“Critique of Practical Reason” by Immanuel Kant; Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge 2002 (first published 1788)

PREFACE

3-4 “This Critique is to establish merely that there is pure practical reason, and with this aim it critiques reason’s entire practical power. If it succeeds in this [aim], then it does not need to critique (as does happen with speculative reason) the pure power itself in order to see whether reason is not overreaching itself, by merely claiming such a power. For if as pure reason it is actually practical, then it proves its reality and that of its concepts through the deed, and all subtle reasoning against the possibility of its being practical is futile.”

5 “All other concepts (those of God and immortality) that, as mere ideas, remain unsupported in speculative reason now attach themselves to the concept of freedom and acquire, with it and through it, stability and objective reality. I.e., their possibility is proved by freedom’s being actual, for this idea reveals itself through the moral law.”

7 “it so happens that our power of speculation is not so well off. Those who boast of such lofty cognitions should not keep them back but should exhibit them publicly to be tested and highly esteemed. They wish to prove; very well, let them prove, and the critique will lay all its weaponry at their feet, [acknowledging them] as victors. Quid statis? Nolint. Atqui licet esse beatis.” + 7-8 NOTE 50, WERNER SCHRUTKA PLUHAR “The quote is from Horace’s Satires, I, I, 19. A god (who turns out to be Jupiter), having offered to people unhappy with their lives the opportunity to change places with others, yet finding them reluctant, says to them, “What are you waiting for?” (literally, “Why are you standing still?”), and then comments, “They are not willing; yet they could be happy.””

9 “in inner intuition even the thinking subject is merely an appearance to himself”

14 NOTE 90 “Life is a being’s power to act according to laws of the power of desire. The power of desire is the being’s power to be, through its presentations, [the] cause of the actuality of the objects of these presentations. Pleasure is the presentation of the agreement of the object or of the action with the subjective conditions of life”

15 “those who have only their old system before their eyes and for whom it is already settled beforehand what is to be approved or disapproved are not about to demand a discussion that might stand in the way of their private aim”

16 “To contrive new words where the language already has no lack of expressions for given concepts is a childish endeavor to distinguish oneself from the crowd, it not by new and true thoughts then at least by new patches on the old garment.”

21 “empiricism is based on a felt necessity, but rationalism on a necessity into which one has insight.”

PART 1 DOCTRINE OF THE ELEMENTS OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON

BOOK 1

ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON

CHAPTER I, ON THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON

§ 2 THEOREM I, 32-33 “By the matter of the power of desire I mean an object whose actuality is desired. Now if the desire for this object precedes the practical rule and is the condition for making the rule one’s principle, then, I say, (first), the principal is always empirical. […] (second), a principle that is based only on the subjective condition of receptivity to a pleasure or displeasure ([a receptivity] which can always be cognized only empirically and cannot be valid in the same way for all rational beings) can indeed serve the subject—who possesses this receptivity—as his maxim, but it cannot serve even the subject himself as a law (because it is lacking in objective necessity, which must be cognized a priori); and hence such a principle can never provide a practical law.”

§ 3 THEOREM II, 33 “All material principles—as such—are, one and all, of one and the same kind and belong under the general principle of self-love or one’s own happiness.”

COROLLARY, 37 “To be consistent is the greatest obligation of a philosopher, and yet [consistency] is most rarely encountered. The ancient Greek schools give us more examples of it than we encounter in our syncretistic age, where a certain coalition system of contradictory principles is contrived—[a system] full of insincerity and shallowness—because it commends itself better to a public that is satisfied to know something of everything, and on the whole nothing, while yet being fit for anything.”

COROLLARY, 38 “To be happy is necessarily the longing of every rational but finite being, and hence is an unavoidable determining basis of its power of desire.”

§4 THEOREM III, 41 “it is odd how it could have occurred to intelligent men, [merely] because the desire for happiness and hence also the maxim whereby everyone posits this happiness as the determining basis of his will is universal, to therefore pass this [maxim] off as a universal practical law. For although ordinarily a universal law of nature makes everything accordant, here, if one wanted to give to the maxim the universality of a law, precisely the extreme opposite of accordance would result: the gravest conflict, and the utter annihilation of the maxim itself and of its aim. [^.. 40 maxim:] to increase my assets by every safe means.”

