חדש באתר: NotebookLM עם כל תכני הרב מיכאל אברהם

Q&A: Kant and Logical Proofs for God

Back to list  |  🌐 עברית  |  ℹ About
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Kant and Logical Proofs for God

Question

Kant argues in his book Critique of Pure Reason that our logic cannot lead us to proofs of the existence of God, who is infinite and at the same time outside our logic and our cognition.
This claim essentially rejects all the logical proofs for God. (Rabbi Soloveitchik spends five years on the finding and then suddenly jumps to a proof of God only from emotion.)
How does the Rabbi deal with this strong statement?

Answer

First, I’m not familiar with any such statement by Kant. On the contrary, in Critique of Pure Reason he goes through the three types of proof and rejects each one separately. He does not reject the very possibility in principle of proving the existence of God.
And as for the claim itself, what is so strong about it? It’s really a foolish claim. And not because the claim that He is outside logic is itself foolishness. But even aside from that, even if He is outside cognition, that does not prevent proving His existence. For example, the proof that there is something that created the world, because a complex thing is not created spontaneously, does not require any assumption about God or any ability to know Him and say something about Him. I prove that there exists something that created the world. The question of whether I have a way to know it or not is irrelevant to the proof. And so too for all the other types of proofs that I know.

Discussion on Answer

Michi (2020-11-24)

And I haven’t even addressed a proof of God from emotion. I can’t even respond to that nonsense. It’s a combination of words that means nothing.

Yishai (2020-11-24)

I think Rabbi Soloveitchik has been treated a bit unfairly. As far as I know, he argues that awareness of God’s existence is embedded in every person at the most basic level of consciousness. In other words, it’s a kind of intuition. I assume the Rabbi knows Rabbi Soloveitchik’s claim better than I do.

K (2020-11-25)

Rabbi, you may be surprised, but there is such a thing as a proof of God from emotion, and it’s not clear that it’s all that bad if you incorporate it into the physico-theological argument. It even improves Column 144.

Leave a Reply

Back to top button