An Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant by Edward Caldwell Moore
page 51 of 282 (18%)
page 51 of 282 (18%)
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is a knowledge of the facts about us in the world, of the growth of the
cosmos, of the development of life, of the course of history, all viewed as necessary sequences of cause and effect. [Footnote 3: Paulsen, _Kant_, a. 2.] On the other hand, with the idealists, Kant is fully persuaded that there is a meaning in things and that we can know it. There is a sense in life. With immediate certainty we set moral good as the absolute aim in life. This is done, however, not through the pure reason or by scientific thinking, but primarily through the will, or as Kant prefers to call it, the practical reason. What is meant by the practical reason is the intelligence, the will and the affections operating together; that is to say, the whole man and not merely his intellect, directed to those problems upon which, in sympathy and moral reaction, the whole man must be directed and upon which the pure reason, the mere faculty of ratiocination, does not adequately operate. In the practical reason the will is the central thing. The will is that faculty of man to which moral magnitudes appeal. It is with moral magnitudes that the will is primarily concerned. The pure reason may operate without the will and the affections. The will, as a source of knowledge, never works without the intelligence and the affections. But it is the will which alone judges according to the predicates good and evil. The pure reason judges according to the predicates true and false. It is the practical reason which ventures the credence that moral worth is the supreme worth in life. It then confirms this ventured credence in a manifold experience that yields a certainty with which no certainty of objects given in the senses is for a moment to be compared. We know that which we have believed. We know it as well as that two and two make four. Still we do not know it in the same way. Nor can we bring knowledge of it to others |
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