Kant and the Divine

Abstract

The book offers a definitive study of the development of Kant’s conception of the highest good, from his earliest work, to his dying days. It is argued that Kant believes in God, but that he is not a Christian, and that this opens up an important and neglected dimension of Western philosophy. Kant is not a Christian, because he cannot accept Christianity’s traditional claims about the relationship between divine action, grace, human freedom, and happiness. Christian theologians who continue to affirm these traditional claims (and many do), therefore have grounds to be suspicious of Kant as an interpreter of Christian doctrine. As well as setting out a theological critique of Kant, the book offers a new defence of the power, beauty, and internal coherence of Kant’s non-Christian philosophical religiosity, ‘within the limits of reason alone’, which reason itself has some divine features. This neglected strand of philosophical religiosity deserves to be engaged with by both philosophers, and theologians. The Kant revealed in this book reminds us of a perennial task of philosophy, going back to Plato, where philosophy is construed as a way of life, oriented towards happiness, and achieved through a properly expansive conception of reason and happiness. When we understand this philosophical religiosity, many standard ‘problems’ in the interpretation of Kant can be seen in a new light, and resolved. Kant witnesses to a strand of philosophy that leans into the category of the divine, at the edges of what we can say about reason, freedom, autonomy, and happiness.

Response to Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)

“…Insole heads that off at the pass: Kant really means any reality whatsoever, including God. 3 The aim in this section of the book is to find out not only what Kant claims, and what it means, but also: why Kant says it. What question is being answered here?…”

“…This is reinforced in several later sections, none more emphatically, however, than in the wonderfully titled section: 'Kant does not need grace, but is not a Pelagian'. 5 The gist of that discussion is: Kant is not a Pelagian. It's much worse than that!…”

“…Kant does not even manage the base-line Christianity requisite to qualify as a Christian heretic. 6 That has to be a candidate for the best line in the book. This has deeper implications for those who offer theological critiques of Kant.…”