Kant’s Critique of Mysticism:
(2) The Critical Mysticism
Prof. Stephen
Palmquist, D.Phil. (Oxon)
Department of
Religion and Philosophy
Hong Kong
Baptist University
...the
inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in
respect to what it denies us than in [respect to] what it has granted.[1]
I. Mysticism and
Religious Experience
In the first article in this series[2] I
examined the Critical character of Kant's Dreams of a Spirit-Seer[3]
and its role in preparing the way for his Critical System. I argued that, far from being a
"pre-Critical" work, Dreams contains all the essential
ingredients of the Critical method and that the only key element of Kant's
mature thinking which is altogether missing, namely the famous
"Copernican" insight, is actually present in the works of
Swedenborg, whom Kant was criticizing in Dreams. I also suggested, but left undeveloped, the
idea that Kant himself did not have an entirely negative opinion of mysticism,
but rather hoped through his Critical System to provide a secure foundation not
only for metaphysics, but for mysticism as well. The purpose of the present paper will be to
defend this idea more thoroughly by demonstrating the extent to which a kind
of mystical world view can be seen operating throughout Kant's philosophical
writings, but especially in those which compose the Critical System
itself. I will begin in this section by
explaining the differences between several types of mystic, paying special
attention to the role of religious experience.
The next section will examine more thoroughly Kant's reasons for
rejecting traditional forms of mysticism.
Section III will then demonstrate that Kant himself developed a Critical
type of mysticism. And the fourth section
will conclude this paper by pointing out how this way of understanding Kant's
world view sheds light on certain metaphors which he frequently used.
A good general definition of mysticism is suggested by Albert
Schweitzer's description of the mystic as "a human being looking upon the
division between earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal, as
transcended, and feeling himself, while still externally amid the earthly and
temporal, to belong to the super-earthly and eternal."[4] From this at least three sorts of mysticism
can be inferred. First, the mystic might
believe that membership in a "super-earthly" realm makes it possible
to communicate with other spirits, especially those which are no longer tied to
a body. This is the type of mysticism which Swedenborg practiced, and against
which Kant was reacting in Dreams.
Another, more common alternative is for mystics to join some organized
religion and seek to express their eternal nature through more traditional
beliefs and rituals. (This is indeed so
common that such participants in organized religion are normally not regarded
as mystics.) Kant readily admits the
validity of this second sense of mysticism, as organized religious experience,
and encouraged its promotion insofar as it maintains itself as a rational
(moral) discipline.[5] However, mystics (as well as many ordinary
religious people who would not presume to adorn themselves with such a title)
often speak of "religious experience" in a rather different way. This term can be used to refer not to the act
of pleasing God through the overcoming of one's evil heart, as expressed in
the moral actions of a group of believers banded together to form a church, but
to a more direct form of communication or communion with a personal God. That Kant may have also admitted the validity
of immediate personal religious experience, and encouraged its
promotion as an important aspect of the Critical System, is a view which (if
entertained at all) is almost universally denied by his interpreters. Nevertheless, my purpose here will be to
demonstrate that such a mystical feeling lies at the very heart of the Critical
System: it is as important to the System
as birth and death are to an individual person, for it sets up the limits and
in so doing establishes for the System its ultimate meaning.
Webb notes the traditional view that philosophy is "the
daughter of Religion, and starts upon her career with an outfit of questions
suggested by religious experience."[6] The "religious experience" to which
Webb is referring is not so much the experience of God in humanly organized
religion as an immediate personal encounter of the sort I have labelled
"mystical" (even though this term is often reserved for its extreme
manifestations). Kant's philosophy, I maintain, does not break with tradition
in this respect. For his Critical System
has a clear religious and theological orientation, despite the failure of most
commentators to recognize its significance.
For example, the task of validating the primarily theological ideas of
God, freedom and immortality unites the three Critiques; indeed, Kant
believed that his approach to these and other topics of religious and
theological interest, though entirely philosophical in its presentation, could
provide the only legitimate rational basis for religion [see e.g. CPR
xxx,877; CPrR 3-5]. Moreover, his
last book before setting out on the path of the Critical System (viz. Dreams)
sets before him the question of how the philosopher is to cope with the claims
of mystics such as Swedenborg; and the uncompleted book intended to fill the
final gap in his philosophical System (viz. Opus Postumum, as it is now
called) provides ample evidence that the ultimate aim of the entire Critical
enterprise is to replace the extreme mystical and anti-mystical attitudes with
a balanced attitude which can best be called "Critical
mysticism". Since I have dealt with
these two works elsewhere,[7] I
will leave them out of account here and examine in general the extent to which
we are justified in associating Kant's other works with a mystical spirit.
II. Kant's Apparent
Rejection of Mysticism
The traditional interpretation of Kant portrays him as
consistently denying, or at least ignoring, any "possibility of an
encounter with the transcendent",[8]
and adds that "he seems to have found the notion of an immanent God
unfamiliar and uncongenial to his mind" [KPR 50]. Baelz expresses this view in its classic
form:
Kant, while
recognizing the demands of the moral law inherent in man's own rational being,
had no room for any immediate apprehension of God, belief in whom was a
postulate and no more than a postulate, inferential rather than direct,
mediated by reason rather than immediately given in experience.[9]
Even those who recognize
that Kant's view of religion in RBBR is "not radically unlike the
traditional Christian view" of religion generally agree that "any
sense of personal fellowship with God, revelation from God or redemption by God
is entirely lacking in the Kantian scheme."[10] However, such claims are much too harsh: Kant
is always careful to leave a space for God's activity in relation to man (for
faith in relation to knowledge); what he criticizes is only man's attempt to
grasp or control God in such a way as to force Him into revealing
Himself or redeeming man.[11] Accordingly, a few interpreters, rejecting
the traditional interpretation, have seen in Kant "the glimmer of a
notion of faith as a 'direct interior persuasion' in matters of religious
truth".[12] The recognition that Kant's philosophy is a
System of Perspectives can, I believe, transform this "glimmer" into
an unmistakable ray of noon-day sunlight.
It may even enable us to defend Du Prel's suggestion that Kant's
"Critique of Reason" points directly to mysticism.[13]
The belief that Kant disallows any direct experience of God
stems from two misunderstandings, which arise only when the dependence of his
ideas on the Principle of Perspective is ignored. The first arises out of the failure to make
the important distinction between mediate experience (i.e. empirical
knowledge), and immediate experience.[14] The fact that "the glimpses [of
"the infinity in the finite and the universality in the individual"]
are distrusted" by Kant[15]
is taken by most interpreters as a distrust in immediate experience, when
in fact Kant's expression of distrust in such "glimpses" is always
an expression of distrust in their adequacy when viewed from reason's theoretical
standpoint (which always aims at and depends on empirical knowledge). If such glimpses are viewed as immediate
experiences, and therefore not reflected upon, then there is no question of
distrusting them, because no Critical standpoint is adopted from which such
distrust can arise.
The second misunderstanding arises out of the failure to
recognize that Kant does not require that one of the Critical perspectives must
be adopted at all times. Only when a
person chooses to reflect rationally on experience would Kant argue that
one of the Critical perspectives must be adopted. By no means does such reflection entail a
denial that people have nonreflective (immediate) experience as well. Thus, when Kant makes statements such as
"The philosopher, as a teacher of pure reason...must waive consideration
of all experience" [RBBR 12(11)], he is not calling into question
the reality or validity of such (immediate) experience, but only reminding us
to distinguish between the a priori and a posteriori. Likewise, his lack of attention to the
importance of an immediate encounter with God throughout most of his Critical
works does not indicate that he views such an encounter as impossible, but only
that he recognizes that it does not occur by means of reflection. Kant's tendency
to explain religious doctrines and experiences in practical (moral) terms must
therefore be regarded not as a denial of the legitimacy of immediate
experience, but merely as an insistence that, insofar as one wishes to explain
such experiences, a practical explanation always takes precedence over a
theoretical explanation.
