Chapter VII

Kant’s System of Religious Perspectives

 

 

      ... to have religion is a duty of man to himself. [Kt6:444]

 

1. The Four Stages of Religion in General

       As a result of the highly abstract character of much of Kant’s theology, both in its positive and negative aspects [cf. IV.2-4 and AIV.1-3], there is a general consen­sus among those who have any opinion on the matter that ‘Kant’s God is, most aggressively, the God of the philosophers.’[1] It is a mis­take, however, to infer from Kant’s Critical theology (especially from the philo­soph­ical concept of God developed in the three Critiques) that his God is nothing but an abstract philosophical concept. On the contrary, Kant’s purpose in developing his Critical theology was to a large extent to defend the legitimacy of his fervent belief in the God of his youth, and to separate the genuine ele­ments of his par­ents’ Pietist tradition from the unnecessary trappings that tended to obscure its true value [see e.g., Kt8:132n(123n)]. Webb fully appre­ciates this point: ‘Not only did Kant ... al­ways believe in the existence of God as a real Being ...; but also ..., he en­vis­aged the God, in whom he never ceased to believe, after the fashion of the the­ism current in his youth.’[2] Thus it is wrong to interpret Kant’s personal lack of participation in organized religion as a denial of the value of religion in general, or of Chris­tianity in particular. To do so would be as inap­propriate as to interpret his avoidance of the services of doctors and lawyers as an outright rejection of medicine and govern­ment. Instead, all of these can be explained in terms of his tendency to carry individ­ualism to an extreme: ‘Every man his own doctor, every man his own lawyer, every man his own priest,—that was the ideal of Kant’.[3]

       Kant’s theology is bound to give the impression of total abstraction to those who fail to recognize that its main purpose is ‘to form the basis of reli­gion’ [Kt1:656]. This might seem at first sight to pose an insur­mountable problem, however, in light of his conviction that all attempts to prove the exis­tence of God theoreti­cally ‘are alto­gether fruitless and by their very nature null and void’ and ‘do not lead to any theology whatsoever’ [664]. Neverthe­less, as we saw in IV.2-4, Kant avoids this problem by arguing that ‘the mere pos­si­bil­ity of such a being [viz., God] is sufficient to pro­duce religion in man’ [Kt26: 998(27)]. For ‘in religion ... no assertorial knowledge is required (even of God’s existence)’; the only requirement is ‘an assertorial faith’ [Kt8:153-4n(142n)]. As long as we keep in mind the primacy of practical reason, the limitations of theoretical reason will not be a valid ex­cuse for living as though God does not exist, because a practical faith in God carries us ‘farther into the heart of reality than the purely speculative or scien­tific reason could ever take us’ [We26:69]. Although Kant’s concern for the au­tonomy of morality leads him to emphasize that ‘morality does not need religion at all ... either to know what duty is or to impel the performance of duty’,[4] he would also admit that ‘without faith in God’, as Webb puts it, the moral law ‘must seem to be ... a voice crying in the wilderness of an alien world, its pres­ence wherein must remain an inexplicable and baffling mystery’ [We26:86; see e.g., Kt4:129-30; Kt7:474]. The main aim of Kant’s Critical theology, therefore, is to provide the basis for a philosophically sound account of religion.

       In this chapter, we shall begin our discussion of Kant’s Critical religion proper—i.e., as the topic of Part Three, rather than the topic of this entire second volume of Kant’s System of Perspectives. My goal will be to demon­strate how a recognition of the theocentric and perspectival character of Kant’s Critical philosophy [see Part One], together with an appreciation of Kant’s true attitude towards God and theology [see Part Two], can shed new light on the implica­tions of his critique of religion, as it is laid out primarily in his two books on religion, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason [Kt8] and The Conflict of the Faculties [Kt65], but also in scat­tered comments throughout his lectures [especially Kt26 and Kt35] and other writ­ings. I shall begin in this section by continuing Chapter VI’s discussion of the place of religion in Kant’s Sys­tem, focusing in particular on the structure of Kt8 and on the interplay be­tween pure (or ‘transcendental’) and empirical reli­gion. The remainder of this chapter will then examine in detail the systematic contents (i.e., what Kant could have called the ‘transcendental elements’) of religion, as set forth in Kt8. (These sections will apply to Kant’s system of religious perspectives the same architectonic mapping principles outlined in KSP1:III.3 and VII.1 for systemt and systemp: each stage will be analyzed in terms of a three-step, synthetic ar­gument, with the four stages related to each other as a 2LAR.[5] I shall therefore adopt the convention of referring to the religious system as ‘systemr’.) Follow­ing the synopsis of Kant’s argument given in VI.3, I shall present in VII.2 a detailed account of Kant’s treatment of the nature of and conflict be­tween good and evil. His views on the church and its service of God will be the subject of VII.3. Finally, I shall conclude in VII.4 with a summary of this architec­tonic, perspectival interpretation of systemr.

