DIVISIONS

     GENERAL DIVISIONS OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS

	 
	 
  I. DIVISION OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS AS A SYSTEM OF

                   DUTIES GENERALLY.

				   

  1. All duties are either duties of right, that is, juridical

duties (officia juris), or duties of virtue, that is, ethical duties

(officia virtutis s. ethica). Juridical duties are such as may be

promulgated by external legislation; ethical duties are those for

which such legislation is not possible. The reason why the latter

cannot be properly made the subject of external legislation is because

they relate to an end or final purpose, which is itself, at the same

time, embraced in these duties, and which it is a duty for the

individual to have as such. But no external legislation can cause

any one to adopt a particular intention, or to propose to himself a

certain purpose; for this depends upon an internal condition or act of

the mind itself. However, external actions conducive to such a

mental condition may be commanded, without its being implied that

the individual will of necessity make them an end to himself.

  But why, then, it may be asked, is the science of morals, or moral

philosophy, commonly entitled- especially by Cicero- the science of

duty and not also the science of right, since duties and rights

refer to each other? The reason is this. We know our own freedom- from

which all moral laws and consequently all rights as well as all duties

arise- only through the moral imperative, which is an immediate

injunction of duty; whereas the conception of right as a ground of

putting others under obligation has afterwards to be developed out

of it.

  2. In the doctrine of duty, man may and ought to be represented in

accordance with the nature of his faculty of freedom, which is

entirely supra-sensible. He is, therefore, to be represented purely

according to his humanity as a personality independent of physical

determinations (homo noumenon), in distinction from the same person as

a man modified with these determinations (homo phenomenon). Hence

the conceptions of right and end when referred to duty, in view of

this twofold quality, give the following division:



  DIVISION OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS ACCORDING TO THE OBJECTIVE

                  RELATION OF THE LAW OF DUTY.



                         I. The Right of Humanity.

I. Juridical   Oneself     in our own person (juridicial

      Duties     to or     duties towards oneself)             Perfect

                Others                                            Duty

                        II. The Right of Mankind.

                            in others (juridical duties

                            towards others.)





                       III. The End of Humanity.

II. Ethical   Oneself       in our person (eithical duties

     Duties     to or       towards oneself)                 Imperfect

               Others                                             Duty

                        IV. The End of Mankind.

                            in others (ethical duties

                            towards others.)





  II. DIVISION OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS ACCORDING TO RELATIONS

                      OF OBLIGATION.



  As the subjects between whom a relation of right and duty is

apprehended- whether it actually exists or not- admit of being

conceived in various juridical relations to each other, another

division may be proposed from this point of view, as follows:



  DIVISION POSSIBLE ACCORDING TO THE SUBJECTIVE RELATION OF

      THOSE WHO BIND UNDER OBLIGATIONS, AND THOSE WHO ARE

                 BOUND UNDER OBLIGATIONS.



  1. The juridical relation of man to beings who have neither right

nor duty:

  Vacat. There is no such relation, for such beings are irrational,

and they neither put us under obligation, nor can we be put under

obligation by them.



  2. The juridical relation of man to beings who have both rights

and duties:

  Adest. There is such a relation, for it is the relation of men to

men.



  3. The juridical relation of man to beings who have only duties

and no rights:

  Vacat. There is no such relation, for such beings would be men

without juridical personality, as slaves of bondsmen.



  4 The juridical relation of man to a being who has only rights and

no duties (God):

  Vacat. There is no such relation in mere philosophy, because such

a being is not an object of possible experience.



  A real relation between right and duty is therefore found, in this

scheme, only in No. 2. The reason why such is not likewise found in

No. 4 is because it would constitute a transcendent duty, that is, one

to which no corresponding subject can be given that is external and

capable of imposing obligation. Consequently the relation from the

theoretical point of view is here merely ideal; that is, it is a

relation to an object of thought which we form for ourselves. But

the conception of this object is not entirely empty. On the

contrary, it is a fruitful conception in relation to ourselves and the

maxims of our inner morality, and therefore in relation to practice

generally. And it is in this bearing that all the duty involved and

practicable for us in such a merely ideal relation lies.





  III. DIVISION OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS AS A SYSTEM OF

                     DUTIES GENERALLY.



  According to the constituent principles and the method of the

system.



  I. Principles    I. Duties of Right        I. Private Right.

                                             II. Public Right



                  II. Duties of Virtue, etc.

                      And so on, including all that

                      refers not only to the

                      materials, but also to the

                      architectonic form of a

                      scientific system of morals,

                      when the metaphysical

                      investigation of the elements

                      has completely traced out the

                      universal principles constituting

                      the whole.



  II. Method       I. Didactics

                  II. Ascetics

       GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS



  I. THE RELATION OF THE FACULTIES OF THE HUMAN MIND TO THE

                        MORAL LAWS.



  The active faculty of the human mind, as the faculty of desire in

its widest sense, is the power which man has, through his mental

representations, of becoming the cause of objects corresponding to

these representations. The capacity of a being to act in conformity

with his own representations is what constitutes the life of such a

being.

