A Monumental Figure of Western Thought Wrestles with the Question of God Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him. Kant's teachings on religion were unorthodox in that they were based on rationality rather than revelation. Though logically proving God's existence might be impossible, it is morally reasonable to "act as if there be a God." His strictly (...) rational approach was considered so scandalous that the King of Prussia forbid him to teach or write further on religious subjects, which Kant obeyed until the king's death. A work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion grounded in moral reason and meeting the needs of an ethical life. (shrink)

Due to his theory of deontological ethic, Kant is regarded, in the history of philosophy, as one of the cornerstones of ethics, and it is said, as a rule, that he has an original theory of ethics in that he posited the idea of free and autonomous individual. However, when dug deeper into Kant‟s ethics, and also if it is ex-actly compared with theological ethic, it is clearly seen that all he has accomplished was to make a copy of the (...) theological ethic and to use such secular terms as reason, conscience, good will, moral law, categorical imperative, universalizability, summum bonum, ethico-civil state/universal religion of mere reason as a substitute for such key terms of religious ethics as God, prophet, for God‟s sake, the Golden Rule, Divine command, Heaven, Kingdom of God without modifying the wording, content and logic of theolog-ical ethics. So, the notion of a subject or reason which pretends to be God has no sign of originality. (shrink)

A Monumental Figure of Western Thought Wrestles with the Question of God Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him. Kant's teachings on religion were unorthodox in that they were based on rationality rather than revelation. Though logically proving God's existence might be impossible, it is morally reasonable to "act as if there be a God." His strictly (...) rational approach was considered so scandalous that the King of Prussia forbid him to teach or write further on religious subjects, which Kant obeyed until the king's death. A work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion grounded in moral reason and meeting the needs of an ethical life. (shrink)

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s ethics had a significant influence on the formation of Kant’s ethics. The extent of this influence, however, has not been sufficiently investigated by existing Kant scholarship. Filling this gap, this paper aims to reveal Baumgarten’s substantial influence on the formation of Kant’s ethics, particularly the complex ways in which Kant’s ethics retains the concept of God as crucial for ensuring that his ethics persist under the scrutiny of reason. In a systematic comparison of the ethics of the (...) two philosophers, I argue that Kant alters and yet accommodates several aspects of Baumgarten’s ethics in his own version of the system of ethics more thoroughly than has previously been perceived. More specifically, I argue, first, that Kant’s rejection of Baumgarten’s conception of “duties towards God” and his alternative notion that duties are recognized as if they were divine commands unveil his criticism of Baumgarten’s conception of how religion is situated in ethics. Second, I argue that Kant’s argument for the extension of pure reason for practical purposes discloses his critical response to Baumgarten’s optimistic assumption about the entirety of pure reason. (shrink)

This is a review of Gordon Michalson's book on Kant and religion.

Presents the basic elements of the philosophy of religion tradition in a new and provocative way as original philosophical narrative interspersed with rich selections from Plato, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Pascal, Descartes, Paley, Leibniz, Hume, Hegel, Kant, Mill, Stephen, Royce, James, and Clifford. The history and concepts of philosophy of religion emerge more clearly through this integration and interrelation of classical texts with modern summary and interpretation.

Kant’s religious ethics is grounded in a practical philosophy where ‘God’ is subordinated to moral principles. To accomplish this goal, Kant dismantled the onto-theological groundwork of religion and the conventional method of attaching morality to God, as if morality was a consequence of religious belief. In this essay, I will show how Kant replaces the metaphysics of being with the metaphysics of morality. More importantly, I will show how Kant’s thesis of moral theism argues that the practical philosophy does not (...) end with the categorical imperative, but that Kant also thinks morality inevitably leads to religious belief. (shrink)

Kierkegaard and Kant on Radical Evil and the Highest Good is a major study of Kierkegaard's relation to Kant that gives a comprehensive account of radical evil and the highest good, two controversial doctrines with important consequences for ethics and religion.

Peter Byrne presents a detailed study of the role of the concept of God in Kant's Critical Philosophy. After a preliminary survey of the major interpretative disputes over the understanding of Kant on God, Byrne explores his critique of philosophical proofs of God¿s existence. Examining Kant¿s account of religious language, Byrne highlights both the realist and anti-realist elements contained within it. The notion of the highest good is then explored, with its constituent elements - happiness and virtue, in pursuit of (...) an assessment of how far Kant establishes that we must posit God. The precise role God plays in ethics according to Kant is then examined, along with the definition of religion as the recognition of duties as divine commands. Byrne also plots Kant¿s critical re-working of the concept of grace. The book closes with a survey of the relation between the Critical Philosophy and Christianity on the one hand and deism on the other. (shrink)

This paper provides analysis of Kant's Categorical Imperative and its relevance to religion. I discuss what the concept of a categorical imperative implies about self-transcendence, and what this understanding of self-transcendence indicates about the self's relation to God and others.

In the years shortly before and after the publication of his classic _Truth and Method_ (1960), the eminent German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer returned often to questions surrounding religion and ethics. In this selection of writings from _Gesammelte Werke_ that are here translated into English for the first time, Gadamer probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of these subjects. Gadamer raises issues of importance to ethicists and theologians as well as students of language and literature. In such outstanding essays as "Kant (...) and the Question of God," "Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine," and "Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics," Gadamer discusses the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ethics with one another. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's final publication in ethics was The Doctrine of Virtue, Part II of the 1797 The Metaphysics of Morals. This text presents Kant's normative ethical theory. This guide is meant to be read alongside Kant's text, combining accessible explanations and novel interpretations of this difficult text. It is the first book in English devoted to The Doctrine of Virtue, one of Kant's most significant works. -/- Timmons divides the guide into five parts. Part I reviews Kant's life, the history (...) and significance of The Doctrine of Virtue, and situates Kant's ethics within his general metaphysical and epistemological views. Part II is devoted to the General Introduction to The Metaphysics of Morals, which is essential for understanding Kant's ethics. Part III and Part IV turn to The Doctrine of Virtue itself, exploring Kant's defense of a system of duties and corresponding virtues. Part V examines Kant's conception of moral education, the practice of virtue, and the conclusion to the book where Kant explains why the discipline of ethics does not include religion as a doctrine of duties to God. Timmons concludes the book highlighting key aspects of The Doctrine of Virtue, situating Kant's ethical theory in relation to other normative ethical theories. This guide is a vital resource for both students and scholars interested in ethics and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics (...) not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This new edition includes slightly revised translations, a revised introduction with expanded discussion of certain key themes in the work, and up-to-date guidance on further reading. (shrink)

