You may remember that I have repeatedly emphasized that in Western culture, especially under the strong religious background of the West, a cultural tradition is formed. In which field are they negative, in a prohibitive way, to regulate human behavior?
It's a religion.
It is precisely in religion that people are prescribed not to do anything. The purpose of religion is not to propagate what people should do, but to prescribe what people cannot do, to express a positive content in a negative form, which is precisely Kant's formal requirement for a priori moral judgment.
By understanding Kant's Critique of Practical Reason in this way, especially his fundamental principle of practical reason, we can truly enter Kant's philosophy and all the issues he discusses.
Behind this regulation, as we mentioned earlier, only religion can have such a form, and only in a religious way can such regulations exist. In fact, there is a hidden fact that Kant is actually talking about the third step of the Critique of Practical Reason, which is that its next step should be to discuss religious issues. This is only natural.
That is to say, it is only natural for you to go from the Critique of Practical Reason to the metaphysical critique of religion. So, Kant initially designed his Critique of Practical Reason to achieve this goal. Therefore, why establish an absolute command and determine its innate form in a negative form is to ultimately enter religion.
But after he finished writing 'Critique of Practical Reason', he suddenly realized something was wrong. As I mentioned earlier, he realized there was a problem in the middle, so he made a last-minute change in the middle, changed the direction he had originally set, adjusted his path of progress, and finally moved towards' Critique of Judgment '.
So, 'Critique of Judgment' is not the work he initially set out to do, it is only after he finished writing 'Critique of Practical Reason' that he realized there were problems in the middle, and then at this point, he began to think about whether we should discuss the issue of judgment, so that we can truly enter into the most basic question of what we humans are.
This is a historical trajectory of Kant's thought development, which is different from the logical trajectory it originally set. So, we can understand Kant's thought, which was not completely predetermined from the beginning, or in other words, it was not entirely based on his predetermined pattern to unfold his arguments.
It was precisely after the completion of "Critique of Practical Reason" that a change occurred, around 1787, when he had already discovered the problem before it was officially published.
Therefore, we can understand why the requirement of such a priori form as stipulated in the Critique of Practical Reason has become the core or main approach of the Critique of Practical Reason. This approach is because it ultimately needs to meet the requirements of a religion, which is why it has such an approach. This is different from the later resolution of the Critique of Judgment.
Because 'Critique of Judgment' was not something he had intended to do beforehand, while 'Critique of Practical Reason' was something he had intended to do beforehand. It was only after writing 'Critique of Practical Reason' that he discovered problems that he wrote 'Critique of Judgment'. So, this historical relationship has led us to see some gaps and inconsistencies between the critique of practical reason and the critique of judgment, that is, he has not continued to advance according to the ideas of "Critique of Practical Reason".
At this point, the ship abruptly turned around and turned in another direction. Perhaps this turning point prevented the ship from colliding with an iceberg and becoming a Titanic, allowing it to truly survive, because if it continued to charge down, its result would be Fichte.
Because it is impossible for him to complete the final discussion about what humans are, as Fichte has clearly revealed in his book 'The Mission of Man' that discussions about humans can only be resolved in a religious sense.
And Kant provided us with another path, which is what we call the anthropological approach today. So, the philosophical system of Kantian philosophy is an "anthropological" system. The system of anthropology lies in its ultimate goal of reducing all philosophical discussions to answering the question of 'what is human'.
This is quite complicated because different people can have different philosophers and various ways of discussing what a person is. Let's first continue to provide a brief introduction to some basic aspects of pure practical rationality that it involves.
He mentioned the fundamental principles of pure practical rationality, and among these four theorems, the most important one is actually the fourth one.
You can tell at a glance that the most important thing is the fourth theorem. Although they are all called theorems, in fact, the most important thing is the fourth theorem, because only in the fourth theorem can we read Kant's problem to be solved, which is how to regard the self-discipline of this consciousness as all moral laws and the only principle that conforms to the obligations of these laws; The self-discipline of will is regarded as a fundamental principle.
What does self-discipline of will come from?
Originating from freedom of will, it is a self disciplined activity that arises from people's freedom of will. So, self-discipline of the will can control whether I go to save people in the event of a sea of fire? Am I afraid of death in times of danger?
This comes from freedom of will, and if we look at humanity as a whole, it comes from an understanding of human nature. As an individual, this kind of freedom of will is built on continuous and repeated moral teachings, in an environment where he constantly instills in you the idea that 'saving people is great and glorious, and being afraid of death is despicable and ugly'.
Then, constantly emphasizing the importance of strengthening this meaning, from birth until I grew up, I have been influenced and educated by a culture that has shaped my moral values.
Therefore, a person's moral concept is related to the social environment in which they live. They are not born with a moral concept, and the moral concept that each individual possesses is related to the moral concept they promote in this society, the mainstream values.
So, in different cultural backgrounds, different people will have different moral concepts. However, as a class of people, where did such a moral command that fundamentally regulates human nature come from?
According to Kant's understanding, this regulation is an idea formed when there is opposition between a person and another other person they face. What is the Other?
This other is God, a set of principles that humans must follow when facing God, and this principle that humans must follow is based on a transcendent statement we have constructed about God.
A set of transcendent statements is not a priori, but rather a transcendent or innate statement that actually defines the fundamental nature of human beings.
So, why is this rule an absolute order when we say that killing is not allowed? Why is it a moral command that transcends individual existence and has universal and objective significance?
It's because not being able to kill is not predetermined by humans. This is stipulated in the Bible, to put it simply, it was made by God, not by man, so you must abide by it and not violate it.
Perhaps Kant is different from what we have known before. Because through our interpretation, Kant vividly presents us with an image of a philosopher that we can approach, because Kant tried to tell us that what philosophers can do cannot be told to us like religious scholars or religious missionaries, what we should do; And he only told us that if we want to set a moral standard for what people should do, what form should we provide to ensure that such moral standards become the basic principles that should be followed.
So, in this sense, Kant, as a philosopher, provided us with some formal standards for moral requirements or moral principles, which allows us to better understand Kant; Otherwise, we would feel lost in understanding all of Kant's words, and you would even keep asking why Kant did not provide a specific standard for moral commands, or why he did not provide even a few commandments like the "Ten Commandments of Moses" for us to follow and execute. This is precisely not what Kant wanted to do.
So, among the several principles given by Kant, the last principle is the most important, especially regarding the interpretation of autonomy and heteronomy.
In contemporary moral philosophy, the interpretation of self-discipline and heteronomy has become a foundation of contemporary moral philosophy. For example, the contemporary French philosopher Levinas, whom we are familiar with, provided us with a renewed discussion on the relationship between self-discipline and heteronomy, and the religious philosopher Martin Weber provided us with insights on how to understand religious beliefs from a moral perspective.
All these issues are actually based on Kant's moral imperative, which is about the relationship between self-discipline and heteronomy.
With such restrictive conditions, we can see that he will come up with some practical results that can be achieved by the formal requirements we repeatedly emphasized earlier.
