1 Introduction My title is Nature and the Good. It could also be Nature and Practical Reason, for the good is the object of practical reason. Of nature and practical reason, I want to say: Practical reason is no part of nature; it is not because it is knowledge of nature as such, namely, of the good as its ultimate principle. I shall develop this thought by engaging a question that recently has given rise to debate: Does practical reasoning conclude in a state of mind or does it conclude in an action? The question may be misunderstood. It may be thought to relate to a part of nature: a psychic power found in human beings and possibly other animals. An answer explains how that bit of nature works. The bit has a special interest for us as it is present in us, but that is incidental to the knowledge of it that the answer provides. This is a misconception. Answering the question is not describing a given apparatus; it is expounding the understanding of its conclusion that practical reasoning itself is; it is expounding the self‐understanding of practical reasoning. Then the answer is clear: In practical reasoning, we know its conclusion to be an action. This answer does not expand our knowledge of nature; it is not knowledge of any part of nature. It is not that, not because it is knowledge of something other than nature, but because the self‐understanding of practical reasoning is knowledge of the whole of nature: Knowing its conclusion to be an action, practical reasoning knows the good to be the principle of nature as such. In this way, the exposition of the self‐understanding of practical reasoning reveals that understanding, and so practical reasoning, to be knowledge of the absolute, or absolute knowledge. I shall proceed as follows. In section 2, I describe theoretical reasoning and the understanding of its conclusion internal to it. This understanding defines reasoning as such, and section 3 says how it informs practical reasoning. Section 4 explains why the conclusion of practical reasoning is no mere thought, but an action. In the final section, I bring out what this means: Practical reasoning is knowledge of the good as absolute.

2 Theoretical Reasoning Frege writes: “Urteilen, indem man sich anderer Wahrheiten als Rechtfertigungsgründen bewußt ist, heißt schließen.”1 The passage may be translated as follows: “Judging, being conscious of other truths as justifying grounds, is called inferring.” Or, if we want a word to reflect “indem,” rendered above by the naked participle: “Judging, in the consciousness of other truths as justifying grounds, is called inferring.”2 Frege speaks of a judgment that is justified, made just. A judgment that is justified is not just in itself; it may be just or not, so that something may make it just. Talk of a judgment’s justice may sound forced. We may equally speak of a judgment’s validity and of its grounds as validating it. As a judgment’s validity is its truth, what validates a judgment shows it to be true. Since only truths can show something to be true, Frege speaks of the grounds justifying a judgment as truths. Frege says, judging is—is called—inferring. Not every judging is inferring; a certain manner of judging is. The participle says what manner: judging being conscious of other truths as justifying grounds. She who infers that such‐and‐such is the case understands other truths to justify judging that it is the case. And it is not that she judges that and understands other truths to justify judging it. Rather, this understanding of hers is—it is nothing other than—her judgment. This is the meaning of “indem,” rendered by the naked participle: Judging understanding other truths to justify so judging is inferring. An inference, then, is a judgment that is an understanding of itself: It understands itself to be justified by certain other truths. Judging is inferring, Frege says. It may be objected that an inference is not a judgment, but a unity of judgments; it conjoins judgments as premises with a judgment that is the conclusion. Frege conflates the inference with its conclusion! It is true that an inference is a unity of judgments. This does not mean that it is not a judgment. The unity of an inference—the unity of premises and conclusion—is understood by her who draws the conclusion. It is understood not in a separate act, but in inferring the conclusion: Recognizing other truths to show it to be valid to judge that such‐and‐such is the case is judging that it is the case. This point—the one Frege makes when he explains that inferring is judging—is made by Kant when he explains that the premises are the matter of an inference, the conclusion, insofar as it contains the consequence, its form.3 He does not say, premises and conclusion are the matter and their unity is the form. He says the conclusion is the form. The conclusion is the form as it contains the consequence, namely an understanding of the premises as justifying the conclusion. Aristotle makes the same point when he describes a syllogism as a unity of three terms.4 He does not mean that there is the conclusion, which conjoins two terms, and in addition the syllogism, which conjoins three terms. He means that a syllogism is a recognition of the two terms figuring in the conclusion as bound together by the middle term. Seeing its terms so bound together is affirming the conclusion. I