Kant on God (Ashgate Studies in the History of Philosophical Theology)

✍ Scribed by Peter Byrne

• Publisher: Ashgate Pub Co
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 194
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Peter Byrne presents a detailed study of the role of the concept of God in Kant's "Critical Philosophy". After a preliminary survey of the major interpretative disputes over the understanding of Kant on God, Byrne explores his critique of philosophical proofs of God's existence. Examining Kant's account of religious language, Byrne highlights both the realist and anti-realist elements contained within it. The notion of the highest good is then explored, with its constituent elements - happiness and virtue, in pursuit of an assessment of how far Kant establishes that we must posit God. The precise role God plays in ethics according to Kant is then examined, along with the definition of religion as the recognition of duties as divine commands. Byrne also plots Kant's Critical re-working of the concept of grace. The book closes with a survey of the relation between the "Critical Philosophy" and Christianity, on the one hand, and deism, on the other.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents......Page 6
Preface......Page 8
References......Page 9
The aim and the problem......Page 12
Sources and strategies......Page 14
Does Kant’s life settle the interpretative questions?......Page 16
The Weltanschauung......Page 18
The context of religious philosophy......Page 20
The Critical project in outline......Page 22
Coda on transcendental idealism......Page 26
2 Kant on Natural Theology I......Page 30
The ontological argument......Page 33
The cosmological proof......Page 42
The physico-theological proof......Page 48
The argument from possibility......Page 51
Arguments from probability......Page 55
God as an object of intuition......Page 63
Kant the positivist?......Page 68
Kant on God-talk: the fundamentals......Page 72
Analogy......Page 80
Wobbles?......Page 83
Teleology......Page 88
Moral teleology......Page 94
The moral proof in the second Critique......Page 95
The force of the postulate......Page 97
Doing without the highest good......Page 105
Happiness......Page 112
Virtue and holiness......Page 121
The highest good as an immanent or transcendent end......Page 128
The cogency of the moral argument......Page 131
God and the foundations of morality......Page 136
Morality, commands and legislation......Page 139
Kant on radical evil and divine grace......Page 150
Kant and Christian truth......Page 164
Kant as pure rationalist......Page 170
Kant as naturalist......Page 174
Kant and deism......Page 178
Conclusion......Page 183
Kant sources......Page 186
Non-Kant sources......Page 187
H......Page 192
R......Page 193
W......Page 194