On the Old Saw

That May be Right in Theory But It Won't Work in Practice

Immanuel Kant, E. B. Ashton

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780812209495
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Filosofía política

In this famous essay, first published in 1793, Kant considers the alleged conflict between theory and practice in the conduct of human affairs in three widening contexts: those of the common person faced with a moral decision, of the politician and the citizen concerned with the extent and limits of political obligation, and, finally, of the citizen of the world whose actions have a bearing on war and peace among nations.Unlike other animals, Kant reminds us, people must decide how they will live their lives. They therefore ask for a guide to action, a set of principles—a theory.From the outset, Kant rejects the ancient claim that the practical possibilities of action cannot always be reconciled with moral demands. He offers his own moral theory, a theory starting out from the principle of the right as an unequivocal guide to action. In partial disagreement with the rival theories of Hobbes and Locke, he proposes that the only condition under which the individual can achieve true destiny as a person and a member of the human race is the civil state. Such a state can be secured only by law. Although "from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built, " only the rule of law can bring about a stable society.Last, Kant turns to the relation between theory and practice in international relations. "Nowhere, " he writes, "does human nature appear less lovable than in the relation of whole nations to each other." But to hope for world peace on the basis of "the so-called balance of power is a mere chimera." There is no other remedy to international lawlessness and war than an international coercive law, and such law can grow only out of sound theory. "I put my trust in theory. At the same time, I trust in the nature of things, and also take account of human nature, which I cannot, or will not, consider so steeped in evil that in the end reason should not triumph."

On the Old Saw: That May Be Right in Theory But It Won’t Work in Practice?

A set of rules, even practical rules, is called a theory if the rules are conceived as principles of a certain generality and are abstracted from a multitude of conditions which necessarily influence their application. Conversely, we do not give the name practice to every activity, only to that accomplishment of an end which is thought to follow certain generally conceived principles of procedure.

However complete the theory may be, it is obvious that between theory and practice there must be a link, a connection and transition from one to the other. To the intellectual concept that contains the rule, an act of judgment must be added whereby the practitioner distinguishes whether or not something is an instance of the rule. And since we cannot always lay down rules for our judgment to observe in subsumption (as this would go on ad infinitum), there may be theoreticians who, for lack of judgment, can never be practical: physicians or jurists, for example, who have been well schooled but do not know what to do when they are summoned to a consultation.

But even where we find this natural gift, there may be a lack of premises. The theory may be incomplete, perhaps to be supplemented only by additional experiments and experiences from which the trained physician, agriculturist, or economist can and should abstract new rules of his own, to complete his theory. Thus, when the theory did not work too well in practice, the fault lay, not in the theory, but rather in there being not enough theory which a man should have learned from experience; and which is true theory even though he cannot express it or, as a teacher, expound it systematically in general propositions, and thus he cannot claim to be a theoretical physician, agriculturist, etc.

Accordingly, no man claiming to be practically versed in a science can disdain its theory without exposing himself as an ignoramus in his field. It is the belief of such a man that he can get farther than theory might take him by fumbling with experiments and experiences without specific principles for organizing them (which properly constitutes what we call “theory”) and without an overall conception of his business (which, when pursued methodically, is called a “system”).

And yet, when an ignorant individual calls theory unnecessary and dispensable in his supposed practice, this is not as unbearable as when a know-it-all admits its academic value (as a mere mental exercise, perhaps) while asserting that in practice things look altogether different, that with one’s emergence from school into the world comes an awareness of having pursued empty ideals and philosophical dreams—in a word, that what sounds good in theory is invalid in practice. (Which is often put this way: that some proposition or other does apply in thesi, but not in hypothesi.) Now, if an empirical machinist said of general mechanics, or an artilleryman of the mathematical doctrine of ballistics, that the theory is nicely thought out but not at all valid in practice because the experience of applying it yields very different results, one would simply laugh at them. For if the first were to consider the theory of friction, and the second that of air resistance—that is, if they were to add more theory—their theories would conform very well to experience. Still, matters are altogether different with a theory that concerns objects which can be observed, and with one concerning objects represented merely by concepts (such as the objects of mathematics and those of philosophy). Although from the standpoint of reason the latter objects may indeed and unimpeachably be thought, they are perhaps not given at all; they may be nothing but empty ideas that in practice are put either to no use at all or to a detrimental use. In such cases, therefore, that old saw might be perfectly appropriate.

