Interpreting Kant's Theory of Divine Commands
Author:
- 25 March 2005
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Kantian Review
- Vol. 9, 128-149
Abstract
Kant rejected ‘theological morality’, insisting that no one, including God, can be the ‘author’ of the moral law because the moral law is a categorically necessary, non-positive law. Kant was also no religious enthusiast and clearly intended to rule out certain kinds of dependence of ethics on theology. Such considerations make it tempting to suggest that Kant was fully committed to what has been called the ‘autonomy of ethics’ from theology. Yet an observant reader of Kant's corpus is constantly confronted with passages in which Kant discusses philosophical theology, connections between moral philosophy and theology, and even argues that we should ‘recognize all our duties as divine commands’ (KpV, 5: 129).Keywords
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