make it clearer for ourselves. What can we gather from these statements? Respect is respect for the law as determining ground of moral action. As this respect-for—namely, for the law—respect is determined by something positive, the law, which itself is not empirical. This feeling of respect for the law is produced by reason itself; it is not a feeling pathologically induced by sensibility. Kant says that it does not serve for judging actions; moral feeling does not present itself after the event, following upon the ethical deed, as the manner in which I assume an attitude toward the already accomplished action. Instead, respect for the law, as a motive, first really constitutes the possibility of the action. It is the way in which the law first becomes accessible to me as law. This means at the same time that this feeling of respect for the law also does not serve, as Kant puts it, for substantiating the law; the law is not what it is because I have respect for it, but just the reverse: my having a feeling of respect for the law and with it this specific mode of revelation of the law is the only way in which the moral law as such is able to approach me.
Feeling is having-feeling-for, and so much so that in it the ego which feels in this way at the same time feels its own self. Applied to respect, this means that in respect for the law the respectful ego must simultaneously become manifest to itself in a specific way. This must occur not subsequently and not merely occasionally; instead, respect for the law—this specific type of revelation of law as the determining ground of action—is as such conjointly a specific revelation of my own self as the agent. What the respect is for, or that for which this feeling is the having of a feeling, Kant entitles the moral law. Reason, as free, gives this law to itself. Respect for the law is the active ego's respect for itself as the self which is not understood by means of self-conceit and self-love. Respect as respect for the law relates also, in its specific revelation, to the person. "Respect always goes to persons alone, never to things."17 In respect for the law, I submit myself to the law. The specific having of a feeling for the law which is present in respect is a self-subjection. I subject myself in respect for the law to my own self as the free self. In this subjection of myself I am manifest to myself; I am as I myself. The question is, As what or, more precisely, as who?
In subjecting myself to the law, I subject myself to myself as pure reason; but that is to say that in this subjection to myself I raise myself to myself as the free, self-determining being. This submissive self-elevation of myself to myself reveals, discloses as such, me to myself in my dignity. Speaking negatively, in the respect for the law that I give to myself as a free being I cannot have disrespect for myself. Respect is the mode of the ego's beingwith- itself [Bei-sich-selbst-sein] according to which it does not disparage the hero in its soul. The moral feeling, as respect for the law, is nothing but the
17. Ibid.