Discussions of the sources for Levinas’s philosophy have tended to focus on Greece and the Bible to the neglect of his Russo-Lithuanian cultural heritage. Almost no work has been done examining the impact of Russian literature on Levinas’s thinking. The present essay seeks to overcome this neglect by examining the influence that Dostoyevsky in particular exerted on the development of Levinas’s philosophy. I am aware that the notion of “influence” is philosophically vague, and not something whose truth can easily be (...) ascertained. Might there be nothing more than simply a confluence between the thinking of Dostoyevsky and that of Levinas? Could it be that Levinas was attracted to the work of Dostoyevsky because he found there what he was already looking for? Although Levinas credits Dostoyevsky with introducing him to philosophy, it would be facile to draw the conclusion that St. Petersburg occupies as important a place in Levinas’s intellectual itinerary as Athens or Jerusalem. Dostoyevsky provided neither an ontology nor any of the “pre-philosophical experiences” (EI 24) on which, according to Levinas, all philosophical thought rests. But he did give Levinas a way to think about art, religion, and, most importantly of all, ethics after the Holocaust, an event that more than any other, according to Levinas, demonstrated the absolute failure of philosophical theodicy. It was Dostoyevsky, I submit, rather than the Bible, the Greeks, or Kant who taught Levinas that the moral imperative, addressed to the singular existing individual, supersedes the religious imperative, whose validity is placed in question by the suffering of innocents and the absence of the all-powerful and providential God of theism. (shrink)

In the years shortly before and after the publication of his classic _Truth and Method_, the eminent German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer returned often to questions surrounding religion and ethics. In this selection of writings from _Gesammelte Werke_ that are here translated into English for the first time, Gadamer probes deeply into the hermeneutic significance of these subjects. Gadamer raises issues of importance to ethicists and theologians as well as students of language and literature. In such outstanding essays as "Kant and (...) the Question of God," "Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine," and "Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in Greek Ethics," Gadamer discusses the nature of moral behavior, ethics as a form of knowing, and the hermeneutic task of mediating ethos and philosophical ethics with one another. (shrink)

Kant proclaimed that all theodicies must fail in ?On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy?, but it is mysterious why he did so since he had developed a theodicy of his own during the critical period. In this paper, I offer an explanation of why Kant thought theodicies necessarily fail. In his theodicy, as well as in some of his works in ethics, Kant explained moral evil as resulting from unavoidable limitations in human beings. God could not create (...) finite beings without such limitations and so could not have created humans that were not prone to committing immoral acts. However, the work of Carl Christian Eberhard Schmid showed Kant that given his own beliefs about freedom and the nature of responsibility one could not account for moral evil in this way without tacitly denying that human beings were responsible for their actions. This result is significant not only because it explains an otherwise puzzling shift in Kant's philosophy of religion, but also because it shows that the theodicy essay provides powerful evidence that Kant's thinking about moral evil and freedom underwent fundamental shifts between early works such as the Groundwork and later works like the Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason. (shrink)

The classical secularization thesis that emerged during the European Enlightenment held that all expressions of belief would gradually weaken and fade away under the pressure of scientific and technological rationality. Yet religious belief has persisted and thrived under the conditions of modernity. In After the Death of God, philosopher Espen Hammer reconstructs and analyzes a discourse of secularization that accounts for this incongruity. Starting from Immanuel Kant, Hammer explores how philosophers have responded to the death of God, focusing on the (...) idealist and anti-idealist aftermath of Kant's thinking in Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche. For these philosophers, the Enlightenment critique of rational metaphysics was either articulated, affirmed, or simply taken for granted. However, the absence of God, or at least the impossibility of knowing whether a divine power exists, was not simply a mere fact. Rather than searching for reasons to reject religion, Hammer finds, these thinkers have called for a diagnostic and interpretive account of religion's ultimate significance and role within the context of modernity. Unlike today's New Atheists, who see religion as fundamentally anti-modern, the thinkers in this book all see religion as being either transformed into, or replaced by, a renewed ethical life. For them, the claim that "God is dead" implies the beginning of a secular age in which humans attain dignity and moral authority as a self-actualizing, self-creating being. (shrink)

This paper describes and defends two arguments connecting ethics and religion that Kant makes in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. The first argument is that the moral demand is too high for us in our natural capacities, and God's assistance is required to bridge the resulting moral gap. The second argument is that because humans desire to be happy as well as to be morally good, morality will be rationally unstable without belief in a God who can bring (...) happiness and virtue together. The paper states and replies to three objections to each argument. (shrink)

In the Groundwork Kant dismisses theistic principles, along with all other competitors to his Categorical Imperative, claiming that they are heteronomous. By contrast, he asserts, the fundamental moral principle must be a principle of autonomy. I argue that the best case for this Kantian conclusion conflates our access to the reasons for our commitments with an ability to state these reasons such that they could figure in an argument. This conflation, in turn, results from a certain Kantian conception of inclination, (...) and its role in our moral psychology. These are views that we ought to reject. Having done so we will see that a theistic ethics based on desire or love for God would not face a distinctive problem of heteronomy. (shrink)

