Kant and the Creation of Freedom: A Theological Problem

ISBN-13: 9780198755197 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 288 str.

Dr. Christopher J. Insole

Opis

Kant actively struggles with the problem of how to conceive of God's creative action in relation to human freedom. He comes to the view that human freedom can only be protected if God withdraws in certain ways from the created world. The two pillars of Kant's mature philosophy - transcendental idealism and freedom - are in part shaped and motivated by Kant's need to provide a solution to his theological problem. The medieval and early modern theological tradition conceives of divine action as unlike the action of any created being. When the creature acts, God directly causes this action, but without reducing the creature's freedom. Kant explicitly discusses and rejects this account of divine and human concursus. This rejection has significant and surprising ramifications for Kant's wider philosophy, explaining otherwise incomprehensible claims in his critical philosophy.
Christopher J. Insole presents a definitive study in the history of ideas, engaging with a wide range of Kant's texts from 1749 until the early 1800s. Many of these texts have received little or no attention in Kant studies to date. Insole places Kant's thought in relation to numerous historical and traditional positions and illuminates these positions by a close engagement with recent debates in analytical philosophy and systematic theology. Kant is unrelentingly honest when grappling with the difficulty of relating divine and human freedom. This study, of Kant's theological struggle and legacy, goes to the heart of the problem in the modern reception of what the Christian tradition has affirmed about human freedom. As such, the book throws light on one of the defining fault-lines in modern theology and philosophy.

Recenzje

Insole's project is tremendously important and provides an equally comprehensive, focused and illuminating take on familiar Kantian issues from what for many readers still is a thoroughly unfamiliar perspective. It is rare to see philosophers like Aquinas, Suárez and others along this line discussed in the context of Kant, and Insole's book shows that invoking this context has a clarifying effect on a large number of passages in Kant's œuvre ... I should like to close by reiterating how deeply illuminating Insole's approach is and how he manages to shed light on a number of as yet largely unexplored aspects of Kant's thought. Moreover, he provides the resources for reassessing quite a few allegedly familiar claims by placing them in a context thoroughly unfamiliar and perhaps even alien to many quarters of contemporary Kant scholarship. He has done us all a great service by linking Kant to the Thomist tradition of scholasticism

O autorze

Christopher J. Insole is a senior lecturer in Philosophical Theology and Ethics at the University of Durham, UK. His work is concerned with the relationship between fundamental metaphysical and doctrinal commitments, and patterns of thought in meta-ethics and practical reasoning. This interest underlies publications on realism and anti-realism, the relationship between theology and political liberalism, the place of natural law language in the work of Edmund Burke, and the role of theology within Kant's metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.