       By focusing in this chapter on outlining the transcendental elements of systemr, we shall be limiting our attention to the first of the two ‘experiments’ Kant refers to in the Preface to the second edition of Kt8 [see VI.3]. These two experiments actually corre­spond directly to the nature of pure and empirical re­ligion, respectively. The first experiment, Kant says in Kt8:12(11), concerns the ‘narrower’ sphere identified as ‘the pure religion of reason’, and aims at constructing a ‘pure ra­tional system of religion.’ The second, by contrast, con­cerns ‘the wider sphere of faith’, and aims at assessing one particular empirical religion by ‘start[ing] from some alleged revelation or other and ... examin[ing]

in a fragmentary manner this revela­tion, as an historical system, in the light of moral concepts’. Kant sug­gests the image of ‘concentric circles’ as a good model for picturing the rela­tionship between these two experi­ments. Following this suggestion gives us the map in Figure VII.1. After completing our exami­nation of the first experiment here in Chapter VII, we shall turn in Chapter VIII to the second, in which Kant tests the appli­cability of his theo­ry by using it to assess the rationality of the Christian

 

 

 

 

Figure VII.1: Kant’s Two Experiments in Kt8

religion. Part Three will then conclude with a chapter adopting the Perspective of the biblical theologian in order to provide a Christian response to Kant’s views on reli­gion in gen­eral and on Christianity in particular.

       The outline of Kt8, as shown in Table VII.1, is simpler than that of most other books in Kant’s System of Perspectives [cf. KSP1:III.2], with only nine different divisions (not counting the untitled introductions, the ‘General Obser­vations’ appended to each Book, and the numbered paragraphs within a few of the subsections). Its most important feature for our purposes is the initial two­fold division of Books Two through Four. In each case the first section/divi­sion/part relates more closely to the first experiment, while the main task of the second section/division/part is to perform the second experiment. Book One was initially published on its own as a journal article, so its format does not match that of the other Books; discussion of the two experiments is mixed throughout all four of the numbered sections.

       Another architectonically significant feature of Table VII.1 is its division of the main text into four ‘Books’. As we have seen, the first book deals with ‘the

 

Table VII.1: Analysis of the Table of Contents to Kt8

 

indwelling’ of ‘rad­i­cal evil in human nature’ [Kt8:19(15)]; the sec­ond, with ‘the conflict of the good with the evil principle for sovereignty over man’ [57(50)]; the third, with ‘the victory of the good over the evil principle’ [9 (85)]; and the fourth, with ‘service and pseudo-service under the sovereignty of the good principle’ [151(139)]. Regarding these as four stages in a systematic critique of religion enables us to correlate each with one of Kant’s four perspectives[6] and map them onto the quadrants of a circle, as shown in

 

Figure VII.2:

The Four Stages in Kant’s System of Religion

Figure VII.2. The two 1LARs that combine to make up this 2LAR are dis­tinctions between (1) the relatively passive (-) functions of ‘indwelling’ or ‘victory’[7] and the more active (+) func­tions of ‘conflict’ or ‘service’, for the first term, and (2) the focus of Kant’s attention on either the individual (-) or social (+) requirements of religion, for the second term. The next two sections of this chapter are related according to the latter distinction,[8] while the twofold subdivision of each of those two sections is based on the former dis­tinction.

       With this in mind, we can now summarize (partially in anticipation) the basic perspectival or­ganization of systemr in a tabular form similar to the one used in KSP1:VII.1 for systemt, and in KSP1:VIII.1 for systemp [see Table VII.2]. Of all the books in Kant’s entire System, none fits more naturally into the four­fold pattern of Kant’s architectonic than Kt8, with its neat division into four ‘Books’. Labeling the four perspectives in systemr is somewhat more tenuous than for systemt, where Kant repeatedly uses the terms ‘transcen­den­tal’, ‘logical’, ‘empirical’, and ‘hypothetical’ in the corresponding sections of Kt1. In Kt8, by contrast, these terms rarely occur anywhere, so it would be difficult to assign perspectives based on word usage [cf. Table VI.1 of KSP1]. Instead, I shall try to demonstrate that, in spite of Kant’s lack of concern for using the same terminology, there is ample evidence that he adopts the same four

 

Table VII.2: Basic Perspectival Relations in Systemr

  

perspectives in Kt8 as he did in Kt1 and Kt4. The ‘gaps’ listed in brackets in the third column of Table VII.2 are elements reason compels us to include in systemr, yet (as we shall see) they surpass reason’s ability to explain.[9] Their explanation—and therefore the viability of systemr—requires some definite (material) input from an historical tradition. The key element bare reason can fully explain in each stage is specified in the same column, above each ‘gap’.

