December 9 – final meeting of the fall quarter

You are invited to our last meeting of the fall quarter next Tuesday, December 9, 12:00 – 1:20 pm in Swift 208 , co-sponsored with the Philosophy of Religions workshop.

Evan Kuehn (a Ph.D. candidate in Theology) will present his paper entitledFrom Postulates of Reason to Doctrines of the Faith: on Doing Theology after Kant.” Russell Johnson, a Ph.D. student in Philosophy of Religions, will respond.
Lunch will be served.

The abstract is below:

This paper will attempt to lay out some theses for the task of doing theology after Kant and in the spirit of his philosophical work. In particular, I am interested in the problem that faces any would-be Kantian theologian of how to offer a theological account of things like God, or the immortality of the soul, or human freedom. Kant sees these sorts of ideas as necessary postulates of reason which can, however, never become objects of knowledge for us. Yet in many cases, theologians do not consider ideas like these from such an epistemological remove. Ideas which according to Kant are merely regulatory for theoretical knowledge and at most objects of faith are, for theological inquiry, often treated as objects of knowledge. Can theology engage these objects (systematically, critically, and theoretically) as objects of theological knowledge without thereby abandoning the original Kantian framework of human knowledge limited to the categories of understanding? And what resources are available within Kant’s Critiques for dealing with these theological ideas as objects of theological knowledge?

Paper is available for download below, prior to the workshop.  Please do not cite or share.

Persons with disability who would request assistance, please contact us using the website form  in advance.  

EKuehn Workshop Paper