Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T09:15:48.892Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hope, virtue, and the postulate of God: a reappraisal of Kant's pure practical rational belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2013

M. JAMIE FERREIRA
M. JAMIE FERREIRA*
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA22904 e-mail: Mjf5e@virginia.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

After identifying contrasting formulations of the practical postulates of reason in Kant's second critique, I analyse the context of each formulation, showing both how the postulate of the ‘possibility’ of God is consistent with Kant's understanding of a significant transition arising from practical needs as well as how the postulate of the existence of God can be seen as a ‘practical belief’ acting out a ‘hope’. My goal is to re-examine Kant's view of the relation between the practical and theoretical employments of reason in order to distinguish clearly between what Kant sees as required of the moral believer as opposed to permitted.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 3 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allison, Henry E. (1983) Kant's Transcendental Idealism (New Haven CT: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Beck, Lewis White (1960) A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Beiser, Frederick C. (2006) ‘Moral faith and the highest good’, in Guyer, Paul (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 588–628.Google Scholar
Chignell, Andrew (2010) ‘Real repugnance and belief about things-in-themselves: a problem and Kant's three solutions’, in Lipscomb, Benjamin & Krueger, James (eds) Kant's Moral Metaphysics: God, Freedom, and Immortality (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter), 177–209.Google Scholar
Day, J. P. (1969) ‘Hope’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 6, 89–102.Google Scholar
Downie, Robert S. (1963) ‘Hope’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 24, 248–251.Google Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (1992) ‘The concept of the highest good in Kant's moral theory’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52, 747–780.Google Scholar
Ferreira, M. Jamie (1983) ‘Kant's postulate: the possibility or the existence of God’, Kant-Studien, 74, 75–80.Google Scholar
Insole, Christopher (2008) ‘The irreducible importance of religious hope in Kant's conception of the highest good’, Philosophy, 83, 333–351.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1960) Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Green, Theodore M. & Hudson, Hoyt H. (trs) (New York: Harper Torchbooks).Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1965) Critique of Pure Reason, Smith, Norman Kemp (tr.) (New York: St Martin's Press).Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1992) ‘The only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God’ (1763), in Walford, David (ed.) Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 111–201.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996) The Metaphysics of Morals, Gregor, Mary (tr.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997) Critique of Practical Reason, Gregor, Mary (tr.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuehn, Manfred (1985) ‘Kant's transcendental deduction of God's existence as a postulate of pure practical reason’, Kant-Studien, 76, 152–169.Google Scholar
Mariña, Jacqueline (1997) ‘Kant on grace: a reply to his critics’, Religious Studies, 33, 379–400.Google Scholar
Mariña, Jacqueline (2000) ‘Making sense of Kant's highest good’, Kant-Studien, 91, 329–355.Google Scholar
Muyskens, James L. (1979) The Sufficiency of Hope (Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press).Google Scholar
O'leary-Hawthorne, John & Howard-Snyder, Daniel (1996) ‘Are beliefs about God theoretical beliefs? Reflections on Aquinas and Kant’, Religious Studies, 32: 233–258.Google Scholar
Quinn, Michael Sean (1976) ‘Hoping’, The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 7, 53–65.Google Scholar
Reath, Andrews (1997) ‘Introduction’, in Gregor, Mary (ed.) Critique of Practical Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), vii–xxxi.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1970) Kant's Moral Religion (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1992) ‘Rational theology, moral faith, and religion’, in Guyer, Paul (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 394–416.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (2005) Kant (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing).Google Scholar
Zeldon, Mary-Barbara (1971) ‘The summum bonum, the moral law, and the existence of God’, Kant-Studien, 62, 43–54.Google Scholar