§6 PROBLEM II, 43 “it is the moral law of which we become conscious directly (as soon as we draft maxims of the will for ourselves), which first offers itself to us, and which—inasmuch as reason exhibits it as a determining basis not to be outweighed by any sensible conditions and indeed entirely independent of them—leads straight to the concept of freedom.”

§7 BASIC LAW OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 45-46 “So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle of a universal legislation. […] The consciousness of this basic law may be called a fact of reason, because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason—e.g., from the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given to us)—and because, rather, it thrusts itself upon us on its own as a synthetic a priori proposition not based on any intuition, whether pure or empirical. […] one must note carefully that it is not an empirical fact but the sole fact of pure reason, which thereby announces itself as originally legislative (sic volo, sic iubeo).” + NOTE 78, WERNER SCHRUTKA PLUHAR “’This I will, this I command.’ The quote is from Juvenal, Satires, VI, 223, and is a Roman woman’s retort to her husband, who has dared to object to her demand that an innocent slave be nailed to the cross.”

COROLLARY, 46 “Pure reason is practical by itself alone and gives (to the human being) a universal law, which we call the moral law.”

COROLLARY, 48 “virtue [,] is the highest [result] that finite practical reason can being about. Virtue itself, in turn, at least as a naturally acquired power, can never be complete, because the assurance in such a case never becomes apodeictic certainty and, as persuasion, is very dangerous.”

§8 THEOREM IV, 51 “The exact opposite of the principle of morality is [what results] when the principle of one’s own happiness is made the determining basis of the will”

§8 THEOREM IV, 53 “The maxim of self-love (prudence) merely counsels; the law of morality commands.”

I, ON THE DEDUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 62 “nature in the most general meaning is the existence of things under laws. The sensible nature of rational beings in general is their existence under empirically conditioned laws, and hence is, for reason, heteronomy. The suprasensible nature of the same beings, on the other hand, is their existence according to laws that are independent of any empirical condition and that hence belong to the autonomy of pure reason. And since the laws according to which the existence of things depends on cognition are practical, suprasensible nature, insofar as we can frame a concept of it, is nothing other than a nature under the autonomy of pure practical reason. The law of this autonomy, however, is the moral law, which is therefore the basic law of a suprasensible nature and of a pure world of understanding whose counterpart ought to exist in the world of sense, yet without impairing that world’s laws. The former nature could be called the archetypal nature (natura archetypa), which we cognize merely in reason, whereas the latter—because it contains the possible effect of the idea of the former nature as determining the basis of the will—could be called the ectypal nature (natura ectypa). For in fact the moral law transfers us, in [our] idea, into a nature in which pure reason, if it were accompanied by the physical power adequate to it, would produce the highest good, and determines our will to confer the form [of a world of understanding] on the world of sense as a whole of rational beings.”

I, ON THE DEDUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 63 “consider how the maxim would be if it held as a universal law of nature. […] to accept statements as proof and yet as deliberately untrue is not consistent with the universality of a law of nature.”

I, ON THE DEDUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 66 “the objective reality of the moral law cannot be proved through any deduction, through any endeavor of theoretical reason, speculative or empirically supported, and hence could not, even if one wanted to forgo apodeictic certainty, be confirmed through experience and thus proved a posteriori, and yet it is—on its own—established.” { SECRET }

I, ON THE DEDUCTION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 68 “Pure practical reason now fills this vacant place with a determinate law of causality in an intelligible world (causality through freedom), viz., the moral law.” { SUBLIME OBJECT }

II, ON THE AUTHORITY OF PURE REASON IN ITS PRACTICAL USE TO AN EXPANSION THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR IT IN ITS SPECULATIVE USE, 76 “the concept of an empirically unconditioned causality, although theoretically empty (without an intuition that fits it), is nonetheless always possible and refers to an undetermined object; and in place of this [lacking signification] the concept is nonetheless given signification in the moral law and consequently in a practical reference.”

ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON

CHAPTER II, ON THE CONCEPT OF AN OBJECT OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON

85-86 “these philosophers looked for an object of the will in order to turn it into the matter and basis of a law (this law was then to be the determining basis of the will not directly, but by means of that object applied to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure); instead they should have started by searching for a law that determined the will a priori and directly and that, in conformity with the will, first determined the object. Now, whether they posited this object of pleasure—which was to yield the supreme concept of the good—in happiness, in perfection, in moral feeling, or in the will of God, their principle was always heteronomy and they had to come unavoidably upon empirical conditions for a moral law; for they could call their object—as direct determining basis of the will—good or evil only according to its direct relation to feeling, which is always empirical. Only a formal law, i.e., one that prescribes to reason nothing more than the form of its universal legislation as the supreme condition of maxims, can be a priori a determining basis of practical reason. The ancients, however, betrayed this mistake openly by staking their moral investigation entirely on the determination of the concept of the highest good, hence the concept of an object that they meant afterwards to make the determining basis of the will in the moral law—an object that long thereafter, when the moral law has first been legitimated on its own and justified as direct determining basis of the will—can be presented as object to the will that is now determined a priori in terms of its form; this we shall undertake in the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason. The moderns, among whom the question concerning the highest good has fallen out of use, or at least seems to have become a subordinate matter only, conceal the above mistake (as they do in many other cases) behind indeterminate words; but one can still see it peering forth from their systems, since it then betrays throughout heteronomy of practical reason, from which a moral law that a priori commands universally can never arise.”

ON THE TYPIC OF THE PURE PRACTICAL POWER OF JUDGMENT, 90 “it seems paradoxical to want to find in the world of sense a case which, while to this extent it always falls only under the law of nature, nonetheless permits the application of a law of freedom to it, and to which the suprasensible idea of the morally good to be exhibited in that world in concreto can be applied.”

ON THE TYPIC OF THE PURE PRACTICAL POWER OF JUDGMENT, 93-94 “guarding against the empiricism concerning practical reason is much more important and advisable; for, the mysticism [concerning practical reason] is in fact still compatible with the purity and sublimity of the moral law, and, besides, stretching one’s power of imagination all the way to suprasensible intuitions is not exactly natural and commensurate with the common way of thinking, so that on this side the danger is not so general. By contrast, the empiricism [concerning practical reason] eradicates by the root the morality in attitudes (in which, after all, and not merely in actions, consists the high worth that humanity can and ought to procure for itself through morality), and substitutes for it something entirely different, namely in place of duty an empirical interest, with which inclinations as such traffic among themselves. Precisely because of this, moreover, empiricism—along with all inclinations which (no matter what style they are given) degrade humanity if they are elevated to the dignity of a supreme practical principle, and which are nonetheless so indulgent to everyone’s mentality—is for this reason far more dangerous than any fanaticism, which can never amount to a lasting state of many human beings.”

[ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON]

CHAPTER III, ON THE INCENTIVES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON

95 “Hence for the sake of the moral law and in order to provide it with influence on the will, one must not search for any further incentive in view of which the incentive of the moral law could be dispensed with, because this would bring about nothing but hypocrisy without stability; and it is precarious even to let some further incentives (such as that of advantage) so much as cooperate alongside the moral law.”

101 “Before a lowly, plain common man in whom I perceive righteousness of character in a certain measure that I am not conscious of in myself my spirit bows, whether I want it or not and whether I hold my head ever so high to keep him from overlooking my preeminence.”

101-102 “So little is respect a feeling of pleasure that we give way to it only reluctantly in regard to a human being. We try to discover something [in him] that could lighten the burden of it for us, some blemish to compensate us for the humiliation that comes upon us through such an example. […] Does one suppose that our being so ready to degrade the moral law to [the level of] our familiar inclinations can be ascribed to any other cause—or that everyone’s taking such trouble to turn this law into the favored precept of our well-understood advantage is due to any other causes—than that we wish to be rid of the intimidating respect that holds our own unworthiness so sternly before us? On the other hand, there is nonetheless so little displeasure in respect that, once we have shed our self-conceit and have permitted that respect to have practical influence, we can in turn not take our eyes off the splendor of this law, and the soul believes that it elevates itself to the extent that it sees the holy law elevated above itself and its frail nature.”

