The Highest Good And Rational Faith

In reality, there isn't any law which could make the conservation between virtue and happiness for guarding the value of virtue, so the relationship between virtue and happiness is always imprinted with a sort of paradox. However, up to now, there's no lack of interpretations, speculative or faithful, on the accordance of virtue and happiness. Unfortunately, the absence of faith in the process of secularization since the Enlightenment, the domination of tool reason and utilitarian reason on the moral subjective, have gradually disorganized those ways of interpretation on the accordance of virtue and happiness that belongs to traditional philosophies or religions. This has caused that the crisis of moral faith has become one of the biggest sticking points of modern spiritual crisis. So, for solving the problem of value confusion brought by the disaccord of virtue and happiness, and sustaining the declining moral value system, it's extremely significant to reconstruct this moral faith on the accordance of virtue and happiness, even modern spirit faith. For the character of rational faith which makes itself has more modern significance than any other theories on the accordance of virtue and happiness before, Immanuel Kant's the highest good (summum bonum) is the necessary spiritual resource that can solve this problem of modern moral faith. Kant's thought of the highest good, came from his criticism on the traditional thoughts of the accordance of virtue and happiness. In Kant's opinion, there must be a kind of necessary accordance between virtue and happiness. But, he thought it's never a kind of analytical relationship (searching for the identification between virtue and happiness) which was expressed in both the hedonist (Epicurus) and the moralist (Stoic) virtue-happiness views, but it's a priori synthesis, because the two denied the mutually independent values of virtue and happiness. He abandoned completely the approach of hedonism that regarded happiness as virtue, but he absorbed their cognition on the independent value of happiness. About the traditional moralists' virtue-happiness views, his attitude was 'aufheben', namely critical succession. Though he disagreed with their approach of analysis and their ignorance of the value independence of happiness, he absolutely appreciated their emphasis on the superiority of virtue, and inherited the tradition and created his own theory of the highest good in the background of transcendental orcritical moralist philosophy. The basis of theodicy which imprinted on the faith approach of the accordance of virtue and happiness in Christianity, detennined that it's a kind of product rooted in the moral principle of heteronomy, and the very target which Kant's theory of the highest good cannot but criticized that was built on the moral principle of autonomy. However, because Kant wanted to borrow Christian ideas, God and Immortality, he purposely misread or creatively interpreted Christianity, and changed its basis from theodicy into humandicy. Finally, he transformed Christian approach of kingdom of God into his approach of the highest good. In conclusion, Kant's theory of the highest good was the summarization and transcendence of the ancient thoughts of the accordance of virtue and happiness. Nevertheless, its resource significance for modern spirit reconstructing, is still essentially rested with its interior character of modernity. Kant's the highest good consisted of dual-dimension structure, nature value and freedom value, which's only its delomorphous character of inner construction. Factually, there's a sort of deeper dual-dimension structure existed in the idea of the highest good, holiness and secularity, or human moral (rationality) and superhuman faith (revelation). This structural relationship was connected directly with the highest good as a moral idea as well as a theological idea. In the relationship between the highest good and the three postulates of practical rationality, and the relationship between Kant's moral theology and traditional Christian theology, the idea showed the modern puzzlement of spirit and faith which enwound on itself. Kant swayed between the two poles of holiness and secularity, and finally stood at the secularized value standpoint of human-standard and rationality, which represented the hard choice of the whole enlightenment modernity. In the spiritual kernels of Enlightenment, enlightenment rationality and the idea of progress, the searching of the interior spiritual structure of the highest good, radically opened out the modernity depth of the dual-dimension structure. So the spirit of rationality and humanism were the most interior spiritual characters of the highest good. However, it didn't deny holiness;the other way around, the highest good opened the door to faith. This notion also appealed to the transcendental value. The highest good, as an aim or faith in the infinite progress of moral-perfecting, which was shaped by the idea of enlightenment progress, totally agreed with the modernity mind-structure of modern people that was formed in the frame of beeline vector time-idea. In a word, this idea had the characters of modern faith, such as rationality, subjectivity, secularity, transcendence, etc., which was the veryresource of thought for curing modern spiritual aisis. Nobody after Kant could catch up with him in this field. The responses and criticisms which the Western put on Kant's theory of the highest good, revealed its disadvantages of formalism and idealism, but never added any new thing to the thoughts of the accordance of virtue and happiness, said nothing of transcending Kant. Mou Zongsan in the Sino-world, upset Kant's future model of the faith on the accordance of virtue and happiness with the model of immediate accordance of virtue and happiness in the thinking way of philosophy, which was the most challenging response to Kant's summum bonum in the modern times. After all, this thinking way was archaic, moreover it had the disadvantage of elitism, so it had only the extremely limited significance of resource for reconstructing modern spirit or moral faith. Though the strict historical critical inspection, comparatively speaking, Kant's theory of the highest good is still the most perfect way of the accordance of virtue and happiness which is provided with the modern significance of spiritual resource at present.