The investigation now turns from the laws of nature, which express a

"must," to the laws of will, in which an "ought" is expressed, and by which

certain actions are not compelled, but prescribed. (If we were merely

rational, and not at the same time sensuous beings, the moral law would

determine the will in the form of a natural law; since, however, the

constant possibility of deviation is given in the sensibility, or, rather,

the moral standpoint can only be attained by conquering the sensuous

impulses, therefore the moral law speaks to us in the form of an "ought,"

of an imperative.) Among the laws of the will or imperatives, also,

there are some which possess the character of absolute necessity and

universality, and which, consequently, are _a priori_. As the understanding

dictates laws to the phenomenal world, so practical reason gives a law to

itself, is _autonomous_; and as the _a priori_ laws of nature relate only

to the form of the objects of experience, so the moral law determines not

the content, but only the form of volition: "Act only on that maxim whereby

thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

The law of practical reason is a "categorical imperative." What does this

designation mean, and what is the basis of the formula of the moral law

which has just been given?

Practical principles are either subjectively valid, in which case they are

termed maxims (volitional principles of the individual), or objectively

valid, when they are called imperatives or precepts. The latter are either

valid under certain conditions (If you wish to become a clergyman you must

study theology; he who would prosper as a merchant must not cheat his

customers), or unconditionally valid (Thou shalt not lie). All prudential

or technical rules are hypothetical imperatives, the moral law is a

categorical imperative. The injunction to be truthful is not connected with

the condition that we intend to act morally, but this general purpose,

together with all the special purposes belonging to it, to avoid lying,

etc., is demanded unconditionally and of everyone--as surely as we are

rational beings we are under moral obligation, not in order to reputation

here below and happiness above, but without all "ifs" and "in order to's."

Thou shalt unconditionally, whatever be the outcome. And as the moral law

is independent of every end to be attained, so it suffers neither increase

nor diminution in its binding force, whether men obey it or not. It has

absolute authority, no matter whether it is fulfilled frequently or seldom,

nay, whether it is fulfilled anywhere or at any time whatsoever in the

world!

There is an important difference between the good which we are under

obligation to do and the evil which we are under obligation not to do, and

the goods and ills which we seek and avoid. The goods are always relatively

good only, _good for something_--as means to ends--and a bad use can be

made of all that nature and fortune give us as well as a good one. That

which duty commands is an end in itself, in itself good, absolutely

worthful, and no misuse of it is possible. It might be supposed that

pleasure, that happiness is an ultimate end. But men have very different

opinions in regard to what is pleasant, one holding one thing pleasurable

and another another. It is impossible to discover by empirical methods what

duty demands of all men alike and under all circumstances; the appeal is to

our reason, not to our sensibility. If happiness were the end of rational

beings, then nature had endowed us but poorly for it, since instead of an

unfailing instinct she has given us the weak and deceitful reason as a

guide, which, with its train, culture, science, art, and luxury, has

brought more trouble than satisfaction to mankind. Man has a destiny other

than well-being, and a higher one--the formation of good dispositions: here

we have the only thing in the whole world that can never be used for evil,

the only thing that does not borrow its value from a higher end, but itself

originally and inalienably contains it, and that gives value to all else

that merits esteem. "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or

even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a

_good will_." Understanding, courage, moderation, and whatever other mental

gifts or praiseworthy qualities of temperament may be cited, as also the

gifts of fortune, "are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects, but

they may also become extremely evil and mischievous, if the will which is

to make use of them is not good." These are the classic words with which

Kant commences the _Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics_.

When does the will deserve the predicate "good"? Let us listen to the

popular moral consciousness, which distinguishes three grades of moral

recognition. He who refrains from that which is contrary to duty, no matter

from what motives--as, for example, the shopkeeper who does not cheat

because he knows that honesty is the best policy--receives moderate

praise for irreproachable outward behavior. We bestow warmer praise and

encouragement on him whom ambition impels to industry, kind feeling to

beneficence, and pity to render assistance. But he alone earns our esteem

who does his duty for duty's sake. Only in this third case, where not

merely the external action, nor merely the impulse of a happy disposition,

but the will itself, the maxim, is in harmony with the moral law, where

the good is done for the sake of the good, do we find true morality, that

unconditioned, self-grounded worth. The man who does that which is in

accordance with duty out of reflection on its advantages, and he who does

it from immediate--always unreliable--inclination, acts _legally_; he alone

acts _morally_ who, without listening to advantage and inclination, takes

up the law into his disposition, and does his duty because it is duty. The

sole moral motive is the consciousness of duty, _respect for the moral

lazy_[1]

[Footnote 1: The respect or reverence which the law, and, derivatively, the

person in whom it is realized, compel from us, is, as self-produced through

a concept of reason and as the only feeling which can be known _a priori_,

specifically different from all feelings of inclination or fear awakened by

sensuous influences. As it strengthens and raises our rational nature, the

consciousness of our freedom and of our high destination, but, at the same

time, humbles our sensibility, there is mingled with the joy of exaltation

a certain pain, which permits no intimate affection for the stern and

sublime law. It is not quite willingly that we pay our respect--just

because of the depressing effect which this feeling exerts on our

self-love.]

Here Kant is threatened by a danger which he does not succeed in escaping.

The moral law demands perfect purity in our maxims; only the idea of duty,

not an inclination, is to determine the will. Quite right. Further, the one

judging is himself never absolutely certain, even when his own volition is

concerned, that no motives of pleasure have mingled with the feeling of

duty in contributing to the right action, unless that which was morally

demanded has been contrary to all his inclinations. When a person who is

not in need and who is free from cupidity leaves the money-box intrusted

to his care untouched, or when a man who loves life overcomes thoughts of

suicide, I may assume that the former was sufficiently protected

against the temptation by his moderation, and the other by his cheerful

disposition, and I rate their behavior as merely legal. When, on the other

hand, an official inclined to extravagance faithfully manages the funds

intrusted to him, or one who is oppressed by hopeless misery preserves his

life, although he does not love it, then I may ascribe the abstinence from

wrongdoing to moral principles. This, too, may be admitted. We are

certain of the morality of a resolution only when it can be shown that no

inclination was involved along with the maxim. The cases where the right

action is performed in opposition to inclination are the only ones in which

we may be certain that the moral quality of the action is unmixed--are

they, then, the only ones in which a moral disposition is present? Kant

rightly maintains that the admixture of egoistic motives beclouds the

purity of the disposition, and consequently diminishes its moral worth.

With equal correctness he draws attention to the possibility that, even

when we believe that we are acting from pure principles, a hidden sensuous

impulse may be involved. But he leaves unconsidered the possibility that,

even when the inclinations are favorable to right action, the action may be

performed, not from inclination, but because of the consciousness of duty.

Given that a man is naturally industrious, does this happy predisposition

protect him from fits of idleness? And if he resists them, must it always

be his inclination to activity and never moral principle which overcomes

the temptation? In yielding to the danger of confounding the limits of our

certain knowledge of the purity of motives with the limits of moral action,

and in admitting true morality only where action proceeds from principle

in opposition to the inclinations, Kant really deserves the reproach of

rigorism or exaggerated purism--sometimes groundlessly extended to the

justifiable strictness of his views--and the ridicule of the well-known

lines of Schiller ("Scruples of Conscience" and "Decision" at the

conclusion of his distich-group "The Philosophers"):

"The friends whom I love I gladly would serve, but to this inclination

incites me;

And so I am forced from virtue to swerve since my act, through affection,

delights me.

The friends whom thou lovest thou must first seek to scorn, for to no

other way can I guide thee;

'Tis alone with disgust thou canst rightly perform the acts to which

duty would lead thee."

