Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)
2012 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: Immanuel Kant and Theology
IMMANUEL KANT AND THEOLOGY in us ‘without ceasing’.”17 These worthy words are a noble approach to religion. But what Kant gives with one hand he takes back with the other. For on the same page he calls direct prayer to God, usually thought of as a ‘means of grace’, to actually be “a superstitious illusion (a fetish-making); for it is no more than a stated wish directed to a Being who needs no such information __”. So Kant wants to delete prayer through the Spirit, and is happy w ith the spirit of prayer in our moral disposition. He never recovered from his much disliked experience of piety in his youth. Is there such a thing as pure reason? Kant’s main question in the preface to his first Critique, 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.18 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.19 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 focuses on reason. But it has been said that mysticism and rationalism are dialectically part of the same package, and we find this in some ways in Kant. Both Pietism and Rationalism appeal to an inner light.20 21 Kant’s views have been subjected to much debate and detailed evaluation. Without entering into such far-reaching analysis, we take note here of a major concern. Dooyeweerd (among others) suggests that Kant was unaware of his own ‘dogmatic’ startingpoint: he did not first clarify to himself the relationship between epistemology and ontology before he wrote his Kritik der reinen Vernunft.2' One of the results of this is that Kant could only find certain knowledge in universal concepts; he did not know how to deal with concrete, experiential judgments. The Romantic movement rebelled against this. So we must choose: is the ‘cognizing subject’ (I think - ego cogito) not much more than a ‘pure logical function’; - or (against the rationalist tradition), should we rather not speak about a richer, fully integrated T, which involves the total selfhood of a person? The logical, theoretical act of knowing can never give us the totality of meaning, since it is one aspectual function 1' Kant, Religion Within the Umits, p. 183. 18 cf.Frederick Copleston for a good summary, in A History of Philosophy Volume 6: Modern Philosophy (New York, Double Day Image Books), ch.ll. 19 cf.Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy: The Rise and Fall of the Self (Oxford: 1988), p.28. 20 cf.Paul Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology (SCM Press, London, 1967). 21 Dooyeweerd, A New Critique, vol.II, part II: The Epistemological Problem in the Light of the Cosmonomic Idea, pp429ff. 2012/2 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK 83
