On Feeling in Kant : The Significance of 'Morality'

Kant's ethical theory in Critical-Period is formed not on the negation of 'feeling' which he had before taken very important, but rather on the deepening and refining of it. Indeed the feeling of 'respect' comes here to have a central meaning. Respect is, as it were, the sublimated 'pain', 'elatio animi', and the spring for actual conducts. Moreover the affinity of the moral feeling with the aesthetic one is much emphasized. This point suggests that Kant in his Critical Period did not take morality as merely 'formal'. 'The adopted virtue' or 'the shimmer of virtue' (Beobachtungen ü. d. Gefühl d. Schönen u. Erhabenen), 'bonitas pragmatica' (Vorl. ü. Ethik), 'the imperative of cleverness' (K. d. p. V.), and 'the pragmatic cultivation' 'the civilizing' (über Pädagogik), these concepts are found to be structually interconnected. They are so to say mediums to the moral act from duty. And under these considerations we think we can see the meaning of the feeling of respect in a new light. Respect' is referred to in the K. d. Ur. as "the feeling that our capacity is unsuitable to attain Idee, which is the law for us, is nothing else but respect". Also 'the revolution of mind' argued upon in his theory of religion can be interpreted on the same line. 'Respect' is the morality itself taken in its subjective aspect