Kant Quote on the Moral Law: The Law Within

Quote

"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me." — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

Author

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was the greatest philosopher of the Enlightenment, the founder of the deontological ethics, and the author of the categorical imperative.

Source

The quotation is from the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason (1788). It is the most famous passage of his philosophy, and it is inscribed on his tombstone in Königsberg.

Context

The lines conclude the Critique of Practical Reason, the work in which Kant grounded the moral law in the pure practical reason. The passage contrasts the two objects of the awe: the starry heavens, the immensity and the order of the external universe; and the moral law within, the law of the rational will — the categorical imperative that the rational being gives to itself. The starry heavens are the object of the theoretical reason, the science of the external world; the moral law is the object of the practical reason, the law of the duty. Kant's point is that both are sublime, and that the moral law — the law within — is the greater: it is the law that the person freely gives to itself, the law of the dignity of the rational being.

Meaning

The quotation states the Kantian ethics in its most elevated form. "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe" — the two objects of the awe are the boundaries of the Kantian philosophy: the external world and the inner law. "The starry heavens above me" — the first object: the immensity of the universe, the order of the nature, the world that the theoretical reason explores. "And the moral law within me" — the second object: the law of the reason, the categorical imperative, the duty that does not depend on the consequences. The contrast is the contrast of the two worlds that Kant distinguished: the world of the phenomena, governed by the natural necessity, and the world of the freedom, governed by the moral law. The moral law within is the ground of the dignity: the person is not merely the part of the natural mechanism but the citizen of the moral order, the being that gives the law to itself.

Related Wisdom

The quotation belongs to the Kantian ethics of duty and the philosophy of ethics. Its account of the moral law connects to the categorical imperative and to the wider wisdom tradition's teaching on the law within — the conscience, the duty, the moral order that the reason discovers in itself.