--- In [email protected], "Samudjo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Menurut saya malah pencarian itu harus terus dilakukan
> Tidak akan ada jawaban yang 100%, nanti di Akhirat baru kita akan
mengetahui
> kebenaran yang sesungguhnya
> Metodenya seperti acara TV H2C, harap-harap cemas
> Punya harapan, punya kepercayaan bahwa yang kita anut itu benar
> Tapi harus tetap cemas, kalau kalau kita membuat suatu kekeliruan
> Begitu Mas, have a nice week end to all of you,
> samudjo
-------------------------
DH: mau mencari? Ini ada teman, Imanuuel Kant, selamat
berperjalanan, anggap saja bacaan akhir minggu.
Salam akhir minggu
Danardono
Kant's early writings such as A New Exposition of the First
Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge (1755), Universal Natural
History and Theory of the Heavens, (1755), and The One Possible Basis
for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), engage the
concept of God in terms of principles and arguments that had been
framed by the metaphysical systems of Leibniz and Wolff as well as by
the theoretical structure of Newtonian physics. Kant had not yet
articulated a definitive break with the approach of the rationalist
metaphysics of his predecessors, so his discussions presuppose the
validity of the enterprise of constructing an adequate theoretical
argument for the existence of God. Even so, he makes a number of
points in these works that prefigure key arguments that his mature
critical philosophy will later raise against the way rationalist
metaphysics had traditionally treated the status and function of the
concept of God. In particular, these works show that Kant was already
concerned to address the three main lines of argument that he took
these traditions characteristically to employ for demonstrating the
existence of God: the ontological argument, the cosmological
argument, and the physico-theological argument (Dell'Oro, 1994).
2.1 Arguments for the existence of God: Pre-critical period
Among the three early works noted above, Kant's most focused
treatment of these arguments for the existence of God can be found in
The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God.
He classifies arguments for God under just two headings, one that
moves to the affirmation of God from a rational concept of the
possible, the second that moves from experiential concepts of
existent things. The ontological argument, as well as the argument
Kant himself poses in this work as the only valid one, fall under the
first heading. The cosmological and the physico-theological arguments
fall under the second heading.
With respect to the positions about the validity and value of
theoretical arguments for the existence of God that Kant later
espouses and which are considered his definitive views, there are
three features worth noting from this earlier work:
First, he has already formulated a central feature of the main
objection that he will raise against the ontological argument in the
Critique of Pure Reason, namely, that existence is not a predicate.
Kant's objection is directed against rationalist accounts that took
the judgment "Something exists" to predicate a property �
i.e., "existence" � that is included in the concept of that thing.
(An example of a property so predicated would be "extension" as a
property of the concept "physical object.") Fundamental to the
ontological argument is the view that "existence" is necessarily a
property of the concept of God. This then functions as the decisive
consideration for the conclusion that God must exist. Against this,
Kant argues that in no case � even that of God � can we
predicate "existence" to be a property that is included in the
concept of any object. He illustrates this by pointing out that the
difference between the one-hundred dollars in my pocket and the one
hundred dollars I imagine to be in my pocket is not a difference in
the concept of "one hundred dollars." To say that something "exists" �
even in the case of God � is not to predicate a property that its
concept lacks if the thing did not exist.
Second, at this earlier stage of his philosophical development he
holds, in contrast to the position he takes in his critical
philosophy, that there can be a theoretical argument that validly
leads to the conclusion that God exists; of note about the argument
he proposes, moreover, is that it falls under the same heading under
which he has classified the ontological argument, namely an argument
that starts from a concept of the possible.
Third, he groups the cosmological and physico-theological arguments
under a single heading as "cosmological," inasmuch as he sees each
making an inference to God from our experience of things as they
exist in the world, but he already differentiates them from one
another in terms of their relative cogency and persuasive power. One
line of argument � which he will designate in his later terminology
as the "cosmological argument" � moves in terms of a concept of
causality to its conclusion that there must be a first necessary
being. He does not consider this line of argument, which he sees as
characteristic of metaphysics in the tradition of Wolff, to be valid.
