“G. F.

Meier and Kant on the Belief in the Immortality of the Soul”

Corey W. Dyck (University of Western Ontario)

It is widely acknowledged that Georg Friedrich Meier (1718-1777) exercised an important influence
on Kant’s views on logic. As is well known, Meier’s textbooks on logic, either the full Vernunftlehre
[Doctrine of Reason] of 1752 or the much-truncated Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre [Excerpt from the Doctrine
of Reason] of the same year, were the basis for Kant’s lectures on the topic consistently from 1755
through to 1796. Of course, Kant no more took Meier’s word for matters pertaining to the laws of
thought than he took Baumgarten’s for matters concerning metaphysics, though scholars have
recently argued that, in addition to retaining the form of Meier’s presentation, Kant can also be seen
to take over important themes from Meier’s logic.1 However, while Meier’s logic texts are perhaps
the ones most familiar to Kant scholars, they do not by any means exhaust his scholarly output. So,
a biography of Meier, published just after his death, lists at least 70 works published in his lifetime,2
where these vary in length from short treatises to multi-volume works, and cover an incredibly
diverse range of philosophical topics, including metaphysics, ethics, theology, and aesthetics, among
others.3 And while a not-inconsiderable portion of Meier’s corpus is devoted to disseminating and
developing the thought of his revered teacher, Alexander Baumgarten, including a German
translation of the Metaphysica, his own four-volume Metaphysik (1755-7), the three-volume
Anfangsgründe aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften [First Principles of all Fine Arts and Sciences] (1748),
and the five-volume Philosophische Sittenlehre [Philosophical Doctrine of Ethics] (1753-61), to understand
Meier simply as Baumgarten’s disciple does not do justice to his frequent and striking originality,
even if it can often only be fully appreciated when viewed through the lens of Baumgarten’s system.
Yet, just as our understanding of Meier’s thought should not be limited to his contributions
to logic, so we should be wary of limiting our appreciation of Meier’s importance for Kant to the

1 This is for instance a major theme of the work by Riccardo Pozzo; see Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung in die Logik:
Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion der historischen Hintergründe von Kants Logik-Kolleg (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1989), and
“Prejudices and Horizons: G. F. Meier's Vernunftlehre and its Relation to Kant.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.2
(2005): 185-202.
2 Samuel Lange, Leben Georg Friedrich Meiers, (Halle, 1778), 109-56.
3 There is, moreover, quite a range in the quality and tone of Meier’s texts, including philosophical treatments of

otherwise unserious topics, such as the Gedanken vom Scherzen [Thoughts on Joking] (1744) as well as unserious treatments of
what some regarded as philosophical topics, such as the Gründliche Anweisung, wie jemand ein neumodischer Weltweiser werden
könne [Rigorous Instruction on how one can become a Philosopher after the Current Fashion](1745) and the Gedanken von Gespenstern
[Thoughts on Ghosts](1748).
 2

texts Kant made use of in his lectures.4 In fact, there is reason to think that there is a more profound
philosophical continuity between Meier and Kant, albeit one that only becomes evident once we
expand the context of their comparison to include metaphysics and their respective discussions of
the immortality of the soul in particular. As I hope to show, a consideration of Meier’s treatises on
rational psychology reveals a perspective on the basis for our certainty of the soul’s immortality that
not only serves to distinguish his views within the broader Wolffian tradition, but that also
constitutes a clear anticipation of Kant’s own distinctive claim that the immortality of the soul is
(merely) an object of a moral belief. By way of illustrating this, I will begin with a consideration of
Meier’s critical discussion of Wolffian proofs for the immortality of the soul, the goal of which is to
show that knowledge of the soul’s survival of the death of the body and of its state in the afterlife is
unavailable. I will then turn to Meier’s positive account of our confidence in the soul’s immortality
which, according to him, is grounded primarily in the important role played by that truth as a spur to
virtuous action. Finally, I will consider whether this complex attitude towards the immortality of the
soul can be accommodated within Meier’s account of the modes of assent in his texts on logic, and I
will conclude that in fact it is best captured by Kant’s own notion of moral belief, and accordingly
that Meier’s treatment of immortality represents an important and widely overlooked anticipation of
the famous Kantian doctrine.

1. Meier’s Critique of Demonstrative Proofs of the Soul’s Immortality

Meier’s contributions to rational psychology come at the peak of a period of intense interest
among Wolffian rational psychologists in proofs for the immortality of the soul. Unsurprisingly,
Wolff himself largely set the terms of the discussion through his initial treatment of the topic in his
Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt [Rational
Thoughts on God, the World, and the Soul of Man, as well as all Things in General], or the German Metaphysics
of 1720, with a more detailed exposition following in his later Psychologia rationalis of 1734.
Significantly, Wolff understands the immortality of the soul as involving not only the incorruptibility
of the soul but also its retention of its capacity for distinct perception and its personality after death.5

4 It bears noting that upon Meier’s death in 1777, Kant (among others) was offered the chair in philosophy in Halle that
Meier had held. The Prussian minister of education who worked to recruit Kant, Baron von Zedlitz (also the dedicatee
of the KrV), had previously been an auditor in Meier’s classes and remained a close acquaintance after (see Leben, 92).
55 Vernünfftige Gedancken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (Halle: 1751), reprinted, with

introduction and notes by Charles A. Corr, in Christian Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, Pt. 1, Deutsche Schriften, Vol. 2
(Hildesheim: Olms, 1983); §926.
 3

