Introduction to Kant's philosophy

Deng Xiaomang: The Contemporary Significance of Kant's Philosophy

Deng Xiaomang

Culture runs rampant

For two hundred years, no one's prestige as a pure philosopher has surpassed Kant's (1724-1804). Today, whether abroad or in China, the charm of Kant's ideas is getting stronger and stronger. For two hundred years, an idealistic and agnostic philosopher, who has long been pronounced by countless people, is still towering like a huge mountain, although not necessarily "credible", but so "lovely". What lessons can we learn from Kant today? I would like to try to answer this question from the following aspects.

First of all, the most prominent feature of Kant's philosophy is the so-called "critical philosophy", Kant clearly declared that "our time is the era of criticism, and everything must be subject to criticism." The proposal of the critical spirit is a leap forward in the rational spirit of the West. The rational spirit of the West has undergone four great leaps since ancient Greece. The first is the discovery of the Logos by Heraclitus and Parmenides, which led to the Westerners' quest for the "one," the universal norm, thus laying the first cornerstone for the rational spirit (Logos-centrism). Then there was the reflective spirit of Plato and Aristotle, which propelled the logos spirit into an infinitely ordered system that progressed from low to high and constantly transcended. The third is the skeptical spirit of descartes in modern times, which enabled reason to reach an active subject, that is, self-consciousness. The fourth is Kant's critical spirit, which enables the agent of reason to begin to play its role of self-criticism and self-establishment, thus making reason for the first time the supreme principle in all human cognitive, moral, and historical activities.

It is with the same critical spirit that Kant's philosophy suffers the most profound criticism from Hegel and Marx, but because of this, Kant's critics also happen to be Kant's successors, and Kant's rational critique has become the eternal merit and glory of Kant's philosophy. Since Kant, human society, especially human thought, has entered the "age of criticism", which is still the case today, and the spirit of criticism will not be lost in the future. Criticism is no longer just a characteristic of individuals or an era, but has become a necessary basic quality in the spiritual life of mankind.

Second, Kant's philosophy has a strong idealistic tendency. In modern times, human beings have increasingly entered the spiritual labyrinth caused by science and technology, the value of truth, goodness and beauty has increasingly given way to the practical needs of economy and practicality, God is dead, and religious belief is only the meaning of "habit" as Hume called. Kant proposed two centuries ago that man must "suspend" God out of his own moral nature, arguing that this was not self-deception or self-consolation, but an inference made from the "fact" of man's freedom. This is a profound insight into human nature. Human nature lies in "knowing that it cannot be done", hanging an "idea" for oneself to pursue, whether this ultimate idea is called "God" or something else, otherwise man is no different from other animals.

The entire historical development of human civilization proves that man's creativity lies in the realization of what was originally thought impossible or even inconceivable through his own unremitting pursuit, so that the essence of man cannot be reduced to only the reality he has created, but to his continuous creative spiritual power. The suspension of man's ultimate purpose is precisely the necessary condition for stimulating his infinite creativity, and only under this condition can the full richness of man's essential potential or man's essential power be fully developed, and man can improve himself day by day, free himself from his enslavement (of nature and others). Looking back at Kant's ideals two hundred years later, we feel even more that this lack of idealism is the crux of all the pathologies of modern society.

Third, Kant's "a priori philosophy" has always been criticized by us, but it still seems to have its rational elements today. Husserl's phenomenology reduces the real world to a world of ideas through "transcendental reduction", a world of "what should" and "maybe", which is the salvation of European humanity. Because on the platform of such an "essential world", people can transcend the narrow vision of daily secular life and realize the true nature of themselves, and pursue that human life with a sincere belief. Transcendental philosophy is not a kind of ignorance of thought, but a transcendence of experience; but it is not completely detached from experience, but a conscious awareness of the premises on which experience is possible.

Without such a priori vision, all searches for lofty ideals, holy personalities, sacred convictions, and micro-heavenly paths will become a tool for secular considerations, an empirical attitude to deal with practical problems, and even a stopgap measure. Of course, transcendental philosophy cannot solve any practical problems, but it offers a state of life in which we can discern hypocrisy and nostalgia in our own minds by virtue of our transcendental principles. This is of particular importance to our Chinese, which is "enlightenment within enlightenment."

Fourth, Kant's humanism, although already criticized by modern philosophy (Husserl, Heidegger, etc.), and especially by "postmodernism", is still the backbone of the zeitgeist that governs contemporary society. Although there are limitations of rationalism and formalism, "man is the end", all human activities are ultimately for the perfection and completion of man himself, and this principle of Kant has universal effect to this day and is the highest principle pursued by all civilized societies. The only contemporary force that can have an impact on this principle is the principle of nature, which is embodied in the principle of "environmental protection". But the opposition between nature and man is not Kant's fault. It is only a misunderstanding to understand Kant's humanism as antagonistic to naturalism, Benning said. Although Kant's epistemology has the saying that "man-made nature legislates", he does not think that cognition and science are the highest attitudes of man towards nature, but that it is necessary to transition to human morality through the ecological chain of aesthetic and natural purposes, and nature is generated by man and man's morality. The moral qualities of man are expressed as the final result of all natural history.

Kant despises the practical domination of nature by human beings, believing that this kind of practical technical activity does not belong to the free nature of man, and that man's true freedom is embodied in man's moral qualities, and that people with this moral quality cannot help but appreciate the magnificence and beauty of nature, cherish nature, and regard nature's kindness to mankind as a "favor" that should be appreciated. Kant's moralized humanism is not unrelated to nature, still less a threat to the natural world, but encompasses a sense of environmental protection. The position of man and nature as one developed in Marx the view that "completed humanism is naturalism, and completed naturalism is humanism." To protect the environment is to protect man himself, because, as Hegel and Marx pointed out, nature is man's "inorganic body."

Fifth, Kant's "agnosticism" may be an obstacle that must be overcome for the progress of human knowledge, and in this respect it has been surpassed by Marx's theory of practice; but it is a prerequisite that can and should be preserved for the progress and perfection of human morality. For knowledge deals with the kingdom of necessity, while morality is based on human freedom. Reducing freedom to necessity is the root cause of human moral degeneration. Since freedom is spoken of, there will always be an element of "unknowability." Freedom, fundamentally speaking, lies in the infinite possibilities of human behavior, and we do not know which possibilities there are, nor do we know which of these possibilities we will choose. Freedom certainly has its own inevitable principles, which in Kant's view is "self-discipline." A person who violates self-discipline will feel ashamed and feel unfree; when he practices self-discipline, he will feel the dignity of freedom. But precisely because man is free, what he chooses between the thoughts he chooses, whether to obey the moral law or to obey the needs of the senses, cannot be guaranteed in advance by external necessity, and is therefore unknowable.

Kant's separation of morality from man's knowledge certainly makes morality an abstract form, divorced from real life and history; but on the one hand it frees man from his dependence on the laws of nature, and does not think that as long as he does what he knows (the inevitable laws of nature and the "iron necessity" of history), he can even do whatever it takes to achieve his goals; on the other hand, he also breaks the excessive confidence and pride in himself, thinking that he can fully grasp himself, know himself, and think that he is "sincere." "If you can do anything, you can commit a heinous crime without repenting." In Kant, "unknowable" is not an excuse for abandoning moral responsibility; on the contrary, it is precisely the premise of moral responsibility, because "unknowable" excludes all objective and subjective knowledge of man's behavior, and takes "should" only as the only measure of behavior, and only man's own freedom or arbitrariness as the subject of responsibility. Thus the "unknowable" leaves unlimited room for moral introspection, opening the way for moral "sustainable development" and the establishment of new morality by abandoning old morality. In the transitional stage of the development of the mainland today, the historical task of "moral transformation" will inevitably and has been put forward to us, and Kant's "agnosticism" has a particularly important exploration value and enlightening significance for us in this regard.

Sixth, Kant's cosmopolitan and globalist views also have special reference value for our time. Kant, who was reluctant to step out of Königsberg all his life, had the vision of a "citizen of the world", which was different from the current popular "cultural relativism" and was guided by the development and evolution of history from barbarism to civilization. Only from this standpoint can Kant predict the progress of mankind from evil to good and the realization of "eternal peace"; otherwise we cannot expect the predators of the real world to one day cease. But Kant's cosmopolitanism is not a warm and helpless expectation, he is soberly aware of the difficulties of the process of human globalization, the bloodiness of war and the irreconcilability of national contradictions, and he pins his only hope on the awakening of man's moral consciousness in great calamities and sufferings.

In today's "clash of civilizations", Kant's views are particularly worthy of our deep consideration. Although the conflict between contemporary terrorism and hegemonism contains elements of barbarism and civilization confrontation, the whole is a repetition of the primitive and barbaric "law of the jungle" in the era of civilization. The "war of all men against all men" described by Hobbes is today being waged on a world scale between nations and cultures, without a world monarch as a judge. We can even predict that in the future, even if the countries of the world economically eliminate poverty, the cultural gap will still be difficult to fill, and economic development will not reduce the danger of war. The depletion of Earth's resources and the lag in moving to outer space are enough to make humans tend to destroy each other. We still see no way for humanity to avoid this tragic end for itself, except for the moral improvement of humanity, as Kant pointed out. Our past morality does not tell us how people should deal with other human beings of different countries, different nationalities, different cultures, and different religious beliefs when they encounter them. It is only out of interest and temporary considerations that we form a temporary alliance with other groups of people in society, and as soon as we violate our own interests, we will immediately reveal our original form.

But there are also signs that a globalized ethic is quietly taking shape. After the 9/11 incident, even in those countries that were actually or likely to be victimized, the call for for tat was growing. Due to the popularization of environmental awareness, multinational companies also have to consider the environmental protection issues of their host countries so as not to bring losses to their reputation and sales. The establishment of the European Union has clearly led to a certain degree of overcoming the resistance of racial and ethnic prejudices and historical grievances towards an era of greater cooperation and harmony. Globalization must not be just economic (and political) globalization, but at the same time the result of cultural mentality and moral consciousness rising to the point where they can tolerate and cooperate with each other;

It can be seen from this that these ideas of the "first great zhe kangde in recent times" (Liang Qichao) are not obsolete even two hundred years later, but an intellectual treasure that has yet to be excavated.

(This article is written by Professor Deng Xiaomang for the 200th anniversary of Kant's death, originally published in Wen Wei Po on February 22, 2004)

Reading Kant's Moral Philosophy (Recommended Collection)

Deng Xiaomang

The author Deng Xiaoman was originally published in the Journal of Xi'an Jiaotong University, June 2005

At present, the discussion on Kant's moral philosophy at home and abroad is very heated, especially in such a special period of cultural transformation and social change that China is currently facing, and the social and moral problems caused by it are particularly prominent, so that a big discussion on moral issues and humanistic spirit has been set off in China.

One of the most important topics of discussion is the moral decline of contemporary society, and the problem of the incompatibility of traditional Chinese culture and traditional morality under contemporary conditions. But the huge discussion finally fell short. In this discussion, one view is that we should return to traditional culture, and the other view is that modern culture should be rebuilt.

The author believes that in the contemporary era, we should absorb more of the views and perspectives of some Westerners and understand their views on moral issues. In the course of centuries of years from the establishment of capitalism to the entry into modern industrial society, the West has undergone great changes in their moral values, especially since the period of the Western Enlightenment.

A key factor in the thinking that led to this important transformation was Kant and Kant's moral philosophy. Therefore, if China's contemporary social life also has to go through such a development path, then the author believes that we should be able to absorb a lot of things worth learning from modern Western rationalism, which will be completely new for the Chinese people.

Chinese is no stranger to Kant's moral philosophy, and we have studied it for more than a hundred years. But I still feel that there are still many things in Kant's moral philosophy that we have not touched on, and there are still some things that deserve further study. In fact, this does not mean that the level of Chinese theory is low, mainly Chinese generally presents an impetuous psychology when studying Western theory, especially when it comes to many problems in the field of morality:

We believe that the Chinese nation has an unparalleled advantage in morality, and this is an area in which we should speak. Under the influence of such a mentality, people are often half-aware of Western moral statements, and they are busy playing out without fully understanding them.

I feel that today we should re-examine the characters and ideas (especially in the moral field) that we think are outdated and have been studied almost, and re-objectively and deeply understand the true meaning contained in the thinking of Westerners.

After some in-depth research, the author found that Kant's moral philosophy about moral positions, moral foundations, and his understanding of moral structure is completely different from what we Chinese, and we should appreciate the true meaning of what is hidden behind these propositions for us.

Therefore, when I talk about Kant's moral philosophy here, I mainly want to start from some new perspectives and contexts, and put forward those problems that Chinese usually cannot be fully understood and that have not caused shock in our hearts, for everyone to think.

When people think of Kant, the first thing that probably comes to mind is that his writing is obscure and difficult to understand, and even Germans feel a headache for this. But in fact, Kant was very concerned with the practical significance of his doctrine, especially for ordinary people.

Kant made it clear that his view of philosophy changed radically in his early years as a result of Rousseau's influence.

He thought that his teachings should be useful to ordinary people, otherwise his knowledge would have no value. So written in his lifetime. In many works, including the three major criticisms, he is everywhere considering the basis for the survival of ordinary people, based on the living world of ordinary people.

Thus there are three levels in Kant's moral philosophy, the first of which is the philosophy of popular morality. If he wants to have a complete vision of his moral philosophy, then first of all it is aimed at popular moral philosophy, so there is such a line of thought in him:

Discover and search for the innate principles of morality from ordinary people. Of course, the moral principles he formed are very obscure, but he believes that they are very useful to ordinary people, and it is indispensable for the moral education of ordinary people, for daily interactions with ordinary people, and for the improvement of the moral quality of ordinary people.

Guided by this line of thought, he took popular moral philosophy as the first level of his entire moral philosophy.

