The following essay is divided in three parts. First, while sharing in principle Harrison's hypothesis of an affinity between the sixteenth-century Reformation and early modern science, it questions the connection between the latter and the Weberian “disenchantment of the world.” Second, it suggests a broader group of possible actors than that envisaged by Harrison in referring to virtuoso collectors and their cabinets of curiosities who are rather marginalized in Harrison's narrative. And third, it highlights the physico-theology of the second half (...) of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century and beyond as an important temporary fusion of religion/theology and science at a time when the new science was still striving for social and religious respectability. (shrink)

The following essay is divided in three parts. First, while sharing in principle Harrison's hypothesis of an affinity between the sixteenth‐century Reformation and early modern science, it questions the connection between the latter and the Weberian “disenchantment of the world.” Second, it suggests a broader group of possible actors than that envisaged by Harrison in referring to virtuoso collectors and their cabinets of curiosities who are rather marginalized in Harrison's narrative. And third, it highlights (in agreement with Harrison) the physico‐theology (...) of the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century and beyond as an important temporary fusion of religion/theology and science at a time when the new science was still striving for social and religious respectability. (shrink)

Joseph Addison’s Spectator papers on the imagination have been read as a landmark in the development of aesthetic disinterestedness. But this is problematic in light of Addison’s theological concerns, particularly as they bear on the final causes of aesthetic pleasures. This teleology of the aesthetic is far from a Kantian understanding, but rather part of a larger discourse of physico-theology. By drawing on the work of Zeitz and Mayhew, among others, this paper shows how Addison’s theological underpinnings of the aesthetic (...) raise the broader question of the role theology played in the emergence and evolution of philosophical aesthetics. In eighteenth-century Britain, the aesthetic belonged to a disciplinary matrix comprising a set of confluent discourses, one of which was theology. Drawing on and expanding M.H. Abrams’s scheme, which explores how concepts such as ‘contemplation’ and ‘disinterestedness’ migrated from theology to aesthetic theory, this paper suggests that the concept of ‘aesthetic pleasure’ underwent a similar transformation. With Addison, the pleasures afforded by the imagination acquire a new dominant position which allows one to speak of a text in modern aesthetics instead of a manual of Christian apologetics. (shrink)

The Courage to Be is Tillich’s best-known work. That this work has retained such popularity perplexes one as a Tillich scholar since this text is anything but easy to understand. This essay offers an analysis of the concepts ‘theism,’ ‘absolute faith,’ and ‘God above God,’ and comes to the conclusion that both proponents of this work as well as its theological critics have misunderstood, and indeed that only because of these misunderstandings could the work have become a bestseller at all.