do not bring in Kant and Aristotle as authorities vouching for Frege. Frege saw no need for such support. He says: This is what is called inference. Speaking in this way, he does not mean to contrast what is called inference with what inference is. He means to indicate that what he says is not a thesis with which one may disagree and for which he feels obligated to give reasons. Frege puts into words an understanding available to everyone who judges being conscious of grounds that justify judging as, thereby, she judges. Indeed, if an inference is a judgment understanding itself, then an inference is an understanding of itself as being that: a judgment that understands itself. Frege expresses the understanding of inference that inference is. So do Kant and Aristotle. And so does this essay. It elaborates—it does nothing but elaborate—the self‐understanding of inference. An inference is a judgment that understands itself to rest on grounds that establish its validity. Unfolding this understanding, we can say: Therein, it understands itself to be explained by these grounds. An inference is an explanation of its conclusion. Something may explain a judgment without justifying it. Something may justify a judgment without explaining it. But she who judges being conscious of other truths as justifying her judgment understands these truths to explain her judgment. For her judgment that things are so is her recognition of the validity of this judgment; so she understands it. Therefore, she cannot think of anything as explaining her judgment that does not explain how she recognizes the validity of judging as she does. And nothing can explain this that falls short of showing that things are as she judges. Conversely, comprehending something to show it to be valid to judge that things are so, she understands herself to judge that they are. That which shows that it is valid to judge that things are so settles it that she so judges; so she who infers understands it. Thus she rules out that something beyond the ground that justifies her judgment is needed in order for her to judge as she does. Hence, she who judges that such‐and‐such is the case, being conscious of other truths as justifying grounds, explains her judgment by speaking this consciousness. Nothing is more familiar. He asks her, Why do you think p? Because q, she answers. She explains why she judges p by another truth, q, which she recognizes establishes the validity of judging what she judges, namely p. It may be said that this is how she who infers understands her judgment and its explanation. By contrast, with respect to someone else, we can, do, and must distinguish what establishes the validity of judging what she judges from what explains why she judges it. Now, it is misleading to say that this is wrong. Rather, it cannot be entertained by anyone who partakes of discourse. For it dissolves the form of exchange above. He who asks her why she judges p must be able to receive her answer in the sense in which she gives it. If he did not take her answer in this way, there would be no common theme among them: judgment and its explanation. Unless I understand what someone gives me as justifying her judgment to explain why she so judges, explain it as justifying it, I have no thought of her as judging at all, not if this is to be the thought of her doing what I do, judging being conscious of other truths as justifying my judgment. This is how we understand judgment as we engage in discourse: When someone judges that things are so being conscious of other truths as showing it to be valid so to judge, then those truths explain why she so judges. Explaining why she judges that things are so then is laying out the truths that justify her judgment. What shows her judgment to be valid explains it. Not per accidens, as though these were two things that have happened to come together. No, what justifies the judgment explains it as justifying it. Comprehending why the judgment is requires nothing more and nothing other than what provides for the recognition of its validity. When someone infers something, then what justifies her judgment explains why she so judges; what establishes her judgment’s validity is the ground of its actuality. In order to avert misunderstanding, it is worthwhile to repeat what I said about the character of this inquiry: I do not report observations of how things tend to go. I do not claim to have found that, in general, that in the consciousness of which someone judges, being conscious of it as a justifying ground, explains why she so judges. Then, it would make sense to devise experiments to ascertain whether my finding is robust. This is not the way to understand what I say. I do not report an observation. I expound the understanding of itself that inference is. As Frege, Kant, and Aristotle, I say nothing but what is understood in the self‐understanding of inference. To understand why a judgment is, we need nothing more and nothing other than what reveals its truth. We can describe this as judgment’s direct relation to the truth.5 The relation is direct because it excludes intermediaries that are not comprehended in the judgment and the recognition of its grounds that the judgment itself is. It has been proposed that human beings possess mechanisms of belief formation and that these yield beliefs that are mostly