『순수이성비판』에서 칸트의 신(神) 이념

Abstract

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that the transcendental ideas of reason, including the idea of God, function as regulative principles for the systematic unity of our cognitions of experience. However, apart from this regulative function, Kant seems to endow the idea of God with an additional function in the Critique of Pure Reason, i.e., a negative function with regard to theology. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate this negative function of the idea of God for theology. For this purpose, we proceed as follows: First, three transcendental ideas, including the idea of God, are pure concepts of reason which necessarily originate from the very nature of reason, and each of the transcendental ideas finds their origin respectively in three different forms of syllogisms according to which the faculty of reason manifests its nature. Secondly, the idea of God which is specifically derived from the disjunctive form of syllogisms is understood as a concept of an ens realissimum, i.e., as a concept of ‘the supreme condition of the possibility of everything that can be thought.’ Finally, since the idea of God is a problematic concept whose objective reality cannot be cognized, the idea of God as an ens realissimum can never provide us with any determinate cognition on God. Nevertheless, this idea of God, insofar as being the only concept of God which necessarily originates from the nature of reason and which is in itself a faultless ideal of reason, can function as a ground of censorship with which all possible claims on God must be in accord. In short, although the idea of God cannot positively function as a source to provide any determinate cognition on God for theology, it can negatively function as a ground to censor all possible claims on God which are provided by other sources for theology.