INTRODUCTION: Philosophy is the unique science which considers all other sciences in systematically unity (Kant). The classical anthropology (Platon, Aristoteles, Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc.) considers the human and his "spheres" (biological, psychological, logical, philosophical, theological) and his interdependence with nature and society. A philosophical theology investigates spiritual phenomena, described by religions and parapsychology in context of ethics, epistemology (incl. metaphysics), aesthetics. A theological anthropology should consider these phenomena multidimensional in context of a holisticscience, i.e. physico- (Kant), bio- (Lüke), psycho-, logico-, (...) philosophical theology, etc. [Lit.: Neu, Michailov: Integralanthropology. In: Proc. 21st World Congr. Philos. Istanbul. Press FISP 280‐281, 2003; Theol. Anthrop. In: Book: New Pathways for Eur. Bioethics. Ed.: Eur. Ass. Med. Ethics, Leuven, p. 53/60, 2006; Med. Ethics, 21st Ann. Conf. EACME (Ed.) Zürich, p. 53, 2007]. CONCEPTION: Regrettably philosophical theology is reduced to nearly philosophical and theological ethics: Both ethics in the future should realize a common scientific integrated ethics based on philosophy, theology, and psychology incl. of great cultures - Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianism-Mosaism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism. The present moral philosophy is very pluralistic: Many views concerningnormative and metaethics (deontology, axiology), also relativism, absolutism (incl. utilitarism), noncognitivism are present. A similar situation exists in moral theology: Not only in context of philosophy (consequentialism, justice, protectionism), but more - of theology are existent contradictionary differences concerning ethics in the great religions (related to God, Spirit/Soul, reincarnation, etc.). A future philosophical theology needs a renewal of its scientific theoretical andexperimental fundamentals (controlled observations: criterion for intersubjectivity) concerning theological anthropology incl. not only occidental epistemology (metaphysics, scientific theory, etc.), but also oriental - esp. Brahmanistic and Buddhist (self realization by Yoga, Tibetan, Zen Buddhism) and scientific evaluation of spiritual phenomena by biophysics, physiology, psychology and formal (Aristoteles, Gautama), real, transcendental (Kant), metaphysical (Hegel) normal logic. Areconsideration of application of philosophy of arts, esp. aesthetics in philosophical theology is also necessary (incl. inspirations in music/Bach, Beethoven, Händel, painting/Leonardo da Vinci, sculpture/Michelangelo). CONCLUSION: Scientific and political support for a renovation of theological anthropology and philosophical theology could help essentially for a realization of UNO-Agenda 21 for better total (incl. spiritual) health and peaceful world. (shrink)

In the early 1740s, one book caused turmoil and debate among the English cultural elites of the time. Entitled Christianity Not Founded on Argument, it was attributed to Henry Dodwell the Younger (1706-1784). This book went through four editions between 1741 and 1746, and the controversy that followed its publication involved some of the major figures of English religious thought in the mid-eighteenth century. Dodwell purposely led a skeptical attack on any sort of rational theology, including deistic doctrines of natural (...) religion, which identified ‘true’ religion with the outcomes of unprejudiced, rational inquiry, and Boylean and Newtonian physico-theologies, which aimed at proving God’s existence and the veracity of Christian revelation by combining physico-mathematical rationality with traditional theological concepts. In fact, Dodwell called attention to the limits and inadequacies of human reason and, hence, to the impossibility of achieving religious truth by either reflecting on human nature and morality (as most deists used to do) or investigating the physical world (as several freethinkers, most prominently the deist and pantheist John Toland, and such physico-theologians as Boyle, Newton and their followers did). On the other hand, Dodwell did not openly reject Christianity and, instead, he claimed to be a defender of fideism. However, his observations on the Scriptures, religious education and the de jure divino (divine right) institutions of the Church and the Christian state were extremely ambiguous. For this reason, his book received a variety of reactions in the more than twenty replies that followed its publication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century TheologyFrancis Oakley[W]e must cautiously abandon [that more specious opinion of the Platonist and Stoick]... in this, that it... blasphemously invades the cardinal Prerogative of Divinity, Omnipotence, by denying him a reserved power, of infringing, or altering any one of those Laws which [He] Himself ordained, and enacted, and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters of Destiny.Walter (...) Charleton, The Darknes of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature : A Physico-Theologicall Treatise (London, 1652)Of the various attributes characteristically ascribed to God in the Christian tradition—goodness, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotence, and the like—it is omnipotence which of recent years has most persistently been the object of focused attention among philosophers and historians alike. That that should be the case with philosophers working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition is not altogether surprising. While it is doubtless a development few would have predicted half a century ago, the years since then have seen something of a recrudescence of interest in a legislative or divine-command ethic. 1 Had that [End Page 437] not itself conspired to make omnipotence an obvious focus of philosophic attention, the deepening contemporaneous preoccupation with modal logic or the logic of possibility would surely have succeeded in so doing. Understood classically as affirming of God the ability to do all things and connoting a virtual capacity for action (as opposed to a power exercised in actuality), omnipotence has proven to be something of a troublesome notion, inviting unrestrained speculation about hypothetical divine action and generating a veritable cat’s cradle of philosophical conundrums concerning the relationship of God’s power to his will, wisdom, goodness, and justice.Medieval theologians and philosophers alike were forced to grapple with these taxing problems, 2 and philosophers of our own era have found them no less directly pertinent to their own logical and ethical concerns. 3 In 1955 Mackie inaugurated what was destined to become an ongoing discussion of omnipotence in the philosophical journals, 4 and such philosophers as Kenny and Keane, Cowan and Wolfe, Dummett, Plantinga, Swinburne, and Geach have been drawn into the fray. Since then, as a result, the pages of Mind, Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and even The Listener have been punctuated by their efforts to grapple with those venerable questions concerning the divine power that had exercised St. Peter Damiani in the mid-eleventh century, brought Abelard to grief a half-century later, and subsequently led Peter Lombard to devote to them a crucial and influential section of his Sentences—whether God of his omnipotence could undo the past, whether he could have made things other than he had, or created a world better than he did, and so on. 5 [End Page 438]While no medievalist can be expected to be anything but gratified by this unexpected testimony to the enduring significance and power of medieval scholastic concerns, those of us interested especially in the intellectual developments of the later-medieval centuries have particular reason to be energized by it. The years since Mackie launched this contemporary philosophical debate have also seen an intensification of interest on the part of historians in the ways in which, during these particular centuries, medieval thinkers themselves came to terms with the implications of the divine omnipotence and dealt with the theological and philosophical puzzles characteristically generated by that notion. Unlike the philosophers, whose concerns have been somewhat more broad-ranging, the historians have focused in particular on a quintessentially scholastic distinction that was developed, it has been said, “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and grace.” 6 The distinction in question is that between God’s power understood as absolute and as ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata), which the theologians and philosophers of the period deployed as part of their great effort of accommodation between Greek philosophical and biblical notions of the divine, and the historical significance of which the scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to vindicate. 7 But while that distinction has been... (shrink)

