Universal legislation

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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · fact of reason · duty, conscience, and obligation · categorical imperative · autonomy of the will · a priori moral law

Usually: argument (1) · reverence (1)

Quotable

“We may call the consciousness of this fundamental law a fact of reason, because we cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, e.g., the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given), but it forces itself on us as a synthetic a priori proposition, which is not based on any intuition, either pure or empirical.” Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason · insight

The Critique of Practical Reason secondary

Immanuel Kant · 1788
BOOK*1|CHAPTER*1 > Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation. (1/19)

Kant argues that the moral maxim of universal legislation is an unconditional, a priori rule of practical reason, experienced as a “fact of reason,” determining the will without borrowing anything from experience.

{BOOK*1|CHAPTER*1 ^paragraph 70} REMARK. Pure geometry has postulates which are practical propositions, but contain nothing further than the assumption that we can do something if it is required that we should do it, and these are the only geometrical propositions that concern actual existence. They are, then, practical rules under a problematical condition of the will; but here the rule says: We absolutely must pr…