that what we are trying to apprehend must be a
whole, we get one series of results; if with the thought that we can
only apprehend the whole by going from condition to condition
indefinitely, we get another. Kant distinguishes four antinomies, each
with thesis and antithesis. The thesis of the first is, "The world has
a beginning in time, and is limited also in regard to space"; the
antithesis, "The world has no beginning and no limits in space, but is
infinite, in respect both to time and space." The thesis of the second
is, "Every compound substance in the world consists of simple parts, and
nothing exists anywhere but the simple or what is composed of it"; the
antithesis is the contrary of this. The thesis of the third is,
"Causality, according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality
from which all the phenomena of the world can be deduced. In order to
account for these phenomena it is necessary also to admit another
causality, that of freedom"; the antithesis, "There is no freedom, but
everything in the world takes place entirely according to the laws of
nature." The thesis of the fourth is, "There exists an absolutely
necessary Being belonging to the world, either as a part or as a cause
of it"; the antithesis is a denial of this.
The problems of the third division of the _Dialectic_ arises from an
attempt to think of a whole which shall include both the known world and
the mind that knows. This attempt, which Kant calls the ideal of pure
reason, leads to proofs of the existence of God.
As the _Dialectic_ proceeds, it becomes clear that Kant has another list
to hand. He enumerates, as the three great objects of metaphysical
inquiry, God, Freedom, and immortality, and in his discussion of the
ideas of reason he treats them principally as attempts to give definite
and dogmatic answers to the problems suggested by these three topics.
Immortality is the subject of what Kant calls the paralogisms of
rational psychology. He argues that all attempts to prove the
immortality of the soul by a priori arguments involve an argument of
this kind: they begin by noting that death is always dissolution of some
kind, that, therefore, what is not made up of parts and cannot be
dissolved, cannot die. Then they urge that the soul is not made up of
parts, and therefore cannot die. The fallacy in this argument is that
it treats the unity of the self as though it were an object of
knowledge. We can show that knowledge is only possible if the self has
a unity other than that of a spatial whole, but we cannot therefore
argue that it must be exactly like a spatial whole, in the sense that
death in it can only be brought about by dissolution, but unlike a
spatial whole in that in it there is nothing to be dissolved. The real
nature of the unity of the self, Kant argues, cannot be known. All we
can do is to reject a priori arguments either for or against its
immortality.
Freedom is treated in the third antinomy of pure reason, and to that
Kant devotes most attention, but others of the antinomies are concerned
with the difficulties arising from the application of spatial and
temporal determinations to reality as a whole, and to the category of
necessity. Kant makes a distinction between the first two and the
second two antinomies. It is the first two that express the inadequacy
of temporal or spatial determination to reality as a whole. All such
determination implies measurement, and measurement is always a relation
of part to part. The antitheses of both antinomies express the
inadequacy of any number to the expression of the nature of the whole,
the thesis the inadequacy of regarding reality as an aggregate or
addition of any kind. Each is strong in what it denies, and Kant's
solution is that both thesis and antithesis are false, because you
cannot apply spatial or temporal determination to the world as a whole.
In contrast the solution of the other antinomies is that both thesis and
antithesis are true, and that is possible because they are concerned
with different things. The third antinomy arises from the difficulty of
applying the category of causation to the world as a whole. The
assumption underlying the thesis is not, as is sometimes asserted,
merely that the notion of infinity in itself implies a contradiction,
but that a determinate result must have a determinate cause. If we
think of what actually exists now as having been caused by what has
preceded it, we must think of that which has had a determinate result
being itself determinate. It is the familiar argument for a first cause.
In causation we seem to be relating one event to another event, and are
really only putting the question of origination further back. Yet, if
we say that therefore we must suppose an absolute origination of change,
a beginning of the series, we have to answer the question, How is it
possible to think of the originating number of the series? For to think
that something can arise from nothing is to contradict the principle of
causation.