As in his later criticism of this argument in the first Critique, he
sees it ultimately resting upon the same conceptual considerations
that function within the ontological argument, most notably the claim
that existence is a predicate. The other � which he will designate is
his later terminology as the "physico-theological" argument � moves
from observations of order and harmony in the world to its conclusion
that there must be a wise creator of that order. This argument he
also finds lacking in strict probative force; he nonetheless
considers it an important marker of the dynamics of human reason to
seek an explanatory totality, even though it does not thereby provide
a sure demonstrative route to an affirmation of God.
3. God and religion in Kant's critical philosophy
The shift in perspective that Kant takes in his critical philosophy �
a shift that he designated a "Copernican revolution" � not only
sharpens the earlier criticisms he had made of the ontological and
cosmological arguments for the existence of God. It also leads him to
conclude that no theoretical argument, even of the kind he had
earlier advocated, can do so. Although there are many aspects to this
shift in Kant's thinking, one that is centrally important to his
treatment of God and religion is the urgent need he sees for human
reason to become self-critical and self-limiting of both its powers
and pretensions. A fundamental way in which Kant considers human
reason to overreach its powers � and thus in need of self-limitation �
is its ineradicable tendency to seek a unification of all
theoretical principles into a final, comprehensive and absolute
totality. Human reason seeks to move from an apprehension of a series
of conditioned phenomena in space and time to the affirmation of a
ground for such series that is represented as unconditioned, i.e., as
independent of space and time. Human reason seeks to know what lies
beyond the range of that to which Kant gives the technical
term "experience" � i.e., our apprehension of objects as they are
interrelated to one another in a spatio-temporal framework of causal
laws. He considers any movement to claim knowledge outside the limits
of experience to be problematic. It lies beyond the powers of human
reason to bring us to any knowledge of an unconditioned ground for
the framework within which we apprehend objects in their spatio-
temporal relations.
This tendency to go beyond the limits of experience culminates in the
representation of ideas of the soul, the world, and God as the final
outcome of the efforts of reason to affirm what is absolutely
unconditioned. Kant argues that it is mistaken to take these ideas
as "constitutive" � i.e., as standing for objects that lie within the
scope of our human powers of theoretical cognition. He thus denies
that there can be any theoretically adequate basis for the arguments
that the metaphysics of Leibniz and of Wolff put forward as
theoretical proofs of the existence of God, for the independent
subsistence and immortality of the human soul, and for the causal
dependence of the world on an absolutely necessary first cause.
Despite this denial of the adequacy of such theoretical proofs, Kant
nonetheless takes the ideas of God, the soul, and the world to have a
valid philosophical use as "regulative," i.e., for guiding the
direction of inquiry to be all the more encompassing in scope.
3.1 Arguments for the existence of God: Critical period
The arguments that Kant offers in the Critique of Pure Reason against
the standard proofs of rationalist metaphysics for the existence of
God are in continuity, for the most part, with his earlier treatment
of these proofs. Although he now re-classifies the proofs for the
existence of God under three headings, the physico-theological, the
cosmological, and the ontological, his objections to them echo his
earlier analyses. The ontological argument rests upon the false
assumption that existence is a predicate. The physico-theological and
the cosmological arguments can both be shown to rest upon the
ontological argument and thus share its fatal defect. There also are
notable developments in his arguments that lead him beyond the
positions he had taken in those previous discussions. These
developments are ones that play a significant role in many subsequent
philosophical analyses of religion. They arise from what Kant
enunciates as a central argument of his critical philosophy: Human
reason is limited (finite), but because it constantly seeks to
overstep those limits it requires a discipline to stay within those
limits. The appropriate discipline to keep reason within its own
limits, moreover, is the one that reason imposes upon
itself. "Critique" � i.e., critical philosophy � is thus the method
that makes it possible for us to impose such self-discipline upon our
human uses of reason. Thus Kant's arguments against the adequacy of
any theoretical proof for God exemplify "critique" by identifying one
of the crucial limits that we must recognize and set upon our
exercise of the power of reason.
