Kant on moral character, immortality, and holiness as the limit of virtue: curing moral despair at the cost of moral anxiety

This paper has four main sections. In section one, I argue that Kant faces a trilemma being committed to the following three seemingly incompatible claims: (a) that we ought to be morally perfect (‘holy’), (b) that ought implies can, and (c) that we cannot be morally perfect. In section two, I explain how Kant’s account of the relationship between virtue and holiness is designed to address this trilemma. For Kant, someone with a virtuous disposition is striving to be perfect. Given human nature, however, we can cannot succeed in this endeavor in any finite period of time, so the most we can hope for is to asymptotically approach perfection. One key feature of this interpretation is that the ultimate moral status of one’s character has to do with the shape of the development of one’s character over time, rather than with one’s maxims at any particular moment. In section three I show how this account of the relationship between virtue and holiness lies behind Kant’s adoption of the position that morality requires that we believe in our own immortality as a postulate of practical reason. In the final section of the paper, I show how this interpretation commits Kant to a strong version of moral opacity—to the thesis that we cannot know our own moral character or the moral character of others and I argue that this impossibility of knowing one’s own moral character is a source of deep moral anxiety that is likely to deepen the more moral one becomes.