by Robert Wicks
A more explicit, causally centred formulation of the cosmological argument more clearly illustrates Kant’s point. Since a chain of causes and effects extends from the past into the present moment, and since each member of the chain is a contingent item, an ‘uncaused’ cause is required to begin the chain and make it possible. Suppose we accept this. The problem is that by itself, the concept of an uncaused cause is too thin for the argument’s purposes, since it does not include the thought of being all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing or supreme.
The third traditional argument for God’s existence is the teleological argument (or the argument from design), as it is usually known, or as Kant refers to it, the ‘physico-theological’ argument. He describes the argument’s motivation inspiringly:
This present world presents to us so immeasurable a stage of variety, order, fitness, and beauty, whether we follow it up in the infinity of space or in its unlimited division, that even with the little knowledge which our poor understanding has been able to gather, all language, with regard to so many and inconceivable wonders, loses its vigour, all numbers their power of measuring, and all our thoughts their necessary determination; so that our judgement of the whole is lost in a speechless, but all the more eloquent astonishment…
(A622/B650)
The argument is that to account for the world’s awesome regularity, there must be an intelligence that underlies the natural patterns, operating with great wisdom and a determinate purpose, which we call God. Contrasting with the respectful phrasing in which he presents it, Kant’s estimation of the teleological argument is that it is the weakest of the three. At best, the argument establishes a world-designer, but not a world-creator, so it does not imply an all-sufficient, primordial being.
A stronger result can follow if the teleological argument is combined with the cosmological argument to introduce an absolutely necessary being as the intelligence-behind-the-scenes. At that point, though, the cosmological argument will still need to advance from an absolutely necessary being, albeit now endowed with intelligence, to a fully supreme being. For that, it must combine with the ontological argument.
In the end, Kant maintains that the teleological argument and the cosmological argument depend upon the ontological argument, and that the ontological argument is invalid, not to mention scholastically artificial. His sceptical position towards the traditional arguments for God’s existence rests significantly on the weakness of the ontological argument, although each argument has a variety of other difficulties.
Key idea: The primacy of the ontological argument
Kant claims that the teleological argument rests upon the cosmological argument, and that the cosmological argument rests upon the ontological argument. Arguing further that the ontological argument is invalid, Kant concludes that the teleological and cosmological arguments, like a house of cards, fall down together with the ontological argument.
As is true for the Paralogisms and Antinomy of Pure Reason, Kant extracts a constructive and consoling result from the failures of reason to obtain knowledge of what lies beyond the possibility of experience. Our reason generates the idea of God in its effort to know everything, but lacks the power to know whether a real being corresponds to that idea. That very idea of God nonetheless serves importantly and inevitably in the realm of appearances to guide regulatively, our inquiries in natural science.
Reason, as the intelligent supervisor and regulator for our scientific inquiries, dictates that we examine the world around us as if it were the product of a supreme intelligence. By expecting and looking for intelligent connections everywhere in our scientific endeavours, assuming that the world is coherently designed and purposeful through and through, we are led to discover more and more natural connections. In this way, by generating the concept of God as the intelligent designer of the world, reason guides us towards achieving the greatest unity combined with the greatest detail in our scientific knowledge of the world. Not only, then, does reason have a practical application in the moral sphere of what we ought to do, it pragmatically aids science, which intends thoroughly to understand the mechanical and factual details of experience.
Dig Deeper
Sadik J. Al-Azm, The Origins of Kant’s Arguments in the Antinomies (Clarendon Press, 1972)
Michelle Grier, Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Illusion, Chapters 6 and 7 (Cambridge University Press, 2001)
Christopher David Shaw, On Exceeding Determination and the Ideal of Reason (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)
Victoria S. Wike, Kant’s Antinomies of Reason (University Press of America, 1982)
Allen Wood, Kant’s Rational Theology (Cornell University Press, 1978)
Study questions
1 What are the four main philosophical questions in the Antinomy of Pure Reason?
2 Why does Kant believe that it makes no sense to ask whether or not the world had a beginning?
3 Why does Kant believe that there need be no contradiction in asserting that we are both free and not free?
4 Which of the three traditional arguments for God’s existence does Kant believe is the weakest?
5 Which of the three traditional arguments for God’s existence does Kant believe is the most natural and expressive of a fundamental human puzzlement?
6 Which of the three traditional arguments for God’s existence does Kant believe is the most artificial?
7 What is the difference between an ‘absolutely necessary being’ and a ‘supreme being’?
8 Of the three traditional arguments for God’s existence, upon which of the three arguments does Kant believe the other two rest?
9 With respect to the ontological argument, what does it mean to say that existence is not a ‘property’ or ‘perfection’?
10 What consolations does Kant offer at the ends of the Antinomies and the Ideal of Reason that offset his more sceptical analyses?
Section Three:
What should we do?
