Appendix II

Kant, Swedenborg, and Kantian Mystics

 

 

1. Kantian Mystics—Old and New

          Kant’s notoriously cryptic way of dealing with mystical visions in Kt18 has made it easy for many Kant scholars to misunderstand his true attitude towards mysticism in general and Swedenborg in particular. Few contemporary interpreters are aware of the profound influ­ence Kant has had on mystics and on scholars interested in mystical experience. After a tantalizingly brief sketch of some of these influences, this appendix supplements Chapters II and X by examining three recent studies of Swedenborg’s influence on Kant. In AII.2 I respond to an interpretation of Kant’s relation to Swedenborg that differs markedly from the one I presented in Chapter II. AII.2 then summa­rizes the views of Florschütz, who sees Kant’s relation to Swedenborg in a more positive light. The appendix concludes with an overview of Johnson’s exhaustive study of Kant’s references to Swedenborg in his Lectures on Metaphysics [Kt25].

          Kant’s lengthy quotation of Wilmans’ letter on mysticism [see X.2] is the first of many examples of mystics or scholars interested in mystical experience who have seen Kant as a friend rather than a foe and Kantian philosophy as supporting their outlook. Due to the limits of length placed on this book, I can only briefly mention some of the long line of subsequent examples. In his Introduction to the first English translation of Kt18, Sewall summarizes and quotes extensively from the writings of four German Kant scholars who saw varying degrees of mystical strains in Kant’s philosophy: Vaihinger, Heinze, von Lind, and Du Prel. Heinze, for instance, assures us ‘that both in modern and earlier times the “mystics” have claimed Kant as being of their number’ [q.i. Se00:32]. Sewall’s impressive collection of evidence, both here and in a series of appendices that quote extensively from Swedenborg as well as Kant, reveals a significant degree of overlap in their ideas. Unfor­tu­nately, there is insufficient space here to summarize this evidence, much less to do justice to the work of those Sewall cites. Let it suffice instead merely to mention that one of these writers, Carl Du Prel, published a German edition of Kt25 and wrote Du89, an impressive (though now outdated) two-volume application of Kantian philosophy to a range of mystical experiences.[1]

          Manolesco’s more recent translation of Kt18 likewise includes a significant amount of supplementary material. In addition to an introductory essay [see notes II.3,13,35, above] and a running commentary in the form of 140 footnotes to the text,[2] Manolesco provides an Ap­pendix containing translations of relevant supplementary material. This in­cludes three letters written by Kant, extracts of two others, an extract of Kt51, and Karl Kehrbach’s 1880 Preface to Kt18, which conveys a wealth of information on the text’s numerous versions and variants.

          Neither Sewall nor Manolesco mentions Kant’s influence on one of the most important eighteenth-century movements that was significantly mystical in its orientation: Romanti­cism.[3] Hedge, writing in 1849, notes that Kant ‘is commonly cited as the founder of modern Transcendentalism, which in the popular estimate is equivalent to Mysticism’ [He49:59]. Coleridge in particular was keenly interested in Kantian thought and even considered translat­ing Kt1 into English at one point. Unfortunately, limitations of time and book length again prevent me from exploring the details of Kant’s influence here [but see Ma74], as well as with other transcendentalists such as Wordsworth, Emerson, and Thoreau.

          Although twentieth-century studies of mysticism rarely do justice to Kant,[4] his influence on certain scholars outside the field of philosophy is more evident. These scholars, who could be called the New Mystics, tended to be innovators in their fields, many providing the basis for revolutionary new approaches to various scientific disciplines. Much of KSP3 will be devoted to examining these new theories and demonstrating the influence of Kant and/or their consistency with Kant’s Critical mysticism. At this point one brief illustration will suffice. Carl Jung’s works are thoroughly and consistently salted with Kantian ideas and perspectives and lightly peppered with direct references—so lightly that few have recognized how thoroughly Kantian Jung’s psychology is. I hope to demonstrate the many correlations between their systems in a later work, tentatively entitled Two Philopsychers: A Kantian Critique of Jung’s Analytic Psycholo­gy and a Jungian Analysis of Kant’s Critical Philosophy. Though he denied the charge, Jung was regarded by many as a mystic, largely because of his belief in an unseen spiritual connec­tion between all human beings, the so-called ‘collective unconscious’. In his autobiography Jung acknowledges Kant’s influence on him at several points, saying he read Kt18 ‘just at the right moment’ [Ju83:120], followed by ‘Karl Duprel, who had evaluated these ideas philosophically and psychologically’ and ‘seven volumes of Swedenborg.’ Later he adds [122] that his time as a medical student was so busy that he ‘was able to study Kant only on Sundays.’

