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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
From the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 (see A 634/B 652, A 828/B 856) to the 1793 draft of an answer to the Berlin Academy's question “What Real Progress Has Metaphysics Made since the Time of Leibniz and Wolff?” Kant argued that the necessity of conceiving of the highest good as the object of morality leads to a “practical-dogmatic” proof of the existence of God, immortality, and (sometimes) freedom that is valid “only in a certain regard.” In such a proof, the existence of God or the other objects of belief is postulated “not in order to ground the laws and even the final end of morality … but in order to secure reality … in a practical point of view [in praktischer Absicht] for its idea of a highest good possible in a world, which considered objectively and theoretically lies beyond our capacity [Vermögen]” (RP, 20:305). Or as Kant put his position in the Critique of Judgment:
The highest good that can be effected in the world through freedom, [is a] concept [whichl cannot be demonstrated in any experience possible for us, whose objective reality hence cannot be adequately demonstrated for the theoretical use of reason, but whose use for the best possible effectuation of that end is yet commanded through practical reason and hence must be assumed to be possible. […]
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