1. Introduction:
From political to ethical cosmopolitanism
When
scholars discuss Kant’s cosmopolitanism, they typically focus on his political
cosmopolitanism, described in the Doctrine
of Right and Perpetual Peace,
and summarized as the “rational idea of a peaceful, even if not friendly, thoroughgoing community of all
nations on the earth that come into relations affecting one another” (6:352). The ideal form for this community would
require nations to “give up their savage (lawless) freedom, accommodating
themselves to public coercive laws, and so form an (always growing) state of nations (civitas gentium) that would finally encompass all the nations of
the earth” (8:357).[1] For Kant, political cosmopolitanism is
morally necessary. Kant insists that
“states, considered in external relation to one another, are (like lawless
savages) by nature in a nonrightful condition” and even if “no state is wronged
by another in this condition (insofar as neither wants anything better), this
condition is still wrong in the highest degree, and states . . . are under
obligation to leave it” (6:344).[2]
The moral necessity of this pacific league is clearest in
Kant’s Doctrine of Right, where his
account of the need to form such a cosmopolitan “league of nations” (6:344)
follows from his more general account of the need to form political communities
at all. The need to leave the state of
nature and enter into a civil condition arises, for Kant, from the fact that a
right relation among people depends upon limiting the freedom of each such that
“the freedom of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a
universal law” (6:230). This is not
simply an abstract requirement. It requires
instantiation in concrete rights, especially property rights, which receive
authorization from “a will that is omnilateral
. . . . [f]or only in accordance with this principle of the will is it possible
for the free choice of each to accord with the freedom of all” (6:263). As long as issues of right are settled
unilaterally (or even multilaterally), it is not truly “possible for there to
be any right” (6:263). Thus before human
beings leave a state of nature and submit to laws within a state, all rights
are merely “provisional,” and the same applies to a state of nature among
nations. As Kant explains,
Since a state of nature among nations, like a state of
nature among individual human beings, is a condition that one ought to leave in
order to enter a lawful condition, before this happens any rights of nations,
and anything external that is mine or yours . . ., are merely provisional. Only in a universal association of states . . . can rights come to hold conclusively.
(6:350).
Kant’s
political cosmopolitanism, described in the Doctrine of Right and
Perpetual Peace, thus involves the increasing interdependence of states
that is necessary to ensure that people’s rights are grounded in a truly
“omnilateral” will.
Grounding political cosmopolitanism on the same basis as
that of rights more generally has important implications for the nature of that
cosmopolitanism. First, political
cosmopolitanism is morally necessary
to provide a legitimate basis of rights.
Second, because political cosmopolitanism “is not an . . . ethical principle but a
principle having to do with rights”
(6:352), it does not relate to internal ends, either of states or individuals
within them. As Kant emphasizes, “the
concept of right . . . has to do . . . only with the external . . . relation of
one person [or state] to another” such that “no account at all is taken of the
. . . end that each has in mind” (6:230). Thus political cosmopolitanism
neither depends on nor gives rise to good wills. Rather, it simply ensures that in their actions, human beings (whether as
individuals or as states) act in ways that allow maximum freedom of action for
others. The first implication, that
cosmopolitanism is morally necessary, implies that political cosmopolitanism
would be required even for morally perfect angels. The second, that it deals only with external
actions, makes this cosmopolitanism possible even for “a nation of devils”
(8:366).
In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, however, Kant discusses
something that might be called an ethical cosmopolitanism: “an enduring
and ever expanding society, solely designed for the preservation of morality”
(6:94). In contrast to political
cosmopolitanism, which seeks merely to ensure that the actions of states are in accordance with cosmopolitan right, ethical cosmopolitanism promotes
the cultivation of virtue. Unlike political cosmopolitanism, then, this
cosmopolitanism will be unnecessary for angels, who are already virtuous, and
impossible for devils, who lack any basis for becoming virtuous.[3] But like political right, and to an even
greater extent, this ethical community must be truly cosmopolitan, encompassing all human beings: “a multitude of human
beings united in that [moral] purpose cannot yet be called an ethical community
as such but only a particular society that strives after the consensus of all
human beings . . . in order to establish an absolute ethical whole” (6:96).
Kant discusses ethical community in the greatest detail in
his Religion within the Boundaries of
Mere Reason, a work within which Kant recasts traditional Christian
theological beliefs in terms of his own philosophy. The Christian doctrines that form the backbone
of the book are the doctrines of human sinfulness and God’s mercy, and Kant’s
ethical cosmopolitanism cannot be understood without reference to these central
doctrines. But this dependence upon
fundamentally Christian concepts taints the cosmopolitan character of Kant’s
ethical project here. In particular,
this dependence raises the question of whether an ethical ideal founded on
specific theological claims can ever meet the requirements for a truly
universal cosmopolitanism.
In this paper, I propose two
readings of Kant’s cosmopolitanism that offer two different solutions to the
problem of reconciling religious commitment with cosmopolitan ideals. The first, a “liberal” reading of Kant’s
cosmopolitanism insists that theological commitments are not a necessary part
of the content of cosmopolitan ethical community. A liberal need not rule out any religious
beliefs per se, but only a necessary role
for them in ethical communities. The
second, a “religious” reading of Kant, sees a role for limited “rational
theology” – including belief in God’s existence and mercy – as a necessary part
of ethical cosmopolitanism.[4] Each reading has advantages, and in my
conclusion I suggest that Kant’s Religion
within the Boundaries of Mere Reason can be seen as attempt to reconcile
them, though one that ultimately favors the religious reading. Before turning to these interpretations,
however, I must first lay out in more detail why ethical cosmopolitanism is
necessary, and what problems in particular these readings of Kant are designed
to solve.