If we return from this necessary limitation of a groundless inference

(that true morality is present only when duty is performed against our

inclinations, when it is difficult for us, when a conflict with sensuous

motives has preceded), to the development of the fundamental ethical

conceptions, we find that important conclusions concerning the origin and

content of the moral law result from the principle obtained by the analysis

of moral judgment: this law commands with _unconditional authority_--for

every rational being and under all circumstances--what has _unconditioned

worth_--the disposition which corresponds to it. The universality and

necessity (_unconditionalness_) of the categorical imperative proves that

it springs from no other source than reason itself. Those who derive

the moral law from the will of God subject it to a condition, viz., the

immutability of the divine will. Those who find the source of moral

legislation in the pursuit of happiness make rational will dependent on a

natural law of the sensibility; it would be folly to enjoin by a moral law

that which everyone does of himself, and does superabundantly. Moreover,

the theories of the social inclinations and of moral sense fail of their

purpose, since they base morality on the uncertain ground of feeling. Even

the principle of perfection proves insufficient, inasmuch as it limits the

individual to himself, and, in the end, like those which have preceded,

amounts to a refined self-love. Theonomic ethics, egoistic ethics, the

ethics of sympathy, and the ethics of perfection are all eudemonistic, and

hence heteronomic. The practical reason[1] receives the law neither from

the will of God nor from natural impulse, but draws it out of its own

depths; it binds itself.

[Footnote 1: Will and practical reason are identical. The definition runs:

Will is the faculty of acting in accordance with the representation of

laws.]

The grounds which establish the derivation of the moral law from the will

or reason itself exclude at the same time every material determination of

it. If the categorical imperative posited definite ends for the will, if it

prescribed a direction to definite objects, it could neither be known _a

priori_ nor be valid for all rational beings: its apodictic character

forbids the admission of empirical elements of every sort.[1] If we think

away all content from the law we retain the form of universal legality,[2]

and gain the formula: "Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at

the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation." The

possibility of conceiving the principle of volition as a universal law of

nature is the criterion of morality. If you are in doubt concerning the

moral character of an action or motive simply ask yourself the question,

What would become of humanity if everyone were to act according to the same

principle? If no one could trust the word of another, or count on aid from

others, or be sure of his property and his life, then no social life would

be possible. Even a band of robbers cannot exist unless certain laws are

respected as inviolable duties.

[Footnote 1: The moral law, therefore, is independent of all experience in

three respects, as to its origin, its content, and its validity. It springs

from reason, it contains a formal precept only, and its validity is not

concerned, whether it meets with obedience or not. It declares what ought

to be done, even though this never should be done.]

[Footnote 2: The "formal principle" of the Kantian ethics has met very

varied criticism. Among others Edmund Pfleiderer (_Kantischer Kritizismus

und Englische Philosophie_, 1881) and Zeller express themselves

unfavorably, Fortlage and Liebmann (_Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit_, 2d

ed., 1880, p. 671) favorably.]

It was indispensable to free the supreme formula of the moral law from all

material determinations, _i.e._, limitations. This does not prevent us,

however, from afterward giving the abstract outline a more concrete

coloring. First of all, the concept of the dignity of persons in contrast

to the utility of things offers itself as an aid to explanation and

specialization. Things are means whose worth is always relative, consisting

in the useful or pleasant effects which they exercise, in the satisfaction

of a need or of the taste, they can be replaced by other means, which

fulfill the same purpose, and they have a (market or fancy) _value_; while

that which is above all value and admits of no equivalent has an ultimate

worth or _dignity_, and is an object of respect. The legislation which

determines all worth, and with this the disposition which corresponds to

it, has a dignity, an unconditioned, incomparable worth, and lends its

subjects, rational beings framed for morality, the advantage of being ends

in themselves. "Therefore morality, and humanity so far as it is capable of

morality, is that which alone possesses dignity." Accordingly the following

formulation of the moral law may be held equivalent to the first: "So act

as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other,

in every case as an end, never as a means only."

A further addition to the abstract formula of the categorical imperative

results from the discussion of the question, What universal ends admit of

subsumption under it, _i.e._, stand the test of fitness to be principles of

a universal legislation? Here again Kant stands forth as an arbiter between

the contending parties, and, with a firm grasp, combines the useful

elements from both sides after winnowing them out from the worthless

principles. The majority of the eudemonistic systems, along with the

promotion of private welfare, prescribe the furtherance of universal good

without being able to indicate at what point the pursuit of personal

welfare should give way to regard for the good of others, while in the

perfectionist systems the social element is wanting or retreats unduly into

the background. The principle of happiness represents moral empiricism, the

principle of perfection moral rationalism. Kant resolves the antithesis

by restricting the theses of the respective parties within their proper

limits: "Make _thine own perfection_ and _the happiness of others_ the end

of thy actions;" these are the only ends which are at the same time duties.

The perfection of others is excluded by the fact that I cannot impart

to anyone a good disposition, for everyone must acquire it for himself;

personal happiness by the fact that everyone seeks it naturally.

This antithesis (which is crossed by the further distinction between

perfect, _i.e._, indispensable, and imperfect duties) serves as a basis for

the division of moral duties into duties toward ourselves and duties toward

other men.[1] The former enjoin the preservation and development of our

natural and moral powers, the latter are duties of obligation (of respect)

or of merit (of love). Since no one can obligate me to feel, we are to

understand by love not the pathological love of complacency, but only the

active love of benevolence or practical sympathy. Since it is just as

impossible that the increase of the evils in the world should be a duty,

the enervating and useless excitation of pity, which adds to the pain of

the sufferer the sympathetic pain of the spectator, is to be struck off

the list of virtues, and active readiness to aid put in its place. In

friendship love and respect unite in exact equipoise. Veracity is one of

the duties toward self; lying is an abandonment of human dignity and under

no conditions allowable, not even if life depends on it.

[Footnote 1: All duties are toward men, not toward supra-human or

infra-human beings. That which we commonly term duties toward animals,

likewise the so-called duties toward God, are in reality duties toward

ourselves. Cruelty to animals is immoral, because our sympathies are

blunted by it. To have religion is a duty to ourselves, because the view of

moral laws as laws of God is an aid to morality.]

After it has been settled what the categorical imperative enjoins, the

further problem awaits us of explaining how it is possible. The categorical

imperative is possible only on I the presupposition of our _freedom_. Only

a free being gives laws to itself, just as an autonomous being alone is

free. In theoretical philosophy the pure self-consciousness, the "I think,"

denoted a point where the thing in itself manifests to us not its nature,

indeed, but its existence. The same holds true in practical philosophy of

the moral law. The incontestable fact of the moral law empowers me to rank

myself in a higher order of things than the merely phenomenal order, and

in another causal relation than that of the merely necessary (mechanical)

causation of nature, to regard myself as a legislative member of an

intelligible world, and one independent of sensuous impulses--in short, to

regard myself as free. Freedom is the _ratio essendi_ of the self-given

moral law, the latter the _ratio cognoscendi_ of freedom. The law would

have no meaning if we did not possess the power to obey it: I can _because_

I ought. It is true that freedom is a mere Idea, whose object can never be

given to me in an experience, and whose reality, consequently, cannot

be objectively known and proved, but nevertheless, is required with

satisfactory subjective necessity as the condition of the moral law and of

the possibility of its fulfillment. I may not say it is certain, but, with

safety, I am certain that I am free. Freedom is not a dogmatic proposition

of theoretical reason, but a _postulate_ of practical reason; and the

latter holds the _primacy_ over the former to this extent, that it can

require the former to show that certain transcendent Ideas of the

suprasensible, which are most intimately connected with moral obligation,

are compatible with the principles of the understanding. It was just in

view of the practical interests involved in the rational concepts God,

freedom, immortality, that it was so important to establish, at least,

their possibility (their conceivability without contradiction). That,

therefore, which the Dialectic recognized as possible is in the Ethics

shown to be real: Whoever seeks to fulfill his moral destiny--and this is

the duty of every man--must not doubt concerning the conditions of its

possible fulfillment, must, in spite of their incomprehensibility,

_believe_ in freedom and a suprasensible world. They are both postulates

of practical reason, _i.e._, assumptions concerning that which is in behalf

of that which ought to be. Naturally the interests of the understanding

must not be infringed upon by those of the will. The principle of the

complete causal determination of events retains its validity unimpeached

for the sphere of the knowledge of the understanding, that is, for the

realm of phenomena; while, on the other hand, it remains permissible for

us to postulate another kind of causality for the realm of things in

themselves, although we can have no idea of its _how_, and to ascribe to

ourselves a free intelligible character.

