第28章

Practical rules of omission (prohibitivae)Practical rules of exceptions (exceptivae)III.RELATION.

To personality To the condition of the person.

Reciprocal, of one person to the others of the others.

IV.MODALITY.

The Permitted and the Forbidden Duty and the contrary to duty.

Perfect and imperfect duty.

It will at once be observed that in this table freedom is considered as a sort of causality not subject to empirical principles of determination, in regard to actions possible by it, which are phenomena in the world of sense, and that consequently it is referred to the categories which concern its physical possibility, whilst yet each category is taken so universally that the determining principle of that causality can be placed outside the world of sense in freedom as a property of a being in the world of intelligence; and finally the categories of modality introduce the transition from practical principles generally to those of morality, but only problematically.These can be established dogmatically only by the moral law.

I add nothing further here in explanation of the present table, since it is intelligible enough of itself.A division of this kind based on principles is very useful in any science, both for the sake of thoroughness and intelligibility.Thus, for instance, we know from the preceding table and its first number what we must begin from in practical inquiries; namely, from the maxims which every one founds on his own inclinations; the precepts which hold for a species of rational beings so far as they agree in certain inclinations; and finally the law which holds for all without regard to their inclinations, etc.In this way we survey the whole plan of what has to be done, every question of practical philosophy that has to be answered, and also the order that is to be followed.

Of the Typic of the Pure Practical Judgement.

It is the notions of good and evil that first determine an object of the will.They themselves, however, are subject to a practical rule of reason which, if it is pure reason, determines the will a priori relatively to its object.Now, whether an action which is possible to us in the world of sense, comes under the rule or not, is a question to be decided by the practical judgement, by which what is said in the rule universally (in abstracto) is applied to an action in concreto.But since a practical rule of pure reason in the first place as practical concerns the existence of an object, and in the second place as a practical rule of pure reason implies necessity as regards the existence of the action and, therefore, is a practical law, not a physical law depending on empirical principles of determination, but a law of freedom by which the will is to be determined independently on anything empirical (merely by the conception of a law and its form), whereas all instances that can occur of possible actions can only be empirical, that is, belong to the experience of physical nature; hence, it seems absurd to expect to find in the world of sense a case which, while as such it depends only on the law of nature, yet admits of the application to it of a law of freedom, and to which we can apply the supersensible idea of the morally good which is to be exhibited in it in concreto.Thus, the judgement of the pure practical reason is subject to the same difficulties as that of the pure theoretical reason.The latter, however, had means at hand of escaping from these difficulties, because, in regard to the theoretical employment, intuitions were required to which pure concepts of the understanding could be applied, and such intuitions (though only of objects of the senses) can be given a priori and, therefore, as far as regards the union of the manifold in them, conforming to the pure a priori concepts of the understanding as schemata.On the other hand, the morally good is something whose object is supersensible; for which, therefore, nothing corresponding can be found in any sensible intuition.Judgement depending on laws of pure practical reason seems, therefore, to be subject to special difficulties arising from this, that a law of freedom is to be applied to actions, which are events taking place in the world of sense, and which, so far, belong to physical nature.

But here again is opened a favourable prospect for the pure practical judgement.When I subsume under a pure practical law an action possible to me in the world of sense, I am not concerned with the possibility of the action as an event in the world of sense.

This is a matter that belongs to the decision of reason in its theoretic use according to the law of causality, which is a pure concept of the understanding, for which reason has a schema in the sensible intuition.Physical causality, or the condition under which it takes place, belongs to the physical concepts, the schema of which is sketched by transcendental imagination.Here, however, we have to do, not with the schema of a case that occurs according to laws, but with the schema of a law itself (if the word is allowable here), since the fact that the will (not the action relatively to its effect) is determined by the law alone without any other principle, connects the notion of causality with quite different conditions from those which constitute physical connection.