2. The need for ethical cosmopolitanism
For Kant, ethical cosmopolitanism is necessary because of
human beings’ propensity to evil and the role that social life plays in
cultivating human evil. The notion of a
propensity to evil comes from Kant’s recasting of the Christian doctrine of universal
sinfulness in terms of his account of “radical evil,” and it is this doctrine
that provides the reason for the importance of ethical cosmopolitanism.[5] The locus
classicus for this doctrine within the Christian tradition is the Apostle
Paul’s claim in Romans[6]
that “There is no one who is righteous, not even one,” a passage that Kant
explicitly connects with his own theory of radical evil:
[I]f nowhere is a virtue which no level of temptation can
overthrow, if whether good or evil wins us over only depends on which bids the
most and affords the promptest pay-off, then what the Apostle says might indeed
hold true of human beings universally, “There is no distinction here, they are
all under sin – there is none righteous (in the spirit of the law), no, not
one.” (6:39)
That all are “under sin” is precisely the claim that Kant
defends in this section of his Religion,
a section entitled “the human being is by nature evil” (6:32).
Kant not only defends the existence of universal and radical evil;
he philosophically describes the nature
of that evil. In general, radical evil
takes the form of a subordination of the moral law to maxims of self-love.[7] When a person allows him or herself to choose
in such a way that the moral law can be overridden by sensuous incentives, that
person is evil. And this overriding need
not occur all the time:
The statement, “The human being is evil,” cannot
mean anything else than that he is conscious of the moral law and yet has
incorporated into his maxim the (occasional) deviation from it. (6:32)
Kant is, in this sense, a “rigorist” about morality – even
the occasional deviation from complete prioritization of the moral law to one’s
sensuous interests constitutes “evil.”[8]
For Kant,
however, radical evil goes beyond mere occasional deviation from the law. Human evil also involves the cultivation of a
propensity to evil,[9] a
subjective disposition that makes one more likely to act on evil maxims in the
future. Radical evil is not simply a
matter of choosing maxims that are themselves contrary to the moral law. It involves acting on maxims that constitute
or bring about a propensity to and persistence in evil. One who is evil – and all humans are – chooses
evil now and also seeks to ensure that evil will continue in one’s choices
throughout life.
For Kant, however, the cultivation of this propensity to
evil is not a solitary endeavor. Human
beings live in societies, and our social lives provide fertile breeding grounds
for evil. As Kant explains,
If [a human being] searches for the causes
and the circumstances that draw him into this danger [i.e., assault of the evil
principle] and keep him there, he can easily convince himself that they do not
come his way from his own raw nature . . . but rather from the human beings to whom
he stands in relation or association.
(6:93)
The primary means by which we cultivate our own worst
tendencies are social.[10] Competition, resentment, and a myriad of
diverse desires arise only in social contexts, and the “passions,”[11]
which for Kant are among the greatest hindrances to self-mastery and virtue,
“assail his nature, which on its own is undemanding, as soon as he is among human beings” (6:94). Radical evil manifests itself not merely in
individual wrongdoing, but in a social climate that fosters vice.
This, then,
brings us to the need for ethical cosmopolitanism. For Kant, the propensity to evil is not
merely an unfortunate fact about human beings; it sets an important moral task.
As Kant explains,
[A human being] remains . . . exposed to the assaults of
the evil principle; and, to assert his freedom, which is constantly under
attack, he must henceforth remain forever armed for battle. (6:93, cf. 6:408)
Human beings cannot rest easy in ethical life. We cannot simply face each decision with the
firm conviction to follow the categorical imperative. Instead, we must recognize our own propensity
to evil and actively arm ourselves against its influence. As Kant explains in his criticism of stoic
ethics,
They drew the moral laws directly from reason . . . and so
was everything quite correctly apportioned . . . subjectively, with respect to
the incentive – provided that one attributes to the human being an uncorrupted
will . . .. The mistake of those philosophers,
however, lay in just this last presupposition.
For . . . we must rather start by dislodging from its possession the
evil which has already taken up possession [in the will]. (6:58n)
Were human
beings morally pure, ethical cosmopolitanism would be unnecessary, and every
reader of the Groundwork would become
(or better, would already be) a morally perfect follower of the categorical
imperative. But because we actively
promote evil in ourselves, we can become good only by combating this evil
tendency. And because our propensity to evil
is cultivated by our social relationships in particular, one can struggle
against corrupting influences only through the moral reform of society.
The dominion of the good principle is not otherwise
attainable . . . than through the setting up and the diffusion of a society in
accordance with, and for the sake of, laws of virtue. (6:94)
Thus ethical cosmopolitanism is the morally necessary
consequence of our own radical evil.
Without a social struggle for more improvement, human beings will lay
down arms in a battle in which we are required to be ever vigilant.
