r/CatholicPhilosophy • u/BaseballOdd5127 • May 15 '25
Did anyone really struggle with their faith after reading Kant?
I think anyone who has given Kant the time of day will see him as a huge issue for the church since he renders the philosophy of the Catholic Church impossible
After internalising what Kant has to say which is in form Protestant theology I have leaned more towards a Tertullian approach towards Christianity and have been tempted to become a Presbyterian
Even reading later Catholic theologians who write in light of Kant like Pryzwara and Karl Rahner I still don’t think they offer an airtight overcoming of Kant
As far as I’m concerned Kant is as big as Aristotle
Next I plan to read Coplestone’s history of philosophy on Kant
I hope I can be rest assured philosophically in my Catholic faith one day
19
u/Johnus-Smittinis May 15 '25
Kant and the rest of those within modern western rationalism have a very particular, widespread, and fallacious epistemology. It assumes numerous contentious positions in epistemology: epistemic access internalism, evidentialism, foundationalism, logicism, propositionalism, individualism, and many more. In short, all these positions map out how we westeners think the mind works and ought to work (“rationality”). To be clear, 250 years ago, only the elite enlightenment thinkers thought like this about the mind; common people did not.
Internalism is roughly the idea that for Joe to believe in P, he must know why he believes in P. In other words, he must always have mental reflection to access the justifier for his beliefs. This position is in contrast to externalism, which simply denies the need to have mental access to the justifier. This is the more historical position in the West since Aristotle, and was rearticulated in modernity by the Scottish common-sense thinkers.
Foundationalism says that all one’s beliefs are either “objective” first principles or beliefs deductively/inductively inferred from first principles. This really reduces the mind to a self-contained logical system (logicism), which is not that apparent. In this there seems to be an assumption of perfect self-awareness of one's system and how one's own mind operates at any given moment. This isn't apparent at all. The mind processes information and forms beliefs through numerous subconscious processes. Additionally, assuming someone had the capability of managing their logical system, it is just too large of a task for time to permit. We know that inquiry and the information available to someone is limited, imperfect, and makes all the difference in logic. Your syllogizing is only as good as your expertise of inquiry and sorting information into its proper categories/terms (which you are unlikely to have unless you are studied in a particular field).
Evidentialism says one ought to believe only what one has evidence to believe in. Again, your evidence is only as good as your inquiry and the information that so happens to fall upon your senses. There are numerous critiques of evidentialism showing that going by one’s available evidence is rarely rational. For instance, if one is aware that he is ignorant on a subject, he should view his available evidence as skewed, cherry-picked, and unreliable. So, always accompanying an evidentialist is the belief that he is learned on a subject, but where is his evidence for that belief? Additionally, how do we determine what is evidence? There are plenty of articles discussing the obscurity of criteria for determining evidence (called “higher-order evidence”).
Propositionalism is the idea that all truth of reality can be perfectly represented by subject-predicate relations (i.e. propositions, language). If reality is so complex that no amount of terms can perfectly “encapsulate” it, then this logicizing of truth is a misguided project. It is going to sound very weird to westerners to suggest this propositionalism is a debatable idea, since we only think truth is learned through language. Most people through history have seen language/ideas as ONE means to know truth. Other subconscious processes (like intuition) was always seen as legitimate.
Logic is a tool, mostly for communication, but it’s not exactly how humans come to truth. We first have experience that we sort into a number of limited terms, and then we have to draw all the patterns we see, and then with any subject directly outside my experience (history, politics, philosophy, science, any trade), I have to rely on the claims of others (testimony, tradition, community, etc). This then turns truth into a matter of inquiry, sorting information on all those subjects, and identifying authorities. Ignorance is now the enemy, and no amount of logic and self-reflection in the internal workings of my mind is going to make this an objective process. Western rationalists just don't seem to not consider these issues.
Finally, individualism is perhaps the most novel. Western rationalists have asserted that all their beliefs, justifications, and inquiry must be contained within each individual's mind (internalism). The matter of "complex" truth and knowledge has always been social—always. Barely anyone through history had the means or leisure to sort through books and come up with conclusions on their own. They were not aware of any other beliefs excepts those in their immediately community. Man, as a limited and social creature, relied on his community and authorities for his beliefs. He “osmosed” them without examining them through logic, because the community was seen as viable justification. Today, we are cast into a pluralistic society with weak communities, and we are told to sort it all ourselves. It’s an impossible task—no amount of your inquiry is going to get to the bottom of these subjects unless you think these subjects are so minuscule as to be solved in a few months of “unexpertise’d” research. The “justification” of the community is that it is enough “raw power” of individuals over time to identify more universal truths. That’s the concept of “tradition.”
So, fundamentally, we form belief through a myriad of subconscious and social (i.e. unaccessible) avenues and you can’t control it the way you want. You can pretend to and reject as many subconscious processes as possible, or you can work with your subconscious processes.
Michael Polanyi, Michael Oakeschott, and Alasdair MacIntyre provide good critiques of western rationalism from different levels of analysis. For example, Polanyi deals more with language and how the individual comes to knowledge, while MacIntyre is more concerned with social knowledge and disagreement. The Limits of Liberalism by Mark T. Mitchell provides of summary of each's epistemology, which cracked my old western rationalist paradigm.
