The Kantian Puzzle

This chapter begins by examining the emergence of Kant’s conception of the highest good in his pre-critical engagement with Stoicism and Epicureanism. His critiques of these schools and concomitant endorsement of Christianity anticipate both his later notion of heteronomy and an enduring commitment to the constitutive inadequacy of the human or finite will. The chapter then turns to explaining the nature of Kantian theodicy as an attempt, undertaken solely from the perspective of the autonomous subject, to show that and not just how rational criteria are instantiated. Since the content of Kantian theodicy is the idea of the highest good, we need to understand both why Kant thinks we need to hope for its realisation and the nature of this need, especially given his contention that the very reality of the moral law depends upon the possibility of the highest good. Seeing how the need for the highest good arises from the condition of finite autonomous beings allows us to understand the existential motivation behind Kantian theodicy. But it also alow us to identify a first path opened up, but not taken, by Kant towards rendering the content and possibility of autonomy dependent on the actual conditions of its development and exercise.