ABSTRACT
The work of the late eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is emblematic of the Enlightenment’s attempt to square the authority of unfettered reason with the inherited tradition of Christian belief. Although Kant offers no separable ‘philosophy of religion’ in the modern sense, religious themes are rarely distant from his thought. In the eld of knowledge, Kant claims that reason is incapable of supplying any possible proof for God’s existence or supporting evidence for his existence. In the domain of moral judgment, Kant contends that belief in God, the soul, and an afterlife are necessary postulates of practical reason. In the sphere of religious belief proper, Kant locates the relevance of revealed religion in the context of its moral dimension, coordinating these moral claims in the architecture of a distilled pure rational religion. Although these themes are present in many of Kant’s texts, in his mature work the central texts are the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and concerning the relation of pure rational religion with ecclesiastical faith, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) and The Confl ict of the Faculties (1798). If there is an abiding meta-commitment that unites all of Kant’s writings, it is his unswerving commitment to the authority, autonomy, and boundaries of human judgment. Kant’s unique mix of rationalist and empiricist concerns, forged in his new transcendental idealist model, places great emphasis on (1) determining the limits and preconditions of cognition and (2) grounding empirical claims within the boundaries of possible experience. Given the complex relation between religious belief and reason, and the equally intricate relation existing between commitments of faith and evidenced empirical belief, Kant’s unique treatment of religious themes is of particular contemporary urgency.
