HKB
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Often appears with: the nature and attributes of God · justice as a virtue · supreme being as cause · summum bonum · subjective vs objective necessity · pure rational faith · moral necessity of belief · moral necessity · harmony of happiness and morality · best possible world
Usually: argument (2) · detachment (1) · reverence (1)
He maintains that the realization of the summum bonum requires happiness proportioned to virtue, which demands a Supreme Being whose causality harmonizes nature with moral character, so belief in God is morally necessary.
V. The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason. In the foregoing analysis the moral law led to a practical problem which is prescribed by pure reason alone, without the aid of any sensible motives, namely, that of the necessary completeness of the first and principle element of the summum bonum, viz., morality; and, as this can be perfectly solved only in eternity, to the postulate of immortality. T…
Kant argues that assuming God’s existence is morally necessary for realizing the summum bonum, though this necessity is subjective desire, not a duty to make a theoretical claim.
possible only on condition of the existence of God, it inseparably connects the supposition of this with duty; that is, it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God. It must be remarked here that this moral necessity is subjective, that is, it is a want, and not objective, that is, itself a duty, for there cannot be a duty to suppose the existence of anything (since this concerns only the theoretical emplo…