Kant's Theory of Religion - Essay Example

Kant's Theory of Religion Introduction Immanuel Kant was one of the most prominent philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. In what has been grouped as his philosophy of religion, Kant gives an extensive discussion on the immortality of the soul, arguments for the existence of God and his attributes, the ‘moral argument’ for God, moral principles’ relationship to religious practice and belief as well as the problem of evil. He also gives criticisms of organized religion, among others. His philosophy of religion has amazed many including his warmest admirers. This paper gives a critical discussion of Kant's theory of religion. Before the 1781publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s major interest lay in the theoretical standing and function of the concept of God. Therefore, he sought to locate this concept within a methodically ordered set of basic philosophical principles, which give an account for the world’s structure and order. As he developed his critical philosophy, Kant proposed a new philosophical principles’ role in understanding the world’s structure and order. Consequently, the critical project had an important effect upon the way he treated the role as well as status of the concept of God within the hypothetical enterprise of metaphysics. Furthermore, Kant uses the critical philosophy as a locus for addressing more explicitly other key aspects of the concepts of God and religion than he had done in his former writings. Chief among these are the moral and the religious importance that humans ascribe to the concept of God (Rossi, 2009). Important to note is the fact that throughout his entire career, Kant's interest in the theoretical function and status of the concept of God persists. Some of his important early works that talked about the concept of God in terms of principles and arguments include Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763) and A New Exposition of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge (1755). Kant’s interest in natural sciences’ problems shaped these writings. Rossi notes that they were also shaped by an intellectual context wherein rationalist philosophies stalking from Wolff and Leibniz’s metaphysical systems held general sway. He also adds that Newtonian physics’ theoretical structure as well shaped them. The way Kant treated such topics as the relationship of God’s power to the order of the universe was therefore principally directed in these and other former writings to situate a comprehension of the concept of God in cosmology and metaphysics, fields of philosophical inquiry. While the focus of cosmology was on the physical principles that govern the natural universe’s workings, the concern of metaphysics was articulating the general principles of all that is (Axinn, 1994). During this early period, in his discussions of the concept of God, Kant’s primary focus was not on the religious function and content that the concept of God may have for humans and their activity –for instance, how God may be an object of worship. Rather, he focuses more upon locating the concept of God properly within a methodically arranged set of basic philosophical principles that explain the world’s structure and order (Axinn, 1994). In his pre-critical discussions of God, Kant had not yet expressed a definitive break with his predecessor s’ rationalist metaphysics approach and therefore, his discussions presume the legality of the enterprise of the construction of enough theoretical argument for the existence of God. Nevertheless, in these works, he makes a number of points that portend crucial arguments that his mature critical philosophy will raise afterward against the traditional treatment of the function and status of the concept of God by rationalist metaphysics. Particularly, these works are a clear indication that Kant already had the concern of addressing the three main lines of argument that he characteristically took these traditions to utilize for indicating God’s existence. They are the physico-theological argument, the cosmological argument and ontological argument (Kant & Meiklejohn, 2003). In the first part of his study about God, Kant offers an extensive explanation of the impediments to right conduct and right willing. Central to this account is what he refers to as the radical evil in human moral life. Kant particularly emphasizes upon human responsibility for both moral conversion and radical evil. Radical evil is self-incurred by each human being different from original sin, which is inherited in Christian belief. Kant argues that radical evil consists of our will’s fundamental misdirection that corrupts humans’ choice of action. Rather than making the rightness of actions humans make the satisfaction of one of their own ends take precedence in the willing of their actions thereby instilling in themselves a tendency to make exceptions to the categorical imperative’s demand in situations when such an exemption appears to be in our their favor. Change of heart is vital in overcoming radical evil, that is, there must be a restructuring of human’s basic principle of choice – that everyone is responsible for effecting in himself/herself. However, effecting such a change leaves our moral responsibility for those choices that made under the inverted maxim of evil unsettled. Kant discards the ‘vicarious atonement’ view that by standing as a substitute for all, Christ removes the guilt of previous evil conduct. He asserts that Christ provides a model in which humans recognize unwavering adherence to the principle of moral rightness in both action and word. he says that we already possess this principle as the principle for the exercise of our practical reason in the categorical imperative. Such devotion to moral rightness principle is essential to what Kant considers as the ‘religion of reason’ (Rossi, 2009). Axinn points out that according to Kant, the principle of selfishness is suitably a radical or an innate evil and that it frequently conflicts with the moral principle, the other innate principle in human nature. Kant believes that the principle of selfishness is the source of evil. Since Kant considers this principle to be a fixed part of each individual person’s nature, he refers to it as radical evil. He assumes that healthy persons must be ambivalent regarding the choice between the selfish and the moral principles. Kant