While the Idea of freedom can be derived directly from the moral law as

a postulate thereof, the proof of the reality of the two other Ideas is

effected indirectly by means of the concept of the "highest good," in which

reason conceives a union of perfect virtue and perfect happiness. The

moral law requires absolute correspondence between the disposition and the

commands of reason, or holiness of will. But besides this supreme good

(_bonum supremum_) of completed morality, the highest good (_bonum

consummatum_) further contains a degree of happiness corresponding to the

degree of virtue. Everyone agrees in the judgment that, by rights, things

should go well with the virtuous and ill with the wicked, though this must

not imply any deduction from the principle previously announced that the

least impulse of self-interest causes the maxim to forfeit its worth: the

motive of the will must never be happiness, but always the being worthy of

happiness. The first element in the highest good yields the argument for

_immortality_, and the second the argument for the _existence of God_. (1)

Perfect correspondence between the will and the law never occurs in this

life, because the sensibility never allows us to attain a permanently good

disposition, armed against every temptation; our will can never be

holy, but at best virtuous, and our lawful disposition never escape the

consciousness of a constant tendency to transgression, or at least of

impurity. Since, nevertheless, the demands of the (Christian) moral law

continue in their unrelenting stringency to be the standard, we are

justified in the hope of an unlimited continuation of our existence,

in order that by constant progress in goodness we may draw nearer _in

infinitum_ to the ideal of holiness. (2) The establishment of a rational

proportion between happiness and virtue is also not to be expected until

the future life, for too often on earth it is the evil man who prospers,

while the good man suffers. A justly proportioned distribution of rewards

and punishment can only be expected from an infinite power, wisdom, and

goodness, which rules the moral world even as it has created the natural

world. Deity alone is able to bring the physical and moral realms into

harmony, and to establish the due relation between well-being and right

action. This, the moral argument, is the only possible proof for the

existence of God. Theology is not possible as speculative, but only as

moral theology. The certitude of faith, moreover, is only different from,

not less than, the certainty of knowledge, in so far as it brings with it

not an objective, but a subjective, although universally valid, necessity.

Hence it is better to speak of belief in God as a need of the reason than

as a duty; while a logical error, not a moral one, should be charged

against the atheist. The atheist is blind to the intimate connection which

exists between the highest good and the Ideas of the reason; he does not

see that God, freedom, and immortality are the indispensable conditions of

the realization of this ideal.

Thus faith is based upon duty without being itself duty: ethics is the

_basis of religion_, which consists in our regarding moral laws as

(_instar_, as if they were) divine commands. They are not valid or

obligatory because God has given them (this would be heteronomy), but they

should be regarded as divine because they are necessary laws of reason.

Religion differs from ethics only in its form, not in its content, in that

it adds to the conception of duty the idea of God as a moral lawgiver, and

thus increases the influence of this conception on the will; it is simply

a means for the promotion of morality. Since, however, besides natural

religion or the pure faith of reason (the moral law and the moral

postulates), the historical religions contain statutory determinations or a

doctrinal faith, it becomes the duty of the critical philosopher to inquire

how much of this positive admixture can be justified at the bar of reason.

In this investigation the question of the divine revelation of dogma

and ceremonial laws is neither supra-rationalistically affirmed nor

naturalistically derived, but rationalistically treated as an open

question.

The four essays combined under the title _Religion within the Limits of

Reason Only_ treat of the Radical Evil in Human Nature, the Conflict of the

Good Principle with the Evil for the Mastery over Man, the Victory of the

Good Principle over the Evil and the Founding of a Kingdom of God upon

Earth, and, finally, Service and False Service under the Dominion of the

Good Principle, or Religion and Priestcraft; or more briefly, the fall, the

atonement (the Christ-idea), the Church, and true and false service of God.

(1) The individual evil deeds of the empirical character point to an

original fault of the intelligible character, a _propensity to evil_

dwelling in man and not further deducible. This, although it is

self-incurred, may be called natural and innate, and consists (not in the

sensibility merely, but) in a freely chosen reversal of the moral order

of our maxims, in virtue of which the maxim of duty or morality is

subordinated to that of well-being or self-love instead of being

placed above it, and that which should be the supreme condition of all

satisfaction is degraded into a mere means thereto. Morality is therefore a

_conversion_ from the evil to the good, and requires a complete revolution

in the disposition, the putting on of a new man, a "new birth,"

which, an act out of time, can manifest itself in the temporal world of

phenomena only as a gradual transformation in conduct, as a continuous

advance, but which, we may hope, is judged by him who knows the heart,

who regards the disposition instead of particular imperfect actions, as a

completed unity.

(2) By the eternal Son of God, for whose sake God created all things, we

are to understand the ideal of the perfect man, which in truth forms the

end of creation, and is come down from heaven, etc. To believe in Christ

means to resolve to realize in one's self the ideal of human nature which

is well pleasing to God, or to make the divine disposition of the Son of

God our own, not to believe that this ideal has appeared on earth as an

actual man, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The only saving faith is

the belief of reason in the ideal which Christ represents, and not the

historical belief in his person. The vicarious atonement of the ideal

man for those who believe on him is to be interpreted to mean that the

sufferings and sacrifices (crucifixion of the flesh) imposed by moral

conversion, which are due to the sinful man as punishment, are assumed by

the regenerate man: the new Adam bears the sufferings of the old. In the

same way as that in which Kant handles the history of Christ and the

doctrine of justification, all biblical narratives and ecclesiastical

doctrines are in public instruction (from the pulpit) to be interpreted

morally, even where the authors themselves had no such meaning in mind.

(3) The Church is a society based upon the laws of virtue, an ethical

community or a people of God, whose members confirm each other in the

performance of duty by example and by the profession of a common moral

conviction; we are all brothers, the children of one father. Ideally there

is only one (the universal, invisible) Church, and its foundation the pure

faith of reason; but in consequence of a weakness peculiar to human nature

the foundation of an actual church required the addition of a statutory

historical faith, with claims to a divine origin, from which a multitude of

visible churches and the antithesis of orthodox and heretics have sprung.

The history of the Church since the establishment of Christianity

represents the conflict between the historical faith and the faith of

reason; its goal is the submission of the former to the latter, as, indeed,

we have already begun to perceive that God does not require a special

service beyond the practice of virtue.

(4) The true service of God consists in a moral disposition and its

manifestation: "All that man supposes himself able to do in order to please

God, beyond living a good life, is _false service_" False service is the

false subordination of the pure faith of reason to the statutory faith, by

which the attainment of the goal of religious development is hindered

and the laity are brought into dangerous dependence upon the clergy.

Priestcraft, hypocrisy, and fanaticism enter in the train of fetich

service. The church-faith is destined little by little to make itself

superfluous. It has been necessary as a vehicle, as a means for the

introduction and extension of the pure religion of morality, and it still

remains useful for a time, until humanity shall become of age; with man's

entrance on the period of youth and manhood, however, the leading-string of

holy traditions, which in its time did good service, becomes unnecessary,

nay, finally, a fetter. (This relative appreciation of the positive element

in religion, in antithesis to the unthinking rejection of it by the

Illumination, resembles the view of Lessing; cf. pp. 306-309.) Moreover,

since it is a duty to be a co-worker in the transition from the historical

to the pure religious faith, the clergy must be free as scientific

theologians, as scholars and authors to examine the doctrines of faith

and to give expression to dissenting opinions, while, as preachers in the

pulpit, speaking under commission, they are bound to the creeds. To decide

the articles of belief unalterable would be a crime against human

nature, whose primal destination is just this--to progress. To renounce

illumination means to trample upon the divine rights of reason.

