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Kant’s argument for God’s existence is based on the validity for reason of the ideas of happiness, worthiness, freedom, and purpose. All those are applicable to the sensual world in a certain sense, but form moral laws which transcend its causality. The moral laws command us to freely choose certain actions in the world which would make us worthy of happiness desired by us. ”Do that through which you will become worthy to be happy” (A809).
Appealing “to the moral judgment of every human being” Kant says: “Pure reason thus contains – not in its speculative use, to be sure, but yet in a certain practical use, namely the moral use – principles of a possibility of experience, namely of those actions in conformity with moral precepts… since they command that those actions ought to happen, they must also be able to happen” (A807) He points to the history full of facts of moral behavior making his assertion stronger. “The idea of moral world thus has objective reality, not if it pertained to an object of an intelligible intuition, but as pertaining to the sensible world, although as an object of pure reason in its practical use and a corpus mysticum of the rational beings in it, insofar as their free choice under moral laws has thoroughgoing systematic unity in itself as well as with the freedom of everyone else” (A808.)
The very existence of such presented morality “cannot be cognized through reason if it is grounded merely in nature, but may be hoped for only if it is at the same time grounded on a highest reason, which commands in accordance with moral laws, as at the same time the cause of nature”(A810). Kant calls that idea of such intelligence the ideal of the highest good. Only in this can pure reason find the ground for the practically necessary connection of both elements of the highest derived good, i.e., moral world. Thus God and the future life are two presuppositions that pure reason imposes on us in accordance with its principles.
I think that Kant fairly produces his argument for the existence of God and immortality from the observed morality. If this is dogmatic what isn’t? Hence the critique of his opponents is unfair. In addition he says in A819: “So fat as practical reason has the right to lead us, we will not hold actions to be obligatory because they are God’s commands, but will rather regard them as divine commands because we are internally obligated to them”. For Kant “moral theology is only of immanent use, namely for fulfilling our vocation here in the world by fitting into the system of all ends, nor for fanatically . . . abandoning the guidance of a morally legislative reason . . . . a transcendental use, like the use of mere speculation, must pervert and frustrate the ultimate ends of reason”. So reason is still the judge and its laws are valuable and should not be ignored.
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