The idea of a final end of human conduct – the highest good – lies at the centre of important parts of Kant’s philosophy, such as his moral theory, his philosophy of religion, his views on the historical progress of the human species, and his conception of human rationality. This collection of new essays attempts to re-evaluate the doctrine of the highest good and to determine its relevance for contemporary philosophy.

This chapter contains sections titled: Kant's Anti‐Cartesianism Kant on the Highest Good and the Practical Necessity of Belief in God's Existence The Moral Proof at the Tübinger Stift and Its Fate Self‐Positing and the “Only True and Thinkable Creation out of Nothing” The Way to Absolute Knowing in Hegel's Phenomenology.

The article has the aim to show that Kant’s “standard” conception of the highest good does not represent his last word about the problem. Kant moves from a conception of the highest good close connected with the metaphysical tradition and with the aim of a new, moral justification of traditional metahysical concepts such as God and immortality of the soul. This view does find many difficulties and oscillations in the Critiques, looking for different formulations of a (...) moral “proof” for the metaphysical concepts, grounded upon the need of justice and of a rational solution to the question of theodicy. The failure of this project is apparent with the essay on theodicy. In the last decade of Kant’s intellectual activity, the expression “highest good” occurs few times and the concept looses its systematic relevance, as shown by the last works up to the Opus postumum. (shrink)

This paper explains a way of understanding Kant's proof of God's existence in the Critique of Practical Reason that has hitherto gone unnoticed and argues that this interpretation possesses several advantages over its rivals. By first looking at examples where Kant indicates the role that faith plays in moral life and then reconstructing the proof of the second Critique with this in view, I argue that, for Kant, we must adopt a certain conception of the highest good, and (...) so also must choose to believe in the kind of God that can make it possible, because this is essentially a way of actively striving for virtue. One advantage of this interpretation, I argue, is that it is able to make sense of the strong link Kant draws between morality and religion. (shrink)

In the Dialectic of the first Critique, Kant claims that a highest being is the transcendental ideal of speculative reason. However, the Canon of the Doctrine of Method presents the highest good as an ideal of both the speculative and the practical use of reason. In this paper, I argue (1) that the highest good is the ideal of the unity of reason – unlike the ideal in the Dialectic – insofar as (2) the (...) class='Hi'>highest good serves both the speculative and the practical employment of reason. Accordingly, I also argue that (3) these two employments are complementary, not alternative. Kant’s argument for the ideal of the highest good in the Canon shows that the unity of reason combines the two lawful employments of reason. In order to be reason’s highest ideal, this ideal cannot just mirror the demands of speculative reason – it must also involve the other fundamental employment of reason, i. e., the practical. This highest standpoint cannot be merely speculative but must be moral as well: not just a highest ideal, but also a good (the highest good). (shrink)

In this paper I defend three different points: first, that the concept of highest good is derived from an a priori but subjective argument, namely a maxim of pure practical reason; secondly, that the theory regarding the highest good has the validity of a practical regulative knowledge; and thirdly, that the practical regulative knowledge can be understood as the same “holding something to be true” as Kant attributes to hope and believe.

The paper develops a Kantian view of the highest good and the relation between virtue and happiness. Several Kantian theses are defended, among them the thesis that the highest good is realized only if every virtuous individual is happy, the view that virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, and the proposition that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for the worthiness of being happy. The author argues that the highest good ought to (...) be realized and that it ought to be that everyone who is virtuous is happy. To prove these claims, the author will use techniques developed by modern deontic logicians. According to Kant, we do not have an immediate duty to promote our own happiness, the aim of morality being not personal satisfaction but rather virtue and the good will. The important question is not “How do I become happy?” but “How do I become good?”. The arguments in this paper support this view. (shrink)

The notion of the highest good used to occupy a primary role in ethical theorising, but has largely disappeared from the contemporary landscape. The notion was central to both Aristotle's and Kant's ethical theories, however--a surprising observation given that their approaches to ethics are commonly conceived as being diametrically opposed. The essays in this collection provide a comprehensive treatment of the highest good in Aristotle and Kant and show that, even though there are important differences in (...) terms of content, there are also important similarities in terms of the structural features of Aristotle's and Kant's value theories. By carefully analysing Aristotle's and Kant's theories of the highest good, a team of experts in the field shed light on their respective ethical theories and highlight the richness, complexity, and fruitfulness of the notion of the highest good. (shrink)