This article makes two key claims in succession. First of all, Kant’s own religious hope is significantly and studiedly distanced from the traditions of Christianity that he would have received, in ways that have not yet been fully, or widely, appreciated. Kant makes an ideal moral community the object of our religious hopes, and not the transcendent God of the tradition. Secondly, Kant nonetheless has a notion of transcendence at play, but in a strikingly different key to traditional Christianity. Both (...) concepts of transcendence, the Christian and the Kantian, deflate, in their own distinctive ways, our hopes for politics and history, in a way that can unsettle the certainties, and vanities, of both the traditional theologian and the secular Rawlsian. The Christian hope is not the same as Kant’s religious hope, which is distinct, in origin, depth and ambition from his more limited hope for politics. (shrink)

Introduction: A Not So Secular Age? -- An Idealist Theory of History -- Kant's Anti-Determinism -- Freedom without Arbitrariness -- Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Kant -- From Heaven to History -- Autonomy and Alienation -- Philosophy in History -- After Immortality.

This book is the first comprehensive study of Schopenhauer's philosophy of religion. It develops a contextual account of Schopenhauer's relation to the religions of India by placing his interpretation of their main doctrines within the perspective of his diagnosis of the religious situation in nineteenth-century Europe, and his revised conception of the proper content and methods of metaphysical philosophy in the wake of Kant. It shows that Schopenhauer's encounter with the religions of India was the stimulus for his formulation of (...) a novel theory of a revitalised modern Christianity. The possibility of an oriental renaissance prompted Schopenhauer to argue that Christianity's immanent or ethical teachings needed to be severed from its supernatural or metaphysical doctrines, so that European culture could continue to satisfy the human need for a metaphysical interpretation of the world and life. This book will be of interest to philosophers, theologians, students of religion and modern intellectual history. (shrink)

Although the title of this book is misleading, Terry Godlove offers valuable insights into Kant’s approach to concept formation, and how this relates to conceptualizing religion.The book deliberately sets narrow limits to its discussion of a complex and far-ranging topic that spans most of Kant’s major writings. In six loosely-connected chapters, Godlove explores various aspects of the relation between Kant’s epistemology and the way we understand and classify religions, hence eschewing “the ‘official’ philosophy of religion,” including Kant’s own . Godlove (...) generally ignores the predominant approaches to Kant and religion, such as exploring “the denial of the knowledge of God in favor of a moral faith” , which unfortunately for him seems to include the crucial issue of the ethical dimension of religious concepts. He also rejects, quite rightly in my judgment, the endeavors of “those of a traditional theological bent whose views are difficult to square with Kant’s texts” (p. .. (shrink)

Since the publication of Andrews Reath's “Two Conceptions of the Highest Good in Kant” (Journal of the History of Philosophy 26:4 (1988)), most scholars have come to accept the view that Kant migrated away from an earlier “theological” version to one that is more “secular.” The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of this interpretative trend, re-assess its merits, and then examine how the Highest Good is portrayed in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. As (...) will be argued, it is in this text more so than any other where Kant develops his most philosophically sophisticated account of the Highest Good. Because of the central significance of Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good for both his ethical theory and philosophy of religion, this paper therefore seeks to provide an important corrective to the current received views. (shrink)

The nineteenth century background -- Kant, God, and immortality -- Newman and the argument from conscience -- The argument from the objectivity of value -- The euthyphro problem -- Two recent divine command theories -- Objections to divine command theory -- The case for divine command theory -- Religious ethics and rational morality -- Abraham and the binding of Isaac -- Mysticism and morality.

Sono prese in esame – attraverso le opere pubblicate, ma anche attraverso le lezioni e le riflessioni – tre questioni centrali nell’etica di Kant: lo spessore teorico, e le modificazioni, dei concetti di virtù e di felicità, nonché le maniere con cui Kant tentò di armonizzarli, nell’idea di sommo bene. La filosofia morale di Kant è presentata non come un sistema compiuto una volta per tutte, bensì come un ragionare in lotta con il proprio oggetto. L’autrice mostra – presentando una (...) ricostruzione sorprendente delle vicende dell’etica di Kant nel decennio successivo alla Critica della ragion pratica– come Kant si trovò costretto, per difficoltà teoriche, a mutare la propria dottrina su tutti e tre i temi, collocandoli, di volta in volta, entro una nuova struttura globale. L’evoluzione del concetto di felicità è riconosciuta dalla Kantforschung; l’analisi dei mutamenti del concetto di dovere etico e dell’idea di sommo bene costituisce un contributo originale dell’autrice. L’excursus sulla nascita del concetto di eudemonismo mostra come il termine – contrariamente a quanto si sostiene correntemente – non sia stato coniato da Kant.L’interpretazione del libro di Kant su La religione contrasta con le tendenze di gran lunga dominanti negli studi kantiani. -/- The concepts of virtue and happiness, and the ways Kant tried to combine them in the idea of the highest good, are examined with regard not only to Kant’s published works, but also to his lectures and reflections. The story of the changes in Kant’s ethic – particularly about the reality of the highest good and God’s existence – and the excursus on the birth of the concept of eudemonism give an original contribution to Kantforschung. (shrink)