3. The first
problem with ethical cosmopolitanism: radical evil
Radical
evil is crucial for Kant’s argument that ethical cosmopolitanism is needed, but
it raises an apparent problem for Kant because of two further commitments: (1)
One can rationally hope to be fundamentally morally good and (2) There
is no middle ground between moral good and evil since the moral law insists on
unswerving obedience (rigorism). The
first of these commitments lies at the heart of Kant’s whole practical
philosophy, which is based on seeking the conditions of the possibility of
morality. If it is impossible to be
morally good – if there is no hope for us – then Kant’s philosophy is
practically inert. The second commitment
follows (as noted above) from the specific nature of Kant’s morality, and in
particular from the categorical and universal nature of the moral law. John Hare nicely summarizes the challenge:
If we want to keep
morality as demanding as Kant says it is, and if we want to concede what
Kant says about our natural propensity not to live by it, and if we want
at the same time to reject these traditional Christian doctrines [of grace],
then we will have to find some substitute for them. (Hare 1996: 37)
Hare does not include (1) in this description, although
denying (1) is a way to avoid Christian doctrines or their substitutes. One can simply admit the rigor of morality
and our propensity not to live by it, but claim that we have freely fallen
short and now are morally evil without any further hope of reform. This would be an option, but it is not one
that Kant is willing to accept.[12]
The doctrine of radical evil seems to challenge Kant’s commitments
to moral hope and moral rigorism because radical evil, at least as Kant
describes it, seems to be inextirpable.[13]
This evil is . . . not to be extirpated
through human forces, for this could happen only through good maxims –
something that cannot take place if the subjective supreme ground of all maxims
is presupposed to be corrupted. (6:37,
cf. 6:45)
There are two reasons, for Kant, that radical evil is
inextirpable. First, given that one has
subordinated the moral law to sensuous inclinations, it can never be the
case that one completely prioritizes morality over inclination. One’s overall moral status depends on one’s
life as a whole (6: 22-25). To be morally good, one cannot ever
compromise morality. But if one has already
compromised morality, even if one always does one’s duty from now on,
one is nonetheless a person who, given the right circumstances (which may
include temporal conditions), violates the moral law. That is to say, one is nonetheless evil. In Kant’s terms,
however steadfastly a human being may have persevered in
such a [good] disposition in a life conduct conformable to it, he
nevertheless started from evil, and this is a debt which is impossible for
him to wipe out. (6:72)[1]
The evil from which we have started provides a reason for
the inextirpability of evil overall.
The second reason
that evil is inextirpable is that one’s evil is not merely past evil
deeds, but includes a propensity to evil. The fundamental maxim governing one’s life is
a commitment to prefer inclination over morality. And this fundamental maxim provides no ground
for its own overturning. One will not
reject evil because the basis of one’s decisions is evil. And although obstacles to choosing rightly do
not erode one’s responsibility for one’s evil, they seem to undermine the real
possibility of moral reform.
Given rigorism
(commitment 2), the inextirpability of radical evil leaves one without hope of
being morally good. But Kant still
insists that what is required by
morality is that one do what is right, which includes improving the
basis of one’s choices. As Kant
explains, “In spite of the fall, the command that we ought to become better
human beings still resounds unabated in our souls; consequently, we must also
be capable of it” (6:45). Kant is
unwilling to give up his commitment to moral hope. But if one ought to become better, one
must still be capable of moral reform.
And that means that radical evil must be eradicable after all.
One approach that might seem promising, given Kant’s
commitment to ethical cosmopolitanism, is to turn to society to overcome the
radical evil that is found in each individual. In his Anthropology, Kant suggests something like this:
No matter how great his animalistic inclination may be to
abandon himself passively to the enticements of ease and comfort . . ., he is
still destined to make himself worthy of humanity by actively struggling with
the obstacles that cling to him because of the crudity of his nature. Man must, therefore, be educated to the good.
(6:324-5, emphasis added)
But Kant immediately realizes that the turn to education,
or to the social, will not avoid the problem posed by radical evil. Instead, it only makes that problem more
acute, because “he who is to educate him is again a human who still finds
himself in the crudity of nature. This
human, now, is expected to bring about what he himself is still in need of”
(6:325). This challenge arises in any
attempt of the human race to educate itself, but especially in the context of moral education:
Since good men, who must themselves have been trained for
it, are required for moral education, and since there is probably not one among
them who has no innate or acquired depravity himself, the problem of moral
education for our species remains unsolved.
(6:327)
A society of radically evil individuals is a seedbed for
further evil, and thus Kant requires an ethical community to promote the social
struggle against evil that marks our only hope for moral progress. But this ethical community itself depends
upon having already overcome the very
problem that it is supposed to solve, the problem of the propensity to evil.[14]
4. Solving the problem of radical evil with divine mercy.
Kant solves the problem of radical
evil by invoking the doctrines of providence and divine mercy. In his Religion,
he explains that “Some supernatural cooperation is also needed to [a person]
becoming good or better” (6:44).[15] And in his Anthropology, he says, “it is only from
To avoid despair, one must believe that there is some way
to be morally good, but practical reason will not condone any lenience in the
interpretation of the moral law. Thus
there must be some inconceivable supplement for our failings, some supplement
that reason does not fully specify.
It may be impossible for an
individual to overcome the propensity to evil without some assistance, but God
can mercifully provide for such transformation.
From God, one can hope that one will be capable of overcoming one’s own
radical evil. But Kant makes clear that
the revolution made possible by divine mercy does not absolve one of the
responsibility to actively promote one’s own virtue. Even with the cooperation of providence and
divine mercy, the most that one can expect is “an endless progress toward the complete conformity” of human wills
with the moral law (5:122), a “battle . . . against the attacks of the evil
principle” (6:93) and a constant “struggle” (6: 78) of one’s efforts to be good
against one’s tendencies for evil.