Kant's solution to this difficulty is important, for it had great
influence upon his ethical theory. The category of causation applies
only to phenomena. If we think of things as phenomena we must recognise
that they are subject to the principle of causation; if we think of them
as things in themselves, the category of causation does not apply to
them, and their action may be free. The same action may therefore on
its phenomenal side be determined, and on its nominal side, as the
action of a thing in itself, be free. This may seem to be solving one
contradiction by propounding another, till we remember that in causation
we do not explain the relation of cause to effect. The relation we
discover is between one instance of cause and effect and another. Like
causes have like effects. The principle applies, then, in so far as
things are like one another. It applies to changes which are aggregates
or complexes of simpler changes which are like other changes. If and in
so far as there are things which are more than aggregates of their
elements, and are therefore unique, there are things to whose changes no
laws of cause and effect are adequate. The point may be illustrated by
the way we think about character. If we think of a man's character as
his characteristics, his being this or that _kind_ of person, we must
think of his action as so far determined, but that does not prevent us
from thinking of his individuality as something more than any sum or
combination of characteristics, as something essentially alive, which
escapes all attempts to bind it by rules. It is the difference in
Kant's words between man regarded "from the point of view of
anthropology," and man regarded as a responsible moral being. We shall
see in the next chapter that this distinction is the basis of Kant's
moral theory. Here it must be noted that he does not claim that his
solution of the third antinomy proves the fact of freedom. That, he
held, no merely intellectual argument could prove. It only defends the
possibility of freedom.
The third division of the _Dialectic_ is an examination of the proofs of
the existence of God. When we study Kant's account of them, we find we
are concerned not, as elsewhere in the _Dialectic_, with a conflict
springing from the nature of reason itself, but with the relation of
thought and conduct. Kant distinguishes three proofs of the existence
of God--the ontological, the cosmological, and the
physico-theological--but he maintains that the last two really rest upon
and imply the first. The first, the ontological proof, is the argument
that the very conception of a perfect being implies existence. It is
the only proof of moral importance, inasmuch as it attempts to argue a
priori that a being of perfect morality must exist. Kant's answer to it
is that, to argue that we could not conceive a perfect being unless we
conceived that being's existence, is to suppose that to conceive of a
thing, and to conceive of the same thing existing, is to conceive of
different things. Existence, he says, adds nothing to the concept of an
object. Kant's objection to the ontological proof has been criticised.
But the proof either assumes that God is a being independent of and
separate from the rest of reality, and then, as Kant says, we may
conceive God as existing, but our conception not being necessitated,
carries no necessity with it. (If I conceive a hundred dollars to be in
my pocket, he says, I conceive them to be there; but that does not mean
the dollars are there.) Or if we say that reality must be thought of as
existing, the answer is, Yes, but must reality necessarily be thought of
as morally perfect? It is this last assumption which alone makes the
ontological proof worth proving; for arguments about the existence or
non-existence of God are mere quarrels about words, except in so far as
they are concerned with moral issues. But moral issues cannot be solved
by a consideration of purely intellectual assumptions. The nature of
the other two proofs of God's existence makes this clear. The second,
the cosmological, is the argument that if anything exists, something
must necessarily exist. Kant's answer is that this is sound so far as it
goes, but it does not prove that what necessarily exists is a morally
perfect being. The third, the physico-theological argument, is the
familiar argument from design. Kant treats this argument with much
greater respect than the other two, but insists that we must see how far
it will carry us. If we are going to infer the nature of God from the
nature of the world as we see it, we must do so honestly. But though we
see design in the world, we do not see perfection, and on the basis of
this argument we cannot ignore the imperfection and want of harmony
which is as patent as the harmony and design.
Kant's analysis of these proofs seems negative. Its real purport is to
insist that religion cannot be dissociated from moral experience, that
the knowledge of God, which is the concern of religion, is not got by
intellectual speculation, but in the moral life. When he said that he
had limited reason to make room for faith, he did not mean that men
could not prove the existence of God, but might believe in it if they
pleased. He meant that God is implied and known above all in moral
action. His criticism of these classical proofs is thus the beginning
of that revivified philosophy of religion whose chief representatives
have been Schleiermacher and Ritschl.
*CHAPTER VI*
*KANT'S MORAL THEORY*
Kant's moral theory is an integral part of his philosophical system. If
the _Critique of Pure Reason_ argues the impotence of reason in the
sphere of speculation, the _Critique of Practical Reason_ affirms its
sovereignty in the sphere of practice. The second _Critique_ is thus
the complement of the first. Kant's treatment of moral problems being
largely the consequence of the conclusions of the first _Critique_, his
moral theory is thus mainly metaphysical. The title of one of his works
on moral theory, _Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals_,
bears this out. There were, no doubt, other influences which had their
effect on his conception of morality. He tells us himself that he was
inspired by the teaching of Rousseau on the dignity and worth of man.