true. Provided someone is equipped with such a mechanism, that things are so may explain why she thinks that. However, that she is equipped with this mechanism is not internal to things’ being as, in virtue of this mechanism, she judges them to be. Neither the judgment nor the consciousness of grounds on which the judgment understands itself to rest is a consciousness of this mechanism. Judgment bears a direct relation to the truth as its self‐understanding in inference excludes an explanation of it in terms of such a mechanism. One may think that the exclusion of intermediaries reflects a principle of explanation I beg you to accept and hope will be established by some philosophy of science. This would be to forget what I have been insisting on: The object of this essay is the self‐understanding of inference. In judging, being conscious of grounds that establish the validity of my judgment, I exclude from the explanation of my judgment anything that is not internal to its truth: anything being conscious of which is not recognizing things to be as, in this consciousness, I judge them to be. If I thought an intermediary were required to explain why I judge as I do, I therein would think that the grounds I recognize establish the validity of judging as I do not, on their own, explain why I so judge. I would think it an open question whether I judge that things are so even as I recognize, in the light of certain truths, that it is valid so to judge. And then there would be no judging being conscious of other truths as justifying so judging. There would be no inference. I understand the grounds I recognize establish the validity of judging as I do to explain why I so judge. Now my judgment is the recognition of these grounds. As Kant puts it, my judgment, containing the consequence, is the inference; as Frege puts it, judging, in the consciousness of grounds, is inferring. So what I judge, including as it does the grounds on which I judge it, explains why I judge it. When a judgment is an inference, then there is no need to turn, no possibility of turning, to something outside what is known in this very judgment, and that is, no turning to something other than that judgment, in order to understand why that judgment is. This is the self‐understanding of judgment that is—is called—inference. Therefore, it is the self‐understanding of any judgment that may be just or not and hence is such as to be made just. For such a judgment is an understanding of itself as being that. If it were not, it would be inconceivable that it figure in inference. Any judgment understands itself to be such as to be justified and therein thinks itself through the form of explanation that inference is: It knows itself to be such as to be explained by what it judges alone. Being explained by what it judges, a judgment is explained by itself. In its self‐understanding, then, judgment is understood to be absolute.6 Hegel says it is an error to suppose that knowledge and the absolute are distinct. He goes on to say that it is equally erroneous to suppose that we are something other than knowledge.7 The latter point will begin to acquire contour as we consider, in the light of what we said of theoretical reasoning, practical reasoning, and its conclusion.8

3 Practical Reasoning One may reason with a view to ascertaining how things are. Then, one’s reasoning is theoretical. And one may reason with a view to ascertaining what to do. In this case, one’s reasoning is practical. Practical reasoning has been said to conclude in a state of mind, and it has been said to conclude in an action, in thinking of doing something, and in doing it. Now if practical reasoning concludes in doing something, it does not do so to the exclusion of concluding in a thought. As an inference is a logical unity, its conclusion is anyway a thought. However, practical reasoning may be taken to conclude in a mere thought, a thought that is not the subject’s doing what, in this thought, she thinks of doing. As the conclusion of reasoning is anyway a thought, we first consider it as such, in order then to ask whether it is a mere thought. Practical reasoning answers the question what to do and thus concludes in a thought of doing something. When we ask how such a thought represents doing it, various words suggest themselves: It represents such‐and‐such as good to do, the thing to do, to be done, right to do, what one ought to do, etc. My reflections do not turn on the word; they can be rephrased in terms of any of the above. I use “good”: Practical reasoning concludes in thinking such‐and‐such is good to do. I call such a thought a practical thought. Echoing Frege, we can say: Thinking something good to do, being conscious of other things as justifying grounds, is called practical inference. This means that the practical thought in which practical reasoning concludes is not just in itself; there is space for something to make it just. If talk of a practical thought’s justice sounds forced, we may replace “justice” by “validity”: Inferring that such‐and‐such is good to do is thinking it is good to do being conscious of other things as establishing the validity of thinking this. The naked participle indicates that understanding these things to show it to be valid to think it good to do such‐and‐such is nothing other than thinking this. A practical inference