The metaphysical layer of what can be called philosophical Christology in Kant’s treatise on religion reflects his idea of the embodiment of the archetype of moral perfection. Kant raises the problem of the ontology of the ideal in the shape of the question about the conditions that make actual experience possible: the ideal of holiness resides in reason, i. e. in the human being, but the dominance of radical evil over the human will puts it out of human reach either (...) in thought or in practice. For rational thought it is more natural to imagine the practical reality of the archetype as the embodiment of the authentic man proceeding from God. Using the Gospel narrative about Jesus, Kant interprets the human nature of the archetype in the light of his general notions about the properties of this nature. It is widely believed that Kant’s ethical theology eliminates the divine nature of the archetype by stating that an entirely holy will cannot be a moral example for the infirm human will. Kant however says, merely as a critical philosopher, that there are not enough rational grounds for thinking divine nature. Rational philosophy can think the archetype of perfection only as its pure and whole moral attitude through all the maxims and acts. Philosophy would transcend its boundaries if it claimed more and expected recognition of the prototypical theology of the ideal as the content of church faith. But it is not by chance that Kant sets forth the philosophical theory of the archetype as the content of faith in the subjunctive mood. According to Kant, the preaching of the divine character of the archetype as extra-philosophical supplement of the paradoxes and symbols of philosophical theology is only possible on condition that this statutory preaching does not obstruct the overall aspiration toward the actualisation of the pure moral attitude. If these conditions are observed the philosopher and the biblical theologian remain each with their theologies and within their rights. (shrink)

This is a fairly detailed philosophical and theological attempt to defend Kant's position that faith must be interpreted through pure practical reason if it is to remain a free and moral one. One of its primary aims is to demonstrate the intrinsic connections existing between Kant's critical ethics and his philosophy of religion. The main texts analyzed are the Foundations, the second Critique, and the Religion. ;The first and second chapters of the dissertation are intended to show that if an (...) individual is to possess a good will, she must first of all rationally understand in what it is that goodness consists, and second, she must do the good because she understands it to be such. I discuss the connections between Kant's understanding of a categorical imperative and autonomy, and use the conclusions to demonstrate the impossibility of a theological foundation for ethics. ;The third chapter shows that since only a categorical imperative can provide a universally valid concept of the good, such an imperative is a precondition of our ability to transcend our subjective desires and to value that which is objectively good. The unconditioned moral law, confronting us absolutely and without regard to subjective incentives, grounds the possibility of self-transcendence and of a real communication between all rational wills. ;Chapters four and five contain a critical account of Kant's understanding of the highest good and the conditions requisite for its attainment. Kant's rational understanding of the Christian faith is discussed as the result of a moral existential posture already adopted: it is a faith descriptive of the journey towards holiness, through which the propensity to value merely subjective inclinations over the objective good is eradicated, thereby making transcendence of the self possible. The historical revelation given in the person of Jesus Christ is interpreted in terms of the self-transcendence made possible by the universal moral law witnessing to God's care for all his sons and daughters. This unconditioned law is understood as the call to grace witnessing to God's grace, through which the positive revelation given in the person of Christ must be understood. (shrink)

Kant’s critical philosophy represents a rudimentary existentialism, or a proto-existentialism, in the following respects: He emphasizes human finitude, limits our knowledge, and argues that human consciousness is characterized by mineness (Jemeinigkeit). He introduces the influential concept of autonomy, something that lead to controversies about constructivism and anti-realism in meta-ethics and anticipated problems concerning decisionism in Existentialism. Kant makes human freedom the central philosophical issue, arguing (in the incorporation thesis) that freedom is inescapable for human agents. He even holds that awareness (...) of freedom leads to anxiety (as opposed to fear), and that anxiety precedes the fall into evil. In the doctrine of radical evil, he argues that human agents are always already suffering from self-deception because of this fall. In order to overcome self-deception and evil, Kant proscribes a radical self-choice in which the agent takes over himself and society by thinking independently and consistently. However, this is not only a moral issue for Kant but also something that concerns religious faith and hope, since Kant argues that we need religion to overcome not only moral evil but also despair. Although he criticizes traditional natural theology, Kant develops a practical (moral) interpretation of religion that anticipates religious Existentialism. In this context, he developed an influential critique of philosophical theodicies and a notion of the hiddenness of God that emphasizes the importance and inscrutability of evil. By doing this, and by introducing philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology as new disciplines, Kant prepared the ground for Existentialism. (shrink)

This collection contains some of Gadamer’s best essays, including: “Kant and the Question of God” ; “On the Possibility of a Philosophical Ethics” ; “On the Divine in Early Greek Thought” ; “The Ontological Problem of Value” ; “Thinking as Redemption: Plotinus between Plato and Augustine” ; “Myth in the Age of Science” ; “The Ethics of Value and Practical Philosophy” ; “Reflections on the Relation of Religion and Science” ; “Friendship and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on the Role of Friendship in (...) Greek Ethics” ; and “Aristotle and Imperative Ethics”. Rather than describe each essay, this review will content itself with presenting the predominant ethical and theological doctrines found in this compilation. (shrink)

This chapter presents the text of the Lectures on Ethics, which was compiled by Paul Menzer from manuscript notes of Kant's annual lectures. In the Lectures, Kant formulates a clear conception of the nature of ‘practical philosophy’ as a science which is concerned with the purely rational a priori laws governing the conduct of beings possessed of a free will. In view of what critics have sometimes said about the absence of a concern for personal happiness in Kant's ethics, one (...) should note his final unequivocal declaration that ‘God's will is that we should make ourselves happy' and that this is the true morality’. A fairly large section of the Lectures on Ethics is devoted to the doctrine of religion, and as well as being independently interesting as an account of Kant's attitude to religion, it helps to make more explicit the general metaphysical background which forms the context for his developing ethical theory. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of Manfred Kuehn’s observation that Kant’s claim in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that the ethical community must be a community under God seems “a bit strained.” After clarifying Kant’s train of thought that results in his conception of the ethical community in the form of the “visible church,” the paper argues that the seemingly strong religious dimension may be misleading. If we understand the ethical community to be the development of the kingdom (...) of ends in the Groundwork, it becomes apparent that Kant’s notion of God’s “sovereignty” over the ethical community is a shared sovereignty lodged in rationality and not in God’s own will. The “strain” that Kuehn senses thus suggests the potentially gratuitous nature of Kant’s references to God’s sovereignty over the ethical community. Despite the initial appearances, Kant’s account of the ethical community in the form of the visible church is, over the long term, closer to a secularizing move than to a robustly religious one. (shrink)

