ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relation of religion to life in many different ways and describes two things: the relation of religion to conduct and the question of the meaning of life. Not only does Immanuel Kant think that ethics was autonomous, but he goes further suggesting that religion is subordinate to ethics. Whereas the first erroneous claim is that there can be no morality without religion, the second erroneous claim is that there can be no religion without morality, since religion necessarily has moral content. In the West, the tradition of basing political decisions on principles that have autonomy from religion is the guiding approach, though there are always those who urge a return to moral values based on religious convictions. Although the preponderance of the philosophical tradition is on the side of the autonomy of ethics, there is wide disagreement about the source of our knowledge of ethics.
