The Morality, God and the Religion in Critical Philosophy of Kant

The philosophy and the religion are the two different domains that are mainly addressed to find the most fundamental answers that we seek to lead our lives by attaching it a meaning that can satisfy us. For this reason, with regard to this important task that we attach to both of them, they seem to be aiming for the same direction in order to arrive at a common end regarding our life, which can be announced briefly as the truth. Because of this collective end, we see that these two domains get close to each other, support each other, or use one another according to the explanations that they adopt. Nevertheless in the matter of the claim of truth it is also probable that an inevitable conflict emerges between the two. The history of philosophy and the history of religions testify too many examples of this cooperation as well as those conflicts, to which critical philosophy is part as a well-known and often discussed example. Our thesis aims examining the position of Kant's critical philosophy, which bears a very strong claim of the truth and therefore, in its relation with the religion, it maintains a rather conflictual position. It is evident that the scope of religion finds its most adequate equivalent in Kant's moral thought, however, we note that all of the critical philosophy, if we use the terminology of Kant, having an architectural structure, retains this subject throughout its parts. This is the reason why we organized our work according to the most important parts of this structure on which it stands, in order to obtain the most appropriate illustration that we can attain.The architectonical structure of the critical philosophy directs us almost in a constrained way to examine our subject by a tripartite classification in the present work. Because, according to this structure, Kant elaborates his conception of religion at each moment of his thought by taking in hand the various aspects of the subject (pure speculative, pure practical, empirical and historical etc.). These are the most important features of the critical philosophy with which we can arrive finding a satisfying exposition of our subject. For this reason we have divided our work in three chapters in which firstly we examine the critique of natural theology which includes Kant's objection that points to onto-theology, which marks the whole of the Western thought. Then we examine the moral philosophy of Kant, which is the unique domain to encompass and value the religion in terms of a final moral end of nature and all reasonable beings that are apt to achieve this end. And finally we try to deal with his position in relation to the historical religion, which constitutes the one of the main subjects of his last studies, in which he exercises after finishing to write his critical oeuvres, so they can be thought as their applications to the practical fields such as politics, history, anthropology and of course religion. After having determined the scope of our work in this way, we can say that our goal here is to reveal Kant's idea about religion in general and related concepts to it, in a way that encompasses the fundamental moments of his works. And on the other hand try to criticize his point of view by drawing attention to his claim to be the most adequate system for explaining the most fundamental subjects of man, by this we mean about the human condition in relation with the world and its author. In this way it seems plausible to think that Kant excludes all explanations alternatives along with the subjects that cannot be brought to the limits of transcendental idealisms, and evidently the irrational, which cannot be encompassed with human faculties of knowing.It is probably not necessary to recall that Western philosophy is strictly linked to the tradition of monotheism as well as to the roots that we find in the antique philosophy. These two sources are often described as the antagonistic components of the philosophy, and it finds its clearest and by far the most common expression in the question of Tertullian “Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?”. Yet in spite of Tertullian's objection, Western philosophy and monotheism engage in an inextricable way that Kant ends up calling this unity the “onto-theology” for the first time. Philosophy devotes an undeniable effort to make religion rational, while the latter provides for philosophy a valuable material, a set of concepts without which we cannot think the philosophy. Thus we have a great literature that is written to explain the world as the creation of a creator who is the most perfect and real being, the being as the supreme cause of what is. In the Critique of Pure Reasonwe observe that Kant brings a very severe criticism to the philosophy, which, in the course of its history, gives rise to the doctrinal theories concerning this explanation. Kant's criticism of reason, one of the higher faculties of knowledge that is responsible for critical errors that reason reaches as the conclusions of its ratiocinations, which compose these doctrinal theories, constitutes the starting point of his own conception of religion. Of course, this criticism occupies a very important part of our work because of its founding role in the critical philosophy. Nevertheless, it is argued that even if it signals a breaking point in the Western philosophy, Kant's criticism is not a categorical refutation of either natural theology or historical religion. In asserting the inevitability of the dialectic of speculative reason, Kant tries to show the impossibility of building the theology through the speculative use of reason, while he conserves the possibility of this task within the practical use of reason that has supremacy over its speculative use. So in the first part of the thesis we examine Kantian criticism, without forgetting that it has for the purpose to designate another place for religion in its system, which will be legitimate according to Kant, but not to demolish all.In the second chapter we examine the practical use of pure reason as the legitimate initiator of religion to the horizon of philosophy, designating it as the assurance of the moral law and the guardian of hope by which man thinks himself being free of all the necessities arising from nature, from the sensible world, and as a citizen of the intelligible world. The main purpose of this part is to prove the possibility and the necessity of the moral religion according to the critical philosophy and to make a presentation of the theoretical arguments, which Kant offered us. Here we focus our attention primarily on the two moral works of Kant, the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Moralsand the Critique of Practical Reason. We first try to show how Kant opens the door to a morality ensured by free causality, the possibility of which is recognized by speculative reason in a negative way. So in the second part we start our study by asking, “how can the practical reason have positive legislation that could have real effects on those that take place in empirical realm? ”. Then we examine the two components of the highest good and the conditions for its realization. So the idea of immortality and God, the two postulates of practical reason are made subject to our inquiry as the key subjects of the moral religion. This part provides us with a very important information that can helps us to understand Kant’s intention concerning religion, he reinforces religion’s consoling function by trying to eliminate any element “irrational”, it means in this case that does not conform to the criteria dictated by critical philosophy, in relation to all these two major parts, both the speculative and the practical. He also attaches to it another, a more fundamental task, which is to guarantee the realization of the aim of the moral law, thus to avoid the danger it confronts: to fall into absurdity because of heading towards an unattainable end.The third part of our thesis is devoted to a subject less discussed and relatively unknown; we examine the position of Kant with respect to the historical or institutional religion. We believe that this part allows us to arrive at a clearer perspective on Kant's conception of religion. By the way of comparison the peculiarity of the moral religion is clarified, one comes to understand the importance that Kant attaches to religion because of its service rendered for the idea of humanity and its purpose. We explore in this chapter the fact that Kant's position is not hostile to historical religion but it is not conservative either. For him the only criterion to evaluate historical religion is the moral one and he applies this criterion without exception to every part of the historical religion without paying attention to its function in the religion under consideration. By means of this last part, we believe that we arrive at a reliable conclusion on the Kant’s thought concerning the concept of the religion. We argue that his conception engendered from the critical philosophy in a natural but not artificial or arbitrary way. In examining the architectonic structure of his thought, it is possible to say that it provides such a conception to the scope of its initial plan, without contradicting the internal order of its system. So we do not think that the reintroduction of the ideas of reason into its positive use is a compromise but on the contrary it serves to complete the aim of the critical philosophy. Nevertheless we think that Kant reinvents religion and attaches to it a single moral task that excludes all the other functions of religion. We find that such an exclusive treatment of the subject can lead to the unfavorable consequences regarding historical religions because of which they can lose their particular positions with regard to the morality, which we will try to examine in the conclusion.