This essay examines Wolff’s science of teleology, which has historically been dismissed as a crude physico-theology resting on a simple confusion between uses and purposes. Focusing especially on his two German volumes (German Teleology, 1723, and German Physiology, 1725), I argue that, first, Wolff never intended teleology to be a self-standing theology; and second, that teleology, as a part of physics, is primarily an applied or practical discipline. In its theological function, teleology presupposes the ontological and cosmological arguments for the (...) being and attributes of God rendered in rational theology. As a part of physics, meanwhile, teleology presupposes the inert-mechanical view of nature which had emerged in the seventeenth century, and builds upon mechanistic physics by providing a perspective on nature as consisting of relations of benefit and advantage. The physiological part of teleology, or the study of plant and animal bodies, occupies a special place, for which Wolff deploys notions of health and sickness consistent with the mechanistic physics he accepts. With this in view, I argue that Wolff’s teleology could not be the proper target of Kant’s critique of physico-theology. Yet, there remain deeper differences between Wolff and Kant on the topic, which have to do with the sources and limits of teleological reasoning in general. (shrink)

The importance of teleology in the 18 th century has mainly been studied from the point of view of a few specific authors. Leibniz is one of the most convinced advocates of the use of final causes in both physics and metaphysics. Despite its significance for the history of teleology, very few studies were in fact devoted to the influence of the Leibnizian doctrine during the 18 th century. However, Leibniz’s reception allows us not only to understand his own views (...) on teleology in comparison with those that 18 th century thinkers attributed to him, but also to feed the conceptual debate on the legitimate articulation of finality and efficiency in natural philosophy in that period. Consequently, studies on 18 th century physico-theology may help us to clarify the following questions: what is the difference between explanations concerning organic functions and in the architectonic use of the principle of optimum in physics? And how exactly do “the details of physics” illustrate the general harmony of the world? In order to clarify these kinds of questions, the present issue explores how Leibniz’s 18 th century readers integrated in their own philosophical doctrines multiple interpretative possibilities opened up by Leibniz’s texts. (shrink)

In this article we distinguish four kinds of finalities at stake in Nieuwentijt’s “scopologia” (general design, teleology of health, particular final causes and organic uses). We show that the tension between the principle of economy and the assignation of particular final causes in Nieuwentijt’s physico-theology perfectly illustrates what later commentators as Gould and Lewontin called the problem of ‘panglossism’ in biology. It was a problem to which Leibniz himself drew attention in different texts.

