Kant and Crusius on the Role of Immortality in Morality

The paper focuses on an important but overlooked aspect of Crusius’s influence on Kant, namely his deployment of ‘moral proofs’ of immortality. Crusius (like Meier) sought an alternative to what he regarded as the defective Wolffian theoretical demonstrations of the soul’s survival of the body’s death through the moral properties of rational spirits (such as their conscience) as well as through the necessity of eternal reward and punishment for moral action, though Crusius likewise stressed, in a clear anticipation of Kant, that the resulting confidence in immortality does not replace but only complements the power of the moral law to motivate our actions.