Affirming that we have immediate (and hence nonreflective)
experience is not problematic; but asserting that God is actually present in
such experience does seem to go directly against Kant's own claims to the
contrary. "A direct revelation from
God", he says, "would be a supersensible experience, and this is
impossible."[16] For "a supernatural experience...is a
contradiction in terms" [CF 57]; indeed, "supersensible
experience...is absurd."[17] Before we jump to any conclusions concerning
the implications of such negative statements, it is important to determine just
what Kant means by the words "supersensible [or "supernatural"]
experience". Is he declaring that
an immediate, nonreflective encounter between man and God is so absurd an idea
as to be an impossible contradiction, or is he only rejecting the supposition
that such an encounter can give rise to real empirical knowledge of God (i.e.
from the standpoint of a theoretical system)? Since most interpreters fail to distinguish
between immediate experience and experience in Kant's special, mediate sense,
this question is rarely even asked. Once
we make this distinction, however, it seems clear that Kant is referring to
experience as empirical knowledge whenever he rejects the possibility of
supersensible experience. Immediate
experience just is; so words like "contradiction" do not
really even apply to it. Moreover, Kant
himself, as we have seen, was actually open to the possibility of mystical
visions in Dreams; and he even affirmed an immediate experience of God
in his Opus Postumum, so it would be a blatant contradiction for him to
claim elsewhere that such ineffable experiences are actually absurd. By contrast, a claim to theoretical knowledge
of the tran-scendent (i.e. supernatural) ground of the empirical world clearly would
be absurd and contradictory, inasmuch as the presupposition of the entire
System is that the transcendent ground (the thing in itself) is unknowable.[18]
The purely theoretical intention of Kant's various denials of supersensible
experience is substantiated by examining the context of such comments. For he never denies altogether that such
experiences are legitimate, but only requires that we change the standpoint
from which we view them. In CF
57-8 Kant is considering whether the "claim that we feel as such
the immediate influence of God" can be used as "an interpretation of
certain sensations" in order to prove that "they are elements
in knowledge and so have real [theoretical] objects". He concludes that "we can never make
anything rational out of" such an attempted theoretical proof. He admits that such subjective experiences
are genuine, but insists that they remain mysterious.[19] Thus he explains in CF 47 that the
experience of divine supernatural power "comes to man through his own
reason"; it is not a "direct revelation" inasmuch as it does not
come in the form of a sensible experience which is objectively verifiable. (Otherwise, a person watching someone who is experiencing,
for example, an apparition of the Blessed Virgin would also be able to see the
object just as clearly. Indeed, a
television camera would be able to capture it.)
"The internal experience [e.g. of the mystic], and the feeling
(which is in itself empirical...), are incited by the voice of reason only";
yet such feeling does not constitute "a particular rule for reason...,
which is impossible" [GT 402(181)].
Here again Kant is explicitly considering whether or not such a feeling
suffices for a theoretical proof:
if it could give rise to a "rule for reason" (i.e. for everyone's
reason), then it would be objective, and could qualify as a supersensible
experience in his theoretical system.
Kant's point is that all such feelings which arise out of our
immediate experience will remain subjective;[20]
but the certainty which results from them is not for this reason any less valid
[see e.g. CPR 857]. Thus, he says "there is no theoretical belief
in the supersensible"; yet "from a morally practical standpoint a
belief in the supersensible is not only possible, but it is even inseparably
conjoined with it [i.e. with the practical standpoint]" [GT
397n(174n)]. So when he says the
"feeling of the immediate presence of the Supreme Being and the distinguishing
of this from every other, even from the moral feeling, would constitute a
receptivity for an intuition for which there is no sensory provision in man's
nature" [RBBR 175(163), emphasis added], he is not denying that
such a feeling can legitimately be experienced, as Ward suggests [DKVE
157], but is only insisting that it cannot properly be viewed from the
theoretical standpoint. Likewise, when
criticizing the excesses of the "philosophy of feeling", which
attempts to go "directly to the point itself", without
"reasoning from conceptions" [GT 395(171-2)], Kant admits that
"philosophy has its secrets which may be felt". The mistake is to think such feelings can be
interpreted in such a way as to replace reason. This accords well with the mystic's
recognition that what is apprehended in a mystical experience remains
ultimately mysterious--i.e. it is something the true nature of which cannot
be apprehended sensibly. Indeed, this
very fact that man cannot have a sensible experience of the transcendent
as it is in itself--i.e. one which gives rise to theoretical
knowledge--is what gives rise to the need for a mystical experience
which cannot be fully analyzed from any Critical perspective.
Unfortunately, Kant had a rather narrow conception of what mysticism
is. He equates "mystical" with
"magical" in RBBR 120(111), and comments elsewhere on
"the mystical fanaticism in the lives of hermits and monks"
[130(121)]. He refers to the
"mystical veil" [83(78)] in such a way as to indicate that for him
mysticism implies confusion or lack of clarity.
Thus he claims in GT 398(175) that mystics seek to establish
"an overlap...from conceptions to the incogitable" by means of
"a faculty to seize that which no conception reaches". Such efforts usually indicate "a bent
towards fanaticism": because such
mystical operations are "transcendent and can lead to no proper cognition
of the object, a surrogate of it, supernatural communication (mystical illumination),
must be promised; which is then the death of all philosophy." Similarly, in The End of All Things[21]
Kant argues that "the speculative man becomes entangled in mysticism where
his reason does not understand itself", a situation which is not
"fitting for an intellectual inhabitant of a sensible world". (The example he cites is that "Chinese
philosophers strive in dark rooms with eyes closed to experience and
contemplate their nihility.")
Mystical experiences as such can hardly be called speculation in
Kant's theoretical sense, yet he believes they are subject to the same
criticism, because the pantheism on which he believes such practices are based
"is really a concept in company with which their understanding
disintegrates and all thinking itself comes to an end."
Kant's official criticism of mysticism is that it errs only when
it gives rise to fanaticism--i.e. only when the attempt at
"communion with God" is believed to "accomplish [something] in
the way of justifying ourselves before God" [RBBR 174(162); see
also CF 54-7]. However, mystics
do not have to be fanatics of this sort--indeed, they often are not. In CF 46 Kant explains that mysticism
in the form of fanatical fantasy which "inevitably gets lost in the
transcendent" can be avoided only by establishing for it an ethical
grounding [cf. note 4]: philosophers
should "be on the lookout for a moral meaning in scriptural texts and
even...impose it on them", because "unless the supersensible (the
thought of which is essential to anything called religion) is anchored to
determinate concepts of reason, such as those of morality, ...there is no longer
any public touchstone of truth." So
"mysticism, with its lamp of private revelations" [65] is not
illegitimate in itself, but only when it fails to subject itself to the
objective principles of practical reason, as expressed, for example, in the
Bible.[22] Accordingly, Kant says in CPrR 71 that
empiricism is actually more harmful than mysticism: because "empiricism uproots the morality
of intentions, ... [it] is far more dangerous than all mystical enthusiasm,
which [because of its extreme character] can never be a lasting condition for
any great number of persons."
Like all objects to which Kant applies his Critical method,
mysticism is rejected only in its extreme form ("enthusiasm"), but is
allowed to remain in a more moderate ("Critical") form. Kant implies as much when he says in Observations
on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764) that some of Plato's
tendencies "may be too mystical" [ET 240(53), emphasis
added]. He makes the same point in a
rather different way in CF 59:
And so,
between orthodoxy which has no soul and mysticism which kills
reason, there is the teaching of the Bible, a faith which our reason can
develop out of itself. This teaching is
the true religious doctrine, based on the criticism of practical
reason, that works with divine power on all men's hearts...
The three words Kant
emphasizes in this passage suggest that his real aim is to defend, in
accordance with the true aim of the biblical message, not only a kind of Critical
orthodoxy [see KSP, ch.XI], but also a kind of Critical mysticism.
