Abstract
Moors identifies religious acts and representations that are allowed within the boundaries of mere (pure practical) reason. He investigates how ethics emerges in the context of properly religious representations (God, Son of God, grace, church, hope) and as religious praxis (the practice of the “seeing as,” the practice of “to accept the positive increase of force” by grace for the sake of conversion, the practice of prayer, etc.).
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Notes
- 1.
I prefer the Cambridge edition translation “mere” of the German bloss, despite Pluhar’s and Palmquist’s arguments for “bare.” See Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009); Stephen R. Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); and Stephen R. Palmquist, Comprehensive Commentary on Kant’s “Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason” (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). I base my opinion on Kant’s own literal indication (at Ak 18:90 [R5107]) that bloss does not refer to the boundaries (Schranken) of a “bare body” (in this case, of rational religion) but rather to the “act of setting boundaries [actus der Einschränkung],” which exactly corresponds to Kant’s methodological statement: “I only intend to determine the boundaries of the sensible and empirical in [religious] faith and of those of reason as well” (Ak 23:91).
- 2.
“For a human being it is impossible to enjoy his life without religion” (Ak 19:649 [R8106]).
- 3.
“Domain [Gebiet]” is used as a technical term in accordance with CJ 5:174: the territory in which pure concepts legislate.
- 4.
It is surprising that Kant is bringing the first explicitly religious item (grace) to the fore in a General Remark (on conversion) at the end of Part One (Rel 6:44–52), which deals with radical evil in human nature. At the end of this first General Remark and in a preview to other General Remarks following at the end of the next Parts, he classifies the issue of grace as a first parergon, “a secondary occupation [Nebengeschäft]” that “border[s]” on “religion within the boundaries of pure reason” but does not intrinsically belong to this domain (Rel 6:52). The structural location of this first typically religious item by which he opens a work on religion might be surprising at first sight. But the fact that, despite this strange location, the issue itself introduces a first notion of critique (“bordering on” versus “not belonging to”) is significant because – as we will see – it is Kant’s critical intention that will from now on dominate the whole work.
- 5.
“Territory [Boden]” is used as a technical term (CJ 5:174): the extension of concepts that can possibly become determined cognition.
- 6.
An interesting case of metaphorics is presented here. Corresponding to the distinction I propose to make between antithetical opposition and interim reservation, the various metaphorical schemes that are used by Kant can be a cause of uneasiness. With respect to antithetical opposition, the topological metaphor used in the Critique of Pure Reason is very well appropriated to also be used in the current context of his critique of religion: “[the land of truth] is an island…surrounded by a vast and stormy ocean, where illusion properly resides and many fog banks and much fast-melting ice feign new-found lands” (B294–95). Applied to religion: “the land of truth” refers to “religion proper” where universal principles of reason legislate and determine the place for and significance of each religious concept (grace, Son of God, church, cult). As an island of truth, “religion proper” is surrounded by an ocean of religious enthusiasm, delusions, superstitious faiths, and counterfeit services. On the other hand, to represent in the religious context the meaning of interim reservation, we do not think that the other topological metaphor, used in CJ 5:174, of “domain [Gebiet]” (see note 3 above) as a section of “territory [Boden]” (see note 5 above) is appropriate. It is also not appropriate to use the metaphor of the two concentric circles by which Kant locates revelation and scripture (inasmuch as contingencies are involved) in the wider sphere of faith inside which is critically circumscribed the pure religion of reason (Rel 6:12–13). The reason why we raise doubts against these (surveyor’s and geometer’s) topological metaphors is the fact that they do not fit with what Kant explicitly suggests regarding history-based religion in its veridical move toward “the pure religion of reason” following the dynamics of the Enlightenment (Rel 6:12; see also OT 8:144–46; WE 8:40–42). In this regard, temporal expressions such as “transitory,” “episodic,” and “interim” seem more privileged as schemes expressing Kant’s persisting emphasis on “furtherance of a pure faith of religion” or “gradual transition” at the basis of which he lets prevail the dynamics of hope (Rel 6:115).
- 7.
Later on we will see how this relation takes the form of superimposition.
- 8.
Particularly interesting with regard to the Opus postumum is that it testifies how Kant in the last years of his life (between April 1800 and February 1803) was intensely dealing with the issue of “human duties as if divine commands.” He does not explicitly treat it as a theme that introduces the real definition of religion. He rather investigates (making use of analogy) the synthetic link between pure practical self-positing (Selbstsetzung) (“I am”) and the moral-practical idea of God (OP 22:115–31).
