Kant and Religion Roundtable

Kantian Review, 2016

Review of Godlove's book Kant and the Meaning of Religion in Kantian Review

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.

2014

Kant believes that the concepts of a just and compassionate God and the life beyond death spring from our rational need to unite happiness with virtue. But since Kant had banished happiness from any place in moral reasoning, his philosophy of religion have been deemed as not merely discontinuous with his ethics but radically opposed to it. This article tries to argue against this apparent inconsistency and show that Kant’s philosophy of religion is in fact based firmly on his ethical reasoning.

Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Contemporary Philosophy of Religion

Kant believes that the concepts of a just and compassionate God and the life beyond death spring from our rational need to unite happiness with virtue. But since Kant had banished happiness from any place in moral reasoning, his philosophy of religion have been deemed as not merely discontinuous with his ethics but radically opposed to it. This article tries to argue against this apparent inconsistency and show that Kant's philosophy of religion is in fact based firmly on his ethical reasoning.

Kantian Review 18.1 (2013), pp.73-97, 2013

In the second edition Preface of Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason Kant responds to an anonymous review of the first edition. We present the first English translation of this obscure book review. Following our translation, we summarize the reviewer’s main points and evaluate the adequacy of Kant’s replies to five criticisms, including two replies that Kant provides in footnotes added in the second edition. A key issue is the reviewer’s claim that Religion adopts an implied standpoint, described using transcendental terminology. Kant could have avoided much confusion surrounding Religion, had he taken this review more seriously. We therefore respond to three objections that Kant failed to address: how the Wille–Willku¨ r distinction enables the propensity to evil to be viewed as coexisting with freedom of choice; how moral improvement is possible, even though the propensity to evil is necessary and universal; and how a ‘deed’ can be regarded as ‘noumenal’.

International Philosophical Quarterly, 2018

Faith and Philosophy, 2012

This essay replies to four critics of In Defense of Kant's Religion (IDKR). In reply to Gordon E. Michalson, Jr., I argue that the best pathway for understanding Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Religion) is to conduct close textual analysis rather than giving up the art of interpretation or allowing meta-considerations surrounding Kant's personal and political circumstances to govern one's interpretation. In response to George di Giovanni, I contend that his critique is dismissive of theologically robust readings of Kant for reasons that have very little to do with what Religion actually asserts. Pamela Sue Anderson's essay, I argue, reads Kant on God according to an empirically-biased stream of British interpretation which makes Kant's transcendental philosophy appear foreign to its rationalist heritage. Lastly, in response to Stephen R. Palmquist, I suggest that his reading of Kant's two experiments is done not only in a vacuum, but also according to a perspectival interpretation of Kant that goes beyond what Kant's writings actually maintain.

2005

Kant's Rational Foundations for Religious Faith is a work of philosophy and religion. The dissertation as a whole falls within the field of Kant studies. In particular, the interpretations of Kant made by several contemporary scholars are analysed in depth with the view to establishing the rational basis by which Kant thinks faith gains a foothold in his philosophical programme. Two obstacles to the establishment of faith in Kant's programme are presented. The first is the problem of coherence that Gordon Michalson expounds regarding Kant's Religion Within the Boundaries ofMere Reason. The second is the problem of knowledge as presented in the work of P. F. Strawson and others. In proposing a way past the latter of these two problems, a hypothesis is made for how to overcome the former. The proposal is to understand faith not in terms of knowledge, but instead in terms of cognition. When this is done, Kant's train of reasoning for the development of his transcendental theology becomes clear. It yields a hypothesis for interpreting Religion by focusing the combined resources of cognition and faith on certain underdeveloped aspects of Kant's thought. Chief of these underdeveloped aspects is the human moral disposition. I demonstrate that this hypothesis, when applied exegetically to Religion, overcomes the most significant objections raised by Michalson. Kant's rational foundations for faith are shown to reach their fullness when an existential decision is made to believe in God based on a simultaneous conviction in the meaningfulness of the world. For Kant, such an existential faith has a specific shape that is fleshed out in his analysis of human depravity as a problem for belief in the meaningfulness of the world a nd t he p ossible adoption of the disposition of the prototype of perfect humanity as solution to it. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i Michalson takes this tendency of interpretation to be the predominant one insofar as it has given rise to a whole set of problems and approaches unique to the theological discussion after Kant. Michalson, however, notes that another prevalent tendency is to argue that Kant's philosophy implicitly advocates the 'abandonment of theism'. Interpretations of this kind understand Kant's philosophy and i ts i nfluence on theology to be primarily negative. This position, Michalson's own, argues that Kant's 'efforts to ameliorate the theologically destructive effects of the Critique of Pure Reason implicitly makes things worse for Christian theism, not better'.3 This tendency understands Kant's influence to be traceable down the predominately atheistic path of Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and Marx. Kant, according to this tendency, releases human autonomy and sets it up in such a way that it becomes imperialistic and reductionistic relative to theology in all its manifestations.4 My thesis is that Kant's late writings, most especially his classic text Religion, provide a consistent development of his moral foundations for theology. The faith that Kant made room for was indeed moral faith, but, as I will argue, it was more than just morality. I contend moral faith only comes to completion (and indeed fruition) for Kant in the context of his turn toward the topic of religion and the question of hope. This turn is not solely determined by Kant's moral philosophy, but instead is the result of ongoing developments in Kant's thinking on the transcendental nature of his philosophy. These developments, I suggest, are consonant with the doctrines of central concern to Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy and are propelled by further concerns expressed and only partially addressed in the Critique ofJudgement. In particular, the question of hope 3 Michalson, Kant and the Problem of God, 5. 4 For the purposes of this dissertation, interpretations of Kant's philosophy that tend to be received in a 6 This movement to the practical in the latter stages of the first Critique marks the beginning of the renowned fact-value bifurcation of philosophy and sets Kant on his later quest to 'bridge the gap' between nature and freedom that we find in the Critique ofJudgment. It also initiates a kind of moral metaphysic of cognition that will not reach its fullness until the arguments of Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason.