Kant on God and Faith

by
Dr. Chris L. Firestone
Kant 101
“I have denied knowledge to
make room for faith.”
 Copernican Revolution

Geocentric Model vs Heliocentric Model

Ptolemy Copernicus
Sun AD 83-168 Earth AD 1473-1543

Earth Sun
Kant’s Copernican Revolution

Blank Slate Model vs Transcendental Model

Philosophy Philosophy
Objects before Kant Mind after Kant

Mind Objects
 Kant’s “Transcendental” or
“Copernican” Philosophy
• OLD View
—Reason is fundamentally passive in the knowing
process; reason is either a blank slate (as in empiricism)
or logic-bearing, nearly-blank slate (as in rationalism)

impression

mind object
 Kant’s “Transcendental” or
“Copernican” Philosophy
• NEW View
—Reason forms nature (or appearances)
according to its receptive capabilities.

five senses world

Five Senses
X timeSpace
and and space
Time
12 Categories
as it
12 categories appears
Ding an sich
 The Black and White TV Analogy

Hollywood Set --------> Receiver and Equipment ----------> Picture

 The Black and White TV Analogy

Hollywood Set --------> Receiver and Equipment ----------> Picture

Reality as such -----> Transcendental Conditions ----> Appearance

for the possibility of experience
 The “Predator” Analogy

The Jungle <--------------------------------- Human Sight

 The “Predator” Analogy

Predator’s “Heat Sensing” Sight -------------> The Jungle

 The Transcendental Argument

(1) In order for experience to happen, p

must be true of the human subject.
(2) I, at least, have experience.

Therefore, p must be true of the human

subject.
Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy
Space and Time

Known Unknown
(Nature or Appearance)

Boundary Line
12 Categories
Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy
Space and Time

Known
Unknown
(Nature or Appearance)

Problems:

12 Categories God, Freedom

& Immortality
Basic Logic Behind Kant’s
Philosophy
Basic Axiom
The mind = nature/appearance

Corollary #1—Theatre of Experience

Space and Time = transcendental forms of intuition

Corollary #2—Props within the Theatre

Twelve categories of the mind = transcendental forms
of conception

Kant’s Revolution
The mind imposes its categories on the world rather
than the world imposing its categories on the mind
 The “Holy Grail” of Kant-studies
• “I have denied knowledge to make room for faith.”
• Kant’s expressed purpose is to silence the skeptics
and the dogmatists regarding proofs for or against
the existence of God.
 The “Holy Grail” of Kant-studies
• “I have denied knowledge to make room for faith.”
• Kant’s expressed purpose is to silence the
dogmatists and the skeptics regarding proofs for or
against the existence of God.

So, where exactly is this room for faith?

 The Kantian Anxiety
How can we talk or even think about God,
if God is by definition beyond possible
experience?

This question must be answered if there is

room for faith.
Kant 201
“I will inexorably believe in the
existence of God and a future life,
and I am sure that nothing can
make these beliefs unstable, since
my moral principles themselves,
which I cannot renounce without
becoming contemptible in my own
eyes, would thereby be subverted”
(The Critique of Pure Reason; A828/B856).
 Kant’s Apparent Answer

The room for faith is found in practical reason.

 Kant’s Second Revolution
Reason is not monolithic (theory only),
rather it is “perspectival.”

Reason is not merely a faculty of cognition,

it is also a faculty of desire.

We not only know things, but also want and

do things.
 Kant’s Second Revolution
Reason is not monolithic, rather it is “perspectival”

Four Questions:
(1) What can I know? Critique of Pure Reason

(2) What ought I to do? Critique of Practical Reason

(3) What may I hope? Critique of Judgment

(4) What is man? Later writings:

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Viewpoint
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
Opus Postumum
 Kant’s Second Revolution
Reason is not monolithic, rather it is “perspectival”

Four Questions:
(1) What can I know? Critique of Pure Reason

(2) What ought I to do? Critique of Practical Reason

(3) What may I hope? Critique of Judgment

(4) What is man? Later writings:

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Viewpoint
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
Opus Postumum
 Kant’s Moral Philosophy
• What are the necessary conditions for the
possibility of moral action?
Non-moral
Action

Moral Action
 Kant on Morality
• What are the necessary conditions for the
possibility of right action?
Non-moral
Action
Freedom
Freedom and
the Moral Law
Moral Action

The Moral Law

 Kant on Morality
• What are the necessary conditions for the
possibility of right action?
Freedom and the Moral Law Non-moral
Action
Freedom

Necessary Postulates: Moral Action

God and Immortality

The Moral Law

 Why are God and immortality necessary
postulates of practical reason?

