stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

pathologically” (CPR 802/B830). Is not the essence of all pathology the inability to will? The
material-will is a lower will in the sense that it is not a will at all. How does a will become higher
will? That the will is pathologically affected does not mean that it is necessitated. “For a will is
sensuous, in so far as it is pathologically affected, i.e. by sensuous motives; it is animal
(arbitrium brutum), if it can be pathologically necessitated. The human will is certainly an
arbitrium sensitivum, not, however, brutum but liberum. For sensibility does not necessitate its
action” (CPR A534/B562). Something other than the matter of the will must determine the will
for it to be a will at all.
The will becomes the higher will when it is determined by something that is true of the
human will as such. But what is that? No matter of the will is true of the human will as such no
matter how many people agree on it. “But suppose that finite rational being were thoroughly
agreed with respect to what they had to take as objects of their feelings of pleasure and pain and
even with respect to the means they must use to obtain the first and avoid the other;…this
unanimity would still only be contingent. The determining ground would still be only
subjectively valid and merely empirical and would not have that necessity which is thought in
every law, namely objective necessity from a priori grounds…” (CPrR5:26). In other words, no
matter of the will is true of the human will as such even if all people agreed on the matter. But
what is it then that is true of the will as such? Nothing other than the form of willing itself. In
other words, the only thing that is true of the human will as such is the willing itself. “Now, all
that remains of a law if one separates from it everything material, that is, every object of the will
(as its determining ground), is the mere form of giving the universal law” (CPrR 5:27). Therefore
Kant’s point is that the will becomes higher will when it is determined by the form of willing
itself. “All material practical rules put the determining ground of the will in the lower faculty of
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