          C.D. Broad has a chapter on ‘Immanuel Kant and Psychical Research’ in Br53:116-55. After summarizing the contents of Kant’s letter to Charlotte von Knoblock and of Kt18, Broad analyses various issues relating to Kant’s interest in spirits in general and Swedenborg in particular. He speculates that Kant’s reason for writing Kt18 anonymously and with such an uncharacteristically ‘condescending tone’ may have been largely prudential [Br53:127]: as an ordinary lecturer with his eye on a professorship, ‘a reputation for having carefully read Swedenborg’s writings and having paid serious attention to the evidence for his alleged feats of clairvoyance, would be enough to condemn [Kant] to remain in that position for the rest of his life.’ An interesting ‘Postscript’ [147-55] conveys Broad’s assessment of Kant’s actual at­titude towards Swedenborg and reports on the results of his own empirical investiga­tions into the reliability of Kant’s account of Swedenborg’s famous vision of the Stockholm fire. On the former issue, Broad concludes that, although the consistently respectful attitude towards Swedenborg in Kt25 must not be given too much weight (since the lectures are based only on students’ notes), Kant’s ‘private opinion may have been that something like this part of Swedenborg’s doctrine [i.e., the views affirmed in Kt25; see AII.4, below] may well be true, or at any rate that it may be the nearest approxima­tion to the truth which is ... expressible in our language.’[5] On the latter, he points out several serious ‘discrepancies’ [Br53:152] between currently available facts and the report Kant says his English friend brought back to him from Sweden, compares this report with other available accounts, and concludes that ‘independent evidence of the truth of this story’ is unlikely to be found at this point [155].

          The amount of further evidence that could be cited here is almost unending.[6] But instead of attempting the impossible, let us proceed now to a more detailed examination of three recent scholars who have devoted considerable attention to the issue of Kant’s interest in Swedenborg and its implications (or lack thereof) for the former’s alleged mystical tendencies.

 

2. Laywine’s Account of Swedenborg’s Influence on Kant

          Alison Laywine’s book, Kant’s Early Metaphysics [La93], constitutes a thoroughgoing evaluation of the extent of Swedenborg’s influence on Kant. Laywine’s Introduction portrays Kant’s early works as being concerned primarily with a defense of the theory of ‘real interaction’ between creatures [3] and of how it relates to ‘the problem of the soul’s presence in the body’ [7]. She explains Kant’s interest in Swedenborg’s work as resulting from a basic similarity in their views, with ‘[t]he only significant difference between the two’ [8] being ‘that Swedenborg had a system of pre-established harmony, Kant, a system of real interaction.’ She therefore sees Kt18 as ‘a key moment’ in the line of thinking that led Kant to develop the Critical philosophy [9-10], just as I argued in Chapter II. However, the details of her account of this development differ from my understanding in several key respects. My main concern in this section will be to comment on those differences.

          The chief weakness of Laywine’s account shows itself early in Chapter One: she has very little sensitivity to Kant’s life-long penchant for perspectival reasoning. As a result, she fails to recognize the progression of Kant’s arguments in Part One of Kt18 from the dogmatic, through the skeptical, to the Critical, regarding them instead as being ‘highly equivocal’ [La93:14]. She provides a helpful account of some interpreters, such as Vaihinger, who have regarded Kant as ‘a student of Swedenborg’ and as having ‘incorporated some of Swedenborg’s ideas into his own metaphysics’ [15]. Claiming this position has been defended mainly by ‘an odd assortment of mystics, quacks and charlatans’ [16], Laywine concludes [18] that it is unreasonable to regard Kant as ‘one of Swedenborg’s pupils or followers.’ Of the three alternatives to this position, the one that best describes my approach is the third [21], that in Kt18 ‘Kant was not so much skeptical of metaphysics [and Swedenborg] as he was critical.’ The problem Laywine finds with this position, as defended by de Vleeschauwer and Beck, is that it fails to account for Kant’s satire and for his appeal to a Humean empiricism [22]. But this omission would not apply to my account in Chapter II, above.

