We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
It would be difficult to find a philosopher who has suffered more injustices at the hands of his commentators (friends and foes alike) than Immanuel Kant. This is particularly true when it comes to the many anecdotes that commentators are, for some reason, quite fond of reciting about Kant. The problem is that such tales are often used surreptitiously to twist Kant's own explicit claims about what he was attempting to accomplish, so that when his writings are read with these stories in mind, misunderstanding is almost inevitable. As an example, it is only necessary to think of the tale of the old ladies of Königsberg who became so familiar with Kant's rigid schedule that they used to set their clocks by his daily comings and goings. This may or may not be true; the point is that unless this anecdote is recounted with a certain skepticism, it is likely to encourage a prejudice whereby the reader of Kant assumes at the beginning that Kant's writings are filled with the unreasonably rigid and formalistic ravings of someone out of touch with the unpredictable passions that punctuate the life of an ordinary person. In other words, such stories are in danger of creating an image of Kant that may have little or no justification in the text. One could cite other examples, such as the story of how Kant used to lead the procession of university professors up to the cathedral each Sunday, only to desert it at the door, or Bertrand Russell's quip that Kant's response to being “awakened” by Hume was merely to invent a transcendental “soporific” to help him fall asleep again.
1 Russell, Bertrand, History of Western Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1946) 731Google Scholar.
2 See Rabel, Gabriele, ed., Kant (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963Google Scholar) vii.
3 Heine, Heinrich, Religion and Philosophy in Germany (trans. Snodgrass, John; Boston: Beacon, 1959) 119Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., 276–77.
5 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787; trans. Smith, Norman Kemp; London: Macmillan, 1929) xxix–xxxiGoogle Scholar. All references to the Critique of Pure Reason cite the page numbers of the second (1787) German edition. References to Kant's other writings will cite the pagination of the Akademie edition of Kant's works unless they are not included in that edition (see nn. 6 and 27).
6 Kant, Immanuel, Lectures on Ethics (ed. Menzer, Paul; trans. Infield, Louis; London: Methuen, 1979) 86–87Google Scholar, English pagination. See also idem, Critique of Judgement (1790; trans. Meredith, James Creed; Oxford: Clarendon, 1952) 480–81Google Scholar.
7 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 667.
8 Kant, Immanuel, “What is Orientation in Thinking?” in idem, Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (trans, and ed. Beck, Lewis White; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949) 136–37Google Scholar.
9 Kant (ibid., 137) continues by explaining that “the right of a need of reason enters as the right of a subjective ground to presuppose or assume something which it may not pretend to know on pure grounds.” From the former, theoretical standpoint, this “need of reason” to “assume the existence of God” is “conditional”: the assumption only “needs” to be made “when we wish to judge concerning the first cause of all contingent things, particularly in the organization of ends actually present in the world” (p. 139). But from the latter, practical standpoint, “the need is unconditional; here we are compelled to presuppose the existence of God not just if we wish to judge but because we must judge” (p. 139).
10 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 671–732.
11 Ibid., 643.
12 Ibid., 643–44.
13 Ibid., 644–45; my emphasis.
14 See Palmquist, Stephen, “Faith as Kant's Key to the Justification of Transcendental Reflection,” HeyJ 25 (1984) 452–55Google Scholar; and idem, “Knowledge and Experience—An Examination of the Four Reflective ‘Perspectives’ in Kant's Critical Philosophy,” Kant-Studien 78 (1987) 190–96Google Scholar.
15 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 729; my emphasis.
16 Ibid., 709.
17 Ibid., 725.
18 Ibid., 707.
19 See n. 9 above.
20 “Hypotheses,” Kant urges (Critique of Pure Reason, 805), are “permissible only as weapons of war, and only for the purpose of defending a right, not in order to establish it.” They can be invaluable tools, when used “in self-defence,” in order to nullify “the sophistical arguments by which our opponent professes to invalidate this assertion [of God's existence]” (pp. 804–5). Yet they cannot be used dogmatically, since the skeptic can also produce opposing hypotheses. Since theoretical reason “does not… favour either of the two parties,” hypotheses can be used “only in polemical fashion.” So a proper view of hypotheses limits dogmatists by refusing them knowledge, while also limiting skeptics by upholding the right t o believe. These warring parties, Kant explains (pp. 805–6), both “lie in ourselves”; and the task of criticism is to remove “the root of these disturbances” in order to “establish a permanent peace.” Once we recognize that hypotheses, “although they are but leaden weapons,” are required “for our complete equipment” in fulfilling this purpose, we will see that there is “nothing to fear in all this, but much to hope for; namely, that we may gain for ourselves a possession which can never again be contested.”
