2022 Vol. 41. №4

The positions of Christian Wolff and Im­manuel Kant on the possibility of proving the existence of God require some examination. Wolff’s critique of the physical-theological proof and his proposed ways of improving it are here analysed. God is central to Wolff’s philosophical system and the fundamental prerequisite of his theoretical and practical philosophy. Although Wolff insists that the natural law is inherent in human nature and can therefore be comprehended by human reason without turning to divine revelation, in reality God is the creator of this natural law and the cause of its perfection. Accordingly, faith in the true God in Wolff’s philosophy is obligatory for achieving the supreme degree of virtue, whereas pagans and atheists can achieve only its lowest degree. Kant criticises traditional proofs of the existence of God both in his pre-critical and critical periods. The author looks at the role God plays in Kant’s practical philosophy. Comparing the positions of Kant and Wolff, the author finds many similarities between them. Chief of them is that although both thinkers saw the moral/natural law as universal and obligating regardless of a person’s faith in God, in fact faith in God turned out to be an inevitable consequence of the true moral attitude of the individual.

In his first Kant book of 1929 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics Martin Heidegger focusses, not surprisingly, on one of the two central themes from his two years earlier major book Being and Time — the question of the essence of time. It cannot be overseen that he tries to show that his conception of time is superior to Kant’s. Nevertheless, it is high time to examine whether Heidegger’s claim can bear up against a micro-hermeneutical and micro-analytical test. Such an examination, to be fair and appropriate to the leading aspects of the two philosophers, has to bear in mind from the very beginning the deep differences of these leading aspects: Kant concentrates on the formal structure and the strictly subjective status of time as a form of intuition, Heidegger concentrates on the roles time plays in the daily human world orientation. Under these methodical and conceptional pre-suppositions a close examination must come the result, that both conceptions complement, even complete one another. Heidegger comes closer to the type of time-experience as it is exposed by St. Augustine, Kant exposes a strict analysis of the human way to conceive of the successive form of time. It is evidently possible for us today to continue on both paths.

The Russian intuitivist philosopher Nikolay Lossky repeatedly admitted Kant’s substantial formative influence on him as a scholar. Moreover, Lossky was a disciple of the Russian Kantian Aleksander Vvedensky, and was one of the most successful translators of the first Critique. However, his own philosophical project is rather the opposite of the critical programme. While in the framework of Lossky’s epistemology the specificities of his reading of Kant have received a fair amount of attention in Russian scholarship, in the ethical field the Russian philosopher’s comments on Kant have passed largely unnoticed. My task is to reveal the link between Kant’s practical philosophy and Lossky’s ethics. A demonstration of the degree of Kant’s influence in this field will enlarge and concretise the current thinking about Lossky’s perception of Kant. We are looking at a whole range of parallels and borrowings. My comparative analysis focuses on the following aspects: 1) definition and uses of the term “categorical imperative”, 2) free will as the condition of the possibility of moral action, 3) the cause of moral evil, 4) the role of the idea of God in ethics. As a result, I reveal how Lossky used elements of Kant’s practical philosophy as conceptual, terminological and rhetorical resources in his theonomic ethics, and how the Russian philosopher interpreted them in line with his own doctrine. I argue that Lossky’s use of the Kantian moral terminology is incautious and debatable and point out several intersections of ethical argumentations in the light of its projection on radically different ontological and epistemological principles.