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immediacy of sense-experience, so here we have also to consider the nature of the existence to which this
immediate certainty in ethical experience gives expression--to analyse the constitution of the immediately
existing areas (Massen) of ethical reality. Examples of some such laws will show what we want to know; and
since we take them in the form of declarations of the healthy reason knowing them, we, have not, in this
connexion, to introduce the moment which has to be made good in their case when looked at as immediate
ethical laws.
"Every one ought to speak the truth." In this duty, as expressed unconditionally, the condition will at once be
granted, viz. if he knows the truth. The command will therefore now run: everyone should speak the truth, at
all times according to his knowledge and conviction about it. The healthy reason, this very ethical
consciousness which knows immediately what is right and good, will explain that this condition had all the
while been so bound up with that universal maxim that it meant the command to be taken in that sense. It
thereby admits, however, in point of fact, that in the very expression of the maxim it eo ipso really violated it.
The healthy reason said: "each should speak the truth"; it intended, however: "he must speak the truth
according to his knowledge and conviction". That is to say, it spoke otherwise than it intended, and to speak
otherwise than one intends means not speaking the truth. The improved untruth, or inaptitude now takes the
form: "each must speak the truth according to his knowledge and conviction about it on each occasion".
Thereby, however, what was universally necessary and absolutely valid (and this the proposition wanted to
express) has turned round into what is really a complete contingency. For speaking the truth is left to the
chance whether I know it and can convince myself of it; and there is nothing more in the statement than that
truth and falsehood are to be spoken, just as anyone happens to know, intend, and understand. This
contingency in the content has universality merely in the propositional form of the expression; but as an
ethical maxim the proposition promises a universal and necessary content, and thus contradicts itself by the
content being contingent. Finally, if the maxim were to be improved by saying that the contingency of the
knowledge and the conviction as to the truth should be dropped, and that the truth, too, "ought" to be known,
then this would be a command which contradicts straightway what we started from. Healthy reason was at
first assumed to have the immediate capacity of expressing the truth; now, however, we are saying that it
"ought" to know the truth, i.e. that it does not immediately know how to express the truth. Looking at the
content, this has dropped out in the demand that we "should" know the truth; for this demand refers to
knowing in general--"we ought to know". What is demanded is, therefore, strictly speaking, something
independent of every specific content. But here the whole point of the statement concerned a definite content,
a distinction involved in the substance of the ethical life. Yet this immediate determination of that substance
is a content of such a kind as turned out really to be a complete contingency; and when we try to get the
required universality and necessity by making the law refer to the knowledge [instead of to the content], then
the content really disappears altogether.
Another celebrated command runs: "Love thy neighbour as thyself." It is directed to an individual standing in
relation to another individual, and asserts this law as a relation of a particular individual to a particular
individual, i.e. a relation of sentiment or feeling (Empfindung). Active love--for an inactive love has no
existence, and is therefore doubtless not intended here(1)--aims at removing evil from someone and bringing
b. REASON AS LAWGIVER 150
 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND
him good. To do this we have to distinguish what the evil is, what is the appropriate good to meet this evil,
and what in general his well-being consists in; i.e. we have to love him intelligently. Unintelligent love will
do him harm perhaps more than hatred. Intelligent, veritable (wesentlich) well-doing is, however, in its
richest and most important form the intelligent universal action of the state--an action compared with which
the action of a particular individual as such is something altogether so trifling that it is hardly worth talking
about. The action of the state is in this connexion of such great weight and strength that if the action of the
individual were to oppose it, and either sought to be straightway and deliberately (fer sich) criminal, or out of
love for another wanted to cheat the universal out of the right and claim which it has upon him, such action
would be useless and would inevitably be annihilated. Hence all that well-doing, which lies in sentiment and
feeling, can mean is an action wholly and solely particular, a help at need, which is as contingent as it is
momentary. Chance determines not merely its occasion, but also whether it is a "work" at all, whether it is
not at once dissipated again, and whether it does not itself really turn to evil. Thus this sort of action for the
good of others, which is given out as necessary, is so constituted that it may just as likely not exist as exist; is
such that if the occasion by chance arises, it may possibly be a "work", may possibly be good, but just as
likely may not. This law, therefore, has as little of a universal content as the first above considered, and fails
to express anything substantial, something objectively real per se (an und fer sich), which it should do if it is
to be an absolute ethical law. In other words, such laws never get further than the "ought to be", they have no
actual reality; they are not laws, but merely commands.
It is, however, in point of fact, clear from the very nature of the case that we must renounce all claim to an
absolute universal content. For every specific determination which the simple substance (and its very nature
consists in being simple) might obtain is inadequate to its nature. The command itself in its simple
absoluteness expresses immediate ethical existence; the distinction appearing in it is a specific determinate
element, and thus a content standing under the absolute universality of this simple existence. Since, then, an
absolute content must thus be renounced, formal universality is the only kind that is possible and suitable,
and this means merely that it is not to contradict itself. For universality devoid of content is formal; and an
absolute content amounts to a distinction which is no distinction, i.e. means absence of content.(2)
In default of all content there is thus nothing left with which to make a law but the bare form of universality,
in fact, the mere tautology of consciousness, a tautology which stands over against the content, and consists
in a knowledge, not of the content actually existing, the content proper, but of its ultimate essence only, a
knowledge of its self-identity.
The ethical inner essence is consequently not itself ipso facto a content, but only a standard for deciding
whether a content is capable of being a law or not, i.e. whether the content does not contradict itself. Reason
as law-giver is reduced to being reason as criterion; instead of laying down laws reason now only tests what
is laid down.
1. Cp. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals: Sect. 1 Critique of Practical Reason: Analytic c. 3.
2. The above criticism applies to Kant's "categorical imperative".
c. REASON AS TESTING LAWS
A DIFFERENCE within the bare and simple ethical substance is for it an accident, which, in the case of
determinate commands, as we saw, appeared as contingency in the knowledge of the circumstances and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]