GOD IN KANTIAN MORALITY

Philosophers before Kant believed that only analytic a priori or synthetic a posteriori was possible.
It was Kant who proved for the first time that synthetic a priori was possible, earning him the
honour of ‘Copernican revolutionary’. To explain the nature of synthetic a priori prepositions,
Kant showed that there are a priori particulars namely space and time and the application of
categories.1 The famous example of Kant is as follows: "Everything which has happened has a
cause". The proposition is synthetic in a way that the predicate 'has a cause' is not contained in the
concept of 'what happens'. But, at the same time, it is a priori because it has the characteristics of
strict universality and necessity. This synthesis is not merely transcendental, but also purely
intellectual, as the condition to which this conformity must be necessarily be submitted to the
objects of human intuition. This synthesis of the manifold of sensuous intuition, which is
necessarily a priori, may be called figurative synthesis when it has relation only to the
transcendental reality apart from the purely intellectual cognition. 2 This means that synthetic a
priori can arise from the faculty of intellect and transcendental cognition too.
GOD IN KANTIAN SYNTHETIC A PRIORI
God is portrayed or depicted as a super-sensible reality by Kant. When it is said that it is super-
sensible, it does not conform to the idea of a non-existing being, but it only points out to the being
in the transcendence realm. Kant holds that the chief canons of traditional metaphysics arise from
the normal tendency of human reason to use the categories for knowledge of limitless objects
beyond the limits of human sensibility. Kant does not despair of the possibility of philosophical
insight into the nature of God and a philosophical basis for belief in the existence of God. 3 It is
obvious that on Kant’s premises no proof of God’s existence is possible. But he wishes to make
this impossibility clear by showing that every line of proof is a fallacy. For him, there are only
three ways of God’s existence in speculative metaphysics.4 Kant establishes various proofs for the
denial of the possibility of the existence of God, contradicting and strictly challenging the
Ontological, Cosmological and Theological arguments that were once considered the sole source
for the instituting possibilities towards the existence of God. Whatever the reasons or negations he

1
S. Korner, Kant (London: Penguin Books, 1964), 70.
2
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1969), 104.
3
Paul Guyer, Kant (London: Routledge, 2006), 152.
4
Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy (New York: Image Books, 1964), volume 6, part 2, 88.
 2

provides for the impossibility insights, his grand argument is based on the synthetic a priori
knowledge claims. In the Critique of Pure Reason, where he maintains the basic problem of true
knowledge, his response by giving a new formulation of synthetic a priori knowledge, is capable
of denying the possibility of proof that was claimed to be true by the predecessor philosophers. At
the outset, what Kant claims is not merely to refute their arguments, but to show that God who is
beyond our capacities and capabilities is purely transcendental which is outside the realm of our
pure cognition and human intuition.
GOD FOR THE PRACTICALITY OF SUMMUM BONUM
Happiness is the rationale of a being where everything goes affording to their caprice and velleity.
The moral law as a law of freedom orders by determining principles, which ought to be quite
independent of nature and its harmony with our faculty of yearning. The acting rational being is
not the cause of the world and of nature itself, with no least ground in the moral law for a necessary
connection between morality and balanced happiness. A rational being cannot be that reason that
by his will be a cause of this nature, nor by his power make it fully harmonize with his practical
principles. Nevertheless, in the practical problem of pure reason, the necessary search of the
summum bonum, such a connection is postulated as necessary: we ought to attempt to promote the
summum bonum, which, therefore, must be possible. Consequently, the existence of a cause of all
nature, different from nature itself and containing the principle of this connection, namely, of the
exact harmony of happiness with morality, is thereby postulated. Now, this supreme cause must
contain the principle of the harmony of nature, not only with a law of the will of rational beings,
but with the notion of this law, in so far as they make it the supreme determining principle of the
will, and accordingly not merely with the form of morals, but with their morality as their motive.
Therefore, the summum bonum is possible in the world only on the supposition of a Supreme Being
having a causality corresponding to a moral character. Now a being that is capable of acting on the
concept of laws is an intelligence and the causality of such a being according to this conception of
laws is his will. Therefore, the supreme cause of nature, which must be presumed as a condition
of the summum bonum, is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will,
consequently its author is God. It follows that the postulate of the possibility of the highest derived
good is likewise the postulate of the reality of the highest original good, that is to say, of the
existence of God.5

5
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 104-105.
 3

GOD, THE NECESSARY ARBITRATOR

The real significance of the idea of a first cause becomes recognized that the whole phenomenal
events are necessarily connected in space and time presupposes an ultimate ground that governs
it.6 As Saint Paul says in the Epistle of Romans “Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not
have known sin” (Rm: 7.7). If God had not been there then the possibility of explaining morality
and social justice would not have been made feasible. Kant considers the contingency in the
phenomenal world that is necessitating to ensure that there would be a life that would make life
morally stable through his notion of life after death. Contingency in the phenomenal world makes
it clear that the world must have been created by a being that is necessary for itself. His necessity
draws to the conclusion that He must exist, where existence is one of the prime qualities of
necessary beings. When we think of moral laws, especially divine laws, we can imagine the
existence of a being who has the power and authority to execute these laws and to declare reward
or punishment in accordance with their actions.7 A man receives rewards for the good that he has
done and obtains punishment for the evil deeds that he has done. Although this notion of both
reward and punishment prevails in this world, most often there are more wicked men than righteous
men. Moreover, it is observed that the wicked men may flourish and the righteous may be trampled
down. If in justice, the opposite should have happened then why is it recurring so in the converse
order? Furthermore, the righteous have to be rewarded for their deeds and the wicked punished,
there should be at least a place for final judgement. Kant calls this state the life after death where
God would be the arbitrator. “Therefore, the highest good in the world is possible only insofar as
a supreme cause of nature having a causality in keeping with moral disposition is assumed.8 Thus,
in the phenomenal world that is occupied by the contingent beings must be out of the plan of God
who wills that all should be moral. But, on the contrary, when it happens, it makes the space for
the final judgement after death that is proceeded by God himself.
CONCLUSION
The understanding of the same intelligible world as the unseen reservoir of dynamic activities that
should necessarily proceed from an all-dynamic and powerful source assumed to be God, Kant
was concerned about the morality of life which compelled him to accept the practical necessity of

6
F.E.England, Kant’s Conception of God (New York: Humanities Press, 1968), 137.
7
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1979), 52.
8
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 104.
 4

God. Practical necessity never proved the existence of God because this necessity might result
from merely the sakes of something. But his later research on God was furnished in reaching the
metaphysical necessity that proves God’s existence. So far, the practical necessity also calls for the
existence of God in reality because the supreme good that governs the minor good must exist in
reality for governance. This deduction itself proves the metaphysical existence of God Almighty.

BRO ALBERT PEECHATTU

3RD YEAR THEOLOGY