reveals the validity of the practical thought that is its conclusion. That thought is a thought of doing something; specifically, it is a thought of the justice, or validity, of doing it. Thus validity appears twice in practical reasoning: As the conclusion of reasoning, a practical thought is a consciousness of its own validity; as a practical thought, it is a consciousness of the validity of doing something. Now, this is but one validity: The justice of thinking such‐and‐such is good to do is none other than the justice of doing what thus is thought good to do. For suppose it were not. Then it would be conceivable that something justifies thinking it good to do A while failing to justify doing it. And then, she who thinks that A is good to do, being conscious of grounds that establish the validity of thinking this, could not understand herself therein to have answered the question what to do. So there would be no practical reasoning. Conversely, it would be conceivable that something shows it to be good to do A while failing to justify thinking it good to do. And then she who recognizes certain things to show it to be good to do A could not on the basis of these think it is good to do A. Again, there would be no practical reasoning. The idea of practical inference is the idea of a thought whose validity is the validity of doing something. Using “good” to signify this validity, we can express what we understand in practical reasoning in this way: The same goodness is in doing such‐and‐such and in the recognition of it as good to do. We can represent this as an interpenetration of truth and goodness in practical thought. As a thought, a valid practical thought is true: Things are as they are thought to be in that thought. As practical, it is a thought of its being good to do such‐and‐such. Since the validity of a practical thought is the validity of doing what it thinks of doing—since a valid practical thought has what the doing has of which it is the thought—we can say that truth, in practical thought, is goodness. And we can say that goodness, in action that springs from reasoning, is truth. What we cannot do without dissolving the idea of practical reasoning is to assign truth to its conclusion and goodness to that of which the conclusion is the thought, thinking of these as different. She who infers that it is good to do such‐and‐such is conscious of other things as justifying thinking this. Therein, she is conscious of these as explaining why she thinks this. For she cannot conceive anything as explaining why she thinks what she does that does not provide for the validity of thinking it. And she cannot comprehend anything as showing it to be valid to think something without therein understanding herself to think it. Hence, she explains why she thinks that it is good to do such‐and‐such by the grounds in the consciousness of which she thinks this is good to do. She understands that which shows it to be valid to think what she thinks to explain why she thinks it. She understands her thought’s validity to be the ground of its actuality. We can describe this as the direct relation of practical thought to the good. The relation is direct because it excludes intermediaries not comprehended in the thought and the consciousness of its grounds. I do not know that it has been proposed that human beings possess mechanisms of forming practical thoughts that are mostly good. In any case, since the existence of such a mechanism would be external to the goodness of doing what, in these thoughts, is recognized to be good to do, the conclusion of a practical inference excludes an explanation of itself by such a mechanism.

4 The Conclusion of Practical Reasoning Does practical reasoning conclude in merely thinking that it is good to do such‐and‐such or does it, concluding in such a thought, conclude in doing it? In the light of what we said about reasoning, we see that, asking this, we ask: Is someone’s doing something capable of being explained in the way in which a conclusion of reasoning is? Thinking it good to do A, being conscious of grounds that establish that it is good, I explain why I think this by these grounds. What shows it to be good to do A explains my thinking that it is good to do; the goodness of doing what I think good is the ground of the actuality of my thinking it good. If my practical reasoning concludes not in a mere thought, but in my doing what in this thought I recognize to be good, then what holds of my thinking holds of my doing: What shows that what I am doing is good explains why I am doing it. Practical thought bears a direct relation to the good. If practical reasoning is capable of concluding in an action, then so does human action: My doing such‐and‐such may be explained directly by its being good to do that. I noted that no one seems to have postulated a mechanism by which human beings form practical thoughts most of which are good.9 But it has been asserted that there is, or may be, a mechanism by which she in whom it is lodged tends to do what she thinks good. Indeed, T. M. Scanlon defines a rational agent as a being with such a mechanism.10 If practical reasoning is capable of concluding in an action, the idea of such a mechanism makes no sense. Practical reasoning concludes in an action if the grounds being conscious of which someone thinks that it is good to