THREE POSTULATES OF IMMANUEL KANT

Introduction

The three postulates, namely freedom, God, and Immortality, though they can’t be theoretically proven, are incorporated into the already coherent and meaningful ethical structure of Kant to give more practicality to his ethical theory, taking into account the fact that man is not a purely rational being but a creature haunted by inclinations.

Freedom, God, and Immortality, the three postulates, are not theoretical dogmas but are presuppositions having necessary practical reference. The introduction of postulate in Kant’s philosophy can be considered as an attempt to limit the theoretical and extend the practical so as to make them stand together. God as postulated by Kant is not the God of religion. This postulate of God has its origin in one’s own reason, which would necessarily mean that submitting to the will of God is submitting to one’s own reason. The need of God arises because the relationship between moral law and happiness is not guaranteed in this world. So here God comes to the rescue and thus necessitates the compatibility of virtue and the realization of the highest good. The postulate of immortality is very much interwoven with the postulate of God. Taking into account the sensuous nature of human beings, Kant states that it is very difficult for a man to be righteous without hope. Immortality guarantees this hope and ensures that there is a place sufficient for the reckoning of happiness in proportion to worthiness to be happy. The postulate of freedom is given a special position among the other two postulates. Freedom is an a priori that we do not understand, but we know it as the condition of the moral law, which we do know. It is because of freedom that God and Immortality gain objective reality and legitimacy and subjective necessity. Freedom then can be considered as the keystone of the structure of pure reason.

The postulates take us to the practical realm of Kant’s otherwise theoretical and rationally overpowered ethical structure. But these postulates, too, were of little help in Kant’s attempt to make his philosophical structure a perennial one. The postulates have made his ethical theory a more humane one, even though it maintains its strong rational base.

1. The Postulates: A Practical Necessity

It is beyond doubt that human beings are endowed with rationality. Kant’s Philosophy is basically woven taking into account this rational nature. From a theoretical angle the immense power of rationality can be glorified, modified and crafted to form a strong structure. But the fact that man is not a pure rational being and that he is prone to inclinations is something very serious to be taken care of. Kant turned a blind eye with respect to this aspect in his initial years going behind the mightiness of rationality. The postulates- Freedom, God and Immortality show his awareness of the inability of human beings to bank on rationality alone. These postulates make Kant’s ethics more humane and practical.

According to Kant, a postulate is “a theoretical proposition which is not as such demonstrable but which is an inseparable corollary of an a priori unconditionally valid practical law.” So the postulate becomes part of Kant’s ethical structure but he makes it clear that the postulates play no theoretical or explanatory role. As we have no intuitions to apply the concepts of freedom, God and immortality, no theoretical knowledge is possible. As Kant makes it clear, “A postulate of practical reason is an object of rational belief, but the reasons for the belief are practical and moral. The person needs the belief as a condition for obedience to the moral law, and it is this combined with the categorical nature of that law which justifies the belief. Although the beliefs are theoretical in form- will is free, there is God, their basis and their functions are practical.

The postulates are indemonstrable and are necessary for practical function. It is an attempt by Kant to limit the theoretical and extend the practical and to make them stand together. Though a postulate in a general sense means to suggest or accept that something is true so that it can be used the basis of a theory, in this case it does not form the basis but only presuppositions of practical import. C.D. Broad writes: A postulate of pure practical reason is a factual proposition which combines the two following characteristics: (i) there is no conclusive factual evidence for or against it. (ii) Unless a person accepts it, he finds himself in the practical dilemma of knowing himself to be under an unconditional obligation to strive to bring about a certain state of affairs is in principle unrealizable.[4] So the postulates are “not theoretical dogmas but presuppositions having a necessary practical reference,” which “do not extend speculative cognition” but “give objective reality to the idea of speculative reason in general.”

