[p. 257]
|257| led away from a purpose which he should make his vocation.
The drive toward the agreeable can agree with reason, i.e. both have the same content, reason legitimating the content. – With regard to form, the drive acts for the sake of the subjective feeling or has the agreeable of the subject as its purpose. In the action for the sake of a universal object, the object itself is the purpose. The drive toward the agreeable, on the other hand, is always selfish.
§ 39
Drives and inclinations are 1. considered in themselves neither good nor evil, i.e. the human being has them immediately as a natural being. 2. Good and evil are moral determinations and pertain to the will. The good is what corresponds to reason. 3. Drives and inclinations, however, cannot be considered without relation to the will. This relation is not contingent, and the human being is no indifferent double being.
Explanation. Morality has the human being in his particularity as its object. This seems at first to contain only a multitude of manifoldnesses, the unequal, which distinguishes human beings from one another. But what distinguishes human beings from one another is the contingent, what depends on nature and external circumstances. In the particular, however, something universal is at the same time contained. The particularity of the human being consists in the relation to others. In this relation there are now also essential and necessary determinations. These make up the content of duty.
§ 40
The human being has 1. the essential determination of being an individual, 2. he belongs to a natural whole, the family, 3. he is a member of the state, 4. he stands in relation to other human beings in general. – The duties
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