Morality and The Three-fold Existence of God

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Leslie Armour
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Existence Of God

Arguments about the existence of a being who is infinite and perfect involve claims about a being who must appear in all the orders and dimensions of reality. Anything else implies finitude. Ideas about goodness seem inseparable from arguments about the existence of God and Kant's claim that such arguments ultimately belong to moral theology seems plausible. The claim that we can rely on the postulates of pure practical reason is stronger than many suppose. But one must show that a being who is infinite and perfect is even possible, and any such being must be present in the physical world as well as in what Pascal called the orders of the intellect and morality (which he called the order of charity). Indeed, locating God in the various orders without creating conflicts is problematic. Such arguments are necessarily difficult and sometimes self-defeating but I argue in this paper that there is a promising path.

scholarly journals Kant's Practical Postulates and the Limits of the Critical System

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 187-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Critical System ◽  
Philosophical System ◽  
Separate Treatment

The topic that I wish to consider is the significance, both systematic and historical, for Kant's system as a whole, of the postulates of pure practical reason, more specifically, of the two theological postulates concerning the existence of God and personal immortality which form the basis of Kant's moral theology. My discussion will focus on the problems of Kant's moral theology in the eyes of his early contemporaries, for whom it constituted a crux in Kant's project. Different views were taken by Kant's contemporaries of what exactly these problems signified regarding the future of Critical philosophy. For the thinkers I will be looking at here, the miscarriage of the moral theology constituted a fatal fault in the Kantian project. For the German Idealists, the moral theology instead provided a vital clue as to how the Kantian system could be transformed into a more radical idealism, while confirming that it needed to be. The role of the practical postulates in the development of German Idealism demands a separate treatment; what I will argue here is simply that the practical postulates do indeed represent a point at which Kant's philosophical system displays a deep and interesting tension, in light of which both historical responses are prima facie intelligible.

Kant's Moral Proof of the Existence of God

1979 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Existence Of God

During his lifetime Kant offered a number of versions of his moral proof of the existence of God, but the classic statement of his argument is normally taken to be that found in the Dialectic of the Critique of Practical Reason. It is to this argument that the phrase ‘Kant's moral proof’ is normally taken to refer.

The Non-Moral Element in Kant's ‘Moral Proof’ of the Existence of God

1986 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 501-516
Author(s):  
Gordon E. Michalson
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Moral Certainty

In a discussion in this journal of Kant's ‘moral proof’ of the existence of God Peter Byrne describes what he takes to be the ‘fundamental incoherence’ of Kant's position. Kant, it is well known, wishes to hold together two claims concerning our epistemological relationship to God: the claim that we can have no ‘theoretical knowledge’ of God's existence; and the claim that we nonetheless have ‘moral certainty’ of God's existence. The first claim arises out of the Kantian criticism of the pretensions of speculative metaphysics, a criticism developed most rigorously in the Critique of Pure Reason. The second claim, in turn, arises out of Kant's so-called ‘moral proof which appears in skeletal form in the firstCritique and acquires more detail edelaboration in the Critique of Practical Reason.

scholarly journals Idea Boga w późnych pismach Immanuela Kanta

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Kupś
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
The Status ◽  
Moral Behaviour ◽  
Opus Postumum ◽  
Idea Of God

Kant’s position on the problem of God is radicalized under the influence of transcendental philosophy’s evolving project. The weakening position of physico-theology and the growing importance of moral theology are possible ways of describing the shift in perspective between the pre-critical period writings and the critical period writings. The separation of the area of cognition and action excludes the possibility of formulating theodicy in a classical form. God, as only a conceived idea, and its meaning is firmly grounded in practical philosophy, in which the presentation of the law is a sufficient condition for moral behaviour. In such a model, God is only an idea, but a fully functional one. This could be noticed mostly in the Opus postumum, where in analogy to God’s practical idea, Kant deduces the transcendental ether’s existence. Ether is not just a hypothesis for Kant; it is not just a ‘temporary’ or ‘contingent’ assumption made ad hoc to explain a particular experience. Still, it is a fundamental and indelible condition, a conditio sine qua non of experience in general. The non-hypothetical matter of heat (ether) is the transcendental condition of all experience, though it does not cease to be an ‘intelligible thing’, an ‘idea’. The status of this idea is entirely ‘non-theoretical’. Kant writes about the ether similarly as he writes about the idea of God, which is only conceivable but at the same time it maintains a strong ‘non-theoretical’ status. The Kantian idea of God is strongly objectified. It is not a ‘product’ of reason, but rather something ‘perceived’ by reason, a strictly theistic idea (as Erich Adickes claims). Kant’s statements, characteristic for the Opus postumum, in which God is identified with moral law, of course give grounds to suppose that the deification of practical reason can be understood as a final stage in the long process of anthropologizing God. However, these statements also allow us to consider practical reason as a new source of what is given.