       Before beginning our analysis of systemr, it is important to note that Kant appends a ‘General Observation’ to each book in Kt8. The first of these (originally published separately along with Book One) sketches the solution to the problem of evil-heartedness that is then developed in more detail in Book Two. Near the end of the first General Observation, though, Kant introduces four by-products, or ‘parerga to religion within the limits of pure religion’ [Kt8:52(47)]. These ‘morally transcendent ideas’ [52(47)] tend to arise in his­torical religions, because of their empirical character, but can ac­tually be coun­terproductive to the purposes of pure religion if emphasized too strongly. He proceeds to discuss the first of these parerga, rather briefly, and then devotes the bulk of the other three General Observations to the task of discussing the other three in turn. Because Kant himself separates his main discussion of these topics from the rest of his text, I too shall make such a distinction: the four par­erga will be examined in detail in Appendix VII. At this point, it will suffice merely to give a brief, systematic description of each.

       In the order of the four books to which they correspond, the four ‘morally tran­scendent ideas’ Kant sees arising out of religion are: (1) ‘workings of grace’, or ‘imagined inward experience’, leading to ‘fanaticism’; (2) ‘miracles’, or ‘alleged external experience’, leading to ‘superstition’; (3) ‘mysteries’, or ‘a supposed enlightening of the understanding with regard to the supernatural’, leading to ‘illumination’; and (4) ‘means of grace’, or ‘hazardous attempts to op­erate upon the supernatural’, leading to ‘thaumaturgy’ [Kt8:53(48)]. These distinctions can be mapped according to the same 2LAR pattern as the four books them­selves:

 

 

Figure VII.3: The Four Parerga to Universal Religion

 

The two 1LARs that com­pose this 2LAR distinguish between internal (-) and external (+) and between ex­pe­ri­enc­ing God’s pres­ence (-) and understanding God’s nature (+). (‘Internal under­stand­­ing’ here means rational knowledge of a mystery; ‘external under­standing’ means using such knowledge ‘to bring about ... an ef­fect’ on God [194(182)].)

       That Kt8 is organized according to such architec­tonic patterns[10] comes as no surprise, if, as I suggest in KSP1:96, this book constitutes part of Kant’s philosophical System. To view it as such—i.e., as an al­ternative, or comple­ment, to Kt7 [see notes III.11 and VI.14]—involves the as­sumption that its standpoint is judicial rather than practical (as Kant’s emphasis on morality seems at first to indicate [see VI.1-2]). As such, Kant’s critique of religion should turn out to be a philo­sophical account of the necessary conditions for religious experience—i.e., for making re­ligious judgments (just as Kt7 is all about the experi­ences of beauty and purposiveness that arise out of our aesthetic and teleologi­cal judgments). The extent to which this is the case will be discussed in Chapter VIII,[11] and the role of religious expe­rience as such (i.e., apart from its formal manifestation in specific or­ganized religious traditions) will be the main topic of Part Four. Our task in this chapter, however, is the more limited one of describing and interpreting the systematic ele­ments of pure religion, as set forth in Kt8.

 

2. The Conditions of Religion in the Moral Individual (-)

    A. Radical Evil (--)

       Kant begins Book One of Kt8 by examining the issue of whether human beings are good or evil by nature.[12] First he samples the views of those who ar­gue that human nature develops from good to bad, and of those who argue for the more optimistic, bad-to-good development. Then he briefly considers two ways of settling for ‘a middle ground’, whereby ‘man as a species is neither good nor bad, or ... [alternatively, is] partly good, partly bad’ [20(16)]. From the empirical perspective of our actual behavior, one or the other of the latter solutions might seem plausible.[13] Kant clarifies, how­ever, that the question he is interested in is not empirical but transcendental: it concerns not ‘actions that are evil (contrary to law)’ or good, but rather the maxims that are used as the basis for such actions [20(16)]. These maxims must have some ‘ultimate ground’ that is ‘inscrutable to us’, and so ‘cannot be a fact revealed in experi­ence’ [21-2(17)]. This ground, or ‘disposition’,[14] is ‘innate’ (‘antecedent to every use of freedom in experience’), so it must be ‘either morally good or morally evil’ [22(17)] and not a mixture of the two.

       Resolving the problem of whether human nature is essentially good or evil is Kant’s way of ‘distinguishing man from other possible rational beings’ [Kt8: 21(17)]. Before beginning to elaborate his solution, Kant makes one further clari­fication: his use of the generic term ‘man’ refers to ‘the entire race’, not to ‘the single individual’;[15] this means the question of whether or not there might be some exception(s) is a matter that ‘can only be proved [by evidence from] an­thropological research’ [25(21)]. (This will prove to be a crucial point when we consider Kant’s view of Jesus in VIII.2.B.) Kant’s full solution to the problem of mankind’s innate moral character occupies the entirety of Book One, and defines the basic elements in stage one of systemr.

