God’s role in Kant’s philosophy

The Concept of God and the Role 

of Ideas in Kant 

Overview.... 

. 

God’s role in Kant’s philosophy . ambiguous 

-what roles is this concept playing? 

-given this, what does this being need to be 

like? 

-what, if anything, does this imply for 

whether or not God needs to exist? 

. 

Use these conclusions to say something about 

regulative ideas in general 

. 

Kant and Spinoza?? 

God in the Critique of Pure Reason 

. 

Fourth Antinomy (A456/B484-A461/B489) . 

discusses a necessary being as first cause, and 

identifies problems with this: 

-to be a cause the necessary being must be 

phenomenal, BUT a phenomenal necessary being 

leads to contradictions 

. 

Highlights a problem for any Kantian account of 

God . 

must be able to account for causal 

relationship to phenomena without reducing him 

to the phenomenal 

God in CPR (2) 

. 

The Ideal (A568/B596-A591/B619) . God is 

literally reason’s ideal concept as he ‘contains a 

therefore for every wherefore’ (A585/B613): 

-he provides the unconditioned that reason 

seeks; 

-fulfils the role of ens realissimum (the most real 

being, which contains all possible predicates; 

-and provides an archetype for morality in his role 

as summum bonum (highest good) 

God in CPR (3) 

. 

BUT...despite this, no theoretical proof ever 

sufficient to demonstrate (non)existence of 

God 

. 

However, there is a valid practical proof, which 

stems from our awareness of the moral law this 

gives reason grounds to posit a being who 

makes these laws obligatory (A634/B622) 

God in the Critique of Practical Reason 

. 

God’s moral roles the focal point: 

-God as an exemplar/archetype of the highest 

good (4:408) 

-God as the being who ensures that the goals of 

our moral strivings are possible, and therefore 

rational (by ensuring the coincidence of duty and 

happiness, the potentail for nature to be 

moralised, and the possibility of eterninty) 

(4:437-4:439) 

-God as a postulate of practical reason, and this 

gives reason grounds for belief 

God in the Critique of Teleological 

Judgement 

. 

Teleology and natural organisms 

-reason is only able to think of certain natural 

products as designed . infers existence of 

designer 

-natural organisms as systems which self-

regulate in accordance with a concept (tree, tulip, 

for e.g.) . as nature does not have the 

intelligence to produce concepts, reason infers a 

higher intelligence to provide these 

-natural organisms (‘ends of nature’) as 

comparable to moral agents 

God in CTJ (2) 

. 

The problem . 

how to reconcile this kind of 

causality (free/teleological) with the causality 

that governs the rest of phenomenal nature 

(mechanistic) 

. 

The solution . 

both are united in a supersensible 

ground. We are unable to perceive this unity due 

to our discursive mode of cognition, BUT it would 

be accessible to a divine intelligence (intellectual 

intuition) (Ak V 407-410) 

What we can say about all of this..... 

. 

God has two central functions in Kant’s 

system: 

-moral role 

-grounding role 

. 

BUT Kant always stresses that this concept 

must remain a regulative idea.....so are we 

able to say anything about God’s existence? 

. 

Moral roles . seems these could be played just 

as well by mere idea of God 

Regulative Ideas 

. 

Strong sense . regulative ideas are just ideas, 

their objects have no reality outside of rational 

minds 

. 

Kant’s sense . regulative ideas refer to objects 

which we can have no rational grounds to affirm 

the existence of, but we do have rational grounds 

for belief in 

-Kant’s conception necessitates agnosticism 

about the existence of the objects of regulative 

ideas 

A problem for non-metaphysical 

accounts of Kant........ 

. 

Non-metaphysical accounts necessarily 

committed to a strong understanding of 

regulative ideas 

. 

Because these accounts deny the possibility of 

any ontological commitment to the noumenal, 

they therefore lack the space in which these 

objects could exist 

BECAUSE.... 

. 

For Kant, the phenomenal world arises through 

constitutive ideas . 

these ideas are necessary for 

the world to exist in the way that it does 

. 

Regulative ideas (freedom, God, for e.g.) 

contradict certain constitutive ideas, and 

therefore cannot exist in the phenomenal 

. 

