The concept of ontotheology in Kant and Heidegger and the possibility of religion: contemporary protestant interpretation

Abstract

Kant and the origin of the notion of ontotheology The expression “ontotheology” appears in twentieth century literature through the texts of Martin Heidegger, for whom the entire history of Western metaphysics, from Plato to Nietzsche, can be determined as metaphysical, which means ontotheological 1 . However, it was Kant who first used the term “onto-theology” as a designation for the ontological proof of the existence of God based on mere concepts (a priori). Kant coined this term in The Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), his momentous analysis of the capacity and limits of reason and the implications of each for the claims of traditional metaphysics, which he defines as a “system of pure reason (science), the whole (true as well as apparent) philosophical cognition from pure reason in systematic interconnection [1, p.696]”. Kant considers metaphysics as the systematization of knowledge based on reason alone.