Likewise, it may be impossible for
the human species to overcome the social corruption that fosters the propensity
to evil. Kant goes so far as to say that
“even with the good will of each individual, because of the lack of a principle
which unites them, [human beings] deviate . . . from the common goal of
goodness as though they were instruments of evil” for one another (6:97). The corrupting effects of society are strong
and self-reinforcing, and “the problem of moral education for our species
remains unsolved” (6:327), at least at a
human level. At the level of
providence, one can hope not only for God’s merciful intervention facilitating
individual transformation, but also for the providential establishment of an
ethical community: “To found a moral people of God [i.e., a cosmopolitan
ethical community] is, therefore, a work whose execution cannot be hoped for
from human beings but only from God himself” (6:100). Again, Kant does not take God’s role to
absolve human beings of moral responsibility: “human beings are not permitted
on this account to remain idle in the undertaking and let
5. The second
problem with ethical cosmopolitanism: the role of religion
Invoking providence and divine mercy
helps alleviate the apparent conflict between Kant’s commitments to moral hope,
rigorism, and the reality of radical evil.
Human beings are radically evil, but we still have hope of satisfying
the demands of morality through God’s mercy.[18] However, the invocation of divine mercy
raises a potential problem with Kant’s account because of the nature of Kantian
ethical cosmopolitanism and the sources of his account of divine mercy. In particular, Kant insists that ethical
cosmopolitanism does not depend upon divine revelation nor upon specific features
of any revealed religion, but divine mercy is a core doctrine of Christianity –
especially German Protestantism – and Kant’s explanation of it is permeated
with references to Christian Scriptures.
Kant was well aware of the importance of the doctrine of
divine mercy within the Christian tradition, especially within German
Lutheranism and the Pietist forms of that Lutheranism with which he grew
up. Gordon Michalson describes his
doctrine of radical evil as “a Kantian adaptation of the Lutheran simul justus et peccator”
(Michalson 1990:117). Similarly, Robert
Adams points out how Kant is “like his Lutheran
forebears” (Adams 1998:xviii) and
suggests that “his thought about good and evil in human nature is deeply
attuned to the dynamics of the Lutheran piety in which he was raised” (Adams 1998:xv). And John Hare argues that Kant “takes the
four central items of the traditional Christian faith (Creation, Fall,
Redemption, and Second Coming) and the translation of these dictates the
structure of the rest of [Religion within
the Boundaries of Mere Reason]” (Hare 2004, cf. Hare 1996). The sense that Kant is drawing on a
specifically Christian (even Lutheran) doctrine of divine mercy is heightened
by Kant’s extensive use of Christian Scriptures relevant to his account of
divine mercy. In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, there are over 100
references to Christian Scriptures, making up over half of the references in
the text. The close connection between
German Lutheranism and Kant’s doctrine of divine mercy need not imply a dependence
upon specifically Christian
authorities or arguments, but there is at least an apparent tension between the
theological commitments that underlie Kant’s hope for ethical cosmopolitanism
and his account of the nature of that cosmopolitanism.
Kant allows ethical cosmopolitanism
to involve religion in a sense. As he
explains, “an ethical community is conceivable only as a people under divine
commands, i.e. as a people of God”
and “the idea of a people of God cannot be realized (by human organization) except
in the form of a church” (6:99, 100). But Kant is explicit that true cosmopolitanism depends on freeing moral
religion from “revelation” and anything tied to “historical” or
“ecclesiastical” faith (cf. e.g. 6:106, 109).
For Kant, the need to free religion from anything historical or revealed
is a necessary consequence of linking religion to cosmopolitan ethical community.
For an ethical community to be truly cosmopolitan, it must not depend on
anything that cannot “be convincingly
communicated to everyone” (6:103).
Kant insists that any “religion” in an ethical cosmopolitanism must be
purified of contingent details[19]
of different “faiths” that cover the globe (6:107-8).
But this requirement of universality
for the religion that underlies ethical community brings with it an apparent
problem in the context of Kant’s discussion of divine mercy. On the one hand, Kant’s account of divine
mercy suggests that it must be an essential part of any ethical community. Without divine mercy, one apparently must sacrifice
either the hope of moral progress, the rigor of the moral law, or the
recognition of one’s own radical evil.
Giving up the first would make ethical cosmopolitanism hopeless,
dissolving it in moral despair. Giving
up the second would fail to be truly ethical
cosmopolitanism and would cultivate a sort of moral laxity rather than true
virtue. And giving up the third, in
addition to being intellectually dishonest given “the multitude of woeful
examples that the experience of human deeds parades before us” (6:33),
would make the pursuit of ethical cosmopolitanism unnecessary, since ethical
cosmopolitanism is needed only to combat our own evil.
But on the other hand, the doctrine
of divine mercy seems to be a specifically Christian doctrine, and Kant defends
it in specifically Christian terms. As
we have seen, Kant explicitly refers to the apostle Paul and to the Christian
Scriptures in explaining the reality of radical evil, even connecting it with
Paul’s claim that all are “under sin” (6:39, cf. Romans 3:9). And Kant draws his solution to this problem,
at least in part, from Paul’s further claim that “since all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace.”[20] Kant’s discussion of the mechanics of divine
mercy is permeated throughout with Christian concepts and jargon. Kant discusses, for example, how the “son of
God . . . bears as vicarious substitute
the debt of sin for him, and also for all who believe . . . in him; as savior, he satisfies the highest justice
through suffering and death” (6:74).