SO as non-metaphysical accounts are committed 

to a denial of the noumenal, they are also 

committed to denying that the objects of 

regulative ideas could exist 

Does it matter?? 

. 

Might think this is not problematic, as the idea 

of God is sufficient to fulfil moral roles 

-seems that non-metaphysical accounts will 

have no difficulty accounting for God’s roles 

with regards to morality 

. 

BUT 

there is still one important function which 

God plays that cannot be fulfilled by a mere 

idea . his grounding role 

God as ground 

. 

God as ground for teleology and mechanism, but 

also grounds other regulative ideas (e.g. the unity 

of nature, transcendental freedom) 

. 

This role cannot be sufficiently fulfilled by an idea 

-if the possibility of God is denied, then the 

apparent unity between mechanism and 

teleology must be denied, and because 

mechanistic causality is a constitutive idea this 

implies that other forms of causality (teleological 

or free) cannot exist phenomenally 

God as ground (2) 

. 

Further, if the possibility of God’s existence is 

denied, so too is the noumenal, and therefore 

the possibility that other regulative ideas 

could exist as noumenal is also negated 

-the denial of the possibility of God’s 

existence entails the denial of the possibility 

that the objects of other regulative ideas 

could exist (most importantly transcendental 

freedom) 

Guyer and the Opus Postumum 

. 

Guyer’s account . rather than positing God as the 

ground of unity for nature and freedom, Kant is 

rather positing rational minds as this unifying 

ground 

. 

God and nature form a single system as both are 

‘thought entities’ posited by reason (2000:22) 

. 

Evidenced by claims in the OP, and Kant’s 

repeated insistence that his claims are only valid 

for rational beings 

Or..... 

. 

Kant’s reluctance to posit God as really existing is 

due to the limits of his system rather than a belief 

that God is a mere idea 

. 

Kant (by his own standards) cannot reasonably 

make any claims about God without contradicting 

his claims about the limits of reason, and this is 

why he doesn’t make any such claims 

. 

Kant would not have wanted to deny the 

possibility of God’s existence, as this would lead 

to the denial of the possibility of transcendental 

freedom 

Do we need transcendental freedom? 

. 

Could argue that Guyer’s 

account is not 

problematic . 

although he cannot have 

transcendental freedom, he can still retain 

some conception of freedom 

-Guyer’s 

account leaves room for practical 

freedom (the necessity that we conceive of 

ourselves and our agency under the 

presupposition of freedom) 

YES! 

. 

Practical freedom is not enough . guarantees 

the thought of our autonomy, but only 

transcendental freedom can guarantee the 

reality of this autonomy 

. 

Kant’s emphasis on freedom and autonomy 

demonstrates that he wouldn’t have been 

happy with a system which negates the very 

possibility of transcendental freedom 

Kant and Spinoza...? 

. 

Spinoza’s God: 

-not separate from world, but constitutes 

totality of existence 

-synonymous with nature (deus sive natura) 

-absolutely necessary . God is entirely 

determined by his necessary attributes, and 

thus the reality that follows from him is 

inherently deterministic 

Kant and Spinoza (2) 

. 

The big advantage . 

-traditional conceptions of God as separate 

from creation fall into contradiction 

-Spinoza provides a logically consistent 

conception of God 

-So this conception is valid in terms of 

theoretical as well as practical reason 

Kant and Spinoza (3) 

. 

Kant’s critique of Spinoza . this conception of 

God leads to fatalism 

. 

BUT Kant argues that only transcendental 

idealism is able to avoid this consequence, as it is 

unable to posit God as direct cause of the world 

. 

Demonstrates that with transcendental idealist 

framework this problem is avoided . God as 

ground rather than cause, so leaves open the 

possibility for phenomenal beings to have some 

degree of freedom 

Kant and Spinoza (4) 

. 

Spinoza’s God + transcendental idealism = 

-avoids the problems of the fourth antinomy (as 

God is ground rather than cause) 

-God’s grounding role is fulfilled 

-roles of summum bonum and ens realissimum 

are fulfilled 

-conception of God that’s valid on theoretical as 

well as practical grounds 

-fits in with two-aspect reading of Kant