such‐and‐such explain why she is doing it. Seeing the goodness of doing what she is doing in the light of her grounds, we need nothing more to understand the actuality of her doing it. We go no further to understand why she is doing what she thinks good than we do to understand why it is good. Thus, we comprehend the efficacy of her thought that it is good to do such‐and‐such in and through the grounds that justify thinking good what on those grounds she thinks good. The efficacy of her thought resides in the goodness of what in this thought she thinks good. If the conclusion of a practical inference can be the subject’s doing what she concludes is good to do, then there is no study of the efficacy of her practical thought distinct from the study of the goodness of her action and its grounds. Conversely, if the efficacy of her thought is something other than its validity, then it makes sense to imagine a mechanism that translates her thought into action and a science that studies this mechanism. An account of the mechanism will represent the thought of which it treats as one to the effect that such‐and‐such is good to do. So it will use the concept of goodness. However, it will use it only in quotation marks, to identify a thought by its content. It will not use it straight.11 As the efficacy of the practical thought residing in the mechanism is indifferent to whether it is good to do what in this thought is thought good, the mechanism can exist and the account be valid even if ethics is a fraud and there is no such thing as something’s being good to do. There is space now for a moral psychology distinct from ethics. We ask whether practical reasoning concludes in a mere thought. We ask this from within the self‐understanding of inference. It may be that those who think that a practical thought is efficacious in virtue of a mechanism for the most part deny that a thought in which reasoning concludes is explained by its validity alone. It may be that they think that that thought is explained by a mechanism, too. This we discussed above. Here we discuss the notion that, while practical thought is capable of being explained by its validity alone, this form of explanation does not extend to someone’s doing what she thinks good to do.12 The efficacy of my practical thought, I undertake to think, is not comprehended within my recognition of its goodness and its grounds; it is not in virtue of its being good to do what I think good that my thinking this gives rise to my doing it. My thought gives rise to my doing what, in this thought, I think good to do, in a way that is indifferent to whether or not it is good to do. Therefore, I do not comprehend why I am doing, what I am doing directly by seeing that and why it is good. It is true that this is how I understand my thought: I understand my thinking it good to do A to be explained directly by that in virtue of which it is good to do A. But I do not understand the efficacy of my thought in what is happening by recognizing its goodness. My insight into the good does not supply me with comprehension of the efficacy of this insight. It does not by itself make it intelligible to me why that is happening: I am doing it. In order to understand that, I need to turn to something not contained in my practical thought and its grounds. For example, I surmise that I am a Scanlon agent and have a suitable mechanism.13 One may reject this as follows. In my insight that and why something is good, it is said, I do not understand that insight to be efficacious in my doing what I recognize to be good. So I do not, in practical reasoning, understand its conclusion to be a practical thought: I do not understand it to answer the question what to do. For as far as I know in giving this answer, my answer is irrelevant to what I do. This reduces to absurdity the idea that a practical thought is not itself the comprehension of itself as efficacious. This objection may in turn be rejected as begging the question. My practical reasoning concludes in a judgment that such‐and‐such is good to do; I call this reasoning practical because such is the content of its conclusion. I do not think it is practical in a further sense that would suggest that it has something to do with what I do. Of course, I may be a Scanlon agent; if I am, I will, for the most part, do what I think is good to do. Experience may suggest that I am a Scanlon agent, or it may suggest that I am not. Either way, that experience does not impinge on my practical reasoning. For, in practical reasoning I do not think of effects my reasoning may have. To assert that I do is to beg the question. The reply insists that I have no thought of the efficacy of its conclusion in practical reasoning. However, while I have no thought of that in practical reasoning, a conclusion of reasoning must at least be capable of having effects in what is happening; I must be able to entertain the idea that I am a Scanlon agent and harbor a suitable mechanism. If this were unintelligible, then my understanding of practical reasoning would collapse. And it is unintelligible: It makes no sense to think of my practical thought as efficacious at all unless I so understand it in practical reasoning. The idea of my thought as efficacious in what is happening, I try saying, is not contained in the understanding of it I have in practical