Kant’s accounts of the Highest Good and the moral argument for God and immortality are central features of his philosophy. But both involve lingering puzzles. In this entry, we first explore what the Highest Good is for Kant and the role it plays in a complete account of ethical life. We then focus on whether the Highest Good involves individuals only, or whether it also connects with Kant’s doctrines about the moral progress of the (...) species. In conclusion, we look into three ways of articulating the moral argument for God and immorality that take our commitment to the Highest Good as their point of departure. (shrink)

In this paper, I want to focus not on the problems that I believe may threaten Kant’s account of the highest good, but instead on those that I believe threaten the majority of the interpretive reconstructions attempted by commentators and thus prevent the emergence of a consensus in the near future. My goal is to set forth exactly four problems to which I believe any successful interpretation or reconstruction of Kant’s account of the highest good will (...) have to provide substantive solutions and, in doing so, either break new theoretical ground or at least provide a more comprehensive methodology for sorting through the texts. (shrink)

본 글은 볼프의 최고선 개념을 분명히 하는 것이다. 볼프의 최고선 개념은 무엇인가? 우선 볼프에게 좋음이란 다양의 조화로서 완전성의 실현이다. 그러므로 그에게 최고선은 완전성이 최고로 실현된 상태이다. 그리고 이러한 완전성이 가장 크게 실현된 상태는 바로 신적인 완전성이다. 따라서 최고선은 신의 인식을 통해, 최대한으로 신적 완전성으로 나아가는 것이다. 그런데 이렇게 최대한 완전성을 추구하라는 명령을 볼프는 한편으로는 인간의 자연법칙으로 이해하면서도, 다른 한편으로는 다시 신적인 자연법칙으로 이해하기도 한다. 하지만 이러한 사유의 간극에서도, 볼프는 다시 신적인 법칙에 무게를 두고 있다. 신적인 법칙은 이 세계에서의 덕과 행복의 (...) 완전한 일치를 가능하게 하기 때문이다. 그런 이유에서, 이제 볼프의 최고선 개념은 신적인 완전성의 인식을 통한 이 세계에서의 덕과 행복의 일치로 정립된다고 볼 수 있다. 볼프는 신의 인식을 통해, 완전한 행복의 실현을 구상하고 있기 때문이다. (shrink)

The paper develops a Kantian view of the highest good and the relation between virtue and happiness. Several Kantian theses are defended, among them the thesis that the highest good is realized only if every virtuous individual is happy, the view that virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for happiness, and the proposition that virtue is both necessary and sufficient for the worthiness of being happy. The author argues that the highest good ought to (...) be realized and that it ought to be that everyone who is virtuous is happy. To prove these claims, the author will use techniques developed by modern deontic logicians. According to Kant, we do not have an immediate duty to promote our own happiness, the aim of morality being not personal satisfaction but rather virtue and the good will. The important question is not “How do I become happy?” but “How do I become good?”. The arguments in this paper support this view. (shrink)

Arguments have appeared recently that call into question the significance of the highest good for Kant’s moral theory. In particular, Thomas Auxter has remarked that the highest good is “an extramoral addition to Kant’s theory, that is, one designed primarily to serve religious purposes the fulfillment of which are irrelevant to the actual operation of practical judgment and the choice of a course of conduct.” The ramifications of such criticisms are not restricted exclusively to Kantian scholarship, (...) but express concern about the relevance of psychological, religious, and eudaemonist concepts for a rational theory of obligation. Auxter’s specific critique is based on a distinction between two possible senses of the highest good: the first is introduced by Kant in the “Analytic” of the Critique of Practical Reason is the idea of the ectypal world, a moral order in which the ethical dictates of moral judgment harmonize with natural law; and the other, discussed in the “Dialectic” of the second Critique, presents an object of hope for the human will, the idea of a state of affairs in which virtue is rewarded with a proportionate amount of happiness. It is Auxter’s conclusion that neither of these interpretations has anything to contribute to the practical validity of Kant’s theory, as both require more of the individual moral agent or of humanity in general than can be reasonably expected of finite moral beings whose efforts are conditioned and limited by the physical world. Appealing to Kant’s premise that “impossibility implies no obligation,” Auxter points out that as a state in which the spatiotemporal existence of the moral agent is organized in harmony with the prescriptions of the moral will, the highest good as the ectypal world exceeds the physical capabilities of human beings. More often than not, natural phenomena and the laws that govern them are recalcitrant to our moral efforts, and so cannot be expected to conform to the concordance required by the ectypal ideal. Similarly, the highest good conceived as an otherworldly condition, in which virtue is redeemable for the appropriate amount of happiness, mandates the intervention of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity who knows the intelligible dispositions of moral agents and judges them accordingly. This obviously exceeds the moral capabilities of human agents. What cannot be accomplished cannot be commanded, and so Auxter claims that the highest good can in no way enter into Kant’s moral theory, which implies that since religious ideals have no prescriptive force, they have no relevance for an account of obligation. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of what is essential to kant's doctrine of the highest good, Which defends it while also explaining why it is often rejected. While it is commonly viewed as a theological ideal in which happiness is proportioned to virtue, The paper gives an account in which neither feature appears. The highest good is best understood as a state of affairs to be achieved through human agency, Containing the moral perfection of all individuals (...) and the satisfaction of their permissible ends-I.E., One in which all act from the moral law and in doing so achieve their intended ends. The paper shows that the texts contain two distinct conceptions not distinguished by kant-Both a theological and a secular (political) notion. The standard objections apply to the theological, But the secular conception is consistent with kant's conception of moral conduct. Moreover, That the highest good is introduced as an end to be constructed out of the moral law indicates that the secular version is the essential notion. (shrink)