German theologian F. D. E. Schleiermacher's doctrine of God-the first to be developed in the post-Kantian era-fundamentally changed the course of Christian theology. The degree to which his doctrine of God was influenced by the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza remains in dispute, however. This study examines the ways in which Schleiermacher actively adopted elements of Spinoza's thought in the development of his own theological doctrine of God. Julia Lamm's analysis of little-known but seminal essays by Schleiermacher reveals his young (...) creative genius in daring to go beyond the neo-Spinozism of Herder and the post-Kantianism of Fichte by developing his own post-Kantian Spinozism. Schleiermacher's unique simultaneous appropriation of Kant and Spinoza is characterized by four themes: an organic monism, an ethical determinism, a critical realism, and a nonanthropomorphic view of God, which Lamm traces through his two major theological works, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers and The Christian Faith. Ultimately, Lamm finds that Schleiermacher departs from Spinoza in significant ways. Most notably, he talks about "the living God" who is best expressed through the divine attributes of love and wisdom. This living God is what Schleiermacher refers to as the "third alternative" to, on the one hand, the anthropomorphized God of orthodox Protestantism and, on the other hand, Spinoza's natura naturans. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against two prevailing views of Kant’s Religion. Against commentators such as Michalson and Quinn, who have argued that Kant’s project in Religion is riddled with inconsistencies and circularities, I show that a proper understanding of Kant’s views on grace reveals these do not exist. And contra commentators that attribute to Kant at best a minimalist conception of grace, I show that Kant’s view of it is remarkably robust. I argue that Kant works with three different (...) conceptions of grace. These are: a) grace and the God within, b) grace and the transformation of the fundamental orientation, and c) grace that can be laid hold of; the first and the last play a significant role in his philosophy of religion. (shrink)

If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In this engaging study, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and, (...) especially, Jacques Derrida. Tracing how Derrida probes the discourse on religion, its metaphysical presuppositions, and its transformations, de Vries shows how this author consistently foregrounds the unexpected alliances between a radical interrogation of the history of Western philosophy and the religious inheritance from which that philosophy has increasingly sought to set itself apart. De Vries goes beyond formal analogies between the textual practices of deconstruction and so-called negative theology to address the necessity for a philosophical thinking that situates itself at once close to and at the farthest remove from traditional manifestations of the religious and the theological. This paradox is captured in the phrase adieu ( à dieu ), borrowed from Levinas, which signals at once a turn toward and a leave-taking from God -- and which also gestures toward and departs from the other of this divine other, the possibility of radical evil. Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day. (shrink)

The 'ethical commonwealth', the central social element in Kant's account of religion, provides the church, as 'the moral people of God', with a role in establishing a cosmopolitan order of peace. This role functions within an interpretive realignment of Kant's critical project that articulates its central concern as anthropological: critically disciplined reason enables humanity to enact peacemaking as its moral vocation in history. Within this context, politics and religion are not peripheral elements in the critical project. They are, instead, complementary (...) social modalities in which humanity enacts its moral vocation to bring lasting peace among all peoples. (shrink)

Kant approaches the problem of moral evil by recalling the general Critical doctrine that the free moral acts of human agents express a noumenal, timeless, choice, which is made once for all and is the ground of all temporal moral choices. The limitations of speculative reason in the sphere of religion are emphasised by Kant when he admits the existence of totally incomprehensible ‘holy mysteries’ in religion. Kant holds that every ecclesiastical faith, which is founded in some historical revelation, is (...) perhaps a means to bringing about the moral church; but such faiths must wither away, for claims to revelation are incompatible with universality. Kant is totally opposed to any devotional exercises to God, except as a means to cultivating the moral disposition; or to any characterisation of God in anthropomorphic terms, as a tyrant or ruler with an arbitrary will. (shrink)

In the first half, I suggest that Kant’s conception of our moral life goes through a significant shift after 1793, with reverberations in his eschatology. The earlier account, based on the postulate of immortality, describes our moral life as an endless pursuit of the highest good, but all this changes in the later account, and I point out three possible reasons for this change of heart. In the second half, I explore how the considerations Kant brings up to argue for (...) his accounts can inform our process of formulating positions with respect to the afterlife. I argue that, in the absence of a convincing theoretical proof for or against the afterlife as well as apodictically certain knowledge of how demanding the moral law is, the Kantian strategy would be to ask which account of our moral life delivers the kind of contentment that can sustain our moral resolve. I also point out a way theists might be able to find contentment despite their moral failures by imagining God’s moral kenosis. (shrink)