But it was not enough to merely popularize moral philosophy, so he elevated popular moral philosophy to moral metaphysics as a second level, looking for the basis of moral philosophy in popular moral philosophy. Why is there a moral philosophy? Kant firmly believed that there was a metaphysical foundation in human nature, and that the resulting system of moral philosophical principles was moral metaphysics.

Higher than moral metaphysics is the third level in moral philosophy, that is, to seek the premise of moral metaphysics, and to criticize how moral metaphysics is possible, which eventually formed his second major critique, the Critique of Practical Reason. The three levels are roughly introduced as follows.

One

The first level is from the popular moral philosophy, Kant believes that morality should first start from daily life, and the most daily moral life of people is to talk about others (chewing their tongues). In daily life, the most like to talk about others and make moral evaluations are those long-tongued women, in general, people are very disgusted with the behavior of those long-tongued women, but Kant defended this bad habit, he believes that this behavior (chewing the tongue) should not be simply moral criticism, but should be viewed objectively and calmly.

Through such a phenomenon of long-tongued women talking about people and creating gossip, it reveals a restrained nature of man, that is, people like to "measure others by an absolute moral standard." This so-called phenomenon of talking about people just shows that there is an absolute moral yardstick in people's minds.

Kant found a detail based on these phenomena of life: that people always make harsh demands on the motives of others to do good. Accordingly Kant discovered the principle that true moral action should be "moral for morality's sake, obligation for duty's sake" and not for any other sensible practical purpose.

Kant distilled some of the daily moral rules from them and gave four examples to prove them.

The first example is "don't lie" A person does business, tong soo is not deceived, this is what we generally call integrity.

His behavior is commendable, but not necessarily respectable, because business integrity brings benefits. Who is worthy of respect? If he can observe "not selling fakes" as a moral principle, so that even if his shop closes down, he will not sell fakes, then this person's behavior is worthy of respect and moral behavior.

The second example is "Don't commit suicide." Kant believed that not committing suicide was the most basic survival instinct of man. But there is such a person, his life is very painful, even life is worse than death, in such a situation, he still does not commit suicide, strong to live, then his behavior is worthy of respect, his "living" itself is a moral behavior.

The third example is "developing one's own talents". One lives in the world and one should develop one's talents in all its aspects, and you are not just doing it for the sake of gaining some kind of benefit, but for the sake of perfecting oneself, making it their duty, which is also a moral act.

The final example is "helping others." You are not helping others in return, but an obligation, which is also a moral act.

These four examples are not listed casually, but are arranged in a strictly logical order, representing four different moral realms: "do not deceive" and "do not commit suicide" are a complete obligation (negative obligation), and "develop talent" and "help others" are incomplete obligations (positive obligation).

The so-called complete obligation is that you absolutely do not do it, there is no condition to talk about, and the latter two are incomplete obligations, and it is forgivable not to do it in some cases.

Two

The second level in Kant's moral philosophy is the metaphysics of morality. The above is to mention four examples of popular morality cited by Kant, but in fact there are many such aphorisms in daily life, such as "Do not do to others what you do not want", which are the most basic norms of doing things for people. These norms are popular morality.

Precisely because they are popular morality, many people do not understand the "basis" behind them, and this "basis" is the innate basis emphasized by Kant.

Kant argued that popular moral philosophy lacked reliable rational principles as the final ruling, so it was easy to deteriorate, and if a basis for universality was not found for popular morality, such aphorisms were likely to confuse morality and immorality.

Kant therefore sought the moral law behind this moral proverb, thus proposing the second level of moral philosophy, moral metaphysics. Kant's universal moral law is expressed in the form of an imperative:

You have to act in such a way that your code of conduct (subjective) becomes a universal law (objective).

This principle can also be expressed in a popular way, that is, "do not do to others what you do not want", which Confucius called "the one who has a word that can be done for life". But Confucius is a popular expression, while Kant is an expression of reason, an expression of logic and formalization, more precise than everyday expression.

Popular expressions are often flawed, but Kant's expression excludes these situations, and he establishes a rational, formal principle that can be established in any case. Kant said that such a moral law is unconditional and absolute. And "Do not do to others what you do not want" may still be a conditional command, and if the conditions are removed, this command will not be valid.

Conditional commands can be changed according to conditions, so conditional commands are not universal. With regard to universal moral imperatives, Kant believed that everyone could understand and obey them by his own reason alone. To illustrate this point, Kant will reanalyze the four examples mentioned in popular moral philosophy.

For example, is "don't lie" a moral law? Just think about it, if everyone deceives people, no one will believe anyone anymore, then there will be no use in lying to people, there will be no more people lying, ""deception" as a universal law will cancel itself";

And if everyone doesn't lie, it will be a virtuous circle, and people will become more and more honest. Another example is to assume that everyone commits suicide, and everyone dies, which will lead to no more suicide.

So if, in the process of universalization, a norm cancels itself and logically violates the law of identity, then it is incompatible with practical rationality. Thus, these two obligations are more like an "objective" law of nature. Another example is the latter two obligations: "develop talents" and "help others.".

One can imagine a lazy world and an indifferent world, but no one wants to live in such a world. Lazy people always want others to be able to do it, and selfish people always want others to be "unselfish and self-interested."

Therefore, this kind of behavior also has logical contradictions, but it is not an objective self-contradiction like deception or suicide, but a subjective contradiction.

Thus, Kant's determination of whether an action is moral or immoral is understood according to the logical consistency of human behavior. Kant boiled it down to this expression of the moral law:

Make your code of conduct a natural law. That is to say, in the concrete practice, you imagine that once it is generalized, what kind of natural consequences it will lead to——— self-cancellation or self-maintenance? Self-cancellation is moral behavior, not vice versa. This is a "natural elimination" understanding of the moral law.

This form of expression of Kant's moral law emphasizes that the way man behaves becomes a "natural law", to consider the natural consequences, to see if it can become a universal natural law, which is the first deformed form of his moral law. In addition to this form of natural elimination, Kant proposed a second deformed expression, which is of a higher level than the first.

The first is to regard man's moral behavior as a natural act, and to devalue man's status. Historically, people may have chosen moral behavior through natural elimination.

But according to Kant's transcendental philosophy, morality is spoken of only in terms of effect, and it is also utilitarian, and morality can only be freed from utilitarianism if it is seen from the perspective of motives and purposes. Kant, in emphasizing the purpose of morality, further divided it into subjective purposes and objective purposes.

Kant believed that subjective ends are always accidental and vary according to different objects, and that only objective ends are the universal and inevitable aims of all rational beings and have absolute value.

This objective purpose is "the subject of the will itself as the subject of all subjective ends", i.e., the "personality".

This introduces a second form of transfiguration of absolute command, namely, man-made ends, not mere means. True morality is to treat people as an end, and no matter who the other person is, you should respect his personality and humanity.

So looking back at the previous four examples, there is such a meaning: "Don't deceive people" means not to use others as a means; "Don't commit suicide" means not to use yourself as a means; "to exert your talents" means to regard yourself as an end; to "help others" means to regard others as an end.

In contrast, Confucius's statement that "do not do to others what you do not want to do to others" requires a higher level of rational basis, not just a perceptual, utilitarian basis. Otherwise, in order to improve interpersonal relations, for political purposes such as "winning the world", and even for the sake of obtaining greater benefits, I can do "do not do to others what I do not want".

Therefore, such a moral principle of Confucianism is not a universal moral law, it is a morality based on a "human feeling" and utilitarianism, and once human feelings change and utilitarianism is in hand, the "tool" of morality can be abandoned.

We often say that the moral loss of Chinese is essentially the cause, which is not entirely a moral loss, but is determined by our "moral nature and traditional model". Only with the purpose of personality as the purpose, "do not do to others what you do not want" is truly moral.

The third expression of deformation is that the will of each person is the will of legislation. In terms of morality, people are self-disciplined. As for "ruling the country and the world" or the commandments of God in Christianity, etc., in Kant's view, these are not real moral laws, because they are all "other laws."

The expression of the highest moral law is self-discipline, and everyone's free will is the will to legislate, and everyone legislates for himself out of free will, not by following the teachings of others.

Strictly speaking, this formulation does not take the form of an order, but directly refers to the fact that the will of every rational being is the will of universal legislation. Thus the third form of command becomes the strongest basis for compliance with the first two forms of command.

Of the three forms of command, only the third gives the subject of action the dignity of the human person and arouses the moral sentiment of "respect."

Because of this, in the actual moral education, Kant is very opposed to the practice of "using everyone's herd mentality to set an example for others" and to carry out emotional education.

Kant's idea of moral education was based on ethical self-discipline. Every man can enlighten him when he reaches the maturity of reason.

What is Enlightenment? It is to let everyone think with their own rationality and have the courage to use their own rationality to get out of the guardian state (children are in the state of being guarded, so they will also go out of the child state). This is the inspiration that Kant brings to our moral education.

Three

The third level is Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. Earlier in the metaphysics of morality was mentioned the principle that you want to make the norm of your conduct willing to be universal forever. What is the premise of such a moral law? How is it possible?

Everyone's will is the will of legislation, so what is the premise of this will? Therefore, the practice of rational criticism is to critically examine the premise of the moral law, why the moral law is possible, and other issues. The Critique of Pure Reason examines how understanding is possible, and the Critique of Practical Reason examines the question of why morality is possible.

Kant gave an answer, and that was "freedom" or "free will." What is free will? This is not something that can be analyzed with any mechanical relationship.

Everyone is responsible for what he or she does, merit or guilt, which is quite different in the eyes of biologists and medical scientists than in the eyes of theologians and judges, who always assume first and foremost that man is free will.

If from a medical or biological point of view, criminal behavior is determined by environmental factors, the psychological formation of criminals is from a young age by the adverse education and influence of the environment, to become such a criminal person, so the judge to sentence, should be convicted of this society, criminals are only a product of society, there is no free will.

But the judge wants to convict the criminal, because the criminal act was committed by the criminal in a sober state, and unless the doctor can prove that the criminal is a mentally ill person, then the criminal can be exempted from criminal prosecution, and he needs to be taken to the hospital for treatment, because the criminal is not a complete person at that time.

Free will, which is a cause beyond all causality, is the basis for the court's conviction and theological basis for convicting man. Judges convict criminals on the premise of seeing them as people with free will, not animals.

Therefore, there is a very popular view in Western legal circles, and its representative figure, Pecaria of Italy, once proposed that "it is his right to punish criminals", criminals are free people, so the crimes of criminals are his own crimes, and it is the right of criminals to be punished for this.

This is because he approved of the law when the law was made, so that the criminal act was assumed to be an act of knowingly committing a crime in a sober state, and he was prepared to bear the consequences of the crime. Thus, punishment is only the exercise of the criminal's free will, and if he is released, it will be regarded as depriving the criminal of his rightfulness and is disrespectful of the criminal's personality consistency.

This seems to be a very absurd theory, but behind it is a very important Western ethical idea, that is, to respect the free will and the consistency of personality, and the consistency of free will and personality is not interfered with by any law of cause and effect.

The concept of "freedom" is also mentioned in the Critique of Pure Reason, and his third "two-law reversal" already mentions the contradiction between freedom and necessity.

Kant mentioned in "The Reversal of the Second Law" that whether people have free will or not, we can't prove it, but you can't deny it. For even if you deny it, you need to prove empirically that "freedom" is transcendent, it is "something in itself."

Therefore, he emphasizes that as long as we strictly distinguish between the world of things and phenomena, even if we never know what freedom looks like, we can get rid of this contradiction.

Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason that "freedom" can be a priori assumed, and that we cannot prove "freedom", but we cannot deny it. Therefore, I can propose an empty idea of "a priori freedom" and wait for the void. This concept has no meaning in the field of knowledge, but it makes sense in the field of practice.

Kant emphasized at the beginning of his Critique of Practical Reason that man's moral law is possible because he is "free" in practice, and the freedom of practice is unrecognizable, but has a practical "reality".

So free will is the premise of all morality, which is the highest point of practical rational criticism. If we trace how morality is possible, it lies in the fact that man has free will.

As for how free will is possible, this cannot be proved, it is the absolute premise of all proof.

Basing all morality on free will, and all moral evaluations, good and evil, on free will is a very important theoretical contribution of Kant.

Schopenhauer: Why read Kant's philosophy?

Excerpt from the preface to the second edition of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Appearance

[In the preface to the first edition, I have stated that my philosophy proceeds from Kant's philosophy, thus understanding thoroughly that the latter is a prerequisite for the former.] Here I repeat. ]

For Kant's philosophy, as long as it is mastered, produces a fundamental change in everyone's mind, a change of such magnitude that it can really be regarded as a spiritual regeneration. Only Kant's philosophy can really exclude in the mind the innate realism that comes from the primitive prescribe of the intellect; this is beyond the reach of Berkeley and Malebron Hilde, because they are too confined to the general, but Kant enters the special; and Kant enters the special in a way that has never been done before, never since.

This method has a special, so to speak, immediate effect on the human mind; under this action one experiences a complete disillusionment, after which everything is seen from another point of view. Only then will the reader be able to accept some of the more positive explanations I am proposing. On the contrary, whoever does not master Kant's philosophy, then whatever he reads in other respects, always seems to be in a state of naivety, i.e., always confined to the natural, naïve realism. All of us are born in this kind of realism, which teaches us to do everything possible well, but not philosophy. Thus, the relationship between such a person and the person who has mastered Kant's philosophy is equal to that of a minor and an adult.

This truth sounds incomprehensible today, but it was not the case in the first thirty years after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason.

This is because after those ages another generation grew up, and this generation did not understand Kant; for to understand Kant, it was not enough to understand Kant by means of a few fancy, careless reading or listening to second-hand reports. And this, in turn, is the result of the lack of good guidance in this generation, who waste their time on the philosophical problems of vulgar, i.e., incompetent people, or even the sophists who blow around. These sophists, on the other hand, are irresponsibly recommended to them.

