Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

XIV
Introduction.

3. The concluding reflection of the small treatise on the The Lisbon Earthquake (1756) rejects the "blameworthy curiosity" which "always views such fates as decreed penal judgments" and "presumes to perceive the intentions of divine decrees and to interpret them according to its own insights." The 1755 Lisbon earthquake was a massive disaster that sparked a European-wide debate on whether such suffering could be justified by religion. On the other hand, we are "in no uncertainty, when it comes to the application, how we should use these ways of Providence in accordance with its purpose," namely "to remind us that the goods of the earth can provide no satisfaction to our drive for happiness."

4. The short treatise On Optimism (1759), "written down with some haste" and published as an announcement for his lectures for the winter semester of 1759/60, defends Optimism In the 18th century, "Optimism" was the philosophical theory (popularized by Leibniz) that we live in the "best of all possible worlds" because a perfect God created it. based on the thought that God cannot help but choose the best. The whole is the best, and everything is good for the sake of the whole. "Unworthy in myself and chosen for the sake of the whole, I value my existence all the more because I was chosen to take a place in the best plan. I cry out to every creature who does not make itself unworthy of being called so: Hail to us, we exist! And the Creator takes pleasure in us." In his later years, Kant wanted nothing more to do with this writing, as it stood in contradiction to his later Critical views Kant’s later "Critical" period (starting in 1781) argued that human reason cannot prove these kinds of absolute truths about God's plan..

5. The heartfelt little consolatory writing, Consolation of a Mother on the Death of Her Son (F. von Funk, 1760), gives evidence of the philosopher's truly inward religiosity—that "calm cheerfulness of the soul for which no accidents are unexpected anymore," combined with a "gentle melancholy" when it "considers the worthlessness of that which is commonly regarded among us as great and important," but despite all dark fates, trusting in the guidance of a wise and kind Providence.

6. The Only Possible Argument for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763) refutes the traditional "proofs of God," in whose place it offers as the "only possible," although not "necessary," ar—