Kant's idea of the immortality of the soul within the German debate of the time

The talk focuses on the role of the proofs of the immortality of the soul in Kant's philosophy, from the writings of the so called pre-critical period to the rethinking of such a metaphysical issue in the first Critique. Kant's attempt to find his own way in dealing with the immortality of the soul is considered within the general frame of the struggle against psychological materialism, which takes place in Germany from the first decades of the 18^th century. Kant's refutation of the material soul - still meant, at the beginning, as the very premise of any proof of its immortality - offers a good perspective on the development of Kant's reflection on rational psychology from an early general accordance with the main topics of the traditional metaphysic up to the their definitive dismissal on the basis of the transcendental idealism of the first Critique. His lectures on metaphysics allow to follow the different solutions Kant worked out in order to solve this central philosophical topic. The shift from the "obscure reasons" pointed out in the Dreams, that allow a refutation of the materiality of the soul on moral grounds, to the statement of the meaninglessness of the question in a transcendental perspective reveals that the attempt to find a solution to the problem of immortality outside the traditional boundaries of metaphysics represents a never-ending challenge within Kant's reflection.