classifies religions either as efforts to win God’s favour or moral religions, which are religions of good life conduct. He gives a definition of a moral religion as one consisting not in rights and dogmas, but in the disposition of the heart to fulfil all human duties as though they were divine commands. Kant’s interest lies in the religions in the first group. However, he has limited respect for these kinds of religions. He has a very classical view that morality is independent of religion, evident in Euthyphro, Plato’s dialogue. He also argues that morality principles do not require religion whatsoever. However, religion may be a consequence of morality despite the fact that morality does not need religion (Axinn, 1994). Kant believes that there are no special duties to God. He believes that religion is not to be sought outside of us in facts but rather, it is to be sought within us using rational concepts. This is exclusive of all divine worship machinery, which he refers to as a ‘superstitious belief’ as well as scriptural learning, which is not a morality requisite. Whether learned or not, morality principles are revealed to everyone in an immediate but an inscrutable manner. It is presumptuous of us to demand the revelation of more than this. He also believes that human beings are the holiest of beings. He asserts that basic is the following ‘principle calling for no evidence; whatsoever over and above good life-conduct man imagines that he can do to please God is a pseudo-service to God, a mere religious illusion’ (Axinn, 1994). Axinn further asserts that worthiness and hope are key concepts in Kant’s view of religion. Kant argues that the religious objective of an individual is just and only to make him/her laudable of assistance in becoming moral. He consequently defines religion as the execution of all human duties/moral duties as though they were divine commands. Here, one of his fundamental assumptions is that an act is of no moral worth if an evil person as well as a good person can perform it. Based on this, he leaves out almost all organized religion’s machinery and trappings as being behaviour patterns that an evil or a good person can perform equally well. Therefore, to him, they are irrelevant as far as pleasing God is concerned. Kant’s primary question is whether we shall start our system with faith on what God has done on our behalf or with what we are to do to become worthy of the assistance of God, whatever it may be. The response that he gives is worthiness. He argues that there is no vicarious atonement for the immorality of a person and that another person can never discharge moral debts. Furthermore, there does not exist a moral market place to parallel an economic market place’s functions (Axinn, 1994). Axinn asserts that by saying that the concept of Christian faith is an entirely rational faith, Kant implies that everyone can convince himself/herself of the impossibility of ever holding himself/herself to be morally justified before a God via his/her own life conduct and simultaneously, of the need of hope of a valid justification in the God’s eyes. Additionally, Kant means that every one can convince himself/herself on the uselessness of substituting pious compulsory services and churchly observances for a righteousness that is lacking and, over and against this, of the inevitable responsibility of becoming a new individual. Thirdly, Kant means that everyone can convince himself/herself through his/her own reason of the evil that lies in the hearts of human and from which no one is free. Kant argues that everyone can accent to all these. In his view, human beings practice all churchly observances as endeavours to invoke divine help by magic. He says that these observances fail because between morally efficacious cause and exclusively physical means, there is no cause at all according to any law of which reason can conceive. In other words, Kant’s argument is that under whatever circumstances, a physical activity can never accomplish a moral effect. Consequently, Kant’s attitude toward churchly observances made him never go to church out of his own free will – he could only go reluctantly when participating in an official university exercise (Kant, Wood & Giovanni, 2001). Axinn further asserts that Kant believes that a complete rational religion ought to be something presentable to all human beings understandably and persuasively to their own reason. He gives the five great Mohammedan belief’s commands namely fasting, pilgrimage to Mecca, washing and praying as fetish-faith examples. He does not distinctly criticize Mohammedanism just like the way he does not criticize other faith types (Kant, Wood & Giovanni, 2001). According to Kant, fanaticism refers to either the belief that we can somehow produce the effects of grace or the belief that we can separate the effects of grace from those of nature. People may rationally believe that there exists works of grace. However, claiming knowledge or wishing to observe such heavenly influences in themselves is a form of madness (Rossi, 2009). Kant specially emphasizes four religious problems and extensively talks about each of them. These matters include mysteries, means of grace, miracles and works of grace. Within the limits of reason alone, these four areas are not properly parts of a religion. Kant believes that when presented as knowledge rather than hope matters, these matters are errors into which historical religion has fallen. He proposes that the principle for evading this error is that it is not essential and is therefore unnecessary for people to know what God has done or does for their salvation. However, he adds that it is essential to know what people must do to become worthy of this help. Kant poses a challenge by asking who indeed between he who utterly insists on knowing the way in which man is released from evil and if he cannot know this gives up all hope of his release and he who trusts without the knowledge of how that for which he hopes will happen, is the unbeliever (Kant, Wood & Giovanni, 2001). In general, Kant argues that faith in means of grace, faith in miracles and faith in mysteries are three kinds of deceptive faith. In spite of his respect for the spirit of prayer, he believes that praying itself is a superstitious delusion. If thought of a means of grace, it is a fetish making. To him, prayer does not require to be clothed in formulas and words. He calls devotional