10 - The Postulates of Pure Practical Reason (CPrR:122–148)

Summary

The ‘unavoidable problems set by pure reason itself,’ Kant tells us in the Introduction to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, ‘are God, freedom, and immortality’ (B 7). Notwithstanding the ‘loss of its fancied possessions which speculative reason must suffer, general human interests remain in the same privileged position as hitherto, and the advantages which the world has hitherto derived from the teachings of pure reason are in no way diminished. The loss affects only the monopoly of the schools, in no respects the interests of humanity’ (B xxxif). The dogmatic proofs that the schools had traditionally provided for the immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, and the existence of God had never succeeded in reaching the public mind or exercising any influence upon its convictions on account of ‘the unfitness of the common human understanding for such subtle speculation’ (B xxxii). And the ‘purely speculative interest of reason’ in these three themes remains ‘very slight indeed,’ as Kant goes out of his way to emphasise in the section of the text he calls ‘The transcendental doctrine of method.’ ‘If, then, these three cardinal propositions are not in any way necessary for knowledge, and are yet strongly recommended by our reason, their importance, properly regarded, must concern only the practical’ (A 798–800/B 826–8).