Religion within the Boundary of Pure Reason
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Religion within the Boundary of Pure Reason is divided into four “Pieces” that Kant originally intended to publish as a series of journal articles. The book discusses the place of rational religion, which forms the underlying skeleton of religion. The various historical religions are then discussed with attention to their ability to communicate the precepts of rational religion to the people.
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- Discusses the place of rational religion
- Examines historical religion focusing on their communicability
- Kant’s Theory of Religion
- Of Indwelling Sin
- Of the Encounter betwixt the Good and the Evil Principle for the Dominion over Mankind
- Of the Overthrow of the Evil by the Good Principle
- Of Religion and Cleriarchy
Top Highlights
“Ethic, in so far as founded on the Idea of Humanity as a free Agent, binding himself, by virtue of that very Freedom, to an unconditionate Law of Reason, is by itself complete and entire; so that mankind neither requires the idea of any Superior Person to enable him to investigate his duty, nor does he need any incentive or spring to its execution other than the law itself.” (Page 1)
“Ethic needs no material determinator of choice, i. e. requires no ulterior end, either to recognise what is duty, or to excite toward its execution, but, on the contrary, can and ought, in a question regarding duty, to abstract from all ends whatsoever.” (Page 2)
“Thus, for morality no end is required, only the law, which is the formal condition of the use of freedom;” (Page 2)
“We may figure to ourselves three different degrees of this badness of heart: First, it is the general weakness of man’s heart in not adhering to good maxims originally determined on, or, in other words, the frailty of our nature. Second, the tendency to mix up immoral with the moral springs, which, even although this admixture should take place with a good intention, and from (supposed? Tr.) maxims of good, must nevertheless be called impurity. Lastly, the bias to adopt merely evil maxims, which is the depravity of man’s nature, or of his heart.” (Page 31)
“nor can reason remain indifferent to the question, What is to be the result of all her right acting?” (Pages 2–3)
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was born in Königsberg, Prussia, in a Pietist Lutheran family. He attended the University of Königsberg, becoming a lecturer there after graduation. In 1770, he accepted the chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsberg. He published and taught a variety of subjects, but focused on metaphysics and its relationship to physics and mathematics. He was heavily influenced by the writings of Leibniz, Newton, Hume, and Rousseau, drawing on both the empiricist and the rationalist schools. He wrote works of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and teleology. His revolutionary contribution to philosophy is his argument that human knowledge of the world comes from sense experience but is shaped by innate structures inherent in human reason.