The "General Observations" appended to each division add to the four

principle discussions as many collateral inquiries concerning Operations

of Grace, Miracles, Mysteries, and Means of Grace, objects of transcendent

ideas, which do not properly belong in the sphere of religion within pure

reason itself, but which yet border on it. (1) We are entirely incapable of

calling forth works of grace, nay, even of indicating the marks by which

actual divine illuminations are distinguished from imaginary ones; the

supposed experience of heavenly influences belongs in the region of

superstitious religious illusion. But their impossibility is just as little

susceptible of proof as their reality. Nothing further can be said on the

question, save that works of grace may exist, and perhaps must exist in

order to supplement our imperfect efforts after virtue; and that everyone,

instead of waiting for divine assistance, should do for his own amendment

all that is in his power. (2) Kant judges more sharply in regard to the

belief in miracles, which contradict the laws of experience without in the

least furthering the performance of our duties. In practical life no one

regards miracles as possible; and their limitation to the past and to rare

instances does not make them more credible. (3) In so far as the Christian

mysteries actually represent impenetrable secrets they have no bearing on

moral conduct; so far as they are morally valuable they admit of rational

interpretation and thus cease to be mysteries. The Trinity signifies the

three moral qualities or powers united in the head of the moral state: the

one God as holy lawgiver, gracious governor, and just judge. (4) The

services of the Church have worth as ethical ceremonies, as emblems of the

moral disposition (prayer) and of moral fellowship (church attendance,

baptism, and the Lord's Supper); but to find in these symbolic ceremonies

means of grace and to seek to purchase the favor of God by them, is an

error of the same kind as sorcery and fetichism. The right way leads from

virtue to grace, not in the opposite direction; piety without morality is

worthless.

The Kantian theory of religion is rationalistic and moralistic. The fact

that religion is based on morality should never be assailed. But the

foundation is not the building, the origin not the content and essence

of the thing itself. As far as the nature of religion is concerned,

the Kantian view does not exclude completion in the direction of

Schleiermacher's theory of feeling, just as by its speculative

interpretation of the Christian dogmas and its appreciation of the history

of religion as a gradual transformation of historical faith into a faith of

reason, it points out the path afterward followed by Hegel. The philosophy

of religion of the future must be, as some recent attempts aim to be (O.

Pfleiderer, Biedermann, Lipsius), a synthesis of Kant, Schleiermacher, and

Hegel.

While the moral law requires rightness not only of the action, but also of

the disposition, the law of right is satisfied when the act enjoined is

performed, no matter from what motives. Legal right, as the sum of the

conditions under which the will of the one can consist with the will of

others according to a universal law, relates only to enforceable actions,

without concerning itself about motives. Private right includes right in

things or property, personal right or right of contract, and real-personal

right (marriage right); public right is divided into the right of states,

of nations, and of citizens of the world. Kant's theory of punishment is

original and important. He bases it not upon prudential regard for the

protection of society, or the deterrence or reformation of the criminal,

but upon the exalted idea of retaliation (_jus talionis_), which demands

that everyone should meet with what his deeds deserve: Eye for eye, life

for life. In _politics_ Kant favors democratic theories, though less

decidedly than Rousseau and Fichte. As he followed with interest the

efforts after freedom manifested in the American and French Revolutions, so

he opposed an hereditary nobility as a hindrance to the natural equality of

rights, and demanded freedom for the public expression of opinion as the

surest means of guarding against revolutions. The only legitimate form of

the state is the republican, _i.e._, that in which the executive power is

separated from the legislative power, in contrast to despotism, where they

are united in one hand. The best guaranty for just government and civil

liberty is offered by constitutional monarchy, in which the people through

its representatives exercises the legislative power, the sovereign the

executive power, and judges chosen by the people the judicial power. The

contract from which we may conceive the state to have arisen is not to be

regarded as an historical fact, but as a rational idea or rule, by which

we may judge whether the laws are just or not: that which the people as a

whole cannot prescribe for itself, this cannot be prescribed for it by

the ruler (cf. p. 235). That there is a constant progress--not only of

individuals, but--of the race, not merely in technical and intellectual,

but also in moral respects, is supported both by rational grounds (without

faith in such progress we could not fulfill our duty as co-laborers in it)

and by experiential grounds (above all, the unselfish sympathy which all

the world gave to the French Revolution); and the never-ending complaint

that the times are growing worse proves only that mankind is continually

setting up stricter standards for itself. The beginning of _history_ is to

be placed at the point where man passes out of the condition of innocence,

in which instinct rules, and begins to subdue nature, which hitherto he has

obeyed. The goal of history, again, is the establishment of the perfect

form of the state. Nature itself co-operates with freedom in the gradual

transformation of the state based on necessity _(Notstaat)_ into a rational

state, inasmuch as selfish competition and the commercial spirit require

peace, order, and justice for their own security and help to bring them

about. And so, further, we need not doubt that humanity will constantly

draw nearer to the ideal condition of everlasting peace among the nations

(guaranteed by a league of states which shall as a mediator settle disputes

between individual states), however impracticable the idea may at present

appear.

If the bold declaration of Fortlage, that in Kant the system of absolute

truth appeared, is true of any one part of his philosophy, it is true of

the practical part, in which Christian morality has found its scientific

expression. If we may justly complain that on the basis of his sharp

distinction between legality and morality, between legal duty and

virtue-duty, Kant took into account only the legal side of the institutions

of marriage and of the state, overlooking the fact that besides these they

have a moral importance and purpose, if we may demand a social ethic as a

supplement to his ethics, which is directed to the duties of the individual

alone, yet these and other well-founded desiderata may be attained by

slight corrections and by the addition of another story to the Kantian

edifice, while the foundations are still retained. The bases are immovable.

Autonomy, absolute oughtness, the formal character of the law of reason,

and the incomparable worth of the pure, disinterested disposition--these

are the corner stones of the Kantian, nay, of all morals.

%3. Theory of the Beautiful and of Ends in Nature.%

We now know the laws which the understanding imposes upon nature and those

which reason imposes upon the will. If there is a field in which to be

(_Sein_) and ought to be (_Sollen_), nature and freedom, which we have thus

far been forced to consider antithetical, are reconciled--and that there

is such a field is already deducible from the doctrine of the religious

postulates (as practical truths or assumptions concerning what is, in

behalf of what ought to be), and from the hints concerning a progress in

history (in which both powers co-operate toward a common goal)--then the

source of its laws is evidently to be sought in that faculty which mediates

alike between understanding and reason and between knowing and feeling:

in _Judgment_, as the higher faculty of feeling. Judgment, in the general

sense, is the faculty of thinking a particular as contained in a universal,

and exercises a twofold function: as "determinant" judgment it subsumes the

particular under a given universal (a law), as "reflective" it seeks the

universal for a given particular. Since the former coincides with the

understanding, we are here concerned only with the reflective judgment,

judgment in the narrower sense, which does not cognize objects, but judges

them, and this according to the principle of purposiveness.[1]

[Footnote 1: The universal laws springing from the understanding, to

which every nature must conform to become an object of experience for us,

determine nothing concerning the particular form of the given reality;

we cannot deduce the special laws of nature from them. Nevertheless the

nature of our cognitive faculty does not allow us to accept the empirical

manifoldness of our world as contingent, but impels us to regard it as

purposive or adapted to our knowledge, and to look upon these special

laws as if an intelligence had given them in order to make a system of

experience possible.]

This, in turn, is of two kinds. An object is really or _objectively_

purposive (perfect) when it corresponds to its nature or its determination,

formally or _subjectively_ purposive (beautiful) when it is conformed to

the nature of our cognitive faculty. The perception of purpose is always

accompanied by a feeling of pleasure; in the first case, where the pleasure

is based on a concept of the object, it is a logical satisfaction, in the

second, where it springs only from the harmony of the object with our

cognitive powers, aesthetic satisfaction. The objects of the teleological

and the aesthetic judgment, the purposive and the beautiful products of

nature and art, constitute the desired intermediate field between nature

and freedom; and here again the critical question comes up, How, in

relation to these, synthetic judgments _a priori_ are possible?

