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

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ETHICS
Uniqueness of the Concept of "Ought 11
Now this
consciousness of "ought" is a unique feet, a fact of a kind
which it not anywhere to be found in the world of thing!
as they appear. "Obligation," Kant says, "expresses a
sort of necessity . . .- which occurs nowhere else in nature.
It is impossible that anything. in nature ought to b* other
than in feet it is. 1
In truth, obligation if one has before
one's eyes only the succession in nature has simply and
solely no meaning. We can as little ask what ought to
happen in nature as what attributes a circle ought to have."
It is because it recognizes the validity of "ought 11
, that
Kant gives a unique position to what he calls the good
will, which is the source of moral action. "There is," he
maintains! "nothing in the world nay, even beyond
xthe world, nothing conceivable, which can be regarded
as good without qualification, saving alone a good will."
The moral will is thus, by virtue of the obligation that
it recognizes, placed outside the causal sequence which
operates universally in the world of things as they appear.
Nor can its content, that is to say, the course of action
which it prescribes, be derived from reflection upon things
as they appear. The very feet that it takes no account of
likes and dislikes, that it is indifferent to circumstances,
suggests that it is not the reflection of likes and dislikes
or the product of circumstances. Whence, then, is it
derived? Kant answers, from the nature of man regarded
as a moral being. Hence man as a moral being is not
an inhabitant of the world of tilings as they appear, but
is a member of the world of things as they are. For this
reason, when he obeys the moral law, he is spoken of as
a law that comes from himself from himself,
obeying
that is to say, considered as a real and rational being
and not as a member of the world of causes and effects.
This obedience to the moral law, which is also moral freedom,
is something which cannot be explained. For explanation
is the work of understanding, and whatever
the understanding understands, assunuts, just because it
is understood, the status of a member of the world of tilings