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Oxford University Press London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen New Tork Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY
KANT'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION By C L E M E N T C. J. WEBB Oriel Professor of Philosophy of the Christian Religion in the University of Oxford
OXFORD At the Clarendon Press 1926
Printei in England At the OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
By John Johnson Printer to the University
PREFACE
T
HE following chapters embody the substance of a course of lectures delivered at Oxford in the Michaelmas Term of 1924, the year in which was celebrated the bicentenary of Kant's birth. In them I have endeavoured to give a connected view of Kant's contributions to the Philosophy of Religion from the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte of 1755 to the fragments which pass under the name of the Opus Postumum, written in the last years of his life nearly half a century later, and now available for study in Professor Adickes's edition of 1920. The references in the foot-notes are to Hartenstein's edition of the Werke, 1867-8, or, in the case of the Opus Postumum, to that of Professor Adickes already mentioned; but an Index of the passages quoted or discussed in the course of the book, arranged according to the chronological order of Kant's writings, will enable the reader to find the corresponding places in the new Berlin edition. Oxford, 1926.
CONTENTS I. II. III.
INTRODUCTORY
i
KANT AND RELIGION
.
KANT'S
PHILOSOPHY
.
OF
.
KANT'S
PHILOSOPHY
.
25
RELIGION :
PERIOD OF THE CRITIQUES V.
- 1 9
KANT'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION : T H E PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD
IV.
.
OF
.
.
46
RELIGION :
' RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF MERE REASON ' VI.
.
.
. 8 7
KANT'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION : T H E OPUS POSTUMUM .
VII.
.
.
.
.178
CONCLUSION
202
INDEX OF WORKS OF KANT REFERRED TO IN THIS BOOK. GENERAL INDEX
.
.
.
.
.
.
213 -215
I INTRODUCTORY IN the year 1924 was celebrated the bicentenary of Kant's birth at Königsberg on 22nd April 1724, and it seemed to me that a Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion might appropriately recognize the fact by devoting a term's course of lectures to the contribution made by this great man to the special subject of his chair. On the philosophy of religion, as on all departments of philosophical study, Kant left a deep impress ; and since his own religious training was Christian, and he was familiar with no religion other than the Christian ; since moreover it was of the doctrines of Christianity that he offered a philosophical interpretation in his principal book upon religion, his philosophy was certainly a philosophy of the Christian religion, and its consideration relevant to the studies which the present writer is appointed to direct. Kant himself has enumerated x the topics of philosophical inquiry as three : What can I know ? What ought I to do ? What may I hope ? The first question, he says, is purely speculative, the second purely practical, the third at once practical and theoretical. In his view Religion is concerned with the answer to the third question, in which the interest of the speculative or theoretical reason, the 1
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Kr. der r. V. (H. iii. 532). B
2 Kant's Philosophy of Religion interest, that is to say, of Science, and the interest of the practical reason, of Morality, are combined. It was a feature of our experience which especially struck Kant that between the world revealed by dispassion