Kant’s Moral Faith by Arup Jyoti Sarma

Description

In this work, an attempt is made to analyse Kant’s concept of moral faith. Kant famously declares that human reason must deny knowledge to make room for faith. Although theoretical reason cannot offer cognition of God or proof of God’s existence, practical consideration can justify a belief, at least for moral action, that there is a Wise, Benevolent, and Just Providence ordering the world. Morality requires us to set an end that theoretical reason gives us insufficient grounds to believe is attainable. We are thus threatened with an incoherence between our practical volition and our justified beliefs and assertions about the world. The only reasonable way to resolve this practical problem regarding the possibility of the highest good is to go beyond what theoretical reason can affirm about this idea and postulate to the existence of its object.