       A proper understanding of Kant’s solution requires a clear awareness of his subtle distinction between a ‘disposition’ (the timeless ground of a person’s maxims at any given point of time) and a ‘predisposition’ (the timeless ground of a person’s maxims at the very outset of life, before any moral actions have been performed). For, after introducing the main problem of Book One and establishing that the good or evil disposition is the true topic under considera­tion, Kant ends up devoting the first numbered subsection to the discussion not of our disposition but of three aspects of our predisposition. The latter therefore marks the actual starting-point of systemr, with the positing of an ‘original predis­posi­tion to good in human nature’ [Kt8:26(21)].

       Kant finds evidence for this good predisposi­tion in the three basic voli­tional aspects of human nature: our animality, humanity, and personality. The fact that we are animals means we are ‘living’ beings, who engage in physi­cal forms of self-love; the fact that we are humans means we are ‘rational’ be­ings, who possess ‘a self-love which is physical and yet compares’; and the fact that we are persons means we are ‘accountable’ beings, who have ‘the ca­pacity for respect for the moral law’.[16] That Kant includes self-love as a natural source of the first two components of our good predisposition indicates that Treloar is mistaken to say [Tr89:345] ‘the evil act creates a state of self-love.’ The reverse is actually the case: our natural tendency towards self-love exists for a good purpose, yet makes us susceptible to committing evil acts. Thus, although various forms of vice can be ‘grafted’ onto our animality and humanity, Kant argues that all three aspects testify to the good purpose human nature has. ‘All of these predisposi­tions are not only good in negative fashion (in that they do not contradict the moral law); they are also predispositions toward good (they enjoin the ob­servance of the [moral] law). They are original, for they are bound up with the possibility of human nature’ [28(23)]. As ‘constituent elements’ in human nature, they are ‘necessary’.

       Towards the end of Book One, Kant explains that the predisposition to good means a person’s ‘original’ situation (i.e., before any actions are per­formed in time, at the very outset of systemr) is characterized by ‘a state of in­nocence’ [Kt8:41(36)]. This pro­vides a person with the potential to do good, not only in the first temporal act, but in any and every moral act throughout life: ‘every [evil] action must be regarded as though the individual had fallen directly from a state of innocence.’ As long as the action is freely per­formed, ‘it can and must always be judged as an original use of his will.’ We can therefore sum­marize the first step (using the apparatus intro­duced in KSP1:VII.1) as follows:

 

 

The --- component is especially appropriate because this part of Kant’s theory has no positive content; it merely establishes human nature’s pure poten­tial, be­fore anything actual happens. Its function is much the same as the transcen­dental object in step one of systemt and the good will in step one of systemp.

       The second and third steps in systemr are introduced and defended together in §§II-IV of Book One. The topics of these sections are (respectively) the nature, influence, and origin of what Kant calls ‘the propensity to evil in human nature’ [Kt8:28(23)]. First he distinguishes between our ‘propensity’ [Hang] and our ‘predisposition’ [Anlage]: whereas the latter is a necessary part of what it means to be human and consists in the potential to obey the moral law, the former is a self-imposed tendency to disobey the moral law. Hence, the human propensity, as ‘the subjective ground of the possibility of an inclination’, is evil and yet ‘belong[s] universally to mankind (... as part of the character of the race)’.[17] Though we cannot be praised for our pre­disposition to good, we can be blamed for our propensity to evil, even though it is in a sense ‘natural’, because the evil propensity is ‘brought by man upon him­self’.[18] In other words, our good predisposition is an analytic con­stituent of what it means to posit the subject ‘man’, whereas our evil propensity is a predi­cate that is synthetically added to that concept: ‘the proposition, Man is evil ... by nature, means ... that evil can be predicated of man as a species; not that such a quality can be inferred from the concept of his species’ [32(27)].

       The bulk of §II is devoted to a description of the ‘three distinct de­grees’ of this ‘capacity for evil’ in human nature [Kt8:29(24); s.a. 37(32-3)]. Although Kant does not explicitly draw attention to the parallels, these degrees are directly related (as corruptions) to the three aspects of human nature introduced in

 

Figure VII.4: The Three Aspects of Human Nature

as Corrupted by the Evil Propensity

 

connection with the good predisposition [see Fig. VII.4], as well as to the faculties that operate in the first three stages of systemt. The cor­ruption of our animality (the exclusively physical side of our self-love, stemming from our sensibility) plagues us with ‘frailty’ (i.e., difficulty in resisting temptation), so that we sometimes follow our inclinations even when they op­pose a good maxim we have previously set for ourselves. The corruption of our humanity (the side of our self-love that is also rational, stemming from our understand­ing) causes us to act with ‘impurity’ (i.e., doing good for the wrong reasons), so that we sometimes perform objectively good actions only because they also satisfy our inclina­tions. And the corruption of our per­sonality (the properly moral side of our nature, stemming from our judgment) fills us with ‘wicked­ness’ (i.e., the will to do evil), so that our will ‘reverses the ethical order [of priority] among the incentives of a free will’.[19] The first two forms of corruption can and do oc­cur even within a person who has a good disposition (or ‘heart’); but the third is a cor­ruption of the moral disposition itself, so that ‘the man is hence desig­nated as evil.’[20]