Review of: Stephen Gaukroger: The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1680-1760. Oxford: Clarendon, 2010, pp. ix+505. £47.00 (hb). ISBN 9780199594931. This volume is the second of a projected six-volume work on the shaping of modern cognitive values through the emergence of a scientific culture, a phenomenon that Gaukroger takes to be specific to the West. The volume ranges from Newton’s initial publications on optics to the French Enlightenment and the publication of (...) the <i>Encyclopédie</i> of Diderot and d’Alembert. During this period, the unity within natural philosophy, secured by the view that matter theory should underlie all natural philosophy, is challenged, as is the unity between natural philosophy and physico-theology, the latter unity being the primary source of the cultural legitimacy that had allowed natural philosophy to flourish. The first type of unity was sundered as Newtonian natural philosophy disavowed the requirement that mechanics be united with a microscopic corpuscularian basis. Further, during this period, scientific (or natural philosophical) values first came to dominate the cognitive values of an entire culture, largely through the <i>persona</i> of the <i>philosophe</i> as the embodiment of reason, albeit a sensibilized reason arising from the new non-mechanistic natural philosophy of the mid-eighteenth century and no longer tied to physico-theology. The book does a better job charting the trend toward disunity than it does charting the rise of sensibility. (shrink)

According to recent commentators like Paul Guyer, Kant agrees with Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that physico-theology can never provide knowledge of God and that the concept of God, nevertheless, provides a useful heuristic principle for scientific enquiry. This paper argues that Kant, far from agreeing with Hume, criticizes Hume's Dialogues for failing to prove that physico-theology can never yield knowledge of God and that Kant correctly views Hume's Dialogues as a threat to, rather than an anticipation of, his own (...) view that the concept of God provides a useful heuristic principle for science. The paper concludes that Kant's critique of physico-theology reflects Kant's deep dissatisfaction with Hume's manner of argumentation and suggests that Kant's attempt to provide a more successful critique of physico-theology merits continued philosophical attention. (shrink)

Genes induced by the plant hormone auxin are probably involved in the execution of vital cellular functions and developmental processes. Experimental approaches designed to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of auxin action have focused on auxin perception, genetic dissection of the signaling apparatus and specific gene activation. Auxin‐responsive promoter elements of early genes provide molecular tools for probing auxin signaling in reverse. Functional analysis of several auxin‐specific promoters of unrelated early genes suggests combinatorial utilization of both conserved and variable elements. These (...) elements are arranged into autonomous domains and the combination of such modules generates uniquely composed promoters. Modular promoters allow for auxin‐mediated transcriptional responses to be revealed in a tissue‐ and development‐specific manner. (shrink)

Revised versions of papers presented at the 1994 Tyndale Fellowship jubilee conference held in Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick.

The possible existence of extraterrestrial life led in the eighteenth century to a heated debate on the unique status of the human being and of Christianity. One of those who discussed the new scientific worldview and its implications for theology was the Swedish natural philosopher and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. This article discusses Swedenborg's astrotheological transformation, his use of theological arguments in his early cosmology, and his cosmogony that later on ended up in his use of contemporary natural philosophy in his (...) theology, especially concerning the question of the plurality of worlds. I will first sketch the astrotheology found in his natural philosophical works, and then turn to the astrotheology of his later spiritual teachings. In Swedenborg's works we find teleological arguments and a stress on the universality of the divine creation and Christianity, as well as anthropomorphic descriptions of extraterrestrial life. By reconciling contemporary astronomical ideas, among others the concept of the plurality of worlds, with Christian dogmas, Swedenborg refuted deistic conclusions that Jesus was merely a mortal, while at the same time keeping his belief in the modern astronomical worldview. (shrink)

