Religious Concepts in a Kantian Philosophy - Essay Example

 The Regulative Meaning of Religious Concepts in a Kantian Philosophy of Religion Immanuel Kant was an immensely popular and influential philosopher in 18th century Germany, who produced a wide array of works on metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and, most relevantly, religion. Probably the most amazing aspect of Kantian philosophy is the completeness of his theoretical and practical philosophies—a distinction he himself used wonderfully in creating his set of works. The difference between pure and practical reason forms the need for his two most seminal works, Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason, the latter of which is more relevant to his consideration of religion. In that work, and others, he fleshes out the difference between a constitutive picture of religious concepts and a regulative picture of religious concepts. Accepting the latter as a legitimate answer to one troubling antimony, Kant derives a critical philosophy which evaluates the notion of “religious knowledge”. Sceptical of such a possibility, Kant endeavours to move religion into the realm of the non-cognitive such that claims to know what is beyond experience—the phenomenon—are immediately cast aside. The regulative approach to religious concepts Kant adopts the view that human beings should use the belief in God merely as a system of reward and punishment in morality. God, despite existing outside the realm of natural cause-and-effect, has the power to reward goodness and punish evil, thereby making human beings committed to being moral. A key principle in Kant’s philosophy of religion seems to be the removal of religious claims from the discussion of theoretical cognition (Rossi). That is, Kant’s desire was to put religion in the realm of the non-cognitive, which influenced a number of later philosophers of religion. Whether left to feeling or intuition, these non-cognitive accounts give some value to a subjective religious experience. One could argue that heavily subjectivist, non-cognitive accounts of religion and atheistic accounts alike stem from this same conclusion that Kant draws. Other more philosophically constructive accounts of religion that draws on this Kantian view give significance to religious concepts as symbolically (or aesthetically) meaningful. If one chooses to adopt this view, then these religious concepts do not contain meaning-in-themselves, but derivative from something else containing meaning. If a symbol is simply something that represents something else, it is immediately unclear how a religion would function in reality. Like the Kantian distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal worlds in metaphysics, the distinction between religious symbols and the reality they represent is too wide of a gap to cross. This would certainly make sense in the context of the rest of Kant’s body of philosophy, building this notion of a perceptual impenetrability. As Kant argues, no theoretical argument can affirm the existence of God. This represented a shift in Kant’s way of thinking toward a self-critical focus of his own philosophy. To that extent, Kant begins to consider human reason as overreaching its powers in its desire to seek unity in all of its theoretical principles for a final, absolute knowledge of the world. Any attempt to claim knowledge of what lies outside of experience, for Kant, is a challenge, for such “knowledge” lies beyond even the capability of reason, which only provides the framework for experience: not knowledge of what lies beyond that experience (Rossi). This human tendency to want to see beyond the limits of experience culminates in religious concepts that, as said earlier, take on a kind of symbolic meaning in Kant’s philosophy of religion. That is, they do not mean anything-in-themselves (that is, are “constitutive”), only as symbols of other pieces of experience. God, the soul, the world, and many others are the final outcome of the efforts of reasons to identify and know what is absolute in existence. It is a mistake, Kant says, to see these ideas as things that lie within the scope of theoretical cognition. Instead, as Kant’s non-cognitivism holds, there is definitionally nothing within the scope of religion that relates to actual perception or experience. From this standpoint, Kant goes on to claim such religious concepts and ideas only have valid philosophical import as “regulative”, or, “guiding the direction of inquiry to be all the more encompassing in scope” (Rossi). Thus, Kant affirms the regulative meaning of religion and denies the constitutive meaning of religion, meaning he embraces religious notions as being useful for some further good, not good or meaningful in themselves. By “regulative”, Kant means a concept such as God functions only as a principle in causal accounts of the world. That is, what Kant means by “moral faith” justifies the existence of God, playing into human efforts to sustain thoroughly moral behaviour throughout the course of one’s life. If a judgment on the existence of God is necessary regardless of whether there are transcendental limitations on human knowledge, Kant makes his judgment that God takes on a “merely heuristic and regulative” character. He says this because in doing so, he escapes from paradox: the need to explain God’s existence theoretically paired with the need to trust only what we experience. A theoretical discussion of God's existence and attributes, Kant