Page:Philosophical Review Volume 19.djvu/530

516 fact of human consciousness, its basis would be anthropological, psychological, empirical—hence, utterly worthless to a moral philosopher who, like Kant, has forsworn experience. Kant has sternly assumed an a priori point of view, and it is this point of view, this method itself, which is the very object of Schopenhauer's attack.

Nevertheless, Kant asserts: "The moral law is given as a fact of pure reason of which we are a priori conscious." But reason, Schopenhauer insists, is nothing else than the capacity for abstract ideas, the conceptual faculty, as distinguished from the understanding, which is the direct consciousness of the law of causality. The epithets 'reasonable,' 'rational,' have at all times, he says, been applied to conduct guided by thoughts and conceptions, rather than by intuitive impressions and inclinations. Now, this does not necessarily mean virtuous, just, noble conduct, conduct directed by integrity and by love for one's fellows. The latter, whatever its special characteristics may be, depends upon the difference in motivation; rational conduct, however, varies in accordance with the variation of theoretical principles. To identify 'rational' with 'good' conduct, as Kant does, is to beg the whole question at the very start. Although, in the Dialectic of Pure Reason, Kant had repudiated the rational psychology, yet Schopenhauer argues that, in propounding his views of practical reason and its sundry imperatives, Kant was still under the influence of the after-effects of the old Substance doctrine, with its anima rationalis, æternae veritates, and all the other artifacts of rationalist fantasy. Kant starts from the notion of the moral law, and attempts to deduce from it all he needs. He has scorned all empirical basis for his law, and all that is left him is the abstract form of 'lawfulness.' This, however, in Kant's opinion, implies unconditioned necessity and universal validity. What is right for me, is right for all rational beings. Hence, the categorical imperative: "Act as if the maxim of thy law were to become by thy will an universal law of nature." This, then, is Kant's so-called deduction of the categorical imperative, stated