David Hume's "Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding"."The Discourse on Method by René Descartes."John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding".A longer version of this article can be here.
A) Presentation
It was Alfred North Whitehead who asserted that Western philosophy is nothing more than footnotes to the Dialogues by Plato. It may be an exaggeration, but I think the only thing missing from the Dialogues was the idea of the Critique of Practical Reason, and that if I were allowed to save only two philosophical books in a shipwreck, I would save the *Dialogues* and the *Critique*.
In the previous one Critique of Pure Reason, The reality of God was not ruled out, remaining a possibility since the idea of God is posited as an a priori principle or pure idea of our speculative reason. Perhaps the author was aware that he might not live long enough to write this second critique, which counters the apparent agnosticism of the first, since he announces his argument in the observation, toward the end, that it is not that this is my duty because God commands it, but rather that, because I know this is my duty, I know that there is a God and that He commands me to do so.”.
This second Critique begins with the obvious, that on which all schools of ethics agree: the will tends toward the good; that is, everyone who acts does so for the sake of some good, since even a murder is committed because reason, in its practical application, has determined the murderer’s will by presenting the potential crime as a good.
These determinations of our will in practical reason can be personal maxims—which we do not regard as binding on everyone—such as a resolution to exercise first thing in the morning, or they can be universal maxims or moral norms, which we understand to be binding on everyone. This is a form of practical reason that is pure—that is, a priori and therefore universal—since it is part of human nature, where “a priori” means that it precedes any specific arrangement of our practical reason, such as the resolution to exercise. And when we say that it is pure volition, we mean that it is present as a norm for all our concrete volitions.
The dictates of pure practical reason are not provable; they cannot be deduced from prior knowledge, since, on the contrary, they serve as our starting point for demonstrating the morality of our specific actions.
The most universal of these maxims is the categorical imperative—the one that summarizes the moral law in our conscience as an a priori guide for our actions, that moral principle from which all others are derived:
"”Act in such a way that the maxim of your will could always serve at the same time as the principle of a universal law."
In other words, let your conduct be the universal standard. This is Jesus“ golden rule, which encompasses the Law and the Prophets, but in a philosophical version that emphasizes its universality, since Jesus” “as you would have others treat you” is equivalent to “as you believe everyone ought to act” in Kant’s formulation.
For example, regarding deceit: “Everyone knows that if he secretly allows himself to deceive, that does not mean he permits everyone else to deceive, or that if he behaves unkindly, without anyone noticing, that does not mean everyone will immediately turn against him with that same attitude. If the maxim of action is not of such a nature that it withstands the test of being a law of nature in general, it is morally untenable. Even the most ordinary mind judges this way, for the law of nature always underlies all its judgments, even the most ordinary ones.”.
The question that immediately follows is why the moral law is binding. Every man knows the answer: because it is my duty. Its coercive power is based on feeling: an inexorable feeling of self-contempt if one acts contrary to one’s duty, and an equally inexorable feeling of respect for others when they fulfill theirs: “In the presence of a man of low and ordinary standing in whom I perceive a rectitude of character to a degree of which I am not aware in myself, I will bow my spirit, whether I want to or not, even if I were to hold my head high to remind him of my superiority (…) Respect is the tribute we cannot deny to merit, whether we like it or not.” This last remark—“whether we like it or not”—is precisely the reason why this is an a priori principle of the will.
This raises the question that has historically distinguished ethical systems in philosophy: what is the Supreme Good—that is, what is the ultimate goal of human actions—the pursuit of virtue or the pursuit of happiness? Epicurus, three centuries before Christ, replied that humans strive—or should strive—for happiness, but he did not thereby diminish the importance of virtue, since he understood that a virtuous life is the way to achieve happiness. Shortly thereafter, the Stoics viewed virtue as the ultimate end, the Supreme Good toward which humans must strive, with happiness serving as a consequence—a kind of reward from nature—of a virtuous life.
Immanuel will vigorously oppose both schools of thought, rejecting the equation they both uphold—“a virtuous life = a happy life”—and to illustrate this, he cites the example of a courtier of Henry VIII. The king asked him to give false testimony against Anne Boleyn, so that he could have her executed and marry Jane Seymour. The courtier refused, and the king took his revenge by finding people who falsely testified against him with evidence so convincing that even his own family believed it. As that courtier climbed the steps to the scaffold, would he have considered himself to have acted virtuously? Yes, without a doubt. Would he consider his life to have been a happy one? Certainly not, and this proves that virtue does not always lead to happiness. But he would climb the steps “pleased with himself,” and he would do it all over again. (Emily Dickinson: “My soul—it accused me—and it was a torment—/ as if tongues of diamond were insulting me./ Everyone else accused me—and I smiled—/ My soul—that morning—was my friend—“)
This is how Kant believes that both Epicureans and Stoics, by equating virtue with happiness, lost sight of God and the immortality of the soul—that which man receives through his sense of duty and his innermost longing for happiness. This is how, in practical reason, Kant recovers the inner awareness of the reality of God—a God who legislates and rewards our free actions, to whom we are morally accountable: the God of religion. This explains why God, freedom (causality), and immortality remained only as possibilities when, in his earlier Critique, he dealt with speculative reason: “I cannot, therefore, accept God, freedom, and immortality in support of the necessary practical use of my reason without, at the same time, depriving speculative reason of its claim to exaggerated knowledge (…) So I had to delete the saber to make room for the faith” (the underlining is Kant’s own).
