Chapter 12 - Culture and the limits of practical reason in Kant’s Religion

Summary

The fate of metaphysics is inextricably linked to the fates of morality and religion, in that speculative reason proceeding in lawless fashion endangers both the practical realm or the interests of human beings and speculative inquiry itself, to which the philosopher is attached as to a beloved. Immanuel Kant's view of reason's highest interest in purposive unity grounded in freedom relates directly to some of his definitions of philosophy and the philosopher. Historical religion accordingly focuses on practices of praising supposed superhuman powers and interprets virtue as being pleasing to them, and thereby it is a prime manifestation of moral evil, as the subordination of compliance with the pure moral law to maxims of self-love. It could be said that Kant engages in another philosophic-poetic use of analogy to illuminate the highest mysteries when he characterizes the propensity to evil as the "intelligible deed".