Kant’s Suggestion of a Hope of the World
November 1, 2009
Let’s all admit that we are uncertain about divine revelation (for even Gabriel might have not gotten it right), and in general. Let’s all admit that we need a moral religion to give us hope. And, Kant suggest, let’s take the nearest thing to this moral religion available and clean it up and give it a moral explanation and let’s all join. We will have our faith in God, as did Mohammed and the prophets, and we will clothe our uncertainties in morally inspiring hope, i.e., choose among all the uncertainties the one so best suited morally and compellingly (and so certainly don’t just invent one for the occasion)..
Of course Kant had Christianity in mind and thought it an excellent vehicle for unifying the hearts of all well-intending persons. He seemed to think that it needed less tidying up than the others.
[Just wondering now how the Buddhists might fare with Kant. They might be able to think so: we are to be ceaseless in cultivating our desires for moral justice and peace and so are willing to be reborn again to help in the attainment of these desires, that they are given up only after all else. ]
I think Kant is right that it is easy to display the moral core of Christianity, and that is in John’s take, chapter 5, of moral duty over alleged (hearsay) divine command which is thus binding on all Christians (even as it actually is in pure reason itself, and thus of all humans).
[On Buddha again, I guess dignity is a desire that the Buddhist must also give up in his quest for absence. Any desire portends a self that possesses that desire, and thus continues the illusion and suffering of the self.]
If I were charged with the task of certifying the moral core of Islam (with my limited knowledge) I would offer the following interpretation of Abraham. I would compare him with an striking case from Law and Order (TV series) of a Christian mother who understood clearly that upon baptism her child would be totally clean and would go immediately to God for eternal happiness if they should die, and that if the child lived the child might choose disobedience and suffer damnation, and that if she, the mother were to kill the totally innocent child, that would be unforgivable and the mother would have to suffer forever in hell. The mother kills the baby and is put in prison, what she will have to consider (in her mind) merely the beginning of the unending torment that is unending and only just starting.
The heart of this mother is love. All you can do is to look at her and weep for her and for the baby and at existence itself.
Abraham is not in such a severe position, according to this idea, for while he is certain that his son will enter paradise immediately and not actually die, he trusted God to take care of all the details of this endeavor, put God on the spot. This touches again on the bold faith of Mohammed of the past post. The difference will be that Abraham had a vision and acts on it, while Mohammed acts on his own without prompt, and in the faith or challenge for God to disown it.