These latter two elements are emphasized by Wolff, against the allegedly Cartesian conception of the
soul’s immortality merely in terms of its incorruptibility, as required in order to ward off the specter
of the soul persisting in a state of obscure perception, forgetful of its own identity after death, which
state would be inconsistent with God’s wisdom and justice.6 According to Wolff, the soul will
survive the death of the body since it is immaterial and simple and thus incorruptible,7 and he argues
that we can be certain that it will also preserve its state of distinct perception and personality in the
afterlife given that, on the one hand, the soul’s perceptions tend to be improved as a consequence of
such great changes (as is evidenced in birth8) and, on the other hand, that its continued possession
of the faculty of imagination means that perceptions had in the afterlife will spur the reproduction of
similar perceptions and our recollection that we have had them previously.9
Wolff’s definition and demonstration of the soul’s immortality provided the inspiration for a
number of treatises, beginning with a dissertation on the topic by his student Ludwig Philipp
Thümmig, whom Wolff credits with improving his own understanding of the matter.10 Among the
most detailed Wolffian treatments were Philosophische Gedanken über die vernünfftige Seele und derselben
Unsterblichkeit [Philosophical Thoughts on the Rational Soul and its Immortality] (Berlin 1739) by Johann
Gustav Reinbeck, and Überzeugender Beweiß aus der Vernunft von der Unsterblichkeit [A Convincing Proof of
Immortality through Reason] (Tübingen 1744) by Israel Gottlieb Canz. Reinbeck, who departs from
Wolff in taking immortality narrowly in terms of the soul’s inability to lose its life, or capacity for
distinct and universal concepts, in accordance with its essence and nature,11 offers the following
condensed proof of this conclusion:

1) the rational soul [is] a simple, indivisible thing, completely distinct from matter and consequently is
incorruptible and indestructible in itself and constantly retains its actuality
2) the rational soul, because it is a simple thing and constantly retains its actuality, will never be deprived of its
being
3) the being of a rational soul consists in such a representative power as is capable of framing not only clear but
also distinct and universal concepts.12

Canz adopts a rather different strategy in his text: while the first part of his treatment seeks to
buttress and augment the familiar Wolffian arguments for the soul’s immortality through a

6 Psychologia rationalis §739-40.

7 German Metaphysics §§742, 921.
8 German Metaphysics §925.
9 Psychologia rationalis §746.
10 Thümmig’s dissertation was published in 1737 as Demonstratio immortalitatis animae ex intima eius natura deducta (Marburg).

See DM §925 for Wolff’s mention of Thümmig

11 Gedanken §XIX.
12 Gedanken §LXXXVI.
 4

consideration of the nature of the soul itself,13 the second part is devoted to demonstrating that
there are no external hindrances to the soul’s immortality, particularly with respect to God’s will.
Accordingly, Canz seeks to prove that God would not will the annihilation of the soul, that it is
God’s intention that the soul should remain a spirit (a being endowed with higher faculties) after
death, and that God resolved that the soul should be conscious of its continued identity.14
Meier takes up a uniquely critical position in the history of Wolffian treatments of
immortality, though this would hardly be expected given his earliest publications on rational
psychology—the Beweiß daß keine Materie denken könne [Proof that Matter cannot Think] of 1742,15 where
Meier crafts a novel argument in defense of the soul’s simplicity,16 and his Beweiß der vorherbestimmten
Übereinstimmung [Proof of the Pre-Established Harmony] of the same year, where Meier sets out to prove
“that the particular psychological pre-established harmony must necessarily be accepted.”17
However, with his highly original Gedancken von dem Zustande der Seele nach dem Tode [Thoughts on the
State of the Soul after Death] of 1746, Meier’s thoughts take a rather more negative turn as he
characterizes his aim as that of providing a “critique [Critik] of the rational proofs of the immortality
of the soul,”18 and indeed specifically takes issue with Reinbeck’s and Canz’s presentations. Taking
the soul’s immortality more-or-less along traditional Wolffian lines, Meier allows that it is not only
important to demonstrate that the soul will continue to live after the death of the body, but also that
it preserves its higher intellectual capacities in the afterlife, including its capacity for clear, or
conscious, representations and its personality.19 With respect to all of these topics, however, Meier
denies that any strict, or mathematical, certainty is possible on the grounds that it would require an
insight into God’s resolutions (Rathschlüsse) that is unavailable to limited beings like us. While this
point would seem to apply principally to Canz’s attempted proofs, Meier contends that proofs that
proceed from the soul’s (internal) essence and nature (such as Reinbeck’s) are likewise implicated
inasmuch as its status as a contingent, finite being imply that its non-existence is possible, which
possibility is entirely consistent with its annihilation at the hands of God at the time of the death of

13 Überzeugender Beweiß §105.

14 Überzeugender Beweiß §107.
15 On the dating of this text, see Lange (Leben 115) and Paola Rumore, “Georg Friedrich Meiers Theorie der

Unsterblichkeit der Seele im zeitgenössischen Kontext,” in Georg Friedrich Meier (1718-1777), G. Stiening and F. Grunert
eds. (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2015), 163-186; 169n23.
16 Beweiß daß keine Materie, 2nd edn. (Halle: Hemmerde, 1751); §38 (64-67). (Works by Meier are cited by section with page

numbers in parentheses.)
17 See Beweiß der vorherbestimmten Übereinstimmung, §71 (122). On Wolff’s defense of the “hypothesis” of the pre-established

harmong, see my Kant and Rational Psychology, 34-6.