21 As Michael Despland (Kant on History and Religion [London/Montreal; McGill-Queen's University Press, 1973] 146) points out, “The unique strength of criticism is that ‘rational’ is not restricted in meaning to cognitive. The Ideas of reason can be thought rationally without being objectified into possible objects of knowledge.”
22 Wood, Allen W., Kant's Rational Theology (London: Cornell University Press, 1978) 145Google Scholar.
23 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 630–31.
24 Ibid., 709; see also 724–25. This function is fulfilled on the material side by the thing i n itself and on the formal side by reason's architectonic forms (see, e.g., pp. 723–24).
25 Ibid., 395 n.
26 Ibid., 644; quoted above.
27 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Practical Reason (1788; trans. Beck, L. W.; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956) 138Google Scholar; see also idem, Lectures on Philosophical Theology (ed. Beyer, K.; trans. Wood, A. W. and Clark, G. M.; London: Cornell University Press, 1978) 25–26Google Scholar, English pagination. This seems at first to apply equally to Kant's own assumption of the thing in itself, which he does believe to be philosophically sound. He is speaking here, however, from an empirical perspective, in the context of which the thing in itself, as a positive noumenon, is indeed superfluous (see Palmquist, Stephen, “Six Perspectives on the Object in Kant's Theory of Knowledge,” Dialectica 40 [1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar] sec. 3). Kant's use of the thing in itself does not fall under this criticism because it assumes the transcendental perspective. Kant warns that “a presumptuous readiness to appeal to supernatural explanations is a pillow for lazy understanding” (“On The Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World” [Kant's Inaugural Dissertation] 418, as translated in Clement Webb, C. J., Kant's Philosophy of Religion [Oxford: Clarendon, 1926] 45Google Scholar). We must therefore be careful not to interpret this warning too harshly, as Webb does when he says that this claim means that “the assumption of the supernatural is excluded on 'critical' principles” (p. 45). As we have seen, Kant actually encourages such an assumption in the appropriate circumstances, as long as it is put forward without a presumptuous attitude (i.e., as long as it is regarded as a theoretical hypothesis rather than a claim of dogmatic knowledge). If Kant's advice in such passages is that supernatural explanations are always inappropriate, then why does he make use of the God-hypothesis throughout his writings? Rather, his message is that we must be careful to use them wisely, i.e., in such a way that they do not prevent us from relentlessly seeking natural explanations wherever possible.
28 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 597.
29 Kant describes a “hypothesis” as “a ground of explanation” (Critique of Practical Reason, 126). As such, a proper understanding of his theory of the regulative use of the idea of God from the hypothetical perspective reveals it to be remarkably similar to modern attempts t o defend God's existence as the best “explanatory hypothesis” (see, e.g., Norburn, Greville, “Kant's Philosophy of Religion: A Preface to Christology?” SJT 26 [1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar] 441). There are differences, of course, such as that the modern versions, while perhaps benefitting from their freedom from Kant's rather difficult and old-fashioned terminology, often suffer unnecessarily by mixing different perspectives uncritically (e.g., by assuming that rigorous logical argumentation is the primary, if not the only tool available to defend or refute such hypotheses). The two approaches, however, are alike to the extent that both attempt a theoretical defense of God's existence not on the basis that the God-hypothesis enables us to provide a better scientific explanation of the available data, but rather on the basis that the available data point beyond themselves to something that can best be explained philosophically in terms of the God-hypothesis. Thus in both cases the theoretical argument, when properly constructed, assumes a hypothetical, rather than an empirical, perspective.
30 Kant, Immanuel, The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of the Metaphysic of Morals (1797; trans. Gregor, Mary J.; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964) 378Google Scholar.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 443.
