Kant's "Religion" in a Nutshell
A Short Summary from the Classroom
I’m teaching Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone right now, and put this together for my students; I thought I would share it here.
Kant on Morality
Morality must be both free (coming from within us) and dutiful (what is good in itself always and everywhere, not on consequences, enjoyment, or benefit)
This is the moral law, which we put on ourselves
What matters is the good will (our intention or acting from the right reasons). We can see whether we have a good will by checking our maxim, which is the slogan or principle which guides our action. Does our maxim make sense? Can it be applied consistently? Is it motivated purely by the moral law?
If you have the wrong maxim, and are motivated to act well by anything other than the good will itself, you aren’t actually acting well. You are evil in your very principle.
Kant on Religion
For Kant, as an Enlightenment rationalist, the only thing that matters in religion is morality and reason. He cuts out the parts of religion which don’t fit this (or at least says they are unimportant, doubling what is already available from reason)
Works of Grace (inner feelings and experiences)
Miracles (external experiences of God’s actions)
Mysteries (divine revelation and stuff like the Trinity)
Means of Grace (divine help to make us pleasing to God)
The reasons for acting well can’t be the normal religious ones: divine command, eternal reward and punishment (heaven and hell), or earthly blessing
Nevertheless, Kant thinks we need to assume (not prove) that God exists if the impulse to be moral built into us is to make sense in the end - since as rational actors we have to envision the Highest Good as the result of our actions, even if it isn’t our motive. God has to be assumed to make sure the idea of the Highest Good makes sense; that there is someone coordinating a match between the laws of the universe and the moral law in us.
Human beings are evil (they have “fallen”), but we do not know this by empirical observation or on the basis of some first historical act (like eating fruit in the Garden of Eden). For any historical act of evil to be possible, humans must have already been corrupted in our principle, for a will that can be tempted is already impure and thus evil. Humans are evil radically (that is, on the level of their principle) and transcendentally (beyond history and observation, on the level deeper than time where we determine ourselves fundamentally).
To be “saved,” or become good, we need not merely to gradually improve in our own or other’s observation in time, but a fundamental revolution on the level of our principle. But this can’t come from God (grace or divine help), since morality must be free (self-legislating, coming from within). Or at least, if there is such help, we must be capable of deserving it first.
We can’t know how such a revolution is possible, and we can’t know from empirical observation whether it has taken place. But since we feel the moral impulse within us, we have to assume it is possible, and if we are gradually improving, we can hope it means the revolution has taken place.