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Question

Dear Father Angelo,

my name is F. and I am a seminarian from the diocese of M., I am writing to you first of all to thank you for the service you do to the Church of God; in the seminary, we read the questions that people ask you and we remain edified and confirmed in the Faith by your always competent answers and in line with the doctrine, the magisterium and the Sacred Scripture.

In begging you to continue your mission on the website of Dominican friends, I ask you the following question: having met and known Kant’s thought and his Critique of pure reason, I find myself wondering why he thinks he has “solved”  the problem of the demonstration of the existence of God, also believing to have relativized, if not discredited, the Thomist (the famous 5 ways) and Anselmian demonstrations and, if I am not mistaken, also the Augustinian ones.

I would like to read from you, and I would be grateful, a critical analysis, even synthetic, on the Kantian work and its results that highlights any weak points, and why he believes he has given “checkmate” to the demonstration and evidence of the existence of God prior to him.

I thank you in advance for your kind patience in answering me, and writing to you on May 8th (2019), dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Rosary of Pompeii, I ask you for a special remembrance in prayer.

See you soon.

In corde Jesu.

Answer from the priest

Dear F.,

I’m sorry to answer you so late. But only today I reached your email of May 8th 2019.

1. The contrast between Kant and St. Thomas regarding the ways to recognize the existence of God starts from this fact: that St. Thomas begins each of his 5 ways with this affirmation “It is certain in fact and consists of the senses” (Certum est et sensu constat). In other words St. Thomas begins from what our senses see and of which we are certain in order to ascend from creatures to the Creator. St. Thomas begins therefore from the most certain of knowledge: that of the senses, because it is based on what we see, on what we feel, on what we touch. It is the certainty on which we also rely on court trials.

2. While for Kant the knowledge that starts from sensible things is sufficient to say that the things of this world can have a cause and effect relationship between them, it is not enough to conclude to a reality that surpasses them all, that it is of another order, different from the natural one, and that we call God. There would be, therefore, a disproportion between effects which are of a natural order and a cause which is of a higher order.

3. In fact he writes in the Critique of Pure Reason: “The whole possibility of freely operating nature (which begins to make every art possible and perhaps even reason itself) to derive it from another art, albeit superhuman, is a reasoning that it could not withstand the most rigorous transcendental criticism. Reason could not justify itself if it wanted to pass from the casuality it knows to obscure and indemonstrable explanatory principles” (Part II). Therefore, he says, “we do not have the slightest foundation to admit the object of this idea, to suppose it in itself” (Ib.).

4. Kant seems to say: it can be concluded with certainty that from an artifact we can reach the intelligent artificer in the field of experience and observation. But you can’t go any further. If this is good for the things of this world, it cannot be concluded that the works of nature have their internal and external order from an Intellect.

5. However, if we take the concept of order and if we say with Aristotle that it is the task of the wise to order (sapientis est ordinare), how can we not conclude that the order of the cosmos is not produced by an Intellect? It can easily be conceded that with the resources of reason alone we cannot go further in the knowledge of the nature of this Intellect. But, it is not clear why it cannot be concluded. This Intellect will be of a different nature from ours, indeed, infinitely superior to ours, but the concept of Intellect remains. And that’s what we call God for now.

6. But there is another reality that prevents Kant from reaching the conclusion of existence with reason, and it is his concept of knowledge. In a few words, he says that we see the surface, the changing aspect of things, but their essence escapes us. Using his language, he says that we know the phenomenon (what appears) but not the noumenon (the essence). This is because what appears (the phenomenon) is changeable, while the essence (the noumenon) is immutable. Kant asks himself: how can the things that change tell us what the things that don’t change are like? In parallel, how can the things of this world, which are all changeable, tell us something about Him who is immutable? Isn’t there an essential disparity?

7. Yes, it is true, there is an essential disparity. But precisely because our intelligence grasps the essential, while saying that this essential when applied to God is infinitely superior to everything we can know and say about him, nevertheless it grasps something true and not false. For example, it captures His existence. And, although in more negative terms (saying what it is not) than positive (saying what it is), it still says something true about Him.

8. Kant adds: in concluding that there is a creator and regulator Intellect, an undue passage would be made, that is, one would pass from a logical conclusion to a real conclusion, as St. Anselm and Descartes did with the so-called ontological argument. The ontological argument consists in saying that in the concept of God there is that of possessing all possible perfections. And that if there are all possible perfections, there would also be that of existence.

9. But this accusation is not supported, because in the ontological argument one passes unduly from the concept to existence, from the thought to existent. Here, however, the reverse occurs: we pass from the existing to what we can understand and think of Him.

10. Dear F., I don’t know how many visitors have had the perseverance to follow us throughout this exposition. And yet it is also fair to ask ourselves why Kant, this great philosopher, said that reason cannot by itself come to conclude the existence of God.

11. However, I would like to recall that Kant affirmed the existence of God and placed God as the postulate of ethics. The postulates for Kant are those principles that, although they are not demonstrable, are basic for ethics, that is, for that knowledge in order  which we say that an action is good or bad. The postulates of morality (ethics) for Kant are the following three: freedom, the existence of God and the immortality of man. Here we must agree with Kant, apart from the affirmation that they would not be demonstrable. Without freedom, without the existence of God and without the immortality of the soul, it makes no sense to say: this is an absolute evil, this is an absolute good. If the man is not free, nothing is attributable to him. If God does not exist, there is also no objective norm and an ultimate goal to be achieved. If the soul is not immortal there is no retribution and all actions, however good or bad, all have the same outcome: for the person who performed them they are useless because they are destined for nothing.

I wish you to progress in God’s ways to become a holy priest for the benefit of everyone. I remind you to the Lord and I bless you.

Father Angelo

Translated by Rossella Silvestri