To understand Kant’s attitude fully, we must also take into
consideration the great weight that he attaches to the Moral Argument
for the existence of God. The positive side of his teaching on Theism
is summed up in the following sentence (p. 388): “For the theoretical
reflective Judgement physical Teleology sufficiently proves from the
purposes of Nature an intelligent world-cause; for the practical
Judgement moral Teleology establishes it by the concept of a final
purpose, which it is forced to ascribe to creation.” That side of his
system which is akin to Agnosticism finds expression in his determined
refusal to admit anything more than this. The existence of God is for
him a “thing of faith”; and is not a fact of knowledge, strictly so
called. “Faith” he holds (p. 409) “is the moral attitude of Reason as
to belief in that which is unattainable by theoretical cognition. It
is therefore the constant principle of the mind to assume as true that
which it is necessary to presuppose as condition of the possibility of
the highest moral final purpose.” As he says elsewhere (Introduction
to Logic, ix. p. 60), “That man is morally _unbelieving_ who does not
accept that which, though _impossible_ to know, is _morally necessary_
to suppose.” And as far as he goes a Theist may agree with him, and he
has done yeoman’s service to Theism by his insistence on the absolute
impossibility of any other working hypothesis as an explanation of the
phenomena of nature. But I have endeavoured to indicate at what points
he does not seem to me to have gone as far as even his own declared
principles would justify him in going. If the existence of a Supreme
Mind be a “thing of faith,” this may with equal justice be said of the
finite minds of the men all around us; and his attempt to show that the
argument from analogy is here without foundation is not convincing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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