KANT ARGUES AT GREAT LENGTH in the Critique of Pure Reason that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated by means of theoretical reason. For after dividing all traditional theistic proofs into three different kinds—the ontological, the cosmological, and the physico-theological—Kant argues first that the cosmological and physico-theological implicitly assume the ontological argument and then that the ontological argument is necessarily fallacious. By restricting knowledge in this manner Kant notoriously makes room for faith, that is, in this case, for a (...) practical proof of the existence of God, which he develops in the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant’s reasons for rejecting theoretical proofs of the existence of God have received considerable attention. In particular, Kant’s objection to the ontological argument, namely that existence is not a real predicate, still seems relevant in contemporary philosophy of religion. What has not received much attention, however, is the relationship between Kant’s rejection of theistic proofs in his critical period and his views on the matter in his pre-critical period. For throughout his pre-critical period, but especially in his The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, Kant believes that there is a theoretical proof of the existence of God. One would naturally expect Kant’s criticisms of theistic proofs as developed in the “ideal of pure reason” to apply in straightforward ways to his earlier attempts at a theistic proof. However, Kant rejects the three traditional arguments in The Only Possible Argument just as he does in the first Critique. Further, his reason for rejecting the ontological argument in particular is identical to the one presented in the first Critique: “Existence is not a predicate or a determination of a thing.” Accordingly, Kant understood himself to be developing a theistic proof in The Only Possible Argument that is distinct from the three traditional arguments and is also not subject to the objections he raises against them. Given that Kant rejects all theoretical proofs of God’s existence in his critical period and given that he did not take his critical objections to the traditional proofs to apply to the theistic proof developed in The Only Possible Argument, what is his justification for rejecting his pre-critical argument for God’s existence? (shrink)

Beginning with Berkeley and Leibniz, philosophers have been puzzled by the close yet ambivalent association in Newton's ontology between God and absolute space and time. The 1962 publication of Newton's highly philosophical manuscript De Gravitatione has enriched our understanding of his subtle, sometimes cryptic, remarks on the divine underpinnings of space and time in better-known published works. But it has certainly not produced a scholarly consensus about Newton's exact position. In fact, three distinct lines of interpretation have emerged: Independence: space (...) and time are not essentially related to God. Causation: space and time are caused by God. Assimilation: space and time are attributes of God. This paper defends the third interpretation against the first two by drawing out the under-appreciated influence of Descartes' metaphysics on Newton's ‘physico-theology’. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Robert Boyle's strategies for making imperceptible entities accessible to the senses. It is well known that, in his natural philosophy, Boyle confronted the challenge of making imperceptible particles of matter into objects of sensory experience. It has never been noted, however, that Boyle confronted a strikingly similar challenge in his natural theology – he needed to make an equally imperceptible God accessible to the senses. Taking this symmetrical difficulty as my starting point, I propose a (...) new approach to thinking about the interconnections between Boyle's natural philosophy and natural theology. For the most part, studies of science and religion in the early modern period work by seeking out the influence of explicitly stated religious beliefs on scientific ideas. I argue, by contrast, that we need to focus on Boyle's representational practices, using his attempts to represent imperceptible entities as a means of uncovering metaphysical and theological presuppositions that he did not always articulate when stating his religious beliefs. With new interpretations of bothA Discourse of Things Above Reason(1681) andSome Physico-Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection(1675), I show that there were crucial similarities between Boyle's practices for representing both God and atoms. I go on to show, moreover, that Boyle used these practices to enact an ontological stance at odds with one of his most important professed beliefs. (shrink)