%(a) Esthetic Judgment.%--The formula holds of Kant's aesthetics as well as

of his theoretical and practical philosophy, that his aim is to overcome

the opposition between the empirical and the rationalistic theories, and to

find a middle course of his own between the two extremes. Neither Burke

nor Baumgarten satisfied him. The English aesthetics was sensational, the

German, _i.e._, that of the Wolffian school, rationalistic. The former

identified the beautiful with the agreeable, the latter identified it with

the perfect or with the conformity of the object to its concept; in the one

case, aesthetic appreciation is treated as sensuous pleasure, in the other,

it is treated as a lower, confused kind of knowledge, its peculiar nature

being in both cases overlooked. In opposition to the sensualization of

aesthetic appreciation, its character as judgment must be maintained;

and in opposition to its rationalization, its character as feeling. This

relation of the Kantian aesthetics to that of his predecessors explains

both its fundamental tendency and the elements in it which appear defective

and erroneous. In any case, Kant shows himself in this field also an

unapproachable master of careful analysis.

The first task of aesthetics is the careful distinction of its object from

related phenomena. The beautiful has points of contact with the agreeable,

the good, the perfect, the useful, and the true. It is distinguished

from the true by the fact that it is not an object of knowledge, but

of satisfaction. If we inquire further into the difference between the

satisfaction in the beautiful and the satisfaction in the agreeable, in the

good (in itself), and in the (good for something, as a means, or in the)

useful, which latter three have this in common, that they are objects of

appetition--of sensuous want, of moral will, of prudential desire--it

becomes evident that the beautiful pleases through its mere representation

(that is, independently of the real existence of the object), and that

the delight in the beautiful is a contemplative pleasure. It is for

contemplation only, not to be sensuously enjoyed nor put to practical use;

and, further, its production is not a universal duty. Sensuous, prudential,

or moral appetition has always an "interest" in the actual existence of

the object; the beautiful, on the other hand, calls forth a disinterested

satisfaction.

According to quality the beautiful is the object of a disinterested, free

(bound by no interest), and sportive satisfaction. According to quantity

and modality the judgment of taste claims universal and necessary validity,

without this being based upon concepts. This posits further differences

between the beautiful and the agreeable and the good. The good also pleases

universally, but it pleases through concepts; the agreeable as well as the

beautiful pleases without a concept, but it does not please universally.

That which pleases the reason through the concept is good; that which

pleases the senses in sensation is agreeable. That which pleases

_universally and necessarily without a concept_ is beautiful. Moral

judgment demands the assent of all, and its universal validity is

demonstrable. The judgment concerning the agreeable is not capable of

demonstration, but neither does it pretend to possess universal validity;

we readily acknowledge that what is pleasant to one need not be so to every

other man. In regard to the beautiful, on the contrary, we do not content

ourselves with saying that tastes differ, but we expect it to please all.

We expect everyone to assent to our judgment of taste, although it is able

to support itself by no proofs.

Here there is a difficulty: since the judgment of taste does not express

a characteristic of the object, but a state of mind in the observer, a

feeling, a satisfaction, it is purely subjective; and yet it puts forth a

claim to be universally communicable. The difficulty can be removed only on

the assumption of a common aesthetic sense, of a corresponding organization

of the powers of representation in all men, which yields the common

standard for the pleasurableness of the impression. The agreeable appeals

to that in man which is different in different individuals, the beautiful

to that which functions alike in all; the former addresses itself to

the passive sensibility, the latter to the active judgment. The

agreeable--because of the non-calculable differences in our sensuous

inclinations, which are in part conditioned by bodily states--possesses no

universality whatever, the good possesses an objective, and the beautiful

a subjective universality. The judgment concerning the agreeable has an

empirical, that concerning the beautiful an _a priori_, determining ground:

in the former case, the judgment follows the feeling, in the latter, it

precedes it.

An object is considered beautiful (for, strictly speaking, we may say only

this, not that it is beautiful) when its form puts the powers of the human

mind in a state of harmony, brings the intuitive and rational faculties

into concordant activity, and produces an agreeable proportion between the

imagination and the understanding. In giving the occasion for an harmonious

play of the cognitive activities (that is, for an easy combination of the

manifold into unity) the beautiful object is purposive for us, for our

function of apprehension; it is--here we obtain a determination of the

judgment of taste from the standpoint of relation--_purposive without a

definite purpose_. We know perfectly well that a landscape which attracts

us has not been specially arranged for the purpose of delighting us, and we

do not wish to find in a work of art anything of an intention to please.

An object is perfect when it is purposive for itself (corresponds to its

concept); useful when it is purposive for our desire (corresponds to a

practical intention of man); beautiful when the arrangement of its parts

is purposive for the relation between the fancy and understanding of

the beholder (corresponds in an unusual degree to the conditions of our

apprehension). Perfection is internal (real, objective) purposiveness, and

utility is external purposiveness, both for a definite purpose; beauty,

on the other hand, is purposiveness without a purpose, formal, subjective

purposiveness. The beautiful pleases by its mere form. The satisfaction in

the perfect is of a conceptual or intellectual kind, the satisfaction in

the beautiful, emotional or aesthetic in character.

The combination of these four determinations yields an exhaustive

definition of the beautiful: The beautiful is that which universally and

necessarily arouses disinterested satisfaction by its mere form

(purposiveness without the representation of a purpose).

Since the pleasurableness of the beautiful rests on the fact that

it establishes a pleasing harmony between the imagination and the

understanding, hence between sensuous and intellectual apprehension, the

aesthetic attitude is possible only in sensuous-rational beings. The

agreeable exists for the animal as well, and the good is an object of

approval for pure spirits; but the beautiful exists for humanity alone.

Kant succeeded in giving very delicate and felicitous verbal expression

to these distinctions: the agreeable gratifies _(vergnügt)_ and excites

inclination _(Neigung)_; the good is approved _(gebilligt)_ and arouses

respect _(Achtung)_; the beautiful "pleases" _(gefällt)_ and finds "favor"

_(Gunst)_.

In the progress of the investigation the principle that beauty depends on

the form alone, and that the concept, the purpose, the nature of the

object is not taken into account at all in aesthetic judgment, experiences

limitation. In its full strictness this applies only to a definite and, in

fact, a subordinate division of the beautiful, which Kant marks off under

the name of pure or _free_ beauty. With this he contrasts _adherent_

beauty, as that which presupposes a generic concept to which its form must

correspond and which it must adequately present. Too much a purist not

to mark the coming in of an intellectual pleasure as a beclouding of the

"purity" of the aesthetic satisfaction, he is still just enough to admit

the higher worth of adherent beauty. For almost the whole of artificial

beauty and a considerable part of natural beauty belong to this latter

division, which we to-day term ideal and characteristic beauty. Examples of

free or purely formal beauty are tapestry patterns, arabesques, fountains,

flowers, and landscapes, the pleasurableness of which rests simply on the

proportion of their form and relations, and not upon their conformity to a

presupposed significance and determination of the thing. A building, on the

contrary--a dwelling, a summer-house, a temple--is considered beautiful

only when we perceive in it not merely harmonious relations of the parts

one to another, but also an agreement between the form and the purpose or

generic concept: a church must not look like a chalet. Here the external

form is compared with an inner nature, and harmony is required between form

and content. Adherent beauty is significant and expressive beauty, which,

although the satisfaction in it is not "purely" aesthetic, nevertheless

stands higher than pure beauty, because it gives to the understanding also

something to think, and hence busies the whole spirit.

The analytical investigations concerning the nature of the beautiful

receive a valuable supplement in the classical definition of genius. Kant

gives two definitions of productive talent, one formal and one genetic.

Natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artificial beauty, a beautiful

representation of a thing. The gift of agreeably presenting a thing which

in itself, perhaps, is ugly, is called taste. To judge of the beautiful

it is sufficient to possess taste, but for its production there is still

another talent needed, spirit or genius. For an art product can fulfill

the demands of taste and yet not aesthetically satisfy; while formally

faultless, it may be spiritless.

While beautiful nature looks as though it were art (as though it were

calculated for our enjoyment), beautiful art should resemble nature, must

not appear to be intentional though, no doubt, it is so, must show a

careful but not an overnice adherence to rules (_i.e._, not one which

fetters the powers of the artist). This is the case when the artist bears

the rule in himself, that is, when he is gifted. Genius is the

innate disposition (through) which (nature) gives rules to art; its

characteristics are originality, exemplariness, and unreflectiveness. It

does not produce according to definite rules which can be learned, but

it is a law in itself, it is original. It creates instinctively without

consciousness of the rule, and cannot describe how it produces its results.

It creates typical works which impel others to follow, not to imitate. It

is only in art that there are geniuses, _i.e._, spirits who produce that

which absolutely cannot be learned, while the great men of science differ

only in degree, not in kind, from their imitators and pupils, and that

which they discover can be learned by rule.

This establishes the criteria by which genius may be recognized. If we ask

by what psychological factors it is produced the answer is as follows:

Genius presupposes a certain favorable relation between imagination and

reason. Genius is the faculty of aesthetic Ideas, but an aesthetic Idea is

a representation of the imagination which animates the mind, which adds to

a concept of the understanding much of ineffable thought, much that belongs

to the concept but which cannot be comprehended in a definite concept. With

the aid of this idea Kant solves the antinomy of the aesthetic judgment.

The thesis is: The judgment of taste is not based upon concepts; for

otherwise it would admit of controversy (would be determinable by proofs).

The antithesis is: It is based upon concepts; for otherwise we could not

contend about it (endeavor to obtain assent). The two principles are

reconcilable, for "concept" is understood differently in the two cases.

That which the thesis rightly seeks to exclude from the judgment of beauty

is the determinate concept of the understanding; that which the antithesis

with equal justice pronounces indispensable is the indeterminate concept,

the aesthetic Idea.

The freest play is afforded the imagination by poetry, the highest of

all arts, which, with rhetoric ("insidious," on account of its earnest

intention to deceive), forms the group termed arts of speech. To the class

of formative arts belong architecture, sculpture, and painting as the art

of design. A third group, the art of the beautiful play of sensations,

includes painting as the art of color, and music, which as a "fine" art is

placed immediately after poetry, as an "agreeable" art at the very foot of

the list, and as the play of tone in the vicinity of the entertaining play

of fortune [games of chance] and the witty play of thought. The explanation

of the comic (the ludicrous is based, according to Kant, on a sudden

transformation of strained expectation into nothing) lays great (indeed

exaggerated) weight on the resulting physiological phenomena, the

bodily shock which heightens vital feeling and favors health, and which

accompanies the alternating tension and relaxation of the mind.

Besides free and adherent beauty, there is still a third kind of aesthetic

effect, the Sublime. The beautiful pleases by its bounded form. But also

the boundless and formless can exert aesthetic effect: that which is great

beyond all comparison we judge sublime. Now this magnitude is either

extensive in space and time or intensive greatness of force or power;

accordingly there are two forms of the sublime. That phenomenon which mocks

the power of comprehension possessed by the human imagination or surpasses

every measure of our intuition, as the ocean and the starry heavens, is

mathematically sublime. That which overcomes all conceivable resistance,

as the terrible forces of nature, conflagrations, floods, earthquakes,

hurricanes, thunderstorms, is dynamically sublime or mighty. The former

is relative to the cognitive, the latter to the appetitive faculty. The

beautiful brings the imagination and the understanding into accord; by

the sublime the fancy is brought into a certain favorable relation, not

directly to be termed harmony, with reason. In the one case there arose a

restful, positively pleasurable mood; here a shock is produced, an indirect

and negative pleasure proceeding from pain. Since the sublime exceeds the

functional capability of our sensuous representations and does violence to

the imagination, we first feel small at the sight of the absolutely great,

and incapable of compassing it with our sensuous glance. The sensibility is

not equal to the impression; this at first seems contrary to purpose and

violent. This humiliating impression, however, is quickly followed by a

reaction, and the vital forces, which were at first checked, are stimulated

to the more lively activity. Moreover, it is the sensuous part of man

which is humbled and the spiritual part that is exalted: the overthrow of

sensibility becomes a triumph for reason. The sight of the sublime, that

is, awakens the _Idea of the unconditioned, of the infinite_. This Idea can

never be adequately presented by an intuition, but can be aroused only

by the inadequacy of all that is sensuous to present it; the infinite is

presented through the impossibility of presenting it. We cannot intuit the

infinite, but we can think it. In comparison with reason (as the faculty of

Ideas, the faculty of thinking the infinite) even the greatest thing that

can be given in the sense-world appears small; reason is the absolutely

great. "That is sublime the mere ability to think which proves a faculty

of the mind surpassing every standard of sense." "That is sublime which

pleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of the senses."

The conflict between phantasy and reason, the insufficiency of the former

for the attainment of the rational Idea, makes us conscious of the

superiority of reason. Just because we feel small as sensuous beings we

feel great as rational beings. The pleasure (related to the moral feeling

of respect and, like this, mingled with a certain pain) which accompanies

this consciousness of inner greatness is explained by the fact that the

imagination, in acknowledging reason superior, places itself in the

appropriate and purposive relation of subordination. It is evident from the

foregoing that the truly sublime is reason, the moral nature of man, his

predisposition and destination, which point beyond the present world.

Schiller declares that "in space the sublime does not dwell," and

Kant says, "Sublimity is contained in none of the things of nature, but

only in our mind, in so far as we are conscious of being superior to nature

within us and without us." Nevertheless, since in this contemplation we fix

our thoughts entirely on the object without reflecting on ourselves, we

transfer the admiration of right due to the reason and its Idea of the

infinite by subreption to the object by which the Idea is occasioned, and

call the object itself sublime, instead of the mood which it wakes in us.

If the sublime marks the point where the aesthetic touches on the boundary

of the moral, the beautiful is also not without some relation to the good.

By showing the agreement of sensibility and reason, which is demanded by

the moral law, realized in aesthetic intuition (as a voluntary yielding of

the imagination to the legitimacy of the understanding), it gives us the

inspiring consciousness that the antithesis is reconcilable, that the

rational can be presented in the sensuous, and so becomes a "symbol of the

good."

%(b) Teleological Judgment.%--Teleological judgment is not knowledge, but

a way of looking at things which comes into play where the causal or

mechanical explanation fails us. This is not the case if the purposiveness

is external, relative to its utility for something else. The fact that the

sand of the sea-shore furnishes a good soil for the pine neither furthers

nor prevents a causal knowledge of it. Only inner purposiveness, as it

is manifested in the products of organic nature, brings the mechanical

explanation to a halt. Organisms are distinguished above inorganic forms by

the fact that of themselves they are at once cause and effect, that they

are self-productive and this both as a species (the oak springs from the

acorn, and in its turn bears acorns) and as individuals (self-preservation,

growth, and the replacement of dying parts by new ones), and also by the

fact that the reciprocally productive parts are in their form and their

existence all conditioned by the whole. This latter fact, that the whole is

the determining ground for the parts, is perfectly obvious in the products

of human art. For here it is the representation of the whole (the idea of

the work desired) which as the ground precedes the existence and the form

of the parts (of the machine). But where is the subject to construct

organisms according to its representations of ends? We may neither conceive

nature itself as endowed with forces acting in view of ends, nor a

praetermundane intelligence interfering in the course of nature. Either of

these suppositions would be the death of natural philosophy: the hylozoist

endows matter with a property which conflicts with its nature, and the

theist oversteps the boundary of possible experience. Above all, the

analogy of the products of organic nature with the products of human

technique is destroyed by the fact that machines do not reproduce

themselves and their parts cannot produce one another, while the organism

organizes itself.