Thus, in such a cultured generation, their own philosophical trials have always revealed from the shell of pretense and extravagance the confusion of basic concepts and the indescribable bluntness and rudeness. If one thinks that he can understand Kant's philosophy from the discourse of others on Kant's philosophy, then he is in an irreparable error. Rather, I must give serious warnings about such statements, especially in the recent period.

In recent years, in I have encountered some myths that are really difficult to believe in I have written about Kant's philosophy in the Hegelian school. How can we teach those whose minds have been sprained and damaged by Hegel's nonsense since their fledgling youth be able to follow Kant's meaningful inquiry? They have long been accustomed to treating empty nonsense as philosophical thought, the most pitiful sophistry as wit, and foolish nonsense as dialectics; and by absorbing such a crazy combination of words to come up with something from these phrases, the human spirit can only torture itself in vain, wear itself ——, the organization of their minds has been destroyed.

For them, rational criticism is useless, philosophy is useless, but they should be given a spiritual potion, and first of all, as a purifying agent, a small lesson should be given to sound human reason, and then one can see whether they can talk about philosophy.

So Kant's doctrine is in vain except in his own writings, to search anywhere, and Kant's writings are educational from beginning to end, even where he is wrong, where he fails.

What is valid for a true philosopher is, by virtue of Kant's originality, the most effective of his kind; that is, people know them only in their own writings and not in the reports of others.

This is because the minds of these remarkable figures cannot stand the vulgar mind and sift through them. These thoughts were born behind the tall, full heavenly court of [the giants], under which there were shining eyes; but as soon as they were mistakenly moved into the narrow, pressed, thick chamber of the skulls of the [the mediocres], under the low eaves, from where they projected a dull, mouse-eyed light intended for personal purpose, they lost all power and life, and they did not resemble them as they were. Yes, one can say that this mind works the same as that of the haha mirror, where everything is deformed and gone; all the symmetrical beauty it possesses is lost, and only a grimace is revealed. It is only from the founders of those philosophical ideas that one can accept them.

Therefore, whoever aspires to philosophy must personally go to the solemn holy land of the original to find the immortal master.

Every such true philosopher, whose main chapters provide insight into his doctrines, is often a hundred times more insightful than the protracted and contemptuous reports of the vulgar mind in paraphrasing them; moreover, most of these mediocre men are still deeply confined to the fashionable philosophies or personal sentiments of the time. But it is astonishing that the masses of readers are so stubbornly willing to seek out second-hand paraphrases. In this respect it seems as if there really is some selective affinity at work; and because of this effect vulgar character is clustered together, so that even if it is what the great philosophers say, they prefer to hear from their own kind. This is perhaps the same principle as the mutual pedagogy, according to which children learn best only from their own peers.

Overhead Stars and Inner Morality: An Introduction to Kant's Philosophy

Original

Jufa yao

Teacher training jun comment

As a famous thinker during the Enlightenment period, the German philosopher Kant pioneered and laid the foundation for the German classical rationalist philosophy, which had a profound impact on future generations of philosophers. In this article, Teacher Zhu Fayao will lead us to understand Kant and his philosophical thought.

Recommended reading time: 8 minutes

Immanuel Kant, a famous German philosopher and the "founding father" of German classical philosophy. The German nation advocates speculation and logic, and the spirit of a nation is pregnant with a group of great men of the times, so to understand the ideas of the modern Western world, it is inevitable to understand Western philosophy; and to understand Western philosophy, German classical philosophy is a mountain that can never be bypassed; and to climb this mountain, Kant is the first peak.

Born in a small town called Königsberg in eastern Germany, Kant, unlike other scholars who traveled the world at the same time, Kant hardly left his hometown in his life, never married, and died alone.

Kant brought the Germans to the extreme in their logical rigor and speculative thoughtfulness. His writings are extremely obscure, and he is accustomed to expressing a simple statement in a particularly rigorous and thoughtful way, although this expression is very objective and fair, unambiguous, but it is indeed a very pleasant reading experience for the reader, which is why his first tome, The Critique of Pure Reason, was published without any attention.

For example, if Kant were to express the promise of a continent becoming a superpower, he would have expressed the sentence as follows:

This country, I am referring to the being that we call the continent, by its very nature, has the tendency that one can count on itself to produce such a change in the future, that is, to become the kind of being that we may call a superpower.

Just imagine how challenging it is for the reader to discuss such a highly abstract question as philosophy in such an obscure sentence.

Kant devoted his life to thinking and arguing, as his epitaph put it, "Two things fill our hearts, they are eternally new, constantly increasing in awe, and we are more and more often suspenseful about them: the starry sky above our heads and the moral law of our hearts." ”

If the starry sky above the head represents the operation of the natural world, it is the ultimate goal to be pursued by natural science;

Then the moral law in the heart represents the value of human society and is the peak to be climbed by the humanities.

Kant's era was an era of rapid development of modern science and humanistic spirit in the West, and it was also an era of deep crisis. His theories are known for their critical philosophy, using the Critique of Pure Reason to explain the laws of natural science, and the Critique of Practical Reason to argue and analyze the norms of humanistic morality.

The conflict between reason and freedom

Background of Kant's thought

Kant lived in a time when the spirit of Western natural science and humanism was advancing by leaps and bounds. From the day of its birth, the philosophy of "Science as Science" has been entrusted with the task of making fundamental arguments for all disciplines. At that time, the two mainstream epistemological theories of Western philosophy were in serious trouble, which meant that knowledge itself could be false and unreliable, and the foundations of science were naturally challenged.

On the one hand, empiricism holds that all knowledge comes from experience, and that human beings only continue to acquire knowledge about the outside world in their experience with external objects, so science is the induction and summary of experience.

Physics, for example, summarizes the laws and essences behind phenomena in continuous experiments and empirical observations.

On the other hand, the theory of solipsism argues that the rationality of knowledge comes from the deduction of rational and natural concepts and logic, because rationality and formal logic guarantee the rationality of the deduction rules, so as long as it is determined to be true, it can be obtained in strict accordance with rational logic.

For example, geometry is a typical representative of theory of solipsism, geometry is based on the premise of self-evident public settings, using strict formal logic to inductive reasoning, and then draw a variety of conclusions.

Both schools have been debated for a long time, and both have been fatally dealt a blow after Hume (the famous British philosopher) raised skepticism.

Hume's skepticism, which takes the logic of empiricism to the extreme, points out that only two kinds of knowledge are reliable:

The experiences we gain, such as the concrete things we see, the concrete things we observe.

Knowledge that does not depend on experience, such as some axioms and premises of geometry.

Hume's extreme empiricist approach exposed the limitations of two schools:

On the one hand, empiricism advocates the acquisition of knowledge from experience, but it does not guarantee the rationality and correctness of experience, and seeing is not necessarily believing. What is more important is that empirical induction cannot obtain a causal relationship between experiences.

For example, the apple that falls on Newton's head must conform to the law of universal gravitation, just like all apples that fall to the ground. But Hume would criticize how you can ensure that all apples will fall to the ground according to this law when you observe an apple falling to the ground; and even if all apples fall to the ground, how can you guarantee that there will be apples falling on the ground in the future.

The rationality of experience must ensure that it can only be confined to experience, and then the attempt to pursue any universally valid law beyond experience is contrary to the principles of empiricism.

Theory of solipsism, on the other hand, avoids the problem of empiricism, for formal logic generally and necessarily guarantees that conclusions must be correct and reliable. But the theory of solipsism has fallen into another quagmire, that is, it is only a game between ideas and ideas and ideas.

For example, the sum of the inner angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, and it can be deduced that the sum of the inner angles of a quadrilateral is 360 degrees.

This derivation ensures that the conclusion must be correct, but the conclusion is inherently contained in the premise, and we just let it appear, without acquiring any new knowledge. Therefore, theory alone cannot bring new understanding.

It follows from this that while the natural sciences developed by leaps and bounds, philosophy fell into an inevitable crisis. That is, on the one hand, our rationality cannot know things, and cognition is unreliable. On the other hand, if we abandon the epistemological crisis and admit that natural science reveals more and more causal necessity, and that man himself belongs within the limits of this inevitable law of causality, then man's freedom will be lost.

Kant was thus confronted with two questions: "What is the basis of the laws of nature?" Does man have freedom, dignity, and ultimate worth?"

Man-made nature legislation

Starry sky overhead

As mentioned earlier, Kant's job was to break away from the limitations of empiricism and theory of solipsism and solve the problem of the reliability of knowledge.

We call his solution the "Copernican revolution," from the sun revolving around the earth to the earth revolving around the sun, and any problem is solved. Whether it is theory or empiricism, cognition is subjective in line with objectivity. Kant changed the way of thinking about cognition into objectively pandering to subjectivity.

That is to say, cognition is the form of cognition inherent in the object conforming to the cognitive subject. Under this logic, cognition is interpreted as a vision like this:

On the one hand, the object of knowledge is called the thing itself, and no one knows what it looks like.

On the other hand, when the object itself is recognized, it will be processed by man's inherent cognitive form and eventually manifested as the appearance of human cognition.

Use a formula to represent cognition = appearance = object self + human cognitive form.

Let me give you an example

When I see a black sphere in front of me, then Kant will think that color, shape, time, and space are all innate forms of cognition that human beings have, and when this form is projected on the object itself, it is manifested as a black sphere. Maybe in the monkey's eyes this is a white cube, because the monkey's cognitive form is different from that of man, which does not hinder man's cognition, because the real thing itself cannot be recognized.

Under this logic, Kant solved the dilemma of empiricism and theory of solipsism very well.

On the one hand, because there is something in itself, there must be new knowledge in cognition.

On the other hand, because there are innate forms of cognition, it guarantees, like formal logic, that cognition must be correct.

In this way, the natural sciences are reasonable, and man-made nature legislates.

Man legislates for himself

Moral laws in the heart

The Copernican revolution, which solves the rationalization of natural science and proves the rationality and validity of causal relations, how does Kant, the aforementioned contradiction between freedom and necessity, resolve it?

Kant believed that the thing itself is unknowable, so the law of causal necessity, as an innate fixed mode of cognition, cannot act on the realm of the thing itself, and the rationality in the realm of the thing itself is absolutely free.

Kant drew a huge gap between science and man by dividing the world into the world of things and phenomena. On the one hand, the phenomenal realm conforms to the innate law of causality, so that the natural sciences can gallop here. On the other hand, the realm of matter-self is not interfered with by the law of causal necessity, and thus leaves absolute freedom for reason.

Kant further demonstrated how practical reason guarantees freedom in the realm of the self. He proposed a very classic theory called freedom is self-discipline. Anything is free only if my actions can only be attributed to me, and therefore my actions in the true sense of the word, and as far as this behavior is concerned, I am free. In other words, man is free when any action is only an end and not a means. This is Kant's most classic assertion that "man is the end, not the means."

"Man is not a tool of others, but of his own ends."

- Kant

Let me give you an example

When I work to make money, I'm not free. Because the act of my work is the means, and making money is the end, I am enslaved by money and therefore unfree. That's only when I work for the sake of work, and work makes me happy.

Kant's theory not only gives a rigorous logical proof of freedom, but also demonstrates the noble moral rationality of mankind. In this way, he pondered the eternal moral laws of the human mind and argued the meaning of freedom.

The Copernican Revolution of Kant's Philosophy

Reading Notes丨 German Classical Philosophy of Kant Philosophy (III)

First, the problems of the times faced by Kant

(i) The crisis of reason

In 1781 Kant published the first of his three critiques, the Critique of Pure Reason. By this time, Euclid's geometry and Newton's three laws had been widely disseminated and universally recognized. People naturally believe that scientific knowledge exists, that there are universal truths in this world. But how is such knowledge (what Kant called innate synthetic judgment) possible? This question has not been answered.

(ii) The loss of freedom

By the time of Kant, the European Enlightenment had come to an end. The two most important themes of the Enlightenment were reason and freedom. At that time, the understanding of reason was more from a scientific point of view. The world of science is characterized by the fact that everything operates strictly according to a certain law, is inevitable and absolute. But when one extends such reason to all spheres, including nature, society, and human nature, the result is determinism. If the world operates under the laws of nature, if the laws govern the operation of all things are laid down, then what is freedom?

(iii) Metaphysics exists in name only

Metaphysics attempts to transcend the finiteness of human reason itself, to inquire about the causes and origins of everything in the world, to become a science as accurate as geometry or mathematics, but finds itself farther and farther away from science.

The three questions of Kant's philosophy can be summed up into one question: Is man free in a world strictly limited by the laws of nature? Is there a value and dignity that is different from other natural beings?

Second, the dilemma of traditional epistemology

(i) Two philosophers who had a major influence on Kant: Hume and Rousseau

Kant said that Hume (the representative of skepticism) woke him up from the delusion of dictatorship. The so-called dictatorship is to ignore the boundaries of human reason and directly believe that people can know the objective thing itself. From advocating only knowledge to making morality the highest standard of life value, from "despising the ignorant" to respecting ordinary laborers, Rousseau (the representative of the French physiocrats) changed Kant's values.

I frankly admit that it was Hume's prompting that first shattered my dogmatic dreams many years ago and pointed me in a completely different direction in the study of speculative philosophy.

- Kant

I used to think that only knowledge could benefit mankind, so I was proud of my knowledge and despised the ignorant; but Rousseau corrected my prejudices and taught me to respect people.

- Kant

(ii) The dilemma of empiricism and theory of solipsism

There are two major schools of traditional epistemology: empiricism and solipsism.

Empiricism holds that all human knowledge comes from perceptual experience and is based on perceptual knowledge; perceptual experience is a reflection of the objective world, and only perceptual experience is the most reliable. Rationalism, also known as "rationalism", is opposed to "empiricism", which only recognizes the reliability of rational cognition, devalues the importance of perceptual cognition, and denies that rational cognition relies on perceptual experience.

