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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Gordon E. Michalson Jr.
Gordon E. Michalson Jr.
Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Oberlin Ohio, 44074, U.S.A.
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , November 1986 , pp. 501 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1986

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References

1 Byrne, Peter, ‘Kant' Moral Proof of the Existence of God’, Scottish Journal of Theology 32 (1979), pp. 333–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Kant adds further comments on the moral proof in the ‘Methodology’ section of the Critique of Judgment.

3 Byrne, op. cit., p. 336.

4 Ibid., p. 337.

5 Ibid., p. 335.

6 Ibid., p. 341–43.

7 Ibid., p. 342.

8 Gellner, Ernest, Legitimation of Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 185.Google Scholar

9 Kant, , Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Smith, N. Kemp (New York: St Martin's Press, 1965), BXXX, p. 29.Google Scholar

10 Kant, , Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. Beck, L. W. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1959), pp. 9ff.Google Scholar

11 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., A807 = B835, p. 637; see Beck, L. W., A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 164–165, 235.Google Scholar

12 Kant, , Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. Greene, T. M. and Hudson, H. H. (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), p. 169.Google Scholar

13 For a different view of the relation between ethics and metaphysics in Kant, see Paton, H. J., The Categorical Imperative (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 255–256.Google Scholar

14 Kant, , Krilik der Praktischen Vernunft, in Immanuel Kants Werke, ed. Cassirer, Ernst, Vol. 5 (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1922), p. 158Google Scholar. English translation, Critique of Practical Reason, tr. Beck, L. W. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1956), p. 151Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Practical, followed by page numbers in Cassirer and Beck, respectively. All English translations are taken from Beck.

15 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., BXXVI-XXVII, p. 27.

16 Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., p. 39.

17 Kant's ‘critical’ period is characterized in part by a movement away from a conception of freedom as pure ‘spontaneity’ and toward a conception of freedom as fundamentally ‘autonomy’.

18 Practical, p. 120, pp. 114–15.

19 Ibid., p. 135, p. 129.

20 Ibid., p. 132, p. 126.

21 Ibid., p. 132–33, p. 126–27.

22 Ibid., p. 133, p. 127.

23 Ibid., p. 143, p. 137.

24 Ibid., p. 135, p. 129.

25 Ibid., p. 134ff., p. 128ff.

26 Ibid., p. 120, p. 114.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., pp. 9fF.

30 Practical, p. 120, p. 114.

31 Ibid.

32 Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., pp. 11–12.

33 Practical, pp. 120–21, pp. 114–15.

34 Ibid., p. 120, p. 115.

35 For the opposite formulation, see Paton, op. cit., pp. 255–56.

36 Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, op. cit., Book III.

37 Ibid., p. 5; Practical, pp. 154–55, p. 148.

38 Practical, p. 155, n. 1; p. 149, n. 6.

39 Ibid., p. 155, p. 148.

40 Ibid.

41 I am grateful to Norman Care and Timothy Jackson for their thoughtful and critical comments on an earlier version of this essay.