Kant was brought up in a devoutly Pietist Lutheran household. He published his ‘Religion within the limits of reason alone’ in 1793, he was censured in a letter from the King of Prussia, Frederick William II, for “distortion of many leading and fundamental doctrines of holy writ†and forbidden to write or teach further on religious subjects. But he only obeyed this order until the King died, whereupon Kant resumed expounding his religious views. In 1798, more than a year after his retirement from the University, Kant published a manifesto summarizing his ideas concerning religion.
By 1796 his memory was already failing, unable to recognise close family and friends, as was his hearing and eyesight.
Did Kant simply forget the things he had written previously and revert to his Pietist Lutheran upbringing ?
Kant lectured on geography, mineralogy, physics, pedagogy, anthropology and philosophy.
Kant did claim this defense of religious belief by demonstrating the limits of knowledge as his purpose in constructing the Critical philosophy and your statement that he was not a philosopher of religion is simply obviously, blatantly, irrefutably wrong – but otherwise, you’re o.k.
“But surely, people will proceed to ask, we may, according to this, admit a wise and omnipotent Author of the world? CERTAINLY, we answer, and not only we may, but we MUST. In that case, therefore, we surely extend our knowledge beyond the field of possible experience? By no means. For we have only presupposed a something of which we have no conception whatever as to what it is by itself (as a purely transcendental object). We have only with reference to the systematical and well-designed order of the world, which we must presuppose, if we are to study nature at all, presented to ourselves that unknown Being in ANALOGY with what is an empirical object, namely, an intelligence; that is, we have, with references to the purposes and perfections which depend on it, attributed to it those very qualities on which, according to the conditions of our reason, such a systematical unity may depend. That idea is entirely founded, therefore, on the employment of our reason IN THE WORLD, and if we were to attribute to it absolute and objective validity, we should be forgetting that it is only a Being in the idea which we think: and as we should then be taking our start from a cause, that cannot be determined by mundane considerations, we should no longer be able to employ that principle in accordance with the empirical use of reason.”
Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Pure Reason” (New York: Anchor, 1966), pp. 453-454 (F.Max-Muller trans., 1st ed. 1781; 2nd ed. 1786), at A: 694-698; B: 722-726.
Perhaps you instinctively knew that you were making a bit of an interpretational leap, because you registered such at the level of your own sentence’s grammar:
“Immanuel Kant was concerned to be a scientific thinker, whose views were fully compatible with the latest Newtonian learning of his day and also to insulate belief in human freedom and morality, in God and immortality, from the encroachments of science.”
The disjunction between Noumena and Phenomena, Faith and Science, which you attempt to place upon Kant, is literally disjoined in your opening sentence. Somehow I find this both beautiful and revealing. If, as you claim, Kant was unable to marry to two realms of his “dualism”, you should have no problem with Monooq running fast and loose with one half of this dualism. It is rather your contention that Kant’s Faith and Science is intimately linked that undermines your basic premise that he unsuccessfully brought the two realms together. You seem to have only transferred the dualism of your question to the rhetorical realm of motive and accomplishment, merging them. Almost as if you are having your cake and eating it too.
Careful, you might be accused of being capable of detecting irony. You don’t want that. Besides, I’m a relativist. Nothing is right or wrong. It’s all relative because no one has a right to judge such things.
yes, thats what your arguing. so, uh, are you going to argue it?
(this is like: ‘no he didn’t’, ‘yes he did’, ‘no he didn’t’ …not me, you)
your quote shows what he did: create a buffer zone where only faith could reach god. but it is one of many acheivements in the KrV, not even close to the most significant. again, making it the point ignores far too much. it is obviously incidental to an epistemological system. and when he outlines his objectives: that isn’t one of them!
ahhh, you’re a relativist?? and this excuses you from having to make some kind of argument to justify such a narrow reading of the KrV??
you should also do something to show why when Kant outlined his objective in the Introduction to the KrV under The General Problem of Pure Reason… he didn’t mention any religious objectives. and you should address my quote where Kant outlined his objective (to inquire ‘how are a priori synthetic propositions are possible’) and why math, natural science, the pure structures of consciousness and their forms should all be underwritten as objectives to a purely religious objective.
the third question in the Prolegomena is how a science of metaphysics is possible. as you should know this includes freedom of the will, and immortality, as well as god. the popular explanation of the KrV divides into three questions, and in one of the questions, as one of three parts of that question, concerns god.
by limiting kant’s purpose to insolating god, you ignore freedom of the will and immortality as the part under the critique of metaphysics. more importantly, you ignore everything to do with the first two main questions(how is math possible, and how is natural science possible).
there is no doubt in my mind that your religious goggles are your interpretation of how Kant is to be read. unfortunately for your argument, there is nothing in Kant that would lead you to believe that that is how he wants to be read.
and yes, dunamis is rigth that fred has his cake and eats it too. but only the slightest fraction of the cake… because he doesn’t like seeing hte bigger picture. infact he’s probably a priest.
