Immanuel Kant: Philosophy of Religion

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Kant, Immanuel: Philosophy of Religion | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This leaves open the issue of whether further religious beliefs, drawn from revelation, can be added to this core. As Kant makes clear in The Conflict of the Faculties , he does not deny that divinely revealed truths are possible, but only that they are knowable. So, we might wonder, of what practical use is revelation if it cannot be an object of knowledge? His answer is that, even if it can never constitute knowledge, it can serve the regulative function of edification—contributing to our moral improvement and adding motivation to our moral purposes Theology , pp.

The first one, regarding human knowledge, had been covered in the first Critique and the Prolegomena ; the second, regarding practical values, was considered in his various writings on ethics and socio-political philosophy; the fourth, regarding human nature, had been covered in his philosophical anthropology. Thus we can conclude that Kant himself sees this book, the publication of which got him into trouble with the Prussian government, as crucial to his philosophical purposes.

Hence we should take it seriously here as representative of his own rational theology. In his Preface to the first edition, he again points out that reflection on moral obligation should lead us to religion Religion , pp. In his Preface to the second edition, he offers an illuminating metaphor of two concentric circles—the inner one representing the core of the one religion of pure moral reason and the outer one representing many revealed historical religions, all of which should include and build on that core Religion , p.

In the first book, Kant considers our innate natural predisposition to good in being animals, humans, and persons and our equally innate propensity to evil in our frailty, impurity, and wickedness. Whether we end up being praiseworthy or blameworthy depends, not on our sensuous nature or our theoretical reason, but on the use we make of our free will, which is naturally oriented towards both good and evil. At any rate, we are born with a propensity to evil; but whether we become evil depends on our own free acts of will.

Thus Kant demythologizes the Christian doctrine of original sin. He then distinguishes between the phony religion of mere worship designed to win favor for ourselves and the authentic moral religion of virtuous behavior. In the second book, Jesus of Nazareth is presented as an archetype symbolizing our ability to resist our propensity to evil and to approach the virtuous ideal of moral perfection. What Kant does not say is whether or not, in addition to being a moral model whose example we should try to follow, Jesus is also of divine origin in some unique manner attested to by miracles.

Just as he neither denies nor affirms the divinity of Christ, so Kant avoids committing himself regarding belief in miracles, which can lead us into superstition Religion , pp. In the third book, Kant expresses his rational hope for the ultimate supremacy of good over evil and the establishment of an ethical commonwealth of persons under a personal God, who is the divine law-giver and moral ruler—the ideal of the invisible church, as opposed to actual realities of visible churches.

Whereas statutory religion focuses on obedient external behavior, true religion concerns internal commitment or good will. Mere worship is a worthless substitute for good choices and virtuous conduct. However, some faiths can be relatively more adequate expressions of the religion of moral reason than others Religion , pp. In his particularly inflammatory fourth book, Kant probes the distinction between legitimate religious service and the pseudo-service of religious clericalism.

Jacob, Plamthodathil S.

The ideal of genuine godliness comprises a combination of fear of God and love of God, which should converge to help render us persons of morally good will. So what about such religious practices as prayer, church attendance, and participation in sacraments? Mere external shows of piety must never be substituted for authentic inner virtue Religion , pp.

Yet it is quite admirable that, in the last few years of his life, despite struggling with the onset of dementia that made any such task increasingly challenging, he kept trying to explore new dimensions of the philosophy of religion. As has already been admitted, the results, located in his fragmentary Opus Postumum , are more provocative than satisfying; yet they are nevertheless worthy of brief consideration here.

The work comprises a vast quantity of scattered remarks, many of which are familiar to readers of his earlier writings, but some of which represent acute, fresh insights, albeit none of them adequately developed. He then adds a bold idea, which breaks with his own previous orthodox theological concept of a transcendent God. This notion of an immanent God that is, one internal to our world rather than transcendently separate from it , while not carefully worked out by Kant himself, would be developed by later German Idealists most significantly, Hegel.