Kant's treatment of the concept of God and religion in his critical
philosophy, however, does not consist merely in this negative result
that we must block reason from taking us along the theoretical paths
that rationalist metaphysics had claimed will lead to a proof of
God's existence. He argues that once we have disciplined human reason
to stay off that theoretical path, we are then in a position to make
an affirmation of God on the basis of what he terms the practical,
i.e., moral, use of reason. As he writes in the Preface to the second
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), "I had to deny
knowledge in order to make room for faith." He thus proposes what has
come to be known as his "moral argument" for God and the immortality
of the soul. In connection with this argument he also develops the
concept of "moral faith." Key elements of Kant's moral argument are
first presented in the "Transcendental Doctrine of Method," which is
the final part of the Critique of Pure Reason, and are then further
developed in "The Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason" of the Critique
of Practical Reason (1788) and in �� 86-91 of the Critique of the
Power of Judgment (1790). Elements of the notion of moral faith are
found in the same texts, as well as in Religion within the Bounds of
Mere Reason (1793).
3.2 The "moral argument" for God
Kant's "moral argument" rests upon a set of claims about the
relationship between a person's leading of a virtuous moral life and
the satisfaction of that person's desire for happiness. Central to
these claims is the specification that Kant gives to the notion
of "the highest good" as the proper object for the moral
("practical") use of human reason. Within the context of the moral
argument, the "practical use of reason" consists in the exercise of
our will to choose actions in view of � and solely in view of � their
moral rightness. In Kant's technical terminology, in such a choice we
will our actions on the basis of a "categorical imperative."
The "highest good" consists in a proper proportioning of happiness to
accord with the measure of the virtue each person acquires in willing
right moral actions. The highest good thus includes a harmonious
proper proportioning of happiness to virtue for all moral agents. For
the highest good to be the object of the practical use of reason
means that the actions that I will to be moral actions � i.e.,
actions chosen on the basis of following the categorical imperative �
must also be actions that will effect a proper proportioning of
happiness to virtue not merely for myself but for all moral agents.
Even as Kant argues that it is necessary for us to will the highest
good as the proper object of the practical use of our reason, he
offers counter considerations that seem to show that such willing of
the highest good will be futile. Chief among these considerations is
that willing our actions to be moral is not sufficient to insure that
they will effect the happiness appropriate to their virtue. This is
so because Kant holds that, in willing actions to be moral, we
exclude from the bases on which we choose them any consideration of
the happiness such actions might effect for ourselves. Our choice of
actions is moral to the extent that they are chosen because they are
morally right actions, not because of the happiness they might effect
for us. In addition, Kant recognizes that at least some of our right
moral choices are likely to produce quite the opposite of happiness
for us. A striking example he offers in the Critique of Practical
Reason asks the reader to imagine a person presented with this
choice: to perjure oneself so that the state can convict and execute
an innocent person whom the ruler considers an enemy of the state,
or, to refuse to commit perjury and thus be subject oneself to
summary conviction and execution. Kant maintains that, in such a case
we would judge that the morally right course of action is not to
commit perjury. We would make this judgment, he maintains, in full
recognition that following the right course of action would be at the
cost of our own life and happiness. He also holds that we would make
the judgment that not to commit perjury is the morally right course
of action even if we were unsure that we would, if faced with this
choice, act in accord with that judgment.
This case helps to illustrate why Kant thinks that human beings
endeavoring to lead a moral life find themselves faced with a dilemma
in which the practical use of their reason produces a seeming
contradiction in the object of their willing. The practical use of
our reason requires, on the one hand, that our choice of moral
actions be independent of any consideration of their effectiveness in
producing happiness for us. In fact, it will sometimes even require
the choice of actions � as in the case of the individual who refuses
to commit perjury � that produce results contrary to happiness. It
thus seems that reason, in requiring us to will our actions on the
basis of their moral rightness, i.e., on the basis of a categorical
imperative, thereby forbids us to consider their effect on our
happiness. On the other hand, the practical use of our reason also
requires us to make the highest good, which Kant has defined as
necessarily including happiness, an object of our will. This means
that we must take our moral actions to be such that they will, in
fact, bring about the happiness that is properly proportioned to
their virtue, even though we have reasons to think that they will not
do so. We have reason to think they may fail to bring us happiness
not only because doing right actions may bring harmful results upon
ourselves. It also seems that, even in cases when happiness does
result from our actions, this comes about because those actions are
part of the causal processes of the natural world that bring us
satisfaction and pleasure. The rightness of the actions does not seem
to have a role to play in such causal processes. This second
requirement of reason on our willing of actions thus seems to enjoin
us to expect our moral actions to bring about that which, precisely
as moral actions, they do not have power to produce.