For our discursive understanding an interaction between the whole and the

parts is completely incomprehensible. We understand when the parts precede

the whole (mechanically) or the representation of the whole precedes

the parts (teleologically); but to think the whole itself (not the Idea

thereof) as the ground of the parts, which is demanded by organic life,

is impossible for us. It would have been otherwise if an intuitive

understanding had been bestowed upon us. For a being possessing

intellectual intuition the antithesis between possibility and actuality,

between necessity and contingency, between mechanism and teleology, would

disappear along with that between thought and intuition. For such a being

everything possible (all that it thinks) would be at the same time

actual (present for intuition), and all that appears to us

contingent--intentionally selected from several possibilities and in order

to an end--would be necessary as well; with the whole would be given

the parts corresponding thereto, and consequently natural mechanism

and purposive connection would be identical, while for us, to whom the

intuitive understanding is denied, the two divide. Hence the teleological

view is a mere form of human representation, a subjective principle. We may

not say that a mechanical origin of living beings is impossible, but only

that we are unable to understand it. If we knew how a blade of grass or

a frog sprang from mechanical forces, we would also be in a position to

produce them.

The antinomy of the teleological judgment--thesis: all production of

material things and their forms must be judged to be possible according to

merely mechanical laws; antithesis: some products of material nature cannot

be judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws, but to judge

them requires the causality of final causes--is insoluble so long as both

propositions are taken for constitutive principles; but it is soluble when

they are taken as regulative principles or standpoints for judgment. For it

is in no wise contradictory, on the one hand, to continue the search for

mechanical causes as far as this is in any way possible, and, on the other,

clearly to recognize that, at last, this will still leave a remainder which

we cannot make intelligible without calling to our aid the concept of ends.

Assuming that it were possible to carry the explanation of life from life,

from ancestral organisms (for the _generatio aequivoca_ is an absurd

theory) so far that the whole organic world should represent one great

family descended from one primitive form as the common mother, even

then the concept of final causes would only be pushed further back, not

eliminated: the origin of the first organization will always resist

mechanical explanation. Besides this mission of putting limits to causal

derivation and of filling the gap in knowledge by a necessary, although

subjective, way of looking at things, the Idea of ends has still another,

the direct promotion of knowledge from efficient causes through the

discovery of new causal problems. Thus, for example, physiology owes the

impulse to the discovery of previously unnoticed mechanical connections

(cf. also p. 382 note) to the question concerning the purpose of organs.

As doctrines mechanism and teleology are irreconcilable and impossible;

as rules or maxims of inquiry they are compatible, and the one as

indispensable as the other.

After the problem of life, which is insoluble by means of the mechanical

explanation, has necessitated the application of the concept of ends, the

teleological principle must, at least by way of experiment, be extended to

the whole of nature. This consideration culminates in the position that

man, as the subject of morality, must be held to be the final aim of the

world, for it is only in regard to a moral being that no further inquiry

can be raised as to the purpose of its existence. It also repeats the

moral argument for the existence of a supreme reason, thus supplementing

physico-theology, which is inadequate to the demonstration of one

absolutely perfect Deity; so that the third _Critique_, like the two

preceding, concludes with the Idea of God as an object of practical faith.

* * * * *

There are three original and pregnant pairs of thoughts which cause Kant's

name to shine in the philosophical sky as a star of the first magnitude:

the demand for a critique of knowledge and the proof of _a priori_ forms

of knowledge; the moral autonomy and the categorical imperative; the

regulative validity of the Ideas of reason and the practical knowledge of

the transcendent world. No philosophical theory, no scientific hypothesis

can henceforth avoid the duty of examining the value and legitimacy of its

conclusions, as to whether they keep within the limits of the competency of

human reason; whether Kant's determination of the origin and the limits of

knowledge may count on continued favor or not, the fundamental critical

idea, that reflection upon the nature and range of our cognitive faculty is

indispensable, retains its validity for all cases and makes an end of all

philosophizing at random.[1] No ethical system will with impunity pass by

the autonomous legislation of reason and the unconditional imperative (the

admonition of conscience translated into conceptual language): the nature

and worth of moral will will be everywhere sought in vain if they are not

recognized where Kant has found them--in the unselfish disposition, in that

maxim which is fitted to become a general law for all rational beings.

The doctrine of the Ideas, finally, reveals to us, beyond the daylight of

phenomenal knowledge, the starlit landscape of another mode of looking at

things,[2] in which satisfaction is afforded for the hitherto unmet wishes

of the heart and demands of the reason.

[Footnote 1: "_Reason_ consists just in this, that we are able to give

account of all our concepts, opinions, and assertions, either on objective

or subjective grounds."]

[Footnote 2: Those who regard all future metaphysics as refuted by the

Critique of Reason are to be referred to the positive side of the Kantian

doctrine of Ideas. Kant admits that the mechanical explanation does not

satisfy reason, and that, besides it, a judgment according to Ideas is

legitimate. When, therefore, the speculation of the constructive school

gives an ideal interpretation of the world, it may be regarded as an

extended application of "regulative principles," which exceeds its

authority only when it professes to be "objective knowledge."]

The effect of the three _Critiques_ upon the public was very varied. The

first great work excited alarm by the sharpness of its negations and its

destruction of dogmatic metaphysics, which to its earliest readers appeared

to be the core of the matter; Kant was for them the universal destroyer.

Then the Science of Knowledge brought into prominence the positive,

boldly conquering side, the investigation of the conditions of empirical

knowledge. In later times the endeavor has been made to do justice to both

sides, but, in opposition to the overbold procedure of the constructive

thinkers, who had fallen into a revived dogmatism, more in the spirit of

caution and resignation. The second great work aroused glowing enthusiasm:

"Kant is no mundane luminary," writes Jean Paul in regard to the _Critique

of Practical Reason_, "but a whole solar system shining at once."

The third, because of its subject and by its purpose of synthetic

reconciliation between fields heretofore sharply separated, gained the

sympathy of our poet-heroes Schiller and Goethe, and awakened in a young,

speculative spirit Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Schelling reclaimed

the intuitive understanding, which Kant had problematically attributed to

the primal spirit, as the property of the philosopher, after Fichte had

drawn attention to the fact that the consciousness of the categorical

imperative, which Kant had not thoroughly investigated, could be nothing

else than intellectual intuition, because in it knowing and doing coincide.

Fichte, however, does not derive the material for his system from the

_Critique of Judgment_, though he also had a high appreciation of it, but

from the two earlier _Critiques_, the fundamental conceptions of which

he--following the hint that practical and theoretical reason are only

different applications of one and the same reason--brings into the closest

connection. He unites the central idea of the practical philosophy, the

freedom and autonomous legislation of the will, with the leading principle

of the theoretical philosophy, the spontaneity of the understanding, under

the original synthesis of the pure ego, in order to deduce from the

activity of the ego not only the _a priori_ forms of knowledge, but also,

rejecting the thing in itself, the whole content of empirical

consciousness. The thought which intervenes between the Kantian Critique

of Reason and the development of thoroughgoing idealism by Fichte, with

its criticisms of and additions to the former and its preparation for the

latter, may be glanced at in a few supplementary pages.

%4. From Kant to Fichte.%

To begin with the works which aided in the extension and recognition of the

Kantian philosophy, besides Kant's _Prolegomena_, the following stand

in the front rank: _Exposition of the Critique of Pure Reason_, by the

Königsberg court preacher, Johannes Schulz, 1784; the flowing _Letters

concerning the Kantian Philosophy_, by K.L. Reinhold in Wieland's

_Deutscher Merkur_, 1786-87; and the _Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung_, in

Jena, founded in 1785, and edited by the philologist Schütz and the jurist

Hufeland, which offered itself as the organ of the new doctrine. Jena

became the home and principal stronghold of Kantianism; while by the

beginning of the nineteenth century almost all German chairs belonged to

it, and the non-philosophical sciences as well received from it stimulation

and guiding ideas.

