By contrast, the postulates of God and Immortality are rooted in the highest good. Kant then presents the highest good as a synthesis of morality and happiness in order to meet the axiological principles of supremacy and completeness. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant presents two distinct arguments for it. Kant rejects this argument on the grounds that even simple beings can have a degree of reality (an intensive magnitude) that can diminish to zero, he shortly thereafter presents his own argument for the soul’s immortality, one that has a similar metaphysical bent: (a) since throughout nature there is a proportionality between purposes and the conditions for the realization of those purposes, there should be a similar proportionality between our capacities and the conditions for their realization, and (b) since the grandeur of our capacities, including both our natural talents and moral vocation, exceeds what can be realized in this life, it follows (c) that we are justified in affirming a “future life”. In Bahrain and even in Iraq, before the recent political conflicts, she says, there weren’t any major clashes. Note that while there are a considerable number of texts where Kant endorses the need for religious assent, we may nevertheless distinguish between a number of positions.

Such may be taken as the spirit of Kant’s comment that “I must not even say ‘It is morally certain that there is a God’, but rather ‘I am morally certain’” (A829/B857). Critical scholars even acknowledge that (5) the disciples then had real experiences that they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus. There are those on Earth who help to spread God’s work and healing just as the disciples did. There are always challenges but these people know what they are doing. An important characteristic of Hòa Hảo is its emphasis on peasant farmers, exemplified by the old slogan “Practicing Buddhism While Farming Your Land.” Hòa Hảo also stresses the practice of Buddhism by lay people in the home, rather than focusing primarily on temple worship and ordination. While the Critique of Pure Reason shows some sympathy for the Argument from Design, Kant remarks that it can only get us to a “Wise Author of Nature”, a being who is responsible for the order of nature, rather than a creator, a being with infinite capacities, or a moral being. However, this is not an argument that endures beyond the 1780s. It is absent in later works, and in the Critique of Judgment, Kant explicitly dismisses it along with all other non-moral arguments for the afterlife (cf.

In itself, however, this necessarily contradicts the essence of Islam, which simply does not have the separation of the political and religious sphere which Christianity has had from the beginning. This, however, must not be interpreted as “theological ethics”, as if the authority of the moral law depended upon God. Hence, if pleasure were taken as a value, its value would be subordinate to morality, and thus its value would be defeated or overridden if the pleasure comes through a violation of the moral law. In contrast to the latter two, the postulate of freedom is more directly tied to the fact of reason, taken as a necessary condition for the bindingness of the moral law upon us. As discussed through this subsection, Kant’s views on the postulate of immortality through the Critical period involve these three core issues: (a) the standard for moral worth articulated by Kant in various texts; (b) whether Kant continues to regard the highest good as a distribution of happiness in proportion to moral worth versus as maximal happiness and maximal morality as two independent variables; and (c) whether or not the distribution of happiness (especially if taken as proportionate to moral worth) depends upon the postulate of immortality (i.e., cannot take place within the causal order of nature).

Kant’s doctrine of the highest good is the foundation of his positive philosophy of religion. AK 20:299. Note further that the spirit behind the “as if” attitude may be reemerging in a new form within the recent interest in Kant’s conception of moral hope. Palmquist claims, for example, that Religion’s treatment of Original Sin is used by Kant to articulate “what we might call a Christ-sized ‘hole’ in the heart of humanity’s rational capacity” (Palmquist 2016: 165), that Kant “regarded the Christian Gospel as a genuine revelation” (Palmquist 2016: 166) and that an otherwise deficient “bare reason” requires revelatory content in order that we may “believe” in our own capacity to imitate the “archetype of perfection” (Palmquist 2016: 166). That is, Palmquist contends that, in line with traditional Christianity, Kant regards our salvation as dependent upon having faith in the historical reality of the Incarnation. Nevertheless, this aspect of Kant’s treatment of religion does not apply to the postulates, nor does it pertain to the underlying moral/theological issues which are symbolized in specific doctrines (e.g., our innate propensity to evil as represented in the story of Genesis, or our hope for divine as represented in the Crucifixion).