KANT IS, TO BORROW ONE OF HIS OWN METAPHORS, the keystone of the modern defense of religion. This defense turns on the contention that religion is not to be understood in terms of its own metaphysical claims--the most notable being that God exists--for this claim, as well as the obvious counterclaim, cannot be demonstrated. The existence of God is an antinomy--a claim that theoretical reason can neither prove nor disprove. Religion, however, can be, indeed must be defended, because of the (...) claims that a completely dispassionate, even irreligious, reason must make consequent to an analysis of morality. If we understand the nature of duty, conscience, and the moral law, and the end or good to which the moral law obligates us, we will conclude, Kant argues, that we must accept the existence of God as a postulate of practical reason. Kant's defense of religion rests on a strategy that aims to prove the limits of theoretical reason and the necessity of assuming the primacy of practical reason. (shrink)

"Moses and Monotheism" is Freud's last book on religion. It was published in its entirety only after his flight from Nazi-occupied Vienna. Moses is perhaps Freud's most controversial book on religion. It is both an apology and a curse. It is a critique of traditional Judaism (by way of an Oedipal analysis of a deified Moses), a defence of a modern humanistic Judaism (a Judaism of moral and intellectual values), and a bitter critique of Christianity (a religion not of the (...) Father but of the sons, a failed religion, which expresses its failure in anti-Semitism). A defiant and rebellious book, one might say, one in which an old man rises to meet his fate and does so with surprising wilfulness and vigour. But Moses also reveals a dogmatic Freud defending a critique of religion that is intellectually flawed and politically misdirected. (shrink)

Kierkegaard's leap of faith is one of the most thoroughly explored topics in modern philosophy. What can yet another inquiry into this notion hope to achieve? A number of significant things, I think, of both historical and systematic value. The main contention of this paper is that the leap of faith, often associated with the emergence of existentialism, is Kierkegaard's response to a problem which is essentially Kantian in origin and structure. Kierkegaard wants to accomodate both the Kantian interpretation of (...) morality as rational command and Kant's insistence on morality as the sole point of access to religion, while rejecting the Kantian moralization of religion and rationalization of faith. The leap of faith is not, as existentialism would have it, an absolute beginning in philosophy or in individual reflection but a transition from morality to religion within an essentially Kantian context. (shrink)

'Contentment with our existence, ‘Kant observes, ‘is not, as it were, an inborn possession or a bliss, … it is rather a problem imposed upon us by our finite nature as a being of needs.’ Happiness is an inescapable problem for man; is it, however, the central problem of morality? Kant thinks not. The central problem of morality is the tension between two sets of demands, between two goods- virtue and happiness.Happiness, according to Kant, is the fulfillment of all of (...) one's wants. It is ‘a rational being's consciousness of the agreeableness of life which without interruption accompanies his whole existence.'. (shrink)