Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T01:34:59.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kant on the Role of Religion for Moral Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2019

Eva Buddeberg
Eva Buddeberg*
Affiliation:
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines Kant’s understanding of moral progress, especially in his Religion where he argues that religion and, more importantly, the foundation of an ethical community are necessary to promote moral progress. However, it is less the identification of any factual moral progress but rather the idea of moral progress as an action guiding principle that Kant identifies as central. The conclusion shows how Kant’s insights are in accordance with the argument that we should not look for comprehensive moral progress in history but adhere to the idea of possible future moral progress.

Keywords

moral progressethical communityvisible and invisible churchpropensity to evilhighest good
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 335 - 357
Copyright
© Kantian Review, 2019 

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

Ajei, Martin and Flikschuh, Katrin (2014) ‘Colonial Mentality: Kant’s Hospitality Right Then and Now’. In Flikschuh, K. and Ypi, L. (eds), Kant and Colonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 221–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Amy (2016) The End of Progress. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson-Gold, Sharon (1991) ‘God and Community: An Inquiry into the Religious Implications of the Highest Good’. In Rossi, P. J. and Wreen, M. (eds), Kant’s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), pp. 113–31.Google Scholar
Atkinson, James (1968) Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Birmelé, André (2012) ‘Calvins Kirchenverständnis und die heutigen ökumenischen Herausforderungen’. Available at: www.ecumenical-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ForschKolloquienCalvinEkkl09D_-Endfassung_.pdf (last accessed 25 February 2019).Google Scholar
Brachtendorf, Johannes (2011) ‘Die Kritik des Judentums und die Geheimnisse der Vernunft’. In Höffe, O. (ed.), Immanuel Kant. Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), pp. 151–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, Allen and Powell, Russell (2018) The Evolution of Moral Progress. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvin, John (2002) The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Available at: www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/Calvin%20Institutes%20of%20Christian%20Religion.pdf (last accessed 25 February 2019).Google Scholar
Ebels-Duggan, Kyla (2009) ‘Moral Community. Escaping the Ethical State of Nature’. Philosophers’ Imprint, 9/8, 1–19.Google Scholar
Engstrom, Stephen (1992) ‘The Concept of the Highest Good in Kant’s Moral Theory’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52/4, 747–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin (2009) ‘Hope as Prudence: Practical Faith in Kant’s Political Thinking’. International Yearbook of German Idealism, 7, 95–117.Google Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin (2011) ‘Gottesdienst und Afterdienst: Die Kirche als öffentliche Institution?’. In Höffe, O. (ed.), Immanuel Kant: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), pp. 193–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forst, Rainer (2017) ‘Religion and Toleration from the Enlightenment to the Post-Secular Era: Bayle, Kant, and Habermas’. In Normativity and Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 78–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2008) ‘The Boundary between Faith and Knowledge: On the Reception and Contemporary Importance of Kant’s Philosophy of Religion’. In Between Naturalism and Religion (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 209–47.Google Scholar
Höffe, Otfried (2011) ‘Einführung’. In Höffe, O. (ed.), Immanuel Kant. Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), pp. 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1900–) Gesammelte Schriften. Ed. Kgl. Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (and successors). Berlin: Georg Reimer, later Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1996) Religion and Rational Theology. Trans. and ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1997) Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. and ed. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (1998) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2000) Critique of the Power of Judgment. Ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keienburg, Johannes (2011) Immanuel Kant und die Öffentlichkeit der Vernunft. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (1995) Fortschritt und Vernunft. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.Google Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline (2011) ‘Die Bedeutung des weltbürgerlichen Zustandes. Der Siebente Satz der Idee ’. In Höffe, O. (ed.), Immanuel Kant. Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), pp. 79–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moody-Adams, Michele M. (1999) ‘The Idea of Moral Progress’. Metaphilosophy, 30/3, 168–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moran, Kate (2012) Community and Progress in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papish, Laura (2018) Kant on Evil, Self-Deception, and Moral Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pasternack, Lawrence R. (2014) Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant on Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pasternack, Lawrence R. (2015) ‘Reply to Allen Wood’. Available at: https://virtualcritique.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/reply-to-allen-wood/ (last accessed 25 February 2019).Google Scholar
Pasternack, Lawrence R. (2017) ‘Restoring Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 55/3, 435–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perovich, Anthony N. (1991) ‘“For reason … also has its mysteries”: Immortality, Religion, and “The End of All Things”’. In Rossi, P. J. and Wreen, M. (eds), Kant’s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), pp. 165–80.Google Scholar
Reath, Andrews (1988) ‘Two Conceptions of the Highest Good in Kant’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 26/4, 593–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Henry (2018) Articulating the Moral Community. Toward a Constructive Ethical Pragmatism. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silber, John R. (1963) ‘The Importance of the Highest Good in Kant’s Ethics’. Ethics, 73/3, 179–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tampio, Nicholas (2014) ‘Pluralism in the Ethical Community’. In Michalson, G. E. Jr. (ed.), Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 175–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1970) Kant’s Moral Religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (1999) Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (2011) ‘Ethical Community, Church and Scripture’. In Höffe, O. (ed.), Immanuel Kant. Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), pp. 131–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (2014) ‘The Evil in Human Nature’. In Michalson, G. E. Jr. (ed.), Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 31–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Allen W. (2015) ‘Appendix: Kant on Judaism, or, Kant and Mendelssohn’. Available at: https://virtualcritique.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/allen-wood-on-lawrence-pasternacks-kant-on-religion-part-ii/#more-1867 (last accessed 31 Aug. 2018).Google Scholar