GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

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ETHICS
result, as growing up into an adult person possessing such
and such a nature with such and such tastes, prepossessions,
prejudices, desires, and thoughts. These) taken in sum,
determine both the contents of his consciousness and die
actions in which they express themselves. An analysis
of the individual along these lines has already been sug-
gested in a preceding chapter; and, inevitably, its
outcome is the philosophical doctrine of self-determinism
sketched in Chapter IV. 1 To these analyses of the self
by the methods of the various special sciences Kant was
prepared to subscribe. In so fair as human beings are
considered from the point of view of biology, anthropology
and psychology, in so far, that is to say, as they are con-
sidered from die standpoint of the special sciences, there
can, he held, be no doubt of their complete subjection to
the law of cause and effect. They are, therefore, completely
determined. "Man," Kant wrote, "is one of the
phenomena of the sense world, and he, too, is in so far one
of the nature causes whose causality must stand under
empirical laws. As such, he must have an empirical
nature. . . ." A man's every-day personality is, in. other
words, itselfa member of the world of things as they appear
and is, therefore, to this extent not entirely real But there
is, Kant hold, another self, which Kant called the " transcendental
self," by virtue of which man participates in the
world of things as they are.
Now it is
Introduction of the Conception of Ought
die transcendental self which is the source of moral experi-
from what Kant
ence. As such, it is sharply distinguished
called the "empirical self," whidh is the sdf of every-day
experience, and is a chaos ofwishes and desires. Arcreatures
of desire we belong to the world of things as they appear,
and our feelings and actions are as completely determined
as the movements ofmatter in the physical world. But when
we act in accordance with the law which our moral will
prescribes, we escape from the world of appearance and
1 See Chapter IV, pp. 111-116.