1.1 Relation of the Postulates to the Ideas of Reason

The three postulates are closely associated with the three ideas of theoretical reason, namely the idea of the absolute unity of the subject of experience (soul), the idea of the absolute unity of the series of conditions of appearances (the world) and the idea of the absolute unity of the conditions of all things in general (God). When faced with the problem of conviction of the reality of objects corresponding to the three ideas of pure reason, the three postulates come to the rescue. For they contain the ground of the possibility of realizing the necessary object of practical reason (the highest good), whereas theoretical reason finds in them morally regulative principles, which have their value in furthering the exercise of intelligence in experience, but not in enabling us to gain any certitude as to the existence of any object beyond experience.[6] So Kant aims to show that theoretical and pure practical reason point to the same objects, but, whereas they “fly before it when it follows the path of pure speculation,” they can be definitely grasped on the path of practical. The postulates do not give us knowledge of their objects instead they enable us to assert their reality. “when these ideas of God, of an intelligible world and of immortality are predicates which are taken from our own nature, we must regard this determination neither as a sensualising of these pure ideas nor as a transcendent knowledge of supersensible objects; for the predicates we use are only understanding and will, and, indeed, these regarded only in that relation to each other in which we are required by the moral law to regard them.

It is solely from the practical point of view that we have the postulates. It will be foolish to go behind the practical postulates in search of theoretical proof. So we are obliged to content ourselves “with the conception of a relation of understanding to will which the practical law determines a priori, and to which the same practical la secures objective reality.

1.2 The Role of Postulates

Kant was of the view that postulates contributed very less to theory. He states, “The practical argument compels knowledge [i.e. Theory] to concede that there are such objects without more exactly defining them. It is because of the postulates that theory gains acceptance, but this in no way breaks ground for the further extension of its realm by making synthetic a priori judgments about them. The postulates also become the objects of Ideas, which were considered objectively empty. Kant moves from postulates must be asserted to postulates have objects through the doctrine of the primacy of pure practical reason.

If we bestow the privilege of establishing truth only to theoretical reason and not practical reason, then we are met with twin problems (a) we can’t establish a coherent, independent system. (b) If the doctrine of postulates is left in the state of justifying only the process of postulating as a practical act but not the postulates as true and an entire area of human experience, completely rational in itself, is likewise unfounded in any theory about the world.[

2. The Postulate of God

Kant is highly critical of the attempts to employ reason to theology and giving out theoretical proofs and dogmas of things in the phenomenal world that the reason of human beings is unable to reach. In the first Critique, Kant writes, “All attempts to employ reason in theology in any way merely speculative manner are altogether fruitless and by their very nature null and void…the only theology of reason which is possible is that which is based upon moral laws”.  So the postulate of God is based on the moral proof rather than the theoretical proof. The idea of God should originate in our own reason. The God postulated by Kant is not the God of religion. Here it is not the religious dogmas that call the shots and to which one has to submit oneself but it’s to one’s own reason.

Why do the postulates of God come into picture? Kant says, “This system of self-rewarding morality is only an idea, the realization of which rests on the condition that everyone does what he should. But his is no reason for anyone for not being moral. Kant would say that when we have a good reason to believe that we can get to the goal which we pursue.  But in the natural world the goal imposed by morality is not always realized. The relationship between happiness and moral law is not guaranteed although, “to be happy is necessarily the desire of every rational finite being, and thus it is an unavoidable finite being, and thus it is an unavoidable determinant of its faculty of desire.”[ If this was guaranteed, then we would not have seen people who lack goodwill enjoy uninterrupted prosperity and morally good people should experience general happiness to the exact proportion to their moral goodness and obviously, this would mean the delusion of reason with respect to practical matters. So we must therefore postulate as it were, an unnatural world, beyond the temporal frame of ordinary existence and ruled by a wise, benevolent and powerful God, in which the ideal results of morality will become actual. In particular, God turns out to be the “highest original good.” From whom the “highest derived good,” the happiness of all as a result of morality of all is derived.

