Remember:
 start, clue, origin vs. determining ground

Empirically Real, Transcendentally Ideal
Terminology-based exposition of Practical Reason, Analytic, Chapters 1 (con’t), 2-3
FREEDOM AS IDEA in CPR, CPR2 (38-41)

CPR – speculative/theoretical reason secures Freedom as a Noumena (negative), but could not enlarge our knowledge using it (it provides no cognition); we thought it as a necessary idea of reason beyond sensible nature and laws of nature as mechanism

CPR2 – practical reason furnishes the sensible world with our supersensible nature (the form of our intelligence/pure understanding), and our actions in conformity with this supersensible nature (moral law, i.e. law of freedom) provide evidence of the reality (not just think-ability) of freedom (positive).
SUPERSENSIBLE NATURE (38-39)
 simply means, not reducible or possible to experience within the limits of sensibility
 technically, it indicates “a nature under the autonomy of pure practical reason” (38); the law of this autonomy = moral law
 our will introduces order: “we are conscious through reason of a law [moral law] to which all our maxims [individual material desires] are subject, as if a natural order must at the same time arise from our will” (39)
IMPOSSIBLE DEDUCTION, PARADOX (41-44)

No deductions are possible – moral law cannot be proven by any deduction by theoretical reason or speculative reason empirically supported. This is because it is a “fact of reason” – the very ability to apply intelligence in experience (in any capacity) via reasoning has, as a necessary condition, a supersensible nature that is autonomous and free.

The Paradox – the moral law serves as the principle of the deduction of our “inscrutable faculty”
[free will] that is subject to that moral law

See p.43-4 “For, if reason sought to [….]”
MORAL LAW: CAUSALITY THROUGH FREEDOM
 “The moral law is, in fact, a law of causality through freedom and hence a law of the possibility of a supersensible nature” (42)
 “The moral law determines that which speculative philosophy had to leave undetermined [as noumenon, due to our limitations in sensibility and understanding], namely the law for a causality the concept of which was only negative in the latter [speculative philosophy], and thus for the first time provides objective reality to this concept [of freedom]” (42, my brackets)
KANT & HUME (44-47)
-Kant recaps how CPR solved Hume’s skepticism first with respect to possible experience, and then moves into how CPR2 relates.
NEW RELATION: UNDERSTANDING AND REASON (48)

In theoretical reasoning (cognition), Understanding stood in relation to Objects


In practical reasoning (action), Understanding stands in relation to another faculty: Desire (Will)
See p.48 “However, besides the relation ….”
MORAL POSSIBILITY PRECEDES PHYSICAL POSSIBILITY (50)

Moral possibility of actions comes before physical possibility
 Determining ground is the law of the will (moral law), not the object of the will
CONCEPTIONS OF GOOD/EVIL (50-56)

Distinction: Good/Evil vs. Pleasure/Displeasure

Kant argues if we try to make the concept of the “good” an object or result OF willing, it can only be, ultimately, a matter of pleasure/displeasure, and hence materially conditioned; therefore, it must be the form of the willing itself, a “way of acting” that should be considered good
 Implication: there is no good things or evil things or properties, no form of “THE GOOD,” etc. with respect to morality. Good and evil refer to actions, particularly their form, and not their results or objects
See p.52 “Thus good or evil, strictly speaking, […]”
THE HUMAN BEING (53-54)

The human being is a being of needs, but not only needs. As rational animals, they can use reason to efficiently satisfy those needs imposed by their sensible natures and finitude; yet, they can heed the imposition of their intelligence and reason contrary to those needs.

Key Capacities: to reflect on what is good/evil in itself as an act of the will, AND to be able to make the distinction between good/evil vs. pleasure/displeasure
See p.53-4 “The human being is [….]”
PARADOX, AGAIN (54)
 “the good and evil must not be determined before the moral law … but only … after it and by means of it [moral law]” (54)
IF YOU DO NOT START WITH CRITIQUE, YOU FAIL (55)

Kant comments on how empiricists, relativists, etc. could have avoided their impotence to avoid paradoxes of the good and of the possibility of morality if they would have critiqued their grounds
(by which they would have realized that no morality at all can arise if the object of the good determines the will). Thus, CPR was essential start in clarifying limitations of empiricism with respect to our powers.
See p.55 “Now, since what is in keeping […] deserves this name absolutely.”
 The “occasioning ground of all the errors of philosophers” in morality is assumption of a good as ground of morality; If analysis of our will is done FIRST, it shows that a moral law must precede it and thereby ENABLES this conception of good (and evil).
FORM OF PURE INTUITION, FORM OF PURE WILL (57)

In theoretical cognition of possible objects of experience, the pure concepts of understanding had as their basis pure intuition, the pure form of sensibility

In practical willing of choice in experience, the pure concept of cause in understanding has as its basis the form of a pure will