Many regard Kant’s account of the highest good as a failure. His inclusion of happiness in the highest good, in combination with his claim that it is a duty to promote the highest good, is widely seen as inconsistent. In this essay, I argue that there is a valid argument, based on premises Kant clearly endorses, in defense of his thesis that it is a duty to promote the highest good. I first (...) examine why Kant includes happiness in the highest good at all. On the basis of a discussion of Kant's distinction between 'good' and 'pleasant', and in light of his methodological comments in the second chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason, I explain how Kant’s conception of the good informs his conception of the highest good. I then argue that Kant's inclusion of happiness in the highest good should be understood in light of his claim that it is a duty to promote the happiness of others. In the final section of this essay, I reconstruct Kant’s argument for the claim that it is a duty to promote the highest good and explain in what sense this duty goes beyond observance of the Categorical Imperative. (shrink)

In response to the five essays commenting on The Ethical Commonwealth in History, I provide an exploration of three themes—the character of the highest good, the possibility of attainment of the highest good, and the agency for its attainment—as a basis for dealing with the concerns these essays raise about my interpretation of Kant’s critical project. On my interpretation, Kant’s project of “critique” is primarily an anthropological one, with its central focus on the moral vocation to (...) which finite reason calls humanity as a species: To bring about a world of enduring peace as an essential element in the enactment of the highest good. These concerns bear upon: my characterization of the social and religious dimensions both of the highest good and of the finite human reason for which it serves as the final end; the historical dimensions that I claim for the community that is the locus for the attainment of the highest good; and the roles for human and for divine agency in such attainment. (shrink)

This article tries to make sense of the concept of the highest good (eternal bliss) in Søren Kierkegaard by comparing it to the analysis of the highest good found in Immanuel Kant. The comparison with Kant’s more systematic analysis helps us clarify the meaning and importance of the concept in Kierkegaard as well as to shed new light on the conceptual relation between Kant and Kierkegaard. The article argues that the concept of the highest (...) class='Hi'>good is of systematic importance in Kierkegaard, although previous research has tended to overlook this, no doubt due to Kierkegaard’s cryptic use of the concept. It is argued that Kierkegaard’s concept of the highest good is much closer to Kant’s than what previous research has indicated. In particular, Kant and Kierkegaard see the highest good not only as comprising of virtue and happiness (bliss), but also as being the Kingdom of God. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims it is obvious that the concept and the representation of the existence of the highest good, as something that is possible through our practical reason, can be not only the object, but also the determining ground or motivation for a pure will. This essay surveys the systematic advantages and disadvantages of the most plausible interpretations of the concept of the highest good in this sense, with special emphasis upon (...) the highest good as a demand for social justice in this world. In der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft behauptet Kant, es verstehe sich von selbst, daß der Begriff und die Vorstellung der durch unsere praktische Vernunft möglichen Existenz des höchsten Guts nicht nur das Objekt, sondern auch den Bestimmungsgrund des reinen Willens darstellen kann. In diesem Aufsatz werden die systematischen Vor- und Nachteile der plausibelsten Auslegungen des Begriffs des höchsten Guts in diesem Sinne erwogen, mit besonderer Betonung der Interpretation des höchsten Guts als einer Forderung nach sozialer Gerechtigkeit in dieser Welt. (shrink)