While conceding that we think of God as an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent personal Being, Kant now denies that personality can be legitimately attributed to God—again stepping out of mainstream Judeo-Christian doctrine. Unfortunately, we can only conjecture as to what, exactly, he means by this claim. But what is undeniable is what a long and soaring intellectual journey Kant made as he developed his ideas on God and religion from his pre-critical writings through the central, revolutionary works of his philosophical maturity and into the puzzling but tantalizing thought-experiments of his old age.

Kant and Religion This article does not present a full biography of Kant. Some Tantalizing Suggestions from the Opus Postumum Yet it is quite admirable that, in the last few years of his life, despite struggling with the onset of dementia that made any such task increasingly challenging, he kept trying to explore new dimensions of the philosophy of religion.

References and Further Readings a. Cambridge University Press, References to this translation are accompanied by references to the Akademie Ausgabe Volume V. References are to the A and B German editions. University of Michigan Press, Wood and Gertrude M. Cornell University Press, By studying these debates, young people can, we argue, extend their understanding of the natures of science and religion and also of the challenges involved when attempting to discern boundaries and relationships between them.

A large body of work conducted across several decades shows that among young people, the most widely held view of how science and religion relate is that they conflict see, e. Research that has sought to understand young people's perspectives on how science and religion relate draws attention to the cognitive difficulty of the reasoning that scholars frequently use when they discuss issues of epistemology and emphasizes that it is unlikely that students will achieve the levels of understanding required without effective teaching.

INTRODUCTION

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The work included an interview study which led to a typology that included the position of students who say that until the interview they had not appreciated that there is a link between science and religion. As we noted in the previous sections, for students to access a range of views of the relationships between science and religion, it would be important for them to appreciate that scholars do not agree on pertinent aspects of the natures of science and religion and in particular hold different views on whether scientism is a requisite of science.

As we identify in this section, the style of teaching in science lessons combined with the compartmentalization of science lessons from lessons in other subjects is said in existing research to influence how students perceive the nature of science.

School subjects like science and history are not drawn directly from academic disciplines, and there is a range of relationships between the academic disciplines and the subjects at school which share their names Stengel, Byrne and Brodie , p. This is unfortunate as a perception of science as scientistic can lead some young people to form negative attitudes toward science and the possibility of a career in science Reiss, In the case of RE, however, the situation is made more complex because of a diversity of aims for this subject from country to country.

In a few of these countries the aim is to nurture pupils into one faith tradition, whereas in the majority of countries RE teaches students about a range of world religions and is also designed to help young people develop their own beliefs and values Schreiner, In England, RE is a statutory subject for pupils up to the age of 16, although parents do have an option to withdraw their children.

The subject is controlled locally through S. Academies including free schools can in some cases develop their own RE syllabus while needing to meet certain requirements. The vision was that teachers would help students to critically examine their own beliefs and values while not appearing to favor any one of a plurality of religious and nonreligious positions; however, a report by school inspectors a number of years later revealed that RE teachers are often unclear about what they are trying to achieve in their subject OFSTED, Many of the aims of the previous version have been transferred to the current guidance and, for example, the new Framework states that students should learn about a pluralism of religious and nonreligious views.

Of particular relevance here, both the previous and current Frameworks state that students in lower secondary school age 11—14 should learn about how science and religion relate. To conclude this and the previous section, we note that it appears that in principle in RE and science lessons in England there are opportunities to help students to become familiar with a range of views of the relationship between science and religion.

In particular, current and previous science curricular in England acknowledge the importance of teaching students in science lessons about the limits of science. This could lead to a discussion about the types of questions that science can and cannot investigate and as such could be a conceptual bridge to teaching about the types of questions considered by nonscientific disciplines such as history and religion Poole, The RE classroom could then extend this discussion by looking more closely at the nature of religion and the different types of truth claims that religions make. There is also a basis to say that this perception is held without an understanding of other views of the relationship Billingsley, The focus for this section is to draw on existing research to present some possible reasons why the teaching students receive may not be achieving its intended aims.

