Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

"We now turn to a book in which Kant starts to look in some depth at issues in the philosophy of religion . Again, the title is translated in various different ways in various different English versions. I know it as Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason [1793]. We’ve already, several times, used the example of God’s existence as an example of something that Kant takes to be an article of faith. But, of course, the question arises: is that an article of faith that any of us ought to have? Is the existence of God something that we ought to have faith in? What role might a belief in God play in our lives and what role does Kant think that it has to play? Again, it turns out that his answer to that question has to do with this fundamental distinction between appearance and reality. Part of Kant’s picture is that doing the right thing is basically doing the rational thing. When we were considering earlier the categorical imperative, in effect it was a recipe for directing your life in accordance with pure reason. At the level of things in themselves, we are free and rational agents and if that’s all there was to it, we would unfailingly do the right thing. We are agents who have freedom and the only thing that’s in a position to direct that freedom is our own rationality. If that was all there was to it, we would put reason to practical use just in the way that morality demands that we should. But there’s the world of appearances as well. We appear to ourselves in a certain way; we appear to ourselves as animal creatures with animal desires, with biological urges and suchlike. And, actually, what those animal desires and animal urges do is act as temptations to diverge from the path of true rationality. That’s why, in fact, people don’t always do what they should. Kant even leaves open the possibility that we find ourselves succumbing to non-rational impulses and doing the irrational thing all the time. “God cannot do the right thing on our behalf. The only person who can ensure that I act morally is myself” The next question is, obviously, what does any of that have to do with religion? Kant’s answer to that question is that, in a way, we need religion as a kind of non-rational prop – I say ‘non-rational’ rather than ‘irrational’ as this is outside the jurisdiction of reason altogether – to sustain our hope that all is not lost. This is because the picture can look like a pretty bleak one. There are these fundamental categorical imperatives bearing down on us all the while, and there are constant temptations to disobey them. It looks as if we might be forever falling prey to those temptations. It looks as if we’re in a rather miserable position, unfailingly doing the very opposite of what we should be doing. It would be easy to despair in a situation like that, and, after a while, just shrug your shoulders and say ‘Well, forget it. I’m no longer interested in the categorical imperative’. Going back to the imaginary conversation we were having earlier, it would be easy to become like the guy that says ‘I’m just not interested in becoming a better person’. But Kant is very keen not to fall into that despair. The thing that he thinks helps us to maintain some sort of grip on our situation is religion: I mean faith in a divine being who can offer us solace and help. Ultimately, we’re left to our own devices: God cannot do the right thing on our behalf. The only person who can ensure that I act morally is myself. But a religious conviction can sustain my hope that, however badly I’ve behaved in the past, and whatever kind of a mess I might find myself in now, there is always going to be scope to extricate myself from that mess. Indeed, if I not only believe in a god but also in a kind of afterlife, there may be infinite scope for me to work myself back to a sort of perfection – the kind of perfection that should have been there right from the outset but, because I’m an imperfect being just like the rest of us, hasn’t been. So, it’s a very pragmatic conception of the importance of religion. But the title of the book is revealing as well: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason . We can see that what’s going on here is that religion is helping to underpin morality but it’s got a fundamentally subordinate role to play: it’s a prop. Religion is at the behest of morality; morality is not at the behest of religion. That’s absolutely right. Religion doesn’t come into play there at all. I do not need any appeal to religion or any appeal to God to determine that it’s wrong to tell a lie. And actually, in fact, Kant himself is as clear about that as anybody. There is a point in the Groundwork where he addresses the famous ancient question, known as the Euthyphro dilemma , that exercised Plato as well: does God command what’s right because it’s right; or is what is right right because God commands it? There’s absolutely no doubt in Kant’s mind that it’s the first of those, not the second, that even God’s command is subject to the dictates of reason, and not vice versa. Morality is not in any way dependent on religion, insofar as that goes. If you’re interested in working out the difference between right and wrong, you could do it: you could give a quasi-mathematical demonstration that lying is always wrong, say. But, in any case, you wouldn’t even need to do that, since you could just consult your own conscience: Kant thinks we’re already well aware of the difference between right and wrong. As far as ascertaining the difference between right and wrong is concerned, morality has no need of religion. “At a practical level, Kant thinks that religious thinking can help us avoid falling into a kind of nihilism” The sense in which religion serves as a prop is the sense in which it helps us to put morality into practice. It’s one thing to determine what you should do in a given situation; it’s another thing to do it. The fact that each of us can look back over our past life and see the multitude of ways in which we’ve gone wrong means that there’s a very real serious practical danger that we will just succumb to despair and think ‘All is now lost. I can just see that I’m a grotty person. Why should I care any longer? My past life is already testimony to the fact that I’m fundamentally irrational. Here I am confronted with another choice about whether to do the right thing or not, but I’ve so often done the wrong thing in the past, why would one more misdeed make any difference?’ So it’s at a practical level that Kant thinks that religious thinking can help us avoid falling into that kind of nihilism."