The very fact of the existence of natural beauty appears to confirm that the natural world is compatible with and receptive to human goals, especially moral goals.

As both the second critique and the preceding Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals make clear, Kant clearly recognizes that in order to act morally, we need to (i) understand the moral law and what it requires of us; (ii) believe that we are in fact free to choose to do what it requires of us rather than to do what all our other motives, which can be subsumed under the rubric of self-love, might suggest to us; (iii) believe that the objectives that morality imposes upon us can actually be ac