Part I: WHAT IS ETHICS? Plato: Socratic Morality: Crito. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part II: ETHICAL RELATIVISM VERSUS ETHICAL OBJECTIVISM. Herodotus: Custom is King. Thomas Aquinas: Objectivism: Natural Law. Ruth Benedict: A Defense of Ethical Relativism. Louis Pojman: A Critique of Ethical Relativism. Gilbert Harman: Moral Relativism Defended. Alan Gewirth: The Objective Status of Human Rights. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part III: MORALITY, SELF-INTEREST AND FUTURE SELVES. Plato: Why Be Moral? Richard Taylor: On the Socratic Dilemma. David Gauthier: Morality and (...) Advantage. Gregory Kavka: A Reconciliation Project. Derek Parfit: Later Selves and Moral Principles. Bernard Williams: Persons, Character, and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IV: VALUE. Jeremy Bentham: Classical Hedonism. Robert Nozick: The Experience Machine. Richard Taylor: Value and the Origin of Right and Wrong. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Transvaluation of Values. Derek Parfit: What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best? Thomas Nagel: Value: The View from Nowhere. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part V: UTILITARIANISM AND CONSEQUENTIALISM. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. J.J.C. Smart: Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism. Kai Nielsen: Against Moral Conservatism. Bernard Williams: Against Utilitarianism. John Hospers: Rule-Utilitarianism. Robert Nozick: Side Constraints. Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VI: KANTIAN AND DEONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. Immanuel Kant: Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals. W. D. Ross: What Makes Right Acts Right? Onora O’Neill: Kantian Formula of the End in Itself and World Hunger. Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck. Philippa Foot: Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives. Judith Jarvis Thomson: Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VII: CONTRACTARIAN ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan. David Gauthier: Why Contractarianism? John Rawls: Contractualism: Justice as Fairness. T.M. Scanlon: Contractualism and Utilitarianism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VIII: VIRTUE-BASED ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Aristotle: The Ethics of Virtue. Bernard Mayo: Virtue and the Moral Life. William Frankena: A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics. Walter Schaller: Are Virtues No More than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules? Alasdair MacIntyre: The Nature of the Virtues. Susan Wolf: Moral Saints. Louis P. Pojman: In Defense of Moral Saints. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IX: THE FACT/VALUE PROBLEM: METAETHICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. David Hume: On Reason and the Emotions: The Fact/Value Distinction. G. E. Moore: Non-Naturalism. A. J. Ayer: Emotivism. R. M. Hare: Prescriptivism: The Structure of Ethics and Morals. Geoffrey Warnock: The Object of Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part X: MORAL REALISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF SKEPTICISM. J.L. Mackie: The Subjectivity of Values. Jonathan Harrison: A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory. Gilbert Harman: Moral Nihilism. Nicholas Sturgeon: Moral Explanations. Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Bruce Russell: Two Forms of Ethical Skepticism. Michael Smith: A Defense of Moral Realism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XI: RELIGION AND ETHICS. Plato: Morality and Religion. Immanuel Kant: God and Immortality as Necessary Postulates of Morality. George Mavrodes: Religious and the Queerness of Morality. Kai Nielson: Ethics Without God. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XII: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO CLASSICAL ETHICAL THEORY. Part A. Sociobiology and the Question of Moral Responsibility. Charles Darwin: Ethics and the Descent of Man. E.O.Wilson: Sociobiology and Ethics. Michael Ruse: Evolution and Ethics: The Sociobiological Approach. Elliot Sober: Prospects for an Evolutionary Ethics. J.L. Mackie: The Law of the Jungle, Evolution and Morality. Suggestions for Further Readingon Sociobiology. Part B. The Challenge of Determinism to Moral Responsibility and Desert. Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility. Louis Pojman: Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility:A Response to Galen Strawson. Richard Taylor: A Libertarian Defense of Free Will and Responsibility. Suggestions for Further Reading on Moral Responsibility. Glossary of Ethical Terms. (shrink)

An original work which rethinks the question of God in a constructive spirit, drawing its conclusions by considering ideas received from both philosophy and religion. Makes an important new contribution to the ongoing scholarly debates surrounding the intersection of philosophy and religion Suggests that this junction is not just dictated by religion having to prove its credentials to rational philosophy, but that it is also a matter of philosophy wondering if religion is the ultimate partner in dialogue Includes discussion of (...) a wide range of significant thinkers, both traditional and contemporary, such as Plotinus, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche and his successors Completes a trilogy of works by William Desmond, complementing its companion volumes, _Being and the Between_ and _Ethics and the Between._. (shrink)

In this study, the religious philosophy of Teoman Duralı, one of the leading representatives of contemporary Turkish thought, will be discussed. We are aware that studies have been carried out in various fields regarding Teoman Duralı's thought and philosophy. As far as we know, there has been no independent study on the philosophy of religion, which is one of the most important elements of Durali's philosophical system. Duralı did not use the concept of classical religious philosophy in a technical sense (...) in any of his works. However, in many of his works, he discussed the dominant subjects of philosophy of religion such as existence, knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, God vision, mind-revelation relationship, faith-knowledge dialectic, truth, self-soul and immortality in a comprehensive, consistent, rational and objective way. Religion has a central position in Duralı's thought. While establishing the philosophy-science-religion relationship, our philosopher took into account the boundaries drawn between reason and religion by philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Ghazali, Kant and Kierkegaard. In particular, the noumenon-phenomenon dualism, which is the basis of Kant's metaphysics and epistemology, and the distinction between reason and religion based on it, have been one of the starting points for Duralı. Duralı uses his own unique philosophical terminology in his philosophy of religion. For example, although concepts such as "Truth" and "Reality", "Life and Life" are used synonymously in the TDK Turkish Dictionary, it includes these concepts by giving them different philosophical contents. Our aim is to make a modest contribution to this field by considering Teoman Duralı's views on religion and philosophy, which are sprinkled throughout his works, in the form of philosophy of religion in accordance with his sensitivity to language and concepts. (shrink)

The religious intolerance that nowadays feeds a number of current conflicts leads us to rethink our modern conception of toleration, which emerged from the theological and philosophical debates accompanying or thrown up by the doctrinal controversies and politico-religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is defined by respect for distinct orders: that of conscience and that of the law, private and public, faith and reason. It bears the mark of religion and theology and relates to the idea of (...) human dignity which was given its ethical foundation in the 18th century by Kant’s doctrine of autonomy. Current events teach us that still today people kill and persecute in the name of faith, in the name of God, in the name of religion, because they have a different opinion or belief. If toleration, child of the Enlightenment and critical reason, has not definitively gained the upper hand in a rational, technical world, we need to ask whether it is not because we have neglected faith. To conclude from the distinction between reason and faith that they are antagonistic has not led to uprooting the human spirit’s intolerance. Might we have forgotten that peace is also the business of religion? What should we expect, what should we hope for from dialogue between religions? Could faith be the antidote to intolerance? (shrink)

