THEOLOGY

Kant's philosophy is a critique of the dialectical illusion.

The dialectical illusion

Dialectical illusion

The dialectical illusion was seen by David Hume and later criticized by Immanuel Kant.

Kant Writes.

"Hume started mainly from a single but important concept in metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of cause and effect, and called upon reason, which pretends to have generated this concept in her womb, to give him an account of by what right she thinks: that something could be so constituted that, if it is posited, something else necessarily must thereby also be posited; for that is what the concept of cause says. ... The question was not, whether the concept of cause is right, useful, and, with respect to all cognition of nature, indispensable, for this Hume had never put in doubt; it was rather whether it is thought through reason a priori." (Text)/(AA IV:257)

Hume's attack

David Hume writes:

"When we say we desire to know the ultimate and operating principle, as something, which resides in the external object, we either contradict ourselves, or talk without a meaning. This deficiency in our ideas is not, indeed, perceiv’d in common life, nor are we sensible, that in the most usual conjunctions of cause and effect we are as ignorant of the ultimate principle, which binds them together, as in the most unusual and extraordinary. But this proceeds merely from an illusion of the imagination." (Text)

Hans Kelsen writes:

"Hume’s real achievement does not consist in the pointing out that no necessary connection of cause and effect can be assumed on the basis of experience. That had already been ascertained before his time. It consists rather in the fact that he gave up looking for the necessity of the causal nexus in the will of God, and abandoned it together with the entire previous notion of causality." (Text)

Kant's response

Kant's response to Hume's attack establishes the connection between God and causality in a new way.

Kant writes:

"The world is tired of metaphysical assertions; what’s wanted are the possibility of this science, the sources from which certainty could be derived in it, and sure criteria for distinguishing truth from the dialectical illusion of pure reason." (Text)/(AA IV:377)

Kant's philosophy is a new paradigm of truth.

God

God

God is the absolute truth in the absolute time and the absolute space.

The absolute truth precedes and makes possible every empirical truth.

Kant writes:

"In the whole of all possible experience, however, lie all our cognitions; and the transcendental truth that precedes all empirical truth and makes it possible consists in the universal reference to this possible experience." (Text)/(AA B185)

God is invisible.

The Gospel of John says:

"No one has seen God at any time." (Jn 1:18)

Cosmos

Cosmos

Cosmos is heaven and earth created by God "in the beginning".

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." (Gn 1:1)

God is invisible, because everyone is in Cosmos and in Cosmos everything is relative.

Cosmos is four pure forms.

  1. ABOVE/BEFORE
  2. BELOW/BEFORE
  3. BELOW/AFTER
  4. ABOVE/AFTER

Kant uses the terminology below.

Terminology

This is neither a limitation, nor a division of God.

Kant writes:

"Moreover, because an original being cannot be said to consist of many derivative beings, inasmuch as each of these presupposes that being and hence cannot make it up, the ideal of the original being will have to be thought also as simple. Hence, moreover, the derivation of all other possibility from this original being cannot, strictly speaking, be regarded as a limitation of this being's supreme reality and, as it were, as a division of this reality." (Text)/(AA B607)

Logos

Logos

Logos is both the correspondence between God and Cosmos and the coherence between the four pure forms.

Logos is three connections between the four pure forms.

  1. ABOVE/BEFORE—BELOW/BEFORE
  2. BELOW/BEFORE—BELOW/AFTER
  3. BELOW/AFTER—ABOVE/AFTER

Kant writes:

"Thus if (with regard to a transcendental theology) one asks, first, whether there is something that is distinct from the world and contains the basis of the world order and of the coherence thereof according to universal laws, then the answer is: without doubt." (Text)/(AA B723)

Logos is in Cosmos, but Logos is not of Cosmos. Logos is of God.

The Gospel of John says:

"In the beginning was Logos and Logos was with God, and Logos was God. This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being that has come into being." (Jn 1:1-3)

Dictionary of untranslatables says:

"The Greek word logos [λόγος] has such a wide range of meanings and so many different usages that it is difficult to see it from the perspective of another language except as multivocal, and in any case it is impossible to translate it except by using a multiplicity of distinct words." (Text)

Logic

Logic

Logic is premises and conclusions based on God, Cosmos and Logos.

Kant writes:

"To be sure, one could therefore say that logical reflection is a mere comparison, for in its case there is complete abstraction from the cognitive power to which the given representations belong, and they are thus to be treated the same as far as their seat in the mind is concerned; transcendental reflection, however, (which goes to the objects themselves) contains the ground of the possibility of the objective comparison of the representations to each other, and is therefore very different from the other, since the cognitive power to which the representations belong is not precisely the same. This transcendental reflection is a duty from which no one can escape if he would judge anything about things a priori." (Text)/(AA B318)

Premises and conclusions are judgments.

Judgment

Judgment

A judgment consists of content, modality and mundality.

Content

The content of the judgment consists of quantity, quality and relation.

The content of the judgment is a simple or compound [relation] affirmation or negation of something [quality] about something [quantity].

Modality

The modality of the judgment is either above/before, below/before, below/after, or above/after.

Kant writes:

"The modality of judgments is a quite special function of them, which is distinctive in that it contributes nothing to the content of the judgment (for besides quantity, quality, and relation there is nothing more that constitutes the content of a judgment), but rather concerns only the value of the copula in relation to thinking in general." (Text)/(AA B99)

Mundality

The mundality of the judgment is either logic, nature, or freedom.

The word mundality is from the latin word mundus (world). Kant does not use the word mundality. Kant distinguishes between logic, theoretical reason and practical reason.

Nature

Nature

In nature, the connection ABOVE/BEFORE—BELOW/BEFORE is closed from the pure form BELOW/BEFORE to the pure form ABOVE/BEFORE. The connection ABOVE/BEFORE—BELOW/BEFORE is only open from the pure form ABOVE/BEFORE to the pure form BELOW/BEFORE.

Because the connection ABOVE/BEFORE—BELOW/BEFORE is closed from the pure form BELOW/BEFORE to the pure form ABOVE/BEFORE, in nature no one can make and/or abolish the content of the pure form ABOVE/BEFORE.

Freedom

Freedom

In freedom, the connection ABOVE/BEFORE—BELOW/BEFORE is open from the pure form BELOW/BEFORE to the pure form ABOVE/BEFORE.

Because the the connection ABOVE/BEFORE—BELOW/BEFORE is open from the pure form BELOW/BEFORE to the pure form ABOVE/BEFORE, in freedom everyone can make and/or abolish the content of the pure form ABOVE/BEFORE.