RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Practical Reason.
Introductory thoughts: Freedom is the only idea of speculative reason that we can know a priori (291). Freedom is the condition of the moral law. Ideas like God are conditions of the practical use of our pure reason (i.e., God is a limiting concept. You need God to make other ideas work).
To say it another way: God is an application of our will to a determined object.
Problems Kant must solve:
1) He had previously denied that we could know supersensible reality, yet he specifically posits this for morality (the freedom of our will). The thinking subject internally intuits itself as a phenomenon (292).
The imperative: these are rules that I do not make up for myself. They transcend me. It is closer to the realm of causality. A Law is much stronger. It actually determines the will. As such they are categorical.
Theorem I: a principle which presupposes an empirical object of desire can furnish no practical laws (298).
Theorem 2: all material practical principles fall under the category of self-love or private happiness.
A refined pleasure is one that does not wear out and increases our capacity for enjoyment.
Kant proceeds to speak on what is “a good or an evil in itself” (317). That language is surprising, given his agnosticism on knowing anything “in itself.” Kant is cheating. He (rightly) says the moral good “is something whose object is supersensible” (319). He correctly wants to avoid the is-ought fallacy. On the other hand, one wonders how he can possibly know this, given that the supersensible are noumena and off-limits to our knowing. He says by way of conclusion that “It is therefore allowable to use the system of the world of sense as a type of a supersensible system of things” (320). I had always suspected Kant was a secularized Plato. Now I am sure.
Motive: subjective ground of determination (321).
Kant defines personality as “freedom and independence on the mechanism of nature.”
Kant’s most notorious move is his positing God, the soul, and the moral law as postulates of pure reason. He knows he needs these categories in order for his system to work. Unfortunately, they are empty concepts. Kant doesn’t seriously think that God will act in history and bring judgment. Yet that is precisely what Kant’s God would need to do in order for a moral universe to work. At the end of the day, as Nietzsche would later point out, Kant doesn’t really need God at all.
Kant’s take on human freedom and determinism bears our consideration. How can we be free if we live in a Newtonian universe of cause and effect? Kant’s analysis here is quite similar to Jonathan Edwards’. As long as we remain in a time-bound universe, we cannot be free. Kant believes in freedom, though. He maintains that the time-bound universe is the world of appearances, akin to the phenomenal world. You aren’t free in that world. However, you do have a transcendental freedom. Determinism only applies to the sensible world of appearances.
I think he is wrong, but his take isn’t that strange. As Reformed Christians, we hold free will in suspicion, yet we also believe we are active moral agents who make meaningful choices. And if we hold to Edwards’ analysis of determinism, it’s not clear how different we are from Kant, practically speaking.
Kant’s writing is elegant and austere and could have only been written during the Enlightenment. This text is fascinating in some regards because Kant begins to walk back some of his stronger claims in the First Critique.
Introductory thoughts: Freedom is the only idea of speculative reason that we can know a priori (291). Freedom is the condition of the moral law. Ideas like God are conditions of the practical use of our pure reason (i.e., God is a limiting concept. You need God to make other ideas work).
To say it another way: God is an application of our will to a determined object.
Problems Kant must solve:
1) He had previously denied that we could know supersensible reality, yet he specifically posits this for morality (the freedom of our will). The thinking subject internally intuits itself as a phenomenon (292).
The imperative: these are rules that I do not make up for myself. They transcend me. It is closer to the realm of causality. A Law is much stronger. It actually determines the will. As such they are categorical.
Theorem I: a principle which presupposes an empirical object of desire can furnish no practical laws (298).
Theorem 2: all material practical principles fall under the category of self-love or private happiness.
A refined pleasure is one that does not wear out and increases our capacity for enjoyment.
Kant proceeds to speak on what is “a good or an evil in itself” (317). That language is surprising, given his agnosticism on knowing anything “in itself.” Kant is cheating. He (rightly) says the moral good “is something whose object is supersensible” (319). He correctly wants to avoid the is-ought fallacy. On the other hand, one wonders how he can possibly know this, given that the supersensible are noumena and off-limits to our knowing. He says by way of conclusion that “It is therefore allowable to use the system of the world of sense as a type of a supersensible system of things” (320). I had always suspected Kant was a secularized Plato. Now I am sure.
Motive: subjective ground of determination (321).
Kant defines personality as “freedom and independence on the mechanism of nature.”
Kant’s most notorious move is his positing God, the soul, and the moral law as postulates of pure reason. He knows he needs these categories in order for his system to work. Unfortunately, they are empty concepts. Kant doesn’t seriously think that God will act in history and bring judgment. Yet that is precisely what Kant’s God would need to do in order for a moral universe to work. At the end of the day, as Nietzsche would later point out, Kant doesn’t really need God at all.
Kant’s take on human freedom and determinism bears our consideration. How can we be free if we live in a Newtonian universe of cause and effect? Kant’s analysis here is quite similar to Jonathan Edwards’. As long as we remain in a time-bound universe, we cannot be free. Kant believes in freedom, though. He maintains that the time-bound universe is the world of appearances, akin to the phenomenal world. You aren’t free in that world. However, you do have a transcendental freedom. Determinism only applies to the sensible world of appearances.
I think he is wrong, but his take isn’t that strange. As Reformed Christians, we hold free will in suspicion, yet we also believe we are active moral agents who make meaningful choices. And if we hold to Edwards’ analysis of determinism, it’s not clear how different we are from Kant, practically speaking.
Kant’s writing is elegant and austere and could have only been written during the Enlightenment. This text is fascinating in some regards because Kant begins to walk back some of his stronger claims in the First Critique.