106 “It is of the greatest importance in all moral judgments to attend with the utmost exactness to the subjective principles of all maxims, so that all the morality of actions is posited in their necessity from duty and from respect for the law, not [in their necessity] from love and fondness for what the actions are to produce.”

107 “Love God above all and your neighbor as yourself agrees quite well. For as a command it does demand respect for a law that orders love, and does not leave it to one’s discretionary choice to make this love one’s principle.” + NOTE 391 “The principle of one’s own happiness, which some want to turn into the supreme principle of morality, gives rise to an odd contrast with this law; this principle would say: Love yourself above all, but love God and your neighbor for your own sake.”

109-110 “The moral level on which the human being stands (as does, according to all the insight we have, every rational creature as well) is respect for the moral law. The attitude that he is obligated to have in complying with this law is to do so from duty, not from voluntary fondness or even perhaps from an endeavor that on his own he undertakes gladly, without having been ordered to do so; and the moral state in which he can be each time is virtue, i.e., the moral attitude in the struggle, and not holiness in the supposed possession of a complete purity of the will’s attitudes. By exhortation to actions as noble, sublime, and magnanimous, minds are attuned to nothing but moral fanaticism and enhancement of self-conceit. For it leads them into the delusion [which makes it seem] as if it were not duty—i.e., respect for the law whose yoke (which is nonetheless gentle because reason itself imposes it on us) they must bear, even if reluctantly—which amounts to the determining basis of their actions, and which always still humbles them inasmuch as they comply with the law (obey it), but as if these actions were expected of them not from duty but as bare merit. […] For they flatter themselves with a voluntary good nature of their mind—a mind which requires neither spur nor bridle and for which not even a command is needed—and thereby forget their obligation, of which they should, after all, think sooner than of merit. Actions of others which have been done with great sacrifice and, moreover, solely on account of duty, may indeed be praised under the name of noble and sublime deeds, yet even this only insofar as there are indications suggesting that they were done entirely from respect for one’s duty, not from bursts of emotions.”

110 “If only we search carefully, then for all actions that are praiseworthy we shall surely find a law of duty which commands instead of leaving it to our discretion [to choose] what may be to our propensity’s liking.”

111 “Duty!—you sublime, grand name which encompasses nothing that is favored yet involves ingratiation, but which demands submission, yet also does not seek to move the will by threatening anything that would arouse natural aversion in the mind and terrify, but merely puts forth a law that on its own finds entry into the mind and yet gains grudging veneration (even if not always compliance), a law before which all inclinations fall silent even if they secretly work against it: what origin is worthy of you, and where does one find the root of your noble descent that proudly rejects all kinship with inclinations, the root from which to be descended is the irremissible condition of that worth which human beings alone can give themselves?”

112 “The moral law is holy (inviolable). The human being is indeed unholy enough, but the humanity in his person must be holy to him. In all of creation everything one wants and over which one has any power can also be used merely as a means; only the human being, and with him every rational creature, is a purpose in itself. For by virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the subject of the moral law, which is holy. Precisely on account of this autonomy, every will, even every person’s own will directed to himself, is restricted to the condition of harmony with the autonomy of a rational being, viz., the condition not to subject such a being to any aim that is not possible in accordance with a law that could arise from the will of the subject himself who undergoes [the action], thus never to use this subject merely as a means but [always] at the same time as himself a purpose.”

112-113 “Has not every even moderately honest man sometimes found that he abstained from an otherwise harmless lie by which he could either have extricated himself from an irksome transaction or even procured a benefit for a beloved and deserving friend, merely in order not to have to despise himself secretly in his own eyes?”

113-114 “The venerability of duty is not concerned with the enjoyment of life; it has its own law, also its own tribunal, and however much one tried to shake them together in order to hand their mixture—as a medicine, as it were—to the sick soul, they yet promptly separate on their own; and if they do not, then the first [ingredient] is not effective at all, and even if physical life were to gain some force in this, yet the moral life would fade away irrecoverably.”