  It is to be observed, first, that with desire or aversion there is

always connected pleasure or pain, the susceptibility for which is

called feeling. But the converse does not always hold; for there may

be a pleasure connected, not with the desire of an object, but with

a mere mental representation, it being indifferent whether an object

corresponding to the representation exist or not. And second, the

pleasure or pain connected with the object of desire does not always

precede the activity of desire; nor can it be regarded in every case

as the cause, but it may as well be the effect of that activity. The

capacity of experiencing pleasure or pain on the occasion of a

mental representation is called "feeling," because pleasure and pain

contain only what is subjective in the relations of our mental

activity. They do not involve any relation to an object that could

possibly furnish a knowledge of it as such; they cannot even give us a

knowledge of our own mental state. For even sensations,* considered

apart from the qualities which attach to them on account of the

modifications of the subject- as, for instance, in reference to red,

sweet, and such like- are referred as constituent elements of

knowledge to objects, whereas pleasure or pain felt in connection with

what is red or sweet express absolutely nothing that is in the object,

but merely a relation to the subject. And for the reason just

stated, pleasure and pain considered in themselves cannot be more

precisely defined. All that can be further done with regard to them is

merely to point out what consequences they may have in certain

relations, in order to make the knowledge of them available

practically.



  *The sensibility as the faculty of sense may be defined by reference

to the subjective nature of our representations generally. It is the

understanding that fir refers the subjective representations to an

object; it alone thinks anything by means of these representations.

Now, the subjective nature of our representations might be of such a

kind that they could be related to objects so as to furnish

knowledge of them, either in regard to their form or matter- in the

former relation by pure perception, in the latter by sensation proper.

In this case, the sense-faculty, as the capacity for receiving

objective representations, would be properly called sense

perception. But mere mental representation from its subjective

nature cannot, in fact, become a constituent of objective knowledge,

because it contains merely the relation of the representations to

the subject, and includes nothing that can be used for attaining a

knowledge of the object. In this case, then, this receptivity of the

mind for subjective representations is called feeling. It includes the

effect of the representations, whether sensible or intellectual,

upon the subject; and it belongs to the sensibility, although the

representation itself may belong to the understanding or the reason.



  The pleasure which is necessarily connected with the activity of

desire, when the representation of the object desired affects the

capacity of feeling, may be called practical pleasure. And this

designation is applicable whether the pleasure is the cause or the

effect of the desire. On the other hand, that pleasure which is not

necessarily connected with the desire of an object, and which,

therefore, is not a pleasure in the existence of the object, but is

merely attached to a mental representation alone, may be called

inactive complacency, or mere contemplative pleasure. The feeling of

this latter kind of pleasure is what is called taste. Hence, in a

system of practical philosophy, the contemplative pleasure of taste

will not be discussed as an essential constituent conception, but need

only be referred to incidentally or episodically. But as regards

practical pleasure, it is otherwise. For the determination of the

activity of the faculty of desire or appetency, which is necessarily

preceded by this pleasure as its cause, is what properly constitutes

desire in the strict sense of the term. Habitual desire, again,

constitutes inclination; and the connection of pleasure with the

activity of desire, in so far as this connection is judged by the

understanding to be valid according to a general rule holding good

at least for the individual, is what is called interest. Hence, in

such a case, the practical pleasure is an interest of the

inclination of the individual. On the other hand, if the pleasure

can only follow a preceding determination of the faculty of desire, it

is an intellectual pleasure, and the interest in the object must be

called a rational interest; for were the interest sensuous, and not

based only upon pure principles of reason, sensation would necessarily

be conjoined with the pleasure, and would thus determine the

activity of the desire. Where an entirely pure interest of reason must

be assumed, it is not legitimate to introduce into it an interest of

inclination surreptitiously. However, in order to conform so far

with the common phraseology, we may allow the application of the

term "inclination" even to that which can only be the object of an

"intellectual" pleasure in the sense of a habitual desire arising from

a pure interest of reason. But such inclination would have to be

viewed, not as the cause, but as the effect of the rational

interest; and we might call it the non-sensuous or rational

inclination (propensio intellectualis). Further, concupiscence is to

be distinguished from the activity of desire itself, as a stimulus

or incitement to its determination. It is always a sensuous state of

the mind, which does not itself attain to the definiteness of an act

of the power of desire.

  The activity of the faculty of desire may proceed in accordance with

conceptions; and in so far as the principle thus determining it to

action is found in the mind, and not in its object it constitutes a

power acting or not acting according to liking. In so far as the

activity is accompanied with the consciousness of the power of the

action to produce the object, it forms an act of choice; if this

consciousness is not conjoined with it, the activity is called a wish.

The faculty of desire, in so far as its inner principle of

determination as the ground of its liking or predilection lies in

the reason of the subject, constitutes the will. The will is therefore

the faculty of active desire or appetency, viewed not so much in

relation to the action- which is the relation of the act of choice- as

rather in relation to the principle that determines the power of

choice to the action. It has, in itself, properly no special principle

of determination, but in so far as it may determine the voluntary

act of choice, it is the practical reason itself.