(1) The Highest Good is the end of human moral

striving.
(2) Without the promise of this end, morality
collapses (and with it human dignity).
(3) The ideas of God and immortality are required
in order to realize the Highest Good.
(4) Thus, morality requires belief in God and
immortality for rational stability.
 Kant’s Philosophy as Two-Realms
Yields two problems for God and faith:

(1) God-talk and God-thought (1st Critique)

(2) God as a fictional postulate of the moral
philosophy alone (2nd Critique)
Kant 301
“Thus it is from this idea [of the necessity
of a highest end to moral action] that an
inference can be drawn to the real
existence and nature of both God and the
soul—beings that otherwise would be
entirely hidden from us.”
—Kant’s 3rd Critique (5:474)
• Now hold on Kant …

“… an inference can be drawn to the real

existence and nature of both God and the
soul …”

How can we go from ideas and postulates

to “real existence”?
 The Traditional Reading
• There exists an influential stream of Kant
interpretation stretching all the way back to Kant’s
student Gottlieb Fichte that holds the following to
be true of Kant’s philosophy:
(1) Kant boundary line metaphor in the 1st Critique
destroys any possibility of traditional metaphysics.
(2) Kant’s philosophy is essentially a two-realm
philosophy—the theoretical and practical.
(3) Kant’s understands faith to be purely a moral
matter and thus Kantian faith hovers somewhere
between agnosticism and non-realism.
 Revisiting Kant
Whenever an interpretation runs into data that
it cannot explain, it has two choices:

(1) Blame the author (Kant dribbled on his

philosopher’s cloak by importing theism after
he had eliminated it in the 1st Critique).

(2) Go back and look at what that author really

wrote (rather than what he was taken to have
written)
Back to the first Critique

Knowledge (Wissen)

versus

Cognition (Erkenntnis)
Back to the first Critique

Knowledge (Wissen)
Intuitions + Concepts  Judgment

Cognition (Erkenntnis)
The ability to get an object in mind
One Problem with the Traditional Reading

It equates knowledge with cognition.

Deductions:
(1) Since God cannot be an object of knowledge,
God cannot be understood at all.
(2) Since God cannot be understood at all, God
cannot be a proper object of faith.
 Kant’s Religious Epistemology
TYPES CONVICTIONS
Empirical Knowledge
(Wissen)
Cognition
(Erkenntnis) Faith
Pure
Opinion
God is an object of pure cognition
Rational predicates that apply to God:
* knowledge
* volition
* certain ontological predicates (like
duration and change)

Thus, theoretical reason furnishes

practical reason with a clear and
compelling object for faith.
 Pure Cognition
A priori capability that allows us to get
something in mind at all.

Ideas with Objective and subjective uncertainty

 Opinion

Ideas with objective uncertainty, but subjective

certainty
 Faith
Kant’s Philosophy Supports Theism
(1) We can and do get God in mind in the 1st
Critique.
(2) We understand God according to a fairly
standard, rationalist conception of God
as the all-reality (ens realissimum),
having both knowledge of things-as-they-
really-are and a supreme volition.
(3) We presume the existence of God and
come to faith in God for moral reasons.
 Kant’s Third Revolution?
Reason is not monolithic or diachronic, rather it is “perspectival”

Four Questions:
(1) What can I know? Critique of Pure Reason

(2) What ought I to do? Critique of Practical Reason

(3) What may I hope? Critique of Judgment

(4) What is man? Later writings:

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Viewpoint
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone
Opus Postumum
The Empirical Perspective and the Moral Perspective

Space & Time Freedom

Unknown Immoral

Known Fact/Value Divide Moral



12 Categories The Moral Law

“What can I know?” “What ought I to do?”
 Fact-Value Divide
• Nature appears, for the most part, to be
blind to our moral striving.

• Morality is based not on the facts of nature

or on the consequences of our actions, but
purely on our motivations—Do we have
the moral law as our highest incentive and
thus have a “good will”?
 Fact-Value Divide Explained

• Why should I be moral?

 Fact-Value Divide Explained

• Why should I be moral?

– If nature doesn’t reward moral activity
 Fact-Value Divide Explained

• Why should I be moral?

– If nature doesn’t reward moral activity
– If justice can only be achieved when I take
matters into my own hands
 Fact-Value Divide Explained

• Why should I be moral?

– If nature doesn’t reward moral activity
– If justice can only be achieved when I take
matters into my own hands

I feel a sense of purpose (that I cannot

fully articulate in words) whenever I
experience something beautiful. This
feeling of pleasure is a product of the
faculty of judgment.
 Kant’s Third Perspective

Does the faculty of judgment have synthetic

a priori constitutive principles?
 Kant’s Third Perspective
??

“What may non-Beauty

I hope?”
Beauty

??
 Kant’s Third Perspective
Immortality

“What may non-Beauty

I hope?”
Beauty

The Highest Good

Four Moments in a Judgment of Beauty

• necessary delight
– Spontaneous feeling that yields pleasure to all
who have it
• disinterested delight
– There are no ulterior motives
• subjective universality
– Everyone ought to agree
• purposiveness without a purpose
– Inward sense of purpose that, upon reflection,
is inscrutable
 The Beautiful Bridge
• The faculty of judgment stabilizes reason
through a feeling of pleasure that unifies
nature and freedom.
• We cannot name or fully understand the
purposiveness that we feel.
• Nevertheless, we feel a sense of harmony
when we experience something through
the senses as beautiful (visual, audio, etc.)
Kant 401
“Moral cognition of oneself, which seeks to
penetrate into the depths (the abyss) of one’s
heart which are quite difficult to fathom, is the
beginning of all human wisdom. For in the case
of a human being, the ultimate wisdom, which
consists in the harmony of a human being’s will
with its final end, requires him first to remove the
obstacle within (an evil will actually present in
him) and then to develop the original
predisposition to a good will within him, which
can never be lost. (Only a descent into the hell
of self-cognition can pave the way to godliness.)
—The Metaphysics of Morals (6:441)
The Ultimate Question?
What is the Matrix?
 The Real Ultimate Question

“What is Man?”

The question goes all the way back to the

Socrates’ quest and the Oracle of Delphi
—Know thyself

It involves a sober and critical look at our very

identity as human beings; our identity as only
God knows it.
An Unresolved Problem that Leads
to Religion: The Teleological Gap

We may feel a sense of purpose (in the

aesthetic experience), but, when we try to
name or fully comprehend it, we find that
we cannot.

The purpose of the world and my place in

it requires a transcendental analysis of
hope by focusing on the moral disposition.
Each of us must descend “into the hell of
self-cognition” in order to “pave the way to
godliness.” Only in this way, thinks Kant,
can we understand the necessary faith
conditions for moral hope.
Kant’s descent into the hell of self-cognition:
Answering the question What is Man?

• Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

(What is man when the ends of man are of our
own making?)

• Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

(What is man’s ultimate/true end?)
– Kant raises the question of man’s moral
perfectability
– What hope do we have of ever being found
well-pleasing to God?
 Difficulties in Interpreting Religion
• Kant introduces concepts that seem foreign to
his philosophy as traditionally understood.
• Kant’s speaks of God, God’s Son, grace,
forgiveness, and the importance of the church
for the realization of an ethical world.
• Insurmountable difficulties emerge for any
interpretation of Kant that understands the three
Critiques as promoting atheism, agnosticism,
non-realism, or deism.
 Pure Cognition and Rational Faith
• Religion is best understood as an extension of
the 3rd Critique and the question of hope:
– What must I believe about myself, God, and my
relationship to God for hope to genuine?

