Sárospataki Füzetek 2. (1998)
1998 / 1. szám - Dr. Frank Sawyer: Is there a place for God int he inn of Philosophy?
and consequentialist ethics have seen an important aspect of ethical decisions, but also that ethical decisions are bigger than either view suggests. In Kant’s wider perspective, he himself went beyond the teaching of duty alone, for he says that the Summum Bonum for mankind is not just virtue (duty), but also includes happiness. Virtue does not always bring happiness, he admits. Since the Summum Bonum is not reachable in this life, God and eternity must exist. But arguing in this fashion, Kant treats God like the great rewarder and a means to resolving our moral perplexities. Thus God functions as a means to our ultimate happiness (Summum Bonum) and ethics becomes more utilitarian than Kant wanted. Kant wanted to base ethics on duty; but he also made ethics partly utilitarian, by talking about duty leading to happiness. This shows that we shall always run into such contradictions when we absolutize either the teachings of deontological ethics or that of utilitarian ethics. In Kant’s views on duty, on the radicalness of evil, and on God as a ’practical postulate’, we see something of his pietistic up-bringing travelling with him. Kant remarked that two things in life especially moved him: ’the starry heavens above, and the moral law in my heart’. Here we feel something of God’s (universal) revelation at work in the experience of Kant. But in Kant’s system, philosophy and theology have no real way to join together in a unified perspective. They spend more time trying to limit each other. Toward the end of his life Kant seemed dissatisfied with the moral postulate for God and seemed to be looking for another foundation. But his distrust of mysticism and pious experience led him to undervalue the need for God’s revelation. For Kant, the moral law was real enough to posit the existence of God. But Kant did not know how to make this faith very personal and he thought in terms of universal expressions of religion, not in terms of concrete historical expressions. S7s t/iere a piacé for S?oo.. ? KANT’S SYSTEM-, a philosophical arch without a keystone Kant’s idea of autonomy is typical of the Enlightenment. Free use of reason is the basis for human maturity. But please note that Kant’s idea of autonomy was not that of modern subjectivism. Modern subjectivism says that the individual may define what is good for himself. Kant believed that the individual should use his will to make the right decisions according to a universal moral imperative. 'Theodore M. Greene’s introduction to Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Limits os Reason Alone (Harper Torchbook, New York, 1960), p. Ixiv. 31
