The imperatives of divine reason are communicated to the individual through the assimilation and reformulation of the accumulated social wisdom by individual conscience (PE 318) (see the previous section).
It follows, therefore, that the Categorical Imperative is the supreme principle of reason. That the Categorical Imperative is the supreme principle of reason is, to be sure, a conclusion that Kant never states as such.
The Categorical Imperative expresses the autonomy of reason and its governing principle.
From H.J. Paton's lectures on Kant, and articles by Reginald Jackson, he learnt that imperatives fall within the realm of reason.
He writes: "The burden of proof is on Kant to show how reason could have the powers he attributes to it [i.e., of issuing reasons (moral imperatives) derived from the intrinsic nature of reason alone]; and so far neither Kant nor anyone else has been able to show this" (1977: 133).
A hypothetical imperative, by contrast, expresses a command of reason, but only in relation to an end already set by the agent, e.g., based on her inclinations (G 4 413 20).
They look for substantive guidance from outside of reason itself just as hypothetical imperatives only guide action if some end is taken for granted.
Kant then proceeds to instruct us that we are rational beings (agents whose value is not based on external materiality) and in accepting the categorical imperative we are governed by the laws of reason, not nature.
The process of translation, from the imperatives of faith, however deeply held, to the methodologies of reason and empiricism, is fundamental.
The idea of such a project is itself, of course, insane; it's difficult not to think, here, of Primo Levi's insistence on the moral imperative of not finding reasons for what happened at Auschwitz, or of Claude Lanzmann's remark that "there is an absolute obscenity in the very project of understanding" the Holocaust.