33 Ishall discuss the issue of Kant's theism in more detail at the end of this article.
34 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 440. I have altered the translation of this and several other passages from Kant (see nn. 46, 51, 60, and 62) by using the words “standpoint” or “perspective” to replace words or phrases with an equivalent meaning such as “point of view.” This helps to highlight Kant's own dependence on what I call the “principal of perspective.” For a full explanation and defence of this way of translating and interpreting Kant, see my forthcoming Kant's System of Perspectives (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1992Google Scholar). My basic argument is that Kant's overall System is divided into three systems, each based on a distinct “standpoint” (the theoretical, practical, and judicial, respectively) and that each system is constructed around the same four “perspectives” (the transcendental, logical, empirical, and hypothetical). “Kant, Critique of Judgement, 389.
36 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 725–26.
37 Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 32–33.
38 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 656.
39 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 389.
40 Ibid., 455.
41 Ibid., 437.
42 Wood, Allen W., Kant's Moral Religion (London: Cornell University Press, 1970) 174Google Scholar.
43 Ibid., 176.
44 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 438; see also idem, Lectures on Philosophical Theology,
45 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 440, 442.
46 Ibid., 438.
47 Kant, Metaphxsic of Morals, 480.
48 Ibid., 482.
49 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 446.
50 Ibid.
51 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 133.
52 Ibid., 7
53 Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 40.
54 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 857.
55 Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, 161. Unfortunately, many interpreters make the very mistake in interpreting the underlying connotations of Kant's moral argument against which Wood is warning here. Webb (Kant's Philosophy of Religion, 66) for example, claims that Kant's moral argument “certainly is in no way calculated to express the religious man's conviction of the reality of the object of his worship.” If “the religious man's conviction” here refers to traditional, uncritical ways of believing in God, then of course Webb is correct, since the argument is directed to “the moral man.” But the words “in no way” are misleading, since Kant does intend his argument not only to be compatible with a religious standpoint, but also to provide a rational foundation for the fuller conception of the God of religion, as expounded in his own book, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793; trans. Greene, T. M. and Hudson, H. H.; New York: Harper & Row, 1960Google Scholar). See Palmquist, Stephen, “Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?” Kant-Studien 83 (1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar) forthcoming.
56 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 665.
57 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 450–51.
58 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 142.
59 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 853.
60 Ibid., 855.
61 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 143.
62 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 479.
63 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 847.
64 Ibid.
65 See Caird, Edward, The Critical Philosophy of lmmanuel Kant (2d ed.; 2 vols.; Glasgow: Maclehose, 1909) 470Google Scholar.
66 MacKinnon, Donald, “Kant's Philosophy of Religion,” Philosophy 50 (1975) 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67 See, e.g., Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, xxxii.
68 Webb (Kant's Philosophy of Religion, 68) writes, “Kant… definitely denies that the knowledge of God, the Object of religion, falls primarily or properly within the spheres of Physics [cf. the judicial system] or Metaphysics [cf. the theoretical system]. It is only… to be reached by starting… from the consciousness of duty or moral obligations [cf. the practical system].” Along these lines, Kant distinguishes between the moral argument as “an argument Kax' dv8pcojtov valid for all men as rational [i.e., moral] beings in general,” and “the theoretical-dogmatic argument κατ’ ἀλήθειαν.” See Immanuel Kant, Progress in Metaphysics (1791; ed. F. T. Rink; trans. Ted B. Humphrey; New York: Abaris, 1983) 306.
69 Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 39
70 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 482. Peter Byrne (“Kant's Moral Proof of the Existence of God,” SJT 32 [1979] 337) argues against Kant's moral proof: “If knowledge of God is impossible then one cannot have grounds for believing or thinking that God exists.” Byrne reaches this conclusion, however, only by presupposing an epistemology quite foreign to Kant, whereby knowledge is identified with justified belief (p. 336). See Stephen Palmquist, “The Radical Unknowability of Kant's 'Thing in Itself,'” Cogito 3 (1985) sec. 3. For Kant, unytnowability by no means implies unthinkability. Moreover, he distinguishes between knowledge and belief by explaining that the evidence for a judgment one believes is true must be “subjectively sufficient,” but “objectively insufficient,” whereas the evidence for a judgment one knows is true must be “sufficient both subjectively and objectively” (Critique of Pure Reason, 850). For Kant, the relevant “subjective” grounds are, of course, moral.