          La93’s second chapter examines Kant’s earliest attempts to solve the problem of soul-body interaction in terms of the theory of ‘physical influx’ (i.e., the claim that souls exert a real physical influence on bodies, rather than merely acting in parallel form according to a ‘preestablished harmony’). Laywine shows how Kant bases three metaphysical principles on ‘the principle of succession’ [35], with the interaction between finite substances being ultimately sustained by ‘the divine intellect’ [37]. The third chapter then argues that Kant’s theory, despite its apparent promise, carries an undesirable implication: in order to explain how the soul can influence anything material (such as the body) Kant found it necessary to argue that ‘the soul must occupy a place’ [43]. Yet how the soul as an immaterial substance can occupy space is inexplicable. According to Laywine, this was a major problem Kant faced in the mid-1760s: ‘what moved Kant to write [Kt18]’ was his desire ‘to reclaim the soul from the ordinary sensible conditions of space and time’ [54].

          Chapters Four and Five examine Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia and Kant’s response to it in Kt18. The chief lesson Kant learned from his exposure to Swedenborg, according to Laywine [La93:55], concerned ‘the dangers and follies of subjecting immaterial substances in metaphysics to the ordinary spatio-temporal conditions under which bodies are given to the senses.’ Swedenborg had used a Leibnizian system of pre-established harmony to interpret his mystical visions [56]; although Kant never claimed to see visions, his reading of Swedenborg seems to have made him keenly aware that his own theory also allowed for direct contact with disembodied souls. Laywine regards Kt18’s call for an examination of reason’s limits as Kant’s response to this unwelcome realization. She regards as ‘ludicrous’ [57] the claim of some scholars ‘that Kant was unconsciously drawn to the ideas of Swedenborg in spite of himself.’ While her conjecture that Kant ‘was intellectually put off by Swedenborg’ [57], whose writ­ings exhibited ‘everything that went wrong in his own system of physical influx’ [68] has considerable merit, she does not successfully refute the claim I defend in II.2-4, that Kant’s own mature philosophy was nevertheless profoundly influenced by this contact. Although Chapter Four offers a good introduction to Swedenborg’s life and ideas, por­traying him as a somewhat ‘unbalanced’ man of great learning who ‘sought full-scale reform of the Church’ [La93:61], Laywine pays little attention to the aspects of his thought that prefigure Kant’s Critical philosophy [cf. II.3 above]. She does succeed in showing that a great many of Swedenborg’s ideas bear little if any resemblance to anything Kantian; but this does not justify her explicit denial of the ‘claim that Kant acquired any new insight into his own work by reading’ Swedenborg’s work [159n]. Provided we understand that Kant remained properly Critical in his adoption of Swe­denbor­gian ideas, my interpretation therefore remains unchal­lenged by Laywine’s arguments.

          Laywine begins Chapter Five by citing textual evidence that suggests Kt18 ‘is distinctly hostile [to Swedenborg] throughout’, despite his apparent openness in other con­texts [La93: 74; cf. II.2, above]. Not noticing the Critical strategy Kant employs in Part One of Kt18 [see II.2], Laywine sees it as ‘an exercise in satire’ [78] and argues ‘that the lesson Kant draws from Swedenborg’s work is that we may not take for granted the possibility of encountering immaterial substances ...; that immaterial substances are not subject to the conditions of sensible things; and that metaphysics ... [must] investigate the limits of human reason.’ While Kant certainly does defend the latter claim in Kt18, Laywine’s wording of the first two claims neglects the implications of reason’s limits and mistakenly identifies Kant’s skeptical perspective as representing his final view: the Critical position Kant settles on in Kt18 is that the possibility of an encounter with spirits cannot be denied (and therefore can, in a sense, be ‘taken for granted’), even though an actual encounter could never be positively affirmed, and that we are therefore unable to say for certain whether or not immaterial substances are ever subject to sensible conditions.

          Laywine rightly recognizes that in Kt18 Kant frequently adopts an ‘assumed voice’ for the sake of argument [La93:85]—even referring to these as announcing a ‘change of perspec­tive’ [91]—but her account differs significantly from the one I defend in II.2. She claims only the third chapter of Kt18’s first part represents Kant’s true position [85]. Despite noting that the first chapter accurately repeats content that is also contained in Kant’s lectures [Kt25], she fails to take Kant at his word, that he still believes these views. Instead, she thinks his real goal is to bring ‘discredit on the whole enterprise’ [86] in Chapter Three and that the conclud­ing comments in Chapter Four should be read as ‘the uncritical metaphysician’ returning ‘to confess his errors and promise reform.’ This assumption conve­niently supports her hypothe­sis regarding the hidden agenda in Kt18; but it requires us to reject as mere diversions nearly everything Kant himself says about his motives. The alterna­tive explanation I give in II.2, by contrast, enables us to avoid Laywine’s disagreeable claim ‘that Kant is apparently playing games in [Kt18]’ [86]. Instead, he is playfully illustrating the very serious implications of acknowledging perspectival differences in philosophy.

