Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn

Kanterian, Edward (2017) Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn. Routledge, Abingdon, UK & New York, USA, 462 pp. ISBN 978-1-138-90858-1. E-ISBN 978-0-203-72958-8. (Access to this publication is currently restricted. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:61579)

PDF Publisher pdf
Language: English

Restricted to Repository staff only
Contact us about this Publication
[thumbnail of Kant, God and Metaphysics, clean.pdf]
PDF (Abstract to book) Other
Language: English

Restricted to Repository staff only
Contact us about this Publication
[thumbnail of Abstract to book]
Official URL:
https://www.routledge.com/Kant-God-and-Metaphysics...

Abstract

Kant is widely acknowledged as the greatest philosopher of modern times. He undertook his famous critical turn to save human freedom and morality from the challenge of determinism and materialism. Intertwined with his metaphysical interests, however, he also had theological commitments, which have received insufficient attention. He believed that man is a fallen creature and in need of ‘redemption’. He intended to provide a fortress protecting religious faith from the failure of rationalist metaphysics, from the atheistic strands of the Enlightenment, from the new mathematical science of nature, and from the dilemmas of Christian theology itself. Kant was an epistemologist, a philosopher of mind, a metaphysician of experience, an ethicist and a philosopher of religion. But all this was sustained by his religious faith. This book aims to recover the focal point and inner contradictions of his thought, the ‘secret thorn’ of his metaphysics (as Heidegger once put it). It first locates Kant in the tradition of reflection on the human weakness from Luther to Hume, and then engages in a critical, but charitable, manner with Kant’s entire pre-critical work, including his posthumous fragments. Special attention is given to The Only Possible Ground (1763), one of the most difficult, interesting and underestimated of Kant’s works. The book takes its cue from an older approach to Kant, but also engages with recent Anglophone and continental scholarship, and deploys modern analytical tools to make sense of Kant. What emerges is an innovative and thought-provoking interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics, set against the background of forgotten religious aspects of European philosophy.

Item Type: Book
Uncontrolled keywords: Kant, philosophy, metaphysics, God, religion, modal logic, free will, transcendental idealism
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Edward Kanterian
Date Deposited: 27 Apr 2017 18:31 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Feb 2021 13:45 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/61579 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.