18 Gedancken §2 (6).
19 Gedancken §23 (48-50).
 5

the body.20 To be successful, then, such proofs are ultimately required to demonstrate “that the soul
will also never be annihilated and that God has chosen for it to endure eternally.”21
Accordingly, Meier proceeds to consider whether it is possible to know that God would not
annihilate the soul inasmuch as the soul’s continued existence can be known to be part of the best of
all possible worlds:

He who would demonstrate that God has resolved or not resolved to do something must demonstrate
philosophically that the object of this resolution either would be possible in the best world and so would
belong to the same, or would be impossible in it. 22

Such a demonstration, Meier continues, could proceed either on the basis of experience or on the
basis of reason. With respect to the former, Meier allows that experience permits us to be
“unfailingly certain [untrüglich gewiss]” that something that we cognize as actual, including our soul in
its present state, does in fact belong to the best possible world (inasmuch as the actual world is the
best possible), but our cognition is here limited to things of present and past experience and so such
a demonstration is “inapplicable to the question of the immortality of the soul” which obviously
concerns its future existence.23 An attempt to demonstrate that the soul’s immortality belongs to the
best possible world a priori similarly fails, according to Meier, since this would require that we
possess a concept of “the entire network of the best world” such that we could determine that the
soul belongs to it.24 Such a comprehensive understanding is beyond our limited powers, however, as
we can only be confident in the “general proposition” that “everything will later be brought to
actuality without which this world would not be the best,”25 but cannot determine whether any
particular occurrence, such as the soul’s survival of the death of the body, is a part of that world or
not. Nor can appeal to God’s nature, such as His goodness, wisdom, or justice, supply a basis for
mathematical certainty on this score, as Meier denies that we can know in advance of some event
occurring that it accords, for instance, with God’s goodness,26 and so “that the eternal life of the
soul is something demanded by these attributes, is not a claim that can attain to complete
certainty.”27 Given all this, Meier concludes, rather strikingly, that far from being certain that the

20 Gedancken §28 (57).

21 See Gedancken §39 (80-1), where Meier explicitly discusses Reinbeck in connection with this point.
22 Gedancken §35 (70).
23 Gedancken §35 (70-1).
24 Gedancken §35 (71).
25 Gedancken §37 (71).
26 See Gedancken §89 (182).
27 Gedancken §87 (177).
 6

soul will survive the death of the body, we are in fact “mathematically certain that the soul can die”28
which is to say that considered in itself it is mortal.29
Meier makes a similar case with respect to the other two requirements for the immortality of
the soul, namely, the preservation of our capacities for conscious representations and for the
recognition of our identity. Generally, the fact that we cannot be certain that the soul will survive the
death of the body already implies that anything that can be said regarding the state of the soul after
death is likewise uncertain (since the former is presupposed in any talk of the latter).30 Nonetheless,
Meier thinks that doubts about the soul’s preservation of these higher capacities can be raised even
assuming the continued life of the soul. Concerning the retention of its faculty for conscious
representation, Meier disputes the impossibility of the soul falling into a state of merely unconscious
representations in the afterlife, claiming that any “greater physical [i.e., natural] perfection of the soul
is a future contingent matter, which rests on the decision of God” to preserve and improve the
soul’s capacities.31 It is, accordingly, entirely possible that God should choose to withhold this
natural perfection from the soul and so it cannot be demonstrated that the soul will not “be
shrouded for eternity in sheer obscurity and darkness.”32 With respect to the soul’s retention of its
personality, Meier targets the Wolffian demonstration, contending that, even under the
presupposition that the soul has conscious states in the afterlife such that it can recognize them as
similar to past states, it still cannot be demonstrated that God must decide to preserve the soul’s
memory of its past or that God would not “revoke” the associative law that governs the operation
of imagination after the death of the body.33
As might be expected, Meier’s treatment proved rather controversial, with a number of
reviews and responses on the part of critics34 prompting Meier to pen a detailed reply, the
Vertheidigung seiner Gedancken vom Zustande der Seele nach dem Tode [Defense of his Thoughts on the State of the
Soul after Death] published in 1748. What is most important for our purposes, however, is that

28 Gedancken §33 (66); my emphasis.

29 Gedancken §28 (57-8).
30 Gedancken §45 (91).
31 Gedancken §57 (126). See also §60 (131).
32 Gedancken §60 (131). Meier also takes issue specifically with the Wolffian comparison of birth to death as “great

changes” involving the soul, claiming that even admitting their similarity, it does not follow that after the death of the
body the same circumstances (within and outside of the soul) required for clear representations would be present: “Now
one can show infallibly that just as the soul changes in an extraordinary way through birth, so in death it will experience
an exceedingly great change. But we can infer nothing further than this with certainty because we cannot know securely
whether the grounds for a greater perfection of the soul arise in death in the same way in which they are brought about
in birth” (Gedancken §59 [129-30]).
33 Gedancken §64 (143).
34 For some of the reaction to Meier’s text, see Rumore, “Meiers Theorie,” 179-83.
 7

Meier’s critical attitude in the Gedancken35 towards the possibility of any mathematical certainty
concerning the soul’s immortality unmistakably foreshadows Kant’s own critical posture with
respect to the whole of rational psychology in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason.36 Indeed, one
particularly clear point of overlap concerns a consequence Meier draws from the foregoing regarding
the relevance of settling whether the soul is simple or composite for demonstrating its immortality.
As Meier argues, since the soul’s immortality ultimately depends upon God’s choice to preserve the
soul after the body’s death, and because God could just as well choose to preserve a composite as
He could a simple substance, it follows that the affirmation or denial of the soul’s simple nature is
utterly irrelevant to the issue of its immortality. Meier asserts this rather pointedly in his original
Beweiß, daß keine Materie denken könne:

We will join ourselves to that party which holds the soul for a simple thing and which denies matter any
capacity for thought. Yet, we are also of the conviction that this entire investigation, while it is uncommonly
difficult, has little use [Nutzen].37

Of course, this same contention would later be echoed by Kant who focuses his attention in the
Second Paralogism on the alleged usefulness of the claim of the soul’s simplicity for the rational
psychologist’s inference to its natural immortality; thus, Kant claims there that “not the least use
[Gebrauch] of this proposition [i.e., of simplicity] can be made in respect of its dissimilarity to or
affinity with matter” such that the soul’s natural immortality would follow (A357).38