Kant’s moral philosophy is celebrated for its doctrines of the primacy of the good will, the categorical imperative, and the significance of autonomy. These themes are pursued in the section of the Critique of Practical Reason which Kant called the Analytic, as well as in less formal works such as The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. In his main work Kant added a Dialectic, which is less well studied but is still essential to understanding his whole project. The (...) concept of the Highest Good, summum bonum, the ultimate goal in life, incorporates both an objective and a subjective element. It pronounces on what we ought to want and how we ought to want it: it bears on our happiness and on our virtue. The aim in the Dialectic is to highlight the tension that can result from these twoelements, so that the need for a rapprochement between them becomes better appreciated. This tension remains in contemporary moral philosophy, with its diverse approaches of virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism. Kant’s stance regarding this dialectical tension needs to be understood, by Kant scholars and by moral philosophers. (shrink)

Kant’s ethics conceives of rational beings as autonomous–capable of legislating the moral law, and of motivating themselves to act out of respect for that law. Kant’s ethics also includes a notion of the highest good, the union of virtue with happiness proportional to, and consequent on, virtue. According to Kant, morality sets forth the highest good as an object of the totality of all things good as ends. Much about Kant’s conception of the highest (...) good is controversial. This paper focuses on the apparent conflict between Kant’s claim that we are autonomous, and passages in which he seems to suggest that we require belief in the possibility of the highest good to motivate moral action. I distinguish three distinct versions of these problematic claims that seem to be present in Kant’s texts: that the highest good serves as (1) a motivational supplement to respect for the moral law, (2) a fundamental spring of right action, and (3) a condition of the bindingness of moral requirements. I argue that the texts are better interpreted to yield alternatives to (2) and (3) that do not conflict with our autonomy. I also argue that, properly understood, (1) does not conflict with our autonomy. In arguing for the last claim, I explore Kant’s notion of radical evil and its implications for human agency and virtue. (shrink)

Kant claims that the concept of the highest good, the idea of happiness in proportion to virtue, is grounded in the moral law. But this claim has often been challenged. How can Kant justify including happiness in the highest good? Why should only the virtuous be worthy of happiness? This paper argues that when the moral law is interpreted as the criterion for valid application of the concept of the good, the concept of the (...) class='Hi'>highest good does indeed follow from the moral law. It also argues that the duty to promote the highest good harmonizes with other duties. (shrink)

What function does the highest good serve in our thinking and doing? I propose a new interpretation that sees its importance as fulfilling a contemplative need to construct a worldview.

What is the highest good? In the ethics of René Descartes, we can distinguish between at least seven different answers to this question: God; the sum of all the different goods that “we either possess... or have the power to acquire” ; free will; virtue; love of God; wisdom; and supernatural beatitude. In this paper, I argue that each of these answers, in Descartes’s view, provides the correct particular conception, relative to a distinct sense or concept of the (...) highest good. Just as there are seven different conceptions of the highest good, according to Descartes, there are thus also seven different senses or concepts of the highest good. (shrink)

Gabriel Richardson Lear presents a bold new approach to one of the enduring debates about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: the controversy about whether it coherently argues that the best life for humans is one devoted to a single activity, namely philosophical contemplation. Many scholars oppose this reading because the bulk of the Ethics is devoted to various moral virtues--courage and generosity, for example--that are not in any obvious way either manifestations of philosophical contemplation or subordinated to it. They argue that Aristotle (...) was inconsistent, and that we should not try to read the entire Ethics as an attempt to flesh out the notion that the best life aims at the "monistic good" of contemplation. In defending the unity and coherence of the Ethics, Lear argues that, in Aristotle's view, we may act for the sake of an end not just by instrumentally bringing it about but also by approximating it. She then argues that, for Aristotle, the excellent rational activity of moral virtue is an approximation of theoretical contemplation. Thus, the happiest person chooses moral virtue as an approximation of contemplation in practical life. Richardson Lear bolsters this interpretation by examining three moral virtues--courage, temperance, and greatness of soul--and the way they are fine. Elegantly written and rigorously argued, this is a major contribution to our understanding of a central issue in Aristotle's moral philosophy. (shrink)

