Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)

2012 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: Immanuel Kant and Theology

IMMANUEL KANT AND THEOLOGY

of the subjective imagination. By separating knowledge and faith so completely into two categories, Kant begins to lose something essential to both. He wanted to save both faith in God and the Enlightenment. But he ended with a categorical dilemma between faith and knowledge from which philosophy does not easily recover.

Kant’s duty ethics

Kant’s ethics are a classic example of the deontological viewpoint (deon means duty or obligation). In such duty-oriented ethics the effect or result is not looked at, but rather what counts is the inner obligation. (Although it is of course supposed that doing our duty does have a good effect in the long term.) When ethics looks at results, it is called utilitarian or consequentialist. Kant said that to think about results is to think about usefulness, not about morality. Morality is based on duty, not on self-interest, Kant says. Indeed, pure reason can tell us how we should act. Kant says: ask not about the result of an action, ask about the right principle and the pure motive. What counts is respect for the (universal) moral law, which is a ‘categorical imperative’. Nothing is good unless it is done by a good will. For example, it may be useful to give money to the poor; but if someone does that out of fear or pride, it is not a moral act. It is a utilitarian calculation.

Kant is especially remembered for two ethical principles. First, “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim [ethical principle for decision] become a universal law.” Secondly, “One must act to treat every person as an end and never as a means only.” 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. But virtue does not always bring happiness. Since the Summum Bonum is not reachable in this life, God and eternity must exist. Thus God functions as a means to our ultimate happiness (Summon Bonum) and ethics becomes more utilitarian than Kant wanted.12 He indeed emphasizes that God rewards the good will: the last sentence of his Religion Within the limits of Reason Alone says that our acts of virtue lead us to pardoning grace. So there is a reward for ethical virtue.

Kant on the theological use of ‘the moral law within us’.

For a philosopher who wanted to separate philosophy and theology, it is interesting to find Kant moving from an analysis of the moral law to a relating of this to divine grace. He hereby ventures into theology. In the land of Luther Kant reverses the Protestant Principle of grace preceding good works. He writes:

“Where shall we start, i.e., with a faith in what God has done on our behalf, or with what we are to do to become worthy of God’s assistance (whatever this may be)? In answering this question we cannot hesitate in deciding for the second alternative.”13

12 cf.Theodore M.Greene’s introduction to Immanuel Kant’s 'Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (Harper Torchbook, New York, 1960), p.lxiv.

13 Religion Within the Umits, p.108.

2012/2 Sárospataki Füzetek 81