Thus whereas Kant’s doctrine of divine mercy seems to be an essential
part of his moral religion such that any cosmopolitanism ethical community must
include this doctrine as an essential part, it also seems to be an idea deeply
rooted in a particular faith, tied to specific revelation, and thus must be
precluded from the context of any truly cosmopolitan ethical community. And hence, we have an apparent paradox.
6. Solving the
problem: some preliminaries
As clear as it may seem, this
apparent paradox is not a real one.
There is nothing strictly inconsistent with saying that divine mercy is
necessary for ethical cosmopolitanism but that a doctrine of divine mercy has no place in that cosmopolitanism. If there is a God who is the Creator and
Sustainer of the universe, then presumably the existence of God is necessary in
order for human beings to exist. But
even those who believe that God is Creator and Sustainer of the universe do not
take this to imply that one must believe in
God in order to exist. Similarly, it may
be that divine mercy is necessary in order for ethical cosmopolitanism to be
possible, but that does not necessarily
mean that members of a cosmopolitan ethical community must believe in divine mercy.
Moreover, Kant’s prohibitions on including contingent
details of faith in ethical religion are directed against specifically historical aspects of faith. And while divine mercy as a solution to the
problem of human evil is a doctrine tied to a specific religious tradition, and
while Kant draws heavily on historical features of Christianity in his
explanations of divine mercy, he also interprets those features in ways that
are less historically contingent. Thus
with respect to the role of the “Son of God” as “savior” and “vicarious
sacrifice,” Kant interprets this Christian doctrine in a way that does not
require any specific belief in the historical person of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but only in some Son
of God[21]
whose sacrifice atones for one’s past sins.
Still, however, Kant emphasizes the importance of divine
mercy in giving a philosophical defense of the reasonableness of pursuing
ethical community, but he explains grace in specifically Christian terms. Even without his Christian rhetoric, one
might think that grace as a divine response to human sinfulness is a doctrine
just too tied to historical Christianity to have a place in any truly
cosmopolitan ethical community. And this
at least raises the question of what role this doctrine of divine mercy has in
the context of ethical community. The
two ways of resolving the problem I have just mentioned, in fact, suggest two
different roles for divine mercy. The
first resolution – that divine mercy is necessary but not belief in it – would
imply that those seeking to promote ethical community need not specifically seek to convince others of the importance of
divine mercy, since such a belief is inessential to what ethical community
involves. We might call this the
‘liberal reading’ of Kant’s cosmopolitanism, since it does not require any
specific religious beliefs. The second
resolution – that divine mercy can be cleansed of its specifically historical
features – suggests that one can (and perhaps even should) promote this
non-historical doctrine of mercy as a part of ethical cosmopolitanism. Thus on this ‘religious reading’ of Kant,
religious beliefs are necessary for cosmopolitanism, though not
contingent religious beliefs.
It is important to note here, of course, that liberal
cosmopolitanism is consistent with a great deal of religiosity, and a religious
cosmopolitanism is consistent with a great deal of liberalism. With respect to the former point, one can be
deeply religious at a personal and even corporate level while still holding a
“liberal” view towards ethical community, as long as one believes that belief
in the doctrine of divine mercy is not necessary
for a flourishing and cosmopolitan community.
With respect to the latter, one can hold to a religious cosmopolitanism
and still be quite liberal with regard to the diversity of ways of
understanding divine mercy. To hold a
“religious” stance towards ethical community is simply to believe that the
belief in divine mercy is necessary for
ethical community. And of course,
neither view about ethical cosmopolitanism
– religious or liberal – commits one to any particular view about political cosmopolitanism. In particular, the religious view that
certain core theological doctrines are required for the flourishing of ethical
community need not imply that these doctrines (or any others) are required for political community.
7. The liberal
reading: Belief in divine mercy is not an essential part of ethical
cosmopolitanism
As we have seen, the doctrines of
providence and divine mercy play a role in Kant’s philosophical defense of the
possibility of ethical cosmopolitanism, but on the liberal reading of this
cosmopolitanism, theological commitment to divine mercy is not part of the content of cosmopolitan ethical
community. That is, one need not actually
believe in divine mercy to be fully a part of an ethical community, and one
need not promote this belief as part of promoting “an ever expanding society .
. . designed for the preservation of morality” (6:94).[22]
Allen Wood defends something like this liberal reading in
his account of Kant’s religion. He
argues that “I can have religion . . . even if I am an agnostic,” as long as I
believe that it is possible that God
exists and “so long as my awareness of duty is enlivened with the thought that
if there is a God, then my duties are God’s commands” (Wood 1992: 406). Wood does not specifically apply this liberal
approach to divine mercy, but we can easily reconstruct what he could say. For Wood, the key relevant desideratum in
articulating the nature of a true moral religion is that “Kant does not want to
find moral fault with anyone whose religious beliefs fall within the range of
opinion that is compatible with the theoretical evidence” (405). And just as Wood’s “hopeful agnostic” does
not actually believe in God but believes that God’s existence is possible and bases moral hope on that,
the agnostic could refrain from actually believing in divine mercy, so long as
she allowed that divine mercy is possible. Kant’s language sometimes even suggests that
this is what he has in mind, as when he insists that “Reason does not contest
the possibility . . . . of these
objects” and describes a “faith . . . with respect to the possibility of this something” (6: 52, emphasis added).[23]
We might even go further than Wood. As long as a person is willing to commit to
the pursuit of virtue, they can be a member of an ethical community, whether
they have any beliefs about divine mercy at all. As long as one does not both see divine mercy
as necessary for virtue and deny its possibility, one can be a member of an
ethical community. Philosophers, such as Kant, may need to posit some sort of divine
mercy to make sense of how ethical cosmopolitanism could be possible, but
ordinary people need not have any beliefs about this at all, as long as they
are willing actively to promote ethical community.
