Editing Categorical imperative (section)

== Outline ==

=== Pure practical reason ===
The capacity that underlies deciding what is moral is called ''[[pure practical reason]]'', which is contrasted with: [[pure reason]], which is the capacity to know without having been shown; and mere [[practical reason]], by which we determine ourselves to practical action within the phenomenal world.

[[Hypothetical imperative]]s tell us which means best achieve our ends. They do not, however, tell us which ends we should choose. The typical dichotomy in choosing ends is between ends that are ''right'' (e.g., helping someone) and those that are ''good'' (e.g., enriching oneself). Kant considered the ''right'' prior to the ''good''; to him, the latter was morally dependent on the former. In Kant's view, a person cannot decide whether conduct is ''right'', or moral, through [[Empirical evidence|empirical]] means. Such judgments must be reached [[a priori knowledge|''a priori'']], using pure practical reason independently of the influence of felt motives, or inclinations.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Kant |first=Immanuel |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51622849 |title=Critique of pure reason |date=2007 |publisher=Penguin |others=Marcus Weigelt, F. Max Müller |isbn=978-0-14-044747-7 |location=London |oclc=51622849}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=August 2023}}

What dictates which action can be genuinely considered moral are maxims willed to action from the categorical imperative, separate from observable experience. This distinction, that it is imperative that each action is not [[empirically]] determined by observable experience, has had wide social impact in the legal and political concepts of human rights and [[social equality|equality]].<ref name=":0" />{{Page needed|date=August 2023}}

=== Possibility ===
Rational persons regard themselves as belonging to both the world of understanding and the world of sense. As a member of the '''world of understanding''', a person's actions would always conform to the [[autonomy]] of the will. As a part of the '''world of sense''', he would necessarily fall under the natural law of desires and inclinations. However, since the world of understanding contains the ground of the world of sense, and thus of its laws, his actions ought to conform to the autonomy of the will, and this categorical "ought" represents a [[synthetic proposition]] ''[[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]]''.<ref>4:454</ref>

=== Freedom and autonomy ===
Kant viewed the human individual as a [[Rationalism|rationally]] [[Self-consciousness|self-conscious]] being with "impure" [[freedom of choice]]:

{{quote|text=The faculty of desire in accordance with concepts, in-so-far as the ground determining it to action lies within itself and not in its object, is called a faculty to "do or to refrain from doing as one pleases".  Insofar as it is joined with one's consciousness of the ability to bring about its object by one's action it is called ''choice'' (Willkür); if it is not joined with this consciousness its act is called a ''wish''.  The faculty of desire whose inner determining ground, hence even what pleases it, lies within the subject's reason is called the ''will'' (Wille).  The will is therefore the faculty of desire considered not so much in relation to action (as choice is) but rather in relation to the ground determining choice in action.  The will itself, strictly speaking, has no determining ground; insofar as it can determine choice, it is instead practical reason itself.

Insofar as reason can determine the faculty of desire as such, not only ''choice'' but also mere ''wish'' can be included under the will.  That choice which can be determined by ''pure reason'' is called free choice.  That which can be determined only by ''inclination'' (sensible impulse, ''stimulus'') would be animal choice (''arbitrium brutum'').  Human choice, however, is a choice that can indeed be ''affected'' but not ''determined'' by impulses, and is therefore of itself (apart from an acquired proficiency of reason) not pure but can still be determined to actions by pure will. |author=Immanuel Kant |source=''Metaphysics of Morals'' 6:213–4|title=}}

For a will to be considered ''free'', we must understand it as capable of affecting [[Causality|causal]] power without being caused to do so. However, the idea of lawless [[free will]], meaning a will acting without any [[causal structure]], is incomprehensible. Therefore, a free will must be acting under laws that it gives to ''itself''.

Although Kant conceded that there could be no conceivable example of free will, because any example would only show us a will as it ''appears'' to us—as a subject of natural laws—he nevertheless argued against [[determinism]]. He proposed that determinism is logically inconsistent: the determinist claims that because ''A'' caused ''B'', and ''B'' caused ''C'', that ''A'' is the true cause of ''C''. Applied to a case of the human will, a determinist would argue that the will does not have causal power and that something outside the will causes the will to act as it does. But this argument merely assumes what it sets out to prove: [[viz.]] that the human will is part of the causal chain.

Secondly, Kant remarks that free will is ''inherently unknowable''. Since even a free person could not possibly have knowledge of their own freedom, we cannot use our failure to find a proof for freedom as evidence for a lack of it. The observable world could never contain an example of freedom because it would never show us a will as it appears to ''itself'', but only a will that is subject to natural laws imposed on it. But we do appear to ourselves as free.  Therefore, he argued for the idea of transcendental freedom—that is, freedom as a presupposition of the question "what ''ought'' I to do?" This is what gives us sufficient basis for ascribing moral responsibility: the rational and [[Self-actualization|self-actualizing]] power of a person, which he calls ''[[moral autonomy]]'': "the property the will has of being a law unto itself."