The role of limitation and the language of the intelligence in Kant

Abstract

The precept “know thyself” in The Metaphysics of Morals is used by Kant as a guide for human beings to determine their limits and abilities with regard to reaching freedom and autonomy. This precept is also found in the first Critique when Kant deals with the inquiry that reason must conduct upon itself. The discipline that reason must impose on itself in the first Critique is indispensable in order to establish its own area of activity, and to try to determine its internal conflict, originating in the transcendental illusion that reason itself creates. In Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and in the Lectures on Pedagogy one discovers the same situation as it relates to the human being who enters into society: the person has to limit herself and her wild freedom. This type of limitation is productive because through it human beings can discover something about themselves. Limiting their actions requires human beings to shed their mask of morality and analyse the true intentions behind their actions. In the light of this, it is possible to establish two different analogies. One concerns the way in which reason deals with its illusion and the way in which the human being does the same with the illusion produced in society (which in Anthropology Kant calls moral illusion. The other analogy concerns the type of discipline that both reason and the human being impose on themselves.