Morning Hours: Lectures on God's Existence

Front Matter....Pages i-xx
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
What is truth?....Pages 3-7
Cause – Effect – Ground – Power.....Pages 9-15
Evidence – Of immediate Knowledge: Rational Knowledge – Knowledge of Nature.....Pages 17-21
Truth and Illusion.....Pages 23-28
Existence – Being Awake – Dreams – Rapture.....Pages 29-33
Combination of Ideas – Idealism.....Pages 35-40
Continuation. The Idealist’s Dispute with the Dualist. Truth-Drive and Approval-Drive.....Pages 41-46
Front Matter....Pages 47-47
Importance of the Investigation. On Basedow’s Principle of the Duty to Believe. Axiomata.....Pages 49-54
The evidence of the pure and the applied doctrine of magnitudes. Comparison with the evidence for the proofs of God’s existence. Different methods of those proofs.....Pages 55-57
Allegorical Dream. – Reason and Common Sense. Grounds for the Proof of God’s Existence, according to the System of the Idealists, on the basis of our own Existence. – Also, in any case, on the basis of the ideal Existence of an objective world of the senses.....Pages 59-63
Epicureanism. – Accident. – Chance. A Series of Causes and Effects, without End, – without Beginning. Progression into Infinity, Forwards and Backwards. – The Timeless, without Beginning, without End and without Progression.....Pages 65-68
Sufficient Reason for the Contingent in the Necessary. – The former is somewhere and sometimes , the latter is everywhere and all times. – The former is only in relation to space and time; the latter is unqualifiedly the best and most perfect. Everything that is, is best. – All God’s thoughts, insofar as they have the best as their subject, attain actuality.....Pages 69-74
Spinozism. – Pantheism. – All is One and One is All. – Refutation.....Pages 75-81
Continued dispute with the pantheists. – Approximation. – Point of unison with them. – Innocuousness of the purified patheism. – Compatibility with religion and ethics insofar as they are practical.....Pages 83-90
Lessing. – His Contribution to the Religion of Reason. – His Thoughts on Purified Pantheism.....Pages 91-99
Elucidation of the concepts of necessity, contingency, independence, and dependence. – Attempt at a new proof for the existence of God on the basis of the incompleteness of self-knowledge.....Pages 101-107
The a priori Grounds of Proof of the Existence of a supremely perfect, necessary, independent Being.....Pages 109-115
Back Matter....Pages 117-142