The Critique of Practical Reason — Immanuel Kant
The Critique of Practical Reason, by Immanuel Kant You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Critique of Practical Reason Author : Immanuel Kant Translator : Thomas Kingsmill Abbott Release date : May 1, 2004 [eBook #5683] Most recently updated: January 27, 2021 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5683 Credits : Etext produced by Matthew Stapleton HTML file produced by David Widger *** START OF INTRODUCTION. Of the Idea of a Critique of Practical Reason. FIRST PART — ELEMENTS OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON. BOOK I. The Analytic of Pure Practical Reason. CHAPTER I. Of the Principles of Pure Practical Reason. I. DEFINITION. REMARK. II. THEOREM I. III. THEOREM II. REMARK I. REMARK II. IV. THEOREM II. REMARK. V. PROBLEM I. REMARK. VII. FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF THE PURE PRACTICAL REASON. REMARK. COROLLARY. REMARK. VIII. THEOREM IV. REMARK. REMARK II. Practical Material Principles of Determination taken as the Foundation of Morality, are: I. Of the Deduction of the Fundamental Principles of Pure II. Of the Right that Pure Reason in its Practical use has to an Extension which is not possible to it in its Speculative Use. CHAPTER II. Of the Concept of an Object of Pure Practical Reason. Table of the Categories of Freedom relatively to the Notions of Good Of the Typic of the Pure Practical Judgement. CHAPTER III. Of the Motives of Pure Practical Reason. Critical Examination of the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason. BOOK II. Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason. CHAPTER I. Of a Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason Generally. CHAPTER II. Of the Dialectic of Pure Reason in defining the Conception of the "Summum Bonum". I. The Antinomy of Practical Reason. II. Critical Solution of the Antinomy of Practical Reason. III. Of the Primacy of Pure Practical Reason in its Union with the Speculative Reason. IV. The Immortality of the Soul as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason. V. The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason. VI. Of the Postulates of Pure Practical Reason Generally. VII. How is it possible to conceive an Extension of Pure Reason in a Practical point of view, without its Knowledge as Speculative being enlarged at the same time? VIII. Of Belief from a Requirement of Pure Reason. IX. Of the Wise Adaptation of Man's Cognitive Faculties to his Practical Destination. SECOND PART. -- METHODOLOGY OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON. Methodology of Pure Practical Reason. CONCLUSION. PREFACE. This work is called the Critique of Practical Reason, not of the pure practical reason, although its parallelism with the speculative critique would seem to require the latter term. The reason of this appears sufficiently from the treatise itself. Its business is to show that there is pure practical reason, and for this purpose it criticizes the entire practical faculty of reason. If it succeeds in this, it has no need to criticize the pure faculty itself in order to see whether reason in making such a claim does not presumptuously overstep itself (as is the case with the speculative reason). For if, as pure reason, it is actually practical, it proves its own reality and that of its concepts by fact, and all disputation against the possibility of its being real is futile. With this faculty, transcendental freedom is also established; freedom, namely, in that absolute sense in which speculative reason required it in its use of the concept of causality in order to escape the antinomy into which it inevitably falls, when in the chain of cause and effect it tries to think the unconditioned. Speculative reason could only exhibit this concept (of freedom) problematically as not impossible to thought, without assuring it any objective reality, and merely lest the supposed impossibility of what it must at least allow to be thinkable should endanger its very being and plunge it into an abyss of scepticism. Inasmuch as the reality of the concept of freedom is proved by an apodeictic law of practical reason, it is the keystone of the whole system of pure reason, even the speculative, and all other concepts (those of God and immortality) which, as being mere ideas, remain in it unsupported, now attach themselves to this concept, and by it obtain consistence and objective reality; that is to say, their possibility is proved by the fact that freedom actually exists, for this idea is revealed by the moral law. Freedom, however, is the only one of all the ideas of the speculative reason of which we know the possibility a priori (without, however, understanding it), because it is the condition of the moral law which we know. * The ideas of God and immortality, however, are not conditions of the moral law, but only conditions of the necessary object of a will determined by this law; that is to say, conditions of the practical use of our pure reason. Hence, with respect to these ideas, we cannot affirm that we know and understand, I will not say the actuality, but even the possibility of them. However they are the conditions of the application of the morally determined will to its object, which is given to it a priori, viz., the summum bonum. Consequently in this practical point of view their possibility must be assumed, although we cannot theoretically know and understand it. To justify this assumption it is sufficient, in a practical point of view, that they contain no intrinsic impossibility (contradiction). Here we have what, as far as speculative reason is concerned, is a merely subjective principle of assent, which, however, is objectively valid for a reason equally pure but practical, and this principle, by means of the concept of freedom, assures objective reality and authority to the ideas of God and immortality. Nay, there is a subjective