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Essay about Kant's Deontological Theory

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Kant's Deontological Theory The existence of God is something that most people take for granted. In your upbringing you are taught that God is the most supreme being, the creator of all, infinite and eternal. Taking into account the type of society in which we live in and the fact that it is usually our parents who teach us about God, most people do not even question his existence. Many philosophers who believe in God have tried to prove his existence using many different types of argument. One of these arguments is the ontological argument. It was made famous by the 11th century philosopher Anselm. The ontological argument has three properties: 1. It is an a priori argument. 2. It treats existence as a property. 3. It is …show more content…

Existence is one of the properties included in the concept of God, and if we reject that, then we are contradicting the idea of God. But Kant says that this is not so. Existence is not a property of a thing. If we reject the existence of thing, we reject the thing itself with all its properties. Therefore, there is no contradiction because there is nothing left to be contradicted. The defenders of the ontological argument have a comeback though. They say that the person who rejects the existence of God has not grasped the concept of God correctly because existence is part of the concept of God. In conclusion, the person does not understand what he is denying. But Kant comes back with an even stronger argument. As we already know, existence is not a first order property, it just says that something is actually there. In Kant's own words, "'Being' is obviously not a real predicate: that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing, or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves." Kant's argument makes perfect sense. Let us use a triangle to prove his point. Say that right now I have the concept of a triangle in my head. A triangle is a geometrical figure with three angles. Under the condition that I have the concept of the triangle in my head, it necessarily follows that I must have the idea

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