Kant's ethical thought is self-consciously addressed to the historical needs of an age of enlightenment. Kant views the human race – even (or especially) its most cultivated part – as confronted by crucial questions imposed on it by the natural teleology of human history and the stage in that history which it has reached.

The human species, beset collectively by an innate propensity to evil, finds itself still in the historical epoch of nature. It has long since become “civilized” and therefore finds itself sunk in a condition of social antagonism, misery, inequality, war, and injustice. Yet it also finds itself at the beginning of a new epoch of freedom, struggling to “moralize” itself by combating its evil propensity and discipline the wills of individuals to follow the rational law of autonomy. In individuals, the enemies of morality are passion and self-conceit, the obstacles to moralization are fear, intellectual indolence, and the deadly comfort of deference to authority. In societies, the obstacles to progress are inequality and injustice, the external unfreedom of political tyranny, and the inner unfreedom of traditional superstitions. In Kant's view, the indispensable condition for the historical struggle for good is freedom of thought and communication. But the most powerful historical force for good is an enlightened religious community. Our task in this chapter will be to look at Kant's ethical thought from the perspective of its historical selfconception.