God is very much a part of our society today.  Even so, when the deity is examined closely, obvious flaws are discovered.  Therefore, a new perspective of the deity is needed to account for these lapses in understanding.  God has two different perspectives; the being of God, and the concept of God.  Unlike the concept of God, when the deity is understood as an object or Supreme Being, problems arise in the ability to comprehend such an object.  Ideals, on the other hand, are primarily based in philosophical thought.  For this reason, the concept or ideal of God proves to be far more effective at co-existing with our modern age of thought and reason than that of the Supreme Being God.

            It is difficult to discuss the concept and objective form of God without first separating them by definition.  To do this, I will explain the Supreme Being based primarily on the understanding of the modern secular world.  Then, by using the philosophical concepts of Immanuel Kant and his transcendental ideal, I will define God in terms of virtue and reason.  God as a supreme being can be described as all-knowing and all-powerful, a creator and destroyer, and a supreme controller; and these qualities must constitute an actual physical or metaphysical object.  This means that God as a supreme being is in fact a being.  Just like any human, animal, or object, God must have a form in some sense.  The Supreme Being is much more than an idea and with having God as an actually object, the question of his existence is brought up; for a creator that does not exist is no creator at all.  This is not the same for an idea or ideal.  When ideas are discovered, there does not have to be any unexplainable physical properties.  Immanuel Kant proposes that God is no more than a series of ideals and virtues.  In his book the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant refers to his idealistic God as the transcendental ideal (551-553).  Kant’s argument is that when God is an ideal rather than an object or being, then the comprehension of that ideal becomes possible to consider.  Kant’s stresses the importance of moral insight in this understanding in relation to his idea of the Highest Being.  This is a title given to the state of human thought that, at least he believes, all humanity is striving for.  God of course, or the ideals that he represents, is the only way to achieve this level of thought.  For Kant, moral perfection, truth, wisdom, knowledge, peace, joy, justice and love are the virtuous characteristics of the concept of God; and the only ones that a person needs to consider in their advancement to the Highest Being (Ch. 3).

            To understand my argument, this definition of the Supreme Being must be void of any virtues that are components of the idealistic deity.  A purely supreme being must be considered in this definition in order to verify the failings of such a deity. When a comparison is made between the Supreme Being and Kant’s transcendental ideal, it is clear that when God is in the form of an object, there are obvious short-comings.  For example, if we are to consider God to be a part of the natural world, then we have no actual comprehension of what he is.  Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his book entitled On Politics and Ethics, writes, “All the knowledge that a person has about a thing is based on his understanding of its substance, the way the substance of a thing is understood must determine what is known about it.”  He goes on to explain, “The human intellect can not achieve the understanding of God’s substance by means of its natural capacity because in this life all knowledge that is in our intellect originates in the senses” (3).  This means that every entity that we can understand is based on our comprehension of the characteristics that make up that entity.  And our ability to understand those characteristics is based on our senses of the natural world.  Because we have no ability to “sense” the characteristics of God using our five human senses, it is impossible to understand God using natural human intellect (Book 1 - Chapter 3).  As God is thought of in the realm of nature, human understanding comes to a stand still due to the fact that we can not understand any physical quality of God.  This means that God is separate from humanity; which undoubtedly leads directly to the next fallacy of God.

            God as a supreme being also fails at connecting with society because his essence is unknown to mankind.  Kant’s pursuits to understand God in his own sense lead him to the idea of humanism.  According to Stephen Palmquist, in his article Kant’s Moral Panentheism, Kant supported the idea of “enlightened humanism” (19); or rather, the idea that human thought was more important than the religious foundation.  Kant argues that religion must put human morals above religious piety.  Palmquist supports this by writing, “He(Kant) did argue that the meaning of religious  doctrines must be moral at their core” (18).  When God is conceived as a being, void of moral characteristics, than humanity can not relate to such a being on any level.  Human thought has the ability to understand morality and other virtues that make up the transcendental ideal; but can not connect to a being of divine characteristics.  If human thought is incapable of processing such information, than God fades out from society as a whole leaving nothing but human motivation to fill the gap, causing humanism to flourish.  According to the article, The Religious Disposition as a Critical Resource to Resist Instrumentalisation written by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, there is a steady decline in religion and the only things replacing the gaps left is modern thought and reason (689).

            Another example of how the Supreme Being God fails exists as more of a personal responsibility.  The American Heritage dictionary defines ignorance as, “1.  Lacking education or knowledge.  2. Demonstrating a lack of education or knowledge.  3. Unaware or uninformed” (423).  If we apply what was previously discussed about the incomprehensibly supreme being to the definition of ignorance, it is quite clear that the belief in a supreme being God has the unavoidable dynamic of ignorance.  We can not understand or know who or what God is; meaning that to believe in God, or at least the Supreme Being view, you must accept the ignorance that follows it.  Simply put, to believe in a supreme being deity is an invitation for ignorance.