          Laywine goes into impressive detail to defend her view of the assumed voices in Kt18, raising in the process a number of valuable points. But, while she aptly demonstrates that Chapter One is not Kant’s final word on the subject [La93:87-90], she neglects the fact that this is always true of the initial perspective in a Kantian system. (If we apply Laywine’s reasoning to Kt1, we would need to regard the entire Aesthetic as a ‘satire’ merely because the Analytic develops the theory in some surprising and unexpected ways.) Indeed, she ends up demonstrating in admirable detail that Chapter One just repeats what ‘Kant himself’ had said in 1764 (in Kt17) regarding the need for a ‘strong proof’ [La93:89]. This is hardly an ‘assumed voice’! But because her basic hypothesis requires her to take it in this way, she later has to appeal to ‘irony’ [99] when she admits the allegedly ‘uncritical metaphysician’ speaking in Chapter One gets some key points right. The actual irony is that Laywine never considers this as clear evidence against her central hypothesis.

          One qualm I have about Laywine’s treatment of Chapter Two is that, failing to recognize that Kant has now assumed the dogmatist’s stance, she speculates that this voice is the same as that in Chapter One [90]. Her evidence that ‘Kant no longer endorses this theory in 1766’ [91] is that ‘in Chapter Three, he clearly speaks up for himself and shows contempt for it.’ Yet this alleged evidence is not as ‘clear’ as Laywine seems to think! For if, as I argue in II.2, Chapter Three’s adoption of the skeptic’s voice is only temporary, then Laywine loses her only rationale for claiming Kt18’s main purpose is to refute that theory, and the keystone of her entire argument falls to the ground. Oddly enough, the main reason she cites for regarding Chapter Three as representing Kant’s authentic voice is that ‘nothing like’ it is found in the lectures he had given a few years earlier [92]. Apparently, she thinks this must be Kant speak­ing because we have no evidence from other sources that he ever held such views for himself!

          Without reviewing her treatment of Kant’s development after Kt18, we can conclude by noting that Laywine’s study is valuable in a number of important respects: in particular, she demonstrates that the early Kant was more concerned with the traditional problem of soul-body interaction than has commonly been acknowledged and that he cannot be regarded merely as a gullible follower of Swedenborg. However, her interpretation is tenuous, to say the least, for two reasons. First, in spite of her rhetoric, she provides but scanty evidence that Kant ever explicitly de­fended such a radical version of the soul’s ‘bodily’ nature. Aside from quoting a few passages wherein Kant admittedly hints at the sort of view she imputes to him, Laywine’s ‘evidence’ consists mainly of a frequent repetition of her basic claim. After her initial defense, she takes her assumption for granted throughout La93, using it as the premise of numerous arguments without adding further support—as, for example, when she says ‘... Kant himself subjects immaterial things to the conditions of sensibility ...’.[7] She does point out that ‘spiritual impenetrability is inconsistent with his view that the soul is everywhere present in every part of the body’ [77]; yet her basic assumption prevents her from consider­ing that Kant’s alleged support for the former view may not have been strong enough to cause him the kind of angst she imputes to him. If not, then we should read Kt18 not as implying that Kant panicked at the recognition that he ‘himself had nothing much better to offer’ than Swedenborg [78], but rather as arguing that the theories the two scholars held in common could never be proved and must therefore never be mistaken for knowledge, as Swedenborg had done so boldly and with such dubious consequences.