2. Meier on the Moral Certainty of Immortality

The potential significance of Meier’s discussion for Kant’s does not end with his negative
case concerning our claim to know that the soul is immortal. Crucially, Meier goes on to contend

35 Meier would proceed to publish a further text, the Beweiß, daß die menschliche Seele ewig lebt [Proof that the Human Soul lives
Eternally] in 1751, which purported to offer a new demonstrative proof of the soul’s eternal life (for a convenient if
sceptical summary, see Henning’s Geschichte von den Seelen der Menschen, 415-19, as well as F. Tomasoni, “Mendelssohn’s
Concept of the Human Soul in Comparison with those of Meier and Kant,” in Reinier Munk (ed.), Moses Mendelssohn’s
Metaphysics and Aesthetics [Dordrecht: Springer, 2011], 131-57; 143-4). However, according to Meier’s own report, some
regarded his new proof as deliberately weak and unconvincing (see Meier’s Vorrede to the second edition of Beweiß
[1754]). In any case, Meier evidently continued to value his original presentation in the Gedancken, as he refers the reader
to the earlier (as well as the later) text in his treatment of immortality in the Metaphysik, Dritter Theil (Die Psychologie),
§786; second edition (Halle 1765).
36 This similarity has also been noted by Tomasoni; see “Mendelssohn’s Concept,” 145.
37 Beweiß, daß keine Materie, §5.
38 Another, albeit less striking point of contact concerning the issue of immortality in particular is found in the

discussion contained in the Metaphysik Herder, which is the earliest of the sets of student notes on Kant’s metaphysics
lectures. There, Kant appears to follow Meier’s presentation in progressively ruling out proofs for immortality founded
on God’s wisdom and justice (Cf. 28:109-11 and compare Gedancken §89-90), and obviously Kant’s early conclusion
regarding immortality, namely that there is nothing persuasive regarding it (cf. MH 28:107), echoes that of Meier.
 8

that our lack of knowledge of the soul’s immortality does not imply that there is no rational basis for
assenting to the soul’s immortality or even that there is no sense in which we can be certain that the
soul survives the death of the body; as he emphasizes, while he takes the immortality of the soul to
be mathematically “uncertain” this is not to say that he “denies and rejects it” as such.39 Instead, he
argues that in spite of lacking a strict demonstration of the soul’s immortality there are other
grounds on the basis of which we are warranted in holding it:

to the contrary we recognize so many and important probable grounds for the opposite through the light of
reason to be necessary and sufficient such that any rational being is determined to hold it for true [für wahr halte]
that God has chosen the unceasing life of the soul.40

Naturally, the authority of Scripture and revelation in general is foremost among the grounds that
Meier cites: “as concerns the immortality of the soul, Scripture supplements the deficiency of reason,
advances beyond where reason stops, and provides a needed light for us where reason leaves us in a
pernicious darkness.” 41 Indeed, Meier’s reliance on the authority of revelation when it comes to our
certainty of the soul’s immortality is consistent with his pessimism regarding reason in theological
matters,42 a fact that has led some to compare his views to those of Bayle, a comparison that Meier
for his part discouraged.43 And while Meier sometimes goes as far as to contend that “human reason
could not be completely convinced of the immortality of the soul without revelation,”44 he also
draws attention to the limits of revelation and, consequently, the need for rational grounds for our
certainty of immortality. In his Vertheidigung, for instance, he notes rather flatly that any attempt to
demonstrate the soul’s immortality on the basis of Scripture could hardly prove compelling for those
who “do not acknowledge the holy Scripture.”45
For this reason, Meier contends, we need to consider the possibility of independently
sufficient rational grounds in favour of the soul’s survival of death that provide the basis for a moral
(as opposed to demonstrative or mathematical) certainty of our immortality. As a matter of fact, he
takes such grounds to be available: “I submit moreover that this doctrine can be proven from reason

39 Vernunftlehre §197 (266).

40 Gedancken §34 (69).
41 Gedancken §8 (20). See also Gedancken §4 (8-9) and Verth. §43 (74).
42 See Leonard P. Wessell, Jr., “G. F. Meier and the Genesis of Philosophical Theodicies of History in 18 th-Century

Germany,” in Lessing Yearbook XII (1981), 63-84; especially 74-6; and Günter Gawlick, “G.F. Meiers Stellung in der
Religionsphilosophie der deutschen Aufklärung” in Zentren der Aufklärung I: Halle, Aufklärung und Pietismus, ed. N. Hinske,
Heidelberg, Verlag Lambert Schneider: 1989, 157-76; see especially 170.
43 For the (not unjustified) comparison with Bayle, see Tomasoni, “Mendelssohn’s Concept,” 138, and for Meier’s

denunciations of Bayle, see Gedancken §5 (13), §8 (19), §10 (23).

44 Vertheidigung, §2 (10).
45 Vertheidigung §3 (12).
 9

with the highest probability, indeed with a moral certainty,”46 and later in the Vertheidigung, he lays
out what is required in order to prove the soul’s immortality with moral certainty:

If I know only grounds in favour of [some truth], and not a single one against it excepting that I must admit
that the opposite of the truth is possible, then it is a moral certainty […]. [By contrast,] if I know only grounds
in favour of the truth and not a single one against it and, moreover, that the opposite of the same would not at
all be possible, then we call that a mathematical and apodictic certainty. 47

