Abstract

Kant begins his own metaphysical ‘dream of a spiritual visionary’ by remarking that the conception of ‘spirit’ is not a difficult one to form, since it is ‘merely negative’, consisting in the denial of the properties of material existence. Though nature may ultimately be determined by spiritual forces, science cannot be concerned with them. ‘The morality of an action concerns the inner state of the spirit’, Kant writes; and the consequences of such spiritual actions only become fully apparent in the ‘immediate communion of spirits’. Metaphysics is confined to an analytic role, resolving concepts into their fundamental elements. It cannot provide knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality. Moral concepts are now said to be ‘cognised not by experiencing them but through the pure intellect itself’; and the first principles of moral judgment, as of metaphysical knowledge, are known only through the pure intellect, and must be added to experience by the intellect.