The Critique of Practical Reason | Page 9

the will only, without considering what is attained by its causality,

and we may disregard this latter (as belonging to the world of sense) in
order to have them quite pure.

II. THEOREM I.
{BOOK1|CHAPTER1 ^paragraph 15}

All practical principles which presuppose an object (matter) of the
faculty of desire as the ground of determination of the will are
empirical and can furnish no practical laws.
By the matter of the faculty of desire I mean an object the realization of
which is desired. Now, if the desire for this object precedes the
practical rule and is the condition of our making it a principle, then I
say (in the first place) this principle is in that case wholly empirical, for
then what determines the choice is the idea of an object and that
relation of this idea to the subject by which its faculty of desire is
determined to its realization. Such a relation to the subject is called the
pleasure in the realization of an object. This, then, must be presupposed
as a condition of the possibility of determination of the will. But it is
impossible to know a priori of any idea of an object whether it will be
connected with pleasure or pain, or be indifferent. In such cases,
therefore, the determining principle of the choice must be empirical and,
therefore, also the practical material principle which presupposes it as a
condition.
In the second place, since susceptibility to a pleasure or pain can be
known only empirically and cannot hold in the same degree for all
rational beings, a principle which is based on this subjective condition
may serve indeed as a maxim for the subject which possesses this
susceptibility, but not as a law even to him (because it is wanting in
objective necessity, which must be recognized a priori); it follows,
therefore, that such a principle can never furnish a practical law.

{BOOK1|CHAPTER1 ^paragraph 20}
III. THEOREM II.

All material practical principles as such are of one and the same kind
and come under the general principle of self-love or private happiness.
Pleasure arising from the idea of the idea of the existence of a thing, in
so far as it is to determine the desire of this thing, is founded on the
susceptibility of the subject, since it depends on the presence of an
object; hence it belongs to sense (feeling), and not to understanding,
which expresses a relation of the idea to an object according to
concepts, not to the subject according to feelings. It is, then, practical
only in so far as the faculty of desire is determined by the sensation of
agreeableness which the subject expects from the actual existence of
the object. Now, a rational being's consciousness of the pleasantness of
life uninterruptedly accompanying his whole existence is happiness;
and the principle which makes this the supreme ground of
determination of the will is the principle of self-love. All material
principles, then, which place the determining ground of the will in the
pleasure or pain to be received from the existence of any object are all
of the same kind, inasmuch as they all belong to the principle of
self-love or private happiness.

{BOOK1|CHAPTER1 ^paragraph 25}
COROLLARY.

All material practical rules place the determining principle of the will
in the lower desires; and if there were no purely formal laws of the will
adequate to determine it, then we could not admit any higher desire at
all.

REMARK I.
{BOOK1|CHAPTER1 ^paragraph 30}

It is surprising that men, otherwise acute, can think it possible to
distinguish between higher and lower desires, according as the ideas
which are connected with the feeling of pleasure have their origin in the
senses or in the understanding; for when we inquire what are the
determining grounds of desire, and place them in some expected
pleasantness, it is of no consequence whence the idea of this pleasing
object is derived, but only how much it pleases. Whether an idea has its
seat and source in the understanding or not, if it can only determine the
choice by presupposing a feeling of pleasure in the subject, it follows
that its capability of determining the choice depends altogether on the
nature of the inner sense, namely, that this can be agreeably affected by
it. However dissimilar ideas of objects may be, though they be ideas of
the understanding, or even of the reason in contrast to ideas of sense,
yet the feeling of pleasure, by means of which they constitute the
determining principle of the will (the expected satisfaction which
impels the activity to the production of the object), is of one and the
same kind, not only inasmuch as it can only be known empirically, but
also inasmuch as it affects one