The notion of practical reason in the ethics of Immanuel Kant /Part 3/

The only objects of practical reason are good and evil. Grace or misfortune always means only the attitude to our state of pleasure or discomfort, contentment or suffering. Good or bad, however, always means attitude to the will. Good or evil refers to the actions, not to the states of things. The will is good and is a supreme condition for everything good. Man is called evil not because he performs evil, law-abiding acts, but because these actions are such as to make sense of his evil maxims. Therefore, the nature of man only means the subjective basis for the application of his freedom. The ability or inability to adopt the moral law as its maxim or not to accept it is called a good or bad heart. There is no difference between the man of good manners and the morally good man, as far as the conformity of deeds and law is concerned. The predisposition to evil can only be rooted in the moral ability of arbitrariness. The concept of "man is evil" only expresses the fact that man creates the moral law and nevertheless accepts as its maximum the accidental retreat from it. This natural predisposition to evil can be called innate evil in human nature. The cause of evil is not in the sensuous nature of man. the intellect freed from the moral law is evil, it is evil will. the evil will contains much because it is against the law itself. But this is impossible for man. and the worst man could not deny the moral law.

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At the heart of Kant's moral teaching lies the idea of ​​separating empirical elements from human practice. Kant regards negatively the seeming morality, based on the pleasant and useful, the instinct, the external authority and the feeling. All these motives are private and random in nature. they can not have unconditional meaning for reason, as they can not determine the will of the intelligent being. He is legally worthy of the man who unconditionally submits his life to the moral duty or the requirements of conscience. Only such a will desires good for the sake of good is a pure and good will, which aims itself. its moral law is an explicit imperative free from any material determination. For lawful deeds, morality does not need any purpose, only the law containing the condition for the use of freedom in general is sufficient for it. Until the emergence of moral autonomy, theories were heterologous, they derived morals from external principles. Some have seen the root of moral principles in some forced punishment - the will of God, demands from society. Others have assumed that the concepts of good and evil are derived from the goals that man has set and from the consequences that arise from his behavior, from his pursuit of happiness, enjoyment, and benefit. Kant's goodwill is not passive, it must be active. Good is good even if nobody is good. Science and morality are different spheres of human existence. In theory, moving away from the empirical, reason falls into contradiction with oneself, comes to mysteries, to the chaos of uncertainty, ambiguity and instability. The behavior is quite different. Here the morality appears in a pure, non-smoky form. Only in the practical, moral sphere the mind solves the task of forming the concepts and their realization.

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part 2