Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant

Bibliographic Data

ID8109504
AuthorsNicholas Wolterstorff (Yale University, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume14
Issue1
Pages1-18
Publication date1998-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Theology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0266-7177 • E-ISSN: 1468-0025
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-0025.00054
OpenAlexW2049772358
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Kant marks a watershed in the history of theology, after which the anxious questions, “Can we speak of God? How can we?” have continually haunted modern theologians, insisting on being addressed before any others. Feeling compelled not to say about God what they want to say without first establishing that they are justified or entitled in saying those things, theologians have experienced both frustration and anxiety. However, the widespread assumption that one must experience the Kantian agony in order to be a modern theologian is challenged. Wolterstorff contends that one can move beyond Kant by rejecting the mental representationalist picture required by the latter’s account of intuitions and concepts. Conceiving of our intuitions as ’inputs’ which are then mentally represented according to concepts, is not only unnecessary but misleading. Theologians are better off rejecting the assumption that awareness always represents input and adopting instead the view that perceptual awareness, for example, is not so much an input but an action – the actualization of one of our human powers. Such an alternate pathway (opened up by Thomas Reid) would allow modern theologians to appropriate Kant without being appropriated by Kant

Action (physics · Epistemology · Feeling · Order (exchange · Perception · Practical reason · Theology · Karl Barth and Christian Theology · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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