- 360 Encyclopedia

Kant believed that scientific knowledge consisted of at least two elements: acquired experience and innate forms of knowledge. Innate forms of cognition are independent of experience and at the same time constitute empirical conditions. Empiricism and theory of solipsism fall into a paradox: if knowledge must be based on experience, knowledge cannot have universal necessity; if knowledge has universal necessity, it must be innate, not acquired, derived from sensory experience.

Kant argues that rationalists and empiricists make a common mistake in not critically examining human epistemic capacity before drawing their own conclusions. Before human beings understand the world, they should first have a correct understanding of their own cognitive ability, clarify their premises, and draw their boundaries, so as not to fall into the labyrinth of the vast world without knowing themselves. Neither empiricism nor theory solves the problems of the universality, inevitability and addition of new content to scientific knowledge.

Kant's creativity – the Copernican revolution

Traditional epistemology, even if it holds different positions on the source of certainty of knowledge, all of them think that our knowledge is to conform to the object. Kant, on the other hand, argues that it is not knowledge that must conform to the object, but that the object must conform to the innate form of knowledge of the subject of knowledge. It is not that the subject of knowledge revolves around the object, but that the subject of knowledge asks questions to nature and lets nature answer. This means that while both intuition and concept are related to objects, our knowledge is not determined by objects.

Kant's idea is very similar to Copernicus's traditional belief that "the sun revolves around the earth" with "the earth revolves around the sun", reversing the status of the subject and the object, so it is called the "Copernican revolution".

All knowledge must come from sensory experience, but the subject of knowledge itself must also have a set of cognitive forms and structures that process and organize sensory experience. That is to say, the human mind is not a blank piece of paper as Locke said, and the external world prints on me with whatever it is, but has its own set of forms and structures of knowledge. Sensory experiences that conform to this set of forms and structures of knowledge can be known to us.

In terms of content, knowledge is empirical and acquired; formally, knowledge is innate. Kant is equivalent to synthesizing the rational aspects of empiricism and theory of solipsism to come up with his own transcendental theory.

Kant's agnosticism

Since we know the world through a set of forms of knowledge, the scope of our knowledge is limited to the areas in which this form of knowledge can function. As for what the world or things themselves look like, we will never know. This leads to a serious consequence – the unknowability of the thing itself, that is, Kant's agnosticism. Metaphysics' ideal of questioning the nature of things and the ultimate cause of everything in the universe encounters difficulties here.

All we can feel is the phenomenon, and there is the essence behind the phenomenon. The phenomena we perceive are in line with the conditions of our form of knowledge, but the essence behind them is unconditional, not limited by the conditions of the form of knowledge, and we cannot recognize. (PS: Plato made a strict distinction between phenomena and essences, and held that phenomena are unknowable, while essences are knowable.) Kant happened to be the other way around. ）

Here is an example for everyone to understand: we know that snakes and bats have very poor vision, snakes mainly rely on heat induction to determine the orientation of prey, and bats mainly rely on ultrasound to identify things. The world that snakes and bats feel is the same world, but are the worlds they feel the same? How does it compare to the world that people feel? The answer is clearly no.

Which of the worlds felt by snakes, bats, or humans is the essence of this world? Neither.

In order to deepen the impression, another example should not be seen before meals: why can't dogs change to eat shi?

There is no doubt that shi is of course a disgusting presence for humans. But have you ever wondered why dogs like to eat shi so much?

Because the dog's olfactory organ is different from that of humans, the dog's olfactory sensitivity is 1200 times that of humans, and humans smell shi is strangely smelly, and dogs smell shi but their teeth and cheeks are fragrant.

Therefore, what we feel can only be phenomena, not essences. Each cognitive subject will receive different sensory stimuli emitted by the object itself because of its different sensory organs, and thus feel different phenomena about the thing itself, but the thing itself does not change itself because of different observers.

It can be understood that the object itself sends all the signals related to itself, but different cognitive subjects can receive different signals due to different sensory organs, so the phenomena they feel are different, but there is one thing in common - they cannot fully receive these information, except for the imaginary omniscient and all-powerful God. Since we cannot receive all the information about the thing-self, we cannot truly recognize the thing-self.

The positive role of agnosticism

The thing itself as the cause of the phenomenon is unconditional, which we call the free cause. In this way, what would otherwise seem negative to conclude — agnosticism — plays a positive role — that freedom is possible. And if freedom is possible, then another function of human reason—practical reason—has a place. (Kant divided the function of human reason into two categories: theoretical rationality and practical rationality.) ）

The realm of knowability is limited by the conditions of the form of knowledge, and everything in it is inevitable, and there is no place for freedom. It is precisely because of the unknowable realm that freedom is possible, and thus the moral ethics premised on freedom is also possible. The field of natural science is only inevitable, while moral ethics gives man the possibility of freedom. The Copernican revolution of Kant's philosophy drew a line between the two.

I had to limit my knowledge in order to leave room for belief.

— Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Man is a member of both worlds at the same time and is influenced by both laws. On the one hand, as a finite natural existence, man is a member of nature, a member of the sensory world, influenced by the laws of nature, and everything is inevitable, without freedom. On the other hand, man is rational and obeys the laws of reason. The laws of nature are inevitable, objective laws that man cannot violate; the laws of reason are the laws that human reason should obey but not necessarily obey, and only when man does them according to the laws of reason can it play a role. The trouble is that man is not a mere rational being, but a limited rational being. In addition to reason, man also has natural attributes.

Man is a finite rational being.

— Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Deng Xiaomang | The argumentative approach of Kant's moral philosophy

Deng Xiaomang

Moral virtue

The argumentative approach of Kant's moral philosophy

Deng Xiaomang | wen

Kang mode

The Philosophy

Argument

Abstract: The argumentative approach to Kant's moral philosophy consists of three main levels. The first is the underlying complex, that is, based on the daily moral life of ordinary people, from which to discover and excavate the moral principles hidden behind, rather than quoting the authority to promulgate moral dogmas to them from top to bottom; The second is the purity of reason, which reduces the moral principles that have been discovered to the principle of self-discipline of free will that transcends all perceptual experiences through the critique of pure practical reason, and establishes the absolute command of obligation for the sake of obligation on the basis of the non-contradictory law of pure logic, as the practical law of human moral life; Finally, there is the historical perspective of human cultural progress that unites the moral endowments of the bottom with the moral ideals of pure reason, under which history is nothing more than moral history, and progress is essentially moral progress, but the basis of this belief is reduced to some mysterious "providence".

Keywords: underlying complex; Rational cleanliness; Historical vision; Ethical self-discipline; Providence;

The moral decline in today's society is already recognized by the world, but how to save China's morality is still a matter of opinion. The so-called "Guoxue fever" proposed to rebuild morality is to appeal to the authority of the ancient sages, which is more suitable for children and non-opinionated people, but not for young people in today's world who are beginning to have their own independent thinking ability. I have proposed the third enlightenment of contemporary China, and one of the important contents is to re-evaluate the Enlightenment thought in the West since modern times, reverse the long-standing misunderstanding, draw the necessary ideological nutrition from it, and provide methodological premise for the reconstruction of contemporary Chinese morality. This article attempts to combine Kant's main works of moral philosophy with a little discussion and commentary in this regard, focusing mainly on the way Kant established his own moral system. The specific content of Kant's moral philosophy has been discussed enough for two centuries, but how Kant's moral philosophy is formulated and what characteristics of his way of argumentation seem to have attracted little attention. I think there are three main levels to this approach, namely the underlying complex, the rational purity, and the historical vision.

First, the underlying complex

It is well known that Kant's first turn in moral philosophy in his philosophical career was influenced by Rousseau. In 1764, at the age of 40, Kant was not yet famous, but a non-staff lecturer at the University of Königsberg, who spoke of his own ideological transformation: "I despise the ignorant masses. Rousseau corrected me, and the superiority I had intended disappeared. I have learned to respect man, to consider myself far less useful than ordinary laborers, unless I believe that my philosophy can restore its common right to be human for all. [1] This shift is well understood. Kant came from a poor and low-key background, his father was an ordinary laborer (saddler), and his family had many children and a heavy burden. After graduating from Kant University, he worked as a tutor for 9 years in order to earn a living, and he was at the bottom of society. Although his income improved after he became famous, he still had little money on hand because he wanted to help his family, and he never married. So although Kant was philosophically unfathomable and abstract, he never forgot his mission to "restore the common rights of man" for ordinary laborers. This underlying complex manifests itself first and foremost in the way he argues for his moral philosophy.

The most direct and obvious representation of this method of argument is embodied in his Foundations of Moral Metaphysics. In this pamphlet, Kant begins with the preface to the book that, since the moral metaphysics he is trying to establish ", in spite of its frightening subjects, is capable of a high degree of popularity and suitability for general informancy", he has foreshadowed the analysis of this popularity separately as the "foundation" for moral metaphysics, "so that in the future I will not have to attach the inevitable and elaborate inquiries here to the more understandable doctrines"[2]. In the stylistic arrangement of the whole book, Kant's three chapters are "Transition from Ordinary Moral Rational Knowledge to Philosophical Moral Rational Knowledge", "Transition from Popular Moral Philosophy to Moral Metaphysics", and "From Moral Metaphysics to Pure Practical Rational Criticism". This arrangement is entirely based on the daily moral life of the general public to talk about moral issues, and draws out the implicit moral law and moral metaphysical meaning, which is completely different from the traditional Christian approach to the moral law derived from the Word of God (transmitted by Moses or the prophet) and the words of Jesus, which is completely different from the ancient Chinese principle of seeking moral behavior from the words of the saints (Kong Meng) or the ancient scriptures (Zhou Yi, Shang Shu, Spring and Autumn, Li Ji). Of course, Kant was able to derive moral laws from the daily moral life of the people because he applied one of the most fundamental principles, which is reason, or rather pure reason.

Before Kant, the establishment of rules for the moral behavior of human beings through reason was common to almost all Enlightenment thinkers, and this method was called the "court of reason." But Kant's uniqueness lies in the fact that he did not deduce what man's moral laws should be from the established philosophical point of view (or theory, or empiricism, etc.), as ordinary philosophers do, but from the knowledge of moral reason and popular moral philosophy recognized by ordinary people in reality, using rational analysis to trace the universal moral laws and obligatory principles on which they are actually based, and finally building these laws and principles into a metaphysical system of principles according to the hierarchical relationship of pure reason. So such a system of principles seems so abstract and formal on the surface, but in fact it is very grounded, it is not the kind of empty concept deduction of the academic school, but to provide a set of practical rational norms for the moral life of ordinary people and even ordinary human beings, and to illustrate the way that everyone can understand. Kant repeatedly said more than once: "Human reason can easily attain a high degree of correctness and detail in moral matters, even by virtue of the most ordinary intellect." [3] He said: "Even if one does not teach reason anything, as Socrates did, to make reason pay attention to its inherent principles, and therefore does not require science and philosophy, one knows what to do in order to be honest and good, even wise and virtuous." It can also be prejudged from this that the knowledge of what everyone has the responsibility to do, and therefore the responsibility to know, will also be the business of everyone, even the most ordinary people. Here, one can be surprised to see that in ordinary human intellect, the judgment ability of practice is far greater than the judgment ability of theory. ”[4]

And when he talks about the "deduction" of the moral law (to illustrate the question of "how can a definite command be") he also said: "The practical application of ordinary human reason confirms the correctness of this deduction." [5] "Ordinary human reason," "the most common intellect," or "sound intellect" are concepts he often uses to elicit and testify to moral law, which are abilities that ordinary people, even people with little culture, and even the worst villains, naturally possess and discover upon reflection.

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant affirmed from the outset that "there is pure practical reason", and then based on this "fact" to criticize the general and everyday practical reason, the system constructed is more than one grade higher in its speculative abstraction than that of "The Foundation of Moral Metaphysics", from principle to concept to motivation and dialectics, directly approaching the logical system of "Pure Rational Criticism"; In the final "methodology" of moral education, however, Kant shows that all these difficult and obscure principles are designed for the moral life of ordinary people and have been shown as some implicit basis in the daily conversations of the people at the bottom. He said: "If we pay attention to the conversations in the mixed social gatherings composed not only of the learned and the occult, but also of merchants and housewives, then we will find that, in addition to storytelling and banter, there is a place for small talk, that is to say, gossip... Nothing provokes the participation of those who are immediately bored in all other fantasies than gossip about the moral value of this and that action by which one's character should be determined, and brings a certain anger into society. Those who usually find boring and wounded by all the mysterious and meditative things in theoretical questions, when the matter depends on the determination of the moral content of a good or bad action which is said, will immediately participate in it, and can think of everything that has the possibility of devoting the purity of intention and thus to the degree of virtue in intention, or even if only to the point of doubt, as one cannot normally expect in any object of speculation. ”[6]

