The Final Kingdom

Abstract

For Kant there is a power to conceive the universal in our thought, but this power is activated only because it is obligated to think. The mind has the power, but not the inclination, to conceive the universal. Rather, the universal is its law. Law is a fact. As soon as there is thought, thought discovers the fact of law, within itself. Thought thinks under command. To think is to obey. As soon as thought exists, as soon as thought thinks, it finds itself already subject to law, and already obedient. It is commanded to form representations of the universal, to form representations of concepts and of principles.

Footnotes

1/Irrmanual Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Berlin, Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften), Vol. V, p. 24.

2/In fact what our nature learns from experience is the acts that bring unhappiness. “[I]n the end [one] becomes prudent only as a result of his own or other people’s misfortunes.” Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten (Berlin, Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften), Vol. VI, p. 216.

3/Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie (Berlin, Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften) Vol. VII.

4/Immanuel Kant, Grundlegum zur Metapsik der Sitten (Berlin,Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften), Vol. IV, p. 395.

5/Kritik der praktischen Vernunft p. 74.

6/Ibid., p. 88. “[E]ven when [men as rational natural beings] do obey [the moral law], they do so without gladness (in conflict with their inclinations)…” Metaphysik der Sitten, p. 379.

7/Kritik der praktischen Vrnunft p. 88.

8/Metaphysik der Sitten p. 449.

9/Ibid., p. 246.

10/Kritik der praktischen Vernunft pp. 78-79.

11/Grundlegung, pp. 424-25.

12/Metaphysik der Sitten p. 379.

13/Ibid., p. 228.

14/Ibid., p. 405.

15/Ibid., p. 385.

16/Ibid., p. 445.

17/Ibid., p. 386.

18/Ibid., p. 434.

19/AK. Vol V, 3, Nr. 1170.

20/Grundlegung, p. 418.

21/Metaphysik der Sitten, p. 425.

22/Ibid., p. 429.

23/Ibid., pp. 430-31.

24/Ibid., p. 380.

25/Ibid., p. 409. “One defeats his purpose by setting actions called noble, magnanimous, and meritorious as models for children with the notion of captivating them by infusing an enthusiasm for these actions.” Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. 157.

26/Ibid., pp. 88, 75.

27/Ibid., p. 88.

28/Metaphysik der Sitten p. 399.

29/Ibid., p. 449.

30/Ibid.

31/Love does not attract men to one another: “our species, alas! when we know it more closely, is not such as to be found particularly worthy of love.” (Ibid., p. 402) Something like love rather follows the attraction that is beneficence: “Whoever exercises this and sees his beneficent purpose succeed comes at last to really love him whom he has benefitted.” (Ibid., p. 402) Yet this love is subjugation, and like every action that makes the other our recipient and inferior, gives rise to resentment and hatred. (Ibid., p. 459)

32/Ibid., p. 454.

33/Ibid., p. 451.

34/Ibid.

35/Ibid., p. 388.

36/Ibid., p. 391.

37/Ibid., p. 457.

38/Ibid.

39/Ibid.

40/Grundlegung p. 435.

41/Metaphysik der Sitten p. 246.

42/Ibid., p. 318.

43/Ibid., pp. 314-15.

44/Ibid., p. 455.

45/Anthropologie

46/Metaphysik der Sitten p. 307.

47/Ibid., p. 320.

48/Ibid., pp. 321-2n.

49/Ibid., pp. 318-19.

50/“The best equalizer before the bar of public legal justice is death.” Ibid., p. 334.

51/Ibid., p. 336.

52/Ibid., p. 333.

53/Ibid., p. 332.

54/Ibid., p. 490. It will be recalled that the hope of immortal life can be justified not as a reward for virtue, but as required for the infinitely long progress in virtue the imperative demands.

55/Grundlegung p. 112.

56/Metaphysik der Sitten p. 471.

57/Gerhard Krüger Philosophie und Moral in der Kantischen Kritik (Tubingen, 1931), pp. 136-37.