He was undoubtedly repelled into a reaction against the sentimental
school of Shaftesbury, which in its German adherents insisted on the
agreeable and gentlemanly nature of virtue with an almost sickly
sentiment. This reaction accounts for the extreme emphasis laid by Kant
on the divorce between duty and any kind of inclination. But his
doctrine as a whole can only be understood in the light of the
conclusions of the first _Critique_.
Kant's conception of freedom or autonomy of the will is the key to his
moral theory. "On the hypothesis of freedom of the will," he says,
"morality together with its principle follows from it by mere analysis
of the conception." We saw in the last chapter that Kant regarded human
action, when looked at from an anthropological point of view, as
phenomenal, and therefore subject to the law of cause and effect. If we
think of man as a creature of inclination, with likes and dislikes, we
seem, in considering men's differences from one another in this respect,
to be dealing with matters of fact over which men have no control. We
are born and grow up with different natures, with the result that one
man likes one thing, another another; one man's temptations do not tempt
another, what one man finds easy another finds difficult. We seem here
to be in a world where causation rules. If men act differently, it is
because their external environment, acting upon their different natures,
calls out different responses. So far, then, says Kant, as men act
according to inclination, do things because they like doing them, or
avoid them because they dislike them, their actions are what he calls
heteronomous, governed by laws over which they have no control. We
assume, whenever we are trying to explain human actions, that they are
the result of the interaction of character and environment, and are not
to be praised or blamed but understood. _Tout comprendre est tout
pardonner_.
But when we consider our moral judgments we seem to be in a different
world, for there are some actions which we think we or others ought to
have done or ought not to have done, and this obligation has nothing to
do with our likes and dislikes. If we look back upon a past action of
our own, we may see why we did it, understand how the temptation to it
appealed with peculiar strength to something in our nature, yet
nevertheless we may say that we ought not to have done it, and with that
judgment goes the conviction that we need not have done it. The
conception of "what ought to be" is on a different plane from the
conception of "what is," and assumes a different kind of causality. It
assumes that, when we are done with our analysis of character, of a
man's likes and dislikes and the effect of circumstances upon them, we
can still assume that it is in his power to do what he ought and to
abstain from doing what he ought not. We praise the first and blame the
second, whether in ourselves or others, just because we assume, over and
above inclination and disinclination, a possibility of acting or not
acting as duty demands.
Thus Kant analyses the assumption of moral judgment. But it is still no
more than an assumption, and he has to ask how it can be reconciled with
the seemingly contradictory principle of causation. The analysis of the
third antinomy in the first _Critique_, as we saw, prepared the way by
maintaining that the same action might be phenomenally determined, and
free as the action of a thing in itself, were there another form of
causality--free causality or self-determination. For the existence of
such another form of causality the first _Critique_ offered no evidence.
Kant's concern is to show that morality assumes it; for the claim of
duty is that a man should not act as a creature of inclination, of likes
and dislikes. Duty claims to cut across all such empirical
considerations. The motive to do what duty demands must come from
elsewhere. It may then be found to be a claim that man should act not
as a part of the physical world, but as a moral being. For man, as well
as an observer and understander of other men, is also a moral agent. As
such he stands in quite different relations to other men. He treats
them and himself as moral agents, responsible for their actions. As a
member of the world of moral relations he acknowledges a system of
rights and duties, he holds himself responsible to other men as they are
responsible to him, and all this has nothing to do with what a man wants
or does not want to do, with how easy or how difficult he may find it to
perform what duty demands. In this he is assuming in himself and other
men a power of determining the will in accordance with the moral law.
That, just because it takes no account of likes and dislikes, cannot be
derived from these or from considerations of circumstances or
environment. It must be deducible from the nature of man as a moral
being. In obeying the moral law, then, man will be obeying a law that
comes from himself. His will will be self-legislative. This power of
acting in accordance with a law that comes from the nature of man as a
rational, responsible being, and not as a member of the world of causes
and effects, is moral freedom; it is the assumption of all moral
judgment and action. It cannot, Kant holds, be _explained_. For all
explanation is the work of the understanding, and that can explain only
phenomena. It is enough that the first _Critique_ has shown that
phenomenal causality is not inconsistent with the possibility of another
causality. In the moral sphere we act and judge as if we were free.
The moral law and duty make claims upon us on the same assumption.
Moral freedom, then, is the ground of the possibility of moral
experience.