In fact, in many places Kant showed a moral disdain for the intellectual elite's self-cleverness and pretentiousness, believing that they thought that with all kinds of theoretical knowledge, they must be morally superior to ordinary people, and that with the abstract concepts in their minds they could formulate moral norms for the people, without realizing the difference in principle between theory and practice. Knowledgeable people do not necessarily have morality, but conversely, in the vast masses of people who do not have much culture, moral laws will still be stubbornly manifested even in some vulgar way. Therefore, if we want to seek the prototype of the moral law, instead of appealing to the theoretical construction of the elite, we should appeal to the daily life of ordinary people. This is not to say, of course, that ordinary people are already consciously aware of these moral laws in their daily lives; on the contrary, they are hidden under the simple form of their daily moral judgments, and exist in a vague, potentially disturbed and distorted manner, to be revealed by philosophers with the vision of pure reason. Therefore, the admiration of the daily morality of the people is only emphasized in the two works that laid the foundation for "moral metaphysics" and "Critique of Practical Reason", and in his final book "Moral Metaphysics", he in turn emphasized that it is necessary to come out of this state of daily ambiguity and ascend in order to truly enter a state of moral metaphysics. In response to the criticisms of his philosophical writings at the time, which were denounced as obscure and demanded that his formulation be popularized, Kant responded in the "Preface" to the book: "I am happy to admit this, except that a system of criticism of the capacity of reason itself and of all things which can only be proved by this provision of criticism are exceptional, for it is necessary to distinguish what is perceptual in our knowledge from what is supersensory, but which is still within the purview of reason." This must not be popularized, just as metaphysics of any kind in general must not be popularized; Although its results are entirely intelligible to healthy rationality (a metaphysician who does not know this) to make it understandable. Here one must not think of anything popular (popular language), but must insist on pedantic meticulousness, even if this meticulousness is accused of nitpicking (because it is academic language), because only in this way can reckless reason attain the goal of understanding its own progress first in the face of its arbitrary propositions. ”[7]

This seems to be the complete opposite of Kant's strategy of starting with popular moral philosophy in The Foundation. But considering that Kant was there only to "transition" to moral metaphysics, which is different or even contrary to the demand for the formal establishment of a moral metaphysics here, this shift in emphasis is not difficult to understand. Of course, this shift is by no means a complete replacement of the original grassroots position with an academic stance, but only a reversal, and he has not forgotten the moral needs of ordinary people for a moment. As he says in the following "Introduction": "Just as in the metaphysics of nature there must also be some principle which applies the universal supreme principles of nature to the objects of experience in general, moral metaphysics cannot be left with any defects in this respect, and we will often have to regard as objects the special nature of man which is recognized only by experience (nature), in order to show the consequences of the universal moral principles left to it; But this in no way diminishes the purity of these universal moral principles, nor does it call into question their innate origins. This is tantamount to saying that moral metaphysics cannot be grounded in anthropology, but can be applied in this respect. ”[8]

It can be seen that in fact Kant had a dialectical understanding of the popularization and academicization of his moral philosophy. First of all, although moral metaphysics is an abstract philosophical system, it must not become an ivory tower that does not eat human fireworks, but must be rooted in the moral life of ordinary people, and it should be believed that the principle of pure practical reason is the innermost essence of each person as a human being. But on the other hand, given that this intrinsic essence is already intrinsically contained in the daily lives of ordinary people, if it cannot be endowed with a clear form of pure reason, it cannot be consciously realized that only philosophers with the powerful scalpel of pure reason carefully stripped it out and constructed into a metaphysical system can be used to "restore their common rights as human beings" for the vast number of laborers, thus affecting the actual human society. We do see that even in the philosophical work of Moral Metaphysics, which seems so unfathomable in title, the topics discussed are in fact closely related to people's daily lives everywhere. In addition to the general introduction and the two "introductions" of the theory of legal rights and the theory of virtue, all of which involve substantive content, such as the discussion of property rights, personal rights, and contracts (donations and loans, etc.) in private law, national law and international law in public law, and the discussion of virtue when talking about suicide, prostitution, lying, miserliness, miserliness, love, sympathy, and friendship, all reflect Kant's familiarity with the general human condition and the richness of "human wisdom". This is really a kind of flesh-and-blood "metaphysics", and we may even think that its "metaphysical flavor" is too weak, far less lofty than the Critique of Practical Reason. But in fact, this is precisely the "moral metaphysics" that Kant wants to establish, as quoted earlier: it "has a scary subject, but it can have a high degree of popularity and universal suitability." It can be seen that, contrary to the impression of the difficulty and obscurity of Kant's moral philosophy, this moral philosophy actually has its "pro-people" side, and if we do not understand his mysterious and profound philosophical propositions from this side, we cannot really understand Kant's thought.

Second, rational cleanliness

Kant's philosophy is called "critical philosophy", and its moral philosophy is no exception, based on the critique of pure reason, that is, pure practical reason. Generally speaking about rational philosophy, or rationalist philosophy, does not necessarily have a critical meaning, for example, the philosophies from Descartes to Spinoza and Leibniz belong to the continental rationalists, but in Kant's view they are all authoritarian and lack critical spirit. Hence Kant's rationality is also called "critical reason." Critical reason is characterized by the fact that it does not accept any preconditions that have not been questioned rationally, and thus belongs to the most thorough pure reason of all forms of reason. This thoroughness and purity of reason often reaches some extreme form, which I call "the purity of reason."

As far as Kant's moral philosophy is concerned, in The Foundation of Moral Metaphysics, although Kant's thinking begins with the popular moral knowledge of ordinary people, as mentioned earlier, due to the gradual rise to moral metaphysics, the level of speculation is getting higher and higher, and finally in the "Critique of Pure Practical Reason" shows "the final limits of all practical philosophies". This "critique of pure practical reason" of Kant has always been full of doubts, and has been described as "one of the most difficult mysteries in Kant's writings", and in response to its "deduction", "people unanimously agree that the effort has failed", and even that "Kant himself recognized this failure".[9] In fact, this is groundless, a misunderstanding that leads to the failure to understand the true meaning of Kant's "purely practical critique of reason." Kant pointed out at the beginning of the book that for the metaphysics of morality, the only thing that can really be laid for it is the "pure practical rational critique", but this foundation is not very necessary for moral practice, because ordinary everyday intellect can solve this problem; Although theoretically necessary, this critique of pure reason is "completely dialectical", as is the case with both speculative and practical reason, and "in the end they can only be the same reason"[10]. So, just as the critique of purely theoretical reason ultimately leads to the dialectic of pure reason (false reasoning, the reversal of the dichotomy, and the proof of God), the critique of pure practical reason ultimately leads to the negative dialectical conclusion of freedom and the incomprehensibility of its unconditional laws of practice. But the difference is that in this later negative conclusion, "although we do not understand the unconditional necessity of the practice of moral imperatives, we understand the uninterpretability of such imperatives" [11], and this ununderstandability, as a "rational fact", has become the positive starting point of the later Critique of Practical Reason.

Thus, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant begins by stating that he "does not call this critique pure critique of practical reason, but directly calls it a general critique of practical reason" and "because, if reason as pure rational reality is practiced, then it proves the reality of it and its concept through this fact, and all the mysteries against the possibility of its existence are in vain" [12]. Just because Kant no longer uses the term "critique of purely practical reason" in his Critique of Practical Reason, we cannot say that he has realized that the deduction under this name is "failed"[13], but can only say that its conclusions are negative. Since this deduction of the critique of purely practical reason does not establish the negative (i.e., "unprovoked" and "incomprehensible") premise of freedom from purely practicing the laws of reason, how can it be used to criticize the "impure" general practical reasons that can be explained by other reasons? Therefore, the meaning of the "critique of pure practical reason" is to completely remove the impure components from general practical reason, so as to finally reveal that the purest reason for the existence of the law of practical reason is nothing more than free will without any other reason.

Therefore, we cannot simply dismiss Kant's rational purity as a pathology, but we must see that he has a good intention, that is, to extract the absolutely commanded law of morality from daily moral life through strict rational criticism, and to use it as a universal standard to measure all moral or immoral behavior of mankind. Such a rationality thoroughness is second to none among all rational philosophers, who believe that true morality can only be moral for morality's sake, obligation for obligation's sake, and that anything tainted with a little sensibility or experience as a motive is not pure, cannot be regarded as moral action, but at best can only be regarded as legitimate. Thus the so-called moral law can only be a formal "imperative" of pure practical reason: you want to make the norm of your conduct a universal law. This command alone is conditional on nothing else, on the logical law of identity or non-contradiction in accordance with pure practical reason, and thus embodies the "self-discipline" of free will, that is, the consistency of free will or the law of self-legislation. Free will, which can only be an occasional one-time occurrence without taking into account its own legislation, is what Kant called "free arbitrariness", that is, the kind of freedom to do whatever is commonly considered. But that freedom is only superficial, not only subject to external contingent conditions, but certainly unsustainable, and likely to lead to self-contradiction or self-cancellation, such as "regret" for the original free act. True freedom must be consistent and unconditional, which will not be abolished by subsequent freedoms, in order to truly become a free man. And this requires self-discipline, and therefore there must be the addition of pure reason. Pure practical reason makes free action a universal law of self-legislation, a "one who can do it for life". Therefore, the person who obeys this absolute command as his duty is a moral person, that is, only the person who observes self-discipline is moral, and his actions are moral acts. We don't even have to know what morality is first, just how to be truly free, that's moral. Only a man of self-discipline, that is, a truly free man, for whom we can call such acts "moral", if not specifically moral, is already practically moral.

In the history of Western ethics, Kant was the first philosopher to base morality entirely on the self-disciplined law of free will. The moral law he established sounds condescending ("absolute command"),but in fact has no didactic overtones, but appeals to the free choice of every rational person. That is, if you want to be a truly free person, then you think about it with your own reason, and eventually you will admit that only the self-discipline of the will can maintain a consistent free personality for you; And only this kind of self-discipline according to the will, even if you didn't know what virtue is, everyone will recognize that your behavior is truly moral. That's why you realize that morality is not a dogma instilled in you by any saint or god from the outside, but the true essence of your own heart, a mechanism of freedom. But the premise is that everyone is a rational person, with the ability to distinguish between reason and sensibility, pure reason and impure reason. For only pure reason, by excluding all contingent conditions of sensibility, can establish such a self-disciplined law of man's free will.

From the point of view of pure theory itself, his system of moral philosophy is almost invulnerable, and the principle of self-discipline in it has become a basic principle of various legal, political, and moral philosophies in later generations. But its flaws are also obvious, which is so formalistic that in reality no one can fulfill the moral law of obligation for the sake of obligations that it requires. Not only did posterity criticize him, but he also admitted it. But his justification is that this is only a moral ideal, although it is implicit in the depths of every ordinary person's heart, but the real effect is only to take this as an absolute standard, and to stimulate the humility and respect of the human heart in the face of the moral law in practical activities; Nevertheless, this moral ideal is indispensable for a rational person, otherwise any even moral action of man would be reduced to some consideration of interest, which would put man and animals in general on the same level.

Another of Kant's arguments is that although every man cannot realize his moral ideals throughout his life in his own moral practice, but can only aspire to them with reverence, on the whole, human history can eventually embark on a path that tends to the "kingdom of purpose" due to the increasing penetration of moral law, a path not formulated by a genius for everyone to practice, but a certain "providence" that all mankind follows unconsciously. This is the third way of argumentation of Kant's moral philosophy, which returns from the second way of argument to the first, and on the basis of a new theory, elevates the potential moral qualities of the masses of the people to the subject of history from the point of view of historical development and evolution, albeit unconsciously.

Third, the historical vision

In Kant's time, the concept of development and evolution of human history had become the consensus of Enlightenment thinkers, who believed that history developed step by step from the era of barbarism to civilization, from the lower to the higher. Although occasionally people like Rousseau deliberately come out to contradict each other, saying that science and art do not help to dispel customs, they do not really advocate going back to primitive times, but strive to design a more reasonable and moral social system for the future. Kant undoubtedly accepted this evolutionary view of history and became a faithful believer in it. But unlike others (especially Rousseau), he interpreted this evolution more as moral evolution, that is, the entry of humanity from the age of barbarism into the age of civilization, and in the future into an era of "permanent peace" and morally perfect civil society. So, "If you want to ask: is humanity (the whole) constantly moving towards improvement; It is not about the natural history of man (whether there will be any new human races in the future), but about the history of morality." [15] To think of the evolution of human history as a moral evolution presupposes that there must be a systematicly formed moral metaphysical vision. As the quote from The Metaphysics of Morality puts it: "Moral metaphysics cannot be grounded in anthropology, but it can be applied in this respect."

So, when we complain about the abstract obscurity of Kant's moral philosophy and feel that it is simply a useless game of concepts, do not forget the application of these concepts to his anthropology. In Practical Anthropology he says: "Man has a character of his own creation, for he has the ability to perfect himself according to the purposes he has taken; He can thus make himself a rational animal as an Animal rationable. [16] Here, both the essential attributes of human freedom and reason are possessed, which enable man to "indoctrinate" himself and thus enter into social life. But at the same time, this social life also contains a natural tendency to discord, from the individual point of view, man's "non-social sociality" [17], man's selfishness makes them separate and fight with each other, creating the danger of social division and disintegration at all times. However, despite this, from the perspective of the natural quality of human beings as a whole, human beings are still social.

First of all, it must be remembered that in all other self-conscious animals, each individual realizes its whole prescriptiveness, but in man only the class can do so. Therefore, man can only strive to pursue his prescriptiveness through progress in the endless series of many generations, where his purpose is ultimately to stay in the foresight forever. However, while this tendency to achieve the ultimate goal may often be thwarted, it will never be completely reversed.[18]

And this lays the foundation for the establishment of human moral qualities. That is to say, "man is prescribed by his reason to be in a society with whom he is, and to be civilized, civilized and moralized in society through art and science", and although the animality in him often compels him to degenerate and has a certain tendency to do evil, his moral qualities based on his social character will enable him to "fight more actively against the obstacles that bind him to the barbarism of his nature, in order to establish his human dignity".[19] But in this regard, Kant encountered an insurmountable theoretical dilemma, that is, although human beings have become more and more civilized and moralized through indoctrination or education, who will educate human beings when they are still in a barbaric state? Because the educator himself must first be educated, and the first educator has no one to educate him, this is a paradox [20]. To resolve this paradox, he had to appeal to "Providence" (Vorsehung): "Human beings are educated in the whole of their class, that is, not individuals (Singulorum) systematically and only as a patchwork aggregate, but collectively (Universorum) educated, in an unwavering effort to pursue a state of citizenship based on both the principles of liberty and the principle of legal coercion— This is ultimately what man can only expect from Providence, that is, some kind of wisdom, which is not man's wisdom, but after all the idea of his own reason that he (due to his own sins) cannot attain. ”[21]

However, we cannot simply equate his "providence" with God, which is an arrangement of wisdom in the dark, but its fundamental basis is man's own moral qualities, but man himself does not know it. Kant's historical vision ends here, he neither has the height of historical rationality as he later Hegel, nor has he reached the secret of historical development like Marx's historical materialism, but only a "guess" of historical progress from his "reflective judgment". But after all, with the help of this belief in the process of historical development, he combined his highly abstract moral metaphysics with the underlying moral qualities of ordinary people. Without this union, his moral philosophy of pure reason would always be an unattainable distant ideal, while the people would never be able to manifest their own moral qualities. It is precisely in the course of historical development as a "moral history" that the moral ideals provided by pure practical reason are not completely illusory fantasies, but show their own trajectories in the daily social life of the masses.