  Under the will, taken generally, may be included the volitional

act of choice, and also the mere act of wish, in so far as reason

may determine the faculty of desire in its activity. The act of choice

that can be determined by pure reason constitutes the act of

free-will. That act which is determinable only by inclination as a

sensuous impulse or stimulus would be irrational brute choice

(arbitrium brutum). The human act of choice, however, as human, is

in fact affected by such impulses or stimuli, but is not determined by

them; and it is, therefore, not pure in itself when taken apart from

the acquired habit of determination by reason. But it may be

determined to action by the pure will. The freedom of the act of

volitional choice is its independence of being determined by

sensuous impulses or stimuli. This forms the negative conception of

the free-will. The positive conception of freedom is given by the fact

that the will is the capability of pure reason to be practical of

itself. But this is not possible otherwise than by the maxim of

every action being subjected to the condition of being practicable

as a universal law. Applied as pure reason to the act of choice, and

considered apart from its objects, it may be regarded as the faculty

of principles; and, in this connection, it is the source of

practical principles. Hence it is to be viewed as a law-giving

faculty. But as the material upon which to construct a law is not

furnished to it, it can only make the form of the form of the maxim of

the act of will, in so far as it is available as a universal law,

the supreme law and determining principle of the will. And as the

maxims, or rules of human action derived from subjective causes, do

not of themselves necessarily agree with those that are objective

and universal, reason can only prescribe this supreme law as an

absolute imperative of prohibition or command.

  The laws of freedom, as distinguished from the laws of nature, are

moral laws. So far as they refer only to external actions and their

lawfulness, they are called juridical; but if they also require

that, as laws, they shall themselves be the determining principles

of our actions, they are ethical. The agreement of an action with

juridical laws is its legality; the agreement of an action with

ethical laws is its morality. The freedom to which the former laws

refer, can only be freedom in external practice; but the freedom to

which the latter laws refer is freedom in the internal as well as

the external exercise of the activity of the will in so far as it is

determined by laws of reason. So, in theoretical philosophy, it is

said that only the objects of the external senses are in space, but

all the objects both of internal and external sense are in time;

because the representations of both, as being representations, so

far belong all to the internal sense. In like manner, whether

freedom is viewed in reference to the external or the internal

action of the will, its laws, as pure practical laws of reason for the

free activity of the will generally, must at the same time be inner

principles for its determination, although they may not always be

considered in this relation.





     II. THE IDEA AND NECESSITY OF A METAPHYSIC OF MORALS.



  It has been shown in The Metaphysical Principles of the Science of

Nature that there must be principles a priori for the natural

science that has to deal with the objects of the external senses.

And it was further shown that it is possible, and even necessary, to

formulate a system of these principles under the name of a

"metaphysical science of nature," as a preliminary to experimental

physics regarded as natural science applied to particular objects of

experience. But this latter science, if care be taken to keep its

generalizations free from error, may accept many propositions as

universal on the evidence of experience, although if the term

"universal" be taken in its strict sense, these would necessarily have

to be deduced by the metaphysical science from principles a priori.

Thus Newton accepted the principle of the equality of action and

reaction as established by experience, and yet he extended it as a

universal law over the whole of material nature. The chemists go

even farther, grounding their most general laws regarding the

combination and decomposition of the materials of bodies wholly upon

experience; and yet they trust so completely to the universality and

necessity of those laws that they have no anxiety as to any error

being found in propositions founded upon experiments conducted in

accordance with them.

  But it is otherwise with moral laws. These, in contradistinction

to natural laws, are only valid as laws, in so far as they can be

rationally established a priori and comprehended as necessary. In

fact, conceptions and judgements regarding ourselves and our conduct

have no moral significance, if they contain only what may be learned

from experience; and when any one is, so to speak, misled into

making a moral principle out of anything derived from this latter

source, he is already in danger of falling into the coarsest and

most fatal errors.

