Morality as the Destiny of Human Being in the Philosophy of Kant and in the Age of German Enlightenment

Abstract

The paper concerns the issue of destination of human being and humanity in the philosophy of Kant and in the philosophy of German Enlightenment in general. In the philosophy of Kant the problem of destination of man runs throughout all his main writings from the pre-critical writings until the later work Religionsschrift. Kant pointed out that a human is a unique kind of being because of freedom of will, which allows for the moral dimension. It is this capacity of morality that becomes a bridge to religion. Very close to this point of view was J.J. Spalding, whose writing “The Destiny of Man” opened the discussion of the issue of man’s destination. Similar ideas, though differently expressed, we find in the works of Christian Wolff, that although morality does not depend on the will of God and thus can be derived from the nature of man and the world, the highest and most genuine degree of virtue, possible for a human being, inevitably leads to faith in God. It can be concluded that in these aspects of his philosophy Kant reflected the trend and features which were characteristic for the Age of German Enlightenment both Late as well as Early.