[1] There are ascetic reasons, which may be found in the Fourth Book, Vol. I., § 69, of my chief work (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung).
[CHAPTER IV.]
ON THE BASIS OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS.
With the imperative Form of Ethics, which in Chapter II. we proved to be a petitio principii, is directly connected a favourite idea of Kant's, that may be excused, but cannot be adopted. Sometimes we see a physician, after having employed a certain remedy with conspicuous success, henceforth prescribing it for almost all diseases; to such a one Kant may be likened. By separating the a priori from the a posteriori in human knowledge he made the most brilliant and pregnant discovery that Metaphysics can boast of. What wonder then that thereafter he should try to apply this method, this sundering of the two forms, everywhere, and should consequently make Ethics also consist of two parts, a pure, i.e. an a priori knowable part, and an empirical? The latter of these he rejects as unreliable for the purpose of founding Ethics. To trace out the former and; exhibit it by itself is his purpose in the Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten, which he accordingly represents as a science purely a priori, exactly in the same way as he sets forth the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. He asserts in fact that the Moral Law, which without warrant, without deduction, or proof of any sort, he postulates as existing, is furthermore a Law knowable a priori and independent of all internal or external experience; it "rests" (he says) "solely on conceptions of pure Reason; and is to be taken as a synthetic proposition a priori" (Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft: p. 56 of fourth Edition; R., p. 142). But from this definition the implication immediately follows that such a Law can only be formal, like everything else known a priori, and consequently has only to do with the Form of actions, not with their Essence. Let it be thought what this means! He emphatically adds (p. vi of the preface to the Grundlegung; R., p. 5) that it is "useless to look for it either subjectively in man's nature, or objectively in the accidents of the external world," and (preface of the same, page vii; R., p. 6) that "nothing whatever connected with it can be borrowed from knowledge relating to man, i.e., from anthropology." On page 59 (R., p. 52) he repeats, "That one ought on no account to fall into the mistake of trying to derive one's principle of morality from the special constitution of human nature"; and again, on page 60 (R., p. 52), he says that, "Everything derived from any natural disposition peculiar to man, or from certain feelings and propensities, or indeed from any special trend attaching solely to human nature, and not necessarily to be taken as the Will of every rational being," is incapable of affording a foundation for the moral law. This shows beyond all possibility of contradiction that Kant does not represent the alleged moral law as a fact of consciousness, capable of empirical proof—which is how the later would-be philosophers, both individually and collectively, wish to pass it off. In discarding every empirical basis for Morals, he rejects all internal, and still more decidedly all external, experience., Accordingly he founds—and I call special attention to this—his moral principle not on any provable fact of consciousness, such as an inner natural disposition, nor yet upon any objective relation of things in the external world. No! That would be an empirical foundation. Instead of this, pure conceptions a priori, i.e., conceptions, which so far contain nothing derived from internal or external experience, and thus are simply shells without kernels—these are to be made the basis of Morals. Let us consider the full meaning of such a position. Human consciousness as well as the whole external world, together with all the experience and all the facts they comprise, are swept from under our feet. We have nothing to stand upon. And what have we to hold to? Nothing but a few entirely abstract, entirely unsubstantial conceptions, floating in the air equally with ourselves. It is from these, or, more correctly, from the mere form of their connection with judgments made, that a Law is declared to proceed, which by so-called absolute necessity is supposed to be valid, and to be strong enough to lay bit and bridle on the surging throng of human desires, on the storm of passion, on the giant might of egoism. We shall see if such be the case.
With this preconceived notion that the basis of Morals must be necessarily and strictly a priori, and entirely free from everything empirical, another of Kant's favourite ideas is closely connected. The moral principle that he seeks to establish is, he says, a synthetic proposition a priori, of merely formal contents, and hence exclusively a matter of Pure Reason; and accordingly, as such, to be regarded as valid not only for men, but for all possible rational beings; indeed he declares it to hold good for man "on this account alone," i.e., because per accidens man comes under the category of rational beings. Here lies the cause of his basing the Moral principle not on any feeling, but on pure Reason (which knows nothing but itself and the statement of its antithesis). So that this pure Reason is taken, not as it really and exclusively is—an intellectual faculty of man—but as a self-existent hypostatic essence, yet without the smallest authority; the pernicious effects of such example and precedent being sufficiently shown in the pitiful philosophy of the present day. Indeed, this view of Morals as existing not for men, as men, but for all rational beings, as such, is with Kant a principle so firmly established, an idea so favourite, that he is never tired of repeating it at every opportunity.
I, on the contrary, maintain that we are never entitled to raise into a genus that which we only know of in a single species. For we could bring nothing into our idea of the genus but what we had abstracted from this one species; so that what we should predicate of the genus could after all only be understood of the single species. While, if we should attempt to think away (without any warrant) the particular attributes of the species, in order to form our genus, we should perhaps remove the exact condition whereby the remaining attributes, hypostatised as a genus, are made possible. Just as we recognise intelligence in general to be an attribute of animal beings alone, and are therefore never justified in thinking of it as existing outside, and independent, of animal nature; so we recognise Reason as the exclusive attribute of the human race, and have not the smallest right to suppose that Reason exists externally to it, and then proceed to set up a genus called "Rational Beings," differing from its single known species "Man"; still less are we warranted in laying down laws for such imaginary rational beings in the abstract. To talk of rational beings external to men is like talking of heavy beings external to bodies. One cannot help suspecting that Kant was thinking a little of the dear cherubim, or at any rate counted on their presence in the conviction of the reader. In any case this doctrine contains a tacit assumption of an anima rationalis, which as being entirely different from the anima sensitiva, and the anima vegetativa, is supposed to persist after death, and then to be indeed nothing else but rationalis. But in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft Kant himself has expressly and elaborately made an end of this most transcendent hypostasis. Nevertheless, in his ethics generally, and in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft especially, there seems always to hover in the background the thought that the inner and eternal essence, of man consists of Reason. In this connection, where the matter only occurs incidentally, I must content myself with simply asserting the contrary. Reason, as indeed the intellectual faculty as a whole, is secondary, is an attribute of phaenomena, being in point of fact conditioned by the organism; whereas it is the Will in man which is his very self, the only part of him which is metaphysical, and therefore indestructible.