Meier here understands moral certainty, in accordance with the traditional conception, as a kind of
probable knowledge, where the latter is understood simply as any knowledge for which we have
rational grounds in its favour that nonetheless are insufficient for “complete [ausführlichen]
certainty.”48 While any putative item of knowledge is probable for which there are more grounds in
its favour than against,49 Meier indicates that it is only held with moral certainty when it achieves a
higher degree of probability, such that it is appropriately assumed to be the case for the sake of
action (though Meier never specifies what degree of probability this corresponds to). Meier supplies
an example of a general who is not mathematically certain of prevailing on the battlefield, and yet
can claim moral certainty given that “all of the probabilities” suggest that he will be victorious.50
Generally speaking, then, a claim is morally certain for Meier when it is taken to be the most
probable among the available options where, due to the exigencies of a situation and the limits of
our own insight, we must act on the basis of one of them. As a result, moral certainty is as good as,
or even better than perfect certainty when it comes to action (since lack of perfect certainty can
prevent us from acting), which is to say that “with respect to our prudential [kluges], rational, and
virtuous activity, [such certainty] is to be valued just as highly as mathematical certainty.”51
Accordingly, when it comes to demonstrating the moral certainty of the immortality of the
soul, Meier endeavours to show that we have more grounds in favour of taking the soul to be
immortal than the opposite. First, Meier points out that nothing he has claimed regarding
immortality amounts to providing a ground against it; rather, he takes himself to have merely shown

46 Vertheidigung §3 (13). See also Gedancken §4 (9): “I take it as an established fact that not only can the soul’s immortality
only be proven to be very probable, but that it can also be proven with moral certainty by means of reason.”
47 Vertheidigung §67 (134).
48 Vernunftlehre §203 (280). For a compact history of discussions of moral certainty from Descartes through to Kant, see

Fonnesu, “Kant on Moral Certainty” in Kant und die Aufklärung: Akten der Kant-Tagung in Sulmona, 24.-28. März 2010, eds.
L. C. Madonna and P. Rumore (Hildesheim: Olms, 2011), 183-204. I will however take issue with his contention (at least
with respect to the moral certainty of immortality) that Meier’s “position about moral certainty is traditional, and that he
repeats classical arguments: moral certainty concerns a probable knowledge useful for daily life and based on testimony
(fides historica)” (186)
49 Vernunftlehre §203 (281).
50 Vernunftlehre §207 (288).
51 Vernunftlehre §207 (288).
 10

that the soul’s survival of the death of the body does not follow from reason (“aus der Vernunft”) by
means of strict proof, which does not imply that it is contrary to reason (“wider der Vernunft”).52
Indeed, Meier contends that similar considerations to those which undermined any claim to
mathematical certainty of the soul’s immortality also suffice to rule out any claim to being
mathematically certain that the death of the soul is part of the best possible world, since a divine
choice for the “eternal death” of the soul would be just as inscrutable as any in favour of the soul’s
eternal life.53 Meier thus concludes that “reason does not give us a single ground, even with the
slightest degree of probability, from which we could derive that God had chosen the death of the
soul.”54
Significantly, however, when it comes to providing the rational grounds in favour of the
probability of immortality, Meier does not argue that the evidence we already have in its favour (on,
for instance, the basis of our limited understanding of the constitution of this world) renders it
probable; instead, Meier contends that it is wholly on account of the fact that the soul’s immortality
provides an important support for morality that it is morally certain. Specifically, Meier contends
that the immortality of the soul serves to strengthen considerably our existing motivations towards
virtuous actions: “I must however confess that the immortality of the soul contains a pre-eminent
and important motivation for virtue and religion. Were the soul not immortal, then we would have
far fewer and weaker incitements [Anreitzungen] to be pious and virtuous.”55 Most obviously, the
hope for reward for our virtuous actions in the afterlife, and the fear of punishment for vicious
ones, provides a powerful incentive for us to act morally in this life:

If one has the hope of an eternal blessedness and considers that we will approach the supreme being in eternity
albeit without fully reaching Him, then this thought awakens a justly burning desire to make a beginning of this
progress to blessedness already in this life. 56

Meier also suggests that the immortality of the soul offers an antidote to the moral pessimism that
might result inasmuch as we observe that the rewards of virtuous actions, and punishment of vicious

52 Gedancken §37 (73-4).

53 Gedancken §34 (68). See also Gedancken §4 (11-12) and Verth. §44 (79).
54 Gedancken §34 (69).
55 Gedancken §12 (26).
56 Gedancken §12 (27); see also §15 (33), where Meier contrasts our interest in future goods and the “true and rational

pleasure” that we seek in the afterlife with the “Epicurean” elevation of the pleasure found in present goods to the
highest form of pleasure.
 11

ones, are frequently not secured in this life.57 Moreover, Meier recognizes that it is not merely the
prospect of surviving the death of the body that serves to shore up morality, but also that of
preserving our higher capacities in the afterlife which is required if immortality is to serve as a
sufficiently strong motivation towards virtue. Thus, he notes that those

who advocate and support that great truth of the soul’s immortality must not be satisfied with proving that the
soul will continue to live after its departure from the stage of the present time. Rather, they must seek
principally to present the nature of this future state in such a way that it can be a powerful motivation for virtue
and religion, that it might provide a reason for consolation amidst all of the adversities of this restless life, and
raise our hopes so high as to open a prospect for us into the blessed fields of eternity. 58

Given, then, that immortality plays this crucial role, and given that reason can offer no grounds
against the possibility of the soul surviving the death of the body, Meier contends that we have
sufficient grounds to hold the immortality of the soul with moral certainty, and indeed, that such
certainty is all that is needed to motivate us to act well.59 While Meier also allows that virtue is
something “splendid” in itself and so we can expect from it “splendid consequences already in this
life,”60 he claims the soul’s immortality nonetheless has an “incomparable use”,61 even if not an
indispensable one, as “one of the most important supports of religion and the whole of morality.”62
Accordingly, just as Meier was distinguished in the tradition of Wolffian rational psychology
by his doubts regarding any mathematical demonstration of the soul’s immortality, so he is also
distinguished within that tradition by his positive, distinctly moral “proof” of that claim. For Meier
the basis for the (moral) certainty of the soul’s survival of the death of the body finds a rational basis
in the important role which that “great truth”63 plays in undergirding morality by providing a reliable
and widely-available incentive to virtue, where this confidence is only “noticeably strengthened
throughout by faith [Glauben].”64 Moreover, Meier’s approach contrasts with that of some of his
contemporaries who likewise sought to prove the soul’s immortality on (broadly speaking) moral

