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Extract from THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

But, as we have allowed ourselves to assume the existence of a self-subsistent reality out of the field of experience, and are therefore obliged to regard phenomena as merely a contingent mode of representing intelligible objects employed by beings which are themselves intelligences--no other course remains for us than to follow an alogy and employ the same mode in forming some conception of intelligible things, of which we have not the least knowledge, which nature taught us to use in the formation of empirical conceptions.
Experience made us acquainted with the contingent.
But we are at present engaged in the discussion of things which are not objects of experience; and must, therefore, deduce our knowledge of them from that which is necessary absolutely and in itself, that is, from pure conceptions.
Hence the first step which we take out of the world of sense obliges us to begin our system of new cognition with the investigation of a necessary being, and to deduce from our conceptions of it all our conceptions of intelligible things.
This we propose to attempt in the following chapter.
CHAPTER III. The Ideal of Pure Reason.
SECTION I. Of the Ideal in General.
We have seen that pure conceptions do not present objects to the mind, except under sensuous conditions; because the conditions of objective reality do not exist in these conceptions, which contain, in fact, nothing but the mere form of thought.
They may, however, when applied to phenomena, be presented in concreto; for it is phenomena that present to them the materials for the formation of empirical conceptions, which are nothing more than concrete forms of the conceptions of the understanding.
But ideas are still further removed from objective reality than categories; for no phenomenon can ever present them to the human mind in concreto.
They contain a certain perfection, attainable by no possible empirical cognition; and they give to reason a systematic unity, to which the unity of experience attempts to approximate, but can never completely attain.
But still further removed than the idea from objective reality is the Ideal, by which term I understand the idea, not in concreto, but in individuo--as an individual thing, determinable or determined by the idea alone.
The idea of humanity in its complete perfection supposes not only the advancement of all the powers and faculties, which constitute our conception of human nature, to a complete attainment of their final aims, but also everything which is requisite for the complete determination of the idea; for of all contradictory predicates, only one can conform with the idea of the perfect man.
What I have termed an ideal was in Plato's philosophy an idea of the divine mind--an individual object present to its pure intuition, the most perfect of every kind of possible beings, and the archetype of all phenomenal existences.
Without rising to these speculative heights, we are bound to confess that human reason contains not only ideas, but ideals, which possess, not, like those of Plato, creative, but certainly practical power--as regulative principles, and form the basis of the perfectibility of certain actions.
Moral conceptions are not perfectly pure conceptions of reason, because an empirical element--of pleasure or pain--lies at the foundation of them.
In relation, however, to the principle, whereby reason sets bounds to a freedom which is in itself without law, and consequently when we attend merely to their form, they may be considered as pure conceptions of reason.
Virtue and wisdom in their perfect purity are ideas.
But the wise man of the Stoics is an ideal, that is to say, a human being existing only in thought and in complete conformity with the idea of wisdom.
As the idea provides a rule, so the ideal serves as an archetype for the perfect and complete determination of the copy.
Thus the conduct of this wise and divine man serves us as a standard of action, with which we may compare and judge ourselves, which may help us to reform ourselves, although the perfection it demands can never be attained by us.