 The role played by the pleasure of the striving after knowledge, however, recedes in importance as Maimon becomes more skeptical about the possibility of explaining the motivations that lead to moral actions. Perhaps the clearest formulation of Maimon’s later position is in ‘The Moral Skeptic,’ a late work from 1800, where a sketch of the difference between moral dogmatism and skepticism is provided. As in the theoretical realm, Maimon focuses on the problem of the legitimate application of universal rules to particular cases (a problem that Kant in the Groundwork is well aware of). Just as we can be skeptical of whether the category of causality is legitimately applied to particular intuitions, so too can the connection between the moral law and particular actions be called into doubt. While the moral law presents the rule of conduct that I ought to follow, there is no way, Maimon claims, to determine whether in fact I act only according to it, or whether other motivations have insinuated themselves into the action. Kant, of course, agrees with this point, but Maimon attempts to draw a more skeptical conclusion from it than Kant does. On Maimon’s view, one cannot determine whether an action simply accords with the moral law “and hence possesses mere legality” or whether it in fact follows from the motive of duty itself, and as such lays claim to morality. This uncertainty arises, Maimon argues, because the moral character of an action is not immediately present to cognition. Rather, one can ascribe a moral character to a person or action only after excluding all other possible motives as insufficient to explain the action — but, Maimon notes, such a strategy would require an ‘infinite faculty of cognition’ in order to accomplish this task. Given the uncertainty about motivations, Maimon argues that the moral law can at best be viewed as an “idea that provides only a regulative use (for legality).” (GW VII 547 | MS 285) As such, while the moral law presents a universal command, it cannot be shown to be the ground of human actions, since — to employ a term from Maimon’s theoretical philosophy — there is no determinate relation between the moral law and particular actions. For Maimon, the moral law stands, as do the Kantian categories in the theoretical realm, as a ‘castle in the air,’ incapable of reaching the solid ground of particular actions.