  If the philosophy of morals were nothing more than a theory of

happiness (eudaemonism), it would be absurd to search after principles

a priori as a foundation for it. For however plausible it may sound to

say that reason, even prior to experience, can comprehend by what

means we may attain to a lasting enjoyment of the real pleasures of

life, yet all that is taught on this subject a priori is either

tautological, or is assumed wholly without foundation. It is only

experience that can show what will bring us enjoyment. The natural

impulses directed towards nourishment, the sexual instinct, or the

tendency to rest and motion, as well as the higher desires of

honour, the acquisition of knowledge, and such like, as developed with

our natural capacities, are alone capable of showing in what those

enjoyments are to be found. And, further, the knowledge thus

acquired is available for each individual merely in his own way; and

it is only thus he can learn the means by which be has to seek those

enjoyments. All specious rationalizing a priori, in this connection,

is nothing at bottom but carrying facts of experience up to

generalizations by induction (secundum principia generalia non

universalia); and the generality thus attained is still so limited

that numberless exceptions must be allowed to every individual in

order that he may adapt the choice of his mode of life to his own

Particular inclinations and his capacity for pleasure. And, after all,

the individual has really to acquire his prudence at the cost of his

own suffering or that of his neighbors the form

  But it is quite otherwise with the principles of morality. They

lay down commands for every one without regard to his particular

inclinations, and merely because and so far as he is free, and has a

practical reason. Instruction in the laws of morality is not drawn

from observation of oneself or of our animal nature, nor from

perception of the course of the world in regard to what happens, or

how men act.* But reason commands how we ought to act, even although

no example of such action were to be found; nor does reason give any

regard to the advantage which may accrue to us by so acting, and which

experience could alone actually show. For, although reason allows us

to seek what is for our advantage in every possible way, and although,

founding upon the evidence of experience, it may further promise

that greater advantages will probably follow on the average from the

observance of her commands than from their transgression, especially

if prudence guides the conduct, yet the authority of her precepts as

commands does not rest on such considerations. They are used by reason

only as counsels, and by way of a counterpoise against seductions to

an opposite course, when adjusting beforehand the equilibrium of a

partial balance in the sphere of practical judgement, in order thereby

to secure the decision of this judgement, according to the due

weight of the a priori principles of a pure practical reason.



  *This holds notwithstanding the fact that the term morals," in Latin

mores, and in German sitten, signifies originally only manners or mode

of life.



  Metaphysics designates any system of knowledge a priori that

consists of pure conceptions. Accordingly, a practical philosophy

not having nature, but the freedom of the will for its object, will

presuppose and require a metaphysic of morals. It is even a duty to

have such a metaphysic; and every man does, indeed, possess it in

himself, although commonly but in an obscure way. For how could any

one believe that he has a source of universal law in himself,

without principles a priori? And just as in a metaphysics of nature

there must be principles regulating the application of the universal

supreme principles of nature to objects of experience, so there cannot

but be such principles in the metaphysic of morals; and we will

often have to deal objectively with the particular nature of man as

known only by experience, in order to show in it the consequences of

these universal moral principles. But this mode of dealing with

these principles in their particular applications will in no way

detract from their rational purity, or throw doubt on their a priori

origin. In other words, this amounts to saying that a metaphysic of

morals cannot be founded on anthropology as the empirical science of

man, but may be applied to it.

  The counterpart of a metaphysic of morals, and the other member of

the division of practical philosophy, would be a moral anthropology,

as the empirical science of the moral nature of man. This science

would contain only the subjective conditions that hinder or favor

the realization in practice of the universal moral laws in human

nature, with the means of propagating, spreading, and strengthening

the moral principles- as by the education of the young and the

instruction of the people- and all other such doctrines and precepts

founded upon experience and indispensable in themselves, although they

must neither precede the metaphysical investigation of the

principles of reason, nor be mixed up with it. For, by doing so, there

would be a great danger of laying down false, or at least very

flexible moral laws, which would hold forth as unattainable what is

not attached only because the law has not been comprehended and

presented in its purity, in which also its strength consists. Or,

otherwise, spurious and mixed motives might be adopted instead of what

is dutiful and good in itself; and these would furnish no certain

moral principles either for the guidance of the judgement or for the

discipline of the heart in the practice of duty. It is only by pure

reason, therefore, that duty can and must be prescribed.

  The higher division of philosophy, under which the division just

mentioned stands, is into theoretical philosophy and practical

philosophy. Practical philosophy is just moral philosophy in its

widest sense, as has been explained elsewhere.* All that is

practicable and possible, according to natural laws, is the special

subject of the activity of art, and its precepts and rules entirely

depend on the theory of nature. It is only what is practicable

according to laws of freedom that can have principles independent of

theory, for there is no theory in relation to what passes beyond the

determinations of nature. Philosophy therefore cannot embrace under

its practical division a technical theory, but only a morally

practical doctrine. But if the dexterity of the will in acting

according to laws of freedom, in contradistinction to nature, were

to be also called an art, it would necessarily indicate an art which

would make a system of freedom possible like the system of nature.

This would truly be a Divine art, if we were in a position by means of

it to realize completely what reason prescribes to us, and to put

the idea into practice.



  *In the Critique of Judgement (1790).





         III. THE DIVISION OF A METAPHYSIC OF MORALS.



  All legislation, whether relating to internal or external action,

and whether prescribed a priori by mere reason or laid down by the

will of another, involves two elements: First, a law which

represents the action that ought to happen as necessary objectively,

thus making the action a duty; second, a motive which connects the

principle determining the will to this action with the mental

representation of the law subjectively, so that the law makes duty the

motive of the action. By the first element, the action is

represented as a duty, in accordance with the mere theoretical

knowledge of the possibility of determining the activity of the will

by practical rules. By the second element, the obligation so to act is

connected in the subject with a determining principle of the will as

such. All legislation, therefore, may be differentiated by reference

to its motive-principle.* The legislation which makes an action a

duty, and this duty at the same time a motive, is ethical. That

legislation which does not include the motive-principle in the law,

and consequently admits another motive than the idea of duty itself,

is juridical. In respect of the latter, it is evident that the motives

distinct from the idea of duty, to which it may refer, must be drawn

from the subjective (pathological) influences of inclination and of

aversion, determining the voluntary activity, and especially from

the latter; because it is a legislation which has to be compulsory,

and not merely a mode of attracting or persuading. The agreement or

non-agreement of an action with the law, without reference to its

motive, is its legality; and that character of the action in which the

idea of duty arising from the law at the same time forms the motive of

the action, is its morality.