Thus, although Kant criticizes the belief that we can "by any token,
recognize a supersensible object in experience", he readily admits that
"at times there do arise stirrings of the heart making for morality"
[RBBR 174(162)]. As a support
for the moral life, Kant would not only sanction the attention a mystic pays to
such "stirrings", but, as we shall see, he actively fostered them in
his own life. Indeed, whereas fanatical
mysticism leads to "the moral death of reason" [RBBR 175(163)],
Kant's Critical mysticism is based on what can be called the moral birth
of reason.
Most mystics, in fact, regard a concern for the revitalization
of everyday life as the end result of the true mystical journey. For the mystical experience is not generally
one of confusion or uncertainty, as is so often wrongly assumed [see e.g. note
21a], but one of utmost clarity and immediate certainty. Kant's own attitude towards God in his Opus
Postumum reflects this same sense of inexpressible clarity and immediate
certainty, though we shall not examine it here.
Moreover, just as mystics (contrary to Kant's opinion) do not try
to grasp God (or even their own "nihility") but to open
themselves up to be grasped by the transcendent Ground of Being, so also
Kant's description of the voice of God speaking through the moral law within is
intended not as a way of controlling God, but as a way of recognizing and
receiving God's Word immediately and thereby applying it to one's everyday
actions.
Kant reveals that he is not entirely antipathetic towards
mysticism by appending to his discussion of theology and religion in CF
a lengthy letter in which a young student named Wilmans summarizes the content
of the Critical System.[23]
Kant warns that "I do not mean to guarantee that my views coincide
entirely with his" [69n]; but the title Kant gives to this Appendix
("On a Pure Mysticism of Reason") suggests that his main reason for
including this letter is to encourage the reader to flirt with the
enticing suggestion Wilmans makes at the end, that true Christian mysticism is
entirely consistent with, and perhaps even implied by, the Critical
System. (If Kant had objected to this
suggestion, he could easily have omitted this last portion of the letter.) Wilmans' argument [74-5] begins at the first
point in the letter where he actually addresses Kant, and is worth quoting at
length:
I had
reached this point in my study of your writings...when I became acquainted
with a group of people, called separatists but calling themselves mystics,
among whom I found your teachings put into practice almost verbatim. It was indeed difficult to recognize your
teachings, at first, in their mystical terms, but after persistent probing I
succeeded. It struck me as strange that
these people...repudiate all "divine service" that does not consist
in fulfilling one's duties: that they
consider themselves religious people and indeed Christians, though they take as
their code not the Bible, but only the precepts of an inward Christianity dwelling
in us from eternity. I inquired into
their conduct and found in them (except for the mangy sheep that, from
self-interest, get into every flock) a pure moral attitude of will... I examined their teachings and principles and
recognized the essentials of your entire moral and religious doctrine...: ...they consider the inner law, as they call
it, an inward revelation and so regard God as definitely its author. It is true that they regard the Bible as a
book which in some way or other--they do not discuss it further--is of divine
origin; but, ...they infer the divine origin of the Bible from the consistency
of the doctrine it contains with their inner law. For if one asks their reason, they reply: The Bible is validated in my heart, as you
will find it in yours if you obey the precepts of your inner law or the
teachings of the Bible. For the same
reason they do not regard the Bible as their code of laws but only as a
historical confirmation in which they recognize what is originally grounded in
themselves. In a word, if these people
were philosophers they would be (pardon the term!) true Kantians.... Among the educated members I have never
encountered fanaticism, but rather free, unprejudiced reasoning and judgment in
religious matters.
If Kant really was interested in the prospects of such a
Critical mysticism, then we would expect some evidence of a mystical tendency
both in his own life and in his philosophical writings. Although it is rarely taken at face value,
there is actually ample evidence of such a tendency in both areas. We shall therefore turn at this point to a
careful consideration of this evidence.
III. Kant's
Disclosure of Critical Mysticism
Kant's belief in God was
based not on theoretical proof, but on an existential "conviction
that dawns most spontaneously in all minds",[24]
which is quite close (if not identical) to the sort of immediate certainty of
the transcendent claimed by mystics. As
Norburn puts it: "Kant himself
never doubted the existence of a Supreme Being... He claimed that our awareness of God came by
another route, a route not open (like logic) to the clever devil."[25] Moreover, Kant sometimes uses phrases which
imply some sort of communicative relationship between God and man (such as
"God tells us"[26]),
as does his belief that duties can be regarded from the religious standpoint as
divine commands.[27] For instance, he says that "the sort of
moral relation that holds...between God and man surpasses completely the
boundaries of ethics and is altogether inconceivable to us."[28] Ward somehow construes this to mean that God
and man are not related [DKVE 158]; yet Kant's point surely is that a relation
holds between God and man, even though the nature of such a relation is
"inconceivable" from the theoretical standpoint.
Kant's favorite idiom for expressing the relation between God
and man, which he employs on numerous occasions in his later writings, is that
of the "voice of God" which speaks to man through the common participation
of God and man in practical reason. The
question as to how this "voice" is experienced--i.e. as an inner
feeling, as an audible voice, or even as part of an (apparently) outer
vision--is not important, as long as the person who experiences it recognizes
that it comes not as a direct (i.e. theoretical) communication, but
indirectly, through the mediation of our "morally legislative reason"
[see CPR 847]. To let our
activity be guided by this mysterious, inwardly impelling force or spirit is
to let ourselves be guided by God.
Because God's voice comes to us through the mediation of practical
reason, it will always agree with the moral law within us:
For if God
should really speak to man, man could still never know that it was God
speaking [i.e. the voice does not convey theoretical knowledge]. It is
quite impossible for man to apprehend the infinite by his senses, distinguish
it from sensible beings, and recognize it as such. But in some cases man can be sure that the
voice he hears is not God's; for if the voice commands him to do something
contrary to the moral law, then no matter how majestic the apparition may
be...he must consider it an illusion. [CF 63]
Kant draws attention
away from the theoretical and towards the practical, as usual, in order to
guard against fanaticism. But his
references to this "voice" are by no means entirely negative. On the
contrary, he associates it with a specific (judicial) faculty of the mind,
which he calls "conscience".
Kant describes conscience as "the representative of God,
who has His lofty seat above us, but who has also established a tribunal in
us."[29] That it is a judicial faculty is
evident from the fact that Kant describes it as "a third thing" which
mediates between "the moral judgment and the moral law" [LE
(69)]. "Conscience is a state of
consciousness which in itself is duty....
[It] is the moral faculty of judgment, passing judgment upon itself"
[RBBR 185-6(173-4)]. Through this "consciousness of an inner
court in man" [MM 437; see also 399-400], God shows Himself to
be both transcendent ("above us") and immanent ("in
us"). Kant does not, however, identify
our conscience with God; rather "conscience must be conceived as a
subjective principle of responsibility before God for our deeds" [438],
for "I, the prosecutor and yet the accused as well, am the same man"
[438n]. God, as the third person
in the Trinity, is "the real Judge of men (at the bar of conscience)"
[RBBR 145n(136n)]: "the
Judge of men...(the Holy Ghost)...speaks to our conscience according to the
holy law which we know" [140n(131n)].
"The judge within us is just" [LE (67)], therefore,
because it is conscience commanding on God's behalf in accordance with the
moral law.
This experience of the voice of God can always be trusted as a
person's "guide" [RBBR 185(173)]; the problem is to be
certain that the voice one appeals to for guidance really has its source in the
conscience: "an erring conscience
is a nonentity; ...I may err...in the judgment, in which I believe to be
in the right: for that belongs to the
understanding...; but in the consciousness, Whether in fact I believe
to be in the right (or merely pretend it), I absolutely cannot err..."[30] It is potentially misleading, however, to
interpret Kant as saying that "God's will cannot be...ascertained
otherwise than through our conscience" [KPR 86]; for Kant does not
mean that we cannot learn of God's will in any other way, but only that
whatever the outward form (e.g. a passage from Scripture, a sermon, or an inner
"voice"), the validation that it is from God occurs when the
message touches our conscience. If a
message touches the depths of our being (i.e. the conscience of our practical
reason), then we can be sure it is from God.