          The second problem with La93 is that if Laywine is right, then Kant should have clearly and explicitly abandoned his alleged commitment to the theory of physical influx in Kt18. But her attempt to read such a repudiation into the text fails. Instead, he shows the reader both sides of the coin (a dogmatic defense and a skeptical rejection), demonstrating that such a theory can never be supported by incontrovertible proofs. Laywine neatly tucks away (on the penulti­mate page of her footnotes) an acknowledgment that in Kt19 Kant once again ‘hazards an account of the soul’s presence in space’ [La93:166], yet without pointing out that this destroys her entire hypothesis. Moreover, nowhere does she seriously consider the possibility that, if Kant was already applying his fully-formed Critical method (as I have claimed), then his intent would have been (was!) to draw valuable insights from Swedenborg, while ruthlessly exposing his weak points. This realization frees us from the need to view Kt18 as the result of a panic attack by a philosopher who was afraid to continue affirming an otherwise good theory of the soul simply because doing so might legitimize someone like Swedenborg. The driving force behind Kt18 was not, as Laywine claims [La93:93], a sudden need to deny that ‘immaterial substances ... could somehow fall under the senses.’ Rather, as I argue in Chapter II, it was the gradually emerging need to recognize our ignorance of both sides of such debates.[8] Only as such can Kt18 be regarded as the best example we have prior to Kt1 of Kant’s reasoned (though spirited!) application of the Critical method to a meta­physical issue.

 

3. Florschütz’s Account of Swedenborg’s Influence on Kant

          The history of how Swedenborgian scholars (including any scholar sympathetic towards Swedenborg, not just ‘believers’ in the New Church) have used and/or abused Kant is far too complex to be treated properly in the brief space available in this appendix. Among this group of scholars, the notion that Swedenborg had a positive influence on Kant’s intel­lectual development is not uncommon.[9] Two recent scholars have explored this influence in some detail: Gottlieb Florschütz [Fl93a and Fl93b] and Gregory Johnson [Jo96 and Jo97]. Without claiming to exhaust the insights conveyed by these two scholars—to say nothing of the whole tradition—I shall devote the last two sections of this appendix to summaries of their views.

          Contrary to the impression given by Laywine’s study, Florschütz claims that in Kt18 Kant is ‘not denying the existence of a spiritual world’ [Fl93a:6]; rather, ‘he explicitly presup­poses it.’ While aiming to show that Kant’s view of paranormal events such as those Sweden­borg claimed to experience ‘is decidedly ambivalent’ [1], Florschütz provides considerable textual evidence that many parallels exist between the views defended by these two scholars. For instance [9], Kant assumes in Kt18 ‘that there is an ideal world of spirit, that the human soul belongs to this world, that the earthly existence of living creatures is only incidental, ... and finally, that ... the soul of the earthly individual can receive influences from the spiritual world.’ Although Kant’s ‘preoccup[ation] ... with the question of the conditions under which it might be at all possible that a mortal would have actual views of the ideal world’ predated his acquaintance with Swedenborg’s writings [5; s.a. 9], reading Swedenborg’s Arcana Coeles­tia seems to have focused his understanding of numerous points that later became key compo­nents of his mature philosophical System. Not only theories relating directly to the ‘two worlds’ hypothesis are shared by Swedenborg and (especially post-Kt18) Kant, but also specific moral theories, such as that good should be done for its own sake.[10] Since many of these parallels refer to Kant’s views on the nature and destiny of the human soul, I shall defer commenting on them until KSP4, where Kant’s rather surprising view of the ‘big picture’ of human political history (from pre-birth to post-death) will emerge.

          Florschütz opines at one point [Fl93a:8] that, ‘[i]n spite of intensive parapsychological research for the past hundred years, the question [‘whether as earthly mortals we can look be­hind the veil that separates the two worlds’] is still open.’ What he does not say is that this is quite close to the view Kant himself adopts in Kt18, representing his most fundamental criticism of Swedenborg. Whereas Swedenborg gives an unequivocally positive answer, Kant is content to distinguish between what is and is not possible. Thus Kant explicitly denies ‘the possibility of simultaneous experience of both worlds’ [16], but allows that a person might be able to move back and forth between the two [17]. Florschütz rightly rejects du Prel’s suggestion that Kant might be ‘a closet spiritualist’ [15], for Kant is too firmly committed to developing his philosophical understanding of what we can know about the phenomenal world’s transcenden­tal basis to sacrifice this for an ‘intuitive’ awareness of what we cannot know (but can only feel) about the transcendent realm of spirits. This openness-cum-reluc­tance is the source, I believe, of the ambivalence Florschütz detects in Kant’s views on these matters. But as Florschütz also points out, the view of Swedenborg presented in Kt25 is far more consistently positive, indicating that as he developed his own Critical philosophy, Kant became more and more secure in his understanding of the proper role for (Critical) mysticism.

          In Fl93b Florschütz systematically examines a much broader range of topics and texts dealing with, as the title puts it, Swedenborg’s Hidden Influence on Kant. Kant’s relation to Swedenborg. After a general introduction to the nature of ‘occult’ (parapsychological) phenomena, Florschütz describes Swedenborg himself at some length, then examines Kt18, covering much of the same ground as in Fl93a (though often in more detail[11]). He takes his view significantly further, however, claiming that Kant’s idea of freedom and the moral law, interpreted as ‘occult phenomena’ on the basis of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical theory of the will, con­stitute the key to synthesiz­ing the various strains of Kant’s approach [0.2]. Summarizing this aspect of Florschütz’s position would take us too far beyond the scope of our present study. It is enough to say that his study attains a level of scholarly thoroughness and perspectival awareness that merits far more attention by Kant-scholars than it has so far been given.

 

4. Johnson’s Account of Kant on Swedenborg in Kt25

          Johnson’s two-part study [Jo96 and Jo97] constitutes a significant part of a book he is writing, to be entitled Signatures of the Noumenal: Kant’s Hidden Debt to Swedenborg.[12] He agrees with the view I supported in II.2-4, that ‘many elements of Kant’s mature metaphysics ... are sketched out in [Kt18]’ [Jo96:1], listing ‘the ideality of space and time, ... the kingdom of ends’ and ‘hermeneutics’ as three of the most significant ‘positive Swedenborgian influences on Kant’ [2]. We also agree in rejecting [13] ‘the received view that Kant’s judgment of Swedenborg in [Kt18] is wholly and unambiguously hostile.’ After a concise synopsis of Swedenborg’s basic ideas [13-7], highlighting a number of points that are remarkably similar to corresponding views held by Kant, the remainder of Jo96 and Jo97 consists mostly of a detailed examination of Kant’s references to Swedenborg in Kt25, with some references to paral­lel texts in Kt18.[13] Jo96 concludes with a few comments on the positive interpretations of Du Prel, Vaihinger, and Broad [Jo96:34-6] and a brief response to some points raised by the ‘hostile’ assessments of Butts and Laywine [36-8].

          Kant lectured regularly on metaphysics throughout his career—forty-nine times altogeth­er [Jo96:3]. Ten out of eighteen known sets of students’ notes (some partial, some complete) are published in Kt25 (eight in the English translation). All eight of the sets that include a discussion of ‘the state of the soul after death’ in the unit on rational psychology refer to Swedenborg, seven explicitly [Jo96:4]. The lectures in question span ‘a period of more than thirty years’ [11]. As Johnson points out, Kant always speaks of Swedenborg in Kt25 in a serious, ‘respectful’ tone, both before and after writing Kt18 [Jo96:24], with the only exception being his claim at one point that Swedenborg ‘appears ... to have been a deliberate fraud’ [q.i. 7]. There is otherwise no hint of the tone of ridicule prevalent in Kt18. Thus, for example, he introduces Swedenborg in the Herder notes as ‘perhaps [a] genuine visionary’ [Kt25:28.1.113-4(Jo96:19,21)], arguing that ‘we are not entitled to dismiss Swedenborg’s claims a priori.’

          In the most extensive set of Kt25 lecture notes, edited by Pölitz (viz., the so-called Metaphysik L1), Kant discusses issues relating to Swedenborg in a passage that extends over six pages [Kt25:28.1.296-301(Jo96:25-30)]. Here he presents a basically Sweden­borgian view of the nonlocal presence of the spirit in the body and of the nature of heaven and hell as the spiritual ‘locations’ of spirits even while they are still attached to earthly bodies [see AVI.3]. After distinguishing between the spiritual and natural worlds by relating them to different kinds of ‘intuition’, he admits ‘this opinion of the other world cannot be demonstrat­ed’; yet ‘it is a necessary hypothesis of reason’ [298(27)]. He then explicitly cites Swedenborg’s ‘sublime’ thoughts on the ‘community’ of all spirits [298-9(28)], and of ‘the other world’ that ‘consists not of other things, but of the same things, which ... we intuit in another way.’ Kant concludes by claiming it is ‘not possible’ to see the spiritual world ‘in the visible world through visible effects’ [300(29)], because we ‘cannot simultaneously be in this and also in that world’, and recommends that it is most consistent with ‘sound reason’ not to attempt to communicate with the spirit world until after our bodies pass away. Although ‘God and the other world are the only aim of all our philosophical investigations’, our proper stance in this life is to make morality our chief concern [301(30)].