10
Freedom and moral awareness
Morality presupposes freedom. To hold a person morally responsible for some action, is to assume that the person is free. This chapter describes how Kant defines freedom as being independent of our worldly, sensuous desires and personal happiness. Modelled upon a conception of God’s timeless activity, Kant characterizes freedom independently of the spatio-temporal world, thereby locating it metaphysically closer to ultimate reality. Despite the natural world’s mechanical operations, Kant maintains as a hallmark of his outlook that freedom is compatible with nature, for what we experience as nature is only the mere appearance of ultimate reality.
Kant’s second Critique, the Critique of Practical Reason (CPrR), establishes the foundation of his moral theory in the concept of freedom. Its subject is ‘practical’ reason, which Kant distinguishes sharply from ‘speculative’ reason, the focus of the first Critique. Speculative reason is reason’s employment in the quest for metaphysical knowledge, as it tries to extend the categories of the understanding into a realm beyond the possibility of human experience. In the Critique of Pure Reason, as we know, Kant shows that while remaining powerless to determine the metaphysical source of either the world or our ultimate inner being, reason supplies the ideal of integrating our day-to-day factual knowledge into a complete scientific system. When Kant uses the word ‘speculation’, he accordingly signifies the denial of metaphysical knowledge and affirmation of its regulative function as the systematizer of scientific knowledge.
For Kant, reason’s inability to answer metaphysical questions has it benefits. Rather than remaining in benighted bondage to pointless speculation and the endless conflict of opinion, recognizing the limits of reason redirects our attention liberatingly and peacefully to the world of daily affairs with the assurance that as ‘practical’ reason, we remain in possession of solid moral guidance. Independently of experience, reason can determine what we ought to do, and even more generally, how the world ought to be.
As a causal powe
r that can ‘bring forth objects corresponding to conceptions’ (CPrR, Introduction), reason is intelligently creative. Accompanying this creativity is a vision of what the world would be like, if reason, like a perfect sovereign, were to govern the world entirely, operating in perfect harmony with the laws of nature. Kant envisions that if only everyone were to act in accord with reason’s moral dictates, respecting the divine voice within us, an earthly Kingdom of God would result, filled with mutually respecting people.
This all sounds metaphysical, idealized, and certainly religious, but practical reason officially makes no metaphysical claims. Kant grounds these visions upon the simple recognition – the ‘moral fact’ – that moral considerations are independent of both gratifying sensory pleasure and threatening pain. The following passage is both memorable and illustrative:
Suppose someone asserts of his lustful appetite that, when the desired object and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible. Ask him, though, if a gallows were erected next to the place where he finds this opportunity, in order that he should be hanged immediately after the gratification of his lust, whether he could not then control his passion. We need not wait long in doubt about what he would reply. Ask him, however, if his sovereign ordered him, on pain of the same immediate execution, to bear false witness against an honourable man, whom the prince might wish to destroy under a plausible pretext, whether he would consider it possible in that case to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to affirm whether he would do so or not, but he must unhesitatingly admit that it is possible to do so. He judges, therefore, that he can do a certain thing because he is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free – a fact which but for the moral law he would never have known.
(CPrR, Section 6)
Such examples inform Kant’s conviction that our moral awareness is independent of, and not subservient to, sensory pleasures, gratifications, attractions, satisfactions and the like. To him, it is misguided to believe that the purpose of morality is to maximize the pleasure in the world, where ‘good’ essentially means ‘pleasure’ and ‘evil’ essentially means ‘pain’. That for the sake of upholding justice and respect for other people, we are willing to forsake the most gratifying sensory pleasures and even sacrifice our lives, is evidence to Kant that to understand the source of morality, we must set our sights beyond the sensory world, with its attendant pleasures and pains.
This coheres well with Kant’s abstractive philosophical method, and he develops a position that locates the source of morality in our reason, independently of experience. Just as he identifies the a priori foundations of human knowledge in the forms of space and time in conjunction with the conceptual forms of the understanding, regarded as empty of sensory content, he identifies the a priori source of morality in yet another sensation-independent form, as we shall see more specifically in the next chapter.
Insofar as these various forms are independent of experience, their a priori nature lends them a universality and necessity that dignifies them above the changing sensory scenes. We speak here of a moral theory which purports to be strong, steadfast and applicable to all rational beings. Kant’s theory of beauty – also a subject for later chapters – rests equally and analogously upon disregarding an object’s gratifying sensory qualities (which he calls ‘charm’) to highlight the object’s universally appreciable spatio-temporal structure, in part for the sake of reinforcing moral awareness.
It is frequently assumed that morality’s aim is to bring happiness into the world, not merely for oneself, but for everyone. There are many conceptions of happiness, but in Kant, ‘happiness’ refers to the overall satisfaction of one’s worldly desires. In his words, ‘happiness is the condition of a rational being in the world, with whom everything goes according to his wish and will’ (CPrR, Book II, Chapter II, Section V).