3.3 The antinomy of practical reason, the highest good and moral faith
Kant sees this conflict for the willing of actions arising from the
tendency of reason to overstep its limits. In parallel with his
discussion in the Critique of Pure Reason of similar conflicts that
reason produces in its theoretical use, Kant terms this conflict
the "antinomy" of practical reason. His account of this conflict, as
well as its resolution, rest upon a distinction that is central to
his entire project of critique; he used the same distinction in the
first Critique to resolve antinomies in the theoretical use of
reason. He employs a variety of terms to draw this distinction in the
writings that set forth his critical philosophy, e.g.,
between "phenomenon" and "noumenon," or between a "thing as
appearance" and a "thing in itself." For purposes of his moral
argument, he expresses this distinction in terms of a contrast
between the "sensible" and the "intelligible." By this he means that,
when we consider the relationship between our willing and our action,
we have two different standpoints from which to view that
relationship. From one standpoint, that of the sensible, we view our
actions in terms of their capacity to be efficient causes of our
happiness. This perspective on our actions in terms of their causal
efficacy within a spatio-temporal framework is properly the domain of
the theoretical use of our reason. From the other standpoint, that of
the intelligible, we view our actions in terms of their moral
rightness. This perspective views our actions in terms of their
origin from the exercise of our freedom. For Kant, however, the
exercise of our freedom cannot be conceptually encompassed within a
framework of spatio-temporal causality. An account of our actions in
terms of freedom is thus in the domain of the practical, not the
theoretical, use of reason.
The antinomy of practical reason thus arises inasmuch as we fail to
distinguish these two standpoints from one another. The consequences
of such failure affect not only how we think about our moral action.
Far more important for Kant are its consequences upon the very way we
undertake moral action: Uncertainty about the efficacy of moral
action for bringing about happiness discourages efforts to lead a
fully moral life. There are two points of focus for such
discouragement, each of which involves one of the requirements for
our willing that we place upon ourselves in the practical use of our
reason. One is that even the sustained moral effort of a lifetime
does not seem sufficient for us to form the good will operative in
our moral efforts into a "holy will," the term Kant uses to designate
the attainment of complete human moral perfection. We thus seem
unable to meet in full the demand that practical reason, in the
categorical imperative, makes upon us to be moral. The second focus
for discouragement is the apparent incapacity of our moral actions,
precisely in their capacity as moral, to effect happiness. We thus
seem unable to meet the demand of practical reason that we make the
highest good � which necessarily includes happiness � the object of
our willing. In each case, the use of our reason places on us a
requirement that seems impossible for us to meet. Such impossibility
would make our moral efforts futile.
3.4 The immortality of the soul
In response to this predicament, Kant affirms a principle that, with
respect to choice and action, such practical use of our reason cannot
require of us what is impossible. To the extent that we view these
requirements of reason from the sensible perspective of spatio-
temporal causality, they will seem impossible of fulfilment. When,
however, we view them from the intelligible perspective within which
we frame the exercise of freedom, their fulfilment can legitimately
be "postulated" in terms of the immortality of the soul and of the
existence of God. Thus, with respect to the requirement that we
attain the complete moral perfection of a holy will, Kant holds that
we are justified in affirming that we will have an unending and
enduring existence after death, outside the framework of spatio-
temporal causality, in which to continue the task of seeking moral
perfection. He holds a similar view with respect to the requirement
that the highest good be the object of our willing. Even though our
moral actions do not seem to have the efficacy required in a spatio-
temporal framework to produce the happiness proportioned to virtue
that is a necessary component of the highest good, we are justified
in affirming that there is a supreme cause of nature � i.e., God �
that will bring this about, not merely for ourselves, but for all
moral agents.
3.5 The postulates of practical reason and the categorical imperative
Kant terms immortality and the existence of God "postulates" in order
to distinguish them from the "ideas" of the soul and of God that
rationalist metaphysics had made objects of theoretical proofs.
These "postulates of practical reason" are fundamental components in
what Kant terms "moral faith." The need for such moral faith arises
in the context of our human efforts to sustain ourselves in
consistent, life-long moral endeavor. The requirement of practical
reason that we make the highest good the object of our will is
crucial for sustaining us in this endeavor. Kant thinks that our
efforts in that endeavor will falter, however, in the face of the
predicament for our willing that the antinomy of practical reason
poses for us. If we think that the highest good is impossible of
attainment or that our actions have no bearing on its attainment,
what basis do we then have for continuing our moral efforts?