Jonathan I. Israel claims that Christian ‘controversialists’ endeavoured first to obscure or efface Spinozism, materialism, and non-authoritarian free thought, and then, in the early eighteenth century, to fight these openly, and desperately. Israel appears to have adopted the view of enlightenment as a battle against what Voltaire has called ‘l’infâme’, and David Hume has labelled ‘stupidity, Christianity, and ignorance’. These authors’ barbs were launched later in the century, however, in the period of the high Enlightenment, following polarizing controversies of mid-century. (...) This chapter argues that many Enlightenment figures, including Hume and Voltaire, were far more involved within a culture in the second quarter of the century that was less divided against Christian interlocutors, less rigid, and more complex than these two wished to suggest, in retrospect, after mid-century. A Christian literary and scientific circle was productive and prominent in French Enlightenment culture, particularly in the personages of François Prévost, Pierre Desfontaines, Samuel Formey and Noël Pluche, and in the pages of ubiquitous journals and occasional publications. Many of the Catholics among these lumières held the education and retained the status of ‘abbé’, a title with prophylactic properties that legitimated expansive inquiry – into topics such as libertinism and atheism – and facilitated in-print exchanges with Voltaire and other less orthodox figures. This wing of the Enlightenment developed a culture that reflected, and sometimes promoted, Christian theology – especially in the tradition of natural theology – and displayed broadly Christian and politically conservative values. The latter aspect served in part to motivate concerted efforts toward their marginalization by others, but the French Enlightenment of the eighteenth century’s second quarter was actually very mixed, and not so very radical; rather, it became polarized at mid-century, and in retrospect, the Christians of this wing were written out of the history by the likes of Voltaire and Hume. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the arc of Kant’s critical stance on the belief in God, beginning with the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and culminating in the final chapter of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). I argue that toward the end of his life, Kant changed his views on two important topics. First, despite his stinging criticism of it in the Critique of Pure Reason, by the time of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to endorse the physico-theological argument. (...) Second, some time around the publication of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to move away from the argument for the practical postulates. (shrink)

My paper moves from Kant's taxonomy for the arguments for the existence of God. After providing a brief survey of Kant's account, I claim that contemporary arguments from design fit Kant's characterization of the physico-theological argument. Then, in the second section, I deal with the logical frame of the argument from design. In the third section I introduce Berkeley's divine language argument (DLA), in order to demonstrate that DLA is an argument from design. Consequently, in the fourth section, I give (...) a refutation of Hooker's and Kline's reading of DLA. Finally, in the last section, I take Berkeley's DLA as a paradigmatic case of the argument from design, showing a fundamental difficulty the argument endorses. (shrink)

The present paper investigates why logical empiricists remained silent about one of the most philosophy-laden matters of theoretical physics of their day, the principle of least action (PLA). In the two decades around 1900, the PLA enjoyed a remarkable renaissance as a formal unification of mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, and relativity theory. Taking Ernst Mach's historico-critical stance, it could be liberated from much of its physico-theological dross. Variational calculus, the mathematical discipline on which the PLA was based, obtained a new rigorous (...) basis. These three developments prompted Max Planck to consider the PLA as formal embodiment of his convergent realist methodology. Typically rejecting ontological reductionism, David Hilbert took the PLA as the key concept in his axiomatizations of physical theories. It served one of the main goals of the axiomatic method: ''deepening the foundations.'' Although Moritz Schlick was a student of Planck's, and Hans Hahn and Philipp Frank enjoyed close ties to Gottingen, the PLA became a veritable Shibboleth to them. Rather than being worried by its historical connections with teleology and determinism, they erroneously identified Hilbert's axiomatic method tout court with Planck's metaphysical realism. Logical empiricists' strict containment policy against metaphysics required so strict a separation between physics and mathematics to exclude even those features of the PLA and the axiomatic method not tainted with metaphysics. (shrink)