       Kant’s goal is to prove that in some sense, ‘the propensity to evil in man­kind is universal’ [Kt8:30(25)], ‘that it is woven into human nature.’ Be­fore doing so, he clarifies that the evil in each degree of our evil propensity lies ‘solely in what ... touches the ultimate ground of the adoption or the observance of our maxims [i.e., what touches the disposition], and not in what touches sensibility’.[21] In order to make this point, he finds it necessary to distinguish between two fundamentally different sorts of ‘act’: the ‘formal’ act ‘whereby the supreme maxim ... is adopted by the will’ [31(26)]; and the ‘material’ act ‘whereby the actions themselves ... are performed in accordance with the maxim.’ The former is timeless (elsewhere called ‘noumenal’), while the latter occurs in time (and is ‘phenomenal’).[22] The act of adopting an evil ‘supreme maxim’ therefore functions in much the same way as the pure intuitions of time and space do in systemt: just as the latter are actively imposed on the sensible data by a faculty that is essentially passive (sensibility being the faculty of ‘receptivity’ [see KSP1:VII.2.A]), so also the former must be actively chosen even though we are essentially passive recipients of the ‘indwelling’ of radical evil. As such, it constitutes the second (formal) step in stage one of systemr. The hypothesis being put forward for proof is that this noumenal act produces an evil propensity in all members of the human race.

       The coexistence of the good predisposition and the evil propensity in human nature is, as we shall see, the tension out of which religion arises. So Kant’s proof that mankind’s propensity really is universally evil is of crucial importance. He develops this proof in §III of Book One [Kt8:32(27-8)], point­ing out first that the act that produces the evil propensity must be, paradoxically, both ‘contingent’ (so that each individual person remains responsible for evil [s.a. 41(38)]) and yet ‘universal’ (so that the need for religion applies to everyone). This is possible only if we regard the act postulated in step two as ‘radical’, meaning that it corrupts ‘the ultimate subjective ground of all maxims’ (i.e., the disposition) [32(27-8); s.a. note VII.24]. That human evil is radical is a fact Kant thinks ‘need not be formally proved in view of the multitude of crying examples which experience of the actions of men puts before our eyes’ [32-3(28)]. Nevertheless, after calling attention to ‘a long melancholy litany      of indictments against humanity’ [33(28)] that can serve as an empirical ‘confirmation’ [39n(34n)], he does attempt to provide such a proof, in order to show that our evil character ‘must be apprehended a priori through the concept of evil, so far as evil is possible under laws of freedom’ [35(31)].

       Unfortunately, Kant’s formal ‘proof’ of the universality of the evil propensity turns out to be little more than a restatement of his account of what it means to be evil.[23] As Figure VII.4 shows, human nature is such that all per­sons possess both moral in­centives (based on respect for the moral law, aimed at virtue) and amoral incen­tives (based on self-love, aimed at happiness). Either self-love or the moral law must be adopted ‘as the supreme condition of the satisfaction of the [other]’ [36(31-2)]. Human evil therefore normally consists not in basing one’s maxim solely on an incentive of self-love, but rather on the subtle ‘subordina­tion’ of the moral incentive to the amoral incentive. That is, the moral character of a person’s disposition (or ‘heart’) depends entirely on ‘which of the two incen­tives he makes the condition of the other.’ For this rea­son, Kant explains, a person need not be wicked in order to be regarded as having ‘an evil heart’: ‘Such a heart may coexist with a will which in general is good’, but is plagued by either ‘frailty’ or ‘impurity’ [37(32); s.a. 29(24)]. This ‘a priori proof’ really amounts to an important, though subtle, supplement to (or realization of) step two: the propensity to evil is now regarded (posited, really) as necessarily ‘radical’ and as establishing the material limit­ing condition for the realization of uni­versal reli­gion (thus completing stage one of sys­temr) in the form of an evil heart.

       A better a priori proof can be constructed more directly out of Kant’s definition of evil, as follows. All human beings start out with a predisposition to good (as previously proved). If this predisposition were the only basic element of human nature, then nobody could be praised for obeying the moral law, since there would not be any other real option. The will would not be truly free. According to Kant, evil ‘is original, or prior to all the good a man may do’; every human person’s moral development ‘started from evil’ [Kt8:72(66)]. This is true not merely be­cause radical evil dwells in us, but be­cause each individual inevitably succumbs to its tempting in­flu­ence, ‘for otherwise the beginning of evil would not have its source in free­dom’ [41(37)]. The will becomes free only when a person chooses to step outside of this basic (good) predisposition, and explore the other (evil) side of the boundary. Every human person’s first moral act (i.e., the first free act he or she can be held accountable for) must therefore be an evil act. There must be a ground for such a choice in human nature; this ground is the evil propensity.