IV. Conclusion

To sum up, the way of establishing Kant's moral philosophy is first based on the daily moral life of ordinary people, not with the help of moral dogmas or creeds promulgated from top to bottom, but from the moral qualities that have been revealed in the hearts of the people at the bottom as rational people, through purification and purification, the fundamentals of all human beings are revealed, which is different from the teachings of all religious ethics or the teachings of Oriental saints. Secondly, it is based on the extremely meticulous dissection and separation of the basis of morality by pure practical reason, and it can even be said that it is based on the most thorough implementation and derivation of pure reason itself in practical activity. It establishes the self-disciplined law of man's free will as the highest principle of moral philosophy, making the moral law the highest ideal above all other human activities. Third, as the unity of humanism and idealism, the most enlightening way of his moral philosophy is the historicist view of moral history, which not only avoids his underlying complex staying in the daily experience of secular human beings without thinking of progress, but also avoids the volleying of pure reason, but also shows human history as a process of continuous self-reflection and self-improvement with moral ideals as the ultimate purpose. These three levels, invisibly in a positive, negative, and synthetic dialectical way, have become a basic model for us to fully grasp Kant's moral philosophy, and any attempt to establish a certain moral metaphysics cannot but be considered and therefore has reference significance.

exegesis:

[1] Reflections, reprinted from [English] Comp Mitchell, "The Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason", p. 39, translated by Wei Zhuomin, [Wuhan] Central China Normal University Press, 2000.

[2] [3] [4] [5] [10] [de] Kant: The Foundation of Moral Metaphysics, pp. 8, 7, 27, 101, 7-8, translated by Yang Yunfei, Deng Xiaomang, [Beijing] People's Publishing House, 2013.

[3] [12] [de] Kant: Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 208, 1, translated by Deng Xiaomang, Yang Zutao, [Beijing] People's Publishing House, 2013.

[4] [8] [De] Kant: The Metaphysics of Morality, translated by Zhang Rong and Li Qiuzhi, in The Complete Works of Kant (Vol. 6), pp. 214, 224, [Beijing] Chinese Min University Press, 2007.

[5] [American] Henry E. Allison: Kant's Theory of Freedom, pp. 322, 323, translated by Chen Huping, [Shenyang] Liaoning Education Publishing House, 2001. For a similar misreading, see Lewis Baker, General Interpretation of the Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 204-205, translated by Huang Tao, [Shanghai] East China Normal University Press, 2011.

[6] [de] Kant: The Foundation of Moral Metaphysics, p. 115, this sentence seems to be a "failure" of argument in terms of "incomprehensibility" alone, but judging from the fact that this "incomprehensibleness" has been "understood", it is precisely the deductive success, which is exactly what Kant's "critique of pure practical reason" is trying to prove.

[7] For example, Kant later said in his Critique of Judgment: "Even philosophy can only be divided into two main parts, namely theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy; Even everything that we may say about the unique principles of judgment must be counted in philosophy as part of the theory, i.e., as theoretical understanding according to the concept of nature; However, this critique of pure reason, which must decide on all this in order to make it possible before the system is constructed, consists of three parts: the critique of pure intellect, the critique of pure judgment, and the critique of pure reason, and these faculties are called pure because they are legislated from heaven. (Critique of Judgment, p. 11, translated by Deng Xiaomang, Yang Zutao, [Beijing] People's Publishing House, 2017.) In fact, three of his critiques were renamed here, and the Critique of Practical Reason became the "Critique of Pure Reason" (the original Critique of Pure Reason became the "Critique of Pure Intellect"). It can be seen that Kant's removal of the word "pure" in the Critique of Practical Reason is mainly to avoid misunderstanding, rather than to admit failure. Since he has established at the end of the Foundation the boundary of pure practical reason and the "validity" within this boundary, the next step is to use this law of pure practical reason, which has proved to be valid, to criticize impure practical reason in general, and this is exactly what "critique of practical reason" (that is, the critique of general practical reason) means.

[8] In the face of "who has a word that can be done for life?" Of the question, Confucius replied, "Forgive me!" do unto others as you would have them do to you. (Analects of Wei Linggong) Forgiveness is the meaning of comparing the heart to the heart, pushing oneself and others, in stark contrast to Kant's self-legislation of free will.

[9] "Revisiting the question: Is humanity constantly moving toward improvement?" In[ de] Kant: A Collection of Critical Essays on Historical Rationality, p. 149, translated by He Zhaowu, [Beijing] The Commercial Press, 1990.

[10] [21] [de] Kant: Practical Anthropology, pp. 202, 208, translated by Deng Xiaomang, [Shanghai] Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2012.

[11] [18] [19] For this phrase, see Kant, "Universal Historical Concepts from the Perspective of a Global Citizen", in Critical Anthology of Historical Rationality, pp. 6, 204, 205, translated by He Zhaowu, [Beijing] The Commercial Press, 1990.

[12] See Marx: "There is a materialist doctrine that holds that man is the product of the environment and education, and therefore that the changed man is the product of another environment and of changed education--this doctrine forgets that the environment is changed by man, and that the educator himself must be educated." Therefore, this doctrine necessarily divides society into two parts, one of which is above it... The change of the environment and the consistency of human activity can only be regarded as and reasonably understood as the practice of change. See The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (Vol. 1), p. 504, [Beijing] People's Publishing House, 2009.

[13] See humble essay "Kant's Transition from Practical Rationality to Historical Rationality", in Tianjin Social Sciences, No. 3, 2014.

Deng Xiaomang: A detailed explanation of Kant's moral philosophy

At present, the discussion on Kant's moral philosophy at home and abroad is very heated, especially in such a special period of cultural transformation and social change that China is currently facing, and the social and moral problems caused by it are particularly prominent, so that a big discussion on moral issues and humanistic spirit has been set off in China. One of the most important topics of discussion is the moral decline of contemporary society, and the problem of the incompatibility of traditional Chinese culture and traditional morality under contemporary conditions. But the huge discussion finally fell short. In this discussion, one view is that we should return to traditional culture, and the other view is that modern culture should be rebuilt. The author believes that in the contemporary era, we should absorb more of the views and perspectives of some Westerners and understand their views on moral issues. In the course of centuries of years from the establishment of capitalism to the entry into modern industrial society, the West has undergone great changes in their moral values, especially since the period of the Western Enlightenment. A key factor in the thinking that led to this important transformation was Kant and Kant's moral philosophy. Therefore, if China's contemporary social life also has to go through such a development path, then the author believes that we should be able to absorb a lot of things worth learning from modern Western rationalism, which will be completely new for the Chinese people.

Chinese is no stranger to Kant's moral philosophy, and we have studied it for more than a hundred years. But I still feel that there are still many things in Kant's moral philosophy that we have not touched on, and there are still some things that deserve further study. In fact, this does not mean that the theoretical level of the Chinese is low, mainly Chinese in the study of Western theory, especially when it comes to many issues in the field of morality, there is a general impetuous mentality: thinking that our Chinese nation has unparalleled advantages in morality, which is an area that should be spoken by us. Under the influence of such a mentality, people are often half-aware of Western moral statements, and they are busy playing out without fully understanding them. I feel that today we should re-examine the characters and ideas (especially in the moral field) that we think are outdated and have been studied almost, and re-objectively and deeply understand the true meaning contained in the thinking of Westerners. After some in-depth research, the author found that Kant's moral philosophy about moral positions, moral foundations, and his understanding of moral structure is completely different from what we Chinese, and we should appreciate the true meaning of what is hidden behind these propositions for us. Therefore, when I talk about Kant's moral philosophy here, I mainly want to start from some new perspectives and contexts, and raise those problems that Chinese usually cannot be fully understood and that have not caused shock in our hearts, for everyone's consideration.

When people think of Kant, the first thing that probably comes to mind is that his writing is obscure and difficult to understand, and even Germans feel a headache about this. But in fact, Kant was very concerned with the practical significance of his doctrines, especially to ordinary people. Kant has made it clear that in his early years, due to the influence of Rousseau, his view of philosophy underwent a fundamental change. He believed that his doctrine should be useful to ordinary people, otherwise his knowledge would have little value. So written in his lifetime. In many works, including the three major criticisms, he is everywhere considering the basis for the survival of ordinary people, based on the living world of ordinary people.

Thus there are three levels in Kant's moral philosophy, the first of which is popular moral philosophy. If his moral philosophy is to have a complete vision, then it is first aimed at popular moral philosophy, so there is such an idea in him: to discover and find the innate principles of morality from ordinary people. Of course, the moral principles he formed are very obscure, but he believes that those are very useful to ordinary people, and that moral education for ordinary people, daily interactions with ordinary people, and the improvement of the moral quality of ordinary people are indispensable. Guided by this line of thought, he took popular moral philosophy as the first level of his entire moral philosophy. But it is not enough to merely popularize moral philosophy, so he elevates popular moral philosophy to the second level of moral metaphysics, looking for the basis of moral philosophy in popular moral philosophy. Why is there a moral philosophy? Kant firmly believed that there was a metaphysical foundation in human nature, and that the system of moral philosophical principles thus formed was moral metaphysics. Higher than moral metaphysics is the third level in moral philosophy, that is, to seek the premise of moral metaphysics, to criticize how moral metaphysics is possible, and finally formed his second major critique, "Practical Rational Critique". The three levels are roughly introduced as follows.

1

The first level is from the perspective of popular moral philosophy, Kant believes that morality should first start from daily life, and the most daily moral life of people is to talk about others (chewing their tongues). In daily life, the most like to talk about others and make moral evaluations are those long-tongued women, in general, people are very disgusted with the behavior of those long-tongued women, but Kant defended this bad habit, he believes that this behavior (chewing the tongue) should not be simply moral criticism, but should be viewed objectively and calmly. Through such a phenomenon of long-tongued women talking about people and creating gossip, it reveals a kind of irrepressible nature of people, that is, people like to use an absolute moral scale to measure others. This so-called phenomenon of talking about people just shows that there is an absolute moral yardstick in people's minds. Kant found a detail based on these phenomena of life: that people always make harsh demands on the motives of others to do good. According to this Kant found the principle that true moral action should be "moral for morality's sake, obligation for duty's sake", and not for any other sensible practical purpose. Kant distilled some of the everyday moral rules from them and gave four examples to prove them. The first example is "Don't Lie". A person doing business, Tong Sou is not deceived, this is what we generally call integrity. His behavior is commendable, but not necessarily respectable, because business integrity brings benefits. Who is worthy of respect? He can follow "no fakes" as a moral principle, so that even if his shop closes down and does not sell fakes, then this person's behavior is respectable and moral. The second example is "Don't Commit Suicide". Kant believed that not committing suicide was the most basic survival instinct of man. But there is such a person, his life is very painful, even life is worse than death, in such a situation, he still does not commit suicide, strong to live, then his behavior is worthy of respect, his "living" itself is a moral act. The third example is "developing one's own talents". One lives in the world and one should develop one's talents in all its aspects, and you are not just doing it for the sake of gaining some kind of benefit, but for the sake of perfecting oneself, making it his duty, which is also a moral act. The last example is "helping others". You want to help others not in return, but in an obligation, which is also a moral act. These four examples are not listed casually, but are arranged in a strictly logical order and represent four different moral realms: "do not deceive" and "do not commit suicide" are a complete obligation (negative obligation), and "develop talent" and "help others" are incomplete obligations (positive obligation). The so-called full obligation is that you absolutely do not do, there is no condition to talk about, and the latter two are incomplete obligations, and it is forgivable not to do it in some cases.

2

The second level in Kant's moral philosophy is the metaphysics of morality. The above is to mention four examples of popular morality cited by Kant, in fact, there are many such aphorisms in daily life, such as "Do not do to others what you do not want", and other basic norms for dealing with people. These norms are popular morality. Because they are popular morality, many people do not understand the "basis" behind them, and this "basis" is the innate basis emphasized by Kant. Kant argued that popular moral philosophy lacked reliable rational principles as the final verdict, so it was easy to deteriorate, and if a universal basis was not found for popular morality, such aphorisms were likely to confuse morality and immorality. Thus Kant seeks the moral law behind this moral proverb, thus proposing the second level of moral philosophy, moral metaphysics. Kant's universal moral law is expressed in the form of an imperative: you must act in such a way that your code of conduct (subjective) becomes a universal law (objective). This principle can also be expressed in a popular way, that is, "do not do to others what you do not want", which Confucius called "the one who has a word that can be done for life". But Confucius is a popular expression, while Kant is an expression of reason, an expression of logic and formalization, more precise than everyday expression. Popular expressions are often flawed, but Kant's expression excludes these situations, and he establishes a rational, formal principle that can be established in any case. Kant said that such a moral law is unconditional and absolute. And "do not do to others what you do not want" may still be a conditional command, and if the conditions are removed, this command will not be valid. Conditional commands can be changed according to conditions, so conditional commands are not universal. With regard to universal moral imperatives, Kant believed that every man could understand and obey them by his own reason alone. To illustrate this point, Kant will reanalyze the four examples mentioned in popular moral philosophy. For example, is "don't lie" a moral law? Just think about it, if everyone deceives people, no one will believe anyone anymore, then there will be no use in lying to people, there will be no more people lying, and "deception" as a universal law will cancel itself; And if everyone doesn't lie, it's going to be a virtuous circle and people are going to be more and more honest. Another example is to assume that everyone commits suicide and everyone dies, which will lead to no one committing suicide again. So if a norm, in the process of generalization, cancels itself and logically violates the law of identity, then it is not in conformity with practical reason. Thus, these two obligations are more like an "objective" law of nature. Another example is the latter two obligations, "develop talents" and "help others". One can imagine a lazy world and an indifferent world, but no one wants to live in such a world. Lazy people always want others to be able to do it, and selfish people always want others to be "unselfish and self-interested". So this kind of behavior also has a logical contradiction, but it is not an objective contradiction like deception or suicide, but a subjective contradiction. Thus, Kant's determination of whether an action is moral or immoral is understood according to the logical consistency of human behavior. Kant boils it down to such an expression of the moral law: making your code of conduct a natural law. That is, in practice, you imagine what kind of natural consequences it will lead to once it is generalized—is it self-cancellation or self-sustainment? Self-cancellation is moral behavior, not vice versa. This is a "natural elimination" understanding of the moral law.