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 116 “the unavoidable need of human reason [.] finds full satisfaction only in a completely systematic unity of its cognitions.”

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 116 “pure reason without the admixture of any empirical determining basis is practical by itself alone, this [fact] one had to be able to establish from the commonest practical use of reason, by authenticating the supreme practical principle as a principle that every human reason cognizes—as completely a priori, dependent on no sensible data—as the supreme law of its will.”

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 118-119 “the distinction of the doctrine of happiness from the doctrine of morals, in the first of which empirical principles amount to the whole foundation whereas in the second they amount not even to the slightest addition to it […] this distinction of the principle of happiness from that of morality is not therefore at once an opposition between the two, and pure practical reason does not want us to give up our claims to happiness, but wants only that as soon as duty is at issue we take no account of them at all. In a certain regard it can even be a duty to attend to one’s happiness, partly because happiness (to which belong skill, health, wealth) contains means to the fulfillment of one’s duty, partly because the lack of it (e.g., poverty) contains temptations to transgress one’s duty. Only the furtherance of one’s happiness can never directly be a duty, still less a principle of all duty.”

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 125-126 “one can grant that if it were possible for us to have so deep an insight into a human being’s way of thinking—as this manifests itself through internal as well as external actions—that we would become acquainted with every incentive to actions, even with the slightest, and likewise with all external promptings affecting these incentives, then we would calculate a human being’s conduct for the future with certainty, just like any lunar or solar eclipse, and nonetheless also assert that the human being is free.”

CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE ANALYTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 131 “If a science is to be promoted, all difficulties must be uncovered, and those that may still lie hidden in its way must even be sought out; for, every difficulty calls forth a remedy that cannot be found without providing the science with an increase either in range or in determinateness, and thus even obstacles become means for furthering the thoroughness of science. By contrast, if the difficulties are intentionally covered up, or removed merely through palliatives, then sooner or later they break out in incurable bad [consequences] that bring the science to ruin in a complete skepticism.”

BOOK II

DIALECTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON

CHAPTER I, ON A DIALECTIC OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON AS SUCH

137-138 “all concepts of things must be referred to intuitions, which for us human beings can never be other than sensible and which therefore allow us to cognize objects not as things in themselves but merely as appearances […] But this illusion would never be noticed as deceptive if it did not betray itself on its own through a conflict that reason has with itself in applying to appearances its principles of presupposing the unconditioned for everything conditioned. Through this [conflict], however, reason is compelled to explore this illusion—from which it arises and how it can be removed—and this cannot be done except through a complete critique of the entire pure power of reason. Thus the antinomy of pure reason, which becomes manifest in pure reason’s dialectic, is in fact the most beneficial straying into which human reason could ever have fallen, because it ultimately impels us to seek the key to get out of this labyrinth—the key which, when found, also uncovers what one did not seek and yet requires, namely an outlook into a higher, unchangeable order of things; we already are in this order of things now, and from now on we can be instructed by determinate precepts to pursue our existence in it in conformity with the highest vocation of reason.”

138 “philosophy […] was understood by the ancients [… as] an instruction [directed] to the concept wherein the highest good is to be posited and to the conduct whereby this good is to be acquired. We would do well to leave this word in its ancient meaning, as [signifying] a doctrine of the highest good insofar as reason endeavors therein to attain to science.”

139 “the sincerely performed and unconcealed contradictions of pure practical reason with itself compel us to undertake a complete critique of that reason’s own ability”

CHAPTER II, ON A DIALECTIC OF PURE REASON IN DETERMINING THE CONCEPT OF THE HIGHEST GOOD

II, CRITICAL ANNULMENT OF THE ANTINOMY OF PRACTICAL REASON, 145 “In the antinomy of pure speculative reason we find a similar conflict between natural necessity and freedom in the causality of events in the world. It was annulled by proving that the conflict is not a true one if the events and even the world in which they occur are regarded (as indeed they ought to be) only as appearances.”

