Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason

Five: Imagination and the Postulates of Immortality and God

f i v e Imagination and the Postulates of Immortality and God Kant’s employment of the term “postulate” here coheres with its use in the Critique of Pure Reason. There, after distinguishing his use from the use to which the term is put by mathematicians (i.e., as intuitively certain propositions), he writes, “[postulates] do not increase our concept of things, but only show the manner in which it is connected with the faculty of knowledge” (A234–35, B287). In the realm of practical reason, where there is no extension of knowledge but rather an extension of reason’s use, postulates attach to this practical use in an analogous way: “By a postulate of pure practical reason , I understand a theoretical proposition which is not as such demonstrable , but which is an inseparable corollary of (unzertrennlich anhängt) an a priori unconditionally valid practical law” (V, 122, emphases in original). How must “theoretical” be interpreted in this context? Clearly, it cannot mean “logical” in any narrow sense; in no way can the immortality of the soul (or the existence of God) be conceptually or inferentially derivable from the moral law. Even “transcendentallogical ” must fall short; the schematized categories are one and all time-bound, and the very nature of the practical postulates frees them from any temporal condition. The Canon of Pure Reason in the Critique of Pure Reason provides a clue to the role of the theoretical postulates of immortality and God. The conviction one holds “is not logical but moral certainty; and since it rests on subjective grounds (of the moral sentiment), I must not even say, it is morally certain that there is a God, etc., but ‘I am morally certain, etc.’” (A829, B857). That is to say, the propositions asserting the immortality of the soul and the existence of God receive their theoretical justi¤cation through my act of freedom. By virtue of my inserting myself into the command of the moral law and to the commitment to the highest good that this command entails, those propositions that produce dialectical illusion in pure theoretical reason receive their anchoring truth in practical reason through their inseparable bond with the moral law. This anchoring moral truth is hardly any comfort to anyone who regards the continuance of mere life to be a good in itself. Rather, it merely holds out the hope that one can continue to make moral progress beyond this life and so approach the goal of holiness that resides beyond our grasp in this life and, for Kant, in any other.1 The postulate of immortality is treated ¤rst, as it conforms to the portion of morality (“the ¤rst and principal part”—V, 124) belonging to the highest good. It is followed by the postulate of happiness, the highest good’s other portion. Regarded epistemologically, they are necessary beliefs that attach to the moral law. Before exploring the technical aspect of the postulate of immortality, another Socratic comparison suggests itself here, namely an analogy with Socrates facing death in the Apology. At the conclusion of the Canon, Kant notes, “But, it will be said, is this all that pure reason achieves in opening up prospects beyond the limits of experience? Nothing more than two articles of belief (Glaubensartikel)? Surely the common understanding could have achieved as much, without appealing to the philosophers for counsel” (A830–31, B858–59). While once again the parallel is not exact, this result strongly suggests Socrates’ fearlessness in the face of death as presented in Plato’s Apology, as well as his insistent claim that he knows nothing worth knowing. This ignorance clearly extends to the reality of a future life. And while the treatments of immortality are arguably quite different,2 Socrates’ looking forward to the possibility of interrogating the heroes and 107 Imagination and the Postulates of Immortality and God the “true judges” in Hades (41a) in order to discover the best life for a human being can be seen as imaging the Kantian ongoing quest for a moral life that would be worthy of the greatest happiness. Kant writes of the human being’s ongoing progress that “he cannot hope here or at any foreseeable point of his future existence to be fully adequate to God’s will, without indulgence or remission which would not harmonize with justice. This he can do only in the in¤nity of his duration which God alone can...