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ERIC Number: EJ1223184
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1857
EISSN: N/A
Clipping Our Dogmatic Wings: The Role of "Religion's" Parerga in Our Moral Education
Muchnik, Pablo
Educational Philosophy and Theory, v51 n13 p1350-1360 2019
In a note introduced into the second edition of "Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason" (1794), Kant assigns a systematic role to the General Remarks at the end of each Part of his book. He calls those Remarks, "as it were, parerga to religion within the boundaries of pure reason; they do not belong within it yet border on it" (RGV 6:52). As Kant sees them, the parerga are only a "secondary occupation" that consists in removing transcendent obstacles. This paper is skeptical of Kant's view. It proposes an alternative account, according to which the parerga are essential to our moral education, since they force human reason to confront its own limitations and resist the urge to take refuge in spurious religious beliefs. That urge, I argue, is linked to the propensity to evil, and uses religious orthodoxy to undermine moral religion. By clipping our dogmatic wings, the parerga encourage reason to face its own dialectical tendencies and direct its speculative interest to immanent practical use. This redirection counteracts the debilitating effects of the propensity to evil and plays a key role in our moral regeneration. To consider the parerga "derivative," as Kant himself does, is therefore a grave mistake.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A