Lewis white beck's "a commentary on kant's critique of practical reason" overlooks the fact that some of the ideas most important to kant's ethics are not presented in the second "critique". It also lacks a necessary emphasis on the notion of the highest good, The unifying theme of the work as a whole. The author traces the role of this concept throughout the second "critique" and shows how kant developed the content of the idea of the highest (...) good in the combined notions of perfection as the moral good and happiness as the natural good. (staff). (shrink)

Kant’s moral proof of the postulate of immortality in the Critique of Practical Reason is often dismissed as a failed argument that trades on illicit conceptual shifts. I argue that Kant’s argument is more interesting and less problematic than is usually thought. I first examine its role in the second Critique’s Dialectic. I then point out that the standard interpretation, according to which the argument presupposes God’s intuitive grasp of the moral equivalence between the disposition to pursue holiness and its (...) attainment, faces a number of philosophical and textual problems. I offer an alternative reading that avoids these problems. In particular, I stress the importance of Kant’s mathematized conception of the relationship between infinite progress towards an ideal goal and its attainment and argue that appealing to this conception allows Kant to meet a well-known criticism that his proof illegitimately substitutes the endless progress towards holiness for holiness itself. (shrink)

Kant’s concept of the highest good proportionately unites virtue and happiness—the supreme goods of, respectively, the systems of freedom and of nature. A middle path between theological and secular interpretations of Kant’s highest good is possible if we disentangle two distinct roles played by God: a causal role in promoting the real unity of the highest good, i.e., its actualization; and a conceptual role in modeling its conceptual unity. The highest good is (...) theological in the first case, but neutral—neither directly theological nor secular—in the second. Reconstructing how Kant envisioned the conceptual unity of the highest good requires taking seriously his repeated reference to God as the highest original good, and to the best world as the highest derived good. If, as Kant thought, a moral God forms a triadic unity comprised of holiness, goodness, and divine justice, perhaps he assumed that the conceptual unity of the derived good is likewise triadic, comprised of virtue, happiness, and a form of justice that is not directly divine but “systemic,” designating the unity of the systems of nature and of freedom. Divine justice, in contrast, constitutes the real unity of the highest good. (shrink)

Since the publication of Andrews Reath's “Two Conceptions of the Highest Good in Kant” (Journal of the History of Philosophy 26:4 (1988)), most scholars have come to accept the view that Kant migrated away from an earlier “theological” version to one that is more “secular.” The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of this interpretative trend, re-assess its merits, and then examine how the Highest Good is portrayed in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries (...) of Mere Reason. As will be argued, it is in this text more so than any other where Kant develops his most philosophically sophisticated account of the Highest Good. Because of the central significance of Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good for both his ethical theory and philosophy of religion, this paper therefore seeks to provide an important corrective to the current received views. (shrink)

This paper explores Kant's concept of the highest good and the postulate of the existence of God arising from it. Kant has two concepts of the highest good standing in tension with one another, an immanent and a transcendent one. I provide a systematic exposition of the constituents of both variants and show how Kant’s arguments are prone to confusion through a conflation of both concepts. I argue that once these confusions are sorted out Kant’s claim (...) regarding the need to postulate God’s existence from a moral point of view makes much more sense. (shrink)

Many Kantians dismiss Kant’s claim that we have a duty to promote the highest good – an ideal world that combines complete virtue with complete happiness – as incompatible with the core of his moral philosophy. This dismissal, I argue, raises doubts about Kant’s ability to justify the moral law, yet it is a mistake. A duty to promote the highest good plays an important role in the justificatory strategy of the Critique of Practical Reason. Moreover, (...) its analysis leads to a new perspective on Kant’s conception of moral objectivity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean EthicsCharles M. YoungGabriel Richardson Lear. Happy Lives and the Highest Good: An Essay on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. ix + 238. Cloth, $35.00.Suppose that you and I are friends. I need a ride to the airport; you offer to take me. You might do this for any of (...) a number of reasons: because you want to place me in your debt, because you want to impress bystanders, etc. But you might also do it for none of these reasons. You might do it, instead, because, understanding what resources are and what resources are for, you see taking me to the airport as an appropriate use of your resources (your time and your car), given our relationship and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.That's the Readers' Digest version of one story one might tell, on Aristotle's behalf, by way of connecting up friendship, virtuous action, practical and theoretical wisdom, action for its own sake, and action for the sake of the fine in the Nicomachean Ethics. I myself think it is a good story. It is also a story, I think, that Gabriel Richardson Lear tells, at least some of the time, in Happy Lives and the Highest Good, though she tells it with respect to courage, temperance, and magnanimity, not liberality and friendship.Most of the time, however, Lear tells another story. According to it, your taking me to the airport makes clear your commitment to make use of your resources to promote my good. Since we are friends, however, my good is bound up with yours, so in promoting my good you also promote your own good. But according to Aristotle the good for each of us is a life in which rationality is realized in thought and action. Hence your taking me to the airport counts as fine because it shows your commitment to that sort of life. But, again according to Aristotle, the centerpiece, and source of value, of that sort of life is contemplative activity, so you act for the sake of contemplation, whether you know this or not. And, in view of its expression of practical reason and truthfulness, your liberal activity is structurally similar to and so approximates to contemplative activity, and this allows us to say that you did what you did for the sake of contemplation.This is, so far as I know, an entirely new approach to the problems raised by Aristotle's identification of happiness with contemplation in NE X. Lear's story, and the arguments in its support, deserve and will repay serious attention. I limit myself here to four concerns about some of the details.First, our first story locates what is fine about virtuous action in the fit exhibited among the agent, her action, and her situation. Lear's story locates what is fine about virtuous action in its promotion of a certain kind of life. The first story thus sees what is fine about [End Page 118] virtuous action as something intrinsic to it, while Lear's story sees it as something external to it that it promotes. The first story seems to me to be looking in the right place.Second, the first story has it that virtuous activity is an expression of understanding, Lear's story that it is an expression of a commitment to understanding. Again, the first story seems to me to be looking in the right place.Third, Lear thinks that the liberal person can be said to act for the sake of contemplation when contemplation is the source of value for what she does, even when it is not the conscious aspiration of her action. That may be true, but I do not see that it is enough. What needs explanation is rather that she can be said to choose liberal activity for the sake of contemplation, and it is unclear how this could be unconscious.Finally, Lear's appeal to approximation may prove too much. The crafts, according to Aristotle, involve practical reason and truthfulness. But Aristotle doesn't believe that craft... (shrink)

칸트가 최고선을 정의하기 위해 활용하는 최상선과 완전선은 공히 덕과 행복을 인과적 관계로 잇는 개념들이다. 전자는 ‘덕을 갖추었다면, 반드시 행복할 자격이 있다’고 말하는 개념이라면, 후자는 더 나아가 ‘덕스러운 자의 행복할 자격이 세계 안에서 정말로 실현될 수 있어야 한다’고 말하는 개념이다. 이를 통해 칸트의 최고선은 궁극적으로 ‘최상선의 실현으로서의 완전선’으로 정의된다. 이렇게 정의된 최고선 개념 안에는 덕스러운 자들이 곤궁하고 비참한 사회는 ‘불의’한 세계이며, ‘행복할 자격’이 있는 자들에게 정말로 ‘행복한 삶의 현존’을 보장해주는 사회가 정의로운 세계라는 것, 그리고 이런 정의로운 사회를 실현하는 것이 윤리적 존재로서의 (...) 우리의 책무라는 수수하지만 강력한 통찰이 담겨 있는 것으로 보인다. 그러나 칸트는 이런 통찰을 본격적으로 전개하는 쪽으로 나아가지 않고, 최고선의 가능성을 보증하기 위해 영혼의 불멸과 신의 현존을 요청하는데 그친다. 이런 도덕-신학적 해법은 지극히 불충분하다. 칸트의 말대로 덕과 행복이 이질적 성분들이며 이 양자의 인과적 종합을 요하는 ‘실천적’ 이념이 최고선이라면, 이 이념은 이 세계 안의 유한한 존재인 우리의 삶을 규정하는 물질적, 경험적 조건들을 고려하고 개선할 때에만 실현 가능할 것이기 때문이다. 그러나 칸트의 ‘순수’ 이성의 실천 철학이 포괄하기를 거부하는 것이 바로 이 조건들이다. (shrink)