            The lingering question at this point is: why must one believe in the transcendental ideal above anything else?  To understand the Idealistic God, or at least the importance for it, you must understand the purpose of morality and virtue.  Kant had two ideals that he proposed to support the concept of the transcendental ideal; his categorical imperative and the state of the highest being, based predominantly on Greek philosophy.  The ancient Greeks proposed the idea of Eudiamonia (Kant’s highest being), which can loosely be translated as a fulfillment of happiness.  The Greeks believed that by choosing to live a virtuous life, one could achieve a certain state of fulfillment, which inevitably would lead to happiness.  Kant supported this in his idea of the highest being.  Christopher Insole writes, “Kant is clear that the concept of the ‘highest good’ involves both a demand, that we follow the moral law, as well as a promise, that happiness will be the outcome of being moral” (333).  He goes on to say, “We are not moral because we are seeking future happiness. . . .Rather, happiness is the consequence that ought to follow from being moral” (335).    Insole and Kant are both telling us that as human beings exist, we must follow a moral law in order to achieve the highest good.  By doing so, true happiness, and not just a state of contentment, will follow.  To simplify it, Kant is telling us to be moral for the sake of being moral, and no other reason.  Yet, a void seems to exist in this concept because there seems to be no definition on what moral goodness actually consists of.  In order to solve this dilemma, Kant proposes the idea of the categorical imperative.  Sr. Mary Bernard Curran, in her article entitled What is Pure, What is Good, describes Kant’s two formulations of the categorical imperative in conjunction with moral law.  She writes:

Kant wants a moderate self-scrutiny.  He finds this check in the categorical imperative.  This is the moral law.  The law of nature formulation of the categorical imperative reads: ‘. . . act as if the maxim of your own action were to become through your will a universal law of nature’.  The second formulation reads: ‘So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means’.  (198)

The first formulation means that if you wish to understand what is moral, simply apply the action in question to the universal aspect.  In other words, would the action be moral if everyone did such an act.  The second formulation refers to the connection one would have to another person.  Kant is describing a person to person relationship being an end to a goal, and not some form of means to that goal.  People should never be considered means to an end; rather, they should become the end result of some sort of moral behavior.  As these moral laws are understood, the transcendental ideal seems to become absolute in nature; meaning that the virtues seem to not simply be based on an individual’s perspective, but rather, a universal understanding of absolutism. 

One last point that must be understood is the difference between knowledge and belief.  As mentioned already, God as a supreme being can only exist in conjunction with the ignorance of what that is.  Not to say that one cannot believe in a supreme being, but one must understand that you cannot have any knowledge of what that is.  On the other hand, God as an ideal can be a source of knowledge and understanding due to the fact that ideals are comprehendible by human thought.  Our understanding of virtues must precede our belief in a supreme deity.  Janice L. Schultz writes in regards to knowledge, “He who knows Socrates because he is white, or the son of Sophroniscus, or because of something of that sort, would not know him in so far as he is this man” (626).  This means that knowledge is more than knowing simple facts of any given object.  For example, you cannot know God as a creator simply because there is a creation.  Belief and knowledge must be separately understood ideas before and attempt is made to understand any nature of God.

According to Lawrence Pasternack, Kant considered the Supreme Being form of God as ens realissimum, meaning “the most real being” (467).  This seems to indicate that Kant is contradicting himself in his own argument.  But when careful consideration is given to his position, Kant simply is hold the view of the transcendental ideal higher than that of the Supreme Being.  He is accepting the knowledge of virtue before the belief of a deity.  When the concepts of morality and the highest good are applied to Kant’s transcendental Ideal, we come to understand the necessity of God in relation to the virtues that he is comprised of.  Ideals are human in nature, or at least from our perspective of them, which means that they are totally comprehendible when proper reason is applied.  When we use the moral understandings of Kant and recognize that these virtues are the essence of God, then the view of the Supreme Being becomes insignificant in comparison with the transcendental ideal.  God, at least as a Supreme Being, is not destroyed in such a process; but rather, the focus is shifted from the Supreme Being to the ideals that comprise him.

Work Cited

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant in Translation). New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print.

Thomas, Aquinas. St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (Norton Critical Editions). Trans. Paul E. Sigmund. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987. Print.

Van Nieuwenhove, Rik “The Religious Disposition As a Critical Resource to Resist Instrumentalisation.” Heythrop Journal: A Bimonthly Review of Philosophy and Theology 50.4 (2009): 689-696. Philosopher’s Index. EBSCO. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.

Palmquist, Stephen R “Kant’s Religious Argument for the Existence of God: The Ultimate Dependence of Human Destiny on Divine Assistance.” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 26.1 (2009): 3-22. Philosopher’s Index. EBSCO. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.

The American Heritage Dictionary: Fourth Edition [AMER HERITAGE DICT OF THE ENGL]. 4 ed. New York: Delta, 2001. Print.

Insole, Christopher “The Irreducible Importance of Religious Hope in Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good.” Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 83.325 (2008): 333-351. Philosopher’s Index. EBSCO. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.

Curran, Mary Bernard “What Is Pure, What Is Good? Disinterestedness in Fénelon and Kant.” Heythrop Journal: A Bimonthly Review of Philosophy and Theology 50.2 (2009): 195-205. Philosopher’s Index. EBSCO. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.

Schultz-Aldrich, Janice L “Being As the Ground of Truth in Aquinas.” Heythrop Journal: A Bimonthly Review of Philosophy and Theology 50.4 (2009): 620-634. Philosopher’s Index. EBSCO. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.

Pasternack, Lawrence “The ‘ens realissimum’ and Necessary Being in ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’.” Religious Studies: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 37.4 (2001): 467-474. Philosopher’s Index. EBSCO. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.