Oakes, Robert A. (“Noumena, Phenomena, and God,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 [1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar] 31) argues against the common assumption that anyone who believes that knowledge of God is possible must reject Kant's doctrine of the unknowability of noumena. He argues that Kant was wrong to construe “all religious epistemology as necessarily a quest for noumenal knowing” (p. 32), because our knowledge of God is, in fact, phenomenal: “[A]ny sensible experience of God… must be construed as providing knowledge which is partial or perspectival, i.e., knowledge solely from the vantage point of a finite knower” (p. 33). Kant would, of course, agree that all knowledge is perspectival but argue that our “sensible experience” is never a direct experience of God, in the way that our empirical knowledge is a direct experience (i.e., intuition and conception) of empirical objects. Rather, the religious person regards some experiences as coming from God by means of the God-hypothesis, which can never yield actual knowledge of a phenomenon called “God.” Nevertheless, Kant's treatment of the experience of God is not far removed from that of Oakes, except that Kant never regards such experiences as capable of producing knowledge. See Palmquist, Stephen, “Kant's Critique of Mysticism: (2) Critical Mysticism,” Philosophy & Theology 4 (1989) 67–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
71 Kant offers the theologian various tools to cope with the realities of human ignorance in the form of analogical models for God's nature, which represent a balanced and realistic view of some basic theological issues. These models, though rarely appreciated by his commentators, constitute an important aspect of Kant's systematic understanding of our theoretical conception of God's nature. They are, however, beyond the scope of this article.
72 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 444. “Moral theology” is the title Kant gives his moral proof in the Critique of Judgement, to show its structural parallel to teleology proper (i.e., physical teleology). Each is teleological insofar as it concerns the purpose or final end which must be posited in order to explain a certain type of experience (namely, of either a moral or a physical end). Beck's criticism of the moral proof on this account is therefore correct but irrelevant, since this type of teleology is clearly distinguishable from that discussed elsewhere in the Critique of Judgement. See Beck, Lewis White. A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (London: University of Chicago Press, 1960) 275Google Scholar.
73 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 664.
74 Ibid., 660 n.
75 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 462.
76 Cupitt, Don, “Kant and the Negative Theology,” in Hebblethwaite, Brian and Sutherland, Stewart, eds.. The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology (London: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 64Google Scholar. Likewise Lucien Goldmann (lmmanuel Kant [trans. Robert Black; London: NLB, 1971] 201) says that Kant believes in “[a] transcendent superhuman God who has only practical and moral reality but who lacks independent moral existence… a moral unreal God could scarcely be imagined.” Such a comment is unfair, however, since Kant never dogmatically proclaims that God has no such independent existence, but only warns that if God does, we could never grasp it as an item of our empirical knowledge.
77 Ibid.
78 I have discussed this issue in detail in “Kant's Critique of Mysticism.”
79 Jantzen, Grace M., God's World God's Body (London: Darton, Longmann & Todd, 1984Google Scholar) 1, see also 42–43. For instance, Goldmann (Immanuel Kant, 194) writes, “Kant rejected all positive religion.” Or as J. C. Luik (“The Ambiguity of Kantian Faith,” SJT 36 [1983] 345) puts it, “[T]here is quite literally no Kantian theology, no religious knowledge for Kant.” Luik makes this assertion in the process of rejecting Don Wiebe's claim that for Kant “'knowledge' of God can be had,” although only if it is “inferred” from “moral data.” See Wiebe, Don, “The Ambiguous Revolution: Kant on the Nature of Faith,” SJT 33 (1980) 531CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although Luik's position would be correct as a description of Kant's theoretical standpoint, it ignores the fact that for Kant the practical and judicial standpoints are at least as important, for they can each produce (at least in a symbolic sense) a kind of knowledge of their own. Thus when Kant (Critique of Judgement, 353) claims that “all our knowledge of God is merely symbolic,” he contrasts his own position with “Deism,” since the latter “furnishes no knowledge [of God] whatsoever.”
80 See Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 7–10.
81 Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 23; see also idem, Critique of Pure Reason, 659.
