Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T04:54:07.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What is Kantian Gesinnung? On the Priority of Volition over Metaphysics and Psychology in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2015

Stephen R. Palmquist
Stephen R. Palmquist*
Affiliation:
Hong Kong Baptist University
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Kant’s enigmatic term Gesinnung baffles many readers of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. This study clarifies the notion in Kant’s theories of both general moral decision-making and specifically religious conversion. It is argued that Kantian Gesinnung is volitional, referring to a person’s principle-based choice to live a certain way. More specifically, interpreted as principled ‘conviction’, Kantian Gesinnung is a religiously manifested, moral form of Überzeugung (‘convincing’). 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 ‘disposition’, which reinforces a tendency to interpret the notion more metaphysically, and also with Pluhar’s translation as ‘attitude’, which has too strongly psychological connotations.

Keywords

Immanuel Kantreligious convictiondispositionattitudebelief
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , July 2015 , pp. 235 - 264
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbott, T. K. (1873) First Part of the Philosophical Theory of Religion in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics (London: Longmans, Green & Co.), 323–360.Google Scholar
Allison, Henry E. (1990) Kant’s Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caswell, M. (2006) ‘Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good, the Gesinnung, and the Theory of Radical Evil’. Kant-Studien, 97(2), 184–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chignell, Andrew (2007) ‘Belief in Kant’. Philosophical Review, 116, 323–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Giovanni, George (1996) Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Trans. in Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni (eds), Religion and Rational Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 55–215.Google Scholar
Greene, T. M., and Hudson, H. H. (1934) Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Hollander, Dana (2005) ‘Some Remarks on Love and Law in Hermann Cohen’s Ethics of the Neighbor’. Journal of the Society for Textual Reasoning, 4(1); <etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/tr/volume4/TR_04_01_e03.html>.Google Scholar
Kuehn, Manfred (2001) Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmquist, Stephen R. (1992) ‘Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?’ Kant-Studien, 83(2), 129–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmquist, Stephen R. (1993) Kant’s System of Perspectives: An Architectonic Interpretation of the Critical Philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Palmquist, Stephen R. (2000) Kant’s Critical Religion: Volume Two of Kant’s System of Perspectives. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Palmquist, Stephen R. (2003) The Waters of Love: A Course of Introductory Lectures on Love, Sexuality, Marriage, and Friendship. Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press.Google Scholar
Palmquist, Stephen R. (2009) ‘Introduction to Immanuel Kant’s Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason’. In Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett), pp. xv–xlix.Google Scholar
Palmquist, Stephen R. (2012) ‘Could Kant’s Jesus Be God?’ International Philosophical Quarterly, 52(4), 421–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmquist, Stephen R. (2015) Comprehensive Commentary on Kant’s Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pasternack, Lawrence (2010) ‘The Development and Scope of Kantian Belief: The Highest Good, the Practical Postulates and the Fact of Reason’. Kant-Studien, 102(3), 290–315.Google Scholar
Pasternack, Lawrence (2011) ‘Kant’s Doctrinal Belief in God’. In Oliver Thorndike (ed.), Rethinking Kant, vol. 3 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press), 200–218.Google Scholar
Pasternack, Lawrence (2014) ‘Kant on Opinion: Assent, Hypothesis, and the Norms of General Applied Logic’. Kant-Studien, 105(1), 41–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pluhar, Werner (2009) ‘Preface’ and footnotes. In Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason, trans. Werner Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett), pp. xi–xiii and passim.Google Scholar
Richardson, John (1799) The Religion within the Sphere of Naked Reason (trans. of paraphrased extracts prepared by J. S. Beck). Trans. in John Richardson (anonymous ed.), Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, Religious and Various Philosophical Subjects, vol. 2, (London: William Richardson), pp. 367–422.Google Scholar
Semple, J. W. (1838) Religion Within the Boundary of Pure Reason. Trans. in Kant’s Theory of Religion; Shewing, in Four Books, the Necessary Harmony and Identity of the Notices of Reason with Those of Any Possible Revelation Whatsoever (Edinburgh: Thomas Clark), 1–275.Google Scholar