"If the reader has had the pleasure and patience in traveling along in my company, he can now judge" CPR 704
When I wrote my last entry, there were hints of this. An overarching goal, a greater 'reason'. It now seems to manifest itself in the last few pages of the CPR, as the syllabus takes its last breath and goes to sleep.
If not keen as to why Kant was writing CPR, it seems that there was an objective in mind. Throughout the work the writing style was painful, exhaustive--different from other works. But the manner in which the writing built upon itself was amazing. Piece by piece, the transcendental was constructed from the ground up to this point, the zenith of CPR's pyramid.
The cannon of pure reason distills the questions of CPR, we finally get to see why the Critique is necessary and why it is so important; the world is constituted by morality which is established by the practical interest of pure reason. It is important to note a distinction here. Pure Reason, as designated by Kant, is of worth because it is a negative faculty that does not serve as an organon or expansion of thought, but rather a disciplinary tool or "guard against errors."(CPR672)
The exclusionary aspect of CPR then leaves three questions.
1.What can I know?
2.What should I do?
3.What may I hope?
Kant's pace here is more efficient by leaps and bounds. However, it may move too fast. This is, after all, his crowning moment, his fifteen minutes of fame, his proverbial Alamo. His answers are relatively brief ( A:1. What I can know is speculative, revert back A:2. This is an answer of practical philosophy, specifically moral and is not subject to this critique A:3. Both practical and theoretical, something is because something ought to happen). (CPR677)
These answers are brief, but still leave much to be questioned later. I hope because happiness ought to happen. This passes. But the interjection of God when answering why we have a notion of duty provides discontinuity for me. "Morality is only an idea, the realization of which rests on the condition that everyone do what he should, i.e., that all actions of rational beings occur as if they arose from a highest will..." The cause of all morality in the world is then drawn from the "morally most perfect will, combined with the highest blessedness." (CPR 679-680)
Morals=God?
Not quite. The moral world, a world which we do what we are supposed to do and everyone is happy, would be a consequence of our conduct in the sensible world. Therefor, morals do not lead to god, but lead to a future life in which the concept of God and hope are ostensibly interconnected.
God=Perfection of Morality?
If you were a Kantian and and an atheist, sit down. Kant creates what seems to be an allusion to the Kingdom of God in the New Testament. Some of us are evil(immoral) and must pray(hope) for a future in which God's kingdom (the morally mot perfect will providing the future life not separated from obligation) and we will all be saved. Pardon the iconoclastic summary.
But does this prove God? Earlier, Kant wrote of how CPR was an exercise of 'negative' thought, that is exclusionary thought that should be used to determine what is impossible, not what is. This makes criticism much more difficult, as one cannot necessarily disprove Kant's moral world, but can question it.
One question that came to mind was the subjectivity of "The Morally Perfect Will", how does morality prove that there is a god, even if I were to assume a primordial being capable of establishing the rules of the game? Kant later answers that the being would have to be omniscient and omnipresent, the divine being must know all and be a single voice in order to know of and create the moral world.(CPR 686)
Once again, we are left with more questions than answers. I am not sure. Kant's arguments follow a very precise logical path to get here, but the origin of morality seems flimsy to say the least. It is designed not to be definitive, yet is used in order to make authoritative points in Kant's later works. I remain a critic.
"No one will be able to boast that he knows that there is a God...for if he knows that, then he is precisely the man I have long sought."(CPR689)
7 comments:
I don't have anything substantive to say, but I liked this blog post!
Thank you Mike, I appreciate it.
Yeah, good post. After discussing this topic in class, I still left thinking that while Kant's may be a more studied than, say, Pascal's, he still makes a leap, or so it seems to me. Yes, he is concept of faith is not a Christian one, or something of the sort, where there is much more of a gap between the belief in God and where reason can take us. But, I still think overextends his grasp too much by saying that reason can take us to the possibility of the concept of God.
I wonder why reason should be excluded from God.
Well, Prof. Vaught, I guess I don't mean that reason has to be excluded form the concept of God. But, certainly no claims about such concept. Sure there is a possibility, and the argument he makes from a moral stand point for God is very valid as such. Yet, in the end, it is still rooted in a possibility. I cannot see how it cannot be a bet. While he may be doing some numbers and playing his hand better than Pascal, he is still gambling away his faith.
Didn't we lose at the Alamo, in a crushing and excruciatingly cruel defeat?
Or maybe Kant is a Mexican freedom fighter whose tactics, much like Santa Anna's, inspired considerable backlash, allowing us to eventually win and claim Texas - I mean, uh, metaphysics/morality/God/reason for our own.
I wish to take a humanist perspective when considering why God must be excluded from reason. Is it not just as likely that mankind originated the highest thought of reason? I believe this may be the underlying motive for my criticism.
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