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Journal

2020 | 17 | 65 | 77-94

Article title

The Ambiguity of Kant's Concept of the Visible Church

Content

Title variants

Languages of publication

Abstracts

EN
This paper explores the implications of Manfred Kuehn’s observation that Kant’s claim in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that the ethical community must be a community under God seems “a bit strained.” After clarifying Kant’s train of thought that results in his conception of the ethical community in the form of the “visible church,” the paper argues that the seemingly strong religious dimension may be misleading. If we understand the ethical community to be the development of the kingdom of ends in the Groundwork , it becomes apparent that Kant’s notion of God’s “sovereignty” over the ethical community is a shared sovereignty lodged in rationality and not in God’s own will. The “strain” that Kuehn senses thus suggests the potentially gratuitous nature of Kant’s references to God’s sovereignty over the ethical community. Despite the initial appearances, Kant’s account of the ethical community in the form of the visible church is, over the long term, closer to a secularizing move than to a robustly religious one.

Journal

Year

Volume

17

Issue

65

Pages

77-94

Physical description

Dates

published
2020-08

Contributors

  • New College of Florida

References

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Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

ISSN
1733-5566

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.desklight-b8f769d2-7cb5-4e3c-b774-53ff09802a6f
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