Italian contributions to the Enlightenment are most often discussed in terms of the slow acceptance of Newtonian science (Ferrone) or the obstacles to change within a quaint museum of antiquated states (Venturi). This case study of an important naturalist attempts to identify the paths to change between tradition and revolt, in fields of natural knowledge that are sometimes less regarded in the context of an international movement of intellectual emancipation. In spite of an early attachment to some form of physico‑theology, (...) Antonio Vallisneri, professor of medicine at the University of Padua from 1700 to his death in 1730, made a number of innovative contributions to biological description and natural history which placed him among the forerunners of Georges Buffon. Heir to the empirical approach enshrined in the work of Marcello Malpighi, for the most part he attempted to avoid much of the philosophical and theological speculation raging between deists and atheists. However, the implications of his work, including activity as a science communicator to wider audiences, pointed to a reassessment of the importance of accurate natural knowledge in the ongoing reform of public instruction and cultural institutions then occurring in the major cities of Italy and abroad, an important plank in the Enlightenment program in the years leading up to the French Encyclopédie. (shrink)

The essay collection "Kant on Proofs for God's Existence" provides a highly needed, comprehensive analysis of the radical turns of Kant's views on proofs for God's existence.— In the "Theory of Heavens" (1755), Kant intends to harmonize the Newtonian laws of motion with a physico-theological argument for the existence of God. But only a few years later, in the "Ground of Proof" essay (1763), Kant defends an ontological ('possibility' or 'modal') argument on the basis of its logical exactitude while he (...) praises the physico-theological argument for its beauty and appeal to the common sense. In the first "Critique" (1781/7), Kant replaces traditional constitutive ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological proofs with his own regulative theoretical and moral-practical religious arguments. He continues to defend a moral argument in the second "Critique" (1788). But in the third "Critique" (1790), Kant reintroduces a physico-theological besides an ethicotheological argument in order to unify the critical system of philosophy. Kant develops further moral arguments and arguments from evil in the "Theodicy" essay (1791) and the "Religion" (1793/4), and still searches for the right kind of proof for God's existence in the "Opus postumum" (1796–1804).—Part one of this volume is dedicated to an analysis of Kant's proofs for God's existence in their historical order that explains which proofs Kant favors or rejects in various periods of his thought. Part two contains a systematic classification of main kinds of proof for God's existence in Kant that outlines the argumentative structure of particular kinds of proof and discusses Kant's potential reasons for their variations and modifications. The essay collection speaks to Kant specialists, philosophers, and theologians, but introduces the topic to non-academic readers also. -/- Contributers: Uygar Abaci (Pennsylvania State University), Craig Bacon (University of South Carolina), Andrew Chignell (Princeton University), Eckart Förster (Humboldt University, Johns Hopkins University), Ina Goy (Beijing Normal University) Paul Guyer (Brown University), Graham Oppy (Monash University), Lara Ostaric (Temple University), Stephen Palmquist (Independent Scholar), Lawrence Pasternack (Oklahoma State University), Konstantin Pollok (University of Mainz), Oliver Sensen (University of Tulane), Allen Wood (Bloomington University, Stanford University). (shrink)

There is much more said in the Critique of Pure Reason about the relationship between God and purposiveness than what is found in Kant's analysis of the physico-theological argument. The ‘Wise Author of Nature’ is central to his analysis of regulative principles in the ‘Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic’ and also appears in the ‘Canon’, first with regards to the Highest Good and then again in relation to our theoretical use of purposiveness. This paper will begin with a brief discussion (...) of the physico-theological argument before moving on to the Appendix and the Canon. Finally, it will consider some changes to the role of the Wise Author in the Critique of Judgement. (shrink)