The findings suggested that the opportunity to make bridges for students between the classrooms is rarely if ever taken up. Teachers had mixed opinions on whether collaboration was even desirable. We have noted a basis to say that teachers rarely, if ever, make explicit links between the teaching that takes place in science lessons and RE lessons. We consider next whether students are likely to form their own bridges between the ideas they meet in different classrooms. The extent to which learning might be transferred between these subject classrooms is not straightforward.

This picture leads us to propose a hypothesis that students will perceive science as a worldview that excludes other ways of seeing the world and that they will not be well placed to capitalize on the opportunities that the curriculum suggests are available in RE to consider how science relates to religious and nonreligious worldviews.

The interviews for this study were gathered in the first year of the study with 61 students in these seven schools. Table 1 provides contextual data for the schools participating in this study. The students taking part in this study were in Years 7 age 11—12 , 9 age 13—14 , 11 age 15—16, the final year of compulsory schooling in the United Kingdom , and 12 age 16—17, first year of noncompulsory schooling in the United Kingdom.

Students had initially completed a survey which asked them to select an option to indicate whether or not they saw themselves as having a religious faith and if so which tradition. Students were told that the data they provided on the survey would be anonymized and that the decision whether or not to take part in the study would not affect their grades.

The survey included statements which articulated positions on how science and religion relate on a number of topics including the origins of the universe and the origins of life. Students were also asked to indicate their willingness to be interviewed. To make the selection of students for this interview study, we supplied class teachers with a list of students who said they were willing to be interviewed and who represented a range of faith positions including an atheistic stance.

The final cohort of participants comprised these students and included some who were substituted on the day. In Table 2 , we show the religious or nonreligious faith positions of the interview participants alongside those of the whole cohort who took part in the survey. Typically, interviews lasted 1 hour, although this varied from individual to individual.

Students and their parents gave permission for participants to take part and for the interviews to be recorded and transcribed.

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Pseudonyms for both the school names and the students were put into the transcripts, and we created names such that the first letter links each student with the school he or she attended. Interview schedules were drawn up and were refined in the light of a preliminary study. Students were also told that if they were uncomfortable with any question it is fine to say that they do not want to give an answer. The themes relating to this paper focused on origins the origins of the universe and the origins of life and were.

From our preliminary interviews, we expected that students would vary in their levels of insight into how science and religion relate. The next part of the schedule asked students to talk about the teaching they receive in their science lessons and in their RE lessons about origins. In our study, we found that some students were inclined in some of their answers to offer a mixture of terms associated with science, science lessons, and the science teacher. Two researchers independently assessed and coded the transcripts in the manner suggested by Charmaz , p.

The researchers met to compare codes and themes, and it was noted that the initial themes identified by each researcher were broadly similar and largely derived from the questions. The agreed themes that resulted from these discussions were. In our first meeting, we discussed the level of nuance we wanted to bring to our coding and agreed that the aims of this study would be best met if our codes reflected broad categories of attitudes and ideas that our theoretical studies and initial analysis had led us to expect to find.

We also noted and discussed the cases of students who, when asked about scientific and religious ideas about origins, gave an answer that was based on an experience in a science lesson. This was also the case for many students who did not refer to their lessons in their answers. We concluded that in some cases, students were responding to questions about the scientific explanation of origins by referring to their experiences in science lessons because these were the insights that were most readily available to them.

One researcher then returned to the transcripts and produced an Excel document in which there were 11 columns one per theme and 61 rows one per student. Each cell contained all the comments that each student made relating to a given theme, drawn into a paragraph of text which we call a digest. The two researchers took the final set of codes, and each independently coded the data.

