POSTULATE

In the Antinomy of Pure Reason, Kant discusses a "logical postulate of reason...[which] is analytic and has nothing to fear from a transcendental criticism". This postulate seems to be the major premiss of the antinomy of pure reason, namely the (regressive) claim "If the conditioned is given, the entire series of all its conditions is likewise given". [A633/B661] Later in the Dialectic, Kant distinguishes postulating something's existence and assuming it, and argues that in practical reason existence [of God] is postulated and not assumed. "...Since there are practical laws which are absolutely necessary, that is, the moral laws, it must follow that if these necessarily presuppose the existence of any being as the condition of the possibility of their obligatory power, this existence must be postulated". Here Kant asserts that through practical reason we are justified in postulating the existence of God, "though, indeed, only from a practical point of view".