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)

Although the best-known Hegelian objection against Kant's moral philosophy is the charge that the categorical imperative is an ‘empty formalism’, Hegel's criticisms also include what we might call the realizability objection. Tentatively stated, the realizability objection says that within the sphere of Kantian morality, the good remains an unrealizable ‘ought’ – in other words, the Kantian moral ‘ought’ can never become an ‘is’. In this paper, I attempt to come to grips with this objection in two steps. In the first (...) section of the paper, I provide an initial reading of the objection, according to which Hegel agrees with Kant's formulation of the realizability problem but disagrees with the specific Kantian solution, namely, with the Kantian idea of the highest good and the doctrine of the postulates. In the second section, I go on to argue that this reading is potentially too superficial and offer a more far-reaching interpretation whereby Hegel is ultimately targeting fundamental distinctions of Kant's moral theory. I end by employing these more far-reaching results of Hegel's objection to sketch some features of Hegel's alternative ethical view. (shrink)

Kant is clear that the concept of the 'highest good' involves both a demand, that we follow the moral law, as well as a promise, that happiness will be the outcome of being moral. The latter element of the highest good has troubled commentators, who tend to find it metaphysically extravagant, involving, as it does, belief in God and an afterlife. Furthermore, it seems to threaten the moral purity that Kant demands: that we obey the moral law for its own (...) sake, not out of interest in the consequences. Those commentators brave enough to tackle the issue look to the concept of the highest good either to add content to the moral law (Silber), or to provide rational motivation, in a way that does not violate moral purity (Beiser and Wood). I argue that such interpretations, although they may be plausible reconstructions, are unable to account for certain conceptual and textual problems. By placing Kant's thought against the background of medieval theology, I argue that the hope for the summum bonum is irreducibly important for Kant, even where its function is not that of providing the content or motivational force of the moral law. Kant is not only concerned with the shape of our duties and motivations, but the shape of the universe within which these emerge. (shrink)

The indispensability of the ‘postulate of practical reason with regard to Right’ to Kant's property argument in the Rechtslehre is now widely recognized. However, most commentators continue to focus their attention on the relation between the postulate and the deduction of the concept of intelligible possession. The nature of this relation remains a matter of dispute in part because the precise position of the postulate within chapter one of the Rechtslehre remains undecided. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that (...) the related question has been neglected, as to why Kant should characterize the postulate of Right as a postulate of practical reason. Yet the fact that he does so is of some significance – especially if one recalls the definition in the Critique of Practical Reason of postulates of practical reason as practically necessary but theoretically indemonstrable propositions. What is of interest about this definition is not just the fact that it designates postulates as practically necessary and as theoretically indemonstrable at the same time – even more intriguing is the intimated relation between practical necessity and theoretical indemonstrability. Kant does not think the postulates' theoretical indemonstrability morally insignificant. To the contrary, their moral significance for us appears to be a function, in part, of their theoretical indemonstrability. (shrink)