For the content of ethical cosmopolitanism, this liberal
reading has an important advantage. It
suggests that the belief in divine mercy, which (in Kant at least) is closely
connected with Christianity, is an inessential component of the moral religion
about which one seeks “the consensus of all human beings” (6:96). Eliminating a need to reach consensus about
the nature of divine mercy is particularly important given the conflicts to
which that doctrine has given rise both within Christianity itself and in
interactions between Christians and others.
These conflicts could pose problems for any proponent of ethical
cosmopolitanism that sought to impose doctrines of mercy informed by
Christianity on a world of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and
others. The more one can eliminate
doctrines of faith from ethical community, the easier it will be to promote a
truly cosmopolitan religion.
Moreover, Kant points out that with
respect to the doctrine of divine mercy in particular, belief in this doctrine
can have a dangerously counterproductive effect on the cultivation of
virtue. He explains that this doctrine
is “very risky” because “what is to be accredited to us as morally good conduct
must take place . . . through the use of our own powers” (6:191) and thus that
It can . . . be asked whether this deduction of the idea of
a justification of a human being who is indeed guilty . . . has any
practical use at all, and what such use could be. It is hard to see what positive use
can be made of it for religion and for the conduct of life. (6:76)[24]
What worries Kant here is the possibility that the belief
in divine mercy will lead people to think that certain rituals or formulae can
gain mercy in the absence of a life well lived.
If people rest hope on divine mercy as
opposed to a good life, then the doctrine of divine mercy will actually inhibit ethical cosmopolitanism (the
purpose of which is, remember, to promote virtue), rather than promote it. Thus Kant emphasizes vehemently that “Apart from a good life-conduct, anything
which the human being supposes that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is
mere religious delusion” (6:170, Kant’s emphasis).[25]
On the liberal
reading, then, divine mercy is not an essential part of ethical
cosmopolitanism. One can be a member of
a cosmopolitan ethical community without believing in divine mercy, and one can
promote that community without promoting belief in divine mercy. This reading has two important
advantages. First, it fits well with
Kant’s claims about the universal communicability of “pure” religion. Divine mercy seems not to be easily and
“convincingly communicated to everyone,” so leaving it out of one’s
cosmopolitan religion seems required.
Second, belief in divine mercy can have a tendency to make people
morally complacent, hoping that God will simply take care of them or that
certain rituals will gain them divine favor.
Purifying ethical community of a doctrine with these effects would seem
to promote the cultivation of virtue that it is the purpose of ethical
community to foster.
8. The religious
reading: Belief in divine mercy is an essential part of ethical cosmopolitanism
Like a liberal reading of ethical
cosmopolitanism, the religious reading sees no role for merely historical aspects of faith, but a religious reading of Kant
sees a role for limited rational theology – including belief in God’s existence
and mercy – as a necessary part of ethical cosmopolitanism. Thus to be a fully participating member of an
ethical community one would need to believe in God’s mercy, and to promote
ethical cosmopolitanism, one would need to promote this belief. Since joining ethical communities and
promoting such cosmopolitanism are morally required, belief in God’s mercy
would thus be required.[26] Despite the apparent problems with this view
discussed in the previous section, there are two important (and related)
reasons to advocate a religious reading.
The first is that Kant seems to
think that the belief in divine mercy is rationally required by anyone
seriously pursuing personal virtue and ethical cosmopolitanism. Shortly after the passage quoted above in
which Kant claims that “It is hard to see what positive use can be made
of it for religion and for the conduct of life,” he adds,
The investigation is only an answer to a speculative
question, but one that cannot therefore
be passed over in silence, since reason could then be accused of being
absolutely incapable of reconciling the human being’s hope of absolution from
his guilt with divine justice, and this accusation might be disadvantageous to
reason in many respects, most of all
morally. (6:76, emphasis added)
Despite
the apparent dangers of the doctrine of divine mercy, and thus Kant’s
resistance to giving it too much
weight practically, it is a doctrine that is necessary in order to resolve otherwise impossible conflicts within
reason. And these conflicts, though
speculative, are not merely
speculative. They are morally “disadvantageous.”[27] In this respect, the belief in divine mercy
is like belief in the practical postulates that Kant discusses in his Critique of Practical Reason.[28] Just as “it is morally necessary to believe
in God” because “our reason finds [the possibility of the highest good]
thinkable only on the presupposition of a supreme intelligence” (5:125-6), so
it is similarly “morally necessary” to believe in divine mercy, because only
divine mercy can reconcile moral hope with a rigorous morality.
Unlike the postulates, the need for
divine mercy does not follow simply from the fact that one has a duty to obey
the moral law, nor even from the fact that this duty implies that “one ought to
strive to promote the highest good” (5:125).
One’s moral obligations combined with radical evil are what make
divine mercy necessary. But although
Kant’s the theory of radical evil is related to the Christian doctrine of sin,
Kant insists that “only common morality is needed to understand the essentials
of this text [Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason]” (6:14).
