Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Of the Ultimate Aim of the Pure Use of our Reason
Reason is impelled by a tendency of its nature to go beyond the field of experience, and to venture in its pure employment and by means of mere ideas to the utmost limits of all knowledge ; nay, it finds no rest until it has fulfilled its course and established an independent and systematic whole of all knowledge. The question is, whether this endeavour rests on the speculative, or rather, exclu- . sively on the practical interests of reason ?
I shall say nothing at present of the success which has attended pure reason in its speculative endeavours, and only ask which are the problems, the solution of which forms its ultimate aim (whether that object be really reached or not), and in relation to which all other problems are only means to an end. These highest aims must again, according to the nature of reason, possess [p. 798] a certain unity in order to advance by their union that interest of humanity which is second to no other.
The highest aim to which the speculation of reason in its transcendental employment is directed comprehends three objects : the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. The purely speculative interest of reason in every one of these three questions is very small, and, for its sake alone, this fatiguing and ceaseless labour of transcendental investigation would hardly have been undertaken, because whatever discoveries may be made, they could never be used
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in a way that would be advantageous in concreto, that is, in the investigation of nature.
Our will may be free, but this would only refer to the intelligible cause of our volition. With regard to the phenomena in which that will manifests itself, that is, our actions, we have to account for them (according to an inviolable maxim without which reason could not be employed for empirical purposes at all), in no other way than for all other phenomena of nature, that is, according to her unchangeable laws.
Secondly^ the spiritual nature of the soul, and with it its immortality, may be understood by us, yet we could not base upon this any explanation, either with regard to the phenomena of this life, or the peculiar nature of a [p. 799] future state, because our concept of an incorporeal nature is purely negative and does not expand our knowledge in the least, nor does it offer any fit material for drawing consequences, except such as are purely fictitious, and could never be countenanced by philosophy.
Thirdly, even admitting that the existence of a highest intelligence had been proved, we might; no doubt, use it in order to make the design in the constitution of the world and its order in general intelligible, but we should never be justified in deriving from it any particular arrangement, or disposition, or in boldly inferring it where it cannot be perceived. For it is a necessary rule for the speculative employment of reason, never to pass by natural causes, and, abandoning what we may learn from experience, to derive something which we know, from something which entirely transcends all our knowledge.
In one word, these three propositions remain always transcendent for speculative reason, and admit of no
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642 Canon of Ptire Reasoji immanent employment, that is, an employment admissible for objects of experience, and therefore of some real utility to ourselves, but are by themselves entirely valueless and yet extremely difficult exertions of our reason.
/ If, therefore, these three cardinal propositions are of no
I use to us, so far as knowledge is concerned, and are yet so
I strongly recommended to us by our reason, their true
I value will probably be connected with our [p. 800]
\practical interests only.
I call practical whatever is possible through freedom. When the conditions of the exercise of our free-will are empirical, reason can have no other but a regulative use, serving only to bring about the unity of empirical laws. Thus, for instance, in the teaching of prudence, the whole business of reason consists in concentrating all the objects of our desires in one, namely, happiness^ and in co-ordinating the means for obtaining it. Reason, therefore, can give us none but pragmatic laws of free action for the attainment of the objects recommended to us by the senses, and never pure laws, determined entirely a priori. Pure practical laws, on the contrary, the object of which is given by reason entirely a priori^ and which convey commands, not under empirical conditions, but absolutely, would be products of pure reason. Such are the moral laws, and these alone, therefore, belong to the sphere of the practical use of reason, and admit of a canon.
All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may be called pure philosophy, are in reality directed to those three problems only. These themselves, however, have a still further object, namely, to know what ought to be donCy if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future world. As this concerns our actions with reference to the
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