Introduction

Abstract

In the late 1790s, as he was finishing his studies in mathematics and philosophy at Charles University, Bernard Bolzano announced his intention of becoming a priest. Bolzano’s father, an Italian art merchant who would have preferred to see his son go into business, initially opposed the plan and convinced him to postpone the decision for a year.¹ Bolzano spent that time deepening his knowledge of mathematics and reading Kant, a remarkable fact given that Kant had been banned in the Austrian Empire the previous year. The Critique of Pure Reason had a tremendous impact on Bolzano, and one that can be felt throughout his later work. If Bolzano persisted in his intention to join the priesthood, it was not for lack of enthusiasm or talent for the “speculative part of mathematics that belongs at once to philosophy”. His reasons had, apparently, little to do with his opinion of Christianity about which he claims to have had his doubts and to fail to know whether it “be true or of a truly divine nature”. Why then become a priest? Bolzano’s reasons were in part sentimental — he believed it had been the wish of his deceased mother — in part ethical. Bolzano adhered to a distinct form of religious pragmatism: he assumed that a religious doctrine need not be true, but that it is justified if people’s believing in it generates a greater sum total of happiness.²