Chapter 14

The special ontological laws of practical reason. The first special law: objectivity

1428. I now come to the special ontological laws of practical reason. The first is that of objectivity.
We have seen that through the law of objectivity reason

1. does not modify its term,
2. apprehends its term but not the action of the term, and
3. apprehends the term without simultaneously apprehending its own self; its act finishes in the term outside itself. These three qualities of rational action must be present in both theoretical and practical reason because both are reason. These laws, relative to theoretical reason, are constitutive and necessary. They are therefore essential (Art. 2, §1 [Ch. 2, Art. 1). Relative to practical reason, which is subject to agents foreign to its object, they do not constitute its essence but its perfection, its proper good, and in this sense are fitting but not necessary. They are morally but not physically necessary.

1429. That which is essential law for theoretical reason is moral law for practical reason. It follows therefore:

1.As it is an essential law for theoretical reason not to modify its term, so practical reason must abstain even from trying to modify, alter or make the term different from what it is. If practical reason were not to do this, it would deviate from the law of the rational principle and no longer act rationally. This explains precisely why I posited a faculty of error and malice different from the faculty of knowledge. By maliciously altering the limits and value of entia, the activity of practical reason opposes rather than produces an act of knowledge .

2.As it is an essential law for reason to apprehend an ens without receiving from it any action which may enter and modify the subject, so the rational, practical principle must, according to its law, consider the value of the ens in itself, independently of the accidental real action which the ens exercises on the principle. The ens must be measured against ideal being, not against subjective advantage, and then esteemed according to the measure it receives from this comparison. In other words, its real action on us must not move our practical reason to value it differently from what it is worth in itself when considered relative to and in the ideal ens. It is one thing for us to act as a result of the real action exercised on us by an ens, or rather by an agent; it is another to act as a result of the true measure of the ens (manifested by comparison with the essence of the ens intuited by the mind in ideal-universal being) in which is included the activity of the ens and its aptitude to act on us and others. To act in conformity with this measure is to act rationally and therefore morally ; to act through the impulse of a real action on us is to abandon the law of reason in order to follow that of real or blind being, that is, of purely sensible being.(235) Practical reason must be directed according to the OBJECT, not the SUBJECT.

1430.3.As it is an essential law of reason to apprehend an ens to the exclusion of itself as apprehending, so practical reason, to act rationally, must follow its term-ens in such a way as to forget itself (subject) totally, unless it is contained in the ens, that is, is understood in the object (objectivised). This is equivalent to the preceding law of acting in conformity with the object , but also indicates why a virtuous person forgets himself. It is the origin of generosity , magnanimity , sacrifice and simplicity , that noble, beautiful endowment of a just person, which consists in doing good without regard for subjective stimuli.

Notes

(235) Teodicea , 384-415.