Despite its philosophical interest, Susanna Newcome’s Enquiry Into the Evidence of the Christian Religion (1728, revised 1732) has received little attention from commentators. This paper seeks to redress this oversight by offering a reconstruction of Newcome’s innovative argument for God’s existence. Newcome employs a cosmological argument that differs from Thomist and kalām version of the argument. Specifically, Newcome challenges that idea that the causal chains observed in nature can exist independently. She does this through an appeal to findings from Newtonian (...) natural philosophy that suggest that the universe has entropic tendencies. This suggests that the continued operations of nature are dependent on a cause external to the universe. Newcome identifies this external cause with God. Various strengths and weaknesses of Newcome’s argument are discussed and an attempt is made to situate the argument within her broader epistemic framework and the larger context of Newtonian physico-theology. The paper also explores what is known of Newcome’s biography and intellectual milieu. (shrink)

With his analysis of courage as a foundational theme of modern existential philosophy, Tillich answers, in “The Courage to Be“: dread, which is a key motif in the thought of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, and which also gains importance in ‘existential America’ at the same time. This essay documents the innovative existential philosophical character of the work under the guidance of the concept of ‘participation.’ The book is much more than a theological bestseller. It is also evidence of the wealth (...) of perspectives of existential thought that reveals insightful ethical and political perspectives beyond the religious and philosophical aspects typical of Tillich. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), Kant argues for the impossibility of theistic arguments, namely the ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological arguments. However, his objection relies on his classification of theistic arguments, which has been criticized by analytical philosophers of religion such as Plantinga (2012) and Swinburne (2019). Therefore, this paper aims to critically investigate two problems related to this classification: the systematic criteria of its classification and the historical sufficiency of its three theistic proofs. Regarding (...) the first problem, it will be argued that it is possible to recognize a certain systematic artificiality in Kant's classification of theistic proofs, given the criticisms of Strawson (1966) and Hegel (1812, 1830), as well as the internal critique developed by the authors of this work. Regarding the second problem, it will be argued that it is possible to indicate a certain historical insufficiency in Kant's classification of the three theistic proofs, based on brief critiques focused on some classical theologians such as Anselm, Aquinas, and Al-Ghazali. Finally, once it is justified that Kant's objection depends on this possibly artificial and insufficient classification, it will be briefly indicated that Kant does not seem as justified as he intended in his objection to theistic arguments. (shrink)

Early writings of year 1750 to the ultimate bundle of Opus Postumum Kant remained preoccupied by the question of God. The genetic reconstruction of the theoretical writings of philosophy shows a certain degree how dogmatically asserting the existence of God, first, turns on has its epistemic status to the assertion of an ideal of reason while held constant, as transcendental theology and as physico-theology reflechissante, as to its systematic function, namely to serve as a foundation. It shows how the other (...) theological problematic, as the problematic foundation widens, the way, in the same considerations of theoretical philosophy, to moral theology to be understood as constituting the ultimate point of view the most pupil of a transcendental philosophy remains, it is true, the order of the unfinished. (shrink)

John Locke's comments on experimental natural philosophy can plausibly be seen as a part of the physico-theological project of certain Christian virtuosi of the Royal Society to show that the workings of nature reveal the existence of a providential God. As I make clear, Locke thinks that God providentially designs us with limited epistemic capacities in order to check our pride and to motivate us to seek perfection in God. Locke maintains that a true science of nature is possible, but (...) he is pessimistic about the prospects of realizing such a science, given our epistemic limitations. I argue that this seeming tension can be resolved by appreciating that the horizon for obtaining this science is eschatological. In other words, Locke thinks that we will have a true science of nature in a state of perfection, as God transforms the probable knowledge we have of bodies into certain and comprehensive knowledge. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyze how Schopenhauer employed and developed the concept of Trieb in his philosophy of nature. It elucidates that Schopenhauer was adamant in distinguishing the Trieb from the will and gave the Trieb an important role in defining some characteristics of his metaphysics of nature—against reductionism and for explaining the complexity of organic life. Moreover, the chapter reconstructs how the Trieb—through Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb—found its place in Schopenhauer’s philosophy of biology. Finally, it focuses on his (...) criticism of physico-theology and on his most famous application of the Trieb, namely the sexual drive in organic life and its effects in human society as “sexual love”. (shrink)