About Christ, Morals and the Autonomy of PureReason

Abstract

This essay examines the empiric realizability of Kantian duty, departing from the analysis of human nature as opposed to the Kantian notion of duty. Such opposition would result in duty's possibility and effectivity to drive the be-in-the world and make man worthy of happiness or in duty’s impossibility in reality and therefore prescriptive ineffectiveness. The demonstration implies a particular difficulty, since human motivations alwaysremain hidden, making it impossible to determine if an action has been done for duty or just according to duty. It'sthen necessary to have evidence of a for-duty action in experience. In thistext then, the submission ofJesus Christ toGod’sWill inGetsemani it’s proposed and examined as an instance of a forduty action and, in appreciation of the various arguments found in conjunction with Christian soteriology, it indicates that Getsemani constitutes not only a single instance of a for-duty action in reality, but also becomes the condition of possibility of all for-duty actionsin human experience, having as an instrument not the Pure Reason, but the human Spirit.