Kantovi transcendentalni argumenti za Božje postojanje

Zvonimir Čuljak - Izvorni znanstveni članak

Kant’s Transcendental Arguments for the Existence of God

Sažetak
Kant je u više svojih rasprava iznio pozitivan stav o statusu religijskog vjerovanja i hipotezi Božjeg postojanja. Njegov »jedini mogući argument za demonstraciju Božjeg postojanja« iz »pretkritičkog« razdoblja i argument koji se temelji na »transcendentalnom idealu« iz Kritike čistoga uma po svojoj su strukturi transcendentalni argumenti za Božje postojanje. Njima se hipotezi Božjeg postojanja dodjeljuje status religijskog vjerovanja sa znatnim stupnjem epistemičkog opravdanja i ujedno nužnog eksplanatornog načela.

Abstract
Despite the entrenched impression of promoting a negative attitude towards religion in general, Kant provided several affirmative accounts of the status of religious belief and the hypothesis of God’s existence in particular. The reception of his positive views on religion, first of all in his The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), three Critiques (1781/1787, 1788, 1790), and Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1792), has been mainly focused on the practical dimension of religious beliefs. However, from Kant’s perspective, at least in his The Only Possible Argument… (1763) and in the first Critique (1781/1787), a religious belief can have a reasonably high degree of not only practical but also epistemic justification as well. Kant composed »the only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God« and his argument for God’s existence including the »transcendental ideal« as transcendental arguments. Transcendental arguments as inferences from certain cognitive or experiential regularities to their necessary and a priori conditions in the form of certain objective regularities (e.g. in the »transcendental deduction« of categories or the justification of the causality principle as »a principle of pure understanding«) are of central importance in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Accordingly, the hypothesis of God’s existence in the form of the »transcendental ideal«, included in a transcendental argument, has a regulative function in a theoretical sense: it is the highest explanatory principle, necessary for a satisfactory account of cognition in general as well as for the systematic unity of all our beliefs. This point is a part of Kant’s specific anti-realism, according to which the objects of our beliefs, including our religious beliefs, are not mind-independent, but are the functions of our cognitive architecture (»nature of reason«). Another question is, of course, whether Kant’s transcendental arguments, especially those applied to the hypothesis of God’s existence, are sound and sufficiently justificatory.