The term cosmotheology, along with the term "

ontotheology Ontotheology means the ontology of God and/or the theology of being. While the term was first used by Immanuel Kant, it has only come into broader philosophical parlance with the significance it took for Martin Heidegger's later thought. While, for ...

", was invented by

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...

"in order to distinguish between two competing types of " transcendental theology". Kant defined the relationship between ontotheology and cosmostheology as follows:

"Transcendental theology aims either at inferring the existence of a Supreme Being from a general experience, without any closer reference to the world to which this experience belongs, and in this case it is called cosmotheology; or it endeavours to cognize the existence of such a being, through mere conceptions, without the aid of experience, and is then termed ontotheology."Kant, Immanuel, '' Critique of Pure Reason''
Section VII: Critique of all Theology based upon Speculative Principles of Reason

Notes and references

Philosophy of religion Immanuel Kant 1780s neologisms {{reli-philo-stub