How does Kant ‘Proved’ Existence of God, immortality and freedom ?
Ans:
Existence of God
Kant is highly critical of the attempts to employ reason to
theology and giving out theoretical proofs and dogmas of things in the
phenomenal world which the reason of human beings is unable to reach. In the
first Critique Kant writes, “All attempts to employ reason in theology in any
way merely speculative manner are altogether fruitless and by their very nature
null and void…the only theology of reason which is possible is that which is
based upon moral laws”. So the postulate of God is based on the moral
proof rather than the theoretical proof. The idea of God should originate in
our own reason. The God postulated by Kant is not the God of religion. Here it
is not the religious dogmas that call the shots and to which one has to submit
oneself but it’s to one’s own reason.
Why do the postulates of God come into picture? Kant says,
“This system of self-rewarding morality is only an idea, the realization of which
rests on the condition that everyone does what he should. But his is no reason for anyone for not being moral.
Kant would say that when we have a good reason to believe that we can get to
the goal which we pursue. But in the natural world the goal imposed by
morality is not always realized. The relationship between happiness and moral
law is not guaranteed although, “to be happy is necessarily the desire of every
rational finite being, and thus it is an unavoidable finite being, and thus it
is an unavoidable determinant of its faculty of desire.”[ If this
was guaranteed then we would not have seen people who lack good will enjoy
un-interrupted prosperity and morally good people should experience general
happiness to the exact proportion to their moral goodness and obviously this
would mean the delusion of reason with respect to practical matters. So we must
therefore postulate as it were unnatural world, beyond the temporal frame of
ordinary existence and ruled by a wise benevolent and powerful God, in which
the ideal results of morality will become actual. In particular, God turns out
to be the “highest original good.” From whom the “highest derived good,” the happiness
of all as a result of morality of all is derived.
The assumption of the existence of God can never be made the basis of our obligation to obey the moral law. It is indeed a moral necessity to assume the existence of God. The postulate of God is a need or requirement of our moral consciousness or a moral necessity which is subjective and not objective which means that it is not itself a duty. The postulate of God is in no way connected to the consciousness of our duty. The divine will is the motive to action, not ground of it. So the hypothesis necessary to explain the possibility of the existence of a certain object; but, in as much as the object in question is one which is set before us by our own rational nature as that which should be attained, we call it appropriately “ a faith and indeed a faith of reason.
Kant stresses that the properties of Omnipotence,
Omniscience and Omnipresence can be assigned to God to play his moral role of
guaranteeing the possibility of the highest good and that e have no basis for
assigning any other properties to God in each of the three critiques Kant would
even say that I must not even say ‘it is morally certain that there is God.’
But rather ‘I am morally certain.’ God is not a metaphysical concept,
original being, first cause not blindly working eternal root of all things. It
functions in the thinking of a moral agent and exercise a real influence on
his/her actions.
Immortality
The postulate of God has a close affinity to the postulate
of God in the realization of the moral Ideal. As Kant states in his critique,
“the belief in God and another world is so interwoven with my moral
sentiment.” The postulate of immortality was taken seriously by Kant even
when he was traditionalistic in his rationalism. The premise of immortality was
found in the “incomplete harmony between morality and its consequences in the
world.” He was of the view that the belief in immortality has to be based
on the moral disposition and not one hope of future rewards.
In the preface to the Critique of Practical Reason’s
second edition, Kant says that the belief in immortality is based on a ‘notable
characteristic of our nature, never to be capable of being satisfied by what is
temporal (as insufficient for the capacities of its calling) Basing
himself on the principle of purposiveness, Kant bases his first argument for
immortality. As ‘nothing is purposeless’ each organ or faculty into eh world
has its own specific claim that human life as whole too, must have its own end,
although it is an end not in this life but in a future life. ] As
it involves the fallacy of composition to judge that what is true of the parts
of a whole is true of the whole, Beck states that the argument is teleological
and theoretically and invalid one.
Kant gives the moral arguments and not the theoretical
arguments for the immortality of the soul: “1. the highest good is a necessary
object of the will. 2. Holiness, or complete fitness of intentions to the moral
law, is necessary condition of the highest good. 3. Holiness cannot be found in
a sensuous rational being. It can be reached only in an endless progress and
since holiness is required, such endless progress toward it is the true object
of the will such progress can be endless only if the personality of the
rational being endures endlessly. 6. The highest good can be made real,
therefore only on “the supposition of the immortality of the soul.