In proposing this view, Kant is not freeing individuals to follow the
whims of their desires so long as they convince themselves not to feel
guilty. That would be to ignore
the voice of conscience. Rather, the
ultimate goal of all reflection--and so also of doing philosophy--is to learn
how to distinguish properly the voice of God from the impure incentives which
speak against the moral law. Along these
lines Kant says in EAT 336 that "practical wisdom...abides alone
with God. And to respond to this Idea,
by not obviously acting against it, is what we might perhaps call human wisdom."
Kant's theory of the individual conscience as the means by which
God judges man is entirely consistent with Jesus' teaching about judgment in
the Sermon on the Mount. Both insist
"it is impossible to judge the virtue of others from their actions; that
Judge, who looks into all hearts, has reserved that judgement for
Himself."[31] Along these lines Kant criticizes "the
forcing of conscience" which clergy tend to impose on laity, which can
"forbid thought itself and really hinder it" by assuming that
doubting theoretical doctrines is "tantamount to lending an ear to the
evil spirits" [RBBR 133-4n(124n)].
For a person can become aware of "the verdict of his future
judge" not by examining the correctness of various theoretical beliefs,
but only by considering "his awakening conscience, together with the
empirical knowledge of himself [i.e. of the motives of his actions] which is
summoned to its aid" [77(71)]. This implies that God will judge us on the
basis of the judgment of our own conscience, which seems to be part of what
Jesus intended to convey in proclaiming that "in the way you judge
(yourself and others), you will be judged (by God); and by your standard of
measure, it shall be measured to you" [Matthew 7:2]. In any case, Kant's
understanding of the role of conscience provides significant evidence that he
was concerned not only with "the rational 'form' for the decision-making
procedure that a Christian would follow, anyway, ...if he acted fully in
accordance with Jesus' teachings"[32]--a
description which does accurately describe the purpose of his practical
system--but also with the existential experience of the relation between God
and man.[33]
Further evidence of Kant's concern for understanding the experience
of a relationship between God and man can be gleaned from his description of
"devoutness" as "an indirect relation of the heart to God"
[LE (89)]. A thorough discussion
of this theme would be out of place at this point [but see KSP XI.3], so
it must suffice to state that Kant's emphasis on devoutness as a way of
preparing oneself to act, rather than as a way of manipulating God, is
precisely the emphasis mystics usually put on spiritual exercises such as
meditation, prayer and fasting. Most mystics use such disciplines not to grasp
God, nor to render themselves well-pleasing to God, but to open themselves up
to the immediate presence of God, so that the ordinary actions of their
everyday life become imbued with divine energy. That Kant approves of such
Critical mysticism is clear when he proclaims that the true prayer is that in
which God's "all-seeing eye penetrates into our innermost souls and reads
our thoughts" [LE (98)] and which should as a result "fan into
flames the cinders of morality in the inner recesses of our heart" [(99)].
The traditional view, that "a private relation to God...is in Kant's eyes
incompatible with sound morality and sane reason" [KPR 155-156],
is therefore based on a mistaken interpretation of Kant's criticism. Kant encourages
a private relation between God and man through a mutual participation
in practical reason; he objects only to the supposition of a public
(theoretical) relation based on a supposed sensible intuition of God himself.[34] In other words, he accepts the importance of
"mystery, i.e., something holy which may indeed be known
by each single individual but cannot be made known publicly", as
long as we understand that "it must be moral" and "not for
theoretical use" [RBBR 137(129)]. Thus, when he criticizes
"the tendency of prayer to turn God, the proper object of faith, into an
object of intuition" [DKVE 63; see LE (115)], he is not
arguing that any attempt at "fellowship with [God]" is
"imaginary" [DKVE 62; see also KPR 155], but that our
immediate experience of such fellowship (which in itself is neither practical
nor theoretical) can be rationally explained as being rooted only in our
practical reason. Far from denying the validity of a fellowship based on
practical faith, Kant actually defends its sufficiency: "We do not know God by intuition but by
faith.... Now faith is undoubtedly no less vigorous a faculty than
intuition" [LE (114-5); s.a. RBBR 52(48)].
A criticism which is often made of Kant is well-expressed by
Otto: "It is one thing merely to believe in a
reality beyond the senses and another to have experience of it also; it is one
thing to have ideas of 'the holy' and another to become consciously aware of it
as an operative reality, intervening actively in the phenomenal world.[35] Webb applies this criticism directly to
Kant in KPR 22: "With
Science and with Morality one feels that Kant was completely at home... With
Aesthetics, and with Religion...the case is otherwise. The circumstances of his
life denied Kant any extensive experience of visible beauty, whether natural or
wrought by art." He adds that, in spite of his "congenital incapacity
for much that is most characteristically religious", Kant's philosophy of
religion "is epoch-making in theology" [24; see also 60]. To back up
these judgments Webb would presumably refer to the well known biographical
details of Kant's life: to the fact that
he never strayed more than ten or twenty miles from his birthplace in
Kînigsberg; to his rigidly structured daily schedule, so mechanical that his
neighbors, it is said, could set their clocks by his daily comings and goings;
and to his lack of church attendance.[36] Yet none of these facts points necessarily to
a philistine attitude towards life. On the contrary, many mystics would affirm
that the more one travels, the more difficult it is to maintain the mystical
centre of one's experience (i.e. one's "home"). Surely one does not
have to view natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon or Mount Everest in order
to appreciate God's presence in a flower:
the most ordinary landscape is quite capable of evoking a deep
(mystical) response from a person who is intimately familiar with it. And
generally it is not the philistine who is disciplined, but the mystic; for only
in the context of a disciplined life can the voice of God be clearly distinguished
from one's own inclinations. Moreover, it seems extraordinarily odd to assume
that someone who is capable of expounding the heart of the Christian message,
as Kant did so profoundly in RBBR, was himself uninterested in (to say
nothing of congenitally incapable of!) religious experience as such.
If we ignore the well known descriptions of Kant's life and
character, and consider the facts carefully and with an open mind, there turns
out to be ample evidence that he not only believed in the reality of a
transcendent God whom we represent by a theoretical idea, who manifests Himself
in our practical reason (speaking to our conscience), and who communes with us
in prayer, but also actively experienced this reality in his daily
life. Webb admits that "there is no
doubt that Kant could...have given in all sincerity an affirmative reply to the
question": "Whether he feared
God from his heart" [KPR 28]. But Rabel goes much further:
Kant was a
profoundly religious man.... When Kant had discovered [on one of his daily
walks] that in a bad summer swallows threw some of their own young out of the
nest in order to keep the others alive, he said: "My intelligence stood still. There was
nothing to do but to fall on one's knees and worship."[37]
(Wallace relates the
same story in more detail [WK 53], adding that once Kant said "he
had held a swallow in his hand, and gazed into its eyes; 'and as I gazed, it
was as if I had seen into heaven.'")
To any non-mystical person, out of touch with the voice of God, the
observation that swallows had killed their own young would be more likely to
evoke confusion or disgust with the evils of nature than an attitude of worship.
Yet for Kant, who believed we should always try "to discover the good in
evil", it evoked an overwhelming sense of divine Providence.[38]
Note, however, that it evoked this
response of fearful respect for God precisely because he was unable to
understand it: reason rests in the face of immediate experience; yet this rest
is not so much a death as a new birth, if reason accepts its submission to a
higher power. This is the alternative offered by Critical mysticism.
