ABSTRACT
The Only Possible Ground was an impressive construction, building a seemingly strong edifice around ‘the most important of our cognitions’. But the edifice had weak foundations. Soon after the book’s publication, or even while it was being written, Kant began to dig holes into this edifice, undermining the possibility of a rational theology safeguarding faith. These attacks were developed in systematic way in the Prize essay Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (1762, published in 1764), the Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (1763) and his lectures on metaphysics in 1762–1764 (see Metaphysik Herder, Academy edition volume 28.1). Sharp criticisms of metaphysics, even vitriolic comments, were advanced in the “Essay on the Maladies of the Mind” (1764) and reached a climax in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766). At the same time, the moral theme rose to prominence, especially in the Prize essay and in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764), just as his anti-metaphysical attacks intensified. But these attacks were not meant to dismiss metaphysics altogether. They simply expressed a deep crisis concerning its possibility, while Kant’s craving for metaphysical certainty remained the major driving force of his thinking. Let us review the conflicting situation in which Kant found himself after The Only Possible Ground.