57 Gedancken §12 (27): if “the virtuous set their hopes on God only in this life alone, then they will be the most miserable
of all.” See also §15 (33): immortality “is the most important consolation with which we can comfort our mind amid a
thousand adversities.”
58 Gedancken §23 (47-8), emphasis mine; cf. also §54 (114).
59 Gedancken §12 (27) “Yet, since it is not necessary that our motives be mathematically certain, one can reject our

certainty of the immortality of the soul through reason without weakening or dampening the zeal for virtue and piety.”
60 Gedancken §13 (28).
61 Vertheidigung §60 (122).
62 Gedancken §10 (24). See also §8 (20): “The immortality of the soul is one of the most important and principal grounds

of all virtue and religion.”

63 Vertheidigung §53 (104).
64 Gedancken §12 (27).
 12

grounds.65 As opposed to, for instance, Christian August Crusius’ proof that the soul must be
immortal since we have a drive for a virtue, perfection, and union with God that would require
eternal life to realise and God would be unjust if he instilled such a drive in us without also allowing
for its fulfillment,66 Meier’s proof does not turn on the ascription of (contentious) moral properties
to finite spirits, and moreover Crusius takes the result of his proof to be (in Meier’s terms) the
mathematical rather than merely moral certainty of immortality. Yet, Meier’s signal departure lies in
taking moral certainty not merely in its (traditional) understanding in terms of probable cognition
but, at least when it comes to the supposition of the soul’s immortality, as a certainty founded
wholly in the acknowledged significance of that claim precisely for morality. That ‘moral certainty’
could have such a distinctively moral inflection is a point later emphasized by Kant for similar
reasons, and indeed in a passage commenting on Meier’s presentation of moral certainty in the
Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre (cf. §175), though Meier is not explicitly implicated: “Most, almost all
autores are completely unacquainted with moral certainty and instead they take it in each case to be
probability” rather than as involving “a moral judgment” (V-Lo-Bl 24:200).

3. Meier and Kant on Belief

With respect to the immortality of the soul, then, Meier contends that while it is not subject
to demonstration we are nonetheless entitled to maintain it with moral certainty primarily on the
basis of its role as a support for morality (and religion). Given that in his works on logic Meier offers
a classification of the modes of assent, one which served as the point of departure for Kant’s own in
the Canon of Pure Reason,67 it is natural to consider where this complex attitude concerning
immortality might fit in Meier’s account. In the sixth chapter of the first part of his Vernunftlehre,
entitled “on the certainty of learned cognition,” Meier offers a detailed discussion (clearly inspired by
Locke’s) of what are for him the three primary modes of assent, namely, conviction (Überzeugung),
persuasion Überreddung, and opinion (Meinung). Meier’s treatment of these attitudes is framed in terms
of an account of “certainty subjectively considered [certitudo subiective spectata],” which Meier

65 For a brief survey of some of these arguments, see Rumore, “Georg Friedrich Meiers Theorie,” 167-8.
66 See Entwurf der nothwendigen Vernunfft-Wahrheiten [Sketch of the Necessary Truths of Reason] §483. For Meier’s criticism of
such arguments, see Gedancken §§41-3 (83-8).
67 For complementary accounts of Kant’s departures from Meier on this score, see Axel Gelfert, “Kant and the

Enlightenment's Contribution to Social Epistemology” Episteme, 7 (2010), 79-99, esp. 629-31; and Lawrence Pasternack,
“The Development and Scope of Kantian Belief: The Highest Good, The Practical Postulates and the Fact of Reason,”
Kant-Studien 1-2 (2011), 290-315, esp. 297-8.
 13

characterizes generally in terms of the “consciousness of the truth, or the clear recognition of the
truth” of a cognition.68 A cognition can be held with varying degrees of certainty, where the highest
such degree corresponds to “complete certainty [completa certitudo, eine ausführliche Gewissheit]” which
Meier identifies with conviction.69 Persuasion, by contrast, amounts to a merely “apparent [scheinbar]”
conviction,70 and by way of distinguishing the two, he proposes a “test [Probe]”71 whereby we
consider whether our certainty is such that it drives out “all rational fear of the opposite” being the
case.72 In addition, Meier considers attitudes that involve less than (the appearance of) complete
certainty, among which he classifies opinion, or “a given uncertain cognition insofar as we accept it
and at the same time recognize that it is not certain.”73 Meier takes opinions to make up the majority
of our epistemic attitudes (“die Welt durch Meinungen regiert werde”74), where these range from
philosophical opinions, which are assumed for the purpose of providing the ground of some
phenomena in the world (as with the philosophical opinion concerning the existence of magnetic
matter), to common opinions which are assumed for no such purpose.75
Oddly, Meier himself never explicitly identifies which mode of assent captures the attitude
towards the immortality of the soul that emerges from his considerations in the Gedancken. Indeed, it
is not even clear that this attitude can be accommodated within these three modes. Beginning with
the most obvious, far from our moral certainty of immortality amounting to a case of persuasion,
Meier claims that it is those individuals who think that we are mathematically certain of the afterlife
who fall prey to persuasion: despite the fact that “reason can say extremely little or nothing at all
with certainty [...] the vast majority speak as confidently of these things as if they had already been
dead once.”76 There is a better case to be made for the identification of this attitude with opinion,
since Meier occasionally refers to it as such, as when, at the outset of the Gedancken, he refers to the
“opinion [Meinung] of the immortality of the soul,”77 and additionally Meier sometimes stresses that
we can have little to no rational certainty in immortality, as when he claims that “as far as concerns

68 Auszug §155 (42).

69 Auszug §§159(43-40), 163 (44).
70 Vernunftlehre §216 (309).
71 Vernunftlehre §192 (257).
72 For this formulation of the test, see Auszug §160 (44). Note that the qualification of this fear as “rational [vernünftige]”

does not occur in the parallel passage in the Vernunftlehre (§195[261-2]).

