Kant's reconception of religion and contemporary secularism

Diametros, 2017

The secular interpretation of Kant is widespread and Kant is viewed as the most prestigious founding father of liberal secularism. At the same time, however, commentators note that Kant’s position on secularism is in fact much more complex, and some go as far as to talk about an ambiguous secularism in his work. This paper defends a refined version of the secular interpretation. According to this refined version, Kant can offer a limited, political secularism on the basis of a simple argument which focuses on the distinct epistemic statuses of political and religious claims; however, the paper argues, a more general secularism is unwarranted on the basis of the same argument. If my argument is correct, then it will account at least in part for the plurality of interpretations. Moreover, any further attempt to show that Kant’s relation to secularism is ambiguous or dismissive should take into consideration the argument from epistemic grounds presented here.

2017

This paper argues that Kant’s distinction between “civil union” (i.e., the state) and “ethical community” can be of great value in dealing with a problem that causes considerable trouble in contemporary political and social philosophy, namely the question of the normative significance and role of religion in political and social life. The first part dwells upon the third part of Kant`s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason with the intention of exposing the general features of ethical community. It highlights the fact that Kant considers publicity, and indeed public authority, to be constitutive of the ethical community. The second part discusses his argument that we have a unique ethical duty to enter into an ethical community. This discussion clarifies the constitutive purpose of ethical community and sets forth why Kant thought that the ethical community should have a religious form. The third part presents an account of the constitutive purpose of the state (i.e. the pol...

Diametros

This introduction is divided into two parts. First, drawing on Paul Guyer’s suggestion that we should turn to Kant to reinvestigate the foundations of religious liberty, I outline Kant’s views on the relations between the ethical (‘church’) and the political (‘state’) community, as presented in Part Three of the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, focusing in particular on his arguments for separation between religion and the state. Examining critically the idea to employ Kant in contemporary debates, I claim that Kant’s account of pure moral faith and the church as its ‘vehicle’ may pose difficulties for any argument for religious liberty that appeals to his thought. For Kant is better equipped to offer resources to overcome rather than to accommodate the fact of so-called “moral pluralism,” i.e. the condition in which the principle of religious liberty can find its application. In the second part, I summarise the arguments of the authors who contribute to this volume: D...

Cultivating Personhood: Kant and Asian Philosophy, ed. by Palmquist, Stephen R. De Gruyter, 2011. p455-464

Modern Language Notes, 2016

This article makes two key claims in succession. First of all, Kant's own religious hope is significantly and studiedly distanced from the traditions of Christianity that he would have received, in ways that have not yet been fully, or widely, appreciated. Kant makes an ideal moral community the object of our religious hopes, and not the transcendent God of the tradition. Secondly, Kant nonetheless has a notion of transcendence at play, but in a strikingly different key to traditional Christianity. Both concepts of transcendence, the Christian and the Kantian, deflate, in their own distinctive ways, our hopes for politics and history, in a way that can unsettle the certainties, and vanities, of both the traditional theologian and the secular Rawlsian. The Christian hope is not the same as Kant's religious hope, which is distinct, in origin, depth and ambition from his more limited hope for politics.

2014

This book offers a complete and internally cohesive interpretation of Religion. In contrast to the interpretations that characterize Religion as a litany of “wobbles”, fumbling between traditional Christianity and Enlightenment values, or a text that reduces religion into morality, the interpretation here offered defends the rich philosophical theology contained in each of Religion’s four parts and shows how the doctrines of the “Pure Rational System of Religion” are eminently compatible with the essential principles of Transcendental Idealism. http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415507868/

A compilation of essays by 14 scholars who promote an "affirmative" reading of Kant's philosophy of religion. The article uploaded here is a prepublication draft of the editors' introduction. For a prepublication draft of Palmquist's essay, entitled "Philosophers in the Public Square: A Religious Resolution of Kant’s Conflict of the Faculties", go to http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/srp/arts/PPSq.htm.

Hegel Bulletin, 2010

George di Giovanni's admirable, fascinating book allows itself to be characterized in two ways. First, it provides a detailed, richly scholarly and yet lucid study of a body of post-Kantian literature which has received in the English-speaking world comparatively little attention, and which di Giovanni shows provides rich philosophical pickings. Since the publication in 1989 of Frederick Beiser's groundbreaking The Fate of Reason important work has been done, mostly in piecemeal form, on the relatively minor players in the early German development in the wake of Kant, as it has, in more extended form, on Fichte, but the territory is large and very far from exhausted, and di Giovanni, by focussing at full monograph length on a particular set of themes and debates bearing on the foundations of Kantian practical philosophy, makes a major contribution to the aim of achieving a detailed systematic understanding of what went on in Germany in the period between Kant and Hegel. The second general thing to say about the book is that it pursues through the medium of its historical story a broad systematic agenda which is original and provocative, and of high interest for all concerned with the interpretation of German Idealism and the question of its place in modern philosophy. The two aspects of the book are thoroughly interconnected but it will help to begin by considering them separately. I will describe them in turn.