WORLD-TALK VIS-A-IS GOD-TALK Reflections from a Theistic Reading of Kant
Keywords:
Metaphysical Status of the World We Talk, Search of a World beyond the Phenomenal in Kant, Assuming God as sine qua non for the Assumption of a World of Things in Themselves, Denial of Knowledge Is Affirmation of Faith, Kant in God-Talk Again: This Time for a Talk on the Moral World, Threefold God-Talk Aimed at Fortifying the Moral World, God-Talk at the Conception of the Origin of the Moral Law, God-Talk at the Conception of the End of the Moral Law, God-Talk at the Final Assessment of the Moral EnterpriseAbstract
Most of what people talk pass for world-talk. Most of the talk we engage in is about something in the world. A meaningful talk about a thing requires that any veil of non-clarity be lifted from the status of the thing. Once we put ourselves in a Kantian world, this requirement introduces before us a huge problem as Kant has neatly divided the world into a phenomenal world and a noumenal world. Kant has advocated that we limit our talk to the phenomenal so that our talk bears the stamp of meaningfulness. But the phenomenal as Kant has envisaged is a construction by our mind. It would then mean that unless it has a reference to the real world of the noumenal, what we take to be our talk about the world will amount to nothing more than a talk about ourselves. The situation can be redeemed only by granting a determinate status to the noumenal world which will in turn prop up the phenomenal. There are valid grounds to suggest that Kant does precisely that. The noumenal in his philosophy is the world as seen by God. Hence let me propose that no real world-talk is possible without a God-talk.
References
Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, 29 vols., Georg Reimer and W. de Gruyter, eds., Berlin: Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wisserschaften, 1902.
Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith, New York: Fordham University Press, 2001, 92.
John Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, 35.
M. Jamie Ferreira, “Making Room for Faith: Possibility and Hope” in D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin, eds., Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion, London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 2000, 76. For more on this, see his “Kant’s Postulate: The Possibility or the Existence of God?” Kant-Studien 74 (1983), 75-80.
Ronald M. Greene, “Kant and Kierkegaard on the Need for a Historical Faith: An Imaginary Dialogue” in Chris L. Firestone and Stephen R. Palmquist, eds., Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006, 165.
Cassirer, Kant’s Life and Thought, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, 382.