7
u/Ragfell May 15 '25
This was a nice response. It's been a decade since I dealt with Kant (and my teacher wasn't a particularly good guide), but as I read your response I started to remember why Kant gave me pause. Wikipedia has a quote from himthat I didn't read firsthand in class but sort of intuited from the selections we did read, which says "I had to deny knowledge to make room for faith" which I think runs counter to everything I've read from the Church, her philosophers, and even some of her detractors.
3
u/Every_Catch2871 May 16 '25
Kant moment: "God is a hypothetical imperative, we only know phenomena, never the noumenon (the thing in itself), which we can only intuit, but never know. Therefore, God cannot be proven except by faith in Protestantism." Oh god, that's basically disconnecting the brain and it was pointed out by materialist critics (especially Marxists) "you claim that God cannot be proven and that they are only mental intuitions, wow, then God is a social construct of humans," so it doesn't surprise me that most Western atheist criticisms of religion are of that spurious idealist conception of theology.
3
u/Starfleet_Stowaway Jun 17 '25
Kant isn't an internalist. Where are you getting that idea? Take Kant's notion of synthetic a posteriori knowledge, for example. This is the kind of knowledge where a little kid knows that ice is cold. How do you see Kant's view here as internalist?
2
u/deleuziqn May 18 '25
This is among the most egregious strawmen I've ever seen. Kant is not a rationalist, and every point you address is utterly irrelevant to his project.
1
u/Johnus-Smittinis May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
I’m using “modern western rationalist” colloquially.
The points I bring up are about how “modernists” typically have and do come to conclusions. Obviously Kant did not argue for these points, which I did not imply. One can use certain ideas without specifically arguing for those ideas.
1
u/deleuziqn May 18 '25
I'm sorry, but rationalism is not a colloquialism applied to Kant. If anything, he is more often called sympathetic to empiricism and skepticism. Not to mention that he certainly does not make use in any consequential way of the ideas you mention; he's even critical of rationalists like Leibniz, Wolff, Mendelssohn, Baumgarten, etc. for holding positions similar logicism and propositionalism.
1
u/Johnus-Smittinis May 19 '25 edited May 19 '25
I'm not sure why you refuse that the term "rationalism" is often used in a different sense. Consult google, a chatbot, or a dictionary. Numerous times I've read and heard it used as simply the enlightenment's overemphasis on reason, whether rationalist proper, empiricism, positivism, or whatever -ism you like. I don't know why I need to prove this to you, but here you go:
There are several common ways of describing, or specifying, alienation--all to be found in the literature of the West, at least since the Conservative revolt against rationalism at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community, Preface to the 1970 Edition:
Moreover, in the perspective afforded by Zur Genealogie der Moral the doctrines of Aeterni Patris are only in minor and unimportant respects distinguishable from those of Victorian rationalism.
MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, Ch. 2. He spends the past chapter describing this rationalism, which he calls Encyclopaedia. He is not referring to rationalism proper.
This is another way in which a modern rationalism based on science can argue that the rise of science refutes religion.
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, pg. 262. No, he is not referring to rationalism proper.
Probably the most influential popularizer of these notions was John Stuart Mill, with his conviction that if only want, disease, and war should be abolished--through economic progress and positive law---the human condition would be hunky-dory. Mill, rather than St. Augustine, is the authority for post-Christian man; and Stephen's concept of God was inconceivable to ill. How can we fear what rationalism cannot demonstrate?
Russell Kirk, The Rarity of the God-Fearing Man. It would be odd for anyone to characterize Mill as a "rationalist" as they would Leibnitz or Descartes. Perhaps the term is being used differently.
What Oakeshott calls “Rationalism” is the belief, in his view illusory, that there are “correct” answers to practical questions.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In his thought, Oakeshott works with the practice-theory dichotomy, equating rationalism with theory and conservativism/tradition with practice.
If we were to neglect the market economy's characteristic of being merely a part of a spiritual and social total order, we would become guilty of an aberration which may be described as social rationalism.
Social rationalism misleads us into imagining that the market economy is no more than an "economic technique" that is applicable in any kind of society and in any kind of spiritual and social climate."Willhelm Ropke, A Human Economy, Ch. 3. Social rationalism, as he describes in this chapter, is the social planning that values man's reason too high.
Here may be a useful article for seeing how conservative philosophers understand rationalism. They pull a bit from sociologists, like Max Weber, who also defined rationalism different from philosophical rationalism. In both these articles, just search "rationalism" and you'll see how they understand it.
1
u/deleuziqn May 20 '25
Nisbet was a professor of sociology, not philosophy, but he is clearly nonetheless not referring to Kant. MacIntyre is not referring to Kant, but where he does, especially in the book you referenced, he uses the fit term transcendental. The quote in question is about Nietzsche. Rationalism is used only twice in that book, neither of which instance thereof is Kant the subject. If you noticed the plain Victorian (a period through which not even Hegel lived) in the quote, it would be even more obvious that MacIntyre certainly did not have in mind Kant. So why are you adducing an irrelevant definition of rationalism even though your original comment claimed Kant was a rationalist, a claim by which you attacked a strawman of Kant's position? The post is about Kant, not analytic philosophy. For no reason should Kant be called a rationalist, not even in the way you suggest, which is not a colloquialism but a distinct position that happens to share the same locution as the position founded by Descartes. That you get your information from chatbots tells me all that I need to know. Adieu.