Kant's response to this predicament is to appeal to the unconditioned
character of the moral demand, i.e., the categorical imperative, that
we place upon ourselves in exercising our freedom. Since our reason
demands that we will our actions solely on the basis of their
rightness, and since we acknowledge that we can do what reason
demands, i.e., that we are free, then we have a basis in reason for
affirming the possibility of meeting reason's correlative demand
regarding the highest good. We can make the achievement of the
highest good the object of our willing, even if it remains obscure to
us exactly how this will eventually come about. Thus the immortality
and the God that are postulated as necessary for bringing about, in
concert with our own moral endeavors, the highest good are both
objects of "moral faith." Kant is insistent that the affirmation of
God and immortality that is made on the basis of moral faith does not
make them objects of theoretical knowledge. They are objects of moral
faith inasmuch as their acknowledgment is a matter of a free assent
that is legitimated, but not thereby coerced, by reason. In some
measure, his account of moral faith complements his arguments against
the traditional proofs for the existence of God inasmuch as Kant
thinks that such proofs seek to coerce us intellectually into an
acknowledgment of that which can only be appropriately affirmed by a
response of our human freedom.
Kant's moral argument and his notion of moral faith have both been
subject to different interpretations and evaluations by commentators
on Kant's work. Some of these disputes, e.g., about the structure and
validity of the moral argument, arise because Kant's own articulation
of the argument varies in the writings in which he proposes it. Some
of the more important objections to the moral argument center upon
the coherence and adequacy of the distinction between the sensible
and the intelligible perspectives that are central to both his
statement and resolution of the antinomy of practical reason. The
moral argument has also been criticized as an effort on Kant's part
to transgress, in the name of the moral use of reason, the very
limits he had set to the theoretical use of reason in the first
Critique.
The interpretive problems and disagreements that arise about the
content of the notion of "moral faith" and its significance for
Kant's critical project are often themselves part of larger
interpretive questions about the nature and scope of that project.
One focus for these issues is the set of three questions � "What can
I know? What ought I do? For what may I hope?" � that Kant himself
posed as expressing the central human concerns that he took to be at
stake in the critical project. While the first question arises from
the domain of the theoretical use of reason and the second from that
of its practical use, the third is the one upon which Kant thinks
that both uses of reason must eventually converge. The question of
hope � and the notion of moral faith that Kant takes to be the proper
response of human reason to that question � are thus centrally
important to the unity of Kant's critical project (Neiman 1994).
Kant's interpreters disagree over how successful he is � if at all �
in answering the question of hope with the notion of moral faith.
A number of the occasional essays that Kant published in the 1780s
and 1790s include treatments of some of the philosophical, cultural,
and political dimensions of religion. An Answer to the Question: What
Is Enlightenment? (1784) touches upon religious tolerance and the
role of religion in public and political life. What Does It Mean to
Orient Oneself in Thinking? (1785) was Kant's contribution to a
controversy involving F. H. Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn that was
sparked by Jacobi's claim that the recently deceased G. E. Lessing,
one of Germany's leading intellectuals, had been an adherent of
Spinoza's philosophy and thus, by implication, an atheist. (See Wood
1996b, and Beiser 1987 for a accounts of this "pantheism
controversy.") In The Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786)
Kant utilizes the early chapters of the book of Genesis as a vehicle
for sketching elements for a philosophy of history. In a similar
fashion, in The End of All Things (1794) he makes use of another
biblical text, the book of Revelation, to explore the moral
significance of the Christian doctrine of the Last Judgment. The
brief essay, On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in
Theodicy (1791), offers a reflection on the book of Job that serves
to illustrate the antinomy of practical reason. This prefigures
Kant's more extensive discussion in Religion within the Boundaries of
Mere Reason (1793) of the relationship between morality and religion.
The work in which Kant offers his most extensive and systematic
treatment of religion from the perspective of his critical philosophy
is Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In addition to its
importance in the development of Kant's view of religion as discussed
below, this work is notable because of the controversy over
censorship that attended its publication, the reprimand then given to
Kant in the name of the Prussian emperor, Friedrich Wilhelm II, and
Kant's pledge not to publish on matters of religion, which he later
considered abrogated upon the death of the emperor in 1797.
