Founder of a Metaphysics of Morals 313morality, that gives us the right to believe in the reality of freedom. Fur¬
thermore, morality and freedom also give us the right to believe in the
reality of two other ideas of reason, namely those of "God" and "Immor¬
tality." He argues that we must "postulate" the reality of these ideas in
order to be able to act as moral beings in this world. Without immortality
and God, we would be condemned to moral despair. Moral action should
lead to greater good in this world, but it usually does not. Happiness and
worthiness to be happy do not usually go together in this world. If we want
to establish a connection between the two, we must assume that they will
be made to coincide by God in the long run. In this way, the notions of
"God" and "immortality," as prerequisites for the realization of the summum
bonum or the highest good, make possible the moral enterprise for Kant,
and therefore we must believe in their reality.
All these ideas are anticipated in prior works. Here they are just revised,
expanded, and put into what Kant takes to be their systematic context.
Thus the Analytic explicates first the central issues of the Groundwork, that
is, the notions of a categorical imperative, freedom, and autonomy. It then
goes on to deduce the principles of pure practical reason, that is, the moral
law as "a law of causality through freedom and hence a law of the possi¬
bility of supersensible nature."^164 Kant then shows that we have a right
in the practical context to extend our concepts beyond the sphere that is
delimited in the theoretical and speculative context. While this is not an
extension of knowledge, it is not blind belief either. In the Dialectic he
develops this idea, which he had already introduced in "What Is Orienta¬
tion?" and in his remarks on Jakob's Examination. We are allowed to pos¬
tulate the immortality of the soul and God's existence, because they are
required by morality and in particular by the possibility of the highest
good. This means that belief in God is based in the nature of morality, and
so we cannot justify morality with reference to God. In a famous passage
Kant says:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence the
more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the
moral law mithin me. I do not need to search for them and merely conjecture them as
though they were veiled in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon;
I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my
existence.^165
It is our autonomy that is the basis of the moral law, not God's commands
or demands on us. The "upright man may well say: I mill that there is a God,