Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5063 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: 12-20-2001
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Message 11 of 73 (221548)
07-03-2005 11:55 PM
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Reply to: Message 1 by notwise
07-01-2005 11:33 AM
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faculty conflict : take two
The Philosophy Faculty versus the Theology Faculty by I. Kant in Der Streit Der Fakultaten::
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For there is something in us that we cannot cease to wonder at when we have once seen it, the same thing that rasies humanity in its Idea to a dignity we should never have suspected in man as an object of experience. We do not wonder at the fact that we are beings subject to moral laws and destined by our reason to obey them, even if this means sacrificing whatever pleasures may conflict with them; for obedience to moral laws lies objectively in the natural order of things as the objects of pure reason, and it never occurs to ordinary, sound understanding to ask where these laws come from, in order, perhaps, to put off obeying them until we know their source, or even to doubt their validity. But we do wonder at our ability so to sacrifice our sensuous nature to morality that we can do what we quite readily and clearly conceive we ought to do. This ascendancy of the supersensible, man in us over the sensible, such that (when it comes to a conflict between them) the sensible is nothing, though in its own eyes it is everything, is an object of greatest wonder; and our wonder at this moral predisposition in us, inseperable from out humanity, only increases the longer we contemplate this true (not fabricated) ideal. Since the supersensible in us is inconceivable and yet practical, we can well excuse those who are led to consider it supernatural - that is, to regard it as the influence of another and higher spirit, something not within our power and not belonging to us as our own. Yet they are greatly mistaken in this, since on their view the effect of this power would not be our deed and could not be imputed to us, and so the power to produce it would not be our own.
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Now the real solution to the problem (of the new man) consists in putting to use the Idea of this power,
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which dwells in us in a way we can not understand, and impressing it on men, beginning in their earliest youth and continuing by public instruction. Even the Bible seems to have nothing else in view: it seems to refer, not to supernatural experiences and fantastic feelings which should take reasons's place in brining about this revolution, but to the spirit of Christ, which he manifested in teachings and examples so that we might make it our own - or rather, since it is already present in us by our moral predisposition, so that we might simply make room for it...This teaching is the true religous doctrine, based on criticism of practical reason, that works with divine power on all men's hearts toward their fundamentl improvement and unites them in one universal (though) invisible church.
| This message is a reply to: | | | Message 1 by notwise, posted 07-01-2005 11:33 AM | | notwise has not replied |
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