The twofold aspect of Kant's mystical world view is expressed
most clearly by his famous exclamation in CPrR 161-2 (emphasis added):
Two things
fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and
more steadily we reflect upon them: the
starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not merely conjecture
them and seek them as though obscured in darkness or in the transcendent region
beyond my horizon: I see them before me, and I associate them directly
with the consciousness of my own existence.
Such a statement could
only be made by a person who had spent long hours meditating on the hand of God
in nature and on the voice of God in conscience. The starry heavens and the moral law
apparently correspond in Kant's mind to his theoretical and practical systems,
respectively. But what "fills the mind with awe" is not empirical
knowledge of the stars or moral activity as such, but rather a meditative
observation of how these wonders operate in our immediate experience. There is
no third object of meditation representing Kant's judicial system because this
system is not concerned with knowledge, but with feelings.
"Feelings are not knowledge and so do not indicate [the presence of] a
mystery" [RBBR 138(129)]. His explanation in the third Critique
of purposiveness in nature and of beauty as the "symbol of morality"[39]
should therefore be regarded as an attempt to justify, from the judicial
standpoint, the feelings of awe which arise out of meditation on the mysteries
of theoretical and practical reason.[40] This assumption--that Kant's own religious experience
arose more profoundly in his personal contact with conscience and with nature
than in his participation in organized religion--can adequately explain why he
chose beauty and teleology as the topics of CJ (the Critique
which he explicitly regards as providing a religious answer to the
question "What may I hope?" [see CPR 832-833]) rather than
more traditional forms of religion.[41]
The remainder of this section will therefore be devoted to a closer look at
these two objects of Critical meditation.
We have already considered in some detail how, as Webb puts it,
"Kant's attitude towards the moral law is always profoundly religious,
full of...what Professor Otto...taught us to call das Numinoses" [KPR
58]. Kant says, for example, that our soul regards "with the highest
wonder" and with exalted "admiration...the original moral
predisposition itself in us" [RBBR 49(44)], for "the very
incomprehensibility of the predisposition...announces a divine origin"
[49-50(45)]. An autobiographical remark towards the end of his life shows that
Kant put into practice the theory he propounds:
...when
composing my writings, I have always pictured this judge as standing at my side
to keep me not only from error that corrupts the soul, but even from any
careless expression that might give offence. And...now, in my seventy-first
year, ...I can hardly help thinking that I may well have to answer for this
very soon to a judge of the world who scrutinizes men's hearts [CF
9-10].
His meditative attitude
towards the moral law can be adequately summarized as an attempt not to know
God, but to recognize and accept God's proper role as "a knower of
hearts" [FPET 269(212)].
Unfortunately, commentators are usually not as aware of Kant's
profoundly religious attitude towards nature.
Webb, for instance, laments "that Kant did not more clearly
perceive in his own attitude in the presence of the starry heavens a proof that
Religion has other roots than the experience of moral obligation" [KPR
177]. However, just because Kant believed
no theoretical proof can be adequate to demonstrate the existence of God, and
that religion can therefore claim a rational basis only in morality, this does
not mean that he failed to appreciate the significance of the immediate
presence of God in nature. On the contrary, Kant admits, for instance,
the force of the teleological argument for God's existence, as long as it is
viewed as providing good empirical reasons for belief, rather
than an absolutely certain, theoretical proof. Surely, this indicates just as
clear a perception of the presence of God in the experience of nature as in
"the experience of moral obligation"--though in neither case is this
perception or feeling a sufficient basis for theoretical proof. Indeed, evidence of Kant's meditative
attitude towards nature can be found both in the details of his life and in
the contents of his writings.
Kant's mother, whom he greatly respected, taught him at an early
age to appreciate his natural surroundings [WK 12,53]. As he once told
his friend Jachmann, "she planted and tended the first seeds of good in
me. She opened my heart to the impressions of nature; she awakened and widened
my ideas, and her teachings have had an enduring, healing influence on my
life" [quoted in KE 16]. In his early adulthood (between 1746 and
1755) Kant worked as a live-in tutor for several wealthy families who lived on
country estates near Kînigsberg. During
these seven or eight years [cf. WK 19-21 and KE 22-3] he must
have had ample opportunity to experience the hand of God in nature, as his
mother had taught him. (He also sometimes preached sermons in the village
churches.) And even after becoming a
professor at the age of forty-six [WK 34], he disciplined himself to
break away from the lively conversation at his dinner table at four in the
afternoon in order to enjoy an hour or more of peaceful walking. These walks he
usually took in solitude, either on what is now called the "Philosophers'
Embankment" along the river Pregel or to the north-west of town along
various garden paths [40-1; KE 481]. (He also enjoyed "going for
excursions into the country surrounding his native town", especially to
the "idyllic" forest just a mile to the north-east, where in 1764 he
composed Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime [KE
27-8].) As he walked, he was careful to
keep his mouth closed and breathe through his nose, because he believed this
could help prevent disease, but also, no doubt, as an excuse for walking alone
in silence [49]. (Kant describes his
attitude towards the proper relation between thinking, walking and eating in CF
109-110; and he adds some interesting comments about "drinking
air" through the nose in CF 110-111n.) Such an interest in keeping disciplined
periods of silence and solitude is likely to give rise to a religious
experience of some sort, even if one is not consciously fostering a mystical
bent. Furthermore, Kant usually fasted
on "nothing but water" in between his once-a-day afternoon meal [KE
49]. That Kant may have been more
conscious of the spiritual benefit of his disciplined lifestyle than is
generally recognized is suggested by the fact that, upon returning home from
his walks, he would spend the next few hours doing what could well be called meditating: "As darkness began to fall, he would
take his seat at the stove, and with his eye fixed on the tower of Loebenicht
church would ponder on the problems which exercised his mind."[42]
The impact of Kant's meditative mind-set on his attitude towards
nature is clearly reflected in his writings on nature. For example, he says in HPE
431(95): "Man, who is intrusted
with the oeconomy [sic] of the earth, not only possesses a capacity
["for contemplation and admiration" of nature], but takes a pleasure
in learning to know it, and through his introspections glorifieth the
Creator." The book which contains Kant's most important
"introspections" into nature, and which gave rise to a revolutionary
theory of the universe (often called the Kant-Laplace theory), has at times an
"almost mystical tone".[43] In the "Opening Discourse" Kant
explicitly links his introspections into nature with his experience of
the presence of God: "at each step
I saw the clouds...dissipate, and...the splendour of the Highest Being break
forth with the most vivid brilliance" [UNH 222(81)]. As he draws
his discussion to a close he exclaims at one point that "God...paints [malt]
himself in all his creatures" [360(190)], thus implying the view he develops
in CJ of nature as the artwork of God. And in the final paragraph he
makes a profound statement of the mystical experience of the hand of God in
nature: "In the universal silence
of nature and in the calm of the senses the immortal spirit's hidden faculty of
knowledge speaks an ineffable language and gives [us] undeveloped concepts,
which are indeed felt, but do not let themselves be described."[44]
This attitude towards nature is by no means limited to Kant's
early, "pre-Copernican" writings. In his Inaugural Dissertation, when
he had already adopted the Copernican doctrine of intuition, he nevertheless
affirms that "we intuit all things in God."[45] Far from giving up this view in his later
life, the entire Critical System can be regarded as an explanation of its
implications [see e.g. MM 481]. Thus a comment much like that quoted
from UNH 367(196) is made in RBBR 197(185-6):
...the
contemplation of the profound wisdom of the divine creation in the smallest
things, and its majesty in the great...is a power which cannot only transport
the mind into that sinking mood, called adoration, annihilating men, as
it were, in their own eyes; it is also, in respect of its own moral
determination, so soul-elevating a power that words, in comparison, ...must
needs pass away as empty sound because the emotion arising from such a vision
of the hand of God is inexpressible.
