مطالب

This article clears a path for employing the affirmative way of interpreting Kant's general theory of religion as a guidepost for twenty-first century religious practitioners. Before attempting such an employment, I correct several misconceptions regarding the affirmative way of interpreting Kant's theory that, if adopted as mainstream, would risk weakening its universal applicability. With this purpose in mind, I consider and respond to a misplaced criticism of my interpretation of Kant's theory of grace, advanced by Douglas McGaughey in 2013. I then assess the current state of a debate that has arisen between several key affirmative interpreters, concerning Kant's reference to the two "experiments" that guide the argument in his Religion. I give special attention to Lawrence Pasternack's 2017 attempt to "dismantle" this whole line of interpretation as one that "may very well not be worth our time." After identifying several serious flaws in Pasternack's argument, I conclude by backing a better alternative developed by Brandon Love. By clearing away two very different sorts of potential roadblocks that could stand in the way of a reader of Kant gaining a fair understanding of the affirmative approach to interpreting his theory of religion, these arguments prepare the way for a concluding attempt to catch a glimpse of how Kant's theory of religious judgment (especially his four guidelines for designing the constitution of a church), if adopted widely by practitioners of various historical religions, could benefit the fractured world we find ourselves in, a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century.

In the Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant said that cognition (objective perception) is acquired in the unity of sensibility (the receptivity of the mind to receive empirical representations of things, which yields intuitions) and the understanding (in which concepts – general representations of things – arise), and is mediated by the imagination. Here, it is shown that numbers, either pure or denominate, are cognized in the synthesis of intuition and mathematical concept, and that the phenomenal world of the cognizer is shaped accordingly. Any number can be related to any other number through a general mathematical formula conceived by the cognizer for the purpose. The judgment of the cognizer is manifest in the specifics of the mathematical relationship established between the two numbers in cognition. If the cognized number is the numerical value of a physical constant then in the (consistent) phenomenal world it will always have been of the value found in cognition, which explains why the universe seems to be fine-tuned for life. If the cognized number is the numerical value of a physical variable, then the number will be subject to change in accordance with physical laws. Symmetry is a recurrent feature of the phenomenology. A mathematical formula conceived by the cognizer may also relate, one to one, the numerical values of quantities in one set with the numerical values of quantities of different dimensionality in another set, which suggests that physical laws are human inventions and that causality is a pure concept of the understanding.

Practical reason is the use of reason to decide how to act and perform in a social reality. When someone deliberates about what to do, one puts all the reasons for the action, and then all the reasons against the action will determine the outcome of the action. In that situation, we can describe that practical action with reason because we will determine reason with the weight of different reasons not on the weighing reasons. In this paper, we analyze that reasons have weight against the theory that weights of reasons have no role in a theory of reasoning, and defend that reasons have weight with the evidence of practical reasons. The aim of this paper is to argue that weight of reasons has a role in the process of reasoning. In every situation of life, we can use have reason and weight of reason according to the practical situation of life.