The assumption of the existence of God can never be made the basis of our obligation to obey the moral law. It is indeed a moral necessity to assume the existence of God. The postulate of God is a need or requirement of our moral consciousness or a moral necessity, which is subjective and not objective, which means that it is not itself a duty. The postulate of God is in no way connected to the consciousness of our duty. The divine will is the motive to action, not the ground of it. So the hypothesis is necessary to explain the possibility of the existence of a certain object; but, inasmuch as the object in question is one which is set before us by our own rational nature as that which should be attained, we call it appropriately “ a faith and indeed a faith of reason.’[17]

Kant stresses that the properties of Omnipotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence can be assigned to God to play his moral role of guaranteeing the possibility of the highest good and that e have no basis for assigning any other properties to God in each of the three critiques Kant would even say that I must not even say ‘it is morally certain that there is God.’ But rather ‘I am morally certain.’ God is not a metaphysical concept, original being, first cause, not blindly working, the eternal root of all things. It functions in the thinking of a moral agent and exercises a real influence on his/her actions.

3. Immortality

The postulate of God has a close affinity to the postulate of God in the realization of the moral Ideal. As Kant states in his critique, “the belief in God and another world is so interwoven with my moral sentiment.” The postulate of immortality was taken seriously by Kant even when he was traditionalistic in his rationalism. The premise of immortality was found in the “incomplete harmony between morality and its consequences in the world.” He was of the view that the belief in immortality has to be based on the moral disposition and not one hope of future rewards.

In the preface to the Critique of Practical Reason’s second edition, Kant says that the belief in immortality is based on a ‘notable characteristic of our nature, never to be capable of being satisfied by what is temporal (as insufficient for the capacities of its calling) Basing himself on the principle of purposiveness, Kant bases his first argument for immortality. As ‘nothing is purposeless’ each organ or faculty in the world has its own specific claim that human life as whole too, must have its own end, although it is an end not in this life but in a future life.  As it involves the fallacy of composition to judge that what is true of the parts of a whole is true of the whole, Beck states that the argument is teleological and theoretically and invalid one.

Kant gives the moral arguments and not the theoretical arguments for the immortality of the soul: “. The highest good is a necessary object of the will. 2. Holiness, or complete fitness of intentions to the moral law, is a necessary condition of the highest good. 3. Holiness cannot be found in a sensuous rational being. It can be reached only in an endless progress and since holiness is required, such endless progress toward it is the true object of the will such progress can be endless only if the personality of the rational being endures endlessly. The highest good can be made real, therefore only on “the supposition of the immortality of the soul.

The problem that arises immediately is that it would go against the self-rewarding morality proposed by Kant if we are looking for unknown happiness in unknown world that too like a sort of compensation for the failure to achieve happiness within the natural lives. So in the second critique, Kant would argue that we need immortality not to achieve happiness not at all but rather in order to make “endless progress" toward the complete conformity of dispositions with the moral law,’ that is , toward virtue or worthiness to be happy.

Yet another proof given by Kant assumes the postulate of the existence of God. The postulates of God and immortality reckon the happiness in proportion to worthiness to be happy, ensuring that there is a power and a place for the fulfillment of this. As he says, ‘such a ruler together with life in such a world, which we must regard as a future world, reason finds itself constrained to assume; otherwise it would have to regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain, since without this postulate the necessary consequence which it itself connects with these laws could not follow.

Kant also makes it clear that the postulate of immortality is that which cannot be known but can only be thought. Kant also claims that his arguments for immortality do not furnish us with any theoretical dogma but only practical and objective truth that can give rise to action-motives, and, above all, sustain a moral agent in the moral disposition involved in making himself/herself worthy of the highest good.

4. Freedom

Though freedom is one of the postulates, Kant gives it a special place among them. It is freedom that is considered as logically possible and practically useful in the first Critique. The special status accorded to freedom can be very well read from the following verses from the Critique of Practical Reason: Freedom, however, among all the ideas of speculative reason, is the only possibility we know a priori. We do not understand it, but we know it as the condition of the moral law, which we do know. The ideas of God and immortality are, on the contrary, not conditions of the moral law, but only conditions of the necessary object of a will which is determined by this law, this will being morally the practical use of our pure reason. Kant says in the preface to the Critique of Practical Reason that the concept of freedom is “the keystone of the whole architecture of the system of pure reason and even speculative reason.”

