Critique of Practical Reason Ping (Translation of Famous Works)

Author: Immanuel Kant (Germany), translated by Han Shuifa
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Publishing Date: Not available
Features: The author of this book, Immanuel Kant, was one of the most important thinkers of the 18th-century European Enlightenment. He was born on April 22, 1724, in K?nigsberg, East Prussia, to a modest family of small artisans. From a young age, he developed a moral character rooted in religious principles. At the age of 8, he entered a school in his hometown, where he received rigorous education, laying a solid foundation for his later philosophical research and scientific exploration. In 1740, at the age of 16, Kant entered the University of K?nigsberg for his studies. Due to financial difficulties in 1746, he worked as a private tutor for nine years. In 1755, he completed his studies and secured a teaching position at his alma mater, the University of K?nigsberg, where he taught physics, philosophy, logic, metaphysics, moral philosophy, firearms, fortification, and natural geography. In 1770, he was promoted from lecturer to professor of logic and metaphysics, holding this position until his retirement. During the 1780s, he served as president of the University of K?nigsberg twice. He remained unmarried throughout his life and passed away in his hometown on February 12, 1804. Practical reason holds a dominant and leading position in Kant's entire philosophical system. Morality is superior to cognition, and ethics is superior to epistemology; action is superior to knowledge. Only the moral laws prescribed by practical reason in the human heart possesses objective universal validity and can become universal and necessary moral principles. This critique is not titled Critique of Pure Practical Reason but simply Critique of Practical Reason, although its correspondence with the Critique of Speculative Reason seems to require the former name. The work provides a full explanation for this naming choice. The critique should solely demonstrate the existence of pure practical reason and, for this purpose, examine the entire practical capacity of reason. If it succeeds in this regard, it would be unnecessary to critique pure reason itself to determine whether it has overstepped its bounds with such an excessive claim (as happened with speculative reason). For if pure reason is practically real, it has proven its reality and the reality of its concept through facts, and any sophistry that attempts to deny its reality would be futile. With this capacity, transcendental freedom is established from this point onward, and the freedom here refers to its absolute sense. Speculative reason requires this sense of freedom when applying the concept of causality, in order to extricate itself from the inevitable dilemma it falls into when it seeks to think the unconditional in the series of causal connections. However, speculative reason can only establish the concept of freedom in a probable, i.e., non-impossible, manner and cannot guarantee its objective reality. Moreover, speculative reason proceeds in this way only to avoid assuming the impossible, at least what it must admit is thinkable, thereby endangering the existence of reason and plunging it into the abyss of skepticism.