Kant's account of duty is determined by the sharp separation which he
makes of man as moral agent and man regarded "from the point of view of
anthropology." The commands of duty must be derived solely from the
nature of man as a moral agent. If they were the consequence of man's
empirical nature or his surroundings, they would have no claim to
override his promptings of inclination or pleasure. He describes these
commands as categorical, and the principle of morality as a categorical
imperative. The meaning of this phrase lies in its opposition to
hypothetical. Many commands and principles are, Kant says,
hypothetical. They assume that men desire certain ends, happiness or
health or success, and the actions they advise are advised as means to
such ends. The law of morality is quite different from such prudential
maxims. It does not say, "If you want to be happy or to save your soul,
then act thus and thus." Its commands are absolute, for they appeal to
man simply as a rational being. They must therefore be derived solely
from a consideration of man's rationality. It is difficult at first
sight to see how any commands can be deduced from a consideration so
abstract. How, we might say, can man's rationality be known and
recognised except in the content of what he does and thinks?
Kant seeks to derive his imperative from the contrast between acting as
a moral agent and following inclination. Man regards himself as a moral
agent, morally responsible for his conduct, and he regards others as
morally responsible, whatever his or their particular nature or
character may be. That means that he must act as he thinks any one else
would be bound to act, and from this Kant deduces his formulation of the
categorical imperative: "_Act only according to that maxim which you can
at the same time will to be a universal law_." Another formula
indicates more clearly the relation of duty to a society of moral agents
responsible to one another: "_Act so that you treat humanity, in your
person and in the person of every one else, always as an end as well as
a means, never merely as a means_." It is only by following such
imperatives that we can rise above the promptings of circumstance, for
only thus is the will self-legislative. In obeying such an imperative
our will is self-determined, for it is following a principle that is
derived from man's nature as independent and transcendent of the world
of phenomena. Hence in moral action we are in contact with the reality
of things more truly than in any understanding of phenomena. The moral
law has a dignity which no natural inclinations or likings can have, and
the good-will, the will which follows such a law, has a similar worth
and dignity. "There is nothing in the world--nay, even beyond the
world--nothing conceivable, which can be regarded as good without
qualification, saving alone a good will."
Such in outline is Kant's account of morality. A discussion of some of
the difficulties which a consideration of it suggests may help to make
its purport more clear. Kant holds that the principles of right action
can be deduced directly from the imperative he has formulated, and need
take therefore no account of historical circumstance. Now, it is easy
to show that, when we do an action which we know to be wrong, we are
making an exception in our own favour. We cannot universalise the maxim
of our own conduct. When we do what we know to be wrong, we recognise
what is right. We say, "This is how any one ought to act in these
circumstances, but I am not going to do it." We must learn to look upon
ourselves as we should look upon and judge any other moral agent. If,
when taxed with wrongdoing, we reply, "I wanted to do it," or "That is
the kind of person I am," or "That is the way I am made," we are
abandoning the moral position, and the answer is, "Whether you wanted it
or not, you ought not to have done it," or, "Well, you ought to become
different." But this does not help us when, looking at actions from a
moral standpoint, it is difficult to say what ought to be done. Kant
tries to show that wrong action, if universalised, is always
contradictory. He takes the instance of telling a lie. If that were
universal no one would believe any one else, and there would be no point
in telling a lie. Lying is essentially parasitical. But this does not
help us in the familiar problem in casuistry, whether it is allowable to
tell a lie to save life. For here we have a conflict between two
maxims, both of which can be universalised. We cannot regard such a
situation as simply involving a question of telling the truth or of
saving life. We must consider the circumstances of the case. This is
even more evident if we apply Kant's rule to the question of whether
celibacy is ever justified. If celibacy were universal, there would
soon be nobody to be celibate, but it does not therefore follow that
some people under certain circumstances ought not to be celibate. The
question cannot be answered without reference to circumstances. The
moral of this is that the categorical imperative does not enable us to
act without individual moral judgment in individual cases. Further, in
one of the instances which Kant gives he admits that there are certain
ways of action which might be universalised, but which he nevertheless
holds to be wrong. He instances the duty of being industrious. A
society could quite well be imagined in which every one was lazy, but he
says, "It cannot be willed." The ultimate appeal here is to what the
moral reason wills. That means that we must admit that the moral reason
or moral judgment has a content not derivable simply from the conception
of the moral law; that there are certain kinds of life, certain kinds of
action, which we judge to be good, and others which we judge to be bad.
But, if this is so, we must give up the sharp separation Kant makes
between the moral law and nature, and allow that things in nature can
have a moral value. It may still be true that they only have moral value
through their relation to a good will, and have no moral significance
apart from such a relation.