- 9.
“Morality thus inevitably leads to religion” (Rel 6:6). On my interpretation, the “leading to” is realized according to two different motives. The first motive emerges from a reflection on “the concept of the highest good, as the object and final end of pure practical reason” (CPrR 5:129). Through a reflection on the final object of the moral law, morality leads to religion. We may call this first motive the objective motive of finality of the moral law. A second motive is reflective too, though this reflection is led by a different aim. Morality, namely, is reflectively evoked for bestowing upon religion its real mark of truth. This second mode of “leading to” is performed by the tropic operation of the “recognition/seeing as” that originates from the real definition of religion (see CPrR 5:129). According to the veridical motive of the “recognition as,” morality leads to religion. This second motive can be called the veridical motive of the semantic trope of “recognition/seeing as.” In the section that we are introducing, we do not investigate the “morality…inevitably leads to religion” statement according to the first “objective” motive of finality. Because I am examining the real content of Kant’s philosophical doctrine of religion, I must rather explore, along the second mode of reflection, which (four) moments from his moral theory will “inevitably” lead to the recognition as being religious (Rel 6:6).
- 10.
By omnitudo distributiva is meant, in general, the form of an aggregate of elements which are all (analytically) marked by a common property (Ak 17:354–55 [R3936]). In terms of religion, it is “the rational religion of single individuals” who share a “communality of insight [allgemeine Einhelligkeit]” (Rel 6:157–58). By omnitudo collectiva is meant the form of a community of elements which, for their communality, is constitutively (synthetically) dependent on a common ground (Ak 17:434 [R4149]). In the Religion, it is “the union of the believers in one (visible) church according to principles of a pure religion of reason” (Rel 6:158). For the difference between distributive and collective unity, see also A582/B610, A644/B672.
- 11.
For an elaborated argument, see my “Die Bestimmungsgestalt von Kants Gottesidee und das Gemeinschaftsprinzip,” in Proceedings of the Sixth International Kant Congress, ed. Gerhard Funke and Thomas M. Seebohm, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America and Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, 1989), 49–65.
- 12.
On das Gefühl des der Vernunft eigenen Bedürfnisses, see OT 8:136–39 and CPrR 5:142.
- 13.
In the terminology of the Critique of Pure Reason: a “nothing” is an “empty concept without object” (A292/B348).
- 14.
See Johann Auer and Joseph K. Ratzinger, Kleine katholische Dogmatik, vol. 5: Das Evangelium der Gnade (Regensburg: Pustet, 1972).
- 15.
The question “What may I hope?” was already assigned to be specifically religious (see A805/B833–34; JL 9:25).
- 16.
See A820–31/B848–59, especially A828–30/B856–58 on moral faith; CPrR 5:142–46; OT 8:146; JL 9:65–70.
- 17.
This second restriction has significant implications for Kant’s theory on scriptural exegesis: “Historical cognition that has no intrinsic relation, valid for everyone, to this [moral improvement], belongs among the adiaphora, which each may treat as one finds edifying.” Our searching for historical features of the life of Jesus will result in “only a barren addition to our historical cognition” (Rel 6:43n; see also 110).
- 18.
To be clear: this “putting aside” does not amount to an abstractive operation which would transform Kant’s critique into a logical act of abstraction. In that case we would not even be able to consider the purified/abstracted figure as that of a moral Ideal defined by mere reason. Moreover, by such an abstractive operation, one would not reach any justifiable ground for claiming universal worth or unconditional obedience regarding the abstracted idea.
- 19.
The conclusion is titled: “Religion as the doctrine of duties to God lies beyond the bounds of pure moral philosophy” (MM 6:486).
- 20.
The a priori condition that formally defines the communal end of the moral pursuit of a people is expressed in Kant’s theory on “the type of the moral law” (CPrR 5:67–71).
- 21.
For an elaborated argument, see my “Religious Fictionalism in Kant’s Ethics of Autonomy,” in Cultivating Personhood: Kant and Asian Philosophy, ed. Stephen R. Palmquist (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 475–84.
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Moors, M. (2017). The Fate of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In: Altman, M. (eds) The Palgrave Kant Handbook. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54656-2_24
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