Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

Reason, in its speculative employment, conducted us through the field of experience, and, as it could find no perfect satisfaction there, from thence to speculative ideas which, however, in the end conducted us back again to experience, and thus fulfilled their purpose in a manner which, though useful, was not at all in accordance with our expectation. We may now have one more trial, namely, to see whether pure reason may be met with in practical use also, and whether thus it may lead to ideas which realise the highest aims of pure reason as we have just stated them, and whether therefore from the point of view of its practical interest, reason may not be able to grant us what it entirely refused to do with regard to its speculative interest.

The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or practical, is concentrated in the three following questions : — [p. 805]

646 Canon of Pure Reason

1. What can I know?

2. What should I do ?

3. What may I hope ?

The first question is purely speculative. We have, as I flatter myself, exhausted all possible answers, and found, at last, that with which no doubt reason must be satisfied, and, except with regard to the practical, has just cause to be satisfied. We remained, however, as far removed from the two great ends to which the whole endeavour of pure reason was really directed as if we had consulted our ease and declined the whole task from the very beginning. So far then as knowledge is concerned, so much is certain and clear that, with regard to these two problems, knowledge can never fall to our lot.

r'l^he second question is purely practical. As such it

1 may come within the cognisance of pure reason, but is,

1 even then, not transcendental, but moral, and cannot, con-

[sequently, occupy our criticism by itself.

The third question, namely, what may I hope for, if I do what I ought to do ? is at the same time practical and theoretical, the practical serving as a guidance to the answer to the theoretical and, in its highest form, speculative question ; for all hoping is directed towards happiness and is, with regard to practical interests and the law of morality, the same as knowing and the law of nature, with regard to the theoretical cognition of things. The former arrives at last at a conclusion that something is [p. 806] (which determines the last possible aim) because something ought to take place ; the latter, that something is (which operates as the highest cause) because something does take place.

Canon of Pnre Reason 647

Happiness is the satisfaction of all our desires, exten- ] sivelyy in regard to their manifoldness, mtensively, in regard to their degree, and protensivefy, in regard to their duration. The practical law, derived from the motive of happiness, I call pragmatical (rule of prudence) ; but the law, if there is such a law, which has no other motive but to deserve to be happy, I call moral (law of morality).

The former advises us what we have to do, if we wish to possess happiness ; the latter dictates how we ought to conduct ourselves in order to deserve happiness. The former is founded on empirical principles, for I cannot know, except by experience, what desires there are which are to be satisfied, nor what are the natural means of satisfying them.

The second takes no account of desires and the natural means of satisfying them, and regards only the freedom of any rational being and the necessary conditions under which alone it can harmonise with the distribution of happiness according to principles. It can therefore be based on mere ideas of pure reason, and known a prio^n.

I assume that there really exist pure moral laws [p. 807] which entirely a priori (without regard to empirical motives, that is, happiness) determine the use of the freedom of any rational being, both with regard to what has to be done and what has not to be done, and that these laws are imperative absolutely (not hypothetically only on the supposition of other empirical ends), and therefore in every respect necessary.

I feel justified in assuming this, by appealing, not only to the arguments of \ the most enlightened moralists, but also to the moral \ judgment of every man, if he only tries to conceive such I a law clearly. — ^^