The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Thus, although what is essential in reason (to koyifiop, 17 <ppovr)cn<i, ratio, raison, Vemunft) was, on the whole and in general, rightly understood by all philosophers of all ages, though not sharply enough defined nor reduced to one point, yet it was not so clear to them what the understanding (vow, Siavota, intellcdus, esprit, Verstand) is. Therefore they often confuse it with reason, and just on this account they did not attain to a thoroughly complete, pure, and simple explanation of the nature of the latter. With the Christian philosophers the conception of reason received an entirely extraneous, subsidiary meaning through the opposition of it to revelation. Starting, then, from this, many are justly of opinion that the knowledge of the duty of virtue is possible from mere reason, ♦.«., without revelation. Indeed this aspect of the matter certainly had influence upon Kant's exposition and language. But this opposition is properly of positive, historical significance, and is therefore for philosophy a foreign element, from which it must keep itself free.
We might have expected that in his critiques of theoretical and practical reason Kant would have started with an exposition of the nature of reason in general, and, after
p. 143
he had thus defined the genus, would have gone on to the explanation of the two species, showing how one and the same reason manifests itself in two such different ways, and yet, by retaining its principal characteristic, proves itself to be the same. But we find nothing of all this.
1 have already shown how inadequate, vacillating, and inconsistent are the explanations of the faculty he is criticising, which he gives here and there by the way in the " Critique of Pure Reason. The practical reason appears in the " Critique of Pure Reason " without any introduction, and afterwards stands in the " Critique " specially devoted to itself as something already established.
No further account of it is given, and the use of language of all times and peoples, which is treated with contempt, and the definitions of the conception given by the greatest of earlier philosophers, dare not lift up their voices.
In general, we may conclude from particular passages that Kant's opinion amounts to this : the knowledge of principles a priori is the essential characteristic of reason : since now the knowledge of the ethical significance of action is not of empirical origin, it also is an a priori principle, and accordingly proceeds from the reason, and therefore thus far the reason is practical.
I have already spoken enough of the incorrectness of this explanation of reason. But, independently of this, how superficial it is, and what a want of thoroughness it shows, to make use here of the single quality of being independent of experience in order to combine the most heterogeneous things, while overlooking their most essential and immeasurable difference in other respects.
For, even assuming, though we do not admit it, that the knowledge of the ethical significance of action springs from an imperative lying in us, an unconditioned ought, yet how fundamentally different would 3uch an imperative be from those universal forms of knoioledge of which, in the " Critique of Pure Reason," Kant proves that we are conscious a priori, and by virtue of ffhich consciousness we can assert beforehand an unconf44 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.
ditioned must, valid for all experience possible for ua. But the difference between this must, this necessary form of all objects which is already determined in the subject, and that ought of morality is so infinitely great and palpable that the mere fact that they agree in the one particular that neither of them is empirically known may indeed be made use of for the purpose of a witty comparison, but not as a philosophical justification for regarding their origin as the same.
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.