Abstract
Kant is known as the great mediator between opposing scientific and philosophical systems; for instance, between the Cartesians and the Leibnizians in respect of the competing notions of momentum and energy; or again, between the empiricist and rationalist tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In a very similar way we find Kant attempting to mediate between sceptical and religious positions. On the one hand, he seeks to show that the traditional arguments for the existence of God, the ontological, cosmological and physico-theological proofs, cannot be sustained.Yeton the other hand, we find him simultaneously defending the language and accompanying convictions of religious consciousness. Nor is this a purely ‘linguistic’ matter, as the reference to language might suggest. On the contrary, the imagery of a God whose purposes work themselves out in the context of the order of nature as well as of morality is for Kant an essential element through which reality is to be defined, emerging under the sovereign command of reason.
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Notes
Blackwell, Oxford, 1980.
Cf. LeibnizPhilosophical Papers and Letters, 2 vols., trans. and ed. L.E. Loemker, (Chicago, 1956).
For an account of the ‘reduction-realization’ approach see the author’sKant and the Dynamics of Reason(Blackwell, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, U.S.A.), 1992, ch. 3, ‘Reduction-Realization: A Key to the Structure of Kant’s Thought’, pp. 53–103, and ch. 4, ‘Realism and Realization in a Kantian Light’, pp. 104–34. For a general account of Kant’s philosophy, see myMetaphysics and the Philosophy of Science(Blackwell, Oxford, 1969; University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1988), ch. 8.
For Husserl, cf. hisDie Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologieed. W. Biemel (Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), especially paras. 32–51.
Ak. ed., I, 385–416. Trans. in F.E. EnglandKant’s Conception of God(London, Unwin, 1929), pp. 212–52. See also the translation of NDby John Reuscher in Kant’s Latin Writings, ed. L.W. Beck, (New York/Bern/Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986), pp. 57–109.
‘A’ and ‘b’ respectively denote the First and Second editions of Kant’sCritique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Macmillan, London, 1953).
For the connection between ‘causality’ and ‘empirical sequence’ cf. also my ‘Causality, Causal Laws and Scientific Theory in the Philosophy of Kant’, inThe British Journal for the Philosophy of ScienceXVI No. 63 (1965), 187–208; and Note 3 above, ch. 9, ‘The Kantian “Dynamic of Reason”, with special reference to the Place of Causality in Kant’s system’, pp. 195–221.
Cf. alsoCPrR, p. 44, trans. Lewis White Beck (Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).
My own translation. Note that where Kant says: “I could not realize this thought [Ich konnte diesen Gedanken nicht realisieren]”, Beck translates: “I could not give content to this supposition” (Beck translation p. 50)—evidence that philosophical positions can influence an author’s translation!
I have also used the translation by J.H. Bernard (Hafner, New York, 1951), p. 33, though with modifications.
“ This essay has also been published in Vol. xxx, SupplementThe Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1991, Memphis State University: ‘System and Teleology in Kant’s Critique of Judgement, and it forms ch. 14 of the author’s Kant and the Dynamics of Reason: Essays on the Structure of Kant ‘s Philosophy(Blackwell, Oxford, UK & Cambridge U.S.A., 1992).
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Buchdahl, G. (1994). Science and God: The Topology of the Kantian World. In: Parrini, P. (eds) Kant and Contemporary Epistemology. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 54. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0834-8_1
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