Ein ausgezeichneter Abschnitt von John Frame über die Erkenntnistheorie von Kant:
Although Kant professed a kind of theism and an admiration for Jesus, he was clearly far from orthodox Christianity. Indeed, his major book on religion, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, has as its chief theme the thesis that the human mind can never and must never subject itself to any authority beyond itself. In other words, to Kant, the human mind must be autonomous, subject only to its own law. Kant radically rejected the idea of authoritative revelation from God (either in nature or in Scripture) and asserted, perhaps more clearly than ever before (although this had always been the view of secular philosophers), the autonomy of the human mind. The human mind, that means, is to be its own supreme authority, its own criterion of truth and right.
In his other works, Kant argued that what makes our experience intelligible is largely, perhaps entirely, the work of our own minds. We do not know what the world is really like, we know only how it appears to us, and how it appears to us is largely what we make it to be. Thus, the mind of man not only is its own ultimate authority, but also replaces God as the intelligent planner and creator of the experienced universe. And, to Kant, the human mind is also the author of its own moral standards.
… Kant’s philosophy … does not merely assert or assume human autonomy, as did many previous philosophies; it explicitly presupposes human autonomy. It adopts human autonomy as the root idea to which every other idea must conform. That is what makes Kant unique and vastly important: he taught secular man where his epistemology must begin, his inescapable starting point for all possible reflection.
John M. Frame. Cornelius van Til. An Analysis of His Thoughts. P & R: Phillipsburg 1995. (45)
