Chapter LII: Section VII

CRITICISM OF ALL THEOLOGY BASED ON SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES OF REASON[1633]

=A 631-3 = B 659-66.=--On the distinction between “theist” and “deist,” cf. _Encyclopædia Britannica_, vii. p. 934:

“The later distinction between ‘theist’ and ‘deist,’ which stamped
the latter word as excluding the belief in providence or in the
immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the end of the
eighteenth century by those rationalists who were aggrieved at
being identified with the naturalists.”

=A 633-4 = B 661-2.=--Kant here does no more than indicate that by way of practical Reason it may be possible to postulate, though not theoretically to comprehend, a Supreme Being. On the distinction between postulates and hypotheses, cf. A 769 ff. = B 797 ff., and below, p. 543 ff. Cf. also p. 571 ff.

=A 634 = B 662.=--On relative necessity, cf. below, pp. 555, 571 ff.

=A 635-9 = B 663-7= only summarises points already treated.

=A 639-42 = B 667-70.=--Kant concludes by declaring that the Ideal, in addition to its regulative function, possesses two further prerogatives. In the first place, it supplies a standard, in the light of which any knowledge of Divine Existence, acquired from other sources, can be purified and rendered consistent with itself. For it is “an Ideal without a flaw,” the true crown and culmination of the whole of human knowledge.

“If there should be a moral theology ... transcendental theology
... will then prove itself indispensable in determining its concept
and in constantly testing Reason which is so often deceived by
sensibility, and which is frequently out of harmony with its own
Ideas.”[1634]

And secondly, though the Ideal fails to establish itself theoretically, the arguments given in its support suffice to show the quite insufficient foundations upon which all atheistic, deistic, and anthropomorphic philosophies rest.

=Comment.=--These concluding remarks cannot be accepted as representing Kant’s true teaching. The Ideal, by his own showing, is by no means without a flaw. In so far as it involves the concept of unconditioned necessity, it is meaningless; it is purely logical, and therefore contains no indication of real content; it embodies a false view of the nature of negation, and therefore of the relation of realities to one another. In short, it is constituted in accordance with the false, un-Critical principles of Leibnizian metaphysics, and is found on examination to be non-existent even as a purely mental entity. Reduced to its proper terms, it becomes a mere schema regulative of the understanding in the extension of experience, and does not yield even a negative criterion for the testing of our ideals of Divine Existence. The criterion, which Kant really so employs, is not that of an _Ens realissimum_, but the concept of an Intuitive Understanding, which, as he has indicated in the chapter on _Phenomena and Noumena_,[1635] is our most adequate Ideal of completed Perfection. This latter is not itself, however, a spontaneously formed concept of natural Reason, and does not justify the assertion that the Idea of God is a necessary Idea of the human mind. In attempting to defend such a thesis, Kant is unduly influenced by the almost universal acceptance of deistic beliefs in the Europe of his time.[1636] His criticism of the Ideal of Reason and of rational theology is much more destructive, and really allows that theology much less value, even as natural dialectic, than he is willing to admit.[1637] Architectonic forbids that the extreme radical consequences of the teaching of the _Analytic_ should be allowed to show in their full force. These shortcomings are, however, in great part remedied in the elaborate _Appendix_ which Kant has attached to the _Dialectic_.