“Make room for faith”—that is why God has appeared in our minds only as an a priori idea, in a Critique of pure reason in that nothing has been said about its reality, nor anything against it; it has simply remained a possibility. The same is true of the concepts of the Self and the World, and of the interaction between them known as causality: the world causes the impressions that give rise to my knowledge of it, and I am the true cause—and therefore responsible for my actions upon the world, and thus morally responsible. Thus, freedom, too, had remained a mere possibility in the previous Review and is now being revived in the Critique of Practical Reason.
And at this point, the pious Prussian wonders whether nature has not acted like a stepmother by presenting to us the reality of God and the immortality of the soul solely through action, leaving them beyond the reach of our speculative reason. He responds in depth that nature has rather acted as a provident mother, for otherwise the driving force behind our actions would have been the desire for reward, rather than the noble and selfless sense of duty.
This entirely new and remarkable ethical framework—which has defined the best of the German spirit—not, of course, the spirit that promoted National Socialism, but rather the spirit that had to endure it—concludes with a “methodology of practical reason” that is deeply inspiring for our work as educators. It observes that we all have an innate interest in morality (we doze off during a lecture on ethics, but as soon as a practical case is mentioned, we wake up, because that is what truly interests everyone). The methodology, then, for cultivating practical reason, should not consist of teaching what is moral and what is not—since young people already know that—but rather in telling morally charged stories. Take, for example, that story of King Henry, Anne Boleyn, and the courtier, in which the young person listening discovers—without anyone having to tell them—where good lies and where evil lies, where heroism lies and where ignominy lies, and will engrave this early in their heart.
The play ends. To the reader who read that Critique of Pure Reason where his knowledge of the outside world and its laws was examined, and he has now read this Critique of Practical Reason Having analyzed his inner world and his understanding of its laws, Immanuel Kant directs his unforgettable final words:
“Two realities fill the mind with ever-new and growing admiration and respect, and all the more so the more frequently and carefully one reflects on them: above me, the starry sky; within me, the moral law.”.
B) Critique
It is difficult to criticize the only philosophy book on whose pages one has shed tears, but, like Socrates in that discourse on Love at the end of *The Symposium*, I will not remain silent about what I find negative in it—that would be praise, and here I seek only the truth—nor will I remain silent about the positive aspects, as if I were taking a stand against the integrity of the German philosopher.
To begin with, let us say that Kant’s proposal for accessing divinity, the immortality of the soul, and that freedom through which we are morally responsible—by means of a new philosophical path that is essentially distinct from those considered in ancient thought and Scholasticism. Beyond access to God through the realm of being and through the order we find in nature, we are faced with the knowledge we have of Him in the moral order. The path followed since antiquity had been the philosophical interpretation of Romans 1:20: ”When pagans, though without the Law, naturally fulfill the precepts of the Law, these people, though they do not possess the Law, remain within the Law. They demonstrate the reality of this law inscribed in the heart, attested to by the testimony of their conscience, as well as by the inner judgments of approval or praise that people make of one another.” The approach that Immanuel Kant now introduces into philosophy, however, will be an echo of Romans 2:14–16: ”When pagans, who do not have the Law, naturally fulfill the requirements of the Law, these people, though they do not have the Law, are under the Law. They demonstrate the reality of this law written on the heart, attested to by the testimony of their conscience, as well as by the inner judgments of approval or praise that people make of one another, and this will be evident on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secret things of men through Jesus Christ.”.
But I cannot deny that it has been devastating for philosophy that Kant—with a noticeable Lutheran bias—has declared the realities of God, the world, and of the self to be inaccessible to speculative reason, appearing in it as pure or preconceived ideas of reason, not as something conveyed to us by external reality. One might argue that this is not important, since Kant recovers these realities in practical reason, but this is not a zero-sum game between the positive and the negative: what remains at the end of his philosophical move is that being appears in the realm of the will, whereby the will comes to occupy the place of being. This will be the implicit move in the contemporary philosophers who follow him: when Schopenhauer views the world as will—with the will being that which is represented in knowledge—; when Marx states that the world must not be explained but transformed; and when Nietzsche discards philosophy in favor of the will to power.
A division has arisen among contemporary interpreters of Thomism regarding the Kantian conception of moral law as an a priori principle of the will—the law inscribed in our hearts, according to the Pauline quotation—depending on whether they view Aquinas as closer to the ancient Aristotle or to the modern Kant. The more Aristotelian Thomists maintain that natural law is in being—hence its name, since it is in nature—and that we recognize it by knowing being, as that which accords with the natural order of things, this being the guide for our moral discourse. Those closer to Kant, on the other hand—generally Thomists of German origin—view this position as pagan and at odds with the spirit of Romans 2:14–16. For them, Thomas speaks of natural law because it is in human nature as a light that illuminates what we know, enabling us to see its reason or moral species (just as the active intellect illuminates what we perceive to make it an “intelligible species”). They cite in support of this the *Summa Theologica*, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2:
“Many ask, “Who will show us what is good?“” And in answer to this question, [Psalm 4:6] says: ‘The light of your face, Lord, has been imprinted on our minds,’ as if the light of natural reason, by which we discern good and evil—such is the purpose of natural law—were nothing other than the imprint of divine light within us. It is therefore evident that natural law is nothing more than the participation of the eternal law in rational creatures.
The International Theological Commission has weighed in on the issue, finding merit in both interpretations of Thomism: It recalls the distinction between first and second moral norms—that is, between the general dictates of conscience and those more specific ones in which conscience must determine the moral rationale for concrete situations. The former would indeed be the innate moral law inscribed in our hearts, but for the latter, we would have to reason about the specific applications of those general dictates, since there is no Jiminy Cricket in our conscience to tell us at every moment what we must do, without our having to stop and reflect.
Complutense University of Madrid. SCS-Spain.
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