The Metaphysics of the Moral Law

Kant's Deduction of Freedom

Carol W. Voeller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781136712326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

This work offers a new understanding of Kant on the freedom of the will. Voeller looks in detail at the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason against the background of Kant's critical philosophy as a whole.

PART I

Belief, Subjectivity, and the Epistemic Power of Practical Reason

CHAPTER 1

The Moral Argument for God's Existence

In this chapter I am going to begin by saying what I take Kant's argument for God's existence to be. I will then attempt to explain how the argument is intended to work and why it supports, in Kant's sense, belief but not knowledge.¹ To see why the argument supports belief but not knowledge, it will be necessary to explore Kant's distinction between Glauben and Wissen; this, in turn, will lead to investigation of the difference between subjectively sufficient grounds for a holding-to-be-true (Fürwahrhalten) and objectively sufficient grounds for a holding-to-be-true. For the latter distinction marks the former difference; and even uninterpreted, this strongly indicates what turns out to be the case, that Kant's distinction between Glauben and Wissen is not our distinction between belief and knowledge. We cannot infer that practical reason is epistemically weak from the fact that it justifies only Glauben in God's existence. Finally, I round out the argument concerning the epistemic wherewithal of practical reason by considering the nature of the distinction Kant actually draws between the practical and the theoretical. Taken together, these considerations lead me to conclude that it is no shortcoming of practical reason that results in the claim that God exists being fit for Glauben (belief) but not for Wissen (knowledge); indeed, that it is not with respect to justification of truth that Glauben falls short of Wissen.² This sets the stage for a detailed examination of Kant's practical deduction, which is the focus of the dissertation and the subject of Chapters 2 and 3.

¹ There is also a preliminary discussion of Kant's conception of law and the account of its role in this argument in §7; a fuller discussion and the defense of my reading of Kant on law takes place in Chapter 2 §13. Along the way, there will be consideration of Kant's notions of real possibility, objective reality, and cognition.

² There is another worry for Kant's moral theory associated with the argument for God's existence, namely, that, depending on the precise role attributed to the moral law in that argument, the moral law might be vulnerable to attack through denial of God's existence. Or, to pose the matter in a somewhat weaker way, many of us would find it an unattractive feature of Kant's moral theory were it to turn out that God's existence is a necessary condition of the moral law. According to Kant, God's existence is not a condition of morality nor of moral actions. "The ideas of God and immortality are ... not conditions of the moral law, but only conditions of the necessary object of a will which is determined by this" (C4/4; cf. 125-6/130 and L§IX 67-8n/75-6). On my reading it becomes clearer what his remark means, what remains of the worry, and what responses might be made to it. I will return to this matter in note 61 below.

§1 THE DISPUTED INTERPRETATIONS

When Kant characterizes the conclusion of the argument for God's existence as something we are to believe or have faith in, rather than something we know, he invites many a twentieth-century reader—particularly inasmuch as the context is one characterized as "practical"—to view his argument as something other than an epistemic justification. We sometimes call a justification "practical" where it is to he distinguished (from an epistemic justification) by the absence of any appeal to evidence taken to support the truth of the claim under consideration. Rather, what is argued for is that one ought to adopt some particular attitude (usually be lief—in our sense) toward that claim. Thus a practical justification "rationalizes" the act of believing something by appeal to considerations other than evidence of the truth of the would-be belief.³ For example, the probable ill effects on one's relationship of not so believing may provide one a "practical reason" for believing one's spouse is faithful. Unlike evidence of the spouse's trustworthiness, the former fact does not support the truth that one's spouse is faithful. Similarly, Pascal's wager represents a "practical argument," in this sense, for believing in God's existence. But such a construal of Kant's practical argument could not be more at odds with his intent.⁴

³ This may make it sound as if the distinction can be made out in terms of formal differences; that, however, is not the case. There will be an argument, in the usual sense of reasons offered in support of the truth of some conclusion, in both cases. Moreover, while the conclusion may, in the practical case, typically take some such form as 'You ought to believe that P', there is no reason to think that any conclusion of this form marks the argument for it as practical. I think perhaps the most accurate way to approach the matter is by considering (instead of formal structures) the fact that, in offering an argument, one typically aims at engendering belief in some proposition, P, in one's audience. Thus the question can be put, is the audience being offered reasons that support the truth of P or is it being persuaded on some other grounds to attempt to adopt the belief that P? Whatever the formal structure, it is in the latter situation that one might speak of a "practical" argument in the non-Kantian sense.

