The Role of the Death Drive and Mystical Tendency in Kant’s Ethics

This paper explores the intersection of the death drive and mystical tendency within Immanuel Kant’s ethics. By examining Nietzsche’s critical perspective, the paper aims to uncover the underlying motivations in Kant’s moral philosophy. The paper argues that Kant’s division of human beings into phenomenal and noumenal selves, and his concept of practical reason, reflect a deeper mystical tendency. This tendency aligns with the death drive, suggesting that Kantian ethics may be a tool for the living being to achieve its original, inanimate state. The analysis integrates psychoanalytic and philosophical discourses to offer a more complex interpretation of Kant’s ethics, proposing that it embodies a form of mysticism driven by the death drive.