In the camp of the enemy there was no less of activity. The Wolffian,

Eberhard of Halle, founded a special journal for the purpose of opposing

the Kantian philosophy: the _Philosophisches Magazin_, 1789, continued from

1792 as the _Philosophisches Archiv_. The Illumination collected its forces

in the _Philosophische Bibliothek_, edited by Feder and Meiners. Nicolai

waved the banner of common sense in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_,

and in satirical romances, and was handled as he deserved by the heroes

of poetry and philosophy (cf. the _Xenien_ of Goethe and Schiller, Kant's

_Letter on Bookmaking_, and Fichte's cutting disposal of him, _Nicolai's

Life and Peculiar Opinions_). The attacks of the faith-philosophers have

been already noticed (pp. 310-314).

The advance from Kant to Fichte was preparing alike among friends and

enemies, and this in two points. The demand was in part for a formal

complement (a first principle from which the Kantian results could be

deduced, and by which the dualism of sense and understanding could be

overcome), in part for material correction (the removal of the thing in

itself) and development (to radical idealism). Karl Leonhard Reinhold (born

at Vienna in 1758; fled from a college of the St. Barnabite order, 1783;

in 1787-94 professor in Jena, and then as the successor of Tetens in Kiel,

where he died in 1823) undertook the former task in his _Attempt at a New

Theory of the Human Faculty of Representation_, 1789. Kant's classical

theory of the faculty of cognition requires for its foundation a theory of

the faculty of representation, or an elementary philosophy, which shall

take for its object the deduction of the several functions of reason

(intuition, concept, Idea) from the original activity of representation.

The Kantian philosophy lacks a first principle, which, as first, cannot be

demonstrable, but only a fact immediately evident and admitted by everyone.

The primal fact, which we seek, is consciousness. No one can dispute that

every representation contains three things: the subject, the object, and,

between the two, the activity of representation. Accordingly the principle

of consciousness runs: "The representation is distinguished in

consciousness from the represented [object] and the representing [subject],

and is referred to both." From this first principle Reinhold endeavors to

deduce the well-known principles of the material manifold given by the

action of objects, and the forms of representation spontaneously produced

by the subject, which combine this manifold into unity. When, a few years

later, Fichte's Science of Knowledge brilliantly succeeded in bridging the

gap between sense and understanding by means of a first principle, thus

accomplishing what Reinhold had attempted, the latter became one of his

adherents, only to attach himself subsequently to Jacobi, and then to

Bardili (_Outlines of Logic_, 1800), and to end with a verbal philosophy

lacking both in influence and permanence.

In Reinhold's elementary philosophy the thing in itself was changed from a

problematical, negative, merely limiting concept into a positive element of

doctrine. Objections were raised against Kantianism, as thus dogmatically

modified in the direction of realism, by Schulze, Maimon, and Beck--by

the first for purposes of attack, by the second in order to further

development, and by the third with an exegetical purpose. Gottlob Ernst

Schulze, professor in Helmstädt, and from 1810 in Göttingen, in his

_Aenesidemus_ (1792, published anonymously), which was followed later by

psychological works, defended the skeptical position in opposition to

the Critique of Reason. Hume's skepticism remains unrefuted by Kant

and Reinhold. The thing in itself, which is to produce the material of

representation by affecting the senses, is a self-contradictory idea. The

application of the category of cause to things in themselves violates

the doctrine that the latter are unknowable and that the use of the pure

concepts of the understanding beyond the sphere of experience is

inadmissible. The transcendental philosophy has never proved that the

ground of the material of representation cannot, just as the form thereof,

reside in the subject itself.

Side by side with the anti-critical skepticism of Aenesidemus-Schulze,

Salomon Maimon (died 1800; cf. Witte, 1876), who was highly esteemed by the

greatest philosophers of his time, represents critical skepticism. With

Reinhold he holds consciousness (as the combination of a manifold into

objective unity) to be the common root of sensibility and understanding,

and with Schulze, the concept of the thing in itself to be an imaginary or

irrational quantity, a thought that cannot be carried out; it is not only

unknowable, but unthinkable. That alone is knowable which we ourselves

produce, hence only the form of representation. The matter of

representation is "given," but this does not mean that it arises from the

action of the thing in itself, but only that we do not know its origin.

Understanding and sense, or spontaneity and receptivity, do not differ

generically, but only in degree, viz., as complete and incomplete

consciousness. Sensation is an incomplete consciousness, because we do not

know how its object arises.

By the removal of the thing in itself Aenesidemus-Schulze sought to refute

the Kantian theory and Maimon to improve it. Sigismund Beck (1761-1840), in

his _Only Possible Standpoint from which the Critical Philosophy must be

Judged_, 1796,[1] seeks by it to elucidate the Kantian theory, holding up

idealism as its true meaning. In opposition to the usual opinion that a

representation is true when it agrees with its object, he points to the

impossibility of comparing the one with the other. Of objects out of

consciousness we can know nothing; after the removal of all that is

subjective there is nothing positive left of the representation. Everything

in it is produced by us; the matter arises together with the form through

the "original synthesis."

[Footnote 1: This book forms the third volume of his _Expository Abridgment

of the Critical Writings of Professor Kant_; in the same year appeared the

_Outlines of the Critical Philosophy_. Cf. on Beck, Dilthey in the _Archiv

für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. ii., 1889, pp. 592-650.]

The last mentioned attempts to develop the Kantian philosophy were so far

surpassed by Fichte's great achievement that they have received from their

own age and from posterity a less grateful appreciation and remembrance

than was essentially their due. A phenomenon of a different sort, which is

also to be placed at the threshold between Kant and Fichte, but which forms

rather a supplement to the noëtics and ethics of the latter than a link in

the transition to them, has, on the contrary, gained an honorable position

in the memory of the German people, viz., Schiller's aesthetics.[1] In

its center stand the Kantian antithesis of sensibility and reason and

the reconciliation of the two sides of human nature brought about by its

occupation with the beautiful. Artistic activity or the play-impulse

mediates between the lower, sensuous matter-impulse and the higher,

rational form-impulse, and unites the, two in harmonious co-operation.

Where appetite seeks after satisfaction, and where the strict idea of duty

rules, there only half the man is occupied; neither lust nor moral worth is

beautiful. In order that beauty and grace may arise, the matter-impulse

and the form-impulse, or sensibility and reason, must manifest themselves

uniformly and in harmony. Only when he "plays" is man wholly and entirely

man; only through art is the development of humanity possible. The

discernment of the fact that the beautiful brings into equilibrium the two

fundamental impulses, one or the other of which preponderates in sensuous

desire and in moral volition, does not of itself decide the relative rank

of artistic and moral activity. The recognition of this mediating position

of art may be connected with the view that it forms a transitional stage

toward and a means of education for morality, as well as with the other,

that in it human nature attains its completion. Evidence of both views can

be found in Schiller's writings. At first he favors the Kantian moralism,

which admits nothing higher than the good will, and sets art the task

of educating men up to morality by ennobling their natural impulses.

Gradually, however, aesthetic activity changes in his view from a

preparation for morality into the ultimate goal of human endeavor. Peaceful

reconciliation is of more worth than the spirit's hardly gained victory

in the conflict with the sensibility; fine feeling is more than rational

volition; the highest ideal is the beautiful soul, in which inclination not

merely obeys the command of duty, but anticipates it.

[Footnote 1: The most important of Schiller's aesthetic essays are those

_On Grace and Dignity_, 1793; _On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry_, 1795-96;

and the _Letters on Aesthetic Education_, intermediate between them. Cf.

Kuno Fischer, _Schiller als Philosoph_, 1858, 2d ed. (_Schillerschriften_,

iii., iv.) 1891-92.]