RE: Wes Morriston is awesome
March 26, 2015 at 2:02 pm
(March 25, 2015 at 11:31 pm)Nestor Wrote: (March 25, 2015 at 10:22 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: I see from the wikipedia article that there is some disagreement on his views on religion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
My assessment of his views is based on reading various of his writings in which he mentions god and writes about religion.
Pay particular attention to this bit of the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Ka..._of_Reason
I am not very sympathetic to the view that he was not a Christian. Many Christians say that many other types of Christians who differ from themselves are not really Christians, so I don't take such claims too seriously.
If you are really interested in the question, I recommend that you start reading some Kant, though I don't expect the question to interest you enough to go to that much trouble (and with Kant, reading him is trouble, though not as much as some of the later German philosophers whose writings raise gobbledygook to extraordinary levels).
Thanks. I own and have read his Critique of Pure Reason. In the future I plan on reading the Critique of Practical Reason as I think that delves into his moral philosophy some, which I am interested in. Would you have any recommendations?
If you are interested in his moral philosophy, you should read his
Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, variously translated as
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, and possibly a couple of other ways (unfortunately, there is no standard wording of the title in English). That is where you should start. It is short, and, for Kant, easy reading (though, being Kant, it isn't easy reading). I like the translation by Lewis White Beck. You don't need to make Kant harder by having a difficult translation.
It has literally been decades since I have read much Kant; you should have asked me this 20 years ago and I would have more to say about what you should read for getting the idea that he is a Christian. However, there seems to be a religious sensibility throughout his writings. (Compare with Hume on this, and although Hume professes to believe in God, too, the nature and tone of his writings that mention God are quite strikingly different. Back then, one could not safely say that one was an atheist in most places, or anything close to being an atheist.) And, since Kant was not a total moron, some of his views are disliked by some Christians, but that really means nothing, as there are so many types of Christians it is hard to keep track of them all, and they often hate each other passionately, denouncing others as not really being Christians.
To me, Kant seems intent on keeping the essential aspects of Christianity, while being quite willing to discard extraneous bits that are not necessary. And, again, this contrasts greatly with Hume, where if one follows the argument, one sees that God is wholly unnecessary and really not something rational to believe in, all while he explicitly says that there is a God. See "Of Miracles" (Section X of Hume's
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) for an example of what I mean:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-e...-of-morals
I do not recall reading anything in Kant that compares with Hume's tone when discussing God and Christianity.
One more thing about Kant's views on religion: People's views can change over time, and if he died after a change of mind, I would not know about that.
