This Lecture is the first in a two lecture series that Professor Insole will give at ACU. Across the lectures\, the case is made that Immanuel Kant is neither a secular atheist\, nor a traditional Christian. Nor is Kant best understood as a heterodox Christian\, trying to bend the tradition to his purposes\, but heretically back-sliding on a few key doctrines. Rather\, I suggest\, Kant is deeply philosophically committed to a conception of God\, and to immortality\, and to a transcendent dimension underlying and sustaining everything that appears\, which dimension is a source of spiritual and moral challenge and consolation. As such\, Kant witnesses to a pre- and post-Christian tradition in Western philosophy\, of being committed to belief in God\, and in a universe saturated with reason and divinity. This tradition is an important\, albeit submerged\, dimension of Enlightenment thought.
\n
LECTURE ONE BEING GOOD: KANT&rsquo\;S MORAL COMMUNITY \;
I show how Kant&rsquo\;s religious hope in the &lsquo\;highest good&rsquo\; is significantly and studiedly distanced from the traditions of Christianity that he would have received\, in ways that have not yet been fully\, and widely\, appreciated. Kant makes a rational moral community the object of our religious hopes\, and not the transcendent God of the tradition. The lexical field that Kant explores\, when discussing his conception of the highest good\, faithfully maps onto the terms that are associated\, in the medieval tradition\, with the concept of the &lsquo\;highest good&rsquo\;: &lsquo\;beatitude&rsquo\;\, the &lsquo\;final end&rsquo\; of creation\, and the glorification and honouring of God. But in each case\, Kant carries out a quietly subversive translation of these concepts\, into the categories of his &lsquo\;pure religion of reason&rsquo\;. This translation is motivated by Kant&rsquo\;s rejection of the claim that God could be an &lsquo\;object&rsquo\; that is good without limit for our will or practical reason\, alongside his dismissal of the medieval notion of divine-human &lsquo\;concursus&rsquo\;\, where God can act in our actions\, without destroying our freedom. \; \;
ORGANIZER: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR