Religion and Practical Metaphysics, or Kant, Feynman, and Hitler

Abstract

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When I understand morality as restricting practical metaphysics, I assume that religion, the first though pre-rational form of practical metaphysics, responds to reality independently of morality, by answering the question for meaning. This assumption contradicts the Enlightenment view that considers claims on the meaning of the world a pre-rational form of morality. But howsoever we understand religion and practical metaphysics, the Enlightenment and most current philosophy insist that claims on the meaning of the world lack universal validity.

The problem with this claim is that there are existential problems of society, e.g., which technologies to admit to society, that seem to be morally indifferent but nonetheless need solutions that should follow universally valid rules. If morality is indifferent, it should be meaning-oriented practical metaphysics that decides. In fact, even if existential problems are not consciously solved but decided by accident or by the most powerful interests, the result is that society takes on a certain meaning. For instance, if we allow the cloning of human beings, society gets another meaning than if we forbid it (Huxley’s Brave New World, which allows cloning, has another meaning than a society that forbids it.)

When the Enlightenment banned judgments on the meaning of things from science, the history of philosophy became a catastrophe and a tragedy. In the nineteenth century, the most urgent existential problems of society were how to prevent industrialization from destroying societies. The Enlightenment said they cannot be scientifically solved, as science cannot make claims on the meaning of the world. In contrast, the ideologists claimed they could scientifically prove what the goal of history is that does guide us to solve existential social problems. Masses followed them, but they led into the disasters of totalitarian societies.

To stop them, we cannot insist morality must solve the problem (though morality, too, is banned from science, its use is considered justified by the social contract theory or another philosophy), since many existential problems are morally indifferent. Rather, philosophy must show that something rational and universally obliging can be said on the meaning of the world that can tell us how to manage existential social questions.