Fourth Epilegomenon: The Transition to Practical Judgment

We now begin the final part of this treatise on the phenomenon of mind, namely the exposition of the power of pure Reason. In a number of ways this is the most challenging part of our theory owing to the peculiar aloofness of Reason from all sensational attributes of the Self in Reason’s role as the supreme regulator and executive of all non-autonomic actions of the Organized Being. All our considerations in this realm of nous must be regarded exclusively from the practical Standpoint because the Dasein of pure Reason is exposed only through actions. The objective validity of all our constructs in the theory of Reason can be only a practical objective validity because the Realerklärung of pure Reason can only be understood through ideas of its causality (the causality of freedom). The theory of pure Reason is the theory of a phenomenon of mind that must be regarded as an Unsache-thing in our understanding of it through ideas of phenomenal appearances. It therefore has to be understood in terms of processes, one of which we have called the process of practical judgment, another of which we call the power of choice. Kant said very little on the topic of practical judgment, and indeed one is bound to wonder if Kant drew a clear distinction between the Critical metaphysic of pure Reason and the applied metaphysic of moral theory. It is in any event the case that he expressed all his objective exemplars in concreto of the categorical imperative in terms of “the moral law within me.” However, in all cases “the moral law” of his theory was expressed in terms of an “ought to,” and this is not sufficient to describe Reason as the supreme executive of the capacities for actions in an Organized Being, nor to understand the categorical imperative as the supreme pure and a