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Reason's need for God's actual existence in Kant's religionIn Ina Goy (ed.), Kant on Proofs for God’s Existence, De Gruyter. 2023.
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6Palmquist’s Commentary provides the first definitive clarification on Kant’s Philosophy of Religion in English; it includes the full text of Pluhar’s translation, interspersed with explanations, providing both a detailed overview and an original interpretation of Kant’s work. Offers definitive, sentence-level commentary on Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason Presents a thoroughly revised version of Pluhar’s translation of the full text of Kant’s Religion, including detailed notes co…Read more
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Works CitedIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations.
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4Interpreting Religious Ideas in a ChurchIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.In this chapter, Immanuel Kant's focus is on how members of a (true) church should interpret their Scripture. Not surprisingly, Kant's position on this issue is unequivocal: Scriptures must be given a moral interpretation, if they are to have any relevance to a true church. The first mark of a true church is its universality; through it, a church is grounded in pure religious faith. Kant asks us to choose: (a) Will we interpret religious faith as an attempt to satisfy God by obeying nonmoral pre…Read more
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5Gradual Victory of Good in Church HistoryIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.In this chapter, Immanuel Kant's account of the history of the true (universal) church has a clear progression. It moves from a discussion of Jesus’ radical break with all that was nonuniversal in Judaism, to the tendency of Christians down through the ages to shape their faith into something just as nonuniversal as Judaism. Kant's account concludes with reflections on why we have good reason to be optimistic for the future, because Kant's own interpretation of pure moral religion portrays the m…Read more
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2Biblical Symbols of the Struggle with EvilIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.In Section Two of Second Piece of Religion, Immanuel Kant presents a step‐by‐ step assessment of the biblical account of salvation, starting with the Genesis narrative, proceeding from there to the life and teachings of Jesus, and concluding with his death and resurrection as the source of a new freedom. The main text of the Second Piece then ends with a summary interpretation of the rational meaning of biblical symbols regarding the struggle between good and evil. Kant gives an account of the m…Read more
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3The Personified Idea of the Good PrincipleIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.What makes religion not only possible but necessary for a meaningful human life is the fact that human nature is meant for good but ends up being mired in evil. Religion's task is to solve this problem. We might portray reason as “bumping its head” on the inexorable limits of necessary ignorance when it attempts to answer the two questions: where does moral evil come from? and how can we overcome its powerful influence on us? Immanuel Kant regards good and evil as equal and opposite rational pri…Read more
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2The Founding of a True ChurchIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.The seven numbered sections in Division One of the Third Piece of Religion present a systematic argument regarding the founding, the establishment, and the implementation of an ethical community. This chapter first examines Immanuel Kant's argument that the idea of such a community has objective reality because it arises out of a universal human duty. Next, it is shown that how he argues that the inability of human beings to fulfil this duty independently, thereby giving rise to the need to assu…Read more
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2Legitimizing Hope in Divine GraceIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.We all started out as evil. Immanuel Kant describes and attempts to solve three specific difficulties that arise out of the fact that we are all inevitably corrupted by evil. This chapter presents Kant's treatment of these difficulties as corresponding to three traditional problems in Christian theology: sanctification, eternal security, and justification. That the first difficulty relates to the doctrine of sanctification (how a Christian, following conversion, can become holy) is evident when …Read more
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4Evil's Rational Origin and the Hope for RecoveryIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.Section IV of the First Piece of Religion accomplishes the first major task of Immanuel Kant's first experiment by explaining what bare reason justifies us to say about the essential condition of human nature. The second half of Section IV fulfils the corresponding mandate of Kant's second experiment by assessing how closely the traditional Christian understanding of evil conforms to this rational standard. After examining these two aspects of his conclusion, this chapter demonstrates how the bu…Read more
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1IntroductionIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.The prelims comprise: Half‐Title Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations.