  *This ground of division will apply, although the action which it

makes a duty may coincide with another action that may be otherwise

looked at from another point of view. For instance, actions may in all

cases be classified as external.



  Duties specially in accord with a juridical legislation can only

be external duties. For this mode of legislation does not require that

the idea of the duty, which is internal, shall be of itself the

determining principle of the act of will; and as it requires a

motive suitable to the nature of its laws, it can only connect what is

external with the law. Ethical legislation, on the other hand, makes

internal actions also duties, but not to the exclusion of the

external, for it embraces everything which is of the nature of duty.

And just because just because ethical legislation includes within

its law the internal motive of the action as contained in the idea

of duty, it involves a characteristic which cannot at all enter into

the legislation that is external. Hence, ethical legislation cannot as

such be external, not even when proceeding from a Divine will,

although it may receive duties which rest on an external legislation

as duties, into the position of motives, within its own legislation.

  From what has been said, it is evident that all duties, merely

because they are duties, belong to ethics; and yet the legislation

upon which they are founded is not on that account in all cases

contained in ethics. On the contrary, the law of many of them lies

outside of ethics. Thus ethics commands that I must fulfil a promise

entered into by contract, although the other party might not be able

to compel me to do so. It adopts the law (pacta sunt servanda) and the

duty corresponding to it, from jurisprudence or the science of

right, by which they are established. It is not in ethics,

therefore, but in jurisprudence, that the principle of the legislation

lies, that "promises made and accepted must be kept." Accordingly,

ethics specially teaches that if the motive-principle of external

compulsion which juridical legislation connects with a duty is even

let go, the idea of duty alone is sufficient of itself as a motive.

For were it not so, and were the legislation itself not juridical, and

consequently the duty arising from it not specially a duty of right as

distinguished from a duty of virtue, then fidelity in the

performance of acts, to which the individual may be bound by the terms

of a contract, would have to be classified with acts of benevolence

and the obligation that underlies them, which cannot be correct. To

keep one's promise is not properly a duty of virtue, but a duty of

right, and the performance of it can be enforced by external

compulsion. But to keep one's promise, even when no compulsion can

be applied to enforce it, is, at the same time, a virtuous action, and

a proof of virtue. jurisprudence as the science of right, and ethics

as the science of virtue, are therefore distinguished not so much by

their different duties, as rather by the difference Of the legislation

which connects the one or the other kind of motive with their laws.

  Ethical legislation is that which cannot be external, although the

duties it prescribes may be external as well as internal. Juridical

legislation is that which may also be external. Thus it is an external

duty to keep a promise entered into by contract; but the injunction to

do this merely because it is a duty, without regard to any other

motive, belongs exclusively to the internal legislation. It does not

belong thus to the ethical sphere as being a particular kind of duty

or a particular mode of action to which we are bound- for it is an

external duty in ethics as well as in jurisprudence- but it is because

the legislation in the case referred to is internal, and cannot have

an external lawgiver, that the obligation is reckoned as belonging

to ethics. For the same reason, the duties of benevolence, although

they are external duties as obligations to external actions, are, in

like manner, reckoned as belonging to ethics, because they can only be

enjoined by legislation that is internal. Ethics has no doubt its

own peculiar duties- such as those towards oneself- but it bas also

duties in common with jurisprudence, only not under the same mode of

obligation. In short, the peculiarity of ethical legislation is to

enjoin the performance of certain actions merely because they are

duties, and to make the principle of duty itself- whatever be its

source or occasion- the sole sufficing motive of the activity of the

will. Thus, then, there are many ethical duties that are directly

such; and the inner legislation also makes the others- all and each of

them- indirectly ethical.

  The deduction of the division of a system is the proof of its

completeness as well as of its continuity, so that there may be a

logical transition from the general conception divided to the

members of the division, and through the whole series of the

subdivisions without any break or leap in the arrangement (divisio per

saltum). Such a division is one of the most difficult conditions for

the architect of a system to fulfil. There is even some doubt as to

what is the highest conception that is primarily divided into right

and wrong (aut fas aut nefas). It is assuredly the conception of the

activity of the free-will in general. In like manner, the expounders

of ontology start from something and nothing, without perceiving

that these are already members of a division for which the highest

divided conception is awanting, and which can be no other than that of

thing in general.





