Is it Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?

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 e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wolterstorff, Nicholas 1932- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 1998
In: Modern theology
Year: 1998, Volume: 14, Issue: 1, Pages: 1-18
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1468-0025
Contains:Enthalten in: Modern theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/1468-0025.00054