From Gratification to Justice. The Tension between Anthropology and Pure Practical Reason in Kant's Conception(s) of the Highest Good

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that there is a tension between anthropological and solely 'pure' rational elements in Kant's conceptions of the 'highest good.' Whereas 'happiness' serves in the second Critique still as a humanly conceptualized form of gratification commensurate to virtue, Kant is searching for a purely moral form of 'happiness'-as the objectification of virtue-in his later works. Distancing himself from certain aspects of the postulates, Kant locates this purely moral form in the concept of a (basically punitive) justice. According to the main idea of this paper, moral justice is not exclusively or not even in the first instance an 'all-too-human' concept but a demand of pure, divine practical reason itself.