       Kant’s a priori proof (even in its reconstructed form) leaves open the question of where this mysterious ‘radical evil’ comes from, so Kant makes this the main topic of §IV of Book One.[24] He devotes most of his attention to the task of assessing the biblical account of evil’s origin [see below, VIII.2.A]. In the course of doing so, he explains that to seek for the ‘origin’ of evil is to look for the ‘first cause’ of a given effect, and that, be­cause the propensity to evil is rooted in our rational disposi­tion, not in any tem­poral action(s) as such, this cause will turn out to be ‘an origin in reason’, not ‘an origin in time’ [Kt8: 39(34)]. ‘To seek the temporal origin of free acts as such ... is thus a contra­dic­tion.’[25] Kant’s point is that we must not downplay the extent of our responsi­bil­ity for evil by blaming it on the details of our temporal situation. To say evil is radical is to say our responsibility for it originates with our own free, rational (hence, noumenal) choice. Beyond this, Kant confesses that any more detailed account of evil’s origin would need to appeal to something temporal. In other words, as far as systemr is concerned,

 

the rational origin ... of the propensity to evil, remains inscrutable to us ... Evil could have sprung only from the morally-evil ...; and yet the original predisposi­tion ... is a predisposition to good; there is then for us no conceivable ground from which the moral evil in us could originally have come ... [43(38)].

 

Here Kant is admitting that bare reason cannot elucidate everything that calls for explanation in its account of what makes human beings need religion. In so doing, he opens up the first of four important ‘spaces’ (one in each stage of systemr) that a true religion must fill with historical, tradi­tion-bound content.

       This now puts us in a position to summarize Kant’s argument in §§II-IV of Book One in terms of the second and third steps of systemr. The systematic content of his presentation is, admittedly, not as clear as we might hope. Nev­er­theless, if we look back over the basic arguments presented in these sections, we can formulate out of them two steps that are directly parallel to the corre­sponding steps of systemt and systemp. Step two in systemt, the formal (--+) condition, is where the pure intuitions of space and time convert the undeter­mined transcendental object into a manifold of appearances; in systemp, this is where practical freedom converts the will into a manifold of desires. In both cases these elements serve to define the basic transcendental limits that must be placed on any material that enters the system. Step two of systemr should there­fore be identified as that whereby the mystery of radical evil somehow pro­duces in all human beings a propensity to evil:

 

 

Radical evil is a mystery not unlike the mysteries of pure intuition and freedom, both of which Kant regards as basic facts of human nature that must simply be acknowledged, and cannot be proved or explained by reason. Radical evil con­verts our potential for good into virtually the opposite: the propensity to evil, which serves as the ‘raw material’ for any religion, in much the same way appearances do for empirical knowledge, or desires for moral action.

       Step three, as the synthesis of the first two (represented, as usual, by the  --x component), can be expressed in terms of equally direct parallels. In systemt the goal of stage one (intuitive sensibility) is realized when the function of sensa­tion produces sensations out of appearances. In systemp stage one’s (free will’s) goal is realized when a person sets up a maxim by choosing an end. Step three of the first (material) stage in systemr (radical evil) follows the latter quite closely: the choice of an evil maxim as supreme realizes the human propensity for evil by producing an evil heart:

 

 

Just as empirical knowledge cannot be obtained without being based on sensi­ble intuition, and moral actions cannot be performed without a person freely choosing a maxim of one sort or another, so the need for religion would never even arise were it not for the fact that human beings choose, at the very outset of their moral development, a maxim that corrupts their disposition and spoils their potential to adhere perfectly to the moral law (i.e., to realize the ideals set forth in systemp).

       Throughout Kt8 Kant repeatedly emphasizes that the only way to release oneself from the blame imputed because of one’s evil heart is to become a morally good person. He alludes to the possibility of divine assistance, but consistently presents it as something we must not count on as an ex­cuse for not having a change of heart.[26] For the ‘indwelling’ of evil in an (originally good) heart is what first gives rise to our sense of duty;[27] yet ‘grace stands in direct contradic­tion’ to the ‘absolute necessity’ required by ‘the idea of duty’ [Kt8: 23n(19n)]. Even an outwardly good life, without a change of heart, is not sufficient to meet the de­mands of the moral law: ‘The empirical character is then good, but the intelli­gible character [i.e., the disposi­tion] is still evil’ [37(32)]. What is required is a radical conversion of one’s disposition. Such a conver­sion must be possible, since ‘the moral law com­mands that we ought now to be better men’ (and ‘ought’ implies ‘can’[28]); yet Kant admits that the re­quirement to adopt such an unchangeable ‘new ground (the new heart)’ con­tradicts ‘the postulate of the in­nate corruption of man’ [50-1(46); s.a. 66-7(60)], at least as far as ‘our insight into [its] possibility ... is concerned.’ For evil is ‘inex­tirpable by human powers’.[29] To establish how conversion never­the­less comes about is the purpose of the sec­ond stage in systemr. The only hope provided in stage one is to recall that the innocence of the first step (-) is con­tained in the synthesis of the third step (x), just as much as is radical evil (+), so that even in a person with an evil heart, ‘a seed of goodness still remains’ [45(41)]. ‘For man, there­fore, who despite a cor­rupted heart yet possesses a good will, there remains hope of a return to the good from which he has strayed.’[30]

