Kant’s Criticisms of Ontological and Onto-theological Arguments for the Existence of God

What is it about?

This is a detailed reading of the 14 paragraphs that make up Kant's criticism of the ontological argument for the existence of God in the Critique of Pure Reason. I maintain that the famous remark that "existence is not a predicate" is part of a digression rather than Kant's main argument. I show how that criticism was used as a criticism of the Cartesian/Anselmian ontological argument in Kant's own pre-Critical writings. But in those pre-Critical works, Kant then advanced a version of the onto-theological argument that has its foundation in Leibniz's criticism and improvement of the Cartesian argument. It would be odd that Kant's "revolution" in thought in 1781 brought about no substantial developments in his approach to these arguments. I maintain that Kant's criticism of the ontological argument in the first Critique is also directed at his own earlier onto-theological argument. Kant's new criticism is what one would expect from his Critical turn in which pure reason is regarded as impotent and in which knowledge requires grounding in experience. That criticism is that there is no meaningful predication (understood as the assertion of ontological predicates to things) without a synthetic, existential judgment about the object of predication, which is obviously impossible for the advocate of these pure rational arguments for the existence of God. Therefore, the ontological and onto-theological arguments cannot generate a contradiction upon the denial of some predicate to God. Rather than making the conceptual error of making "existence into a predicate," these arguments are quite straightforwardly circular.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

My approach to Kant's discussion of the ontological argument has few antecedents in the literature. It is even widely held that Kant continued to accept his own, earlier onto-theological argument during the Critical period. I show that this is false.