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

OBJECTIVE INTUITION1SM 2O5
establish contact with reality. In so far, in feet, as a man
wills freely in accordance with the laws of his own nature,
he it a member of the world of things as they are; that
is to say, he walls as a member of reality.
For, Kant points out, the feeling of moral obligation
is something which cannot be accounted for by an ex*
animation of the world of things as they appear. Psychology
can tell us what we are and what we want to do; it cannot
tell us what we ought to be and what it is our duty to do.
Thus the conception of "ought" is on an entirely different
plane from the conception of "is". It presupposes that
when we have finished with our analysis of a man's antecedents
and character, the analysis which tells us what he is,
and how, in virtue of the fact that he is what he is, he is
naturally disposed to act, we can still assume that it is
in his power to act differently. We can still say, 'Yes,
I agree that, given his heredity and constitution, he had a
strong instinctive disposition to act in this way and every
justification for obeying his natural disposition; nevertheless,
I still maintain that he ought to have acted in that
to have acted in that
way", and in saying that 'he ought
way', we are also implying that he was free to act 'in
that way', since it is nonsense to say that a man ought to
do what he cannot do. The consciousness of moral obligation
is thus "inextricably bound up with the conconsciousness
of the freedom" of the self that wills, which
is the transcendental self. One knows, Kant insisted, "that
one can act because one is conscious that one ought, and
thus one knows in oneself the freedom which without
the moral law had remained unknown." It is for this
reason that Kant, in speaking of the obligation to do one>
duty, employs the phrase "the categorical imperative".
Whereas most of our actions are conditioned by an "if"
ifwt want so and so* we must act in such and such a way
and so are "hypothetically determined", the obligation
to do our duty is governed by no such condition. We ought,
we feel, to da it, whether we want to do it or not, and we
shall continue to feel this, even ifwe habitually fell to do it.