The Causa Sui and the Ontological Argument, or the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Is-Ought Distinction | Kant’s Critique of Spinoza (2024)

Kant’s Critique of Spinoza

Omri Boehm

Published:

2014

Online ISBN:

9780199354825

Print ISBN:

9780199354801

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Kant’s Critique of Spinoza

Omri Boehm

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Omri Boehm

Omri Boehm

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Pages

150–189

  • Published:

    May 2014

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Boehm, Omri, 'The Causa Sui and the Ontological Argument, or the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Is-Ought Distinction', Kant’s Critique of Spinoza (New York, 2014; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 May 2014), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199354801.003.0005, accessed 30 June 2024.

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Abstract

Spinoza’s causa sui poses a challenge to Kant’s attack on rational cosmology, and thereby to his attack on metaphysical rationalism as a whole. The chapter suggests the Kantian response, namely that the causa sui fails with the refutation of the ontological argument. It is argued, more generally, that the Principle of Sufficient Reason fails if existence is not a first order predicate. One problem with this answer is that Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument begs the question vis-à-vis Spinozist necessitarianism. This in turn challenges Kant’s refutation of dogmatic metaphysics as a whole. The chapter concludes developing a Kantian defense of the refutation of the ontological argument. This strategy suggests a link between the non-necessitarian assumptions of Kant’s refutation of the ontological argument (dissociating existence from thought) and his insistence on the is-ought distinction.

Keywords: causa sui, ontological argument, is-ought, first order predicate, Principle of Sufficient Reason, necessitarianism, rationalism

Subject

17th - 18th Century Philosophy History of Western Philosophy Moral Philosophy

Collection: Oxford Scholarship Online

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