what we humans can comprehend. At the same time, there is in our nature a basic desire to pose these same questions. But when, for example, we ask whether the universe is finite or infinite, we are asking about a totality of which we ourselves are a tiny part. We can therefore never completely know this totality.”
“Why not?”
“When you put the red glasses on, we demonstrated that according to Kant there are two elements that contribute to our knowledge of the world.”
“Sensory perception and reason.”
“Yes, the material of our knowledge comes to us through the senses, but this material must conform to the attributes of reason. For example, one of the attributes of reason is to seek the cause of an event.”
“Like the ball rolling across the floor.”
“If you like. But when we wonder where the world came from—and then discuss possible answers—reason is in a sense ‘on hold.’ For it has no sensory material to process, no experience to make use of, because we have never experienced the whole of the great reality that we are a tiny part of.”
“We are—in a way—a tiny part of the ball that comes rolling across the floor. So we can’t know where it came from.”
“But it will always be an attribute of human reason to ask where the ball comes from. That’s why we ask and ask, we exert ourselves to the fullest to find answers to all the deepest questions. But we never get anything firm to bite on; we never get a satisfactory answer because reason is not locked on.”
“I know exactly how that feels, thank you very much.”
“In such weighty questions as to the nature of reality, Kant showed that there will always be two contrasting viewpoints that are equally likely or unlikely, depending on what our reason tells us.”
“Examples, please.”
“It is just as meaningful to say that the world must have had a beginning in time as to say that it had no such beginning. Reason cannot decide between them. We can allege that the world has always existed, but con anything always have existed if there was never any beginning? So now we are forced to adopt the opposite view.
“We say that the world must have begun sometime— and it must have begun from nothing, unless we want to talk about a change from one state to another. But can something come from nothing, Sophie?”
“No, both possibilities are equally problematic. Yet it seems one of them must be right and the other wrong.”
“You probably remember that Democritus and the materialists said that nature must consist of minimal parts that everything is made up of. Others, like Descartes, believed that it must always be possible to divide extended reality into ever smaller parts. But which of them was right?”
“Both. Neither.”
“Further, many philosophers named freedom as one of man’s most important values. At the same time we saw philosophers like the Stoics, for example, and Spinoza, who said that everything happens through the necessity of natural law. This was another case of human reason being unable to make a certain judgment, according to Kant.”
“Both views are equally reasonable and unreasonable.”
“Finally, we are bound to fail if we attempt to prove the existence of God with the aid of reason. Here the rationalists, like Descartes, had tried to prove that there must be a God simply because we have the idea of a ‘supreme being.’ Others, like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, decided that there must be a God because everything must have a first cause.”
“What did Kant think?”
“He rejected both these proofs of the existence of God. Neither reason nor experience is any certain basis for claiming the existence of God. As far as reason goes, it is just as likely as it is unlikely that God exists.”
“But you started by saying that Kant wanted to preserve the basis for Christian faith.”
“Yes, he opened up a religious dimension. There, where both reason and experience fall short, there occurs a vacuum that can be filled by faith.”
“That’s how he saved Christianity?”
“If you will. Now, it might be worth noting that Kant was a Protestant. Since the days of the Reformation, Protestantism has been characterized by its emphasis on faith. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has since the early Middle Ages believed more in reason as a pillar of faith.
“But Kant went further than simply to establish that these weighty questions should be left to the faith of the individual. He believed that it is essential for morality to presuppose that man has an immortal soul, that God exists, and that man has a free will.”
“So he does the same as Descartes. First he is very critical of everything we can understand. And then he smuggles God in by the back door.”
“But unlike Descartes, he emphasizes most particularly that it is not reason which brought him to this point but faith. He himself called faith in the immortal soul, in God’s existence, and in man’s free will practical postulates.”
“Which means?”
“To ‘postulate’ something is to assume something that cannot be proved. By a ‘practical postulate,’ Kant meant something that had to be assumed for the sake of ‘praxis,’ or practice; that is to say, for man’s morality. ‘It is a moral necessity to assume the existence of God,’ he said.”
Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Sophie got up, but as Alberto gave no sign of rising, she asked: “Shouldn’t we see who it is?”
Alberto shrugged and reluctantly got up. They opened the door, and a little girl stood there in a white summer dress and a red bonnet. It was the girl they had seen on the other side of the lake. Over one arm she carried a basket of food.
“Hi,” said Sophie. “Who are you?”
“Can’t you see I am Little Red Ridinghood?”
Sophie looked at Alberto, and Alberto nodded.
“You heard what she said.”
“I’m looking for my grandmother’s house,” said the girl. “She is old and sick, but I’m taking her some food.”
“It’s not here,” said Alberto, “so you’d better get on your way.”
He gestured in a way that reminded Sophie of the way you brush off a fly.
“But I’m supposed to deliver a letter,” continued the girl in the red bonnet.
With that, she took out a small envelope and handed it to Sophie. Then she went skipping away.
“Watch out for the wolf!” Sophie called after her.
Alberto was already on his way back into the living room.
“Just think! That was Little Red Ridinghood,” said Sophie.
“And it’s no good warning her. She will go to her grandmother’s house and be eaten by the wolf. She never learns. It will repeat itself to the end of time “
“But I have never heard that she knocked on the door of another house before she went to her grandmother’s.”
“A bagatelle, Sophie.”
Now Sophie looked at the envelope she had been given. It was addressed “To Hilde.” She opened it and read aloud:
Dear Hilde, If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn’t understand it. Love, Dad.
Alberto nodded. “True enough. I believe Kant said something to that effect. We cannot expect to understand what we are. Maybe we can comprehend a flower or an insect, but we can never comprehend ourselves. Even less can we expect to comprehend the universe.”
Sophie had to read the cryptic sentence in the note to Hilde several times before Alberto went on: “We are not going to be interrupted by sea serpents and the like. Before we stop for today, I’ll tell you about Kant’s ethics.”
“Please hurry. I have to go home soon.”
“Hume’s skepticism with regard to what reason and the senses can tell us forced Kant to think through many
