History and Morality: The Moral Structure of the World

Abstract

In the second Critique, Kant puts forward a thought-experiment in order to discuss our striving for the highest good, a moral world in which moral virtue leads to happiness. Kant asks what would be the result of possessing insight [Erleuchtung] into the relation between happiness and virtue. He gives the following answer:

[T]he inclinations, which always have the first word, would first demand their satisfaction, and combined with reasonable reflection, their greatest possible and most lasting satisfaction under the name of happiness; the moral law would afterward speak, in order to keep them within their proper limits and even to subject them all to a higher end which has no regard to inclination. But instead of the conflict that the moral disposition now has to carry on with the inclinations … God and eternity with their awful majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes .…Transgression of the law would, no doubt, be avoided: what is commanded would be done; but because the disposition from which actions ought to be done cannot be instilled by any command, and because the spur to activity in this case would be promptly at hand and external, reason would have no need to work itself up so as to gather strength to resist the inclinations.¹