And Kant’s overall defense of the reality of radical evil, although it uses
Christian terms and references Christian Scriptures, is not based on Christianity. Rather, he sketches an empirical proof of
radical evil based on “the multitude of woeful examples that the experience of
human deeds parades before us” (6:32-33). As he explains, “according to the cognition
we have of the human being through
experience . . ., we may presuppose evil as subjectively necessary in
every human being” and “the existence of this propensity to evil in human
nature can be established
through experiential
demonstrations” (6:32, 6:35, cf. 6:20).
The essence of this demonstration is that people’s actions in the world
provide irrefutable evidence that they have corrupt maxims, and thus that they
are evil (6:24, cf. Frierson 2003: 104-8).
Kant claims that the presence of radical evil is something that “everyone
can decide for himself” (6:39), but anyone honestly surveying their own life
will find ample evidence that one lacks a wholehearted commitment to always
obey the moral law. In giving this
empirical argument for the universality of radical evil, Kant highlights those
aspects of the Christian religion that can be found “within the limits of
reason (understood as including empirical judgments) alone.” In that sense, the quasi-postulate of divine
mercy is grounded in an argument that can “be convincingly communicated to everyone,” and thus it is both
acceptable within an ethical cosmopolitanism and (like the postulates)
rationally required (though not proven speculatively)[29]
for those who genuinely seek virtue.
The second reason that divine mercy
may need to be part of any ethical cosmopolitanism is the psychological correlate
of the first. It is not only irrational
but also psychologically difficult,
if not impossible, to promote ethical cosmopolitanism (or even one’s own
virtue) without believing in divine mercy.
The psychological character of Kant’s concern here can be understood by
a further analogy with the postulates of practical reason. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant
revisits these postulates, but in a way that puts them in a more psychological
and less epistemic light.[30] He discusses “a righteous man (like Spinoza)
who takes himself to be firmly convinced that there is no God” (5:452) and he
asks what kind of life such a man will live. Kant explains that this righteous
man will pursue the moral law from pure motives, but “his effort is limited”
because nature does not, as far as he can tell, cooperate with him. There are two possible results of this, Kant
says. One is that such a Spinoza will
eventually “give up as impossible” his morally righteous ends, regardless of
how “well-intentioned” he is. The only way
to avoid this effect on one’s disposition is to “assume the existence of the
moral author of the world, i.e. of God” (5:452-3). Unlike the derivation of the rational need to
believe in God, Kant’s point here is psychological. Theoretically, human beings could be morally
good without believing in God, but (according to Kant) atheism will “weaken the
respect” for morality and “damage the moral disposition.” One should believe in God in part because
that belief will function as an aid to cultivating a moral disposition, whereas
not believing will weaken one’s commitment to morality.
Kant’s psychological claim about the
effects of belief in God can be extended to his treatment of God’s mercy and
divine providence. The arguments for the
important of grace are rooted in a philosophical problem, but also in a
psychological one. Without believing in
divine mercy, one cannot reconcile the absolute demands of the moral law and
the fact of one’s own radical evil with a continuing commitment to the moral
law. And while it may theoretically be
possible to maintain a long-term commitment to the moral law while believing
that one has no hope of meeting its demands, this is probably impossible
psychologically. Without a belief in
divine mercy, the only way (psychologically) to avoid weakening one’s
commitment to the moral law is to lessen the demands of the moral law or to
deceive oneself about the severity of one’s own evil. Without a belief in divine mercy, the only
options that are psychologically open to human beings seem to be moral despair,
moral compromise, or hypocritical self-satisfaction.
If this psychological claim is true (and it is certainly an
open question whether or not it is true), it provides important reasons for
endorsing a version of the religious interpretation of Kant’s ethical
cosmopolitanism. The purpose of ethical
cosmopolitanism is to cultivate virtue in oneself and others, and the need for
it emerges from human beings’ social nature and the way that radical evil takes
advantage of that social nature. But our
social nature is not the only aspect of our nature relevant to radical evil,
nor to our efforts to correct it. We are
also beings whose commitment to morality is affected by our beliefs, and in
particular our religious beliefs. Thus
an ethical community must actively promote those beliefs that are necessary (or
even helpful) to the cultivation of virtue.
9.
Conclusion.
In the last two sections, we have
seen good reasons to advocate both a liberal reading of Kant’s cosmopolitanism and
a more religious one. The strength of
the liberal account is its commitment to the principle of “the consensus of all
human beings” (6:96) that must underlie any truly cosmopolitan ethical
community. However, a liberal
cosmopolitanism risks embarking on a failing project if it seeks to promote
virtue without attending to the role that the belief in divine mercy plays in
counteracting the moral despair that can come with recognition of the reality
of radical evil. In this respect, the
strength of the religious reading is its awareness of the rational and
psychological importance of the doctrine of divine mercy in cultivating virtue
in human beings. However useful this
doctrine is, however, it is useful for a cosmopolitan
ethical community only if it can be communicated in a way that can be
universally accepted.