The main difference
between this and his earlier eulogies of the mystical contemplation of nature is
that he now distinguishes between the fanatical tendency to allow oneself to be
annihilated by the mystical "vision" and the Critical
mysticism according to which one accepts the immediate but inexpressible
presence of God as a private confirmation of the moral postulate of God's
existence.
If we now recall Schweitzer's definition of the mystic as the
person who feels a connection with the eternal even "amid the earthly and
temporal", and who sees this very division as somehow transcended, then we
can safely conclude that Kant's deep awareness of the "beyond" towards
which nature and conscience points us qualifies him as being a mystic [cf. note
4 above]. A further confirmation of this
conclusion comes in FPET 264(204-5), when the philosopher whose "bent"
in life is supposed to have been "remote" from any interest in
experiencing God's presence[46]
declares that, in the end, the only solution to the problem of evil is a full
appreciation of God's presence in one's contemplative experience of nature
("the world") and conscience ("practical reason"):
The world,
as a work of God, may be contemplated by us as a divine publication of the designs
of his will.... For there [i.e. in the "authentic theodicÇe"
provided by our experience of God] God is by our reason the very expounder of
his own will announced by the creation; ...that is not the exposition of a reasoning
(speculative) practical reason, but of a practical reason possessing potency,
which...may be considered as the immediate declaration and voice of God, by
which he giveth a meaning to the letter of his creation.
The final confirmation
of the mystical character of Kant's world view would require a thoroughgoing
examination of Kant's Opus Postumum [see note 7 above], for in this work
he was attempting to realize his long-standing dream of establishing a Critical
mysticism on the basis of his Critical metaphysics by arguing that the hand of
God in nature and the voice of God in conscience can be regarded as the two
sides of one mystical reality.
IV. Kant's Mystical
Metaphors
We have now explored the extent to which the limitations placed
on mysticism in Dreams provide the context in which Kant was able to develop
a Critical mysticism in his writings prior to Opus Postumum. A helpful way to conclude this article will
be to relate Kant's dual emphasis on the experience of God in conscience and
nature to his metaphor of the Critical philosopher as standing on the shoreline
between the sea and the beach. As Beck
suggests: "Kant speaks of hugging the shore of experience and staying far
away from the high and stormy seas of metaphysical speculation. Yet that may
have been where his heart was."[47] Indeed, we can picture Kant standing on the
wet sand at the beach near Kînigsberg, with the waves periodically splashing
over his feet, feeling the setting of the sun in his heart and the gradual
appearance of the stars overhead. This imagery is admittedly somewhat fanciful,
yet it is suggested by Kant's own choice of metaphors, and can be regarded as
quite an appropriate symbol of his System of Perspectives. The Critical
philosopher stands at the crossroads of immediate experience and casts a
reflective gaze over the earth of knowledge on one side and the sea of faith on
the other, and recognizes that only on the border between these two can
a person fully appreciate the awesome presence of God in light of the
conscience within his heart and the majestic stars above. None of these
perspectives on its own suffices to define human nature, yet together they
suggest the following picture of Kant's mystical world view:
Kant's Four Guiding Symbols
stars above
earth before man sea beyond
heart within
These four symbols
correspond directly to the main divisions in Kant's philosophical System. The stars represent nature, which is the
source of the theoretical knowledge examined in the first Critique; the
heart represents freedom and the moral law, which are the sources of the practical
knowledge examined in the second Critique; the earth represents
experience, which is the source of the judicial knowledge of beauty and purpose
examined in the third Critique; and the sea represents faith, which is
the true source of the metaphysics examined in his metaphysical works,[48]
and so also (following the analogy in Dreams) of what I have called his Critique
of Mysticism.
Kant is not called the "sage of Kînigsberg" for
nothing. As a true sage, he makes his home quietly on the borderlands, denying
all extremes, including extreme mysticism.
Thus, his world view does not really fit into any of the three
categories of mysticism mentioned in section I, but establishes a fourth
category instead. He offers the common
man[49]
a vision of life--a Critical mysticism--which can be enjoyed by any and every
person who is willing to submit to the God of the shoreline, the God who always
escapes our theoretical grasp, yet speaks to us in the universal experiences of
nature and conscience.
Notes to: Kant's Critique of Mysticism (2)
[1] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason--hereafter
CPrR--tr. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), p.148.
(References to Kant's works will cite the Akademie page
numbering. When this number is not
included in the translation, the translation's pagination will be added in brackets. The only exception is Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason--hereafter CPR--tr. N. Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan,
1929), references to which will cite the second (1787) edition pagination,
except where material is unique to the first (1781) edition, in which case an
"A" will precede the page number.)
[2] See "Kant's Critique of Mysticism: (1) The Critical Dreams", in Philosophy & Theology 3.4 (Summer
1989), pp.
[3] Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer,
Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics--hereafter Dreams--tr. E.
Goerwitz (London: Swan Sonneschein & Co., 1900), p.373(121).
[4] The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, tr. W. Montgomery
(London: A. & C. Black, 1931),
p.1. Schweitzer distinguishes between
"primitive" mysticism, which is based on a "magical act"
leading to supposed oneness with God, and "developed" mysticism, in
which this union "takes place through an act of thinking" [1-2]. He argues that Paul the Apostle does not
have "the usual mentality of a mystic.
The exoteric and the esoteric go hand in hand.... [For] mysticism is combined with a
non-mystical conception of the world" [25]. Schweitzer's interpretation of Paul's
mysticism of "being in Christ" is strikingly similar to the interpretation
I will offer in this paper of Kant's mysticism.
For both forge a middle path between the extremes of magical and
intellectual mysticism, and in so doing they avoid the greatest "danger of
all mysticism", which "is that of becoming supra-ethical"
[297].
[5] See Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare
Reason--hereafter RBBR --tr. T.M. Greene and H.H. Hudson as Religion
Within the Limits of Reason Alone (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), passim. In Chapter XI of my forthcoming book, Kant's
System of Perspectives--hereafter KSP--I argue at length for a balanced
interpretation of Kant's attitude. In a
nutshell, RBBR is not an attempt to reduce religion to morality, as is
so often claimed, but to preserve the value of empirical religion by
insuring that it remains connected to its rational (moral) root.
[6] Clement C.J. Webb, Kant's Philosophy of Religion--hereafter
KPR--(Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1926), p.14.
[7] Dreams is examined in the first paper in this series, and
Opus Postumum in "What is 'Tantalizing' about the 'Gap' in Kant's
Philosophical System?" (forthcoming).
[8] Ninian Smart, Philosophers and Religious Truth
(London: SCM Press, 1969), Chapter 5,
paragraph 62.
[9] Peter Baelz, Christian Theology and Metaphysics
(London: Epworth Press, 1968), p.41.
[10] Keith Ward, The Development of Kant's View of
Ethics--hereafter DKVE--(Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1972), p.168.
[11] See KSP, ch.XI. I examine the role of faith in Kant's
Critical System (even in its theoretical part) in "Faith as Kant's Key to
the Justification of Transcendental Reflection", The Heythrop Journal
25.4 (October 1984), pp.442-455.
[12] Quote from John Ballie in Don Wiebe, "The
Ambiguous Revolution: Kant on the Nature of Faith", Scottish Journal of
Theology 33 (1980), p.530.
[13] Carl Du Prel, The Philosophy of Mysticism,
tr. C.C. Massey (London: George Redway,
1889), vol.1, p.xxvi.
[14] See my article "Knowledge and Experience: An Examination of the Four Reflective
'Perspectives' in Kant's Critical Philosophy", Kant-Studien 78.2
(1987), pp.170-173.
[15] William Wallace, Kant--hereafter WK--(London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1901), p.218.
[16] Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties
(1798)--hereafter CF--tr. M.J. Gregor (New York: Abaris, 1979), p.47.
[17] Immanuel Kant, Of a Gentle Ton Lately Assumed in
Philosophy (1796)--hereafter GT--tr. anonymously (by John
Richardson) in vol.2 of Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, Religious
and Various Philosophical Subjects--hereafter ET--(London: William Richardson, 1798-1799), p.401n(180n).
