Search

This article examines Kant’s treatment of the design argument for the existence of God, or physicotheology. It criticizes the interpretation that, for Kant, the assumption of intelligent design satisfies an internal demand of inquiry. It argues that Kant’s positive appraisal of physicotheology is instead better understood in terms of its polemical utility for rebutting objections to practical belief in God upon which Kant’s ethicotheological argument rests, and thus as an instrument in the transition from theoretical to practical philosophy. Kantian physicotheology plays this role (a) by criticizing alternative speculative accounts of the ground of nature, and (b) by analogizing from the structure of finite rational agency in order to represent more clearly the action of an ideal agent.

Summary

Chapter 7 argues that Kant introduces a new conception of the relation of the systems of freedom and nature as reciprocal. Here, under the auspices of what he calls an “ethicotheology,” he describes these two systems as sharing an identical final end, and therefore also being conjoined by that very end. Such a description of this relation is only possible if we view the relation of the two systems from out in the territory. This reflective standpoint further judges freedom as a fact in nature, and opens up the possibility of us being convinced of the existence of God as the author of a nature that now, ineluctably, appears to us as meaningful. In this, nature is something we have a sense of as belonging to us.

Search Results

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

2 results

Physicotheology in Kant’s Transition from Nature to Freedom

7 - Hope and Faith: God in the Critique of Teleological Judgment

Summary

Search Results

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

Save Search

2 results

Physicotheology in Kant’s Transition from Nature to Freedom

7 - Hope and Faith: God in the Critique of Teleological Judgment

Summary