 (3) In his political and historical writings, Kant considers another object of reasonable hope: the hope for historical progress towards a morally better, peaceful future. We find a similar relationship between rational belief and hope as with regard to God and immortality: Kant sees the moral improvement of the human race as a hope that is based on a transcendental assumption (in the mode of faith) in a teleological order of nature. Kant assigns “hope for better times” an important function for moral motivation by claiming that without it, the desire to benefit the common good would “never have warmed the human heart” (AE 8:309). Kant recommends a view of human history with a “confirmation bias” (Kleingeld 2012: 175), i.e., with a view to the realization of moral demands.