(Extensive accounts of this controversy can be found in Wood 1996 and
Di Giovanni 1996.) Kant published his own account of this
controversy, including his justification for considering himself
released from his pledge, in the "Preface" to The Conflict of the
Faculties (1798). In the first essay in this three part work Kant
defends the freedom of the philosopher to inquire into matters of
religion. He places this defense in the context of a larger account
of the difference between the work of philosophers and that of
biblical theologians as distinct faculties in a university.
In the four essays that constitute Religion within the Boundaries of
Mere Reason (hereafter Religion) Kant articulates his understanding
of religion as a human activity in terms of the account of human
moral life he had developed in works such as the Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals (1785), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). The need for
dealing explicitly with this relationship arises in consequence of
Kant's further reflections on the notion of "the highest good" and
its role in the resolution of the antinomy of practical reason. The
demand that the highest good be the object of our willing inevitably
gives rise, in Kant's view, to the question: "What is to result from
this right conduct of ours?" Kant's treatment of this question allows
him to set forth and defend the claim that even though "morality on
its own behalf has no need of religion," it is still the case
that "morality leads inevitably to religion."
3.6 Radical evil
Before Kant offers an answer to this question in Religion, however,
he provides a more extensive account of the obstacles to right
willing and right conduct than he offered in his earlier critical
writings on moral philosophy. Central to this account is the
development of the notion of "radical evil" in human moral life and
of the moral conversion that is needed to overcome it. He presents
the notion of radical evil in Book One of Religion under the guise of
a philosophical counterpart to the Christian doctrine of original
sin. His discussion of moral conversion in Book Two then parallels
the Christian doctrine of redemption. Kant places particular emphasis
upon human responsibility for both radical evil and moral conversion.
Unlike original sin, which Christian belief has understood as
inherited, radical evil is self-incurred by each human being. It
consists in a fundamental misdirection of our willing that corrupts
our choice of action. In Kant's terminology, it consists in
an "inversion" of our "maxims," which are the principles for action
we pose to ourselves in making our choices. Instead of making the
rightness of actions � i.e., the categorical imperative � the
fundamental principle for choice, we make the satisfaction of one of
our own ends take priority in the willing of our actions. We thus
inculcate in ourselves a propensity to make exceptions to the demand
of the categorical imperative in circumstances when such an exception
seems to be in our own favor.
Overcoming radical evil requires a "change of heart" � i.e., a
reordering of our fundamental principle of choice � that we are each
responsible for effecting in ourselves. Effecting such a change,
however, leaves unsettled our moral culpability for those choices
that were made under the inverted maxim of evil. In the language of
traditional Christian theology, what happens to the "old man" [sic] �
and to the consequences of choices made under that guise � when
conversion makes us "new"? In answer to this question, Kant
reinterprets the Christian doctrine of the atonement through the
death of Jesus Christ. He rejects the view of "vicarious atonement" �
that Christ takes away the guilt of previous evil conduct by standing
as a substitute for all of us � in favor of an "exemplary" one.
Christ thus provides a model in which we recognize steadfast
adherence in both word and action to the principle of moral rightness
which we already possess in the categorical imperative as the
principle for the exercise of our practical reason. Such adherence to
the principle of moral rightness is fundamental to what Kant
considers to be the "religion of reason."
Kant's account of moral conversion also touches upon another
important theme in Christian theology: the nature and function of the
activity of God in the process of moral regeneration. This process,
under the heading of "justification," was a central issue during the
sixteenth century Reformation that lead to division of Christian
churches in Europe. Christian theology conceptualized this activity
of God in justification as part of its complex notion of "grace."