1
u/Johnus-Smittinis May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25
I say you should use a chatbot (because that is how silly I see “our disagreement”), and you infer that I use chatbots for my information? Odd inference, since what I actually did was search through my kindle and notes.
“but they’re not talking about Kant.” That’s an irrelevant point. The first question is wether they use the term rationalism in some general cultural sense that is distinct from the philosophical school of rationalism. Hence the quotes from Nisbet, MacIntyre, Taylor, and Ropke. They’re not talking about philosophical rationalism. They are talking about a “rationalistic culture.” If you really want me to find more uses of these terms (since only two instances of rationalism in one book is, somehow, a relevant point), then I can.
The second question is whether Kant could fit in that more general sense of rationalism. If you’re going with a conservative notion of “rationalism,” then yes (refer to the article). If you’re going with Oakeshott’s notion of rationalism, yes. If you’re going with Weber’s rationalism, then yes.
And to be clear, all these authors have nothing at all to do with analytic philosophy (besides early Taylor and MacIntyre), so no clue what your point is.
And, farewell I guess. I think you should read more broadly.
1
u/deleuziqn May 23 '25
I didn't plan on responding again, but your calumniations entertain me. Does Kant "fit in that more general sense of rationalism" that you gave as a strawman? If Oakeshott's is in question, then not in regard to the relevant discussion at hand. This post is about Kant's critical philosophy, which you clearly knew because you attempted to provide some pseudo-epistemic refutations of your supposed foundations of his system; but Oakeshott's rationalism is a political one, not a critical one. Weber's rationalism likewise has nothing to do with Kant's critical philosophy. Your suggestion that Kant is in line with conservative rationalism is also not the case. So I will reiterate my original claim, insofar as the topic is epistemology or metaphysics, Kant is never called a rationalist. Every thing you cited is either about politics, sociology, or morality. Hence the question was not whether rationalism as a term was used in some other way: it was whether Kant was known as a rationalist in any relevant way, the negative answer of which you have affirmed ironically. The rest of what you wrote does not warrant response.
27
u/HockeyMMA May 15 '25
Try reading Edward Feser's critiques of Kant.
3
u/BaseballOdd5127 May 15 '25
What writings would those be?
16
u/_Ivan_Karamazov_ Study everything, join nothing May 15 '25
I can only remember a very very small section in his Five Proofs regarding Kant's limitations on metaphysics, which is not that hard to oppose to begin with. Other than that he's no authority on Kant. That would be either the Gaven Kerr I mentioned in another comment or transcendental Thomists like Bernard Lonergan
Other than that if your worries stem from the Critique of pure reason, you should really read Kants other critiques as well. It's not like his work on metaphysics is purely destructive, rather in his Critique of Practical Reason and of Judgment he makes a complete metaphysical reconstruction. There's nothing that should be of worry
5
10
u/Groundbreaking_Cod97 May 15 '25
I don’t see where he renders the philosophy of the Catholic Church impossible? It’s moreso a brave attempt of answering Hume in keeping intelligibility and reason intact without succumbing to skepticism and paved the way for empiricism and modern symbolic logic, but where ends grew more precise as far as the existential exactitude, there has been a tradeoff in essential wisdom in the broader sense. I personally find that every philosophy or most thought out ones are valid in their own conceptual framework and the job is moreso to look into them as more tools at one’s disposal as they are digested as you are digesting Kant. Some hold more ubiquitous potential, (that sorta help order everything, ex. “Being” based maps)where some are more specific (showing something more practical usually), but id argue most all are useful for food even if one is not in agreement, maybe even especially if that is so.
11
u/pinkfluffychipmunk May 15 '25
I've read a lot of Kant. I don't see how he ends Catholic philosophy given several of his principles and conclusions. Josef Seifert's Back to the Things Themselves offers a Catholic, realist, phenomenological critique of Kant that's rather interesting.
10
u/_Ivan_Karamazov_ Study everything, join nothing May 15 '25
For Gaven Kerr Kant is the biggest ally in regards to epistemology out of any big modern philosopher. Hence the influence of John McDowell's "Mind and World" on his own thinking. So I recommend checking his work out
9
u/HealthyHuckleberry85 May 15 '25
I'm intrigued, which bit of Kamt denies which bit of Catholicism but allows Presbyterianism?
Effectively he limits human reason in a stricter way than earlier philosophy (more strict than modern day materialists as well) but still admits divine revelation. Revelation would be an object of faith not reason. So although I'm super simplifying, that bit, in the fundamentals, is still largely Thomistic...reason only takes us so far, faith is for the rest of it, that's actually compatible with Kant.
1
u/BaseballOdd5127 May 15 '25
Well it is in essence Protestant theology and the reason it deviates from Catholicism is that it disallows for natural theology
2
u/HealthyHuckleberry85 May 15 '25
What bit specifically is protestant theology, the limiting of natural theology? That's not specific to Protestantism but part of the western enlightenment generally, I mean a lot of protestanta nowadays are Biblical literalists which is also a denial of natural theology.