          In Jo97 Johnson translates and comments on all the other references to Swedenborg in Kt25. For our purposes, nothing essential is added in these other texts, except the confidence of Kant’s consistent and lifelong interest in such matters, clearly indicating [Jo97:16] ‘that the Swedenborgian element in Kant’s thought not only survived his “Copernican Revolu­tion,” but also was integrated into his mature metaphysics.’ Although Kant’s repeated appeal to Swedenborg may not prove that Kant actually took all these ideas from Swedenborg, it certainly provides evidence that could be used in support of such a position. Kant himself most often claims neutrality with respect to Swedenborg’s position [Kt25:28.1.447-8(20)]: ‘I can neither prove it nor thoroughly refute it, for experience gives us no instruction on it.’ I shall leave the readers to judge for themselves on this sensitive issue. In any case, Johnson’s closing statement also makes an appropriate conclusion for this appendix [Jo97:39]: ‘Perhaps it is time for Kant scholars to take Swedenborg as seriously as Kant did.’

 

  [1].  See e.g., note II.18. In the second chapter of volume two, Du Prel defends a ‘monistic doctrine of the soul’, appealing repeatedly to Kant for support [e.g., Du89:2.195-8]. He claims that ‘Kant, in [Kt18], has declared Mysticism possible’ [302]. Likewise, as mentioned in note II.36, Du Prel’s Kt25 includes an essay entitled ‘Kants mystische Weltanschauung’, wherein (as Johnson [Jo96:34] puts it) he ‘argues that Kant’s treatment of Swedenborg in particular and spiritual matters in general ... constitute a mystical worldview.’ See X.3-4 for evidence in support of a similar claim.

  [2].  Ma69:99-146. The Cambridge Edition’s translation of Kt18 also includes 71 factual notes [pp.449-456]; but these supply little if anything that is not already available in previous editions.

  [3].  Sewall does note that ‘Schopenhauer has ... turned Kant’s transcendental idealism to the support of mysticism’ [Se00:17]; but Schopenhauer was hardly typical of his era.

  [4].  Such studies typically allude to Kant’s mystical tendencies [see e.g., Un55:58,301; St60:87,274, 325; Cu98:114-5], but do not examine them in any depth. Forman rightly argues against using Kt1’s epistemology to interpret mysticism [Fo99:56-63,78-9], but ignores other options. Butts’ work, with its extensive section on Swedenborg and Kt18 [s.e. Bu84:63-98], focuses primarily on Kant’s philosophy of science, so I shall incorporate his views into KSP3 as appropriate.

  [5].  Br53:150. Broad attributes most of the evidence presented in the Postscript to his contacts with various Swedish friends, especially an article by Alf Nyman, entitled ‘Kant:—en Mystiker?’[147].

  [6].  Moody is something of a modern-day, nonreligious Swedenborg. His book, Reunions, describes his experiments in assisting people to have visions of loved ones who have passed away. While admitting that ‘[t]he existence of this Middle Realm [between life and death] defies scientific proof’ [Mo93:xvii], he claims that, to those who experience them, such visions are as real as their daily experiences—even ‘realer than real’ [18,22]. He stresses that experiencing visions nearly always has a ‘healing’ effect rather than being frightening [6]; they promote ‘growth and development’ of the personality [25; s.a. 164]. Having studied philosophy, Moody points out philosophical impli­cations of his research from time to time. For example, he suggests that Plato’s cave analogy may well have been a ‘parody of the Oracle of the Dead at Ephyra’, where an elaborate series of under­ground chambers had been constructed and were used to facilitate visions of departed spirits [45]. If so, then Plato’s philosophy can be regarded as the first instance of what I call in Part Four a ‘Critical mysticism’; for Plato calls us to step out of the cave, just as Kant calls us to wake up from our spiritual and metaphysical ‘dreams’. Moody also notes that a person’s perception of time is affected during a vision [89; s.a. 84-5], and boasts that his method of promoting psychological heal­ing ‘seems to take less time’ than ordinary psychotherapy [129-30]. The danger of this ‘fast-food’ approach to psychotherapy is that, without being approached with the healthy skepticism of Critical philoso­phy, it can end up providing about as much nourishment as a regular McDonalds diet would. This approach is nevertheless superior to Swedenborg’s in two respects: Moody insists that his visions have nothing to do with the occult, seances, etc. [xv-xvi,140-1]; and he ‘makes no claims whatso­ever about the metaphysical status of these experiences.’ The latter proviso, as argued in X.3, is one of the primary requirements of Critical mysticism.