This form of expression of Kant's moral law emphasizes that the way man behaves as a "natural law", to consider the natural consequences, to see if it can become a universal natural law, which is the first deformed form of his moral law. In addition to this form of expression of natural elimination, Kant also proposed a second deformed expression, which is of a higher level than the first. The first is to regard man's moral behavior as a natural act, and to devalue man's status. Historically, people may have chosen moral behavior through natural elimination. But according to Kant's transcendental philosophy, this is only about morality in terms of effect, and it is also utilitarian, and morality can only be freed from utilitarianism from the perspective of motives and purposes. Kant, in emphasizing the purpose of morality, further divided it into subjective purposes and objective purposes. Kant believed that subjective purposes are always accidental and vary according to different objects, and that only objective purposes are the universal and inevitable purposes of all rational beings and have absolute value. This objective purpose is the subject of will itself as the subject of all subjective purposes, i.e., the "personality". This introduces a second form of transfiguration of absolute command, namely, human ends, not mere means. True morality is to treat a person as an end, and no matter who the other person is, you should respect his personality and humanity. So going back and looking at the previous four examples, it has this meaning: "Don't deceive people", which means not to use others as a means; "Don't commit suicide" means not to use yourself as a means; "Exerting one's talents" means taking oneself as a goal; To "help others" is to take others as an end. In contrast, Confucius's statement that "do not do to others what you do not want to do to others" requires a higher level of rational basis, not just a perceptual, utilitarian basis. Otherwise, in order to do a good job in interpersonal relations, for political purposes such as "winning the world", and even in order to obtain greater benefits, I can do "do not do to others what I do not want". Therefore, such a moral principle of Confucianism is not a universal moral law, it is a morality based on a "human feeling" and utilitarianism, and once human feelings change and utilitarianism is in hand, the "tool" of morality can be discarded. We often say that the moral loss of Chinese, in essence, is not entirely a moral loss, but is determined by the nature of our morality and the traditional model. Only for the purpose of personality, "do not do to others what you do not want" is truly moral.

The third expression of deformation is: the will of each person is the will of legislation. In terms of morality, people are self-disciplined. As for "ruling the country and the world" or the commandments of God in Christianity, etc., in Kant's view, these are not really moral laws, because they are all "other laws". The expression of the highest moral law is self-discipline, and everyone's free will is the will to legislate, and everyone legislates for himself out of free will, not following the teachings of others. Strictly speaking, this formulation does not take the form of an order, but directly refers to the fact that the will of every rational being is the will of universal legislation. Thus the third form of command becomes the strongest basis for compliance with the first two forms of command. Of the three forms of command, only the third form of command gives the subject of action the dignity of the human person and arouses the moral sentiment of "respect." Because of this, in the actual moral education, Kant is very opposed to using a herd mentality to set an example for others, to carry out emotional education. Kant's idea of moral education was based on ethical self-discipline. Every man can enlighten him when he reaches the maturity of reason. What is Enlightenment ? It is to let everyone think with their own rationality and have the courage to use their own rationality to get out of the state of being under supervision (children are in a state of being guarded, so they are also out of the state of children). This is the inspiration that Kant brings to our moral education.

3

The third level is Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. Mentioned earlier in moral metaphysics the principle that you want to make the norm of your conduct willing to be universal forever. What is the premise of such a moral law? How is it possible? Everyone's will is the will to legislate, so what is the premise of this will? Therefore, the practice of rational criticism is to critically examine the premise of the moral law, why the moral law is possible, and other issues. The Critique of Pure Reason examines how knowledge is possible, and the Critique of Practical Reason examines the question of why morality is possible. Kant gave an answer, and that was "freedom" or "free will." What is free will ? This is not something that can be analyzed with any mechanical relationship. Everyone is responsible for the actions he or she does, merit or guilt, which is completely different in the eyes of biologists and medical scientists and in the eyes of theologians and judges, who always assume first and foremost that man is free will. If from a medical or biological point of view, the criminal behavior is determined by environmental factors, the psychological formation of the criminal is from a young age by the adverse education and influence of the environment, to become such a criminal person, so the judge to sentence, should be convicted of this society, the criminal is only a product of society, there is no free will. But the judge wants to convict the criminal, because the criminal act was committed by the criminal in a conscious state, and unless the doctor can prove that the criminal is a mentally ill person, then the criminal can be exempted from criminal prosecution, and he needs to be sent to the hospital for treatment, because at that time the criminal is no longer a complete person. Free will, which is a cause beyond all causality, is the basis for the court's conviction and theological basis for convicting man. Judges convict criminals on the premise that they see them as people with free will, not as animals. Therefore, there is a very popular view in Western legal circles, and its representative figure, Pecaria of Italy, has proposed that "it is his right for criminals to be punished", that criminals are free people, so the crimes of criminals are his own crimes, and it is the right of criminals to be punished for this. This is because he approved of the law when the law was made at that time, so that the criminal's crime was assumed to be an act of knowingly committing a crime in a sober state, and he was prepared to bear the consequences of the crime. Thus, punishment is only the realization of the criminal's free will, and if he is released, it will be regarded as depriving the criminal of his right to entitlement and is disrespectful of the criminal's personality consistency. This seems to be a very absurd theory, but behind it is a very important Western ethical idea, that is, to respect the consistency of man's free will and personality, and the consistency of free will and personality is not disturbed by any causal law. The concept of "freedom" is also mentioned in the Critique of Pure Reason, and his third "two-law reversal" already mentions the contradiction between freedom and necessity. Kant mentioned in "The Reversal of the Second Law" that we cannot prove whether people have free will or not, but you cannot deny it. Because even if you deny it, you need to prove empirically that "freedom" is transcendental, it is "something in itself." Therefore, he emphasizes that as long as we strictly distinguish between the two things and the phenomenal world, even if we never know what freedom is like, we can get rid of this contradiction. Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason that "freedom" is a priori assumption, that we cannot prove it, but we cannot deny it. Therefore, I can propose an empty idea of "a priori freedom", and wait for the void. This concept has no meaning in the field of knowledge, but it makes sense in the field of practice. Kant emphasized at the beginning of his Critique of Practical Reason that the moral law of man is possible because man is "free" in practice, and the freedom of practice is unknowable, but has a "reality" in practice. So free will is the premise of all morality that is possible, which is the highest point of practical rational criticism. If we trace how morality is possible, it is that man has free will. As for how free will is possible, this cannot be proved, it is the absolute premise of all proofs. Basing all morality on free will, and basing all moral evaluations, good and evil, on free will is a very important theoretical contribution of Kant.

(The article was originally published in journal of Xi'an Jiaotong University (Social Sciences Edition), Vol. 25, No. 2, June 2005)

Deng Xiaomang: The place of aesthetic judgment in Kant's philosophy

Nakayama University Philosophy

The place of aesthetic judgment in Kant's philosophy

Text/Deng Xiaomang

Executive Summary

This article deals with the question of the place of aesthetic judgment in Kant's philosophy at two levels. On the one hand, the relationship between aesthetic judgment (or connoisseur judgment) and teleology seems to be a mystery for a long time, but in fact, aesthetic judgment is the only innate principle in the entire teleology, and teleological judgment is a point of view derived from it, both belong to teleology, but there are layers of aesthetic judgment and teleological judgment; on the other hand, aesthetic judgment, as the deepest level in teleology, constitutes the "introduction" of the entire Kant philosophical system, which is not only the introduction to natural metaphysics. Moreover, it is an introduction to the metaphysics of morality, and thus has the characteristics of high-order self-discipline, that is, "re-self-discipline".

Keywords: Kant Aesthetic judgment Teleological teleological judgment Re-self-discipline

The question of the status of "aesthetic judgment" in Kant's Critique of Judgment in Kant's philosophy has always been a topic of divergent opinion. The clarification of this question is conducive to our grasp of the essence of Kant's aesthetics from the height of Kant's philosophical thought, rather than staying on his superficial individual aesthetic propositions and formulations. This article attempts to discuss the relationship between Kant's aesthetic judgment and teleology, and the relationship with critical philosophy and metaphysics.

Relationship with critical philosophy and metaphysics

As mentioned above, the critique of aesthetic judgment is the formulator of the innate principles of the whole teleology, and therefore its principles also represent the principles of teleology. The question now is, what does it have to do with Kant's entire critical philosophy and metaphysics?

In terms of its completed form, Kant's "critical philosophy" is the "three critiques" system composed of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique of Judgment, which correspond to man's cognitive ability, desire ability and emotional ability and their concepts of truth, goodness, and beauty, respectively. But it is well known that Kant's "rule of thirds" system was not formulated at the beginning. His original plan was dichotomous, that is, to "critique" the rational principles of man's cognitive ability and practical ability, respectively, and then to build on this basis two kinds of metaphysics in the future, namely "natural metaphysics" and "moral metaphysics", and these two "criticisms" can be regarded as "introductions" to two "metaphysics". He sometimes includes both critiques in the title of "metaphysics" (note: see Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, People's Press, 2004, p. 635). ）。 But at least, at the time of writing The Critique of Pure Reason, he did not see the prospect of the possibility of a third critique. But even here there are already certain signs that indicate a promising theoretical sign later on. This is the fundamental role of the concept of "teleology" in methodology. For example, in the chapter "The Architecture of Pure Reason" in the "Methodology" section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says

Under the rule of reason, our general knowledge must not be allowed to constitute any fantasy, but must constitute a system in which only this knowledge can support and promote the fundamental purpose of reason. But the system I understand is the unity of miscellaneous knowledge under one idea. This idea is a rational concept of the form of a whole, so long as it is predetermined by this concept, whether it is the scope of miscellaneous things or the position of the parts in between each other. So this scientific conception of reason consists of a purposeful and integral form consistent with that purpose. The unity of the purpose with which all parts are connected, and with which they are also interconnected in the conception of purpose, enables each part to be recalled in the knowledge of the other parts, and also to any uncertain quantity which does not have any accidental increase, or which in perfectity does not have its own innately prescribed limits... Like the body of an animal, its growth does not add any limbs, but does not change proportions to make each limb stronger and more effectively suited to its purpose. (Note: Kant, Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, p. 629.) ）

It is on the basis of such a general assumption that Kant used his teleology to unify natural metaphysics with moral metaphysics into a "single philosophical system." As Mr. Yang Zutao pointed out, although both of Kant's metaphysics are self-contained systems, "in both metaphysics, moral metaphysics is the science of the whole duty of man, about the main purpose and the final purpose of human reason, and all knowledge, use, and main purpose of reason must be subordinated as a means to the final end of reason, which determines that natural metaphysics should be subordinate to moral metaphysics to form a single, complete, purely rational teleological system." (Note: Yang Zutao: A Study of Kant and Hegel's Philosophy, Wuhan University Press, 2001, p. 158.) ）。 But Kant has not seriously explored this "teleology" itself.

In Critique of Judgment, the problem becomes clear. It is evident that the topics discussed in the "Preface" to the Critique of Judgment and the first three verses of the "Introduction" are directly followed by the ideas quoted in the Critique of Pure Reason. The problem is still the combination of the theoretical philosophy of pure reason and the philosophy of practice, but the intermediary of the combination has gone from the general appeal to "teleology" to the "judgment", and the mode of combination has been transformed from "theoretical philosophy - teleological - practical philosophy" to "intellectual - judgment - reason" (equivalent to the concept, judgment, reasoning of ordinary logic). The formulation of the question is now: "So, in the order of our epistemic faculties, does the judgment, which constitutes an intermediary between intellect and reason, also have its own innate principles"? The necessity of solving this problem lies in the fact that if the system of pure philosophy is to be realized as metaphysics, then this critique must probe the base of this edifice in advance in such depth until it lays the initial foundations for the capacity of those principles that do not depend on experience, so that no part of the edifice will sink down, or it will inevitably lead to the collapse of the whole" (Note: Kant, Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, p. 2). ）。 The problem is more serious than ever: the critique of judgment involves the eventual solidification of the foundations of the whole edifice of pure philosophy. Kant discovered so late that the "only philosophical system" composed of two metaphysics, which he had intended to be after two strict "critiques", had not even laid a foundation!

