Kant’s Critical Argument(s) for Immortality Reassessed
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Andree Hahmann
Abstract
Kant’s postulate of the immortality of the soul has received strikingly little attention among Kant scholars, and only very few have regarded it positively. This is not surprising given the numerous problems associated with his argument. However, it is not the only argument for immortality that Kant offers in his critical philosophy. There is also a second argument that differs from the one furnished in the Second Critique and can be found both in the Critique of Pure Reason and later texts from the 1790s. Kant also addresses here many of the problems that interpreters have found with his postulate of immortality in both earlier and later texts. This paper considers the main difficulties associated with the postulate and proposes a coherent interpretation of Kant’s argument. I show that despite the apparent change in his approach to immortality Kant did not in fact substantially alter his position during his critical period
© 2018 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- The Internality of Moral Faith in Kant’s Religion
- Kant’s Critical Argument(s) for Immortality Reassessed
- Evil, the Laws of Nature, and Miracles
- Kant’s post-1800 Disavowal of the Highest Good Argument for the Existence of God
- Kant on Contradiction, Conceptual Content, and the Ens Realissimum
- Kant’s Debt to Baumgarten in His Religious (Un‐)Grounding of Ethics
- The Ideal of the Highest Good and the Objectivity of Moral Judgment
- Predication and Modality in Kant’s Critique of the Ontological Argument
- God, Hypostasis, and the Threat of Paradox: Exploring Kantian And Non-Kantian Reasons for Circumspection
- Hidden Antinomies of Practical Reason, and Kant’s Religion of Hope
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- The Internality of Moral Faith in Kant’s Religion
- Kant’s Critical Argument(s) for Immortality Reassessed
- Evil, the Laws of Nature, and Miracles
- Kant’s post-1800 Disavowal of the Highest Good Argument for the Existence of God
- Kant on Contradiction, Conceptual Content, and the Ens Realissimum
- Kant’s Debt to Baumgarten in His Religious (Un‐)Grounding of Ethics
- The Ideal of the Highest Good and the Objectivity of Moral Judgment
- Predication and Modality in Kant’s Critique of the Ontological Argument
- God, Hypostasis, and the Threat of Paradox: Exploring Kantian And Non-Kantian Reasons for Circumspection
- Hidden Antinomies of Practical Reason, and Kant’s Religion of Hope
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021
