HKB
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Often appears with: justice as a virtue · the nature and attributes of God · the fear of death · fate, destiny, and necessity · summum bonum possibility · problem of evil · moral law determining concept of god · limits of speculative knowledge · infinite moral progress · immortality of the soul · immortality · holiness of will
Usually: argument (3) · detachment (3) · wonder (1)
“These postulates are not theoretical dogmas but, suppositions practically necessary; while then they do [not] extend our speculative knowledge, they give objective reality to the ideas of speculative reason in general (by means of their reference to what is practical), and give it a right to concepts, the possibility even of which it could not otherwise venture to affirm.” Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason · insight
Kant argues that perfect accordance with the moral law requires an infinite progress of moral perfection, which in turn depends on the immortality of the soul as a postulate of pure practical reason.
a postulate of pure practical reason (by which I mean a theoretical proposition, not demonstrable as such, but which is an inseparable result of an unconditional a priori practical law. This principle of the moral destination of our nature, namely, that it is only in an endless progress that we can attain perfect accordance with the moral law, is of the greatest use, not merely for the present purpose of supplementi…
Kant introduces postulates of practical reason—immortality, freedom, and God—claiming they are practically necessary conditions for fulfilling the moral law, extending reason’s ideas without giving speculative knowledge.
{BOOK*2|CHAPTER*2 ^paragraph 60} They all proceed from the principle of morality, which is not a postulate but a law, by which reason determines the will directly, which will, because it is so determined as a pure will, requires these necessary conditions of obedience to its precept. These postulates are not theoretical dogmas but, suppositions practically necessary; while then they do [not] extend our speculative k…
Kant claims the moral law determines God’s attributes as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, something speculative reason could not achieve, and he sketches how early Greek philosophers first sought one rational cause but were held back by world evils.
{BOOK*2|CHAPTER*2 ^paragraph 80} When I now try to test this conception by reference to the object of practical reason, I find that the moral principle admits as possible only the conception of an Author of the world possessed of the highest perfection. He must be omniscient, in order to know my conduct up to the inmost root of my mental state in all possible cases and into all future time; omnipotent, in order to a…