In a theory based on the concept of duty, however, there need be no concern about empty ideality. For the pursuit of a certain effect of our will would be no duty if the effect were not also possible in experience (whether conceived as complete, or as constantly approaching completion); and this is the only kind of theory we are discussing in the present essay. About this theory the philosophically scandalous pretense is not infrequently advanced—that what may be true in it is still invalid in practice. And this pretense is advanced in a tone of lofty disdain full of presumption to have reason itself reformed by experience in the area which reason deems its highest honor, and with the sapient conceit to see farther and more clearly with the eyes of a mole, fixed upon experience, than with the eyes of a being that was made to stand erect and to behold the heavens.

This maxim, grown very common in our talkative, actionless times, does most harm when it refers to questions of ethics (to moral or legal duty). For these are matters of the canon of reasons (in the practical realm), where the value of practice depends entirely on its appropriateness to the underlying theory. All is lost if empirical and therefore accidental conditions of the application of the law are turned into conditions of the law itself, and thus a practice calculated for an outcome probable in line with past experience is made master of the self-existing theory.

I divide this essay according to the three standpoints from which a gentleman bold enough thus to pronounce on theories and systems usually judges his object. That is, in three qualities: 1. as a private person yet a man of business, 2. as a statesman, and 3. as a man in the world (or, a world citizen generally). These three persons are agreed to have at the man of the academy, who works on theory in their behalf and to their benefit; imagining that they know better, they mean to banish him to his academy (illa se iactet in aula!—Let him shine in the lecture hall!), as a pedant unfit for practice and a mere obstacle in the way of their experienced wisdom.

Accordingly, we shall present the relationship of theory and practice in three parts: first, in morality in general (with regard to the welfare of each human being); second, in politics (with respect to the welfare of states); third, in a cosmopolitan perspective (regarding the welfare of the human race as a whole and assuming that progress in that direction is made in the generational sequence of all times to come). For reasons apparent from the essay itself, the subtitles will express the relationship of theory and practice in morality, in constitutional law, and in international law.

I. On the Relation of Theory to Practice in Morality in General

(in reply to some exceptions taken by Professor Garve) ^*

Before I come to the real point at issue—namely, what in the use of one and the same concept may be valid only in theory or only in practice—I must compare my theory, as set forth elsewhere, with Herr Garve’s notion of it, to see beforehand whether we understand each other.

A. Provisionally, by way of introduction, I had defined ethics as a science that teaches, not how we are to achieve happiness, but how we are to become worthy of happiness. My definition, as I had not failed to note, does not mean that in matters of obeying duty a man should renounce his natural goal of happiness.^** He cannot do so, nor can any other finite rational being. What I mean is that, when duty calls, he must completely abstract from this consideration. Under no circumstances must he turn it into a condition of obeying the law prescribed to him by reason; indeed, he must seek as best he can to be conscious that no motive derived from it has imperceptibly mingled with his definition of his duty, as will happen because we tend to conceive duty as linked with sacrifices exacted by its observance (by virtue) rather than with the benefits it confers. The point is to bring the call of duty to mind in its totality, as demanding unconditional obedience, as self-sufficient, and as requiring no other influence.

a. Herr Garve puts my thesis as follows: “Kant maintained that observance of the moral law quite irrespective of happiness is man’s sole ultimate end, that it must be viewed as the sole end of the Creator.” (According to my theory, the sole end of the Creator is neither the morality of man alone nor happiness alone; instead, it is the highest good possible in the world: the union and concordance of the two.)

B. I had further remarked that this concept of duty need not be based upon any particular end, but that, rather, it introduced another end for the human will: namely, to strive as best he can for the highest good that is possible in the world (universal happiness linked to and in accordance with the purest morality in the world as a whole). Since this is within our power on the one side, but not on both, its effect as a practical end is to constrain men of reason to believe in a moral world governor and in a life to come— not as if both had to be presumed in order to give the general concept of duty “support and firmness,” i.e. a safe ground and the required strong motivating force, but only so that an object is provided for this ideal of pure reason.^* For duty in itself is nothing but the will’s restriction to the condition of a universal legislation made possible by an accepted maxim—the object of the will, or the purpose may be anything whatever (hence even happiness) provided the object, or any purpose we may have, is completely abstracted from. When we ask about the principle of morals, the doctrine of the highest good as the ultimate end of a will that is in conformity to its laws, can thus be wholly ignored and put aside as episodic; and indeed we shall see later that where the real issue is at stake, no attention at all is paid to this doctrine, only to the universal moral standpoint.

