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

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. 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 "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."--Jacket