• The nature of the human moral disposition is an

unexamined presupposition of the practical
philosophy that Kant takes up in Religion:
– The question is not “What ought I to do?” but “Who
ought I to be?”
 In Defense of Kant’s Religion
• What must we believe for moral hope?
 In Defense of Kant’s Religion
• What must we believe for moral hope?
– Book One: That we as a human species are
“evil by nature” but not “by necessity”
 In Defense of Kant’s Religion
• What must we believe for moral hope?
– Book One: That we as a human species are
“evil by nature” but not “by necessity”
– Book Two: That God provides a “divine-
human” disposition that we can latch hold of
in moral faith.
 In Defense of Kant’s Religion
• What must we believe for moral hope?
– Book One: That we as a human species are
“evil by nature” but not “by necessity”
– Book Two: That God provides a “divine-
human” disposition that we can latch hold of
in moral faith.
– Book Three: That moral “converts” to “the
good principle” or this “prototype of perfect
humanity” must band together in community.
 In Defense of Kant’s Religion
• What must we believe for moral hope?
– Book One: That we as a human species are
“evil by nature” but not “by necessity”
– Book Two: That God provides a “divine-
human” disposition that we can latch hold of
in moral faith.
– Book Three: That moral “converts” to “the
good principle” or this “prototype of perfect
humanity” must band together in community.
– Book Four: The historic church is “a vehicle”
for rational religious faith and the future
establishment of the ethical commonwealth.
 Christianity according to
Kant’s Philosophy
Kant’s philosophy is not a defense of
Christianity, but it does offer Christianity
rational assistance:
 Christianity according to
Kant’s Philosophy
Kant’s philosophy is not a defense of
Christianity, but it does offer Christianity
rational assistance:
(1) Christianity as exemplified in the
teachings of Jesus was pure rational
religious faith.
 Christianity according to
Kant’s Philosophy
Kant’s philosophy is not a defense of
Christianity, but it does offer Christianity
rational assistance:
(1) Christianity as exemplified in the
teachings of Jesus was pure rational
religious faith.
(2) The doctrines of human depravity, divine
condescension, and the church are all
rooted in reason and thus rational.
 Christianity according to
Kant’s Philosophy
Kant’s philosophy is not a defense of
Christianity, but it does offer Christianity
rational assistance:
(1) Christianity as exemplified in the teachings of
Jesus was pure rational religious faith.
(2) The doctrines of human depravity, divine
condescension, and the church are all rooted
in reason and thus rational.
(3) Rational religious faith is not a stagnant or
closed enterprise.
 Kant’s Philosophy
according to Christianity
Faith in the empirical reality of the God-man
Jesus does matter to human hope.

See 1 Corinthians 15
1-2: “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the
gospel I preached to you, which you received
and on which you have taken a stand. By this
gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the
word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have
believed in vain.”
 Kant’s Philosophy
according to Christianity
Faith in the empirical reality of the God-man
Jesus does matter to human hope.

See 1 Corinthians 15
3-5: “For what I received I passed on to you as
of first importance: that Christ died for our sins,
according to the Scriptures, that he was
buried, that he was raised on the third day
according to the Scriptures, and that he
appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.”
 Kant’s Philosophy
according to Christianity
Faith in the empirical reality of the God-man
Jesus does matter to human hope.

See 1 Corinthians 15
12-14: “But if it is preached that Christ has
been raised from the dead, how can some of
you say that there is no resurrection from the
dead? If there is no resurrection from the dead,
then not even Christ has been raised, our
preaching is useless and so is your faith.”
 Kant’s Philosophy
according to Christianity
Faith in the empirical reality of the God-
man Jesus does matter to human hope.
(1) The human identity is not merely spiritual
in nature, but bodily in nature as well.
 Kant’s Philosophy
according to Christianity
Faith in the empirical reality of the God-
man Jesus does matter to human hope.
(1) The human identity is not merely spiritual
in nature, but bodily in nature as well.
(2) The condescended and resurrected
Jesus is the first born from among the
dead and this is our ultimate hope.
 Kant’s Philosophy
according to Christianity
Faith in the empirical reality of the God-
man Jesus matters to human hope.
(1) The human identity is not merely spiritual
in nature, but bodily in nature as well.
(2) The condescended and resurrected
Jesus is the first born from among the
dead and this is our ultimate hope.
(3) Faith in the prototype of perfect humanity
is, at best, only half of the story.
 Kant’s Philosophy
according to Christianity
Christians claim that other doctrines of
Christianity matter to human hope:
(1) The Trinity (which unites the incarnation
and resurrection of Jesus with the
phenomena of the Holy Spirit working
among us and within us now).
(2) The Eucharist (which is allows us to
participate in the reality of the risen
Jesus here and now).
 Kant’s Philosophical Challenge
• Kant thinks the doctrines of bodily
resurrection, the Trinity, and the Eucharist
are among those Christian beliefs not
grounded in reason.
• Kant thinks we are permitted to hold them
provided they do not conflict with the
central tenets of rational religious faith.
• Kant understands rational religious faith as
an ongoing process best situated within
the university.
Kant’s Vision of the University
The Conflict of the Faculties (1798)

Theology and philosophy must always be

present and allowed to engage one
another in open rational dialogue.

Further religious truths may still be

awakened in reason if this conflict is
allowed to proceed.