Philosophy and Religion from Plato to Postmodernism by Max Charlesworth

Author:Max Charlesworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

The postulate of the possibility of a highest derived good (the best world) is at the same time the postulate of the reality of a highest original good; and it is not merely our privilege but a necessity connected with duty as a requisite to presuppose the possibility of this highest good. This presupposition is made only under the condition of the existence of God, and this condition inseparably connects this supposition with duty. Therefore it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God.106

Kant emphasises that the existence of God is not the condition of morality or obligation as such, but of morality in so far as it is concerned with bringing about the highest good:107 ‘Through the concept of the highest good as the object and final end of pure practical reason, the moral law leads to religion’.108

What kind of assumption is involved in postulating the existence of God as the condition of achieving the highest moral good? Or, put in another way, what is the ‘moral necessity’ of which Kant speaks as attaching to the existence of God? At times Kant speaks as though the assumption is of a speculative kind, and that the necessity that belongs to the postulation of the existence of God is the same as that which belongs to any explanatory hypothesis. The final end of morality would not be attainable unless God exists; but the final end of morality must be attainable; therefore God must exist. As Kant puts it in the Critique of Pure Reason: ‘Reason finds itself constrained to assume’ the existence of God, ‘otherwise it would have to regard the moral laws as empty figments of the brain, since without this postulate the necessary consequence which is itself connected with these laws could not follow’.109 This is a piece of speculative reasoning, even though the ‘facts’ it is attempting to explain or save are facts about morality. Instead of arguing to the existence of God from facts about the world (God being postulated as an explanatory hypothesis to account for the mutability or contingency of things in the world), we argue here to the existence of God from facts about our moral life (God being postulated to explain the fact that we have an obligation to seek to further the highest good).110

At other times, however, Kant argues that the ‘inference’ that leads us to assume the existence of God is wholly practical in mode. We find ourselves under an obligation to promote the highest good, and we adopt the practical attitude that this can be effectively realised, and that, despite appearances, it will coincide with happiness. If God is a postulate of the practical reason, then our knowledge of God must be couched in terms of practical reason – not in terms of ‘is’ but in terms of ‘ought’; not in indicatives but in imperatives. As Kant notes, practical reason cannot be concerned with postulating the existence of hypothetical entities, ‘since such a supposition concerns only the theoretical use of reason’.

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