exercises devout playthings and to him, there exists no crucial distinction in the worthlessness of the mechanical ways such as prayer formulas, regular attendance to the church, use of a Tibetan prayer wheel and pilgrimages to the sanctuaries, that people have invented presumably to serve God. He discusses a psychological phenomenon wherein according to observations, if their denomination has fewer statutory obligations compared to another denomination, human beings feel themselves somehow more enlightened and ennobled. This is so because if a church has fewer statutory requirements, it is considered as much nearer to a pure moral religion. Apparently, Kant was familiar with liberal sects (Rossi, 2009). The most focused treatment of Kant of the arguments for God’s existence appears in The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God. Here, Kant gives a classification of arguments for God under only two headings. The first heading moves from a rational concept of the possible to the affirmation of God and under it are the ontological argument and the argument that Kant himself presents as the only valid one in this work. The second heading moves from existent things’ experiential concepts and under it are the physico-theological as well as the cosmological arguments (Rossi, 2009). Regarding Kant’s later positions about the value and validity of theoretical arguments for God’s existence that he espouses and that people consider as his definitive views, three features are worth noting from his earlier work. To start with, Kant has already devised a central feature of the main objection that he will pose against the ontological argument in the Critique of Pure Reason, to be precise, that existence is not a predicate (Kant & Meiklejohn, 2003). Kant directs his objection against rationalist accounts, which took the judgment ‘something exists’ to predicate a property — that is, ‘existence’ — that is integrated in that thing’s concept. ‘Extension’ as a property of the concept ‘physical object’ is a good example of a property so predicated. The view that ‘existence’ is necessarily a property of the concept of God is basic to the ontological argument. This then acts as the decisive consideration for the conclusion that God must exist (philosophyofreligion.info 2008). In opposition to this, Kant claims that under no circumstance can we predicate ‘existence’ to be a property, which is included in any object’s concept. He demonstrates this by indicating that the difference between the one hundred dollars that one imagines to be in his/her pocket and one-hundred dollars in one’s pocket is not a difference in the concept of ‘one hundred dollars.’ He argues that saying that something ‘exists’, even in the case of God, is not predicating a property that its concept does not have if the thing did not exist. Secondly, at this earlier philosophical development stage, Kant, contrary to his position in his critical philosophy, maintains that there can be a theoretical argument that authentically results into the conclusion that God exists. Moreover, noteworthy about his proposed argument is that it falls under a similar heading under which he has categorized the ontological argument, that is, an argument that begins from a concept of the possible (Rossi, 2009). Thirdly, Kant classifies the physico-theological and cosmological arguments under one heading as ‘cosmological,’ in as much as he sees each one making an inference to God from our experience of things as they exist on earth, however, in terms of their persuasive power and relative cogency, he already differentiates them from one another. One argument that Kant will designate as the ‘cosmological argument’ in his later terminology moves in relation to a concept of causality to the conclusion that a first necessary being must be in existence. Kant sees this line of argument as distinctive of metaphysics in Wolff’s tradition and does not consider it valid. Just like in his later criticism of this argument in the first Critique, Kant sees it eventually resting upon similar conceptual considerations, which function within the ontological argument, most notably the allegation that existence is a predicate. The other, which he will designate as the ‘physico-theological’ argument’ is his later terminology, moves from observations of harmony and order in the world to its deduction that there must be a wise creator of that order. Kant also finds this argument lacking in strict probative force. Nevertheless, he regards it as a significant marker of human reason’s dynamics to look for an explanatory totality, albeit it does not thus provide a certain demonstrative course to an affirmation of God (Kant & Meiklejohn, 2003). Conclusion Kant’s philosophy if religion is very extensive and inexhaustible. Although it brought strong reaction, some people especially the younger generation considered him as their intellectual leader. I agree with Liukkonen and his co-author that Kant's teaching produces a great fundamental transformation in every mind that grasps it. This change may be considered as an intellectual rebirth and is able to actually move the inborn realism that arises from the original disposition of the intellect. Consequently, the mind goes through a fundamental undeceiving and later looks at things in another viewpoint. Various scholars have engaged in the study of Kant’s theory of religion as well as his other theories and each; even his critics, acknowledge the fact that Immanuel Kant was and still is one of the most prominent philosophers in the history of Western philosophy References Axinn, S. (1994): The logic of hope: extensions of Kant's view of religion. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi Press. Kant. I. & Meiklejohn, J. M.D. (2003): Critique of pure reason. New York: Courier Dover Publications. Kant, I., Wood, A.W. & Giovanni, G. D. (2001): Religion and rational theology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Liukkonen, P. & Pesonen, A. (2008): Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Retrieved May 15, 2010, from http://kirjasto.sci.fi/ikant.htm Rossi, P. (2009): Kant's Philosophy of Religion. Retrieved May 15, 2010, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-religion/#2 Philosophyofreligion.info. (2008): Immanuel Kant. Retrieved May 16, 2010, from http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/whos-who/historic-figures/immanuel-kant/ Read More