Kant and the Self-Conscious Form of Rational Faith

Name: Kant and the Self-Conscious Form of Rational Faith
Start: 2024-11-11T19:00:00+02:00
End: 2024-11-11T21:00:00+02:00
Location: Oriental Hall, AUC Tahrir Square

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Lecture/Talk/Seminar

Mon, Nov 11, 2024

7 PM – 9 PM (GMT+2)

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Oriental Hall, AUC Tahrir Square

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It seems paradoxical to believe that p while simultaneously knowing that I lack objectively sufficient grounds for believing that p. Yet according to Kant, such beliefs are sometimes required by our rational moral capacity. Not only is it morally rational to believe in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, but the rationality of these beliefs depends on our ability to simultaneously assert their existence while denying the possibility of knowing it. Join Addison Ellis, Assistant Professor at AUC's Department of Philosophy, as he argues that the appearance of paradox can be dissolved only by spelling out how such belief—what Kant calls ‘faith’—has its own distinctive self-conscious logical form, one that is distinct from the logical form of knowledge. By understanding why the self-conscious character of faith’s logical form differs from the self-conscious form of judgment in knowledge, we can see how faith is neither paradoxical nor pathological, but genuinely rational.

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Speakers

Addison Ellis

Assistant Professor

Department of Philosophy

Addison Ellis received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019. Before coming to The American University in Cairo (AUC), he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City, and a lecturer at the University of Illinois. His research is focused on Kant and post-Kantian European Philosophy (especially Heidegger). Within these areas, Ellis places particular emphasis on the study of self-consciousness and what Kant calls its ‘spontaneity.’ He is interested in how these themes figure not only in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, but also in his practical and religious thought and, more broadly, how these Kantian ideas are taken up, transformed, or rejected by the post-Kantian tradition.

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