reasoning. But then I do not, in practical reasoning, understand my thought to be anything actual. Efficacy is not a second thought added to the thought of actuality. It is the nexus of the actual as actual. Taking something out of this nexus is taking it out of the actual. Hence, the idea that my thought is something actual dissolves when it is stripped of the conception of it as efficacious in what is happening. Now if I do not, in practical reasoning, understand my thought to be something actual, I cannot, later, from the outside, attach to it the idea of its being efficacious. What is to come later comes too late: My understanding of my practical thought has fixed it that I can make no sense of this addition to my idea of it. For my understanding of my practical thought has placed it in unreality. So there is no understanding of my thought as efficacious. This means there is no understanding of my thought as practical and a thought of doing something. Insofar as the reply we are considering intends to speak of such a thought, it says nothing. If practical reasoning concludes in a mere thought, then it is never possible to explain why something is happening by its being good. The good provides no understanding of what is happening. But then, it provides no understanding of anything actual at all. The good is unreal; it is unreality itself. Conversely, if the conclusion of someone’s practical reasoning may be her doing what she thinks good, then its being good may explain why she is doing it. Its being good may explain why what is good is actual. The good may explain why things are happening that are good. The good may be real. This is the stake of the question whether the conclusion of practical reasoning is a mere thought or an action. The answer to this question is beyond error and doubt. Proposing that the conclusion of practical reasoning is a mere thought is asserting the unreality of the good. No one has ever embraced this notion understanding what she thinks. The notion that the good is unreal is rejected in every act of practical reasoning, which comprehends the thought in which it concludes to be explained by its validity, that is, the goodness of doing what it thinks good to do. As the understanding of its conclusion as an action, as something’s happening, is internal to practical reasoning, its alleged denial is the dissolution of practical reasoning and therewith of that about which it means to deny something.

5 The Absoluteness of the Good The conclusion of practical reasoning is an action. So its being good may explain why something is actual. Now this thought, the thought of the good as the ground of the actuality of what is good, is a thought of the actual as such. Thus, practical reasoning is metaphysical knowledge. We may call it a moral metaphysics, meaning not a special metaphysics distinguished by its topic, but the general metaphysics contained in morality, or knowledge of the good. It may seem as though the question whether practical reasoning concludes in action as opposed to mere thought asked whether a certain segment of the actual as opposed to the actual as such is known in practical reasoning, namely, actions. There is a region within the realm of change and becoming, we think, human actions, that is metaphysically special in that it is subject to a special form of explanation, one that explains why something happens by what justifies it, revealing it to be good. By contrast, the rest of what is actual is indifferent to its goodness or lack of it. If we want a term for this rest, we may call it nature and say that nature is not intelligible in this way: It is not possible to understand why something is happening in nature by showing it to be good; its goodness is not why it is. That in which practical reasoning concludes is explained by its goodness. If practical reasoning concludes in my doing something, then my doing it is explained by its being good to do what thus I am doing. Now my doing something is something’s happening. And there is no limit to the internal relations by which something’s happening is joined to other things happening as to conditions of its actuality. There is no limit to the nexus of actuality. The thought of something’s happening is the thought of a totality of things’ happening in which alone its comprehension—the understanding of why it is and why it is as it is—can be complete. Someone’s doing something cannot be insulated in explanation as a segment of this totality. It cannot be comprehended in thought that is insulated from the comprehension of the rest of what is actual. Indeed, thinking the conclusion of practical reasoning to be so insulated is thinking it to be a mere thought; it is thinking it to be nothing actual at all and placing it in unreality. Above, we found that it is impossible to conjoin these theses: First, a practical thought, as it concludes practical reasoning, is explained by its validity, that is, the goodness of doing what it thinks good. Second, and by contrast, why she who thinks something good to do is doing it is not explained by its being good to do. These theses cannot be held together; it is not possible to limit the form of comprehension that practical reasoning is to mere thought, excluding from it the subject’s doing what she sees is good. We now find that, having dropped this limitation, there