He sees, however, an insurmountable problem with grounding morality upon happiness: people want different things, so there are no universally applicable rules that can fulfill everyone’s desire without conflict. Worse yet, when people desire the same thing – for example, land with food and energy sources – there is often a fight to possess it, sometimes vicious. Rather than being intrinsically moral, the single-minded quest for happiness tends rather to produce the ‘most angry conflict’ (CPrR, Section 4). Happiness may be desirable for individuals in a worldly sense, but Kant regards happiness as an appendage to morality: if one acts morally, then one deserves to be happy.
Spotlight: Kant’s moral theory in perspective
According to Kant, an action has moral value if it issues from a good will, motivated purely out of respect for duty and the moral law. The action’s consequences are secondary. The word for ‘duty’ or ‘obligation’ in ancient Greek is deon, and Kant’s non-consequentialist moral theory is accordingly called a ‘deontological’ theory. Other moral theories – the ‘consequentialist’ theories, of which utilitarianism is an example – determine an action’s moral value in reference to its consequences: if the consequences promote whatever is considered to be good, then the action is moral.
Neither kind of theory is perfect. By always telling the truth out of a respect for duty, hurt feelings and needless suffering can result. If done with cold calculation, killing one person to save five is not clearly moral, despite the consequences.
There are yet other moral theories, aiming to be more realistic and practical, which emphasize the development of good character and virtue. These theories in the field of ‘virtue ethics’ appeal to paradigms of good character and to desirable arrays of character traits to be fostered. The inherent flexibility of such examples and idealized constructions, subject to empirical contingencies as they are, remains, however, a matter for debate.
Having established that the foundation of morality is independent of the sensory world of space, time, animal desires and ordinary survival, Kant asks characteristically, ‘What, fundamentally, does our moral awareness presuppose?’ His answer is that it requires the power to choose. Consider another revealing passage:
There are cases in which men, even with the same education which has been profitable to others, yet show such early depravity, and so continue to progress in it to years of manhood, that they are thought to be born villains, and their character altogether incapable of improvement; and nevertheless they are judged for what they do or leave undone, they are reproached for their faults as guilty; nay, they themselves regard these reproaches as well founded, exactly as if in spite of the hopeless natural quality of mind ascribed to them, they remained just as responsible as any other man.
(CPrR, Book I, Chapter III, Critical Elucidation)
As a condition for moral awareness and the accompanying ascriptions of praise and blame, one must suppose that each person is free. Only with this assumption does it make sense to say of a person that he or she could have done otherwise. This brings us to Kant’s theory of freedom, and to how it works within the conclusions of the Critique of Pure Reason.
Key idea: Moral awareness is independent of sensory pleasures and happiness
Since the spatio-temporal world operates mechanistically and deterministically, Kant locates our freedom and the basis of morality beyond space and time. From the moral standpoint, this renders as a merely secondary concern, our happiness as the fulfilment of worldly desires.
In the first Critique, the Third Antinomy maintains that although freedom cannot be proven in a mathematical, logical or scientific sense, if we uphold the distinction between how things appear and how things are in themselves, then freedom is possible. If, to the contrary, the physical world were the world of things in themselves, then there would be no freedom, for like an ever-ticking clockwork, the physical world would be the only world, deterministic and thoroughly understandable by natural science. Upon recognizing that the mechanically operating, spatio-temporal world is merely an appearance, freedom becomes possible outside of and independently of that world. A
s such, it is spaceless and timeless.
This yields a ‘double-aspect’ theory, structured like the two sides of a coin, where from the perspective of how things appear, we are unfree, physically determined beings, and from the perspective of how things are in themselves, we are free agents whose essence is not of the spatio-temporal world. We cannot know substantially what we ultimately are, but the fact of our moral awareness implies that we are essentially free. In light of this moral awareness, we must ‘postulate’ freedom.
Despite its weaker cognitive status as a postulate of practical reason, as opposed to being a matter of proven knowledge, freedom is paramount in Kant’s philosophy. Indeed he states: ‘the concept of freedom, inasmuch as its reality is proved by an apodeictic law of practical reason, it is the keystone of the whole edifice of pure reason, and even of speculative reason’ (CPrR, Preface). With this wider glimpse of Kant’s philosophy, we can say that practical reason contains the deeper significance of pure reason.
Kant’s concept of freedom nonetheless introduces some mystery. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he conceives of human freedom on the model of how God, operating independently of space and time, created the world ‘spontaneously’ (A533/B561). Although religiously moving, this way of understanding freedom generates a series of puzzling assertions that describe our personal character (our ‘intelligible character’ or ‘timelessly true character’) in its condition as a free agent. For instance, Kant states that in our intelligible character ‘no action would begin or cease’ (A540/B568) and that ‘inasmuch as it is noumenon, nothing happens in it’ (A541/B569). He adds that ‘as a purely intelligible faculty, pure reason is not subject to the form of time, nor consequently to the conditions of succession in time’ (A551/B579) and that ‘the causality of reason in its intelligible character, in producing an effect, does not arise or begin to be at a certain time’ (A551/B579).