     IV. GENERAL PRELIMINARY CONCEPTIONS DEFINED AND EXPLAINED.

              (Philosophia practica universalis).



  The conception of freedom is a conception of pure reason. It is

therefore transcendent in so far as regards theoretical philosophy;

for it is a conception for which no corresponding instance or

example can be found or supplied in any possible experience.

Accordingly freedom is not presented as an object of any theoretical

knowledge that is possible for us. It is in no respect a constitutive,

but only a regulative conception; and it can be accepted by the

speculative reason as at most a merely negative principle. In the

practical sphere of reason, however, the reality of freedom may be

demonstrated by certain practical principles which, as laws, prove a

causality of the pure reason in the process of determining the

activity of the will that is independent of all empirical and sensible

conditions. And thus there is established the fact of a pure will

existing in us as the source of all moral conceptions and laws.

  On this positive conception of freedom in the practical relation

certain unconditional practical laws are founded, and they specially

constitute moral laws. In relation to us as human beings, with an

activity of will modified by sensible influences so as not to be

conformable to the pure will, but as often contrary to it, these

laws appear as imperatives commanding or prohibiting certain

actions; and as such they are categorical or unconditional

imperatives. Their categorical and unconditional character

distinguishes them from the technical imperatives which express the

prescriptions of art, and which always command only conditionally.

According to these categorical imperatives, certain actions are

allowed or disallowed as being morally possible or impossible; and

certain of them or their opposites are morally necessary and

obligatory. Hence, in reference to such actions, there arises the

conception of a duty whose observance or transgression is

accompanied with a pleasure or pain of a peculiar kind, known as moral

feeling. We do not, however, take the moral feelings or sentiments

into account in considering the practical laws of reason. For they

do not form the foundation or principle of practical laws of reason,

but only the subjective effects that arise in the mind on the occasion

of our voluntary activity being determined by these laws. And while

they neither add to nor take from the objective validity or

influence of the moral laws in the judgement of reason, such

sentiments may vary according to the differences of the individuals

who experience them.

  The following conceptions are common to jurisprudence and ethics

as the two main divisions of the metaphysic of morals.

  Obligation is the necessity of a free action when viewed in relation

to a categorical imperative of reason. An imperative is a practical

rule by which an action, otherwise contingent in itself, is made

necessary. It is distinguished from a practical law in that such a

law, while likewise representing the action as necessary, does not

consider whether it is internally necessary as involved in the

nature of the agent- say as a holy being- or is contingent to him,

as in the case of man as we find him; for where the first condition

holds good, there is in fact no imperative. Hence an imperative is a

rule which not only represents but makes a subjectively contingent

action necessary; and it, accordingly, represents the subject as being

(morally) necessitated to act in accordance with this rule. A

categorical or unconditional imperative is one which does not

represent the action in any way immediately through the conception

of an end that is to be attained by it; but it presents the action

to the mind as objectively necessary by the mere representation of its

form as an action, and thus makes it necessary. Such imperatives

cannot be put forward by any other practical science than that which

prescribes obligations, and it is only the science of morals that does

this. All other imperatives are technical, and they are altogether

conditional. The ground of the possibility of categorical

imperatives lies in the fact that they refer to no determination of

the activity of the will by which a purpose might be assigned to it,

but solely to its freedom.

  Every action is allowed (licitum) which is not contrary to

obligation; and this freedom not being limited by an opposing

imperative, constitutes a moral right as a warrant or title of

action (facultas moralis). From this it is at once evident what

actions are disallowed or illicit (illicita).

  Duty is the designation of any action to which anyone is bound by an

obligation. It is therefore the subject-matter of all obligation. Duty

as regards the action concerned may be one and the same, and yet we

may be bound to it in various ways.

  The categorical imperative, as expressing an obligation in respect

to certain actions, is a morally practical law. But because obligation

involves not merely practical necessity expressed in a law as such,

but also actual necessitation, the categorical imperative is a law

either of command or prohibition, according as the doing or not

doing of an action is represented as a duty. An action which is

neither commanded nor forbidden is merely allowed, because there is no

law restricting freedom, nor any duty in respect of it. Such an action

is said to be morally indifferent (indifferens, adiaphoron, res

merae facultatis). It may be asked whether there are such morally

indifferent actions; and if there are, whether in addition to the

preceptive and prohibitive law (lex praeceptiva et prohibitiva, lex

mandati et vetiti), there is also required a permissive law (lex

permissiva), in order that one may be free in such relations to act,

or to forbear from acting, at his pleasure? If it were so, the moral

right in question would not, in all cases, refer to actions that are

indifferent in themselves (adiaphora); for no special law would be

required to establish such a right, considered according to moral

laws.

  An action is called an act- or moral deed- in so far as it is

subject to laws of obligation, and consequently in so far as the

subject of it is regarded with reference to the freedom of his

choice in the exercise of his will. The agent- as the actor or doer of

the deed- is regarded as, through the act, the author of its effect;

and this effect, along with the action itself, may be imputed to

him, if be previously knew the law in virtue of which an obligation

rested upon him.

