Stephen R. Palmquist

This question is relevant not only to stu­dents working towards a degree in religious studies, but to every thinking human being. For a person’s concep­tion of how religion ought to be studied will determine to a large extent that person’s view of the value (or lack of value) of be­ing reli­gious, whether or not that person actually studies religion in depth. I say “to a large extent” because this is only one of two key factors which determine a person’s religious disposition. The other im­por­tant factor is what a person actually finds as a result of engaging in a religious quest

When composing “Echoes” I set out to express in an artistic form the cognitive dissonance we sometimes feel between the depth of divine Presence in our experience and the often perplexing shallowness of the various “presences” we experience in our daily life. By starting out with a reference to “every time” and “every space”, the first stanza highlights the contrast between these mundane presences and what religious believers might call “God’s Voice”. If the poem has a “primary” message, it is that God is in all these perplexing presences, though not always (or ever?) in a way that enables us to explain or fully comprehend that Presence with neat rational formulae

This paper defends a simple and surprisingly adequate definition of philosophy: as suggested by the “know thyself” imperative, philosophy is the “self-defining” discipline. The task of philosophizing is therefore best described as the task of self-defining. In responding to various objections, I defend four senses in which this definition holds. First, when other academic disciplines seek to define the nature of their discipline, they are generally recognized as exploring the philosophy of their discipline; only for philosophy is such an inquiry self-referential, remaining fully within the discipline itself. Second, while some genuinely philosophical topics do not explicitly involve self-defining, philosophy as a way of life always has self-examination at its core. Third, even though psychology may have largely usurped philosophy’s classical role as the guardian of self-knowledge, the goal of helping persons to refine their own self-understanding is still crucial for philosophers today. Finally, in a deep but paradoxical sense, genuine philosophy is self-authenticating. While Socrates’ maxim, “the unexamined life is not worth living” should not be taken too literally, it does correctly convey the fact that only an authentic life is really worth living.

Kant on Intuition: Western and Asian Perspectives on Transcendental Idealism consists of 20 chapters, many of which feature engagements between Kant and various Asian philosophers. Key themes include the nature of human intuition, the status of Kant's idealism/realism, and Kant's notion of an object. Roughly half of the chapters take a stance on the recent conceptualism/non-conceptualism debate. The chapters are organized into four parts, each with five chapters. Part I explores themes relating primarily to the early sections of Kant's first Critique: three chapters focus mainly on Kant's theory of the "forms of intuition" and/or "formal intuition", especially as illustrated by geometry, while two examine the broader role of intuition in transcendental idealism. Part II continues to examine themes from the Aesthetic but shifts the main focus to the Transcendental Analytic, where the key question challenging interpreters is to determine whether intuition is ever capable of operating independently from conception ; each contributor offers a defense of either the conceptualist or the non-conceptualist readings of Kant's text. Part III includes three chapters that explore the relevance of intuition to Kant's theory of the sublime, followed by two that examine challenges that Asian philosophers have raised against Kant's theory of intuition, particularly as it relates to our experience of the supersensible. Finally, Part IV concludes the book with five chapters that explore a range of resonances between Kant and various Asian philosophers and philosophical ideas.

Palmquist’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 comparing the translation with the others still in use today Identifies most of the several hundred changes Kant made to the second (1794) edition and unearths evidence that many major changes were responses to criticisms of the first edition Provides both a detailed overview and original interpretation of Kant’s work on the philosophy of religion Demonstrates that Kant’s arguments in Religion are not only cogent, but have clear and profound practical applications to the way religion is actually practiced in the world today Includes a glossary aimed at justifying new translations of key technical terms in Religion, many of which have previously neglected religious and theological implications.

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 university faculties, and to four categorially organized domains comprising his philosophical system.

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 that of an accidental or optional feature of human experience; this propensity must be inevitable. Section III explains how even people who appear to be good may be concealing an evil heart, if we understand the concept of evil in a philosophically appropriate manner. Human evil arises as a perversion of an originally good predisposition.

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 predisposition to good is not a “contingent” possibility; rather, it is necessary for the very possibility of our nature that we desire to remain alive, to compare ourselves with others, and to respect the moral law. This predisposition therefore functions as the first aspect of what (in the three Critiques) Kant would have called the transcendental boundary defining his topic.

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. Although Cheng’s synthesis does not satisfy the Groundwork’s universal aim, it does show how to apply Kant’s insights to empirical moral situations.

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 message of the coming of God's kingdom in symbolic terms that can be applicable to all good‐hearted people. Kant also focuses on the shortcomings not of Judaism, but of Christianity itself, when interpreted as just another historical faith‐particularly in the hands of biblical scholars.

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 bulk of Kant's “General Comment”‐the portion that was labeled “Section V” in R1 previews his subsequent argument that a true religion is one that empowers us to overcome the problem that evil poses for human nature. This basic precept of Kantian religion is: ignorance of the exact method God may have of making up for our moral deficiencies is not only acceptable, but “unavoidable”.

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 precepts, motivated by fear of punishment for service withheld and/or by hope of reward for service rendered? Or (b) Will we interpret faith as a form of assurance based on the practical hope that God will bless those who, though still imperfect, have the sincere conviction to walk the path of continual moral improvement in their lifestyle?.

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 metaphorical description of the struggle between evil and good‐a description that portrays the struggle through the symbolism of two external powers (Satan and God). The chapter focuses separately on several equally important themes Kant emphasizes in the development of the second experiment.

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 principles. Kant focuses on two key questions: (1) must an example of the archetype be fully human? and (2) could we also rightly regard such an archetype as divine? This chapter also examines the answers Kant proposes along with side comments he makes on various other issues in Christology.

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 Kant describes this difficulty in terms of the contrast between human imperfection and God's holiness. Kant provides an overview of how rational religion can come to terms with a practical need: we must be able to access divine grace in some form in order to have a reasonable hope of being sanctified, assured of an eternal destiny with God, and justified in spite of our past evil.

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 relates both the “convoy” metaphor and his redefinition of faith, as grounded in one of two possible principles, to his earlier distinction between true service and pseudoservice. Kant also explores different aspects of how churches tend to be unsuccessful in such efforts and how such failures can be avoided. The chapter concludes with comments on a more affirmative topic, where Kant conveys a principle to assist visible churches in avoiding religious delusion.

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 assume that God is the community's ultimate founder. What this means is that the ethical community must be a church (an ethical community under God's guidance) in order to succeed. The chapter discusses Kant's claim that the true church inevitably begins with an appeal to revelation even though it is a rational reality. It concludes with an analysis of Kant's account of different types of churches.