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

good is the object that reason in practice produces does not mean that it is something other than
that reason in practice itself. Reason in practice produces itself as the good. But what can this
mean other than that reason in practice produces the good as the rational-will?
Reason in practice is not some abstract, eternal good. It does not exist as abstract eternal.
Therefore, it cannot be such a good. Instead, I have argued that all abilities are only to the extent
that they are activities. In this sense, reason in practice can be the good only as the rational-will,
that is as the autonomous human living. Everything hinges on the difference between the feeling-
will and the rational-will. When I raise myself above and beyond the heteronomous attitude of
the feeling-will, that is, when I live with the autonomous, human attitude of the rational-will, I
recognize such a life as good. In this sense, it is not my actions themselves that produce the
good. It is how I act, or better still that I act that produces the good. In the Critique of the Power
of Judgment Kant writes that “it is only the faculty of desire, although not that which makes him
dependent on nature (through sensible impulses), not that in regard to which the value of his
existence rests on what he receives and enjoys; rather it is the value that he alone can give to
himself, and which consists in what he does, in how and in accordance with which principles he
acts, not as a link in nature but in the freedom of his faculty of desire; i.e., a good will is that
alone by means of which his existence can have an absolute value…(CJ 5:443). “Thus” in Kant’s
words “nothing is left but the value that we ourselves give to our lives through that which we do
not merely do but also do so purposively and independently of nature (CJ 5:434ft). Kant often
talks about the “worth which human beings alone can give themselves” (CPrR 5:86). We can put
this point in other words. Autonomous attitude is nothing other than a particular kind of living. If
practice begins with reason, in other words, with autonomy and humanity that means that such
autonomous living also reveals itself as human living. Freedom reveals itself as humanity. Kant
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