 

    B. Conversion to the Good (+-)

       The change in perspective between the first and second books of Kt8 is most evident in Kant’s attitude towards redemption. In Book One, as we have seen, the role of any supernatural influence in conversion is down­played. Its purpose, as the material stage in systemr, is to establish the limita­tions evil imposes on any human attempt to realize the good predisposi­tion. This tran­scendental perspective is replaced in Book Two by something along the lines of a logical perspective—that is, by a set of formal conditions which, when applied to the limitations of the first stage, enable us to understand how the de­sired result (a good heart, leading to salvation) is possible. Each of the three steps in stage two will therefore have +- as the first two terms in the expression that symbolizes its function.

       The cornerstone of the new perspective in stage two is the ‘ideal of moral perfection’ that exists in every human person as an ‘archetype’ and ‘can give us power.’[31] Be­cause radical evil makes us unworthy even to pos­sess such an ‘ideal of a humanity pleasing to God’, it is ‘appropriate to say that this arche­type came down to us from heaven and has assumed our humanity’ [Kt8:61 (54-5)]. For the purposes of pure reli­gion, no prior empirical instantiation of this archetype is required:

 

From the practical standpoint this idea is completely real in its own right, for it re­sides in our morally-legislative reason.... We need ... no empirical example to make the idea of a person morally well-pleasing to God our archetype; this idea as an archetype is already present in our reason. [62(55-6)]

 

Given the evil heart that arises out of stage one, there is no purely rational ex­planation for the presence of this archetype of a perfect person within us, other than to as­sume it is an in­scrutable gift from some higher moral power.[32] For al­though the archetype, as ‘a perfectly valid ideal for all men, at all times and in all worlds’, is universal, our attainment of it ‘will ever remain a righteousness not our own’ [66(59)]. With­out this gift as a starting point (-), conversion would be impossible. Hence this fourth step can be summarized as:

 

 

As the very word ‘archetype’ implies, however, this ‘divine man within us’ does serve as the ideal model ‘for the complete determi­nation of the copy’—i.e., as the ‘standard for our actions’—once we adopt the judicial standpoint of univer­sal religion [Kt1:597; cf. VI.2, above].

       On its own the positing of the archetype of a perfect person does not over­come an evil heart. ‘For only a faith in the practical validity of that idea which lies in our reason [i.e., in the archetype] has moral worth’ [Kt8:63(56)]. Bor­rowing a biblical phrase for the description of this archetype, Kant goes so far as to say: ‘Man may ... hope to become acceptable to God (and so be saved) through a practical faith in this Son of God’ [62(55)]. This practical faith en­ables a person actively to turn away from the evil heart within and obey the moral law. It does not depend on our awareness of any specific empirical examples because:

 

each man ought really to furnish an example of this idea in his own person; to this end does the archetype reside always in the reason: and this, just because no exam­ple in outer experience is adequate to it; for outer experience does not dis­close the inner nature of the disposition but merely allows of an inference about it though not one of strict certainty. [63(56-7)]

 

Practical faith, therefore, is more than just a declaration of repentance [see e.g., Wa72:148]; it gives rise to moral maxims as a sign of one’s repentance. Thus, Kant says ‘the first really good act that a man can perform is to forsake the evil ... in his perverted maxim’ [Kt8:58n(51n)]. The positive rejection of evil (+) in this fifth step of systemr can therefore be expressed in the following way:

 

 

       Once we have glimpsed the archetype of perfection and incorporated it into a good maxim, a ‘conversion’, or change of heart, is all that is necessary before we enter ‘upon the road of endless progress to­wards holiness’ [Kt8:46-7(42)]. For we have now recognized the corrupting influence of radical evil within us. Thus Kant says: ‘Every man must guard against moral self-conceit, against be­lieving himself morally good and having a favourable opinion of himself. This feeling of moral self-sufficiency is self-de­ception; it is an incurable hallucina­tion’ [Kt35:(246); s.a. Kt8:68(62)]. It is ‘incurable’, that is, if one believes the appearance of virtue in one’s empiri­cal character, which can be ‘won little by little’, is sufficient, without ‘a change of heart’ [47(42)]. For ‘the moral out­come of the combat’ between good and evil that leads to conversion ‘is really not the conquering of the evil principle ... but merely the breaking of its power to hold, against their will, those who have so long been its subjects’ [82-3(77); s.a. 93(85)]. This moral breakthrough requires ‘virtue in its intelli­gible character’, which

 

cannot be brought about through gradual reformation so long as the basis of the maxims remains im­pure, but must be effected through a revolution in the man’s disposition ... He can become a new man only by a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation ..., and a change of heart.