  A person is a subject who is capable of having his actions imputed

to him. Moral personality is, therefore, nothing but the freedom of

a rational being under moral laws; and it is to be distinguished

from psychological freedom as the mere faculty by which we become

conscious of ourselves in different states of the identity of our

existence. Hence it follows that a person is properly subject to no

other laws than those he lays down for himself, either alone or in

conjunction with others.

  A thing is what is incapable of being the subject of imputation.

Every object of the free activity of the will, which is itself void of

freedom, is therefore called a thing (res corporealis).

  Right or wrong applies, as a general quality, to an act (rectum

aut minus rectum), in so far as it is in accordance with duty or

contrary to duty (factum licitum aut illicitum), no matter what may be

the subject or origin of the duty itself. An act that is contrary to

duty is called a transgression (reatus).

  An unintentional transgression of a duty, which is, nevertheless,

imputable to a person, is called a mere fault (culpa). An

intentional transgression- that is, an act accompanied with the

consciousness that it is a transgression- constitutes a crime (dolus).

  Whatever is juridically in accordance with external laws is said

to be just (jus, instum); and whatever is not juridically in

accordance with external laws is unjust (unjustum).

  A collision of duties or obligations (collisio officiorum s.

obligationum) would be the result of such a relation between them that

the one would annul the other, in whole or in part. Duty and

obligation, however, are conceptions which express the objective

practical necessity of certain actions, and two opposite rules

cannot be objective and necessary at the same time; for if it is a

duty to act according to one of them, it is not only no duty to act

according to an opposite rule, but to do so would even be contrary

to duty. Hence a collision of duties and obligations is entirely

inconceivable (obligationes non colliduntur). There may, however, be

two grounds of obligation (rationes obligandi), connected with an

individual under a rule prescribed for himself, and yet neither the

one nor the other may be sufficient to constitute an actual obligation

(rationes obligandi non obligantes); and in that case the one of

them is not a duty. If two such grounds of obligation are actually

in collision with each other, practical philosophy does not say that

the stronger obligation is to keep the upper hand (fortior obligatio

vincit), but that the stronger ground of obligation is to maintain its

place (fortior obligandi ratio vincit).

  Obligatory Laws for which an external legislation is possible are

called generally external laws. Those external laws, the

obligatoriness of which can be recognised by reason a priori even

without an external legislation, are called natural laws. Those

laws, again, which are not obligatory without actual external

legislation, are called positive laws. An external legislation,

containing pure natural laws, is therefore conceivable; but in that

case a previous natural law must be presupposed to establish the

authority of the lawgiver by the right to subject others to obligation

through his own act of will.

  The principle which makes a certain action a duty is a practical

law. The rule of the agent or actor, which he forms as a principle for

himself on subjective grounds, is called his maxim. Hence, even when

the law is one and invariable, the maxims of the agent may yet be very

different.

  The categorical imperative only expresses generally what constitutes

obligation. It may be rendered by the following formula: "Act

according to a maxim which can be adopted at the same time as a

universal law." Actions must therefore be considered, in the first

place, according to their subjective principle; but whether this

principle is also valid objectively can only be known by the criterion

of the categorical imperative. For reason brings the principle or

maxim of any action to the test, by calling upon the agent to think of

himself in connection with it as at the same time laying down a

universal law, and to consider whether his action is so qualified as

to be fit for entering into such a universal legislation.

  The simplicity of this law, in comparison with the great and

manifold consequences which may be drawn from it, as well as its

commanding authority and supremacy without the accompaniment of any

visible motive or sanction, must certainly at first appear very

surprising. And we may well wonder at the power of our reason to

determine the activity of the will by the mere idea of the

qualification of a maxim for the universality of a practical law,

especially when we are taught thereby that this practical moral law

first reveals a property of the will which the speculative reason

would never have come upon either by principles a priori, or from

any experience whatever; and even if it had ascertained the fact, it

could never have theoretically established its possibility. This

practical law, however, not only discovers the fact of that property

of the will, which is freedom, but irrefutably establishes it. Hence

it will be less surprising to find that the moral laws are

undemonstrable, and yet apodeictic, like the mathematical

postulates; and that they, at the same time, open up before us a whole

field of practical knowledge, from which reason, on its theoretical

side, must find itself entirely excluded with its speculative idea

of freedom and all such ideas of the supersensible generally.

  The conformity of an action to the law of duty constitutes its

legality; the conformity of the maxim of the action with the law

constitutes its morality. A maxim is thus a subjective principle of

action, which the individual makes a rule for himself as to how in

fact he will act.

  On the other hand, the principle of duty is what reason

absolutely, and therefore objectively and universally, lays down in

the form of a command to the individual, as to how he ought to act.

  The supreme principle of the science of morals accordingly is

this: "Act according to a maxim which can likewise be valid as a

universal law." Every maxim which is not qualified according to this

condition is contrary to Morality.