Hidden Antinomies of Practical Reason, and Kant’s Religion of Hope

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
Rachel Zuckert
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

AbstractIn the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues that morality obliges us to believe in the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. I argue, however, that in two late essays – “The End of All Things” and “On the Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” – Kant provides moral counterarguments to that position: these beliefs undermine moral agency by giving rise to fanaticism or fatalism. Thus, I propose, the Kantian position on the justification of religious belief is ultimately antinomial. One ought, moreover, to understand Kant’s considered position concerning the immortality of the soul and the existence of God to be similar to that he proposes concerning the theoretical ideas of reason in the Appendix to the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason: they are necessary as regulative ideas guiding moral action, not endorsed or even postulated as propositions. In other words, they are subject matters not of belief, but of hope.

scholarly journals Die filosofie van Immanuel Kant en Protestants-teologiese denkstrukture

1990 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Decisive Influence ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Scientific Metaphysics

The philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Protestant theological structures Kant’s critical epistemology destroyed the idea of scientific metaphysics (valid up to Wolff) as the foundation of theology. Kant, however, reconstructed his own metaphysics on the basis of practical reason. In this scheme metaphysics and ethics are interwoven and culminate in a religion exclusively based on and conditioned by pure reason, usually known as Kant’s moral theology or rational religion. The purpose of this paper is, firstly, to give a very short exposition of the basic concepts of Kant’s moral theology, and secondly, to show its decisive influence on post Kantian protestant view of religion.

Kant's Moral Theology

1917 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-295
Author(s):  
Johnston Estep Walter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Existence Of God

The most generally acknowledged mode of apprehending God or argument for his existence, is the Moral. The argument has various forms, of which the more commonly accepted and influential, in its main principles, is that of Kant. Kant emphatically rejected the traditional arguments for the existence of God — the Ontological, Cosmological, and Teleological — as inadequate and invalid. More generally, he rejected or greatly subordinated the theoretical reason in the sphere of religion, and gave primacy to the practical or moral reason. He went far in teaching that the sphere of science and the sphere of religion are separate and independent of each other.

Mendelssohn, Kant, and Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
pp. 259-275
Author(s):  
Paul Guyer
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Maturity ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Existence Of God

This chapter contrasts the two philosophers’ 1784 essays on the question “What is Enlightenment?” True to his faith in theoretical reason, Mendelssohn interprets enlightenment as growth in knowledge, while true to his own faith in practical reason Kant interprets it more as moral maturity, willingness to take responsibility, especially in politics, rather than being passively led by external authority. Next the dispute between Mendelssohn and F.H. Jacobi over whether reason can prove the existence of God or it can be believed only by a leap of faith is examined, and Kant’s intervention in his essay “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thought?,” published in 1786 after the death of Mendelssohn, is then considered: Kant takes the side of reason in this dispute, but only of practical reason.

The Kingdom of Ends

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Lea Ypi
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Kingdom Of Ends

This chapter continues to probe Kant’s claim that systematic unity can be found in the practical use of reason, despite the absent justification of a transcendental concept of freedom. It turns to the analysis of the highest good as the synthesis of virtue and happiness, and to the assumption of purposiveness as design on which the idea of nature as a system of ends is grounded. Physico-theology resurfaces when Kant argues that the demands of reason in its practical use prove the reality of a purposive order of nature without which reason could not promote its essential ends in the natural world. The architectonic unity of the system is thus given by the final end of practical reason that, as Kant argues in the Architectonic, guarantees a passage from the realm of nature to that of freedom, validating the physico-theological proof of the existence of God.

Mīmāṃsā

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Taber
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Indian Science ◽  
The World ◽  
Basic Orientation ◽  
The One ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

The school of Mīmāṃsā or Pūrva Mīmāṃsā was one of the six systems of classical Hindu philosophy. It grew out of the Indian science of exegesis and was primarily concerned with defending the way of life defined by the ancient scripture of Hinduism, the Veda. Its most important exponents, Śabarasvāmin, Prabhākara and Kumārila, lived in the sixth and seventh centuries ad. It was realist and empiricist in orientation. Its central doctrine was that the Veda is the sole means of knowledge of dharma or righteousness, because it is eternal. All cognition, it held, is valid unless its cause is defective. The Veda being without any fallible author, human or divine, the cognitions to which it gives rise must be true. The Veda must be authorless because there is no recollection of an author or any other evidence of its having been composed; we only observe that it has been handed down from generation to generation. Mīmāṃsā thinkers also defended various metaphysical ideas implied by the Veda – in particular, the reality of the physical world and the immortality of the soul. However, they denied the existence of God as creator of the world and author of scripture. The eternality of the Veda implies the eternality of language in general. Words and the letters that constitute them are eternal and ubiquitous; it is only their particular manifestations, caused by articulations of the vocal organs, that are restricted to certain times and places. The meanings of words, being universals, are eternal as well. Finally, the relation between word and meaning is also eternal. Every word has an inherent capacity to indicate its meaning. Words could not be expressive of certain meanings as a result of artificial conventions. The basic orientation of Mīmāṃsā was pragmatic and anti-mystical. It believed that happiness and salvation result just from carrying out the prescriptions of the Veda, not from the practice of yoga or insight into the One. It criticized particularly sharply other scriptural traditions (Buddhism and Jainism) that claimed to have originated from omniscient preceptors.

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