Okay, I'll be the first to say I'm not the expert here, but in reading over the Wikipedia entries on Immanuel Kant and his writings and ideas, I find that I am feeling extremely irritated with him. I'm going to give a short synopsis of his contributions to philosophy, and then I'm going on a little rant.
Immanuel Kant -- 1724-1804 -- According to Wikipedia, Kant believed one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of outside authorities. If we live that way, then our beliefs, conclusions, and the moral code we live by are personal and internally generated, rather than being dictated by society or the church. Off the bat I have to say that I'm inclined to approve of this idea, but I fear it may, in combination with his other ideas, have had a detrimental impact on Western civilization.
On Pure Reason
Kant's work in Epistemology reconciles and integrates the Empiricist and Rationalist schools of thought, and thereby unifies the experimental and theoretical sciences. Empiricism is characterized by the scientific method. One of its core beliefs is that knowledge can be derived only through the evidence of our senses, using a process of forming and testing hypotheses against the world, and rejecting those which prove contradictory to our experience. In Empiricism, absolute knowledge of reality is impossible, and truth is inherently uncertain and limited by our experience. In Rationalism -- characterized by the development of mathematics -- reason, not experience, is used to distinguish truth from falsehood. The evidence of our senses is considered unreliable at best, and it's the inner world of our mind which is seen as the ultimate source of knowledge. These two schools of thought developed in parallel in the century prior to Kant's arrival on the scene.
Pure reason refers to the mental process by which we perceive and understand reality. Kant put forward the idea that our experiences are structured by essential mental constructs -- in particular, the concepts of space and time, and cause and effect -- which make it possible for us to process and understand our sensory experience. These concepts cannot be experimentally verified, but without them we cannot make sense of the phenomena of our senses. So we must rely on reason to understand our experience, and reason in turn must be grounded in experience to avoid spinning off into theoretical illusions. In his view, all our knowledge of reality comes through our senses, and the process of converting raw sensory phenomena into a mental model of reality is inherently shaped and limited by the internal structure of our minds. We cannot directly perceive reality: our knowledge is limited both by what we are capable of sensing, and by our mental capacity for understanding. If a reality exists outside of space and time, or beyond the limits of our senses, we'll never know, because we would be unable to perceive it. This is the essence of his most famous work, the Critique of Pure Reason.
On Practical Reason
Practical reason, as distinct from pure reason, refers to the mental processes by which we decide how to act. According to Kant, there are two reasonable motivations for choosing how to behave: we may act out of self-interest to bring about a desired end, which is inherently subjective and relative to our individual situation, or we may act according to a universal moral law (which, to be valid, must be objective and independent of the empirical world.) The second choice he refers to as pure practical reason. According to Kant's view, there is only one valid universal moral law, which he refers to as the categorical imperative. This law is to act according to those maxims which we can, at the same time, will that they should be universally applied. (You could think of this as a generalization of "do unto others...") He believed that all other moral laws which can be formulated fail the test of universality by making reference to desired ends in the empirical world.
So far so good, but brace yourselves: here comes the "proof of God" part. At the end of Kant's first book, one might have concluded that God is ultimately unknowable -- and from the standpoint of pure reason that is the case. Kant, however, was unwilling to leave things in that state. He did believe it was impossible to prove God's existence through empirical means, due to the limitations of our minds and senses (and we mustn't forget the lack of empirical evidence.) However, for the same reason, it is also impossible to *disprove* the existence of God.
You might think he would end up an agnostic after that statement, but no.
Kant believed that moral law is superior to self-interest as a motivation, and so there must be a valid reason for choosing it. He also believed that, in order to be superior to self-interest, such a law must provide for the highest good. In his view, that is the only reasonable justification for choosing pure practical reason over one's own self-interest. But this statement gives rise to a contradiction. A reality in which morality prevails *and* people are happy is better than a reality in which morality prevails and happiness is not achieved (or not reliably achieved.) So the highest good must include both the highest virtue *and* the greatest happiness. However, we can readily observe in the empirical world that virtue does not necessarily lead to happiness, and that we ourselves have not achieved the highest virtue (and are not likely to achieve it any time soon.)
So Kant concludes that we must be immortal, so that we can have a *really* *long* time to overcome our human self-interestedness and achieve the highest virtue, and there must be an afterlife outside the empirical world in which we can achieve whatever measure of happiness we deserve which does not come to us in this life, and there must be an omniscient God to make it so.
Say what?
So the promise of a reward in heaven is the only reasonable justification for moral behavior? And we ought to believe in God because we can't get a reward in heaven unless God exists to give it to us? Holy limburger, Batman! This argument is so full of holes I could strain spaghetti with it!
Kant was one of the greatest thinkers in Western history -- the man who finally reconciled the philosophical divide between the theoretical and experimental sciences -- and this is the best justification he could come up with for morality?! No wonder Karl Marx came out so vehemently in opposition to religion, just fifty years later!
I wonder if Kant realized how easily his argument could be used to support the opposite conclusion. The juxtaposition of: we cannot prove God exists, with: God is the only justification for morality, leads directly to a highly undesirable conclusion: namely, that a belief system in which God does not exist, and morality is irrelevant, is equally valid. At which point the obvious thing to do is to use other people's belief in God as a tool to manipulate their behavior, and get the goodies in this life instead of waiting for the next. Sure, there's some risk involved -- there might be a hell, after all -- but Christianity quite handily filled that gap with an insurance policy that says Faith is all that's needed to avoid that fate, and Good Works are unnecessary. And, to clinch the deal, you have until you're on your deathbed to attain your Faith. I wonder who originated *that* idea?
It seems clear to me that the empirical world does not function according to Kant's views on morality. There are a great many non-theists who follow a moral code, and (unfortunately) a great many theists who act primarily in their own self-interest. So I think the compelling scientific conclusion is that either Kant is wrong, or the world is full of fools. I find myself wondering who it was that substituted the concept of "Greater Good" for "Highest Good" in this argument, and when that substitution was made, since it seems to me that's one of its fundamental flaws. Does that count as a cliff-hanger? ... read on, my dear, read on ...
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