Week XI: Ideal of Pure Reason/Critique of Theology (pp. 551-589) |
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| General Secondary Reading (optional): Allison pp. 396-422; Strawson pp.207-31. | |||
| Question 1) Is Kant's refutation of the Ontological
Argument successful?
Secondary literature: Strawson, 223-5; Malcolm, "Anselm's Ontological Arguments" and Alston, "The Ontological Argument Revisited" in Plantinga, ed. The Ontological Argument (on reserve) ; Shaffer, "Existence, Predication, and the Ontological Argument" (in Penelhum & MacIntosh); Swing, 301-15; and one of Bennett, 228-37, Walsh, 222-5, or Allison 412-17 |
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| Question 2) Is Kant's refutation of the Cosmological
Argument successful? (For this question, you may consider both his refutation
in the Ideal and in the Antinomies.) Does the Cosmological Argument depend
on the Ontological one, as Kant claims in the Ideal of Pure Reason? Secondary literature: Wilkerson, 180-98; Strawson, 175-206; Walker, 122-35; Allison 417-19 (you may want to read more of Allison for context); J. William Forgie, "The cosmological and ontological arguments: how Saint Thomas solved the Kantian problem" in Religious Studies 31(1995); Lawrence Paternak, "The ens realissimum and necessary being in the Critique of Pure Reason" in Religious Studies 37 (2001): 467-74; |
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Question 3) What gives rise the the illusion of an ens reallissimum as necessary being? Does the idea of God arise naturally in the course of scientific inquiry? Does the idea of God play an positive role in our (scientific) understanding of the world? Secondary literature: Strawson, 219-23; McFarland, 25-42, 69-97; Walker, 165-77; Pippin, 201-15; Allison 396-412, 419-22; Grier 230-56 |
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