Against this background, Kant's account of human responsibility for
turning away from radical evil has frequently been understood as
leaving little or no room for the functioning of God's grace within
this process. This would align Kant with a much earlier Christian
heresy, Pelagianism, (combated by Augustine in the fifth century)
that emphasizes the power of human beings to effect their own
salvation (Michalson 1990, Wolterstorff 1991; for a different
assessment, see Mari�a 1997.) Similar issues arise concerning Kant's
views of other Christian doctrines, such as divine providence, the
incarnation, miracles and revelation, which seem to require that the
activity of God intervene within the ordinary causal workings of the
natural and human world. Kant makes the distinction between the
sensible and the intelligible in such a way that it precludes making
any theoretical claims about the possibility of interventions of
these kinds: To the extent that our human apprehension of such
interventions is cognized within the framework of spatio-temporal
events and relations, we can account for them as part of the causal
working of nature. What then stands in dispute about his view is the
extent to which it still allows affirmation of the possibility of
such divine interventions on the basis of moral faith. (See Savage,
1991 and Mulholland, 1991 for contrasting views.)
3.7 The ethical commonwealth
Kant's account of radical evil does not end, however, with the moral
conversion of the individual. This is so because radical evil is
occasioned by the social circumstances of human life and culture and
it has social and historical consequences. As a result, the moral
conversion of the individual � or even of many individuals � is not
sufficient to overcome radical evil completely. Kant explores these
social and historical dimensions in Books Three and Four of Religion.
Whereas the first two books of Religion display important links
between Kant's view of religion and the moral, epistemological, and
metaphysical concerns of his critical philosophy, these last two
books exhibit connections to his philosophy of human culture, society
and history.
In Book Three he argues that the emulation and competition that come
with being part of society, a dynamic he terms humanity's "unsociable
sociability," trigger the preference for self that corrupts the
individual's fundamental maxim of choice. The formation of civil and
political society � which Kant envisions as leaving "the juridical
state of nature" � makes it possible to place a limit upon a range of
external actions that issue from such a corrupt maxim. This limit
specifically bears upon actions through which we interfere with one
another's freedom. Kant later enunciates this limit, in The
Metaphysics of Morals (1797), as "the universal principle of
right": "Any action is right if it can coexist with everyone's
freedom in accordance with a universal law." This limit has the
positive effect of channeling our unsociable sociability into ways
that lead to the development of culture and commerce. Kant sees this
as a central way in which the causal workings of nature play a role
in the moral progress of humanity. Even so, this limit cannot effect
the moral change needed to leave what he calls "the ethical state of
nature" in which the maxim of our actions remains inverted. Kant thus
introduces a notion of "the ethical commonwealth" as the ideal form
of human social relationship through which the social occasions and
consequences of radical evil are to be overcome.
Kant had anticipated some of the features of the ethical commonwealth
in earlier works. His discussion of the highest good in
the "Transcendental Doctrine of Method" at the end of the Critique of
Pure Reason characterizes the "moral world" as one that is
constituted by the interrelation of rational beings in accord with
moral laws. In The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals he uses
the image of a "kingdom of ends" to express the mutual relation that
moral agents bear to one another when the categorical imperative
serves as their principle of choice. Developing these earlier
discussions into the notion of an ethical commonwealth allows Kant to
explore further the social and historical dimensions of the religion
of reason that he sees arising from morality.
3.8 Religion, society and history
Just as the central discussions of the previous books of Religion
showed parallels to important Christian doctrines, the ethical
commonwealth can be considered Kant's re-interpretation of the
doctrine of the Church as "the kingdom of God on earth." In what may
be an echo of the Augustinian-Lutheran concept of the two kingdoms,
Kant differentiates the external civil order of the political
commonwealth from the internal moral order of the ethical
commonwealth. A major consequence of this differentiation is that the
external civil order of the state can be enforced by coercion while
the moral order of the ethical commonwealth can come about only by
the mutual exercise of human freedom. Even as Kant characterizes
as "invisible" the bonds that link members of the ethical
commonwealth to one another into a community of virtue, he also
assigns this community a role in the visible historical and cultural
dynamics through which humanity is to attain its moral destiny as a
species. In this role the ethical commonwealth serves as a major link
between Kant's account of religion and his philosophical treatments
of the social dynamics that form political and cultural life in the
course of human history. The ethical commonwealth shares key features
with three important concepts that Kant uses to articulate his vision
of the social dynamics that engage human freedom and properly respect
the dignity of the persons who exercise it. These three are a
republic constitution for the governance of nation-states, a
cosmopolitan perspective on cultural and commercial interchange among
nations, and perpetual peace among nations as "the highest political
good." Along with the ethical commonwealth they all presuppose a
dynamic of equal mutual respect for all individuals in virtue of
their moral freedom. They are all factors in forming the trajectory
of human history toward what Kant sees as the moral destiny of
humanity as a species.
