Religious Concepts in a Kantian Philosophy Essay

Religious Concepts in a Kantian Philosophy - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that Immanuel Kant was an immensely popular and influential philosopher in 18th century Germany, who produced a wide array of works on metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and, most relevantly, religion. Probably the most amazing aspect of Kantian philosophy is the completeness of his theoretical and practical philosophies—a distinction he himself used wonderfully in creating his set of works. The difference between pure and practical reason forms the need for his two most seminal works, Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason, the latter of which is more relevant to his consideration of religion. In that work and others, he fleshes out the difference between a constitutive picture of religious concepts and a regulative picture of religious concepts. Accepting the latter as a legitimate answer to one troubling antimony, Kant derives a critical philosophy which evaluates the notion of â€Å"religious knowledge†. Sc eptical of such a possibility, Kant endeavors to move religion into the realm of the non-cognitive such that claims to know what is beyond experience—the phenomenon—are immediately cast aside. The regulative approach to religious concepts Kant adopts the view that human beings should use the belief in God merely as a system of reward and punishment in morality. God, despite existing outside the realm of natural cause-and-effect, has the power to reward goodness and punish evil, thereby making human beings committed to being moral.