Sárospataki Füzetek 2. (1998)
1998 / 1. szám - Dr. Frank Sawyer: Is there a place for God int he inn of Philosophy?
subjective imagination. By separating knowledge and faith so completely, Kant begins to lose something essential to both. He wanted to save both faith in God and the Enlightenment. But he ended with a dilemma between faith and knowledge from which philosophy does not easily recover. Kant was a long way removed from John Calvin’s opening words in his INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION: knowledge of self and world comes from knowledge of God. Kant likewise took steps toward losing the value of empirical individuality since he so emphasized the general norms of reason. It was, however, a positive step that Kant held on to the universal validity of the ’categorical imperative’, since later in western history ethics lost this kind of validity. S7s tfiere a piacé for üocí..? WHA T CAN WE KNO W? Kant’s main question in the preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, was: Is metaphysics possible as a science? By metaphysics Kant means especially the central problems of the existence of God, human freedom, and immortality of the soul. Whereas metaphysics was once seen as the queen of the sciences, after Descartes and other Enlightenment thinkers, mathematics and the natural sciences took first place. It seemed that these sciences could now prove things, while metaphysics, religion and morality were always debating without finding final proofs. So metaphysical (religious) ideas have no firm ground anymore; yet Kant knew that we as human beings will not give up wondering about metaphysical ideas, anymore than we will give us breathing air. So on the one hand, God’s existence for Kant cannot be known; on the other hand, God is necessary for a perspective on human life (especially when it comes to morality). Kant began to realize that in human understanding there is a synthesis or cooperation between the senses and reason. But can there be rational (scientific) knowledge of metaphysical questions? Kant drew up an elaborate scheme by which reason or the knowing subject, uses certain a priori forms or categories of consciousness to comprehend things. This is thus an epistemological question: how do we know what we know? What are the possibilities and powers of reason? Do we learn everything by means of experience (suclv as David Hume seemed to suggest), or does our understanding (reason) 'Frederick Copleston for a good summary, in A History of Philosophy Volume 6:Modern Philospohy(New York, Double Day Image Books), ch.l 1. 2Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy: the Rise and Fall of the self (Óxford: 1988), p.28. 27