The problem which arises immediately is that it would go
against the self rewarding morality proposed by Kant if we are in look
out for unknown happiness in unknown world that too like a sort of compensation
for the failure to achieve happiness within the natural lives. So in the second
critique Kant would argue that we need immortality not to achieve happiness not
at all but rather in order to make “endless progress’ toward “the complete
conformity of dispositions with the moral law,’ that is , toward virtue or
worthiness to be happy.
Yet another proof given by Kant assumes the postulate of existence
of God. The postulates of God and immortality reckon the happiness in
proposition to worthiness to be happy ensuring that here is a power and a place
for the fulfillment of this. As he says, ‘such a ruler together with life in
such a world, which we must regard as a future world, reason finds itself
constrained to assume; otherwise it would have to regard the moral laws as
empty figments of the brain, since without this postulate the necessary
consequence which it itself connects with these laws could not follow.
Kant also makes it clear that the postulate of immortality
is that which cannot be known but can only be thought. Kant also claims that
his arguments for immortality do not furnish us with any theoretical dogma but
only practical and objective truth that can give rise to action-motives, and ,
above all, sustain a moral agent in the moral disposition involved in making
himself/herself worthy of highest good.
Freedom
Though freedom is one of the postulates, Kant gives it a
special place among them. It is freedom which is considered as logically
possible and practically useful in the first Critique. The special statues
accorded to freedom can be very well being read from the following verses from
the Critique of Practical Reason: Freedom, however among all the
ideas of speculative reason is the only possibility we know apriori. We do not
understand it, but we know it as the condition of the moral law which we do
know. The ideas of God and immortality are, on the contrary, not conditions of
the moral law, but only conditions of the necessary object of a will which is
determined by this law, this will being morally the practical use of our pure
reason. Kant says in the preface to the Critique of Practical
Reason that the concept of freedom is “the key stone of the whole
architecture of the system of pure reason and even speculative reason.”
Freedom in its positive conception should not be given a
theoretical employment. The role of idea of freedoms and the intelligible world
is, rather a practical one. It provides a conception of ourselves which motives
us to obey the moral law. As freedom of will can’t be theoretically
established it is asserted only from the practical standpoint. It is impossible
to give empirical or theoretical evidence for freedom. Kant says in the first
critique that it is therefore moral law, of which we become immediately
conscious can soon as we draw up maxims of the will of ourselves that offers
itself to us and…lead directly to the concept of freedom.
In Groundwork Kant’s attempt was to give a
theoretical proof of the reality of our freedom but he was not successful and
coming to Critique of Pure Reason he held that we could infer
the reality of our freedom from the consciousness by means of the principle
that ‘ought implies can.’
Kant’s thought on freedom of the will can be seen to be
going through five phases. In his first position he takes the stand that free
human actions are those that have internal rather than external causes. As the
second position, we have Kant stating that we cannot prove the existence of
free human actions which are not dictated by deterministic laws of nature. This
is explained in the Critique of Pure Reason. The third phase can be
seen in Groundwork which was published in 1785, where he states
that it is possible to prove the existence of human freedom and thereby also
prove that moral law applies to us. In the fourth phase we see Kant stating
that we can prove the freedom of our will form the indisputable fact of our
religion. This can be seen in the Critique of Practical Reason that
came out in 1788. As the final and fifth position in Religion (1793)
Kant is no longer concerned with proving the existence of free will but rather
showing that its existence simply implies the in escapable possibility of human
evil but equally the concomitantly indestructible possibility of human
conversions to goodness.
According to Kant the ideas of God and immortality gain
objective reality and legitimacy and indeed subjective necessity freedom is
given fundamental importance as it gives stability and objective reality to the
ideas of God and immortality. As Kant states in Critique of Practical
Reason: The concept of freedom, in so far as its reality is proved by an
apodictic law of practical reason, is the key stone of the whole architecture
of the system of pure reason and even of speculative reason. All other concepts
(those of God and Immortality), which are mere ideas, are unsupported by
anything in speculative reason now attach themselves to the concept of freedom
and gain, with it and through it, stability and objective reality. That is
their possibility is proved by the fact that there really is freedom, for this
idea is revealed by moral law. Though freedom is given a special status,
it does not mean that it is totally different from other postulates. As we are
neither in a position to prove their reality by speculative reason nor to
disprove them, pre supposing all three postulates is a need of pure practical
reason, which is based on duty to make the highest good the object of the will.
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