Concept
Practical reason
Overview
the use of reason to decide how to act
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Practical reason is discussed.
By a concept of the practical reason I understand the idea of an object as an effect possible to be produced through freedom. To be an object of practical knowledge, as such, signifies, therefore, only the relation of the will to the action by which the object or its opposite would be realized; and to decide whether something is an object of…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
53.] (b) The Practical Reason is understood by Kant to mean a _thinking_ Will, _i.e._ a Will that determines itself on universal principles. Its office is to give objective, imperative laws of freedom,--laws, that is, which state what ought to happen.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
When practical reason thinks itself into a world of understanding, it does not thereby transcend its own limits, as it would if it tried to enter it by intuition or sensation. The former is only a negative thought in respect of the world of sense, which does not give any laws to reason in determining the will and is positive only in this single point that this freedom as a negative…
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
a chapter is titled for it; author linked in the graph; opens on it; names the idea
The view is traceable historically to Kant's conception of Practical Reason, but as the view is ordinarily advanced the function of Practical Reason in Kant's philosophy is overlooked. The Practical Reason is no special faculty of man's being; it is his consciousness of himself as an acting being; that is, as a being capable of acting from ideas. Kant never separates the consciousness of duty from the very nature of…
John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
states what it is; names the idea
I will only observe--and this point I shall take up again later on--that here =reason=, because, and in so far as, it works out the above explained special ratiocination, receives the name of =practical reason=. Now the Categorical Imperative of Practical Reason is the law which results from this process of thought. Consequently Practical Reason is not in the least what most people, including even Fichte, have…
Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality
states what it is; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Practical reason
Related ideas
- Belief
- Argumentation theory
- Immanuel Kant
- Synthese
- Contingency (philosophy)
- Metaphysics
- Categorical imperative
- René Descartes
- Aristotle
- Utilitarianism
- Logical truth
- Cambridge University Press
- Thomism
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Metaepistemology.