notes-philosophy-kant

18: the transcendental unity of apperception

many representations of one object

many objects fall under one concept

ought implies can

excerpted from Does 'Ought' Imply 'Can'? And Did Kant Think It Does? by Robert Stern

Passage A: Critique of Pure Reason, A807/B835: Pure reason, then, contains, not indeed in its speculative employment, but in that practical employment which is also moral, principles of the possibility of experience, namely, of such actions as, in accordance with moral precepts, might be met with in the history of mankind. For since reason commands that such actions should take place, it must be possible for them to take place.18

Passage B: The Metaphysics of Morals, 6: 380: Impulses of nature, accordingly, involve obstacles within the human being’s mind to his fulfilment of duty and (sometimes powerful) forces opposing it, which he must judge that he is capable of resisting and conquering by reason not at some time in the future but at once (the moment he thinks of duty): he must judge that he can do what the law tells him unconditionally that he ought to do.19

Passage C: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 6: 47: But if a human being is corrupt in the very ground of his maxims, how can he possibly bring about this revolution of his own forces and become a good human being on his own? Yet duty commands that he be good, and duty commands nothing but what we can do.20

Passage D: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 6: 50: For if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of being better human beings.21

Passage E: Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 143, footnote: [T]he moral law . . . necessarily binds every rational being and therefore justifies him a priori in presupposing in nature the conditions befitting it and makes the latter inseparable from the complete practical use of reason. It is a duty to realize the highest good to the utmost of our capacity; therefore it must be possible; hence it is also unavoidable for every rational being in the world to assume what is necessary for its objective possibility. The assumption is as necessary as the moral law, in relation to which alone it is valid.22

Passage F: Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 142: [A] need of pure practical reason is based on a duty, that of making something (the highest good) the object of my will so as to promote it with all my powers; and thus I must suppose its possibility and so too the conditions for this, namely God, freedom, and immortality, because I cannot prove these by my speculative reason, although I can also not refute them.23

Passage G: ‘On the Common Saying: That may be Correct in Theory, but it is of no Use in Practice’, 8: 276–7: But in a theory that is based on the concept of duty, concern about the empty ideality of this concept quite disappears. For it would not be a duty to aim at a certain effect of our will if this effect were not also possible in experience.24

Passage H: ‘On the Common Saying: That may be Correct in Theory, but it is of no Use in Practice’, 8: 278–9: I explained morals provisionally as the introduction to a science that teaches, not how we are to become happy, but how we are to become worthy of happiness. In doing so, I did not fail to remark that the human being is not thereby required to renounce his natural end, happiness, when it is a matter of complying with his duty; for that he cannot do, just as no finite rational being whatever can.25

Passage I: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 6: 62: From the practical point of view this idea [of a moral exemplar] has complete reality within itself. For it resides in our morally-legislative reason. We ought to conform to it, and therefore we must also be able to.26

Passage J: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 6: 64: For let the nature of this human being well-pleasing to God . . . be thought as superhuman . . . inasmuch as his unchanging purity of will, not gained through effort but innate, would render any transgression on his part absolutely impossible. The consequent distance from the natural human being would then again become so infinitely great that the divine human being could no longer be held forth to the natural human being as example . . . [T]he idea of a conduct in accordance with so perfect a rule of morality could no doubt also be valid for us, as a precept to be followed. Yet he himself could not also be presented to us as an example to be emulated, hence also not as proof that so pure and exalted a moral goodness can be practised and attained by us.27

Passage K: Critique of Pure Reason, A548/B576: The action to which the ‘ought’ applies must indeed be possible under natural conditions.28

15 Cf. Frankena’s reference to it as ‘Kant’s dictum’ in the passage cited above. But for a very helpful discussion, which distinguishes different ways in which Kant related ‘ought’ and ‘can’ that are overlooked in the contemporary uses of the principle, see Jens Timmermann, ‘Sollen und K ̈ nnen: “Du kannst, denn du sollst” und “Sollen o impliziert K ̈ nnen” im Vergleich’, Philosophiegeschichte und logische Analyse 6 (2003), o pp. 113–22. 17 References are given first to the Akademie-Ausgabe, with the exception of the Critique of Pure Reason, where reference is given to the A (1781) and B (1787) editions. References are also given to standard translations. 18 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London, 1933), p. 637. 16 54 Robert Stern 19 Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor, in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge, 1996), p. 513. 20 Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. George di Giovanni, in Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge, 1996), p. 92. 21 Kant, Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, p. 94. 22 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor, in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge, 1996), p. 255. 23 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 254. Does ‘Ought’ Imply ‘Can’? 55 24 Immanuel Kant, ‘On the Common Saying: That may be Correct in Theory, but it is of no Use in Practice’, trans. Mary J. Gregor, in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge, 1996), p. 280. 25 Kant, ‘On the Common Saying’, pp. 281 f. 26 Kant, Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, p. 105. 27 Ibid., pp. 106 f. 28 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 473.

" The number of the categories in each class is always the same, namely, three—a fact which also demands some consideration, because in all other cases division a priori through conceptions is necessarily dichotomy. It is to be added, that the third category in each triad always arises from the combination of the second with the first.

Thus totality is nothing else but plurality contemplated as unity; limitation is merely reality conjoined with negation; community is the causality of a substance, reciprocally determining, and determined by other substances; and finally, necessity is nothing but existence, which is given through the possibility itself. Let it not be supposed, however, that the third category is merely a deduced, and not a primitive conception of the pure understanding. For the conjunction of the first and second, in order to produce the third conception, requires a particular function of the un derstanding, which is by no means identical with those which are exer cised in the first and second. Thus, the conception of a number (which belongs to the category of totality) is not always possible, where the con ceptions of multitude and unity exist (for example, in the representation of the infinite). Or, if I conjoin the conception of a cause with that of a substance, it does not follow that the conception of influence, that is, how one substance can be the cause of something in another substance, will be understood from that. Thus it is evident that a particular act of the under standing is here necessary; and so in the other instances.

III. With respect to one category, namely, that of community, which is found in the third class, it is not so easy as with the others to detect its accordance with the form of the disjunctive judgement which corresponds to it in the table of the logical functions.

In order to assure ourselves of this accordance, we must observe that in every disjunctive judgement, the sphere of the judgement (that is, the complex of all that is contained in it) is represented as a whole divided into parts; and, since one part cannot be contained in the other, they are cogitated as co-ordinated with, not subordinated to each other, so that they do not determine each other unilaterally, as in a linear series, but reciprocally, as in an aggregate—(if one member of the division is posited, all the rest are excluded; and conversely).

Now a like connection is cogitated in a whole of things; for one thing is not subordinated, as effect, to another as cause of its existence, but, on the contrary, is co-ordinated contemporaneously and reciprocally, as a cause in relation to the determination of the others (for example, in a body the parts of which mutually attract and repel each other). And this is an entirely different kind of connection from that which we find in the mere relation of the cause to the effect (the principle to the consequence), for in such a connection the consequence does not in its turn determine the principle, and therefore does not constitute, with the latter, a whole—just as the Creator does not with the world make up a whole. The process of understanding by which it represents to itself the sphere of a divided con ception, is employed also when we think of a thing as divisible; and in the same manner as the members of the division in the former exclude one another, and yet are connected in one sphere, so the understanding repre- sents to itself the parts of the latter, as having—each of them—an exist- ence (as substances), independently of the others, and yet as united in one whole. "