Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)
2012 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Frank Sawyer: Immanuel Kant and Theology
Frank Sawyer among others. Besides the ‘I think’, there is also ‘I feel’, ‘I act’, ‘I believe’, ‘I hope’, ‘I go dancing’ or ‘I prefer football to stamp collecting’. Reality is very concrete, very specific. There are many ‘other than logical’ experiences which contribute to our knowledge. So Dooyeweerd says that Kant has made the mistake of accepting ‘the absolute self-sufficiency of the Vernunft’, and this glorification of reason is a ‘religious postulate’, an act of faith. It leads to, or comes from, the dogma that reason (theoretical thought) is the revealer and highest judge of truth. In other words, truth is then always ‘logical’, a matter of the Vernunft, not a matter of feelings, social relationships, or for example, aesthetic intuition. But may we not reply that Kant is merely delimiting the range or function of theoretical knowledge in his Critique of Pure Reason, and that we must turn to his Critique of Practical Reason in order to hear what Kant says about morality and God, and the importance of things not bound by Vernunft?22 This is too generous, for the damage has already been done when Kant allows true knowledge to come only from the Vernunft. Other kinds of knowledge for Kant are only regulative (useful but not provable) principles, such as ideas about morality or God. What can these add when the Vernunft has already been chosen as the origin and judge of all certainty, and the only true data already defined as sensory (empirical)? As a result, western thought moved to the dualistic position where our understanding of ‘empirical reality’ is said to be true, whereas our understandings of other things (moral, social, aesthetic, philosophical, religious matters) are said to be ‘value judgments’, or ‘constructions of thought’, not measurable as true. Heschel writes: “Do we owe all we know to discursive thinking? Does our syllogistic power bear the whole brunt? Reasoning is not the only motor of mental life. Who does not know that more is contained in our convictions than has been crystallized in definable concepts? It is a misconception to assume that there is nothing in our consciousness that was not previously in perception or analytical reason. Much of the wisdom inherent in our consciousness is the root, rather than the fruit, of reason. ...When [logical] concepts bring no relief...we turn to the endless shore that lies across [beyond] the logical. .. .Insights [from the dimension of the ineffable] are the roots of art, philosophy and religion and must be acknowledged _23 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 it has been said that what Kant built was like an arch without a keystone to hold it together.24 His separation of the noumenal and phenomenal meant that reason and faith cannot walk hand in hand anymore. The idea of ‘pure reason’ (reine Vernunft) seems to disqualify any other kind of knowledge, especially the knowledge which might be based on divine revelation. Yet having disqualified knowledge which does not come from pure reason, Kant goes 22 This is noted by Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol.6, p.99. 23 Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man is Not Alone (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), p.16. 24 Stanley L.Jaki, The Road of Sdence and the Ways to God (Edinburgh, 1978), ch.8. 84 Sárospataki Füzetek2012/2