73 Auszug §181 (51).
74 Vernunftlehre §213 (300)
75 Vernunftlehre §213 (300); cf. als Auszug §181 (51).
76 Gedancken §1 (3); see also earlier in the same section where Meier accuses these thinkers of “proceed[ing] from belief

to complete conviction through an unthinking leap” (2).

77 Gedancken §1 (3); see also Gedancken §3 (7) and §5 (13).
 14

the immortality of the soul, reason leaves us in complete uncertainty.”78 However, Meier leaves little
doubt that he holds immortality as something more than a common or philosophical opinion, as he
frequently refers to it straightforwardly as a “truth”79 and, consistent with its characterization as
morally certain, assigns to it the “highest degree of probability.”80 This confidence in the immortality
of the soul might be taken to qualify it as a conviction,81 yet that this is so is also not clear. For
starters, Meier tends to associate conviction with mathematical certainty,82 and it is presumably on
the basis of this association that he frequently denies that we have “complete conviction” of the
soul’s immortality.83 Moreover, it is not obvious that our confidence in the immortality of the soul
survives the test that Meier outlines for conviction, namely, that it drives out all rational fear of the
opposite being the case, since Meier has argued that reason confirms that the death of the soul by
annihilation at God’s hands is a live possibility, even if it cannot be shown to be probable.84
A possible alternative mode of assent can be found in Meier’s surprisingly detailed
discussion of belief (Glaube) in his logic texts. Meier focuses his treatment of belief in the Auszug to
what he calls historical belief (fides historica), which he defines as “that approval which we give to some
matter for the sake of some witness.”85 This is to say that, properly speaking, belief for Meier does
not correspond to a distinct epistemic attitude but rather designates a distinct source of the certainty
of cognition, one which he contrasts with experience and reason,86 and which can likewise admit a
wide-range of certainty depending on the credibility of the witnesses who are its source.87 While this
conception of belief obviously does not lend itself to the assertion of the immortality of the soul, he
goes on to introduce a number of other derivative sorts of belief that are more promising. For
instance, in a concession to the well-known ambiguity of the German Glaube, Meier also considers
what he calls “beatifying [seligmachenden] belief” which he indicates is “of an entirely different nature”
than the historical sort and which is treated primarily by theologians.88 Indeed, just this sense of

78 Gedancken §25 (52).

79 See for instance Gedancken §5 (12, 13), §10 (25), §23 (47) and Vertheidigung §53 (104).
80 Vertheidigung §3 (13)—my emphasis; see also §53 (104).
81 On this compare Auszug §175 (48-9).
82 See for instance Vernunftlehre §198 (268).
83 Gedancken §2 (5), §9 (23), §25 (52), §25 (71). At the end of the fifth section of the Gedancken, however, Meier goes as

far as to claim that “mere reason cannot yield any conviction regarding the soul’s immortality” (§90 [185]).
84 See Gedancken §28 (57): “It is accordingly possible in itself that the soul is annihilated, and if it is annihilated its

existence will cease, and it will lose its life along with its nature, which considerable loss is the death of the soul.” In a
passage already cited above, Meier distinguishes moral from demonstrative certainty precisely in terms of the latter
proving “the opposite of the same would not at all be possible” (Vertheidigung §67 (134).
85 Auszug §206 (58).
86 Vernunftlehre §244 (360).
87 Vernunftlehre §241 (354-5).
88 Vernunftlehre §236 (345).
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‘belief’ is operative in Meier’s assertion of the soul’s immortality in his “confession of faith” that
precedes much of the discussion of the Gedancken: “I believe [glaube], on the basis of the infinitely
many witnesses of the holy Scripture [...] with the greatest certainty of faith [Glaubens] that the soul is
immortal.”89 While this sense of belief arguably captures that confidence in immortality that has its
source in Scripture, Meier also introduces derivative forms of belief that incorporate contributions
from reason. So, he mentions “reasonable belief [vernünftigen Glauben],” which is only briefly
mentioned in the Auszug where it is characterized simply as the habit of believing only trustworthy
witnesses,90 whereas in the Vernunftlehre Meier indicates that it is to be understood more broadly as
pertaining to “things and truths [...] that are necessary for us to know and with respect to which we
would remain completely ignorant without belief.”91 Additionally, and most suggestively, Meier
distinguishes a mixed form of belief which, in contrast with a pure belief that has its source only in
testimony, “consists in the unification of belief with the other sources of our knowledge” such as
experience and reason.92 As an example of such a mixed belief (involving a contribution of reason),
Meier cites our certainty that “our highest good consists in religion” and, given this, it would not be
much of a stretch to consider the certainty of the immortality of the soul as another example
inasmuch as it comprises elements taken from revelation and from the rational consideration of the
theoretical and practical grounds in favour of the soul’s survival of the body’s death.93
While Meier’s complete account of belief thus yields some suggestive alternatives, it is not
really until Kant’s formulation of his distinctive conception of moral belief that we find an attitude
that can adequately capture Meier’s various claims regarding the (moral) certainty of immortality.
Briefly,94 in his own discussion in the Canon of Pure Reason, Kant provides a principled division of
the modes of assent on the basis of his distinction between objective and subjective grounds for
holding something to be true, where the former sort of grounds involve epistemic warrants for a
given claim and the latter sort involve psychological causes that lie at the basis of an assent
(A820/B848), and where both types of grounds can be sufficient or insufficient. In line with this,
Kant considers persuasion in terms of an assent involving sufficient subjective grounds that are
wrongly held as objective (A820/B848); correlatively, Kant understands opinion in terms of “taking