⁴ Kant would take such a "reason" as the probable effect on one's relationship to be an incentive for establishing or maintaining the belief (so far as one is able), but not as a ground for the belief, the latter encompassing only those things that would tend to support the truth of that which was to be believed. A sketch of an interpretation along non-epistemic lines would look something like this. The departure point for this interpretation of the argument is a certain take on Kant's expression "need of pure reason" (which expression and its variants abound in connection with the argument).

The end we need to adopt is the highest good. We cannot adopt this as an end unless we believe that its realization is possible. —But we are required to adopt it, so we can adopt it; so we believe its realization is possible.— It's rational to believe that God's existence is a necessary condition of the possibility of realizing the highest good. Therefore, (rationally) we cannot believe that the realization of the end is possible unless we believe God exists. Since we are required (need) to adopt the end, we are required to believe that it is possible. Since we are required to believe it is possible, we are required to believe God exists. Therefore, we are required (ought) to believe God exists.

Were this a reasonable argument in other respects, it would be implausible that Kant should be offering it because the second premiss appears to be a contingent matter of human psychology whereas he explicitly intends an a priori argument. Matters are worsened by the fact that the psychological principle (that we cannot adopt an end unless we believe it possible) is surely false. Keeping in mind that, in this context, the end of an action is what we would bring about by that action, it is clear that, particularly in the case of novel ends, agents often lack an affirmative belief that their ends are possible; indeed, they may seek, in part, to determine this in making their attempts.

The central text of the argument appears in the section entitled "The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason" from chapter II of the Dialectic in the Critique of Practical Reason, And even here the problem of how to construe the argument is imposing. Perhaps the simplest way to put it is by raising the question whether the conclusion of the argument is that God exists or that we ought to believe God exists. Although Allen Wood, who is the leading interpreter of this argument, would not put it so baldly, this is a useful way of marking the dispute over whether the argument is primarily about the truth of God exists or primarily about something we should do, viz., believe or have faith that God exists.⁵ I will argue that it is about the former; Wood, in effect, argues that it is about the latter. As we will see, part of the problem for my view of the matter arises out of the way Kant expresses himself at key junctures, but for a sympathetic or even just charitable reader of the text the deeper problem is to make sense of the fact that Kant's interest in this argument is as a ground for religious faith. For Kant, it is perfectly clear that religion and science (as the investigation of what is empirically the case) are thoroughly distinct matters. Thus, anyone who wishes, as I do, to argue that Kant seeks to establish the truth of the claim that God exists must not be arguing that there is no special significance to the fact that the argument supports Glauben rather than Wissen.

⁵ Allen W. Wood, Kant's Moral Religion, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1970. See pages 28-31, especially page 29.

On my account, as on Wood's, this significance turns on the subjectivity of the former in contrast with the objectivity of the latter, but even here we again part company. Although there is a feature of practical cognition that will show up in truths only subjectively justified, i.e., in beliefs, it is not because, contra Wood, the argument for God is practical that it supplies only subjectively sufficient grounds.⁶ (The argument is practical because of the role of the moral law in it, but the moral law is objectively real and (as far as its role in the argument goes) it provides objective grounds. That the additional necessary grounds are subjective in the case of God, for example, is precisely the difference between the ascription of objective reality to freedom—which rests solely on the moral law—, and the ascription of it to God—which does not—whereby the latter is Glauben while the former is Wissen.)⁷

⁶ To anticipate, theoretical cognitions involve reference to an object by virtue of the fact that, in some way, the content of the cognition captures (part of) the nature of the object, in particular, the nature of the object as determined by natural law. Practical cognitions likewise capture something of the nature of the object, but as determined by practical (the moral) law. Where a thought lacks this kind of determinate relation to an object, it is not a cognition at all; where a thought lacks theoretical content, it has no role to play in natural science, because any nature it does capture is not related to the "natural" natures of things via the categories. Where we have merely subjectively sufficient grounds for claiming the existence of a thing (as in the case of God), our thought lacks any theoretical content; it lacks theoretical content, because it lacks objective content altogether. So, like a practical cognition it has no role in science (and for the same reason, only more so). As we might say, the subjectively justified claim is merely thought that an object exists, not thought of the object.

⁷ See the second Critique Preface: "Freedom . . . among all t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Further Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Belief, Subjectivity, and the Epistemic Power of Practical Reason
• Part II The Deduction of Freedom: The Argument of Groundwork III and Chapter I of the Second Critique
• Afterword
• Selected Bibliography: Works in English
• Index