  [7].  La93:77. Laywine actually softens her claim as late as Chapter Six to read that in his early work Kant ‘came very close to ascribing repulsive forces to the soul’ [103, e.a.]—a much more plausible position, but not one that can carry the weight she has loaded it with in the foregoing chapters. She likewise hints at its conjectural character by prefacing ‘he had located the rational soul in [space]’ with the caveat ‘to all intents and purposes’ [117].

                  Another typical example of Laywine’s tendency to argue by reading between the lines comes when she attempts to account for the obvious Humean influence in certain parts of Kt18 by claiming [La93:84] that ‘the problem for Kant is to ward off the conclusion that the soul might be impenetrable and thus an object of sensation.... So Kant must now figure that he can appeal to Hume’s reflections in order to frustrate this line of thought.’ Yet there is absolutely no basis for such a conjecture in Kant’s text. Laywine explains its absence on the grounds that Kant’s argument in Kt18 ‘forestalls this line of thought before it can get going’ [85]! This is a classic example of a scholar learning so much about an author’s historical context that hidden motives are imputed that probably never occurred to the original author himself. Despite her frequent use of phrases such as ‘as I have argued’, Laywine never actually raises her central thesis above the status of a conjecture.

  [8].  Laywine really has no excuse for not making more of this point. For in La93:166 she ends her comments on Kant’s (she thinks) unexpected restatement of his (allegedly) outdated theory by quot­ing Kant’s Critical claim in Kt19:419 that, although ‘the absolute and immediate location of the soul can be denied, a hypothetical and mediate location can be attributed to it’—that is, both the dogmatic and the skeptical responses to the theory are wrong. Laywine merely remains silent about why Kant did not simply deny the theory at this point in his development, as her hypothesis would require. But on my account, Kant’s response is exactly what we should expect. For an outright de­nial would have made it impossible for him to develop his mature System into a Critical mysticism.

  [9].  The web site entitled ‘Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart’ has a page on literature relating to Kant, at http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/%7Ewww/referate/theologie/skkant%7E%7E.html. It lists numerous studies on the relationship between Kant and Swedenborg, mostly in German or Swedish. The only English study listed that I have not mentioned elsewhere in this appendix is: Robert H. Kirven, ‘Swedenborg and Kant revisited: the long shadow of Kant's attack and a new response’, in Swedenborg and his influence: Symposium ’88 (Bryn Athyn: 1988), pp.193-120. Unfortunately, I was not able to obtain a copy before the publication deadline for this book.

[10].    Fl93a:8. Florschütz closes with a list of ten points of agreement between Kant and Swedenborg [20-1], amounting to the framework for a rational psychology that concludes with the claims: ‘The voice of conscience is the voice of the transcendent subject’; and ‘The “other side” is simply the other side of a perceptual threshold.’

[11].    He argues, for example, that Kant’s harsh ridicule in Kt18 had a profound and lasting effect on Swedenborg’s reception (or lack thereof), especially in German universities [Fl93b:I.1.3], and that this contributed significantly to the need for Swedenborg’s early followers to keep their movement a secret [I.1.4]. He also describes the parallels between the two scholars in much more detail, including separate discussions of their cognitive theories (especially the distinction between a priori and a posteriori) [I.2.1], their cosmogonies [I.2.2], and their rational psychologies [I.2.3]. Other notable features include an extensive discussion of ways Kt18 foreshadows Kant’s mature Critical philosophy [I.4.2], an overview of reviews of Kt18 [I.4.3], and an examination of the implications Kant’s theoretical and practical systems have for occult phenomena [I.5 and I.6].

[12].    Jo96:1n. Johnson also cites his doctoral dissertation, A Commentary on Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, and several of his other essays that will be incorporated into his book. In those essays he argues [37-8] ‘that Swedenborg’s image of the spiritual world exercised a major positive influence on the development of Kant’s mature moral philosophy and that Swedenborg’s spiritual world is the model of Kant’s Kingdom of Ends.’ Unfortunately, I did not have access to these other sources by the time the present volume went to press.

[13].    He points out, for example, that Kt18 actually allows for the possibility of having a ‘genuine awareness of spiritual entities’, provided it is ‘symbolic in nature’ [Jo96:23; s.a. 30-1].

 

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