In parallel and to help us evaluate the analytical method, we enlisted two researchers who had not developed the analysis. One was the researcher who carried out the interviews, and one was a researcher in education who had not worked on the study. Prior to beginning this coding, the two new researchers were trained using sample digests and codes. We met as a group of four to compare the way we had coded these 67 digests. To calculate our interreliability score, we used the percentage of agreement method Goodwin, This approach has been used to assess the reliability of four raters coding psychological interviews whereby, as is the case in our own study, some of the raters are experienced and some are novices who are given training to carry out the task Kay, To arrive at an interrater reliability score, we worked out the proportion of pairs of agreements among the four raters for each digest compared with the number of possible pairs of agreements.

For 63 of the 67 digests, we had full concordance whereas for each of four digests we had one person disagreeing or uncertain.

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But, we might wonder, what about the traditional arguments for God? The Next Generation Science Standards: This is a provocative article considering the pros and cons of regarding Kant as a deist. Such physical teleology points to a somewhat intelligent and powerful designing cause of the world. We recall that, while criticizing the teleological argument from design, Kant exhibited a high regard for it. Having publicly espoused the right of scholars to publish even controversial ideas, Kant sought and got permission from the philosophical faculty at Jena which also had that authority to publish the second, third, and fourth books of his Religion and proceeded to do so.

Four students said there was no relationship or that they were unsure or that there are too many unknowns to form a position. The findings relating to this research question are presented using subheadings corresponding to each of five themes. Another point of interest that emerged during our analysis for this theme was that some students said that the RE teacher offered several different perspectives on origins whereas some others talked about a rivalry between the science classroom and RE classroom and said that RE teachers advocated a religious view.

Here we illustrate both positions. In other cases, students listed types of activities but did not explicitly identify the methods as different. In RE, in contrast, students expected that the ideas would be communicated through stories and people's opinions. Damien Year 7 said:. They teach it differently because like science they'll like show it through experiments maybe … and religious will like show it through videos and what people think, opinions.

Several students said they found the teaching about origins in science lessons to be more convincing. Some students 10 of 61 explained that they would pay more attention to the teaching in a science lesson on origins rather than an RE lesson because science as a subject has a higher status. In England, science is a core subject i. RE has not been included DfE, The majority of comments about science teachers were that they are very knowledgeable and speak with authority. Some students explained that science lessons and RE lessons approach origins differently because of the different sensitivities of the teachers.

Our science teacher would have a more scientific approach to it, and more scientific bias, and it's the same for the RE teacher, they both have their own bias on the situation. I think they teach it very differently, because a science teacher depends on their facts and all the logical knowledge that they have been taught originally. And, a religious teacher, and an RE teacher, depends on their faith, and they've just got to believe it.

Teachers of RE were often perceived by students to be people with a religious faith. She compared her science and RE teachers by saying:. I just think it's because like when you see your science teacher you're like, oh they know everything, they know why it happened … Whereas in RE it's just like they … they just know the views, they don't know whether it's actually true. It depends on the teacher….

Over a third of students 24 of 61 said that they were careful not to voice opinions or questions in lessons about origins that might seem to challenge another person's religious beliefs. Most of these comments were made in the context of discussing the RE lesson. I mean it's somebody else's beliefs, you can't judge anybody on that. We had some Christians come in and talk to us about their theory of creation and I wanted to ask about how that fits in with like dinosaurs and things like that but I didn't because I thought that might be offensive.

In most cases, the students who said that such questions would not be raised explained that this is because it would be seen as a diversion from the goal of the lesson. In Science, although they're not very open with religion, I think that's a good thing … because your exams aren't open to religion and so I think they do have to be quite strict on [keeping to] science. Several students said that there is not much time for questions in general in science lessons.

In a previous section of this paper, we explained that, in England, students are expected to learn in RE lessons why scholars say that science and religion are not necessarily incompatible.

Kant, Immanuel: Philosophy of Religion | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jacob, Plamthodathil S.

INTRODUCTION

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