Kant’s “primacy of the practical” doctrine says that we can form morally justified commitments regarding what exists, even in the absence of sufficient epistemic grounds. In this paper I critically examine three different varieties of Kant’s “moral proof” that can be found in the critical works. My claim is that the third variety—the “moral-psychological argument” based in the need to sustain moral hope and avoid demoralization—has some intriguing advantages over the other two. It starts with a premise that more clearly (...) coheres with Kant’s mature account of moral motivation, and it invokes plausible empirical-psychological theses to motivate a commitment to the full-blown classical deity—the result Kant clearly wanted. From the point of view of its structure, I think this third variety of moral argument also has the most by way of contemporary interest. (shrink)

This paper answers the question, what is Kant’s ‘Critical Philosophy’? The answer is not provided by a bibliography of Kant’s main works, nor by his transcendental idealism. The answer consists in Kant’s critique of our human capacity to judge and of those rational principles by which we can properly judge matters accurately and cogently. To show this, three key features of Kant’s critique of rational judgment are examined: Five constitutive characteristics of our human capacity to judge (§2), two basic theses (...) of Kant’s Critical Philosophy (§3) and a table of basic systematic questions and their Critical answers (§4). This conspectus is philosophically significant because it clearly identifies Kant’s Critical method and its key considerations, which continue to be widely neglected when considering philosophical method (§5). (shrink)