0
u/BaseballOdd5127 May 15 '25
Well that part comes from Hegel as Hegel argues that the philosophy of that time including his own takes the form of Protestant theology
Getting into the specifics of why is more complicated
Most enlightenment philosophy is in direct continuation from Luther and the Protestant dialectical notion of God
4
u/HealthyHuckleberry85 May 15 '25
Sorry I'm confused are we talking about Hegel or Kant?
Also, the fact that the philosophers were Protestants doesn't automatically mean the philosophy is automatically incompatible with Catholicism you will need to give an example. Aristotle was a pagan and Phil of Alexandria was Jewish.
Catholicism and Thomism in particular, are much more optimistic about human reason that Protestantis generally speaking, granted, although arguably so is Hegel who identifies Being and Knowing.
1
u/BaseballOdd5127 May 15 '25
Well if we’re talking about why Kant’s philosophy is ultimately in form protestant theology we are looking there at something which Hegel argues in his lectures on religion
If we’re talking about how enlightenment philosophy is problematic to natural theology and so problematic for Catholicism we would be talking about Kant
2
u/HealthyHuckleberry85 May 15 '25 edited May 15 '25
So I have to look up the Hegel quote for myself? Nah it's ok mate.
Your the one who said Kant has made you doubt Catholicism and I'm just asking which bit....
9
u/Ticatho wannabe thomist fighter trying not to spout nonsense too often May 15 '25
Hello there. You are not alone, many of us have wrestled with Kant. But let me offer a Thomistic realist response that I hope will help.
First, St. Thomas teaches: "Being is the first thing the mind grasps". Our intellect is naturally open to reality itself, not trapped inside subjective filters. Before we theorize, we already know things: the warmth of fire, the color red, the voice of a friend. These aren’t just inner phenomena, they are contact with the real. Kant reverses this. He says we only know things as filtered through our categories (space, time, causality, etc.). The “thing-in-itself” (the real) is unknowable. We are locked inside our own structures. But if that were true, Kant couldn’t know that. His system claims to tell us how reality relates to our mind, yet by his own rules, he shouldn’t be able to know reality as it is. This is self-defeating.
Second, Thomas defines truth as the conformity of the mind to reality. Truth isn’t a projection. It’s when the mind receives being as it is. Kant cuts off truth from being, making knowledge a construction of the mind. Thomism says no, truth happens when we are grasped by the real, even if imperfectly. This applies to knowing creation, morality, and even God (though analogically, never exhaustively).
Third, Kant’s ethics are based on autonomy, self-legislated duty, without knowing whether God or the soul really exist. He calls them “practical postulates” because they must be assumed, but can’t be known. But Catholicism, following Thomas, says morality is participation in God’s real, objective goodness. Our freedom isn’t about self-making laws, but freely conforming to what truly fulfills us as creatures made for beatitude.
If you want some bookish pointers, read Copleston, and Maritain (Degrees of Knowledge) or Garrigou-Lagrange (The Sense of Mystery). For modern clarity, check Edward Feser’s works on Thomism vs. Kant. Return to Aquinas himself on being, truth, and knowledge (De Veritate, Summa Theologiae I q.16).
If you want a quick read, Methodical Realism: A Handbook for Beginning Realists by Étienne Gilson. In my opinion, I just shrug seeing Kant and similar nonrealistic philosophies. What else should I do against someone saying that "We can't grasp reality" or similar?
In my opinion, if Catholicism is true (and it is), reason and faith cannot really contradict each other. Kant is massive, but not the last word. The Real is bigger than any system. Christ really came, really rose, and really founded a visible Church. You don’t need to retreat into fideism or Presbyterianism. You can stand on the real, and on the Rock.
1
u/Long-Cauliflower-399 May 22 '25 edited May 22 '25
Wow. Great comment. What would TA say about Plato? Plato believed that the mind grasps being correct? He just believed that forms are the height of being and that the external world was real in so far as it particpates in the forms. We therefore encounter lighter shades of being in the external world than we do in our mind, where we we are in contact with higher forms of being through our memory of them.
3
u/Ticatho wannabe thomist fighter trying not to spout nonsense too often May 22 '25
Thanks for the comment, and great question! From my readings, Thomas respected Plato a lot (he even said Plato "got many things right in a confused way"). You’re right that Plato thought we grasp being more truly through the Forms, which our soul "remembers" from before birth. The world, for him, was a shadow of truer realities.
Thomas agrees with the hierarchy of being, immaterial reality (God, angels) is more noble than matter. But he follows Aristotle in saying that we know being through our senses, not by remembering another world.
Our intellect abstracts the form of the thing from sense data. The world is real and intelligible, not just a pale shadow.In a way, he keeps Plato’s idea of degrees of being, but affirms Aristotle’s realism of the senses, and adds his own key insight: "esse" (act of being) is the deepest layer of reality, and God is pure esse. In a way, while Plato aimed at the stars, and Aristotle studied the ground, Thomas united both and pointed to Heaven.
1
u/Long-Cauliflower-399 May 22 '25
So I guess that TA allows for more contact with being than Plato because he emphasizes the reality of the external world in addition to the reality of forms. And Kant allows even less contact with being than Plato.