  Laws arise from the will, viewed generally as practical reason;

maxims spring from the activity of the will in the process of

choice. The latter in man is what constitutes free-will. The will

which refers to nothing else than mere law can neither be called

free nor not free, because it does not relate to actions

immediately, but to the giving of a law for the maxim of actions; it

is therefore the practical reason itself. Hence as a faculty, it is

absolutely necessary in itself, and is not subject to any external

necessitation. It is, therefore, only the act of choice in the

voluntary process that can be called free.

  The freedom of the act of will, however, is not to be defined as a

liberty of indifference (libertas indifferentae), that, is, as a

capacity of choosing to act for or against the law. The voluntary

process, indeed, viewed as a phenomenal appearance, gives many

examples of this choosing in experience; and some have accordingly

so defined the free-will. For freedom, as it is first made knowable by

the moral law, is known only as a negative property in us, as

constituted by the fact of not being necessitated to act by sensible

principles of determination. Regarded as a noumenal reality,

however, in reference to man as a pure rational intelligence, the

act of the will cannot be at all theoretically exhibited; nor can it

therefore be explained how this power can act necessitatingly in

relation to the sensible activity in the process of choice, or

consequently in what the positive quality of freedom consists. Only

thus much we can see into and comprehend, that although man, as a

being belonging to the world of sense, exhibits- as experience

shows- a capacity of choosing not only conformably to the law but also

contrary to it, his freedom as a rational being belonging to the world

of intelligence cannot be defined by reference merely to sensible

appearances. For sensible phenomena cannot make a super-sensible

object- such as free-will is- intelligible; nor can freedom ever be

placed in the mere fact that the rational subject can make a choice in

conflict with his own law-giving reason, although experience may prove

that it happens often enough, notwithstanding our inability to

conceive how it is possible. For it is one thing to admit a

proposition as based on experience, and another thing to make it the

defining principle and the universal differentiating mark of the act

of free-will, in its distinction from the arbitrium brutum s.

servum; because the empirical proposition does not assert that any

particular characteristic necessarily belongs to the conception in

question, but this is requisite in the process of definition.

Freedom in relation to the internal legislation of reason can alone be

properly called a power; the possibility of diverging from the law

thus given is an incapacity or want of power. How then can the

former be defined by the latter? It could only be by a definition

which would add to the practical conception of the free-will, its

exercise as shown by experience; but this would be a hybrid definition

which would exhibit the conception in a false light.

  A morally practical law is a proposition which contains a

categorical imperative or command. He who commands by a law (imperans)

is the lawgiver or legislator. He is the author of the obligation that

accompanies the law, but he is not always the author of the law

itself. In the latter case, the law would be positive, contingent, and

arbitrary. The law which is imposed upon us a priori and

unconditionally by our own reason may also be expressed as

proceeding from the will of a supreme lawgiver or the Divine will.

Such a will as supreme can consequently have only rights and not

duties; and it only indicates the idea of a moral being whose will

is law for all, without conceiving of him as the author of that will.

  Imputation, in the moral sense, is the judgement by which anyone

is declared to be the author or free cause of an action which is

then regarded as his moral fact or deed, and is subjected to law. When

the judgement likewise lays down the juridical consequences of the

deed, it is judicial or valid (imputatio judiciaria s. valida);

otherwise it would be only adjudicative or declaratory (imputatio

dijudicatoria). That person- individual or collective- who is invested

with the right to impute actions judicially, is called a judge or a

court (judex s. forum).

  When any one does, in conformity with duty, more than he can be

compelled to do by the law, it is said to be meritorious (meritum).

What is done only in exact conformity with the law, is what is due

(debitum). And when less is done than can be demanded to be done by

the law, the result is moral demerit (demeritum) or culpability.

  The juridical effect or consequence of a culpable act of demerit

is punishment (paena); that of a meritorious act is reward (praemium),

assuming that this reward was promised in the law and that it formed

the motive of the action. The coincidence or exact conformity of

conduct to what is due has no juridical effect. Benevolent

remuneration (remuneratio s. repensio benefica) has no place in

juridical relations.

  The good or bad consequences arising from the performance of an

obligated action- as also the consequences arising from failing to

perform a meritorious action- cannot be imputed to the agent (modus

imputation is tollens). The good consequences of a meritorious action-

as also the bad consequences of a wrongful action- may be imputed to

the agent (modus imputation is poneus).

  The degree of the imputability of actions is to be reckoned

according to the magnitude of the hindrances or obstacles which it has

been necessary for them to overcome. The greater the natural

hindrances in the sphere of sense, and the less the moral hindrance of

duty, so much the more is a good deed imputed as meritorious. This may

be seen by considering such examples as rescuing a man who is an

entire stranger from great distress, and at very considerable

sacrifice. Conversely, the less the natural hindrance, and the greater

the hindrance on the ground of duty, so much the more is a

transgression imputable as culpable. Hence the state of mind of the

agent or doer of a deed makes a difference in imputing its

consequences, according as he did it in passion or performed it with

coolness and deliberation.





                              -THE END-

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