89 Gedancken §4 (8). See also Gedancken §4 (9) and Vertheidigung §43 (74).
90 Auszug §214 (60-1).
91 Vernunftlehre §243 (359-60).
92 Vernunftlehre §244 (361).
93 See Vernunftlehre §244 (360), where Meier also claims that our certainty that religion is the highest good is the result of

reason, particularly through considerations proper to “the philosophical doctrine of ethics.”

94 For recent detailed discussions of Kant’s classification of propositional attitudes, see Pasternack’s “Development and

Scope,” and the literature cited at 290n2.

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something to be true with the consciousness that it is subjectively as well as objectively insufficient”
(A822/B850). When it comes to conviction, Kant claims that it involves subjective sufficiency, and
proceeds to distinguish two kinds of conviction, namely, knowledge (Wissen) and belief,95 where
knowledge rests on sufficient subjective and objective grounds and belief “is only subjectively
sufficient and is at the same time held to be objectively insufficient” (A822/B850). As Kant makes
clear, this is to say that beliefs involve claims that cannot possibly be proven through theoretical
reason and which we are only licensed to assent to for the sake of some practical end (A823/B851),
where in the case of moral belief this end is fulfilling the moral law (A828/B856).
Strikingly, the attitude towards the soul’s immortality that results from Meier’s exploration of
the topic in the Gedancken, links up nearly seamlessly with Kant’s notion of moral belief, and indeed,
this serves to clarify and elucidate aspects of Meier’s account. First, Meier doubtless understands our
attitude towards immortality of the soul as amounting to a subjective sufficiency, and it is this that
lies behind his comparison of that attitude with conviction, though Meier’s apparent assumption that
conviction requires objectively sufficient grounds96 precludes him from actually identifying it as such.
Related to this, Kant can be taken to offer a friendly amendment to Meier’s claim of a moral
certainty of immortality which clarifies the distinctive sort of conviction involved when he contends
that “the conviction is not logical but moral certainty” and accordingly that “I must not even say ‘It is
morally certain [...]’ but rather ‘I am’ morally certain” (A829/B857). Equally importantly, Meier’s
position with respect to immortality at the conclusion of his investigation of the Gedancken is
precisely one where the belief “is only subjectively sufficient and is at the same time held to be
objectively insufficient”; in fact Meier, like Kant, will claim (in the Gedancken) that it is impossible to
have any knowledge of the soul’s survival of the body’s death given that any mathematical certainty
in this regard would require knowledge of God’s resolutions in the creation of this world, where
such insight simply “exceeds the limits [Schrancken] of human powers.”97 Lastly, as we have seen,
Meier likewise contends that our conviction in the soul’s immortality only holds from the practical
point of view, or as Meier puts it, reason gives us “strong enough grounds as are necessary to

95 Here I follow Pasternack in classifying belief as a form of conviction (see “Development and Scope,” 292-6 and the
texts cited at 296n17).
96 See, for instance, Vernunftlehre §191 (255-6), where Meier claims that “complete certainty,” which is later identified

with conviction, involves “recognizing all of the characteristic marks of the truth that must be recognized as such in
order to recognize a truth for the truth that it is.”
97 Gedancken §35 (72). Along similar lines, Meier contends in a later treatise—the Betrachtungen über die Schrancken der

menschlichen Erkentnis [Considerations of the Limits of Human Cognition] of 1755—that it is a function of our own cognitive
limitations that we are unable to conceive of God making a resolution at all inasmuch as “we cannot think of God’s free
resolution [...] without the alterability of God” which, of course, is absurd (§22 [65])
 17

obligate [verpflichten] any given rational being to accept the immortality of the soul as a truth, and to make
use of it as a motivation for action.”98
In light of the foregoing, it should be clear that there is what one commentator has called a
“genuine connection” between the thought of Meier and Kant,99 one that extends farther, and
deeper, than a limited comparison of their respective logical works might initially suggest. Insofar as
Meier argues, on the one hand, that we cannot know that the soul will survive death, though we can
know that such survival is possible, and on the other hand, that there are non-epistemic grounds
distinct from those supplied by revelation that support our certainty in immortality, he clearly blazes
a trail for Kant’s later defense of a moral belief in the immortality of the soul. Meier is of course still
some way from the Kantian doctrine: for instance, he merely asserts that the belief in immortality is
enormously helpful to the ends of morality, and not, as Kant later would, that it is necessary for the
coherence of those ends altogether; nonetheless, it would not be surprising if Meier was in the
background as Kant developed his views on immortality. This continuity between the two thinkers
extends beyond their respective accounts of the moral certainty of immortality to their underlying
aim in investigating the true grounds of our certainty on the topic in the first place. As Meier attests,
he found that the dogmatic defense of the mathematical certainty of immortality actually plays into
the hands of the critic of religion, who to be successful need only show that our certainty cannot
ascend to this unattainable standard,100 and it was for this reason that Meier sought to undermine any
claim of mathematical certainty. Given this, and given the alternative ground for our certainty of
immortality that he discloses, it might be said that Meier, like Kant later would, undertook to deny
any knowledge of immortality in order to make room for belief.

98 Gedancken §4 (9).
99 The phrase is Pozzo’s; see “Prejudices and Horizons,” 188.
100 Gedancken §10 (24-5).