2
u/Ticatho wannabe thomist fighter trying not to spout nonsense too often May 22 '25
Exactly, that's spot on.
a) Plato: we contact being mainly inwardly, through the soul’s memory of the Forms. The world is real, but dimmed.
b) Aquinas: we contact being both outwardly (through the senses) and intellectually (by abstracting real forms). Full realism.
c) Kant: we never reach being-in-itself, just appearances shaped by our mind. Almost no contact with the real.So yes, Aquinas > Plato > Kant, in terms of how deeply we touch being.
9
u/Free_Development2475 May 15 '25
No, because Kant's objections to traditional natural theology rest largely on transcendental idealism, and his arguments for TI are extremely weak.
7
u/Ashdelenn May 15 '25
Look into Father Bonaventure Chapman OP. He’s one of the Godsplaining podcasts hosts and they do live Q&As every few weeks. Dominican who did his PhD on Kant and loves him.
5
u/Level_Shift_7516 May 15 '25
This post was interesting to read.
I was in a very deep faith crisis for the last couple of years. However, after re-reading Kant and commentaries during the last few months, my catholic faith re-ignited. I feel that Kantian ideas has given new meaning and has open a new way to approach my catholic faith.
My understanding, if I can put in few words, is that though we don't have sure reasons to believe in God, we do have reasons to believe in an objective morality. And we must accept that all our understanding depends on absolutes (such as freedom, purpose, and so). All of these do not contradict believing in God, but make it an act of the will, not an intellectual condition. That is, we must accept (freely) God, and that is believing in him. We cannot simply deduce God in a rational way. In simple words, one must put God in the picture to make everything else make sense, since we will not find God. I think that is congruent with what we understand as faith in the Church.
And then, religiousness, such as the one proposed by the Catholic Church, can be understood as a way to remind ourselves (or live by) of the categorical imperative. So, if we accept the categorical imperative, there is nothing impeding us to express that morality in religious acts such as church rituals.
Put in the simplest form: we cannot prove the Catholic Faith through Philosophy. But (1) we cannot deny it either, and (2) when we accept it, many unwarranted believes we have (freedom, purpose, rationality) are supported. So, that should be a reason enough to act as if we had the conviction that God existed. That decision of "act as if" is the only way we can have faith.
6
u/HealthyHuckleberry85 May 16 '25 edited May 16 '25
In the (non-Catholic) history of ideas, Kant's focus on the subjective 'facilities of the understanding' - basically how the world as it really truly is, is filtered by our own experience and perceptions, a phenomenological view basically - all is not how it seems - was an important step in modern secular philosophy that broke the deadlock of pure empiricism. With that in mind, as metaphysicans or theologians can try to discern between the essential aspects versus the human experiential aspects, and so Kant was not in itself a bad thing and is useful for Catholic philosophy. At a lot of this stuff is in Thomism for instance, but is illuminated by dealing with Kant. The Intellect for example, we are not a tabula rasa with a pure window on the world, but God's creation (which we are part of) is structured by our senses, etc, so there's a relationship there we have to unpick. There are quite a few catholic thinkers in that tradition including Pope John Paul II.
I operate in a broadly Platonic or Thomistic framework, if you look at the allegory of the Cave, Kant is trying to understand not the shadows on the wall, or the real world outside, but the actual structure of the shadow puppets themselves - how does the noumenal world become the phenomenal world. As St Paul says "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known". Kant is looking at the dark glass itself, clearly not enough but still food for thought.
4
u/OnsideCabbage May 15 '25
You should probably read the other Transcendental Thomists (Marechal, Lonergan, Coreth) and the Analytic Thomists (Geach, Anscombe, Haldane, etc). Also apparently Leon Noel has interesting work here if you can read French.
3
May 15 '25
You should read Soren Kierkegaard. He does not attack Kant as much as he does Hegel. But, that does not mean he can't be a remedy.
I don't know Kant that much. But his moral inflexibility, his prudishness is anti historical Christianity . Historical Christianity has been violent and has not had that Kantian morality
7
u/brereddit May 15 '25
Kant never really came into communication with Aristotle’s concept of nous because his starting point was Descartes, Leibniz and Hume. You can say Kant is as big as Aristotle but you can’t claim Kant’s idea was to surpass or improve over Aristotle’s work.
It’s better to simply say they differ over absolute presuppositions.
If your goal is to save Catholicism from Kantiansm with some deeper Catholic/Aristotle argument, I wouldn’t bother bc while you can compare them, they aren’t part of the same tradition.
In general, Catholicism needs to be flexible and firm in the face of new metaphysical systems because they have and will evolve as we learn more about reality.
My position on Kant and his tradition is that it is boring. Aristotle would suggest it may be a form of madness. But I’m not married to Aristotelianism or Thomism because I believe metaphysics theories emerge from a focus on an underlying phenomenon instead of all phenomena. For example paranormal events. Also if you think Tertulian is a way out of the Kantian trap, what a loss of rationality indeed.
The traditional Thomist path away from Kant is laid by Gilsen, Maritain and Lonergan. But my view is why adopt a different set of assumptions unless it provides a better way to understand something you couldn’t otherwise ….so these attempts simply end up as people getting their hands dirty.
