Guilherme de Oliveira Freitas

This research investigates the concept of God in Kant's three Critiques, aiming to understand its different functions and the limits attributed to it in each work. We start with the Critique of Pure Reason, analyzing the Ideal of Pure Reason and the section “Opinion, Knowledge, and Belief,” to show how the idea of God, initially linked to the requirement of complete determination and endowed with adjectives such as ens originarium, ens summum, and ens entium, is shifted from the sphere of theoretical judgment to uses that anticipate the postulates of morality and teleological judgment. Next, we examine the Critique of Practical Reason, focusing on the formulation of postulates and the requirement of practical assent to the existence of God as a solution to moral antinomy. Finally, in the Critique of Judgment, we analyze the moral proof of God's existence and its relationship to reflective judgment, which, we argue, already has roots in the first Critique. We argue, in a dialogue with Kant and Lebrun's end of metaphysics, that the idea of God, devoid of ontological content, acquires positive meaning only in its practical use, and that there is, in this sense, no rupture.