This essay considers Kant’s concept of the highest good from a systematic point of view. The two spheres of freedom and nature—of the practical and theoretical—need to be brought into a causal relation for the highest good to be achieved. Kant seems to offer numerous possibilities for how human beings are able to think that it is possible for the highest good to be attainable. I argue that it is only in the third Critique, (...) however, that Kant articulates an answer that also establishes freedom and nature within a larger system. The third Critique does this by positing a third, independent and mediating sphere of human experience that allows a transition between freedom and nature to be effected. This answer to the problem of the highest good is distinctive because the causal efficacy of reason in attaining its own demands is preserved. I examine Kant’s view by way of an analysis of his discussion of ‘territory’ and ‘domain’ in the Introduction to the text. (shrink)

Hegel’s most abiding aspiration was to be a volkserzieher (an educator of the people) in the tradition of thinkers of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), and Friedrich Schiller (159-1786). No doubt, he was also deeply interested in epistemology and metaphysics, but this interest stemmed at least in part from his belief (which Kant also shared) that human beings could become truly liberated to fulfill their vocations as human beings, only if they were also liberated from the illusions and (...) contradictions that plagued uncritical thinking about self, world, and God. Thus to appreciate Hegel’s work in epistemology and metaphysics, one must first appreciate how he (following Kant) sought to think beyond the “special metaphysics” of self, world, and God as developed by Descartes and other pre-critical philosophers. The aim of this chapter is to analyze aspects of Hegel’s critical appropriation and transformation of Kantian thought, shedding light not only on Hegel’s own understanding of his move beyond Kant, but also on the philosophical reasons that might justify such a move. (shrink)

What is the highest good actually good for in Kant’s third Critique? While there are well-worked out answers to this question in the literature that focus on the highest good’s practical importance, this paper argues that there is an important function for the highest good that has to do exclusively with contemplation. This important function becomes clear once one notices that coherent [konsequent] thinking, for Kant, was synonymous with "bündiges" thinking, and that both (...) are connected with the highest good in the third Critique’s moral proof for God’s existence. I show that the original meaning of "bündig," which is from the carpentry trade and has been forgotten, illuminates the stakes of the highest good in Kant’s system. For us, as proverbial carpenters of reason, coherence is essential for the intellectual activity of constructing a philosophical worldview in his transcendental idealism. I motivate the reading further by showing how this function can neatly reconstruct Kant’s proof for God’s existence in the third Critique. I conclude by sketching Kant’s reasons for why the project of creating a coherent worldview grounded in the highest good is worth the labor costs. (shrink)

Kant’s discussion of the highest good is subject to continuous disagreement between the proponents of two interpretations of this concept. According to the secular interpretation, Kant conceived of the highest good as a political ideal which can be realized through human agency alone, albeit only from the Critique of the Power of Judgement onwards. By way of contrast, proponents of the theological interpretation find Kant’s treatment of the highest good in his later works to (...) be wholly coherent with the discussions of this concept found in the second Critique. In their view, however, Kant never conceived of the highest good as a political ideal, and some go as far as to argue that it is the work of God alone. In this article, I defend a theologico-political account of the highest good that avoids the pitfalls of both readings. (shrink)

Contrary to Eckart Förster, I argue that the Opus postumum represents more of an evolution than a revolution in Kant's thought. Among other points, I argue that Kant's Selbstsetzungslehre, or theory of self-positing, according to which we cannot have knowledge of the spatio-temporal world except through recognition of the changes we initiate in it by our own bodies, does not constitute a radicalization of Kant's transcendental idealism, but is a development of the realist line of argument introduced by the "Refutation (...) of Idealism" of 1787-90; and I argue that Kant's concept of the highest good, which according to Förster was only revised to connect virtue to collective rather than individual happiness in 1790-93 and was then in any case withdrawn in the Opus postumum, was uninterruptedly focused on collective happiness from the first edition of the first Critique, and that there is no reason to believe that ever Kant retracted it. (shrink)

In the 1960s Lewis White Beck criticized Kant’s highest good as a moral concept. In 1963 John Silber responded. Thus, the “Beck-Silber controversy.” This paper explores such controversy in the Spanish literature. It begins identifying four criticisms: the problems of heteronomy, derivation, impossibility, and irrelevance. It then identifies a new problem rescued from the Spanish literature: dualism. After categorizing, following Matthew Caswell, the Spanish defenses into revisionists, secularizers, and maximalists, this paper assesses these defenses. The paper also translates (...) sections of such literature into English and leaves us closer to a complete defense of the highest good by salvaging what it can of the Spanish literature’s unique points. (shrink)