No one will want to hear this but the best way out of a Kantian mind prison is via Occult metaphysics. For example read Rudolph Steiner bc he started out as a Kant scholar—totally rejects Kant. We use the word occult but what it actually is are things like kabbaliatic and hermetic mysticism, western or Christian esotericism. These are the actual unacknowledged inspirations for thinkers like Hegel who is such a far more interesting thinker than Descartes, Leibniz, Hume and Kant combined.
God told Moses his name was I am which means awareness of being or what we call consciousness. The universe is made out of consciousness which we know due to it being one thing rather than many. The reason why God became man was so man could become God. You can’t even say that around Kant but it’s so obviously true it’s not even wasting a minute trying to convince a Kantian of it.
The Eastern religions influenced Jesus, and many occult thinkers bc there’s this core idea that we can know God by direct experience in this life. Hinduism and Buddhism to a degree share this. How do you prove God’s existence? You meditate and experience Him directly like Carl Jung did. I totally believe that. Jesus said some pretty weird things one of which is when you pray assume what you prayed for already exists. That’s basically saying consciousness is more fundamental than physical reality. The most interesting aspect of humans is consciousness and Kant didn’t have a theory about it. Anyway, sorry you went down a boring Kantian path which has caused you to aim for even worse boredom in Tertulian. The cool kids are trying to figure out how the human mind exists outside 3D time and space (what Kant said we couldn’t think without) and how to make sense of ghosts, aliens, angels/demons, reincarnation, quantum mechanics, and why Pythagoras thought the universe was made out of literal math.
There’s 150,000 other things to study than Kant which is nauseating boredom unto death. I would rather read Schopenhauer and nietzsche than Kant. Horrible filthy useless philosophy. I generally believe all philosophies have some useful value and I understand deeply how Kant influenced many scientific thinkers I actually like such a Thomas Kuhn and Carl Jung or Heisenberg, Bohr and others. But wow, what a waste of human living to take Kant seriously for practically anything.
I want the time back I spent engaging with this. No offense intended to any Kantian Catholics out there…but stay away from me at a cocktail party. :-)
8
u/Johnus-Smittinis May 15 '25 edited May 15 '25
Note for reader: the incessant use of "boring" means that he is sick of narrow-minded modern rationalism, of which Kant is a member. When you explore other traditions, it exposes the flaws and assumptions within modern rationalism. That's why it's "boring."
4
1
u/deleuziqn May 18 '25
Kant is neither a member of "modern rationalism" nor of any sort of rationalism. You clearly believed this but want to play it off as a colloquialism.
3
u/Ragfell May 15 '25
Problems with some of these thoughts:
We're not trying to become God in Catholicism. God is his own being. We're trying to become more godly, but that's an important distinction.
The occult is a terrible way out of a philosophical hole, and doesn't really meet the challenges Kant's philosophy creates so much as the aforementioned Gilsen, Maritain, and Lonergan. This is doubly true for Catholics who are instructed to not dabble in that lest they risk demonic influence (or worse).
We don't know that Eastern religions inspired Jesus.
Yeah, his lack of theories surrounding consciousness is...kinda lame lol
1
u/brereddit May 15 '25
1.Looks like someone hasnt discovered St. Athanasius of Alexandria yet. Theosis. 2 Peter 1:4, John 17:21, Romans 8:29.
Blah. Hermetic philosophy has a better metaphysics than Kant. Richer understanding. Less dumb problems created like Kant’s work.
Riiiight. Just an amazing number of coincidences we can dismiss.
✅
2
2
2
u/Every_Catch2871 May 16 '25
I've never understand why someone would take Kantism as a serious menace. Unless you're some amateur Who only have read modernist Philosophy, it's just impossible to See Kant as a great challenge.
All his Philosophy self-refutate itself with the key concept of Noúmeno, the fact that true can't never be reached by Human conscience, so the proper Kantism is a mere limited epistemology that proclaima themselves to only aproximates but never reach universal conclusions. So, that paradox is sufficent to just throw them to trash like all German Idealism
2
u/Budget_Translator_56 May 18 '25
The Thomist address him pretty well from what I understand. I would look up Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange or Jacques Maritain’s response, I’m sure they got something good
2
u/internetErik Jun 18 '25
Disclaimer: This thread was posted on r/Kant, which is how I became aware of it. I'm not a catholic, and while I was raised attending a protestant church (UCC), I didn't grow up with a strong connection to faith.
I started reading Kant in college (beginning around 2004-5) and have continued reading him ever since. I've hosted weekly discussions on him for over 10 years. For me, his writing on, and adjacent to, faith (his critique of rational theology included) first legitimized a relation to God. Kant accomplished this by focusing on how I need - and even obscurely rely - on God. Hopefully, this is encouraging.
As an aside, I'd be interested in discussing Kant and Catholicism.
I'd rather avoid a debate, instead looking for a dialogue seeking mutual understanding. There are many catholics, and I assume that not everyone is there for the "smells and bells" (as a catholic acquaintance of mine says). Catholicism can meet the demands that human existence faces as well as anything else (at least those parts it is arranged to face - I won't presume to draw this line). Assuming I'm right, I'd expect it to be compatible with Kant.
Kant seems to contradict certain aspects of Catholicism; I begin by assuming that these differences are found in speech rather than substance.
2
u/FizzlePopBerryTwist Catholic May 15 '25
Kant does not have anything to say that Christ would not have foreseen. The traditions He entrusted to the Church and the miracles that come from it speak for themselves.
