This article begins with a brief survey of Kant’s pre-Critical and Critical approaches to theodicy. I maintain that his theodical response of moral faith during the Critical period appears to be a dispassionate version of what Leibniz called Fatum Christianum. Moral rationality establishes the existence and goodness of God and translates into an endless and unwavering commitment to following the moral law. I then argue that Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason offers a revision of Kant’s 1791 conception of (...) “authentic theodicy.” Kant comes to recognize that the ends of morality and virtue, as well as the action needed to respond to the noumenal evil at the heart of humanity, outstrip the “religion of good life conduct.” This leads Kant to argue in favor of a new form of moral life embedded in a religious community and based on the love of God and of one’s fellow humans. Such a life is rooted in the incorporation of a holy principle in our noumenal selves that he terms “divine blessedness.”. (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)