A vital problem. Unamuno, Life 1.7
What is our personal destiny? What happens when I die? You can hear this passage <here>.
Kant reconstruyó con el corazón lo que con la cabeza había abatido. Y es que sabemos, por testimonio de los que le conocieron y por testimonio propio, en sus cartas y manifestaciones privadas, que el hombre Kant, el solterón—un sí es, no es egoísta—que profesó filosofía en Koenigsberg a fines del siglo de la Enciclopedia y de la diosa Razón, era un hombre muy preocupado del problema. Quiero decir del único verdadero problema vital, del que más a las entrañas nos llega, del problema de nuestro destino individual y personal, de la inmortalidad del alma. El hombre Kant no se resignaba a morir del todo. Y porque no se resignaba a morir del todo, dio el salto aquel, el salto inmortal de una a otra crítica.
Quien lea con atención y sin anteojeras la Crítica de la razón práctica, verá que, en rigor, se deduce en ella la existencia de Dios de la inmortalidad del alma, y no esta de aquella. El imperativo categórico nos lleva a un postulado moral que exige a su vez, en el orden teológico, o más bien escatológico, la inmortalidad del alma, y para sustentar esta inmortalidad aparece Dios. Todo lo demás es escamoteo de profesional de la filosofía.
Kant rebuilt with his heart that which his head had destroyed. From the witness of his friends and his own writings, especially the letters and essays he wrote for a private audience, we know that Kant the man—a bachelor of the sort that expresses unique selfishness and unselfishness—was very preoccupied with the problem of his age, as he professed philosophy in Koenigsberg at the end of the century of the Encyclopedia and the goddess Reason. His problem was the only really vital problem that exists, penetrating deeper into our bowels than any other: our individual and personal destiny, the immortality of the soul. Kant the man was not resigned to dying absolutely. And because of that, because of his unwillingness to relinquish existence with death, he made a leap—the immortal leap from one critique to another.
Anyone who reads the Critique of Practical Reason carefully, without preconceptions, will see that God is deduced there from the immortality of the soul, and not the other way round. The categorical imperative leads us to a moral postulate, which demands in turn an order whose theological or eschatological expression requires the immortality of the soul, which God appears at last to sustain. Everything else in the book is mumbo-jumbo typical of the professional philosopher.