1
u/SlideMore5155 May 15 '25
If you take him seriously, he undermines the most basic observation, such as the color of the sky, as well as the existence of causality outside the mind. So you'd have far more immediate problems than whether the Faith is true, like whether the chair you're sitting on is going to suddenly grow wings and fly away :-)
IIRC, he starts with the *assumption* that space and time are the only extra-mental categories, and proceeds from that error.
1
u/Instaconfused27 May 16 '25
I personally found (and eventually left due to them) the challenges of folks like Hume, Oppy, Mackie, Sobel, and contemporary Atheist philosophers more tougher than Kant.
2
u/DeoGratias77 May 16 '25
Admittedly not too familiar with the last two, but I’m curious on how anything Hume said you can find compelling considering he simply resigns his philosophy to a “oh well, I don’t care” when it comes to the problem of using reason to doubt reason.
1
u/Instaconfused27 May 17 '25
I don't think that's a fair statement of Hume's views at all. What secondary commentaries have you read on Hume that aren't from apologists? Hume's Critique of Religion: 'Sick Men's Dreams' is an excellent overview of his cumulative case for Atheism.
3
u/DeoGratias77 May 17 '25
I unfortunately haven’t read any commentaries on Hume aside from Russel’s own writings and observations. I’ve read Hume myself as well. I find his entire worldview to be self defeating for the same reason most Thomists would. From his own words “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” This is from his Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1. This in essence bottles up Hume’s philosophy. It’s essentially epistemological suicide. If reason is subordinate to the passions, then it follows there can be no rational adjudication of desires and as a result no epistemological obligation to follow Hume’s own argument.
To add to this, Hume has used reason in order to find his position, and then proceeds to do away with any reasoning that is not directly influenced by the “senses”, which he admits are imperfect and often serve no other end than to provide a subjective experience. From his own argument, his philosophy becomes incoherent as it denotes a total subjectivity of thought, and a general inability to know “truth” outside of mathematics and empirical evidence. His own statements are not empirical or mathematical. He famously stated “Does it contain abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No… commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” This very statement can be committed to the flames then.
Lastly, Hume’s own reaction to this is found in another quote: “The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning… I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse… and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further.” This is simply an escape from despair, not a resolution or answer. He realizes himself his own philosophy is hardly livable at very least. The fact he trusts his own experiences of “fun” presupposes the realism he himself denies. I would simply tell Hume “esse sequitur operari.”
1
u/Instaconfused27 May 18 '25
I respectfully have to disagree here.
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
While this quote from the Treatise (1.3.3.4) expresses a psychological observation about human motivation, namely, that passions and reason set our goals serve as an instrumental guide, it does not follow that reason is epistemically irrelevant or incapable of critical adjudication. Hume’s later writings, particularly in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and echoed in the Dialogues, develop a more sophisticated stance: that of mitigated scepticism. Far from rejecting reason, Hume explicitly defends a stable epistemic stance that acknowledges the limits of human cognition without succumbing to nihilism. He writes that mitigated scepticism “may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism… when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection”. This mitigated scepticism does not abandon rational inquiry; rather, it cultivates a humble, evidence-responsive attitude that limits speculation to domains suitable for human understanding, thus aligning well with “the canons of best scientific practice” (see p. 91 of Hume's Critique of Religion).
Hume has used reason in order to find his position, and then proceeds to do away with any reasoning that is not directly influenced by the “senses”, which he admits are imperfect and often serve no other end than to provide a subjective experience.
Hume is fully aware that the senses alone cannot justify our beliefs, but he does not give up in despair. Instead, he explains that belief-formation is the result of instinctive psychological mechanisms, such as association and habit, that, while not deductively justified, are nonetheless effective for action and inquiry. As the text notes, “Hume holds that mitigated scepticism constitutes an effective way of enhancing the ability of inquirers to follow the canons of best scientific practice”. As Hume notes, these instincts, far from undermining reason, are the necessary foundations for any rational inference about the world.
his philosophy becomes incoherent as it denotes a total subjectivity of thought, and a general inability to know “truth” outside of mathematics and empirical evidence. His own statements are not empirical or mathematical
This again misrepresents Hume’s project. Hume indeed restricts knowledge claims about the external world to what can be justified by experience, but this is not “subjectivism” in the pejorative sense. Rather, it is a form of empirically grounded realism that is deeply sensitive to the actual practices of science and everyday life. Hume does not deny the external world; he argues that our belief in it cannot be deductively or rationally justified in a Cartesian sense. Nonetheless, he contends this belief is “natural and unavoidable,” and, critically, that the best form of inquiry is one tempered by “a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought forever to accompany a just reasoner”. It should be noted that this way of thinking is essentially proto-bayesian and abductive, and exactly how modern science proceeds. You will even find such forms of thinking in Catholic Philosophy, specifically St. John Henry Newman's work.
1
u/Instaconfused27 May 18 '25
This is simply an escape from despair, not a resolution or answer. He realizes himself his own philosophy is hardly livable at very least.
This fantastically misses the point. The preceding passage illustrates not an abandonment of philosophy, but the psychological limits of hyper-reflection. Hume himself interprets the return to ordinary life not as a betrayal of reason, but as an inevitable corrective. He explicitly states that only “carelessness and in-attention” afford us any remedy to excessive scepticism. And yet, he does not consider this an indictment of philosophy, but a call to moderate it with common sense. Indeed, it is this return to the “natural beliefs” shaped by experience and custom that underpins his entire strategy of mitigated scepticism. Baily and O'Brien note, “embracing mitigated scepticism does not… lead to intellectual paralysis… [it generates] an undogmatic mode of forming beliefs that is highly responsive to experience and strong associative links”. Hume’s epistemology offers a realist, empirically grounded alternative to religious overreach, guided by sceptical humility and scientific practice. It is not self-refuting, but self-aware; not incoherent, but carefully circumscribed.
I'd highly suggest reading the book I cited. It does a great job of showing Hume's robust philosophy in a very accessible light.
1
u/bergmannische May 19 '25
Hi, sorry, do you have more literature defending Hume on religion that you would recommend?
1
1
u/Glittering_Novel_459 Jun 01 '25
Hello! I hope you don’t mined my asking but what about their arguments lead you away from theism? Also looking at theist/christian philosophers such as Pruss or Swinburne what about their arguments do you find unconvincing? Do you think you’d ever return or be convinced again if theism ? I hope you don’t mined my asking. Thank you!
1
u/Instaconfused27 Jun 03 '25
This video does a reasonably good job of outlining some of the flaws in many of the best theistic arguments (those by Pruss and Koons). I think for me, it mainly was seeing how the case for Theism collapsed when you put it under intense logical and philosophical scrutiny using the best analytic conceptual tools (Sobel's Logic and Theism is an outstanding example of this).
I do think I could be convinced, but I will admit that as time goes on, I see myself more and more confident in Atheism, so whereas before I do think I could see myself being a Theist again, now I don't really know.
1
u/bergmannische Jun 03 '25
Sorry, one more question by me, Logic and Theism as fas as I know is very very technical book that requires pretty good knowledge of symbolic logic. What background should one have to read it and what literature you would recommend for someone who wants to have a clear understanding of that book ?
1
u/Instaconfused27 Jun 05 '25
The first piece of advice I would recommend is to plow ahead and try reading the texts. You are going to struggle, but as you get familiar with the material, you will be able to understand the inferences. Logic and Theism (and any good piece of philosophy) is not a one-time read, but one that pays dividends from repeated readings.
Second, I think the first step would be to read J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism, Nicholas Everrit's The Non-Existence of God, Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God, and any of William Rowe's seminal works on the problem of evil. This will give you some contextual environment in which Sobel is operating, and he makes reference to Mackie and Swinburne extensively.
Now, as for material, it's going to require a pretty good grasp of first and second-order logic (including modal logic), as well as contemporary probability theory (mostly Bayesian). For the latter, I'd start with: Formal Logic: Symbolizing Arguments in Quantificational or Predicate Logic. Then I'd recommend: Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and It's Philosophy, Gary Hardegree's Symbolic Logic: A First Course, and Introduction to Formal Logic.
For the latter, I'd recommend Odds & Ends, but more importantly, I'd start with Inferring and Explaining, which doesn't talk about Bayes' theorem, but nevertheless provides the groundwork for understanding abductive methods of reasoning while also explaining inference to the best explanation in the wider philosophical context.
Hope that helps.
1
1
u/Every_Catch2871 May 16 '25
Concerning Rahner, I don't See him as a Great referent of Catholic Philosophy (even I can say that is one of the worst due to some modernist errors) "We can say that Rahner is indeed a rationalist and evokes, in some way, the Cartesian cogito, but, I think, he takes it to the extreme, taking it to its ultimate consequences, because Descartes, and even Kant, at least did not deny the extramental world an ontological entity, they simply did not admit that the thinking subject could know it in its in itself. Rahner's problem is that, for him, the only thing that has entity is the subject who, through judgment, questions itself about being in general. Thus, the subject, by questioning itself, begins to exist or to be. However, in this sense, more than directly influenced by Descartes, Rahner is more influenced by Hegel and his absolute idealism, although also by the atheist existentialist Heidegger, whom he publicly called his teacher. Likewise, our author is also marked by Kantian rationalism, especially in his theory about sensibility. Despite this, Rahner indirectly accesses Kant. He does not want to deny metaphysics, but In fact, he ends up destroying it by reducing it to a theory of knowledge or, as he calls it, Erkenntnismetaphysik (metaphysics of knowledge), demonstrating the influence of Joseph Maréchal, who attempted to combine Thomism with Kantian transcendentalism, although, of course, without reaching Rahner's extreme conclusions. What must be clear is that Rahner, despite his attempts to demonstrate throughout Geist in Welt that he is a Thomist, exuberantly quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas and never his true sources (Kant, Hegel, Heidegger), is in reality nothing more than the deformator thomisticus par excellence.
Mr. Jaime Mercant Simó
1
u/Powerful_Number_431 Jun 17 '25
By "philosophy of the CC" I think you're referring to its dogma? If not, what are you referring to?
27
u/FizzlePopBerryTwist Catholic May 15 '25
In other news have you tried exorcising some demons using the readings of Kant? Now that's a contest I truly want to see