Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction: on religion, ethics, and the political in Kant
- Chapter 2 Religion, politics, enlightenment
- Chapter 3 Knowledge and experience
- Chapter 4 Illusions of metaphysics and theology
- Chapter 5 Autonomy and judgment in Kant???s ethics
- Chapter 6 Ethics and politics in Kant???s Religion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - Illusions of metaphysics and theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1 Introduction: on religion, ethics, and the political in Kant
- Chapter 2 Religion, politics, enlightenment
- Chapter 3 Knowledge and experience
- Chapter 4 Illusions of metaphysics and theology
- Chapter 5 Autonomy and judgment in Kant???s ethics
- Chapter 6 Ethics and politics in Kant???s Religion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ideas of reason
The Transcendental Dialectic turns from the ordering of intuitions by the understanding to our faculty of reason. This investigation delves deeper into the sources of illusion in metaphysics and theology, which are intertwined with a predisposition toward comprehensive explanation. Kant begins with an overview integrating the understanding with the unifying faculty of reason: “All our cognition starts from the senses, goes from there to the understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which there is nothing higher to be found in us to work on the matter of intuition and bring it under the highest unity of thinking” (A298/B355). Reason is the highest faculty because its procedures are the most abstracted from experience. But reason in itself, without the understanding’s ordered reception of sense intuitions, cannot generate knowledge of reality. The entities hypothesized by metaphysics and theology are emblematic of the endeavors of reason to make ontological assertions disconnected from intuitions.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Kant, Religion, and Politics , pp. 108 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011