ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most famous words that Immanuel Kant wrote during a publishing career of more than fifty years are these from the conclusion to his 1788 work on the foundation and possibility of morality, the Critique of Practical Reason:
(CPracR, 5:161-2)
With these dramatic words, Kant alludes to the two great problems and accomplishments of his philosophical career. On the one hand, he wants to know how we who as creatures are a mere part of nature can discover how all of nature, even those parts of it that are well beyond our physical reach, does and even must work: how is it that we can become certain of the fundamental principles of everyday experience and natural science and by their means gain ever increasing knowledge of the natural order? On the other hand, he wants to display the unconditional value that we have as rational rather than merely natural beings, to show that the fundamental principle of morality is nothing but the necessary and sufficient condition of realizing this unconditional value, and that we are always free to act in accordance with and indeed for the sake of this principle, thus free to realize the unconditional value for which we unlike anything else in nature have the potential.