Kant provides his most concrete specification of this destiny in
terms of "perpetual peace," a notion that he sketches in the essay
Idea for A Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)
and most fully articulates in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795). In the
conclusion of Book Three, Division One of Religion, he describes the
ethical commonwealth as the community of virtue that assures
perpetual peace. This suggests that a full establishment of the inner
moral order of the ethical commonwealth precedes the creation of an
external political order that will be effective for sustaining peace
among nations. In a later writing, The Conflict of the Faculties,
Part Three: An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race
Constantly Progressing? (1798), Kant suggests the opposite relation:
Securing an external political order of perpetual peace is a
condition that needs to precede the establishment of an ethical
commonwealth which is the achievement of an internal dynamic of moral
harmony of intent among all free individuals. This poses a number of
interpretive issues about the final destiny Kant envisions for
individuals and for humanity as a species (Yovel, 1980). Does Kant
think that the moral destiny of the human species is attainable in
this spatio-temporal world as an outcome of human history? Or is it
instead an "other-worldly" achievement? Or might it just be an ideal
goal that can be increasingly approximated but never fully reached? A
related question is whether the ethical commonwealth, or other
notions, such as perpetual peace, that he uses to articulate elements
of the moral destiny of humanity as a species, come to replace Kant's
earlier affirmation of the immortality of individual souls as a
postulate of practical reason. Finally, there are questions about the
meaning and the consistency of Kant's use of the terms "providence"
and "history" as factors in the trajectory of humankind towards its
moral destiny (Kleingeld, 2001). Does Kant truly hold that there is a
divine providential order guiding human moral efforts toward an
harmonious final outcome? Or does he affirm, instead, only an
immanent, impersonal dynamic of history that anticipates Hegel's
notion of "the cunning of reason"?
Kant uses the concept of an ethical commonwealth in the second part
of Book Three of Religion to outline the function of a religion of
reason within the general historical movement of humanity toward its
moral destiny. Book Four, in contrast, deals with a number of the
concrete features of human religious practice and history. As in
other parts of Religion Kant shows awareness of the range of the
world's religions, but his primary focus continues to be upon
Christianity. He first locates Christianity by reference to the
prevailing Enlightenment conceptual construct of "natural religion."
He notes that, as a result the obstacles that arise from the finite
and sensible character of our human make up, a purely natural
religion is unable on its own to command the universal assent that is
its due. There is thus an historical need for revelation to be added
to the religion of reason. The purpose of this revelation, however,
is not to add something essential that would be otherwise lacking in
the religion of reason, but to serve as a vehicle for the free assent
that the religion of reason invites as the response of an authentic
faith. Once authentic faith is operative, the vehicle of revelation
will no longer be necessary.
3.9 Kant's criticisms of organized religion
Kant sees a significant negative side in the concrete, historical
character of the human reception of the religion of reason and its
ancillary revelation. It is subject to the same dynamic of self-
serving corruption that is the mark of radical evil. In consequence,
Kant articulates in Book Four some of his strongest criticisms of the
organization and practices of Christianity that encourage what he
sees as a religion of counterfeit service to God. Among the major
targets of his criticism are external ritual, superstition and a
hierarchical church order. He sees all of these as efforts to make
oneself pleasing to God in ways other than conscientious adherence to
the principle of moral rightness in the choice of one's actions. The
severity of Kant's criticisms on these matters, along with his
rejection of the possibility of theoretical proofs for the existence
of God and his philosophical re-interpretation of some basic
Christian doctrines, have provided the basis for interpretations that
see Kant as thoroughly hostile to religion in general and
Christianity in particular (e.g., Walsh 1967). Other interpreters see
Kant as trying to mark off a defensible rational core of Christian
belief, but offer differing judgements about the success of his
efforts. Some (e.g., Michalson 1999) evaluate these efforts as self-
defeating, paving the way for a more radical denial of God such as
Nietzsche's. Others (e.g., Collins 1967; Wood 1992) see Kant
articulating an account of the dynamics linking morality and
religious belief that has positive value for a believer's reflective
appropriation and practice of faith.
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