But the difficulty of tracing the innate principles of judgment itself is that it is impossible to deduce its own principles from the innate concepts which it applies in its knowledge, for it is not its own principle, but only the principle of the intellect, in which it plays only a mediating role linking the intellect and the sensibility. So its own principles are certainly not related to knowledge. But it cannot be related to the rational principle of desire for ability, which belongs to the field of practice. In this way, the innate principle of judgment itself is only related to pleasant and unpleasant emotions. And this emotion, which cannot be attributed to either knowledge nor practice, seems so "mysterious" that it "makes it necessary to divide a special department for this ability in criticism" (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, p. 4). ）。 However, this particular department "does not constitute any special part between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy in a purely philosophical system, but can only be randomly attached to either of the two sides when necessary" (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, p. 2). Or rather, it does not have its own "Gebiet" (Gebiet) for which it can legislate, as the other two can, but only its own "Boden". So the other two, in addition to being able to produce a "critique" of one's own principles, can also establish a metaphysical "doctrine"; and judgment is "in the inquiry of doctrine ... There is no special part, because as far as judgment is concerned, what is useful is criticism, not theory" . Thus Kant declared that in judgmental criticism "I will conclude all my critical work." I will rush non-stop to the inquiry of academic theory" (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004 edition, p. 4. ), that is, to conduct an inquiry into two major metaphysical systems. In short, the Critique of Judgment does not belong to metaphysics, only to criticism. The "Three Critiques" did not add anything to the two metaphysics, but they made the union of the two stronger.

However, although the critique of judgment, especially the critique of aesthetic judgment, does not have its own territory that can be objectively legislated, and "must therefore be judged only by the critics of the subject and its cognitive ability", it is "the primer of all philosophies" (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004 edition, p. 30). ）。 What do you mean by that? Is aesthetic judgment not only a "bridge" between theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, but also a gateway into theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy? Indeed it is. This means that although Kant wrote the first two critiques, these reflections he made were not sufficient to trace back to the metaphysical origins; the third critique really went deep behind "all philosophies", including the first two critiques, which is man's universal emotional capacity.

First of all, the principle of emotional capacity is the "primer" to all theoretical philosophies. Kant argues that although the capacity of emotion has no place in the activity of knowing, that is to say, all emotional considerations must be excluded in order to carry out scientific research, "the discovery of the consistency of two or more heterogeneous empirical laws of nature under a principle which includes both, is a very obvious basis of pleasure, often even a basis of surprise, which does not cease even when we are already fully acquainted with its object" (Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, p. 22. ）。 Obviously, without a sense of surprise at the accidental phenomena of nature, without a sense of pleasure in incorporating contingencies under the laws of necessity (such as Newton's apple and gravity), without the pursuit and enthusiasm for the hierarchical relations of species, genera, and classes of natural things, and the laws of conservation, the law of continuity, and so on, mankind will not be interested in any scientific exploration. This interest is essentially an emotional concern for the purposefulness of nature that corresponds to the contingent experience of nature and our rational requirements, but it has no specific practical purpose, and is therefore an aesthetic concern for a "purposeless purposefulness", which is often called "scientific beauty". Therefore, in the cognitive activity of man, human emotional activity is already contained as an indispensable premise, and in the natural purposefulness belonging to cognition, it already contains the natural purposefulness belonging to aesthetics as the internal basis. Moreover, the universal conveyability of knowledge is also premised on the universal communicatibility of aesthetics. Since the universal communicatibility of aesthetics is based on the innate principle of "universality," we can even "assume this sense of commonness as a necessary condition for the universal communicatibility of our knowledge" (Note: Kant, Critique of Judgment, People's Press, 2004, p. 75). Because in the universal transmission of knowledge, in addition to requiring that the conceptual content of knowledge is universal, we also require that the mutual coordination relationship between the various cognitive abilities (intuitive, imaginative, intellectual, and rational) that we use to grasp knowledge can also be accurately and universally conveyed to others, and the proportion and extent of this coordination relationship ("proportionality") is measured by emotion. It can be seen that the critique of aesthetic judgment is indeed the "introduction" to theoretical philosophy.

Second, the critique of aesthetic judgment is also an introduction to practical philosophy. The highest point of practical philosophy is Kant's freedom of innate legislation and its unique causality, which should have an effect (although in fact it does not necessarily have an effect). The effect that comes according to the concept of freedom is the ultimate end, and it (or its phenomena in the perceptual world) should exist, for which one presupposes the conditions of its possibility in nature (i.e., the conditions of possibility as a sensory being, that is, the subject as man). This innate, practice-free presupposition of this condition, that is, judgment, provides, through the concept of purposefulness of nature, the mediating conception between the concept of nature and the concept of freedom, which makes possible the transition from purely theoretical reason to pure practical reason, from conformity to the regularity of the former to the observance of the ultimate purpose of the latter; for in this way the possibility of the ultimate purpose which can become reality only in nature and in conformity with the laws of nature is recognized. So this connecting effect of aesthetic judgment "also promotes the inner sensitivity to moral emotions" (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, pp. 31-32). ）。 It is true that the innate legislation of practical philosophy, the moral law itself, is considered only in terms of its "causality" and does not care about its effect in the empirical world, but as a practical purpose action, the "should" of the moral law is, after all, focused on its own responsibilities in the actual empirical world, and its ultimate purpose must certainly consider its own complete realization in reality (which is why it necessarily assumes an afterlife and a Divine basis). So it doesn't consider the effect at all, but it considers the effect of "should" (rather than the immediate effect) from its own principles. Moral practice, like all other practices, is thus an act of purpose, presupposed by a teleological dimension in itself. The innate principle of this dimension is inspired by the critique of aesthetic judgment. In particular, the supremacy of morality in the whole system of natural purpose was truly established when the principle of natural purposefulness of aesthetic judgment was generalized and applied to the system of natural purpose, and from natural teleology to moral teleology, from natural theology to moral theology:

Now, for the man who is a moral being (and, too, for any rational being in the world), we can no longer ask what he is really for. His being itself has the highest purpose, and he is able to make all nature subordinate to this supreme purpose to the best of his ability, at least he can insist on not going against this end and succumbing to any natural influence ... And it is only in man, but also in this man, who is merely a moral subject, that legislation can be found unconditionally in terms of purpose, and therefore only such legislation enables man to be the ultimate end, all of which is naturally teleologically subordinate to this ultimate end. (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, pp. 291-292.) ）

It can be seen that aesthetic judgment and its innate principles are also the "introduction" to practical philosophy.

Thus, although aesthetic judgment criticism does not have its own "territory", it has become its advantage in a sense, and it is precisely because of this that it can not be bound by cognition and morality, but has its own higher degree of freedom or "self-discipline" beyond all territories. So Kant re-examines here his view of "self-discipline" put forward in moral philosophy, arguing: "As far as the general faculties of mind are concerned, as long as they are regarded as higher faculties, that is, the faculties of self-discipline, then for the faculties of knowledge (for the theoretical epistemic faculties of nature) the faculties of knowledge are the faculties which contain the principles of innate constitutiveness; for pleasant and unpleasant emotions, judgment is this faculty. It does not depend on concepts and feelings that may be related to and therefore directly practical in relation to the provisions of the capacity for desire; for the capacity for desire it is reason ..." (Note: Kant, Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, p. 32.) In other words, knowledge, affection, and intention are all reduced to "high-level abilities" that "include self-discipline." In Kant, autonomie was originally only a feature of the practice of rational free will, unlike man's epistemological "legislating for nature" and man's moral practice "legislating for himself"; now its meaning has been expanded, and intellectual cognition and emotional judgment are also regarded as "self-discipline". From the "Copernican revolution" from "all our knowledge must be according to the object" to "the object must be according to our knowledge" (Note: see Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, People's Publishing House, 2004, p. 15). From the point of view, intellectual "spontaneously" legislating for nature can indeed be said to be "self-discipline." The self-discipline of judgment rises to a higher position than these two kinds of self-discipline. Kant said: "So judgment also has an innate principle for the possibilities of nature, but only in its own subjective consideration, judgment is used not to prescribe laws to nature (as Autonomie), but to give itself laws (as Heautonomie) in order to reflect on nature" (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004 edition, p. 20). ）。 Heautonomie is a Greek word consisting of Autonomie preceded by a He( re) Chinese can be translated as "re-discipline", indicating that it is a higher-order self-discipline. This is specified in Kant's "First Introduction" to the Critique of Judgment (which was not published at the time, but the officially published Critique of Judgment is a compression of it): "This kind of legislation is strictly speaking what we will call heautonomie, because judgment is not for nature, nor for freedom, but only for itself to provide laws, and is by no means the ability to produce concepts about objects, Rather, it is only the ability to compare the situation that has arisen with the situation which has been given to it from other sources and to point out the subjective conditions for the possibility of such an innate connection. (Note: Immanuel Kant, Erste Einleitung in der Kritik der UrteilSkraft, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, 1970 , S.32. This reveals the structural roots of critical judgment as "the primer to all philosophy" in the "general psychic faculties."

III. Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be seen that whether it is the relationship between aesthetic judgment and teleological judgment or the relationship with Kant's entire critical philosophy and metaphysical system, Kant is concerned with the relationship between man's various psychic abilities and man's supremacy. If in Kant's epistemology man's ability to take the initiative to legislate only plays a spontaneous and innate role in the establishment of objective natural knowledge, and in practical philosophy, man's moral self-discipline only shows its respectable power by elevating man to a transcendental freedom, then in Kant's aesthetic judgment, human nature and humanity itself have for the first time become the core of all concerns. On the one hand, Kant regarded the critique of judgment as "the introduction to all philosophies," including theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy; on the other hand, in the final "methodology" of the critique of aesthetic judgment, he in turn regarded the knowledge of human nature and the emotion of morality as an "introduction" to art and appreciation. Kant said:

The introduction to the art of all beauty, in its highest degree of completeness with an eye on the art of beauty, seems not to lie in norms, but in the cultivation of inner faculties through the preparatory knowledge known as humaniora [the humanities]: presumably because humanit t implies, on the one hand, universal empathy, and on the other hand, the ability to make one's innermost things universally conveyed; these characteristics together constitute the ability to communicate with human nature (Menschheit). Suitable sociability, through which humans distinguish themselves from the limitations of animals ...

But, however, appreciation is fundamentally a capacity to judge the perceptualization of moral ideas (by means of some analogy of reflection on the two), and from within it, and from the greater sensitivity of the emotions which must be based on moral ideas (which are called moral emotions), the pleasure which is claimed by appreciation to be valid for human beings in general, and not only for any private emotion: it is clear that the real introduction to the establishment of appreciation is the development of moral ideas and the cultivation of moral feelings, For it is only when sensibility and moral sensibility are in agreement that true appreciation can have some definite and unchanging form. (Note: Kant: Critique of Judgment, People's Publishing House, 2004, pp. 204-205.) ）

From this, we can already see the germ of Schiller's idea of "aesthetic education" that "aesthetic people are complete people".

The aesthetic mood of Kant's philosophy

Source Philosophical

Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher. He reconciled Descartes' rationalism with Bacon's empiricism, which profoundly influenced modern Western philosophy and opened up many schools of German classical philosophy and Kantianism. Considered the most influential thinker in the West after Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

When the beautiful art of Chinese painting meets the profound philosophy of the West, and when the introspective oriental aesthetics meets the classic rational philosophy, the painter Ding Rong interprets Kant's aesthetic artistic conception with his unique painting language.

Qing Ping Le Ba Jun Rice paper color Ding Rong

Beauty is happiness without purpose.

Beauty is a symbol of moral goodness.

-- Yasunori,Judgment Criticism》

Yong Yu Le Time Yin (Partial) Rice paper color Ding Rong

The beauty of nature is a beautiful thing,

The beauty of art is the expression of the beauty of a thing.

-- Yasunori,Judgment Criticism》

Yong Yu Le Morning Light Rice paper color Ding Rong

In the process of human understanding of nature, it is not things that affect people, but people who affect things. It is we who construct the real world, and in the process of knowing things, people are more important than things themselves. In fact, we cannot recognize the true nature of things, we can only know the appearance of things.

— Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Yong Yu Le Time Yin (Partial) Rice paper color Ding Rong

Anything that has no concept and is generally pleasing is beautiful;

Everything that has no concept and is regarded as an object of necessary pleasure is beautiful.

-- Yasunori,Judgment Criticism》

When the wind rises again, one of the rice paper color Ding Rong

There is a beautiful thing,

When people come into contact with it,

Often feel a kind of pity,

Mood, that's it.

- Kant

Qing Ping Le Ba Jun Rice paper color Ding Rong

Shyness is a secret of nature, used to suppress the desire for indulgence; it obeys the call of nature, but is always in harmony with goodness and virtue.

- Kant

Looking up at the starry sky (partial) Rice paper color Ding Rong

Beauty is a sign of virtue-goodness; and it is only in this consideration that beauty is liked with the demands of approval of everyone else, with a simultaneous awareness of a certain nobility of oneself and the super-ascension of the pleasure of the mere sensibility of the impression of the senses.

-- Yasunori,Judgment Criticism》

Ten Beautiful Pictures · Two Rice Paper Color Ding Rong

Deep loneliness is sublime, but out of an awesome way.

- Kant, "On the Sense of Beauty and the Sense of the Sublime"

Yong Yu Le Spring Twilight Rice paper color Ding Rong

Time does not flow through, but the existence of things in time flows through; and corresponding to the unchanging and permanent time of itself is the immutable thing in existence, that is, the entity.

- Kant

Yong Yu Le Time Yin (Partial) Rice paper color Ding Rong

If you try your best and still get nothing, all that remains is good will, which is like a sleeping gem, which emits a dazzling light in itself and has value within itself.

- Kant, Principles of Moral Metaphysics

Looking up at the starry sky (partial) Rice paper color Ding Rong

Love for goodness and faith in eternity refer to the same thing.

- Kant

Looking up at the starry sky (partial) Rice paper color Ding Rong

There are two things, and the deeper and more enduring my thoughts I think about them, the wonder and awe they evoke in my soul will change and grow with each passing day, and this is the starry sky above us and the moral law in our hearts.

- Kant's Critique of Practical Reason