Properties of the divine will: Kant between speculative and moral theology

The paper discusses the problem of the attributes of divine will in Immanuel Kant’s philosophical theology. Although Kant in his “critical” philosophical writings was firmly convinced that speculative philosophical cognition of God’s properties is impossible and futile, he considered it possible to compensate the deficiencies of speculative theology by means of practical reason, through ethicotheology, as a religious extension of pure ethics. The philosophical notion of the divine will in Kant is explored on the background of the general concept of will as a form of causality through freedom. Kant’s philosophy of religion considers three attributes of the supreme Will: 1) God is holy as the legislator of the moral law, therefore His will cannot contain counter-moral principles and maxims, and is the prototype of holiness; 2) God is good as the world’s supreme ruler, therefore is the beatitude of all beings for Him alone not a moral duty, but an object of immediate benevolence; 3) God is just as the world’s judge, i. e. His will endows everyone with a share in the highest derivative good in proportion with the moral quality of his behaviour. This latter aspect is related to Kant’s doctrine of justification and salvation: the satisfaction of divine justice is thought in Kant as performed in the very act of “revolution in the disposition” of the sinner, after which the moral law, instead of self-love, becomes the sufficient incentive of his will. In conclusion the paper elaborates a hypothesis, according to which this same “revolution in the disposition” is in Kant also the condition of possibility for theological cognition , in particular for the cognition of the divine will.