[18] See my article "The Radical Unknowability of
Kant's 'Thing in Itself'", Cogito 3.2 (March 1985),
pp.101-116. See also section 2 of my
article "Six Perspectives on the Object in Kant's Theory of
Knowledge", Dialectica 40.2 (1986), pp.121-151.
[19] Kant emphasizes both the subjective and the mysterious
aspects of the supersensible in CF 58-9:
"there is something in us that we cannot cease to wonder at when we
have once seen it... This ascendency of
the supersensible man in us over the sensible, such that (when it
comes to a conflict between them) the sensible is nothing...is an object
of the greatest wonder; and our wonder at this moral predisposition in
us, inseparable from our humanity, only increases the longer we contemplate
this true (not fabricated) ideal."
In GT 402-3(182-3) he says of this same "internal
predisposition in humanity, and...the impenetrability of the mystery which
veils it": "One never wearies
viewing it, and admiring in one's self a power that yields to no power of
nature..." He then identifies
"the mystery which...can be felt" as "the immoveable [sic]
moral law", and explains that this gives us practical access to the
supersensible "not by a feeling that grounds cognition, but by a
distinct cognition, which has influence on (the moral) feeling."
[20] Thus he argues that there cannot "be inferred
or discovered from a feeling certain evidence of a direct divine
influence... Feeling is private to every
individual and cannot be demanded of others" [RBBR 114(104-5),
emphasis added].
[21] Immanuel Kant, The End of All Things
(1794)--hereafter EAT--tr. R.E. Anchor in L.W. Beck (ed.), On History
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963),
pp.69-84. Quotes here are taken from
pp.335-6.
[22] It is relevant to note here that Kant's theory in RBBR
of a moral interpretation of scripture has a close parallel in some
medieval theologians, who referred to this type of interpretation as revealing
the "sensus mysticus of a scriptural passage" [Ernst Cassirer,
Kant's Life and Thought, tr. J. Haden (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981), p.389]. Unfortunately, Cassirer falls into the common trap of dismissing
such interpretations as leading "into a mere mystical darkness"
[390], rather than as providing ultimate clarity, as mystics claim it does.
[23] Elsewhere in the same work [CF 62-3n] Kant
toys with the idea of a "mystical chronology" which is
"calculated a priori" (using the numbers 4 and 7 in various
combinations).
[24] Francisco Peccorini, "Transcendental
Apperception and Genesis of Kant's Theological Conviction", Giornale di
Metafisica 27 (1972), p.64.
[25] Greville Norburn, "Kant's Philosophy of
Religion: A Preface to
Christology?", Scottish Journal of Theology 26 (1973), p.432.
[26] Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (delivered
c.1775-1781)--hereafter LE--tr. L. Infield (London: Methuen, 1979), p.(98); not included in the Akademie
edition of Kant's works. See also CF
67.
[27] See e.g. RBBR 153(142). He declares in LE (48) that the laws
of ethics (as opposed to legal laws) "do not relate to other people, but
only to God and to oneself." That
is, ethical laws are determined by the mutual participation of God and man in
practical reason, which establishes the moral law in each individual.
[28] Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals
(1797)--hereafter MM--part II tr. M.J. Gregor as The Doctrine of
Virtue (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1964), p.490.
[29] Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Education
(delivered c.1776-1787)--hereafter LEd--tr. A. Churton (University of
Michigan Press, 1960 [1899]), p.495(215).
[30] Immanuel Kant, On the Failure of all the
Philosophical Essays in the Theodicäe (1791)--hereafter FPET--tr.
anonymously (by J. Richardson) in ET, p.268(210).
[31] Immanuel Kant, Attempt at Introducing Negative
Quantities into Philosophy (1763), tr. G. Rabel in Kant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), p.200(49). Compare Matthew 6:1,16 and 7:1-5.
[32] S.B. Thomas, "Jesus and Kant: A Problem in Reconciling Two Different
Points of View", Mind 79 (1970), p.195.
[33] I have discussed more thoroughly the relation
between the moral principles of Kant and Jesus in "Four Perspectives on
Moral Judgment" (forthcoming).
[34] Robert Oakes argues [in "Noumena, Phenomena,
and God", International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4
(1973), p.37] that when a person experiences God as present in some sensible
object, as for example in the sound of church bells ringing, the person is
"having a sensible experience of God, i.e., in Kantian terms, God
must be understood as the object of her 'sensible intuition'." In such a case, "the experience of God supervenes
upon the experience of the bells... That
is, in so far as the experience of the bells is at the same time an
experience of God, the woman would thereby be having a sensible
experience of God." Oakes is right
to claim that the hearing of the bells and the experience of God are both
"mediated" experiences. But
his view of "God as a possible object of sensible intuition" [37] is
mistaken inasmuch as it fails to take into account the perspectival difference
between these two types of mediated experiences. Bells can mediate in our experience of God by
pointing indirectly to something nonsensible beyond them: they remain symbols of a transcendent ideal
which can never become an object of empirical knowledge. Yet the mediate element in our experience of
the bells (as bells)--i.e. the sensible intuition of the bells--points directly
to a real sensible object of which empirical knowledge is possible. From the standpoint of immediate
(nonreflective) experience, both of these are indeed equally valid
interpretations. But the fundamental
difference between them is revealed as soon as we reflect upon them
theoretically: our sensible intuition of
the bells points "forward" to a publicly verifiable empirical
knowledge which can be viewed theoretically, whereas our awareness of God's
presence in such an experience points "backward" to a transcendent
and therefore theoretically unverifiable ground of all empirical knowledge.
[35] Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, tr. J.W.
Harvey (London: Oxford University Press,
1950), p.143.
[36] See e.g. Willibald Klinke, Kant for Everyman--hereafter
KE--tr. M. Bullock (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), pp.38,43.
[37] G. Rabel, Kant [see note 30], p.vii.
[38] LEd 495(216); see also Immanuel Kant, History and
Physiography of the Most Remarkable Cases of the Earthquake which towards the
End of 1755 Shook a Great Part of the Earth (1756)--hereafter HPE--tr.
anonymously (by J. Richardson) in ET, p.431(95).
[39] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment
(1790)--hereafter CJ--tr. J.C. Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), pp.351-354.
[40] The question as to why Kant mentions only two
sources of admiration and awe is a difficult one. The account I have given in the main text is the
one which seems to fit best with Kant's own explanation. However, there is another alternative. If the "starry heavens" refer not
to the limits of man's theoretical standpoint, but rather to the limits
of man's judicial standpoint (i.e. not to the first but to the third Critique),
then the problem becomes one of discovering something in the former
system which Kant views with "ever new and increasing admiration and
awe". There are, in fact, several a
priori elements or functions of the mind which Kant admits are ultimately
mysterious. He says in CPR 180-1,
for example, that "schematism...is an art concealed in the depths of the
human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow
us to discover, and to have open to our gaze." This is the answer towards which Heidegger
points in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. However, the best answer, I believe, can be
found by taking note of the sections of the first Critique which most
captured Kant's own attention in an "ever new and increasing"
way--namely, "The Deduction of the Pure Concepts of Understanding"
and the "Paralogisms of Pure Reason", because these are the only two
major sections of CPR which Kant almost completely rewrote for the
second edition. The common factor between
these two sections is that in both Kant devotes considerable attention to
discussing the implications of what he calls "the radical faculty of all
our knowledge, namely, ...transcendental apperception" [CPR
A114]. This clue suggests that his sense
of "I", as the subjective source of the categories, is the
"brute fact" against which he "bumps his head" in his
theoretical system, and which therefore best corresponds to the starry heavens
and the moral law.
Kant's treatment of the "unity of apperception" does
indeed have a certain mystical flavor.
