Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 544 pages of information about Literary and Philosophical Essays.

Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 544 pages of information about Literary and Philosophical Essays.
as necessarily united in the same subject, since otherwise no reason could be given why we should burden reason with an idea which, though it may possibly without contradiction be reconciled with another that is sufficiently established, yet entangles us in a perplexity which sorely embarrasses Reason in its theoretic employment.  This duty, however, belongs only to speculative philosophy, in order that it may clear the way for practical philosophy.  The philosopher then has no option whether he will remove the apparent contradiction or leave it untouched; for in fhe latter case the theory respecting this would be bonum vacans into the possession of which the fatalist would have a right to enter, and chase all morality out of its supposed domain as occupying it without title.

We cannot, however, as yet say that we are touching the bounds of practical philosophy.  For the settlement of that controversy does not belong to it; it only demands from speculative reason $hat it should put an end to the discord in which it entangles itself in theoretical questions, so that practical reason may have rest and security from external attacks which might make the ground debatable on which it desires to build.

The claims to freedom of will made even by common reason are founded on the consciousness and the admitted supposition that reason is independent on merely subjectively determined causes which together Constitute what belongs to sensation only, and which consequently come under the general designation of sensibility.  Man considering himself in this way as an intelligence, places himself thereby in a different order of things and in a relation to determining grounds of a wholly different kind when on the one hand he thinks of himself as an intelligence endowed with a will, and consequently with causality, and when on the other he perceives himself as a phenomenon in the world of sense (as he really is also), and affirms that his causality is subject to external determination according to laws of nature. [Footnote:  The punctuation of the original gives the following sense:  “Submits his causality, as regards its external determination, to laws of nature.” have ventured to make what appears to be a necessary correction, by simply removing a comma.] Now he soon becomes aware that both can hold good, nay, must hold good at the same time.  For there is not the smallest contradiction in saying that a thing in appearance (belonging to the world of sense) is subject to certain laws, on which the very same as a thing or being in itself is independent; and that he must conceive and think of himself in this twofold way, rests as to the first on the consciousness of himself as an object affected through the senses, and as to the second on the consciousness of himself as an intelligence, i. e., as independent on sensible impressions in the employment of his reason (in other words as belonging to the world of understanding).

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Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.