Kant’s first critique, Videos 45-48

This document will cover comments and notes on a series of videos on the critique by Victor Gijsberts.

Video 52; The transcendental ideal

The idea of pure reason speaks of how humans arrive at the idea of God. Kant’s story has to prove that the idea of God can come from something other than God itself. God in Kant’s work is an idea, in a similar vein to Plato’s ideas. An ideal on the other hand is something we can aim for.

The thought of the completed whole states that things are determined in relation to the whole of possibility, meaning that we know how all the possible predicates rely on it. The complete use of an object is an idea which cannot be found in experience and is thus purely rational. The completed whole, besides being an idea, is also an ideal. The transcendental ideals is thus the most real being, or God.

Reason however does not suppose that a being exists that conforms to the ideal it only posed as the existence of the idea of such a being.

God is an idea that grounds all possible predicates. It is therefore not material, but grounds all material things. Taking God as being Eternal, Simple and Omnipotent however, oversteps the boundaries of the transcendental ideal.

Video 53; The ontological argument

The transcendental idea is not a necessary being. The ontological argument state that there must be some necessary being. Believing this being to both be necessary and to be a Transcendent God, leads us to the transcendental illusion. There’s no reason to claim to know that any being is not a necessary being, therefore, if a necessary being has to exist it need not be God.

Video 54; Further proofs of the existence of God

According to Kant, the cosmological- and physio-theological-argument both depend on the ontological argument. For instance, the cosmological argument states that:

If something exists then an absolutely necessary being must exist. I exist tell the necessary being must exist.

However, to prove that this necessary being is the absolute being we require the ontological proof.

For the physio-theological argument, Kant attempts to prove the same dependence on the ontological argument. The physio-theological argument states that:

The complexity of the world must come from an intelligent designer.

However, even if the existence of such an architect/designer was proven that does not imply that this architect has the properties of a God. To apply these properties, such as omnipotence or eternity, to the architect, we need the ontological argument.

Video 55; Appendix to the dialectic

Reason must be able to understand itself. The understanding posits and object as a unity of sensation, whereas reason poses transcendent ideas as a unity of understanding. Reason as such is what leads us to illusion and misunderstanding. However, we cannot simply dispose of reason. The understanding needs reason to get a mark of Truth which does not exist in the empirical world.