82 Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 23. In his 1796 essay, “Of a Gentle Ton Lately Assumed in Philosophy,” Kant makes a similar distinction between Plato's view of “archetypes (ideas)” as intuitions that originate in “the Divine understanding” but can be “named directly” by humans and his own belief that “our intuition of these divine ideas… i s distributed to us but indirectly, as the copies (ectypa)” (p. 391). This essay is found in Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, Religious, and Various Philosophical Subjects (2 vols.; trans, anon. John Richardson; London: Richardson, 1798–1799) 2. 159–87. The quotation appears in 2. 164–65.
83 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 659, see also 660–61; idem, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 28–29.
84 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 660–61.
85 Ibid., 856.
86 Arnulf Zweig infers from a 1759 letter to Kant that Kant equates “deism” with “sanity.” See Kant: Philosophical Correspondence 1759–99 (trans, and ed. Zweig, Arnulf; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) 35Google Scholar n. Yet Hamann's letter actually portrays Kant as an arbitrator between Hamann the Christian and Berens the deist. Zweig's assumption that Kant was on the side of Berens is not justified from the content of the letter, which seems instead to portray Kant in his usual, “critical” position as a middle man.
Although Heine (Religion and Philosophy in Germany, 268) caricatures the Critique of Pure Reason as “the sword that slew deism in Germany,” he believes that the Critique of Practical Reason was intended to revive it. Likewise Theodore M. Greene (“The Historical Context and Religious Significance of Kant's Religion” in Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, lxxvii, see also lxvi) regards Religion with the Limits of Reason Alone as “a deistic classic.” Webb (Kant's Philosophy of Religion, 200–201) also implies that Kant was a deist for most of his life when he says that in his Opus Postumum, Kant “was prepared t o repudiate… the deism which had been so predominant in his youth—the deism which taught a merely transcendent God.” Ironically, Vleeschauwer, Herman-J. de (The Development of Kantian Thought [trans. Duncan, A. R. C.; London: Nelson, 1962Google Scholar] 177) sees in this same work “a public confession of deism.” There is, however, a growing rank of scholars who reject such interpretations. Despland, for example, argues that in his philosophy of religion “Kant… moved beyond the classical deist position” (Kant on History and Religion, 198, also 199–201, 228, 262). See also Norburn, “Kant's Philosophy of Religion,” 431; and Wiebe, “The Ambiguous Revolution,” 515. James Collins (The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion [London/New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967] 117) puts it thus, “Kant regards religious deism and the varieties of nature-based theism as incomplete, preliminary forms of religious life.” Indeed, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, Kant moves beyond these to form a moral theism-one that is thoroughly compatible with his Critical principles. Kant's theistic outlook is acknowledged so consistently throughout his writings that I would call into question even the assumption that Kant ever seriously defended a deistic position as such. See Palmquist, “Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?” and idem, “Kant's Critique of Mysticism.” Kant's rejection of deism is, admittedly, usually expressed in very cautious terms. This is understandable given the dominance of deism in the philosophical climate of his day. Nevertheless, some texts reveal his dissatisfaction with deism so clearly that all debate on this question ought to be a thing of the past. In a 1789 letter to Jacobi (Kant: Philosophical Correspondence, 158), for instance, Kant approves of his friend's refutation of “the syncre-tism of Spinozism and the deism of Herder's God.” In the Prolegomena to Any Future Meta-physics (1783; trans. Beck, L. W.; New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950Google Scholar), Kant says that if theism and anthropomorphism are both abandoned, then “nothing [would] remain but deism, of which nothing can come, which is of no value and which cannot serve as any foundation to religion or morals” (pp. 356–57).
87 Kant, Lectures on Ethics, 85.
88 Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 24.
89 Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, 155, 164.
90 Wood, Kant's Rational Theology, 79.
91 Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, 31.
92 Kant, Lectures on Ethics, 99, 81.
93 Kant, Critique of Judgement, 473.
94 It should be noted, however, that Kant reveals his dissatisfaction with the theoretical implications that philosophers often impute to theism by warning that even theism “is absolutely incapable of authorizing us to make any objective assertion” (Critique of Judgement, 395).
95 Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, 30.
