Metaphysics lectures of Prof Kant written in the years 1784 and 85 by I. W. Volckmann

[Rational psychology]

wanted to annihilate. However, both presuppose this: that we have a soul, therefore one could insert another idea here, namely: that we have no soul at all, and yet will live after death, this idea considers life only as property of the body, and so even the materialist can hope for a future life. In England, Priestley maintained this. One cannot demonstrate, however, the complete impossibility of the transitoriness of the soul, but rather only the impossibility of its passing away like a body. With this there is to prove (1) its perdurability, i.e., the survival of the substance, (2) its survival as intelligence, i.e., of a being whose faculty of reason and its acts <actus> also survive, (3) the actual survival of the personality of the human soul, that after death it be conscious of itself that it was the same soul, for otherwise I could not say that it itself exists in the future world, but rather that there would be another rational being there. – One can infer the immortality of the soul either from empirical or pure rational psychology, from the empirical one would have to do it in this manner: that from the experiences which we have of the soul, its survival followed; but this is not feasible, for from all perceptions of it in interaction <commercio> with the body we cannot infer how it would be constituted outside the interaction <commercio> with the body we would then have to have a faculty for positing our soul outside the interaction <commercio> with the body, or we would have to observe other souls (e.g., if there were ghosts), neither of which is feasible.