 

... That is, if a man reverses, by a single unchangeable decision, that highest ground of his maxims whereby he was an evil man ..., he is, so far as his principle and cast of mind are concerned, a subject suscep­tible of goodness ... For Him who penetrates to the intelligible ground of the heart ..., i.e., for God, this amounts to his being actually a good man (pleasing to Him) ... [47-8(43); s.a. Wa72:147-8].

 

Like the fall it re­verses, such an immediate conversion from evil to good is inexplicable from the standpoint of pure rational religion, except to say that it seems to require some form of divine assis­tance [see We26:111,120].

       The attitude of humility inherent in this account of the change of heart is to be maintained even after conversion, for the sixth step requires us to seek to make ourselves wor­thy of God’s assistance by actively resolving to do our duty. By this Kant does not mean to suggest (a view too often imputed to him) that we are actually ca­pable of making ourselves acceptable to God; on the con­trary, he is saying we have the responsibility to make ourselves worthy of be­ing made by God to be acceptable to him. For our obedience to God (via the moral law) ‘must be the effect of our own action and not ... of a foreign influ­ence in the presence of which we are passive’ [Kt8:108]. ‘Granted that some supernatural cooperation may be necessary to his becoming good ..., man must first make himself wor­thy to receive it, and must lay hold of this aid’ [44(40); s.a. 45(40-1)]. Yet in this context, ‘worthiness always has a merely negative meaning ..., that is, the moral recep­tivity for such goodness’ [146n(137n)]. So our active attempt to obey God is our way of demonstrating our passive accep­tance of God’s accep­tance. And without such a demonstration, our acceptance of God’s acceptance would mean nothing at all. It would be ‘empty’, like a concept without an in­tuition in sys­temt; likewise, moral activity without an awareness of its religious implications would be ‘blind’, like an intuition with­out a concept [see Kt1:75].

       ‘We have been converted’, Kant declares in Kt35:(245), ‘if, no matter how long we may live, we firmly determine to live in virtue.’ This change of heart, which restores in us a good disposition, or a ‘good heart’, should not be viewed as a recovery of what was lost—‘respect for the moral law we have never been able to lose’—but as ‘the establishment of the purity of this law as the supreme ground of all our maxims’ [Kt8:46(42)]. It will inevitably be accompanied by considerable pain, inasmuch as it involves the reawakening and/or intensification of our conscience [73(67)]. This pain can be regarded as a kind of punishment for the past evil we have perpetrated [see AVI.2]. As the syn­thetic (x) condition of the second (formal) stage of systemr, we can therefore summarize this sixth step as:

 

 

       Since ‘conforming our course of life to the holiness of the law, is impos­sible of execution in any given time’, Kant suggests that God will judge our ‘moral constitution’ not by our actions but by our disposition [Kt8:66(60)]. That is, the ‘endless progress of our goodness towards con­formity to the law ... [will be] judged by Him who knows the heart, through a purely intellectual intuition [see V.1], as a completed whole, because of the dis­position, super­sensible in its nature, from which this progress itself is derived.’[33] This Divine Perspective, however, cannot be adopted by human beings, so no amount of introspection can provide a person with ‘assurance concerning such a revolu­tion ...; for the deeps of the heart are in­scrutable to [us]’ [51(46); s.a. 67-8(61), 190-1(179)]. We must always ‘guard against a relapse’ [77(71); s.a. 97(88)]. This is because our ‘empirical self-knowledge ... yields no immediate insight into the disposition but merely permits of an estimate based upon our actions’ [75-6(70); s.a. Wa72:148]. Only an awareness of our moral progress justifies us in hop­ing for supernatural assistance (in the form of being judged by our disposition rather than by our actual deeds). Kant hastens to add, however, that, although theoret­ical certainty concerning the nature of our disposition ‘is neither possible to man, nor ... morally beneficial’, the presence of a good disposition ‘creates in us, though only indirectly, a confi­dence in its own permanence and stability’ [Kt8:71(65); s.a. 76(70) and AVI.3, below].

       Well over half of Section One in Book Two of Kt8 presents Kant’s solu­tions to three ‘difficulties’ that arise out of his view of the role of conver­sion in pure religion. These difficulties loosely cor­respond to the traditional Christian doctrines of sanctification, assurance of salvation at the final judgment, and atonement, respectively. They do not function directly as ele­ments in sys­temr, but serve instead to clarify the implications of each of the three steps in stage two; I therefore examine them separately in AVI.2-3. Likewise, Section Two of Book Two, which is devoted entirely to Kant’s second experiment (that of as­sessing the extent to which the hi