says, cannot be based “upon the knowledge of such a being but upon its idea only” (Palmquist). The attempt to define or prove God is, for Kant, an attempt to make out of our many different principles about the world into one true absolute, which goes beyond human reason. Kant addresses the religious concept of God in order to assert his theoretical concept in other contexts. That is, the criticism Kant lays down of the traditional proofs accomplishes such a goal by demonstrating that although the concept cannot be grounded in experience, the concept itself is at least not a contradiction per se. Kant then claims the regulative function of such an idea may be offered as an acceptably plausible (though not provable) hypothesis, even from reason. This hypothesis seems to be at the heart of Kant's philosophy of religion and his theological thought (Palmquist). If one takes Kant’s account of God as a merely regulative one (that is, as an explanatory factor in causations within the spatio-temporal world), then this makes a clear and unmistakeable intersection with the field of science. Using the regulative idea of God is objectionable to some, based primarily on the concern that science does not need an idea of God as a heuristic device in a naturalistic study. However, what Kant is not actually claiming God should be a part of regulative principles from an empirical perspective; because God is merely an idea, the idea is entirely incapable of shining light on what exists in the natural world. Thus, contrary to the constitutive position, science is still a matter of materialistic study (Palmquist). For Kant, the regulative idea of God functions only in the context of hypothesis, and apply only to how to philosophise about nature, not how to investigate nature scientifically. The clear separation here between philosophy and science seems to be repeated throughout Kant. As such, Kant does not need to “reconcile” religion and science, since they belong to two completely separate epistemic categories: one cognitive (science) and one non-cognitive, one involving experience (science) and one involving an overreaching reason that ultimately becomes only symbolically meaningful (religion). Kant managed to separate the two, but managed to “deftly avoid” finding a way in which the two realms should fit together (Ross). In addition, by treating scientific theory as a part of a “conditioned” reality, and morality/religion as part of an “unconditioned” reality, Kant allows for free will, despite being a determinist with science. This is because despite everything in the phenomenal world having a cause, God is free of any external causal influences. This interesting implication of the Kantian theology and metaphysic reconciles determinism and free will in a philosophically interesting way; however, what is does not do is identify how religion and science complement one another (Ross). Going back to a term introduced earlier, in Kantian philosophy “moral faith” comes about in the context of human struggles to sustain oneself in consistent moral living. Despite the value Kant places on practical reason in his moral philosophy, he still acknowledges that it may falter. For this reason, he addresses the question of why humans would continue their moral efforts despite the attainment of the highest good being impossible. In essence, Kant argues that a final reward for being moral is necessary, and this comes about in the idea of God as a “regulative” force. Kant believes the affirmation of God is made on the framework of moral faith, which incidentally does not make God or immortality objects of theoretical knowledge. This epistemic distinction between knowledge and faith seems to be equivalent to the ontic distinction between a religious concept and a religious object. At one point, Kant asks his reader rhetorically “For what may I hope?” (Fendt). Kant answers this question with the notion of “moral faith”, inasmuch as moral faith unites theoretical reason and practical reason in the context of moral philosophy (Rossi). Kant holds the belief that human beings use God as a lawgiver and law enforcer in the context of morality: without an objective system of reward and punishment for good and evil respectively, there is no rational reason to follow the moral dictates of reason. For this reason, Kant ascribes only symbolic meaning to religious concepts, and rejects the constitutive view that holds these ideas refer to some actually existing objects outside of perception. Kant remains hugely influential on the philosophy of religion because of his early attempts to move religion into the realm of the non-cognitive, which, for the first time, provided the root separation between religion and science. From Kant forward, these two disciplines continued to separate on the basis of their ontic differences within the Kantian metaphysic. Kant never bridged the gap between science and religion, leaving that tall order to generations of descendants. Bibliography Fendt, Gene. For What May I Hope?: Thinking With Kant and Kierkegaard. Washington: Peter Lang Publishing, 1990. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. —. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. —. Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. New York: HarperOne, 1960. Palmquist, Stephen. Kant's theistic solution to the problem of transcendental theology. 1991. 2010 . Ross, Kelley D. Immanuel Kant. 2008. 2010 . Rossi, Philip. Kant's Philosophy of Religion. 22 June 2004. 22 April 2010 . Read More