The Metaphysic of Ethics

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T. Clark, 1836 - Ethics - 378 pages

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Page 59 - is that kind of causality attributed to living agents, in so far as they are possessed of reason, and freedom is such a property of that causality as enables them to originate events, independently of foreign determining causes...
Page cxxi - Kant has hardly expressed himself too emphatically in saying, "there is nothing in the world which can be termed absolutely and altogether good, a good will alone excepted.
Page xviii - Praeterea, ut bene sperent, neque Instaurationem nostram ut quiddam infinitum et ultra mortale fingant, et animo concipiant ; quum revera sit infiniti erroris finis et terminus legitimus.
Page 134 - ... somewhat different points of view, had been followed in England by Cudworth, Clarke, and Price, became still more celebrated in Germany through the writings of Kant. By him all a posteriori methods of accounting for the nature and origin of morality are rejected as alike insufficient and degrading : ' Duty ! Thou great, thou exalted name ! Wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so extorting...
Page xxv - ... experience ; as conversely what truth or perception soever is present to the mind, with a consciousness not of its necessity but of its contingency, is ascribable not to the agency of the mind itself, but derives its origin from observation and experience.
Page 11 - Ethics,' there occurs the following characteristic passage : ' What, therefore, I have to do in order that my volition be morally good, requires no great acuteness. How inexperienced soever in the course of external nature, I only ask, Canst thou will thy maxim to become law universal? If not, it is to be rejected, and that not on account of any disadvantages emerging to thyself and others, but because it is unfit for law in a system of universal moral legislation ' ' (weil sie nicht als Princip...
Page 99 - ... priori, namely, that we are conscious of a practical law a priori as we are conscious of theoretical ones, by attending to the necessity with which reason obtrudes them on the mind ; and, by separating from them all a posteriori conditions, we arrive from the first at the idea of a pure will, as from the last at the idea of a pure understanding.

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