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5The Propensity to Evil in Human NatureIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.Empirical evidence suggests that human nature tends to be corrupt from the very outset of our moral life. In Sections II and III of the First Piece of Religion, Immanuel Kant approaches this theme of the corruption of human goodness in a more direct way. Although our predisposition is good, he argues that all human beings must have a propensity or original inclination that points us in the opposite direction. In Section II, he argues that, if it exists, then its status must be more than just tha…Read more
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5The Original Goodness of Human NatureIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.Immanuel Kant's first way of answering the main question of the First Piece in Religion‐whether human beings are good or evil by nature‐has been to examine the necessary conditions for being human, insofar as these relate “to our capacity for desire”, the rational faculty that governed Kant's considerations in CPrR. As creatures of desire who are “condemned to be free” in the way we use our volition, we are animals who must choose a rational principle to govern our desires. Our original predispo…Read more
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2Learning Statutory Religion without DelusionIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.In this chapter, Immanuel Kant explains the crucial role played by biblical scholars: true religion must be universal, yet the dogmas that define a historical faith are not naturally universal. He attempts to defend the role of biblical scholars as both necessary and legitimate. Kant then turns to an analysis of why biblical theologians nevertheless tend to have a negative effect on church life and why the traditional linkage between Christianity and Judaism only exacerbates this problem. He rel…Read more
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1Natural Christianity RevealedIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.Immanuel Kant's Fourth Piece Religion has two main parts that further develop the distinction between two “experiments”. Part One titled “On the Service of God in a Religion Generally” has sections dealing with natural religion and scholarly religion, and the four sections of Part Two titled “On the Pseudoservice of God in a Statutory Religion” focus on themes that alternate between the first and second experiments. Given the importance of immortality to Kant's conception of the highest good, on…Read more
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IndexIn Comprehensive Commentary on Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Wiley. 2015.In this chapter, Immanuel Kant turns his attention back to the theme that was his earlier focus: the biblical scholars who tend to obscure the natural religion that lies at the heart of Jesus’ teaching. First, he argues that viewing unphilosophical clergy as spiritual guides is bound to promote delusory ways of being religious. Then, Kant claims that true service of God must be guided not by clergy but by conscience. According to Kant, the church leaders portray their preferred tradition in a wa…Read more
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6Kant-Studies in the Hong Kong Philosophical ContextProceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress 1 1257-1271. 1995.
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17Nothing Really Matters: Can Kant’s Table of Nothing Secure Metaphysics as Queen of the Sciences?In Gregory S. Moss (ed.), The Being of Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy, Springer Verlag. pp. 77-89. 2022.At what is arguably the most significant turning point in the Critique of Pure Reason, where Immanuel Kant has just completed his exploration of the safe ground of possible experience and is about to embark on the Transcendental Dialectic’s exploration of the stormy sea of metaphysics, he introduces one of the greatest curiosities in the Kantian corpus: a “table … of the concept of nothing” (A290/B346-A292/B349). The brief passage, which is tacked on to the end of a “Remark” that supplements an …Read more
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5Chung-ying Cheng’s Dialogue with Confucianism and Kant: A Gadamerian CritiqueJournal of Chinese Philosophy 48 (4): 402-409. 2021.Gadamer’s hermeneutics offers several strategies for critiquing Chung-ying Cheng’s synthesis of Confucianism and Kant. Interpreting Kant’s Groundwork, Cheng argues that the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is too rigid: if the “life principle” is the ultimate root of Kant’s four types of duty, then human inclinations are good; Kant’s perfect duties turn out to be imperfect in some situations, while his imperfect duties such as benevolence turn out sometimes to be perfect. Althoug…Read more
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2Kant and the Science of Logic: A Historical and Philosophical Reconstruction (review)Journal of Transcendental Philosophy 1 (3): 307-312. 2020.
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25How is Religious Experience Possible? On the (Quasi-Transcendental) Mode of Argument in Kant’s ReligionKantian Review 27 (1): 81-89. 2022.Kant’s general mode of argument in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, especially his defence of human nature’s propensity to evil, is a matter of considerable controversy: while some interpret his argument as strictly a priori, others interpret it as anthropological. In dialogue with Allen Wood’s recent work, I defend my earlier claim that Religion employs a quasi-transcendental mode of argument, focused on the possibility of a specific type of experience, not experience in general. In R…Read more
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10Kant and the Compound YijingIn Camilla Serck-Hanssen & Beatrix Himmelmann (eds.), The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress, De Gruyter. pp. 1353-1362. 2021.