ABELARD'S ethical theory, presented above all in his Ethics, is a version of what I'll call intentionalism': the view that the agent's intention determines the moral worth of an action. Now even in Abelard's day, the common understanding of morality seemed to endorse the following principle: (P) An agent should intend to Φ only if bringing about Φ would be good -/- But Abelard replaces (P) with its obverse, a principle he identifies as the rational core imbedded in traditional Christian (...) moral teaching: (P*) An agent should bring about Φ only if intending to Φ would be good Abelard's arguments against (P) and in support of (P*) are remarkably similar to those given by the most famous exponent of intentionalism, Kant. For Kant's ethical theory, especially as he presents in the first section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, identifies (P*) as the philosophical conception corresponding to the "common rational knowledge of morals." Abelard and Kant locate moral worth in features of the way the agent conceptualizes her performances, and each thinks that goodness is characterizable in terms of the form such conceptualization takes. Both are deeply indebted to Stoic ethics, familiar to each largely through Seneca's letters, and they share a common project: 'christianizing' Stoic metaethics so that the classical equation of virtue with happiness is revised to leave room for God and the Afterlife. -/- I'l l proceed as follows. In §1, Abelard's arguments against (P) will be canvassed. In §2, I'l l look at his arguments in favor of (P*) and a 'mediaeval categorical imperative'. In §3, a comparison with Kant's intentionalism should make the virtues of Abelard's theory apparent. In §4, I'l l discuss Abelard's failed attempt to baptize Stoicism. Finally, by way of conclusion, I'll offer a suggestion about why intentionalism, in any of its versions, is an ethical theory to take seriously. (shrink)

The subject matter of Ward’s book is Kant’s view of the nature of morality. Its object is to show that there is a development in Kant’s view, not only from the precritical to the critical stage of his thought, but also within the critical stage of his thought. The occasion for writing this book, it should be noted, is the prevalence of "verdicts" regarding Kant’s view of the nature of morality formed by British scholars on the basis of an acquaintance (...) of only the major critical works of Kant. According to Ward, an adequate understanding of Kant’s view of the nature of morality can come only from a reading of all of Kant’s works, most especially from a reading of his final, posthumously published, notes. In these notes, Kant equates God with practical reason. The significance of this equation is that it finally provides a stable solution to the problem of the foundations of morality, a problem which had occupied Kant since the beginning of his philosophical career. Kant’s precritical works, as well as the critiques, provide only unstable solutions. In his pre-critical works, Kant oscillates between seeking the foundations in knowledge and feeling. In his critiques, Kant seems to find a stable solution by conceiving reason as the source of principles, both theoretical and practical. The instability of this solution lies in the fact that Kant retains, along with the formal principles, a morality the source of which is religion. In the critiques, however, Kant is unable to conceive religion as anything more than a supplement to morality. Not until his final notes, Ward argues, does Kant recognize this instability and rectify it by giving religion an integral place in his conception of morality.—W. A. S. (shrink)

The aim is to examine Alois Riehl’s contribution to the “culture war” (Kulturkampf) in the second half of the nineteenth century. We show that he used Kant’s autonomy principle to argue against the idea that religious dogmatism is a fundament of morality. We prove this thesis by focusing on the forgotten historical background, which is important for an understanding of Morals und Dogma. Originally this essay was an expert opinion for the court case of the socialist H. Tauschinski who was (...) accused of blasphemy. Tauschinski wrote an article in which he doubted the immortality of the soul and the existence of a personal God. These two dogmas of the Catholic Church were considered bу the Austrian authorities to be the foundations of public order. Riehl questioned not only the charge but also the validity of religious dogmas for morality. Based on Kant’s ethics, he argued for a moral indifferentism of religious dogmas. His career was significantly influenced by this essay, because of its anti-clerical content. During the culture war, Riehl repeatedly had problems with the authorities, especially in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The “Neurath-Haller Thesis” argues that in Austria the appointment of professorships was controlled and monitored by the state, with the goal of installing a philosophy which was beneficial to the interests of the state, and a strong anti-Kantianism in Austrian Philosophy as a consequence. We can agree with this thesis insofar as Riehl in the period of the “Catholic Renaissance” in Austria was not allowed to succeed Ernst Mach. The analysis of Riehl’s arguments allows us furthermore to understand Riehl as a neo-Kantian as early as 1871/1872, which has been questioned by many authors who think the early Riehl was no Kantian. (shrink)