b. Herr Garve covers these theses in the following expressions: “that a virtuous man can never, nor must he ever lose sight of this aspect (his own happiness), for otherwise he would utterly lose his way to the invisible world, to a conviction of God’s existence and of immortality. But this conviction, according to that theory, is absolutely necessary to give support and firmness to the moral system .” And he concludes with this crisp and pithy summary of the assertions attributed to me: “A virtuous man, in accordance with those principles, will strive incessantly to be worthy of happiness; but insofar as he is truly virtuous, he will never strive to be happy.” (Here the word “insofar” causes an ambiguity that must first be straightened out. It may mean that, being virtuous, one bows to his duty in the act; in this sense the sentence fully accords with my theory. Or it may mean that if one is really virtuous, or in other words, that even if duty is not involved and there is no conflict with it, the virtuous man ought never to consider happiness at all. In that sense it is a flat contradiction of my statements.)

These exceptions are thus nothing but misunderstandings (for I would not wish to consider them misinterpretations). The possibility of their occurrence would be puzzling if the human tendency to follow one’s own habitual trains of thought even in the evaluation of the thoughts of others, and thus to carry one’s own thinking into theirs, did not suffice to explain such a phenomenon.

This polemical treatment of the moral principle just cited is followed then by a dogmatic statement to the contrary. Herr G. comes to this analytical conclusion: “In the order of concepts, the perceiving and distinguishing acts in which we prefer one condition to another must precede our choice of either, and thus precede the predetermination of a specific end. But if a creature endowed with consciousness of itself and its condition prefers a present and perceived condition to others, this condition is a good one; and a series of such good conditions is the most general concept, expressed by the word happiness.” Moreover: “A law presupposes motives, but motives presuppose a previously perceived difference between a condition that is worse and one that is better. This perceived difference is the element of the concept of happiness,” etc. And further: “From happiness, in the most general sense of the word, spring the motives for every endeavor, including that for compliance with the moral law. I must know that something is good before I can ask whether the fulfillment of my moral duties comes under the rubric of the good. Man must have a motivational drive that puts him in motion before a goal can be set for him,^* indicating where the motion ought go.”

This argument is nothing but a play on the ambiguity of the word “good.” Either the good is absolutely good, good in itself as opposed to evil in itself, or it is never more than conditionally good, being compared with the good that is worse or better since the state chosen as better may be only a comparatively better state though in itself it is still evil.

The maxim that a categorically commanding law of the freely choosing will should be observed absolutely, regardless of underlying ends (that is, duty) differs essentially, i.e., in kind, from the maxim to pursue an end supplied by nature itself as our motive for some sort of action (the end generally called happiness). For the first is good in itself, while the second is far from it; in the event of a clash with duty, it may be very evil. On the other hand, if the basis is a certain end and there is thus no law that commands absolutely (if the law commands only under the conditions of that end), two opposite courses of action may both be conditionally good though one is better than the other (which would then be called comparatively evil). They do not differ in kind, merely in degree. And this is the case with all acts not motivated by the absolute law of reason (by duty), but by an end arbitrarily proposed by ourselves. For that end is part of the sum of all ends, whose attainment we call happiness; and one act can do more for my happiness, the other less, so that each can be better or worse than the other.

But preferring one state of determining the will to another is simply a free act (res merae facultatis, as the lawyers say). It is an act in which no consideration is given to the question whether the determination of will is good or evil in itself, and in which alternatives are therefore equivalent.

A state of being in line with a certain given end which I prefer to any other end of its kind is a comparatively better state in the field of happiness (which reason never acknowledges as other than conditionally good to the extent that one is worthy of it). But the state in which I consciously prefer to do my duty, when there is a conflict between certain of my ends and the moral law of duty, is not merely a better state; it is the only condition that is good in itself. It is a good from an altogether different field, a field in which ends that may suggest themselves to me (and their sum total, happiness) will not even be considered, and in which the determining ground o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• On The Old Saw: