![The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20] - Читать Любимую Русскую Полную Книгу 👉 Read-E-Book.com](/uploads/posts/books/4/0/5/6/the-world-s-greatest-books-volumes-1-15-17-20-download.jpg)
The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1910
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]». Краткое содержание книги:
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 01 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 02 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 03 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 04 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 05 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 06 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 07 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 08 — Fiction от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 09 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 10 — Lives and Letters от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 11 — Ancient and Mediæval History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 12 — Modern History от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 13 — Religion and Philosophy от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 15 — Science от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 17 — Poetry and Drama от Неизвестный
The world's greatest books от Mee, Arthur, 1875-1943, joint editor & Hammerton, John Alexander, Sir, 1871-1949, joint editor & McClure, S. S. (Samuel Sidney), 1857-1949, joint editor
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 19 — Travel and Adventure от Неизвестный
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 20 — Miscellaneous Literature and Index от Неизвестный
ANALYSIS OF PRINCIPLES
The practical material principles of determination constituting the basis of morality may be thus classified.
1. Subjective
Externaclass="underline" Education; the civil constitution. Internaclass="underline" Physical feeling; moral feeling.
2. Objective
Internaclass="underline" Perfection. Externaclass="underline" Will of God.
The subjective elements are all experimental, or empirical, and cannot supply the universal principle of morality, though they are expounded in that sense by such writers as Montaigne, Mandeville, Epicurus, and Hutcheson.
But the objective elements, as enunciated and expounded by Wolf and the Stoics, and by Crusius and other theological moralists, are founded on reason, for absolute perfection as a quality of things (that is, God Himself) can only be thought of by rational concepts.
The conception of perfection in a practical sense is the adequacy of a thing for various ends. As a human quality (and so internal) this is simply talent, and what completes it is skill. But supreme perfection in substance, that is, God Himself, and therefore external (considered practically), is the adequacy of this being for all purposes. All these principles above classified are material, and so can never furnish the supreme moral law. For even the Divine will can supply a motive in the human mind because of the expectation of happiness from it.
Therefore, the formal practical principle of the pure reason insists that the mere form of a universal legislation must constitute the ultimate determining principle of the will. Here is the only possible practical principle which is sufficient to furnish categorical imperatives, that is, practical laws which make action a duty.
It follows from this analytic that pure reason can be practical. It can determine the will independently of all merely experimental elements.
There is a remarkable contrast between the working of the pure speculative reason and that of the pure practical reason. In the former—as was shown in the treatise on that subject—a pure, sensible intuition of time and space made knowledge possible, though only of objects of the senses.
On the contrary, the moral law brings before us a fact absolutely inexplicable from any of the data of the world of sense. And the entire range of our theoretical use of reason indicates a pure world of understanding, which even positively determines it, and enables us to know something of it—namely, a law.
We must observe the distinction between the laws of a system of nature to which the will is subject, and of a system of nature which is subject to the will. In the former, the objects cause the ideas which determine the will; in the latter, the objects are caused by the will. Hence, causality of the will has its determining principle exclusively in the faculty of pure reason, which may, therefore, also be called a pure practical reason.
The moral law is a law of the causality through freedom, and therefore of the possibility of a super-sensible system of nature. It determines the will by imposing on its maxim the condition of a universal legislative form, and thus it is able for the first time to impart practical reality to reason, which otherwise would continue to be transcendent when seeking to proceed speculatively with its ideas.
Thus the moral law induces a stupendous change. It changes the transcendent use of reason into the immanent use. And in result reason itself becomes, by its ideas, an efficient cause in the field of experience.
HUME AND SCEPTICISM
It may be said of David Hume that he initiated the attack on pure reason. My own labours in the investigation of this subject were occasioned by his sceptical teaching, for his assault made them necessary. He argued that without experience it is impossible to know the difference between one thing and another; that is, we can know a priori, and, therefore, the notion of a cause is fictitious and illusory, arising only from the habit of observing certain things associated with each in succession of connections.
On such principles we can never come to any conclusion as to causes and effects. We can never predict a consequence from any of the known attributes of things. We can never say of any event that it must necessarily have followed from another; that is, that it must have had an antecedent cause. And we could never lay down a rule derived even from the greatest number of observations. Hence we must trust entirely to blind chance, abolishing all reason, and such a surrender establishes scepticism in an impregnable citadel.
Mathematics escaped Hume, because he considered that its propositions were analytical, proceeding from one determination to another, by reason of identity contained in each. But this is not really so, for, on the contrary, they are synthetical, the results depending ultimately on the assent of observers as witnesses to the universality of propositions. So Hume's empiricism leads inevitably to scepticism even in this realm.
My investigations led me to the conclusion that the objects with which we are familiar are by no means things in themselves, but are simply phenomena, connected in a certain way with experience. So that without contradiction they cannot be separated from that connection. Only by that experience can they be recognised. I was able to prove the objective reality of the concept of cause in regard to objects of experience, and to demonstrate its origin from pure understanding, without experimental or empirical sources.
Thus, I first destroyed the source of scepticism, and then the resulting scepticism itself. And thus was subverted the thorough doubt as to whatever theoretic reason claims to perceive, as well as the claim of Hume that the concept of causality involved something absolutely unthinkable.
GOOD AND EVIL
By a concept of practical reason, I understand the representation to the mind of an object as an effect possible to be produced through freedom. The only objects of practical reason are good and evil. For by "good" we understand an object necessarily abhorred, the principle of reason actuating the mind in each case.
In the common use of language we uniformly distinguish between the "good" and the "pleasant," the "evil" and the "unpleasant," good and evil being judged by reason alone. The judgment on the relation, of means to ends certainly belongs to reason. But "good" or "evil" always implies only a reference to the "will," as resolved by the law of reason, to make something its object.
Thus good and evil properly relate to actions, not to personal sensations. So, if anything is to be reckoned simply good or evil, it can only be so estimated by the way of acting. Hence, only the maxim of the will, and consequently the person himself, can be called good or evil, not the thing itself.
The Stoic was right, even though he might be laughed at, who during violent attacks of gout exclaimed, "Pain, I will never admit that thou art an evil!" What he felt was indeed what we call a bad thing; but he had no reason to admit that any evil attached thereby to himself, for the pain did not in the least detract from his personal worth, but only from that of his condition. If a single lie had been on his conscience it would have humiliated his soul; but pain seemed only to elevate it, when he was not conscious of having deserved it as a punishment for any unjust deed.
The rule of judgment subject to the laws of pure practical reason is this: Ask yourself whether if the action you propose were to happen by a natural system of law, of which you were yourself a part, you could regard it as possible by your own will? In fact, everyone does decide by this rule whether actions are morally good or evil.