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12Getting High with Kant: Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Morality in the Prolegomena’s Analytic MethodIn Camilla Serck-Hanssen & Beatrix Himmelmann (eds.), The Court of Reason: Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress, De Gruyter. pp. 359-368. 2021.
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6Kant's Critical ReligionAshgate Publishing. 2000.Applying the new perspectival method of interpreting Kant he expounded in earlier works, Palmquist examine a broad range of Kant's philosophical writings to present a fresh view of his thought on theology, religion, and religious experience. He defends a number of innovative theses, including how re.
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7Mapping Kant’s Architectonic onto the Yijing via the Geometry of LogicJournal of Chinese Philosophy 39 (5): 93-111. 2012.Both Kant’s architectonic and the Yijing can be structured as four perspectival levels: 0 + 4 + 12 + = 64. The first, unknowable level is unrepresentable. The geometry of logic provides well-structured maps for levels two to four. Level two consists of four basic gua, corresponding to Kant’s category-headings. Level three’s twelve gua, derived logically from the initial four, correspond to Kant’s twelve categories. Level four correlates the remaining 48 gua to Kant’s theory of the four universit…Read more
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16Humanity’s Moral Trajectory: Rossi on Kantian CritiquePhilosophia 49 (5): 1887-1900. 2021.After summarizing the content of Philip Rossi’s book, The Ethical Commonwealth in History: Peace-Making as the Moral Vocation of Humanity, I pose two main questions. First, does politics or religion play a more important role in Kant’s philosophy when it comes to the task of ushering humanity to the realization of its ultimate vocation, the establishment of a lasting peace for human society? I argue that Kant portrays politics as a means to a religious end, whereas Rossi tends to reverse their K…Read more
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416To Tell the Truth on Kant and ChristianityFaith and Philosophy 29 (3): 340-346. 2012.After reviewing the history of the “affirmative” approach to interpreting Kant’s Religion, I offer four responses to the symposium papers in the previous issue of Faith and Philosophy. First, incorrectly identifying Kant’s two “experiments” leads to misunderstandings of his affirmation of Christianity. Second, Kant’s Critical Religion expounds a thoroughgoing interpretation of these experiments, and was not primarily an attempt to confirm the architectonic introduced in Kant’s System of Perspect…Read more
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45What is Kantian Gesinnung? On the Priority of Volition over Metaphysics and Psychology in Religion within the Bounds of Bare ReasonKantian Review 20 (2): 235-264. 2015.Kants theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. It is argued that Kantian Gesinnung is volitional, referring to a personconvictionberzeugung (). This is confirmed by a detailed analysis of the 169 occurrences of Gesinnung and cognate words in Religion. It contrasts with what is suggested by translating Gesinnung as, which reinforces a tendency to interpret the notion more metaphysically, and also with Pluharattitude’, which has too strongly psychologic…Read more
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79The syntheticity of timePhilosophia Mathematica (2): 233-235. 1989.In a recent article in this journal Phil. Math., II, v.4 (1989), n.2, pp.? ?] J. Fang argues that we must not be fooled by A.J. Ayer (God rest his soul!) and his cohorts into believing that mathematical knowledge has an analytic a priori status. Even computers, he reminds us, take some amount of time to perform their calculations. The simplicity of Kant's infamous example of a mathematical proposition (7+5=12) is "partly to blame" for "mislead[ing] scholars in the direction of neglecting the tem…Read more
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23The Paradox of Inwardness in Kant and KierkegaardJournal of Religious Ethics 44 (4): 738-751. 2016.Aside from bioethics, the main theme of Ronald Green's lifework has been an exploration of the relation between religion and morality, with special emphasis on the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Søren Kierkegaard. This essay summarizes and assesses his work on this theme by examining, in turn, four of his relevant books. Religious Reason introduced a new method of comparative religion based on Kant's model of a rational religion. Religion and Moral Reason expanded on this project, clarifying …Read more