Proofs of the Existence of God in the Critique of Pure Reason and Morning Hours

This chapter examines Kant’s continued criticism of the classical arguments for the existence of God in the Critique of Pure Reason and his critique of his own earlier new argument for God as the ground of all possibility. Kant’s conclusion is that belief in the existence of God must be defended on practical rather than theoretical grounds. In Morning Hours Mendelssohn defended the ontological and cosmological arguments and added a new argument from the incompleteness of human knowledge. Mendelssohn does not accept Kant’s argument for belief in God on moral grounds only but instead adopts a pragmatic position that we have no choice but to rely on the results of the unimpaired use of our own cognitive powers.