The Highest Good: Virtue, Happiness, and the Kingdom of God

Abstract

In order to understanding the highest good we need to sketch the various interrelated roles it plays in Kant and Kierkegaard. For both, the highest good represents the final end of life as a whole and is something that gives meaning to life since the human vocation consists in realizing the highest good. The highest good represents the final overcoming of moral evil and the unification of virtue and happiness, morality and prudence, in which priority is given to morality so that virtue leads to happiness. Finally, the highest good involves unifying all moral agents in an ethical commonwealth or a kingdom of God. In short, the highest good represents the full realization of morality and the unification of nature and freedom (spirit).¹ For Kierkegaard, it represents the full realization of ethical principles (ideality) in reality and an overcoming of the conflict between the different elements of the synthesis structure (necessity and freedom, finitude and infinitude, and so on).