The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God

by Immanuel Kant

The search for God is dictated not from without but from a profound sense of one's own moral being and worthiness to be happy. The core of Immanuel Kant's argument remains relevant to the experience of ordinary men and women. He wished to strengthen, not undermine, belief in God and in the spiritual nature of humankind.This 1763 essay is imporrtant in understanding the development of Kant's thought. It exposed the flaw in the Cartesian argument that the existence of a perfect being could be deduced from an idea or concept of such. Similarly, Kant saw the problem inherent in the Leibnizian view of a philosophical system modeled on mathematics: a philosopher who, like a mathematician, began with an arbitrary definition remained trapped in a circle of words. In The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God, Kant diverged from the familiar forms of ontological argument. The result was a brilliant approach to divine being that anticipated his mature Critique of Pure Reason.

With this Bison Book edition, The One Possible Basis appears in paperback for the first time. Gordon Treash's English translation, the only modern one, faces pages containing the original German. Treash, who is a professor of philosophy at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, edited, with Paul A. Bogaard, Metaphysics as Foundation: Essays in Honor of Ivor Leclerc. Also available as a Bison Book is Kant's last major essay, The Conflict of the Faculties (1992).

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics, Nonfiction

247 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1762

About the author

Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.

Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.

Reviews

[Becca · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are two problems with this book, one of which is Kant's fault, the other of which is not:

1) He starts out his argument with the answer already in mind. This, for me, is a fundamental problem for philosophy. There is no sense of "let's see where my chain of logical thinking takes me." It's all, "here is what I want to prove; I shall now construct a chain of logical thinking that gets me there." It's anti-scientific, which is annoying because Kant was a part of the Enlightenment.

2) Very much of the discovery and understanding of the world that has emerged in the past 250 years has served to undermine arguments based on "common sense." There is nothing, for example, remotely resembling "common sense" in quantum physics. That is why it's so cool. Unfortunately, for Kant and his brethren, it also serves to erode arguments that rely on "common sense" as their basis. Evidence, kids. And we are back to the Enlightenment.

There may be an evidence-based argument out there that proves the existence of a god or gods. This ain't it.

[Emma Knighten · Rating 3 out of 5]

okay it’s a good book because it’s like well written but it’s not well argued. he made several interesting points and had a lot of cool shit to say then threw it all away in the last section. he like basically proved himself wrong repeatedly through interesting observations then went but nah ignore all that.

[Moataz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Briefly, it is, in my opinion, a must read!. The level of organization and demonstration in this book!. The clarity of arguments and the clear path to deductions from basic principles!.

What is missing in his argument in the first part, which is unfortunate, is the scientific advances in science in the two decades that followed!. Complexity can indeed emerge from simple principles, that is what mathematics, physics, and biology, through evolution, can easily demonstrate. As a result, the missing out on such big leaps in science lead to the conclusion that complexity, "design", in the universe presupposes a maker!.

[Trounin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Сообразуясь с принципами метафизического познания и применяя разработанное понимание тождества истин, Кант посчитал это достаточным основанием для доказательства бытия Бога. Им были рассмотрены различные подходы: Бог может не существовать, Бог не может не существовать, Бог может существовать, всё существенно, всё едино, всё взаимосвязано, всё зависит от Бога, не всё зависит от Бога. Дополнительно Кантом бытие Бога рассмотрено с помощью физикотеологии и космогонии.

(c) Trounin

[Reinhard Gobrecht · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schlechterdings notwendig ist dasjenige, dessen Gegenteil ansich selbst unmöglich ist.
In diesem Sinne muss Gott gedacht werden. Wenn man Gott (als erste Ursache z.B.) aufhebt, wird alle Möglichkeit vertilgt. Es gibt keine Welt, keine Gegenstände, keine Begriffe.
Jedes andere Ding ist eine Folge von Gott und damit abhängig und sebst nicht schlechterdings notwendig. Kant gibt z.B. einen Beweisgrund für die Einzigkeit des schlechtedings notwendigen Wesens, für seine Einfachheit und Ewigkeit.