Rational Legislation And Free Will

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them:the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. This most famous saying which Kant wrote in the conclusion of his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and was even inscribed on his tombstone, indicates two things that Kant’s philosophical thought focused on throughout his lifetime. Kant tried to explain both the possibility of the new scientific knowledge, which had culminated in the worldview of Isaac Newton, and the possibility of human freedom, and especially the possibility of harmony between them both. As one of the most famous philosophers, Kant exposed and criticized the specific errors of transcendent metaphysics which included rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). In this critique, Kant denied the validity of human knowledge beyond the empirical domain. By suspending knowledge, Kant tried to save human freedom and rational belief, and established human’s subjectivity beyond the whole nature which would endow Person with unconditional value and supreme dignity. Kant’s thought of morality had so important influence, that its notions had dominated our usual moral judgment and even became the pivotal concepts in the subject of ethnics.Though we seem to be so familiar with Kant’s concepts of morality by usual use, we should not forget that Kant’s thought of morality was a great offspring of his times. It had close relation with stirring rational spirit in the enlightenment, theology, the worldview of Isaac Newton, and the empirical ethnics in England in18th century, which provided Kant abundant thinking resource, also a lot of difficult theoretic questions. They shaped the character of Kant’s thought of morality together to a certain extent. My dissertation wants to study the relations between Kant’s thought of morality with the rest parts in his whole philosophy system to clarify how Kant’s thought of morality became itself, and the essential conceptions and standpoints in Kant’s morality philosophy including several themes as below, the harmony between transcendental freedom ideal and the law of natural causation, the relationship between the conception of freedom in human beings’practice and the transcendental freedom ideal, the meanings of’the fact of pure reason’, the fundamental rule of pure practical reason, and the principle of will autonomy.Besides preface and conclusion, the paper has mainly five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces Kant’s thinking course about morality and some important themes of the empirical ethnics in England in18th century.Copernicus revolution and transcendent method played a key role in Kant’s philosophy, the second chapter mainly discusses them and Kant’s prominent thoughts based on them, for example, the distinction between phenomena and noumena, and the ideal of transcendent freedom.The third chapter focuses on Kant’s conception of practical freedom of human being, its relationship with the ideal of transcendent freedom and the unconditional practical ability of pure reason which was regarded as a "fact of pure reason" by Kant.The thought of morality is the core of Kant’s philosophy, just as the concept of freedom is the keystone of the whole architecture of the system of pure reason. The fourth chapter expatiates the meanings of moral law, the concept of volition autonomy and formal legislation, and why Kant said that the conception of freedom, in so far as its reality is proved by an apodictic law of practical reason.The fifth chapter illuminates Kant’s thought of limited reason and volition of human being.On the basis of the illumination of Kant’s thoughts on morality, some widespread and specious criticisms against Kant’s standpoints of morality will be analyzed and responded.The epilogue provides summarization of this paper, and portrays some characters of Kant’s thought of morality, and a theoretic conflict about the harmony between the moral revolution and the natural law of causation is put forward.