II, CRITICAL ANNULMENT OF THE ANTINOMY OF PRACTICAL REASON, 147 “a righteous person cannot think himself happy if he is not first conscious of his righteousness; for, with that [virtuous] attitude, the reprimands—which his own way of thinking would compel him to cast upon himself in the case of transgressions—and the moral self-condemnation would rob him of all enjoyment of the agreeableness that his state might otherwise contain”

II, CRITICAL ANNULMENT OF THE ANTINOMY OF PRACTICAL REASON, 148-149 “in order to make him virtuous in the first place, and hence even before he assesses the moral worth of his existence [as being] so high, can one then indeed extol to him the tranquility of soul that will arise from the consciousness of a righteousness for which, after all, he has [as yet] no mind?
But, on the other hand, here the basis for an error of subreption (vitium subreptionis) and, as it were, for an optical illusion always lies in the self-consciousness of what one does, as distinguished from what one senses, an illusion that even the most tested person cannot completely avoid. The moral attitude is linked necessarily with a consciousness of the will’s being determined directly by the law. Now, the consciousness of a determination of our power of desire is always the basis of a liking for the action produced by this [determination]. But this pleasure, this liking in itself, is not the determining basis of the action; rather, the will’s being determined directly, by reason alone, is the basis of the feeling of pleasure, and this determination remains a purely practical, not aesthetic, determination of the power of desire. Now, since this determination has inwardly precisely the same effect—that of an impulse to activity—which a feeling of agreeableness expected from the desired action would have had, we easily look upon what we ourselves do as something that we merely passively feel, and take the moral incentive for a sensible impulse, just as always happens in the so-called illusion of the senses (here, of the inner sense). It is something very sublime in human nature to be determined to actions directly by a law of pure reason, and so is even the illusion of regarding the subjective [element] of this intellectual determinability of the will as something aesthetic and as an effect of a special sensible feeling (for an intellectual feeling would be a contradiction). It is also of great importance to call attention to this property of our personality and to cultivate as best we can the effect of reason on this feeling. But one must also be on guard against degrading and disfiguring the proper and genuine incentive, the law itself, through spurious laudations of this moral determining basis as incentive, by founding it on feelings of special joys as its bases (although they are only consequences)—by means of a false foil, as it were. Respect, and not the gratification of enjoyment and happiness, as something for which no antecedent feeling laid at the basis of reason is possible (because such a feeling would always be aesthetic and pathological), and as consciousness of the direct necessitation of the will by the law, is hardly an analogue of the feeling of pleasure, although in relation to the power of desire it does exactly the same, but from different sources. Only through this way of conceiving [respect], however, can one attain what one seeks, viz., that actions be done not merely in conformity with duty (as a consequence of agreeable feelings) but from duty, which must be the true purpose of all moral molding.”

II, CRITICAL ANNULMENT OF THE ANTINOMY OF PRACTICAL REASON, 149 “self-satisfaction [.] in its proper meaning always implies only a negative liking for one’s existence, a liking in which one is conscious of needing nothing. Freedom, and the consciousness of it as a power to comply with the moral law with an over-weighing attitude, is independence from inclinations—independence from them at least as motivating causes determining (even if not as affecting) our desire—and insofar as I am conscious of this freedom in complying with my moral maxims, it is the sole source of an unchangeable satisfaction linked necessarily with it and resting on no special feeling, and this satisfaction can be called intellectual.”

IV, THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL, AS A POSTULATE OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 155 “Complete adequacy of the will to the moral law [.] is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being in the world of sense is capable at any point of time in his existence. Since this adequacy is nonetheless demanded as practically necessary, it can be encountered only in a progression proceeding ad infinitum toward that complete adequacy; and according to principles of pure practical reason it is necessary to assume such a practical advance as the real object of our will.
This infinite progression, however, is possible only on the presupposition of an existence and personality—of the same rational being—continuing ad infinitum (which is called the immortality of the soul). Therefore the highest good is practically possible only on the presupposition of the immortality of the soul, and hence this immortality, as linked inseparably with the moral law, is a postulate of pure practical reason”

V, THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, AS A POSTULATE OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 159 “it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God.”

V, THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, AS A POSTULATE OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 161-162 NOTE 151 “The ideas of the Cynics, the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Christians are [respectively] natural simplicity, prudence, wisdom, and holiness. With regard to the path for arriving at them, the Greek philosophers differed as much from one another inasmuch as the Cynics found the common human understanding sufficient for this, the others only the path of science, [but] thus both, after all, the mere use of [our] natural powers. Christian morality, because it sets up its precept (as much indeed be done) [as] so pure and unforbearing, deprives the human being of the confidence of being fully adequate to it, at least here in life, but yet also uplifts it again by [the prospect] that if we act as well as is within our power, we can hope that what is not within our power will be accorded to us from elsewhere, whether or not we know in what way. Aristotle and Plato differed only with regard to the origin of our moral concepts.”

V, THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, AS A POSTULATE OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 162 “Virtue is a lawful attitude based on respect for the law, and hence is a consciousness of a continual propensity to transgression or at least to impurity, i.e., to an admixture of many spurious (not moral) motives for complying with the law. Hence virtue is a self-esteem combined with humility.”

V, THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, AS A POSTULATE OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON, 164-165 “morality is properly the doctrine not of how we are to make ourselves happy but of how we are to become worthy of happiness.”

VI, ON THE POSTULATES OF PURE PRACTICAL REASON AS SUCH, 169-170 “how freedom is even possible and how we are to present this kind of causality theoretically and positively—into this we do not thereby have insight; rather, that there is such freedom is only being postulated through the moral law and for its sake. The situation is the same with the other ideas: no human understanding will ever fathom them as regards their possibility; nor, however, will any sophistry ever wrest from the conviction of even the commonest human being that they are not true concepts.”

VIII, ON ASSENT FROM A NEED OF PURE REASON, 180-181 “a need of pure practical reason is based on a duty to make something (the highest good) the object of my will in order to further it with all my powers; in doing so, however, I must presuppose the possibility of this [highest good], and hence also the conditions for this, viz., God, freedom, and immortality, because I cannot prove these—although also not refute them—by my speculative reason. This duty is based on a law that is independent of these latter presuppositions and apodeictically certain, namely the moral law, and is to this extent not in need of any further support by a theoretical opinion concerning the intrinsic character of things, the secret aim of the world order, or a governor presiding over it, in order to obligate us most perfectly to unconditionally lawful actions. But the subjective effect of this law, viz., the attitude, adequate to it and also necessary through it, to further the practically possible highest good, nonetheless presupposes at least that this good is possible; otherwise striving for the object—of a concept that basically would be empty and without an object—would be impossible practically. Now, the above postulates pertain only to the physical or metaphysical conditions—in a word, those lying in the nature of things—for the possibility of the highest good, but for the sake not of a discretionary speculative aim but of a practically necessary purpose of the pure rational will. Here the will does not choose, but rather obeys an unremitting command of reason. This command has its basis objectively in the character of things as these must be judged universally by pure reason, and is by no means based on inclination, which is in no way entitled immediately to assume, for the sake of what we wish on merely subjective bases, that the means to it are possible, or perhaps even that the object is actual. This is, therefore, a need for an absolutely necessary aim, and it justifies its presupposition not merely as a permitted hypothesis, but as a postulate for a practical aim; and, granted that the pure moral law unremittingly obligates everyone as a command (not as a rule of prudence), the righteous person may indeed say: I will that there be a God, that my existence in this world be even apart from the natural connection also an existence in a pure world of understanding, and finally that my duration be endless; I abide by this, and shall not let this faith be taken from me; for, this is the only [case] where my interest, because I must not remit anything of it, unavoidably determines my judgment, without paying attention to subtle reasonings, however little I may be able to answer them or oppose them with more plausible ones.”

VIII, ON ASSENT FROM A NEED OF PURE REASON, 182 “surely no one can wish to maintain that a worthiness—commensurate to the moral law—of rational beings in the world to be happy, as combined with a possession of happiness proportionate to worthiness, is in itself impossible.”

VIII, ON ASSENT FROM A NEED OF PURE REASON, 183 “according to a mere course of nature in the world [a] happiness precisely commensurate to the moral worth is not to be expected and is to be considered impossible, and that therefore from this standpoint the possibility of the highest good can be granted only on the presupposition of a moral originator of the world.”