Statuiert Kants theoretische Philosophie eine radikale negative Theologie? Anmerkungen zu einer These aus der jüngeren Forschung im Lichte von Kants regulativem Deismus

Abstract

Markus Kohl, Ruben Schneider and (in substance) Marcus Willaschek have recently argued that Kant’s theoretical philosophy includes a radical negative theology. This article criticises this radical reading. On the one hand, it argues that different Kantian passages that seem to speak for the absolute incomprehensibility of the highest being can be interpreted as showing that Kant merely rejects comprehensibility according to the pattern of schematised cognition of the understanding (there is no concrete cognition of God). The paper goes on to show that Kant advocates a form of ‘regulative deism’ (although he also associates deism with a form of atheism) and that the analytical conclusions of deistic transcendental theology are no less substantial in principle than those of the Transcendental Aesthetic of the KrV. What Kohl’s, Schneider’s and Willaschek’s interpretations lose sight of is the fact that Kant continuously characterises the highest being conceived by reason in the KrV as a “faultless ideal.”