Freedom in its positive conception should not be given a theoretical employment. The role of idea of freedoms and the intelligible world is, rather a practical one. It provides a conception of ourselves which motives us to obey the moral law. As freedom of will can’t be theoretically established, it is asserted only from the practical standpoint. It is impossible to give empirical or theoretical evidence for freedom. Kant says in the first critique that it is therefore moral law, of which we become immediately conscious can soon as we draw up maxims of the will of ourselves that offers itself to us and…lead directly to the concept of freedom.

In Groundwork, Kant’s attempt was to give a theoretical proof of the reality of our freedom but he was not successful and coming to Critique of Pure Reason he held that we could infer the reality of our freedom from consciousness by means of the principle that ‘ought implies can.’

Kant’s thought on freedom of the will can be seen to go through five phases. In his first position, he takes the stand that free human actions are those that have internal rather than external causes. As the second position, we have Kant stating that we cannot prove the existence of free human actions that are not dictated by deterministic laws of nature. This is explained in the Critique of Pure Reason. The third phase can be seen in Groundwork which was published in 1785, where he states that it is possible to prove the existence of human freedom and thereby also prove that moral law applies to us. In the fourth phase we see Kant stating that we can prove the freedom of our will form the indisputable fact of our religion. This can be seen in the Critique of Practical Reason that came out in 1788. As the final and fifth position in Religion (1793) Kant is no longer concerned with proving the existence of free will but rather showing that its existence simply implies the inescapable possibility of human evil but equally the concomitantly indestructible possibility of human conversions to goodness.

According to Kant, the ideas of God and immortality gain objective reality and legitimacy, and indeed, subjective necessity and freedom are given fundamental importance as it gives stability and objective reality to the ideas of God and immortality. As Kant states in Critique of Practical Reason: The concept of freedom, in so far as its reality is proved by an apodictic law of practical reason, is the keystone of the whole architecture of the system of pure reason and even of speculative reason. All other concepts (those of God and Immortality), which are mere ideas, are unsupported by anything in speculative reason now attach themselves to the concept of freedom and gain, with it and through it, stability and objective reality. That is their possibility is proved by the fact that there really is freedom, for this idea is revealed by moral law. Though freedom is given a special status, it does not mean that it is totally different from other postulates. As we are neither in a position to prove their reality by speculative reason nor to disprove them, presupposing all three postulates is a need of pure practical reason, which is based on duty to make the highest good the object of the will.

Conclusion

The postulates of God, Immortality and freedom are an attempt by Kant to limit the theoretical and extend the practical so as to make them stand together. Though Kant’s structure has strong foundation in rationality, this rationality alone could not be, used to give fullness and perfection to his theory and towards the end; he had to incorporate postulates to have relevance in the practical realm.

But analyzing the postulates from yet another perspective we become skeptical of the entire philosophic structure built on rationality and the postulates gives food for our thought us to whether it is a last-minute attempt by Kant to save the entire structure. Kant has drawn flak from many for the introduction of postulates. Following Hegel, Neiman holds that, “Kant’s postulates of reason [are] pitiful substitutes for the truth that it failed to establish.” Yet another problem arising from incorporating postulates is that postulates become meaningful only to a person who is moral and for a person who turns a blind eye towards it becomes impossible to objectively identify the reality of God, freedom and immortality. As Walsh writes, “If there were to be someone who was genuinely deaf to the call of moral obligation or totally indifferent to the question whether the world could be made better or not, he could not even understand what the proof was about. And Walsh would again say that when the postulates are taken of their practical context then they become little more than empty sounds. Many questions are raised with Kant attempt to ‘deny knowledge’ in order to make room for faith. Kant’s denial of theoretical knowledge to bring in the practical postulates does not satisfactorily formulate the intrinsic connection that Kant is trying to establish between morality and metaphysics.

The postulates, brought in to the critical philosophy not by virtue of their metaphysical existence and epistemological knowledge but by their transcendental (practical) reality are crucial for human life as it give a moral certitude by which we can respond to the demands of moral law.