Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn by Edward Kanterian

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn by Edward Kanterian Luke R. Moffat KANTERIAN, Edward. Kant, God and Metaphysics: The Secret Thorn. New York: Routledge, 2018. 444 pp. Cloth, £105.00; eBook, £20.00 Kanterian provides an exhaustive analysis of Kant's early works, leading up to the famed "critical turn." Kanterian's main thesis throughout the book is that Kant remained consistently dedicated the connections between theology and metaphysics. Central to this thesis is the "weakness motif," the notion that human reason is by nature imperfect, corruptible, and capable of only limited knowledge. Kanterian seeks to show how this motif, entangled with Kant's religious devotion, consistently informed his philosophical development. The book runs over seven chapters, following a roughly chronological account of Kant's works prior to construction of the critical philosophy. Each of these chapters traces the gradual edification of Kant's "fortress," the metaphysical armaments within which Kant—according to Kanterian's reading—sought to protect his religious faith. The first chapter provides historical and theoretical antecedents to Kant's work, through a wide-ranging discussion of the intersections of knowledge, religion, and morality. Here, Kanterian draws together various iterations of the weakness motif, rooted in figures of the Reformation such as Erasmus and Luther. Kanterian frames the period in terms of continuous dynamic relationships between divine creation, human frailty, and scientific exactitude. The story told here is "rhapsodic," avoiding a "clear teleological pattern." A prevailing theme does materialize, however, over how exactly to construct God's presumed perfection in relation to the natural world, how to conduct theological-metaphysical thinking. Chapter 2 departs from the theological-metaphysical ground established in chapter 1. Beginning with Kant's earliest works from the 1740s, Kanterian delves into Kant's "synthetic project," to find "synthesis between mathematical physics and metaphysics." Through his negotiations with Leibniz and Newton, Kant's first struggles to develop an apt method for reconciling mechanics and divine creation emerge here. By once again tracing the thematic elements of Kant's work to predecessors such as Johann Friedrich Stapfer, Kanterian excavates and contextualizes Kant's ecstatic picture of a universe that is both revealed through natural science and yet majestic in its immeasurability. This in turn leads to a discussion of Kant's ontotheology and determining ground, [End Page 796] signposting the centerpiece of Kanterian's analysis, Kant's theory of existence in The Only Possible Ground (1763). After brief discussion of the works immediately prior to Ground in chapter 3, chapter 4 embarks on a critical reading of two pillars in this work: existence and the modal argument for possibility. Various ambiguities are identified with Kant's use of these notions, and interpretations sought to clarify them. These include a Frege–Russell analysis, which analogizes Kant's concept–data relation to that the linguistic one between sense and reference. While intriguing, it is not always clear how this interpretation impacts Kant's ultimately "religious agenda" in the The Only Possible Ground. Chapter 5 reiterates the conflict between mathematics and metaphysics introduced in chapter 2, briefly detailing Kant's first attacks on the system he had constructed in the Only Possible Ground. Here, the dramas of metaphysical endeavor come to the fore. Kanterian's insistence on Kant's continued quest for certainty during this self-criticism informs chapter 6, which deals with Kant's so-called skeptical period during the 1760s. Despite Kant's growing problems in handling the issue of God's presence—to human reason and to the world—Kanterian defends the claim that, even at his most skeptical, Kant still saw metaphysics as a demand of reason. In the final chapter, Kanterian returns to the themes with which he began, turning inward—as Kant himself arguably also did—to examine the complex status of reason at the nascence of the critical turn. This is achieved largely through a commentary on the notes with which Kant supplemented his copy of Baumgarten's Metaphysica, alongside portions of Kant's Reflexionnen. Here, Kanterian makes his most explicit moves to demonstrate core components of Kant's first Critique in antecedent work. This is particularly successful when it comes to reason's weakness, and the approximations...