Sárospataki Füzetek 2. (1998)
1998 / 1. szám - Dr. Frank Sawyer: Is there a place for God int he inn of Philosophy?
data, and sensory data are blind without thought conceptions. Knowledge comes from their combination. The- THIRD STEP he took was in the area of ethics, when he wrote THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON (1788 - Kritik der praktischen Vernunft). Here Kant talks about our autonomy, by which he means we are not morally bound to the drives of nature. We have the moral law within us. Nature is bound by the chains of causality, but people have the freedom of moral autonomy to make their own choices. Kant arrives at his ’categorical imperative’: Act in such a way that your ethical choices could become universally legislated. Kant then also arrives at three conclusions: i) we are free to choose a better morality (’you can because you should’); ii) the soul is immortal (since we cannot fulfill the ethical imperative completely, we need infinite progression); iii) God exists (since we cannot morally conquer this broken and absurd world, therefore we need God and his kingdom). But notice: Kant places God on the side of morality and freedom, not on the side of nature and causation. Reason (natural theology) cannot reach God, but intuition and morality can ’know’ (posit) that God is there. Said differently: Kant can only find God when he looks through the skylight of morality, not when he looks through the skylight of reason. He says, in his typically moral perspective: ’If we act as well as lies within our power, what is not within our power will come to our aid from another source.’ Kant seeks his certainty about God and faith on moral grounds. He assumed that to accept life at all we must posit a final moral ground: God is conceived not so much as the prime physical cause, but as the prime moral cause. Kant concludes his Critique of Practical Reason by saying that we live according to two principles: ’the starry heavens above and the moral law within’. STEP FOUR: After spending much time on a kind of ’prolegomena’ on the relation of reason and metaphysics, Kant finally arrives at speaking about the content (dogma; teaching) of the Christian faith. He does this in 1793 in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft). Kant was not really so interested in finding personal meaningful religious expression as he was looking for a Ground God - to act as guarantor of morality and a guarantor for the final worldharmony not found in experience. He submits Scripture and the idea of revelation to reason. But how can reason be the last court of appeal if reasonable people disagree on things? Religion for Kant is S7s í£ere a piacé for Socí..? 25
