A.W. Rehberg, “On the relationship between theory and practice”

ABSTRACT

This is the first English translation of A.W. Rehberg's Über das Verhältnis der Theorie zur Praxis which was a published as a response to Immanuel Kant's On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory, but is of no use in practice. Rehberg's response appeared originally in February 1794.

KEYWORDS:

• August Rehberg
• Kant
• eighteenth-century political thought
• translation

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Pauline Kleingeld, Reidar Maliks, Anne Pollok, Hugo Hogenbirk and two anonymous reviewers from the BJHP, who each made this translation better. Thanks also to Marshanda Gregory for continued support.

Notes

1 Leibniz-Wolffian metaphysics contains the most admirable attempt to reveal this mystery; and yet, as is proved in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, it is a futile one. I believe I have shown in my book On the Relationship of Metaphysics to Religion (Berlin 1787) that no other attempt to solve the problem is possible except for and in accordance with that one.

2 Professor Kant shows in the note to the preface of his work Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (6:6–8) how a synthetic sentence a priori, which connects an object of the same with the formal laws of morality, is possible. This possibility alone is not sufficient to base a system of evident moral sciences on. Necessity must shed light on this.

3 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (4:429ff).

4 The law of morality rules human beings by the feeling of displeasure, which is directly connected with every violation of it. Although, Professor Kant says (Berlinische Monatsschrift, Sept. 1793 [P. 51]) that this purely moral dissatisfaction cannot be the motivating force of a human being’s morality, because only the virtuous is capable of it; it is not the cause but the effect of virtue; only here is it just like natural predispositions. Every power develops in him first by itself. The feelings that arise from their development and are connected with their effects are then used for their culture. Thus also (not according to time, but according to the order of concepts in abstraction) every human being must be thought of as morally good; for it is incomprehensible how a rational being should be able to act irrationally (immoral is contrary to the law of reason) if it is otherwise conscious of its reason in its actions. The possibility of immorality arises from the incomprehensible connection of a rational being with a nature whose motivating forces consist in inclinations that refer to the sense-constrained condition. From mere socialization, since reason has no influence on sensible actions and only makes an idle judgement of our own actions, no moral being emerges, but a monstrosity, which some people actually approach, especially through vice (or through the long use of certain metallic medicines), which has the immediate effect of an extraordinary blunting of the nervous system and destroys the finer organization.

That connection by which a human being becomes a truly moral acting being (which is more than a machine) is created by the feelings of pleasure and displeasure which are connected with the purely mental consciousness of one’s own reason or irrationality (which, however, must be thought of purely by those feelings which refer to the condition of the subject, to his personality in the sensory world, which includes the moral pride of being better than others). In our judgements on the morality of human beings we do not therefore demand that a man, in whom the consciousness of his own immorality does not arouse any feeling of displeasure, should nevertheless act morally; but we demand of him that the consciousness of his own immorality should cause him an unbearable torment; just as we demand of every human being that he should feel the charm of beauty, on pain of contempt as a being incomplete in the first predispositions of his nature.

5 The controversy over the original contract, whether it is based on reason or on judicious choice, and whether it consists of necessary or accidental conditions, is seldom settled. Even the author of an essay in the July 1793 edition of the Berlinische Monatsschrift does not seem to have seen it clearly. [“Overview of the different opinions on the true sources of general constitutional law”]. The rationalists among the politicians do not even claim (as in the cited place, p. 38) that the legitimate origin of a state can only be conceived through the voluntary agreement of the citizens; but rather the opposite, namely that a state can never legitimately originate from voluntary agreement (on chosen conditions), but that the conditions of this unification are prescribed by reason and are therefore necessary: not that the general will of the nation, which will always be a rational will, must be the basis, but rather that the general will can be taken as a basis, because this way it probably comes closest to the rational will in most cases, whereby the rational will (in abstracto) is the only basis of all constitutional law. Already the title of Rousseau’s writing tempts some to this misunderstanding. This writer proves in his book “Du contrat social” that there should be no original contract on chosen conditions, but that the original conditions on which civil society is based are prescribed by reason itself.

6 In Berlinischen Monatsschrift, April 1789, No. 2.

i In this translation I will translate Mensch and Menschen as human being and human beings respectively. I have preserved, however, the use of the male pronoun throughout in order to preserve some of the tension in the use of this term in the eighteenth century.

ii Theory and Practice 8:295f.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek: [Universal Moral Laws].