Reason: Meaning

          In the second section (4:407-4:408) I found most interesting the very beginning where is talks about experience, and this helped me understand my blog post from a previous posting as well. Kant talks about experience versus reason as the foundation of morality. I tried to rewrite Kant’s words in a more simplified way to find out the meaning of this passage and it was written as the following:

It is impossible to believe that with experience one can know that in a situation, an action’s principle that is usually in accordance with duty was performed completely on moral grounds and represented one’s duty. This is because it could be also looked at as an act of self-love that is falsely believed to be a noble act. There is no way to examine this for sure, but it does not make a difference because in the end the only thing that matters is the inner principle not the actions that actually take place. Furthermore, people want to believe that morality and the concepts of duty can be obtained solely from experience. For while majority of our actions are based off of duty, a closer look to our intentions and imaginations shows that we have a dear-self which comes forward and those actions rely on that. We genuinely wish for good and doubt at times what we see. Experience only adds or makes wiser and more acute our judgment, whether there is any good actually found. So it can be understood that even if there has never been actions that come from a pure place the only thing that actually matters is the reason, itself, that commands whether the actions ought to happen. Even for those who argue that experience is the core foundation would see that everything is still dependent on reason which will determine the will. 

 

          I gathered that Kant was trying to tell us that experience cannot be the foundation of morality because actions are not what would show the moral ground of duty. He goes on to explain that the moral ground of duty is not something you can see and therefore experiences based off of an action seen or unseen is something we as humans like to believe is the foundation of everything but is actually not. There is something deeper, which is the reason for the action that matters most. Reason is independent because it commands what ought to happen with no concern of the action.