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This book is such a hard read, note making is honestly the only way to make sense out of it for me. In this note, I'm having a dialectic conversation with its famous/infamous author.

Immanuel Kant: "Reason is given to us as a practical faculty, that is, one that is meant to have an influence on the will. Its proper function must be to produce a will that is good in itself and not good as a means."

Me: Reason exists for the reprogramming of our thoughts and actions to cultivate a good will. 'Good will' is contained in the concept of duty, which can be described as a sense of responsibility to be upheld for the betterment of society.

However, it's important that this good will arises as a product of its own, and not for the sole aim of using it as a catalyst for something else.
Since the pursuit of duty is layered with contradictions between selfless and selfish motivations, it can get quite difficult to identify.

Kant: "Reason issues inexorable commands without promising the preferences anything·by way of recompense·. It ignores and has no respect for the claims·that desire makes·—claims that are so impetuous and yet so plausible, and which refuse to give way to any command."

Me: Our sense of reason must not be expected to lead us to the best possible outcome, even a relatively fair one, or any form of an ideal result. Why?
Our expectations consist of our many desires. Hence, the bias is real. We cannot justify personal gratification as any part of the responsibility, the moral obligation we undertake for society.

Kant: "This gives rise to a natural dialectic—·an intellectual conflict or contradiction·—in the form of a propensity to argue against the stern laws of duty and their validity, or at least to cast doubt on their purity and strictness, and, where possible, to make them more accordant with our wishes and desires."

Me: The dialectic of preference and reason are always at play. Our desires interfere with our pursuits of duty, blurring the lines between the needs for the self and the many. Hence, when mixed together, they act as obstacles in the way of absolute morals, which result from the interplay of both practical as well as speculative reason.

Kant: "This undermines the very foundations of duty’s laws and destroys their dignity—which is something that even ordinary practical reason can’t, when it gets right down to it, call good."

Me: When the duty of a person directly conflicts with their personal endeavour, the reasoning behind the pursuit of this duty may change into one seeking an emotional outcome, one where the person feels satisfied for their own reasons upon fulfillment of the given duty. At this point, reason is used in defiance with good intentions since it promotes a selfish result, yet it is only portrayed as a slight deviation in character.

For the sake of our respective senses of duty, we cannot just reason ourselves to be good. To be morally good is to reach for the best possible outcome without any personal expectation in sight.

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