For Kant is not referring simply to the ordinary man's empirical sense
of "I", but to a deeper, transcendental limit of all human
experience--a limit which comes into view only as we gradually forget
about (i.e. hold in abeyance) the empirical diversity of our ordinary
experiences. And this, like Kant's
overall a priori approach, is remarkably similar to the mystic's claim that in
order to experience God (cf. answer philosophical questions) we must first go
through an experience of unknowing.
Eckhart, for instance, says "the more completely you are able to
draw in your powers to a unity and forget all those things and their
images which you have absorbed...the nearer you are to [this experience]. To achieve an interior act, a man must
collect all his powers into a corner of his soul...hiding away from all
images and forms... Here, he must come
to a forgetting and an unknowing" [as quoted by Robert K.C.
Forman in "The Construction of Mystical Experience", Faith and
Philosophy 5.3 (July 1988), pp.259-260].
Forman examines this process of forgetting in some detail, noting that
it eventually serves to revitalize the very details of life which had
been "forgotten" [see p.263].
In the same way, the "I think" is for Kant the thought-less
core or starting point of all thought; apperception is the perceptionless
perception of "I" which enables us to become aware of all our
perceptions. And as such it provides us
with a new (transcendental) perspective from which to view the empirical
details of human knowledge in an enlightened way.
The role of transcendental
apperception as the "missing" element in Kant's description of his
experience of "awe and admiration" is actually implicit in the text
quoted above from CPrR 161-2. For
it is "the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me"
which give rise to this mystical experience; they are experienced as awesome
only when (and because) "I associate them directly with the
consciousness of my own existence"--that is, only if I experience them as
"at one" with the deepest layer of my self-identity, my
transcendental apperception.
[41] Kant confirms this assumption in CJ 482n
[see also MM 482]: "Both the admiration for beauty and the emotion
excited by the profuse variety of ends in nature...have something about them
akin to a religious feeling."
From an explicitly Kantian (a priori) standpoint, Rudolph Otto expounds
in more detail the implications of this view of religious feeling [in The
Idea of the Holy, tr. J.W. Harvey (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1950 [1923]); on Kant, see pp.45,112-4]. Otto's claim that man's deep religious (or mystical)
experiences have an essentially mysterious (i.e. nonrational and even
nonmoral) factor might seem to be a direct rejection of Kant's emphasis on reason
as the source for both natural and moral knowledge. But in fact they are almost entirely
consistent. Otto's account of Kant's
statements regarding the impact of conscience and nature on his philosophical
feeling would be something like this.
Kant experiences awe when confronted with the moral law and starry skies
because he recognizes these as symbols of a transcendent, mysterious source of
the two sides of human existence. They
represent the two "brute facts" against which we "bump our
heads", so to speak, in our efforts to discover the one ultimate Reason
out of which human reason arises. This
Reason creates nature and creates morality, but is it itself
rational and moral? The fundamental
tenet of Kant's theoretical philosophy is that we cannot know the answer
to such a question. And that is
precisely the reason why our experience of these two limits
arouses such "admiration and awe"!
(This paradoxical situation arises, incidentally, whenever
self-reference is applied to any fundamental principle: the principle itself cannot be coherently
submitted to the criteria to which it gives rise.) Once the perspectival character of Kant's
thinking is taken into account, it becomes clear that he would have no trouble
accepting such an explanation of his deepest experiences. "Reason" is, for Kant, the
ultimately unknowable mystery out of which arise all our human capacities for
knowledge and goodness.
[42] WK 41. Kant
also "sat in meditation" after breakfast from about five until six each
morning, a habit about which he once remarked: "This is the happiest time
of the day for me" [KE 48].
[43] WK 108.
Stanley Jaki's recent translation of this book, Universal Natural
History and Theory of the Heavens--hereafter UNH--(Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1981) is
unfortunately over-literal, and his introduction and notes are grossly unfair
to Kant's true position. I have
criticized Jaki's approach in detail in "Kant's Cosmogony Re-Evaluated",
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18.3 (September 1987),
pp.255-269.
[44] UNH 367(196).
This and the previous quote from UNH are my own translation.
[45] Immanuel Kant, On the Form and Principles of the
Sensible and Intelligible World, tr. G.B. Kerferd and D.E. Walford in Selected
Pre-Critical Writings and Correspondence with Beck (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1968),
p.410. Kant repeats this phrase several
times in Opus Postumum.
[46] KPR 60. Such a
stoic view of Kant is flatly contradicted by the accounts of Kant's personality
given by those who knew him personally.
One of his closest friends, Jachmann, describes him as "a spirited
orator, sweeping the heart and emotions along with him, as well as satisfying
the intelligence" [quoted in KE 34], and adds that in social gatherings
he was unsurpassed: "All his
friends were unanimously of the opinion that they had never known a more
interesting companion" [quoted in KE 45]. Moreover, Kant openly described himself as
having a "very easily affected, but otherwise carefree spirit"
[quoted in KE 32]. What Kant
objected to was not emotion as such, but "emotional thinking" [52].
[47] Lewis White Beck, Kant's Latin Writings (New
York: Peter Lang, 1986), p.11. For examples of Kant's use of this metaphor,
see his: The Use in Natural
Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with Geometry... (1756), tr. L.W. Beck
in Kant's Latin Writings, p.475; The Only Possible Argument for the
Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763), tr. anonymously (by J.
Richardson) in ET, pp.65-66(220); CPR 294-295,353-354,A395-396;
and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), tr. L.W. Beck (New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), p.262. The best example comes in CPR 294-5,
where Kant describes the domain of "pure understanding" as "an
island, enclosed by nature itself within unalterable limits. It is the land of truth--enchanting
name!--surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of illusion,
where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive
appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with
empty hopes, and engaging him in enterprises which [like dreams!] he can never
abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion." Kant's use of the word "horizon"
(which occurs 16 times in CPR [according to my A Complete Index to
Kemp Smith's Translation of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
(distributed privately, 1987), p.171]) is closely related to his analogy of the
shoreline. In CPR 353-354, for
instance, Kant compares the illusion created by the Antinomies to the fact that
the sea appears to be "higher at the horizon than at the shore".
[48] That is, in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science, in MM, and in Opus Postumum. I examine in detail the logical relations
between these and the other books which make up Kant's System in "The
Architectonic Form of Kant's Copernican Logic", Metaphilosophy
17.4 (October 1986), pp.266-288. On the
role of faith in Kant's System, see note 11 above.
[49] Manfred Kuehn, in "Kant's Transcendental
Deduction of God's Existence as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason", Kant-Studien
76.2 (1985), p.168, rightly insists that "Kant makes...very clear that he
is on the side of the common man or common sense." "For Kant", unlike many of his
Enlightenment contemporaries, "the 'crowd' is not an object of
contempt." It is important to point
out, however, that, even though the philosopher's task should be to defend
common sense, it is nevertheless unjustifiable for the philosopher "boldly
to appeal to the common sense of mankind [i.e. instead of giving arguments]--an
expedient which always is a sign that the cause of reason is in desperate
straits" [CPR 811-812; see also Prolegomena 259(7)]. Unfortunately, because Kant put in the place
of such specious methods a complex tangle of abstract terminology and
argumentation, his belief that his philosophical System upholds the view of the
common man [see e.g. CPR 859] is often ignored or not taken
seriously. Yet the overall purpose of
his System is certain to be misunderstood if its aim in this respect is
ignored. For the whole of Kant's
philosophical effort can be seen as an attempt to place limitations on the
various extremes which threaten to sway the common man away from the beliefs
and actions towards which his reason naturally points the way [see e.g. CPR
xxxif]. Indeed, this emphasis carried
over for Kant into his personal attitudes as well. Thus, he says in CPrR 76-77 that
"to a humble plain man, in whom I perceive righteousness in a higher
degree than I am conscious of in myself, my mind bows, whether I choose
or not..."
This etext is based on a prepublication draft of the published version
of this essay.
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