The concept of "ethical community", present in the third section of Kant's Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason, constitutes a central motif for understanding the genesis of Hegel's thought in the Berne and Frankfurt periods (1794-1800). The main hypothesis of the paper proposes that the Hegelian idea of the "kingdom of God", contained in the writings of that period, results from the reinterpretation of that Kantian concept. The demonstration of this thesis will be based on the exegesis of selected (...) passages from the sources. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic examination of the place of religion within Kant's major writings. Kant is often thought to be highly reductionistic with regard to religion - as though religion simply provides the unsophisticated with colourful representations of moral lessons that reason alone could grasp. James DiCenso's rich and innovative discussion shows how Kant's theory of religion in fact emerges directly from his epistemology, ethics and political theory, and how it serves his larger political and ethical projects of restructuring (...) institutions and modifying political attitudes towards greater autonomy. It also illustrates the continuing relevance of Kant's ideas for addressing issues of religion and politics that remain pressing in the contemporary world, such as just laws, transparency in the public sphere and other ethical and political concerns. The book will be valuable for a wide range of readers who are interested in Kant's thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Ethics of Justice in a Cross-Cultural ContextMichael von BrückThe central thesis of this paper is, primarily, that justice is neither a qualification of actions nor a political expediency, but is an existential reality. This reality is symbolized in different ways depending on religious experience and cultural conditioning. Underlying all concepts and ethics of justice is a dimension of basic insight that is beyond rational quantifying analysis.The semantics of (...) concepts of justice is different in various contexts and meaning systems, that is, in more general political and social contexts and in the rational discourse of philosophy. The general political term for justice is more confusing than helpful for a clear conceptualization; it might be treated more as a symbol in a mythological framework than a concept. In this context justice is defined in terms of what it is not, or metaphorically in differing categories, for example, justice as impartiality, equality. Thus, many programmatic formulae, such as "International Movement for a Just World,"1 express a utopia against the frustration with regard to social, economic, and political conditions and call for action to establish a "just world" without defining what the standard of this action must be in order to qualify as just and what exactly the notion of a "just world" actually might mean conceptually. Certain political actions are condemned from a particular standpoint, but the very foundation of any standpoint remains controversial. "Just" or "unjust" are actions that are determined according to the two standards of an Aristotelian suum cuique and the principle of treating equal cases in equal ways. Here, actions and their results as well as human freedom of action and the respective responsibility are a matter of debate. The problem is how to establish criteria for what is regarded as being "equal."2I suggest that justice can be discussed in two ways: (1) as an agreement or result of negotiation and better insight that is worked out between partners in social processes, and/or (2) as a reflection of the cosmic order, the divine will, or any pre-established harmony that is not negotiable by human beings. Whereas the first assumption is reflected in the theories of Aristotle, Rousseau, John Rawls,3 and others, the second one seems to be one of the basic contents of any religious worldview. Rawls actually constructs his idea of justice as fairness in the line of the familiar theory [End Page 61] of the social contract, following Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Accordingly, justice is the basic assumption that generates the condition for any further discourse in societies. It is an "original position," an "initial status," the "symmetry of everyone's relations to each other," which, of course, is neither an actual state of historical affairs nor a primitive condition of culture, but a purely hypothetical situation.4 For Rawls, to think justice requires the task to acknowledge interdependencies and mutual dependence of the different factors and actors in societies on the basis of reflexive reason. In religions, however, it is the dharma, the commandment of God, the Tao, or the cosmic harmony or "symmetry" of forces that is the root cause for justice in human relations.In this essay I will not argue any of these positions mentioned above as such but maintain only that any particular discourse depends on communication processes, that is, language and actors. Actors have interests that are mediated through claims. These claims may be compatible or not. However, in both cases they are part of the communication processes itself. And it is in communication that discourses materialize. Therefore, dialogue is the framework for any theory of justice, which may be inclined more to the first or the second position outlined above. Because today, due to economic, political, and cultural circumstances, all discourses are linked to each other, it is in cross-cultural communication and dialogue that a theory of justice has to be worked out. The question is whether justice should be regarded as a precondition for dialogue or a wanted result of dialogue. The hypothesis I want to argue for is that justice is neither only a precondition nor only a result, but that it is the very... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 97 supposed by actual idealism is above all moral and involves what Gentile describes as an aspect of divinity or infinity,as well as a concrete, historical aspect. The following chapter treats of the philosophy of "actual" idealism and compares the views of Kant and Gentile on relations between moral conscience and freedom. According to Yalentini, Gentile's idealism is essentially an ethical view. This chapter concludes with noting (...) that Gentile 's solution to the problem of historical knowledge differs profoundly from that of Hegel and Croce. For "reason" is not, for Gentile, a particular interpretation of historical process, but is rather the "reason" of consciousness in activity. In Chapter In, Valentini discusses Gentile's views on art and religion. The section on art concludes with a comparison between Gentile on feeling and Kant on the transcendental unity of apperception. Whereas art is supposed to be one abstract moment of spirit, religion is the other abstract moment. Valentini suggests that Gentile and Feuerbach hold similar religious views on the attributes of divinity, which are nothing other than the loftiest qualities which man feels to possess in his essence. The history of religion is then the history of the progressive humanization of God. Gentile's religion represents a sort of modem Catholicism in that it understands revelation as a fact of conscience, church as a historical institution, dogma as having a negative character and God as a member of the dialogue between God and man. Moreover, Gentile's Catholicism has a national character; it is the religion of the Italian people. Chapter Iv treats of the relations between individual and state. For, according to Gentile, an individual is inconceivableapart from the social relations which lie within him. Here Valentini distinguishes in detail the differences and similarities between the views of Hegel and Gentile on the relations between state and individual. The differences between the views of these two philosophers are due to the differences between their methods. The method of Hegel is empirical and historical, and examines the state (which remains historical) from an external point of view. According to an idealistic method, however, thought is not to be the spectator of a process, but in every instance, an actor, and philosophizing does not result from an analysis of historical reality, but from the negation of this reality in the name of an ideal, which philosophy is to draw from it (reality). The Appendix includes a critical evaluation of the theory of the dialectic. Here Valentini hopes to distinguish between the imaginary and the real or historical applications of the dialectic. He begins his evaluation by asking: Does the doctrine of the dialectic, like the philosophy of idealism, possess negative connotations, which cannot be separated from it? Valentini suggests that in order to answer this question, we must determine the extent to which the dialectical scheme is constitutive of every concept or truth in general. For this is the way in which Hegel intended that the dialectic be understood and evaluated. Some views in Hegel's philosophy of nature are then criticized according to empirical criteria. In conclusion, Valentini attempts to answer both "internal" and "external" criticisms of Marx's view of the dialectic, and shows that there are problems involved in its application, which still have to be resolved. Mv~ M. MILBURN 9 ~an Jos~ ~ate College Husserl und Kant: eine Untersuchung ~ber Husserls Verh~iltni~ zu Kant und zum Neubantianismus. By Iso Kern. (The Hague : Martinus Nijhoff, 1964.Pp. xxiii q- 448.) This is a very important book. In fact, it is indispensable for a study of Husserl and is, at the same time, almost as valuable for a study of Kant, for it deals with the kind of searching questions that must be asked when one deals with transcendental idealism in any one of its forms. But two reasons in particular, make this book significant. One is the fact that Iso Kern was able to make extensive use of hitherto unpublished materials (manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, etc.), available only in the Husserl Archives and here quoted for the first time--and 98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY quoted in great numbers. The other is Kern's philosophical competence... (shrink)