is no stopping. This form of comprehension cannot be circumscribed at all; we cannot embrace it without extending it to what is actual as such. The same consideration that shows why we cannot limit it to thought shows why we cannot limit it to any segment of the actual: When what is understood through the good is insulated from what is not so understood, then therein the former, and thus the good, is asserted to be unreal. As its being good is the ground of the actuality of my doing what I recognize to be good, the efficacy of the good is illimitable; it embraces the totality that is thought in the thought of something’s happening: the actual. This thought of the good—its illimitable efficacy in what is actual—is internal to practical reasoning. Thus, it is internal to my doing anything insofar as I comprehend my doing it to be such as to be a conclusion of practical reasoning. Human action is knowledge of the good as the ultimate ground of what is actual. This is the true definition of human action, for it is the definition that it gives of itself. If practical reasoning concludes in action, then a practical thought of doing such‐and‐such is first personal. For then that thought is no mere thought, but the doing of that of which it is the thought. Thus, it is a thought that is nothing other than that of which it is the thought, and this is the nominal definition of first person thought.14 Conversely, did practical reasoning not conclude in action, then there would be no such thing as a first person thought of doing something. So the notion that practical reasoning concludes in a mere thought undermines the very thought of my doing anything. This is a reductio of this notion in its own right.15 However, in the absence of comprehension of the first person, its significance may be misrepresented. It may be represented to reflect an interest that I have to possess my actions, an interest in their being mine, “mine” being put in italics. It may be suggested that I would find it unsettling not to own my actions, not to see me as their author, and so on. It may be said that this is a form of estrangement, which is something that is bad. The significance of the reductio of the notion that practical reasoning concludes in a mere thought that dwells on conditions of first person thought of action emerges when it is placed inside the line of thought above: My first person thought of doing something, my first person thought of something’s happening, is the recognition of the illimitable efficacy of the good. An action is mine as I comprehend it to be the conclusion of practical reasoning and thus understand it to be grounded in the good. The mineness of my action is this: My doing what I am doing, precisely as I am doing it, is founded in the absolute. Here we begin to see what Hegel means when he says it is wrong to suppose that knowledge is something other than the absolute and we something other than knowledge. In understanding the conclusion of practical reasoning to be nothing other than my doing what, so reasoning, I recognize to be good, I know the good to govern what is actual as such. Hence, the good is not a power of a certain animal species. No such power governs what is actual as such. Thinking the good to be a power of a certain animal species is the same as thinking the causality of the good, which constitutes practical reasoning, to be limited to a segment of the actual as opposed to governing change and becoming as such. It is wrong to think of practical reason as a power to act; it is wrong to think of human action as the exercise of such a power. The categories through which we think the animal fall apart as we think ourselves in practical reasoning, thinking the good. I am no animal. Since its being good explains what is good, there is nothing in the order of change and becoming that can have any power to stand in the way of the good. It is inconceivable that the good fails to be actual on account of forces of nature. This holds of the efficacy of the good in what is happening. It equally holds of its efficacy in the will. Here, too, nothing can have the least power to stand in the way of the good. Hence, my thought of myself in practical reasoning is that I am nothing but good, unmixed, and unaffectable. This does not mean that I have a power to act well that cannot be affected by wrongful desire. It shows that there is no such power. If I thought the good to be my power, something in me, I could not think that it was unmixed and unaffectable. On the contrary, I would see my alleged power frustrated again and again. Kant’s absurd response to this—his attempt to hold to the corrupt idea that practical reason is a power—is to postulate an infinite path along which I may progress toward moral perfection and we all to the highest good.16 This repulsive response is the only one available when practical reason is thought to be a power I possess, a power to act well. It is precisely in the thought that I am good, unmixed and unaffectable in my goodness, that I recognize that am nothing at all and have no power whatsoever.17 To work this out is to work out the idea of the absolute in practical thought. This is for another occasion. The point here was that practical reasoning understands its conclusion to be something happening and that this understanding is one of the good as absolute.