Here, however, Kant’s account of
ethical community in the Religion can
help provide support for a nuanced version of the religious reading. Although Kant appeals to Christian Scriptures
more than to any other source in his Religion,
he consistently interprets those
Scriptures “within the boundaries of mere reason.” Given Kant’s recognition of the importance of
the doctrine of divine mercy, this text can be read as a first attempt at
articulating that doctrine in ways that are not specifically Christian. Even the appeals to Scripture can be read not
as historically rooted justifications of his claims but as models for how
revelation should be reinterpreted to make it fit rational religion.[31] Thus Kant’s accounts of radical evil,
providence, and divine mercy provide universally acceptable versions of deeply
religious claims. He gives what would
otherwise seem to be historical doctrines of faith a cosmopolitan
interpretation, and thereby helps, if only in a small way, to promote that
ethical cosmopolitanism which will bring about a universal community of virtue,
a “kingdom of God on earth.”[32]
[1] Because this ideal is impractical,
Kant allows for a different structure of cosmopolitan right, a “league that averts war, endures, and
always expands” (8:357). As Kant explains,
This league does not look to
acquiring any power of a state but only to preserving and securing the freedom
of a state itself and of other states in league with it, but without there
being any need for them to subject themselves to public laws and coercion under
them . . .. This could provide a focal
point of federative union for other states, to attach themselves to it and so
to secure a condition of freedom of states conformably with the idea of the
right of nations; and by further alliances of this kind, it would gradually
extend further and further. (8:356)
Despite
the concession to practicality that requires a “league” or “federation” of states
rather than a single overarching state, Kant’s general point is constant. Individuals in a state of nature must give up
their lawless freedom to enter into a civil condition (a state), and nations
must give up lawless freedom vis a vis one
another to enter a cosmopolitan whole.
[2]
As Kant explains in Towards
Perpetual Peace,
reason, from the throne of the highest
morally legislative power . . . makes a condition of peace, which cannot be
instituted or assured without a pact of nations among themselves, a direct
duty, so there must be a league of a special kind, . . . a pacific league (foedus pacificum). (8:356)
[3] Devils, as Kant understands them, are
hopelessly committed to evil. They could
not benefit from ethical communities, the purpose of which is to foster one’s
commitment to good, nor could they form ethical communities, which depend on
people ingenuously seeking to promote goodness in themselves and others.
[4] Calling this second reading a
“religious” reading is potentially misleading, since a liberal interpretation
of Kant can be just as religious as a religious one. One could adhere to a liberal version of
Kantian ethical cosmopolitanism while still being quite religious personally,
and even allowing for the possibility of religious belief within particular
ethical communities. One simply denies
that any religious beliefs (including one’s own) are necessary for ethical cosmopolitanism. In that sense, liberal cosmopolitanism need
not be secular – i.e. nonreligious – cosmopolitanism. It is also important to point out that one
could hold what I am calling a religious view of ethical cosmopolitanism while remaining a liberal about political cosmopolitanism. That is, one could see religious belief as
essential to the promotion of an ethical
community but not essential to the establishment of a stable political order.
[5]
This universal sinfulness is not the same as “original sin” as
traditionally understood within Christianity.
Although the two doctrines are connected within Christianity, Kant is careful
to distinguish his claim that human beings are radically evil, and even evil
“by nature,” from any doctrine that would ascribe this evil to the choice of
another person. For more, see Quinn
1984.
[6] Paul himself develops this doctrine in
the light of earlier Jewish sources.
This passage in particular is taken from the Psalms (cf. Psalm 14:2-3). The doctrine becomes a central doctrine
within the Christian tradition. For some
influential examples, see Augustine, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica I-II QQ 74-89, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion Books II and III, and Martin
Luther’s The Bondage of the Will.
[7]
Kant says, for instance,
If [a person] took
[incentives of his sensuous nature] into his maxim as of themselves
sufficient for the determination of his power of choice, without minding
the moral law . . ., he would then become morally evil. (6:36)
Throughout this discussion, it is
important to remember that for Kant self-love, or “incentives of his sensuous
nature,” can include motives that are normally considered altruistic. The point is simply that one does what is in
one’s sensuous interests, either in that it immediately satisfies some desire
that one happens to have or that it is conducive to the satisfaction of desires
at some later date. Thus someone who
acts from a good-hearted desire to see others flourish is acting from
“self-love” in this Kantian sense.
[8]
This is a doctrine that Kant defends with reference to his moral
philosophy. As Kant explains, “a human
being can [not] be morally good in some parts, and at the same time evil in
others. For if he is good in one part,
he has incorporated the moral law into his maxim. And were he, therefore, to be evil in some
other part, since the moral law of compliance with duty is in general a single
one and universal, the maxim relating to it would be universal and yet
particular at the same time, which is contradictory” (6:25). The argument here starts with Kant’s account
of the moral law, as “single and universal.”
The moral law precisely commands that we will in such a way that we do
not make our particular circumstances determinative for whether an action is
right or not. But if we will differently
at different times or in different contexts, this shows that we have never really acted on a categorical
imperative that commands that particular details not determine our
actions. We have acted rightly
sometimes, but even then, our underlying maxim allowed for deviation, as is
evident by actual deviation in a
different context.
This rigorist doctrine thus fits
well with Kant’s overall moral philosophy, but it is also an important example
of religion within the boundaries of
mere reason. The book of James in the
Christian New Testament insists that “whoever keeps the whole law and yet
stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (James 2:10). Kant here provides a philosophical argument
to support a fundamentally Christian doctrine of rigorism, and Robert Adams
connects this with “one of the points at which his thought about good
and evil in human nature is deeply attuned to the dynamics of the Lutheran piety in which he was
reared.” (Adams 1998: xv).
[9]
For an extended defense of the claim that human evil involves the
cultivation of a propensity to evil, see Frierson 2003: 108-13.
[10] For more detail on this, see
Anderson-Gold 2001, Frierson 2003, and Wood 1991 and 1999.
[11] For Kant, “passions” (Leidenschaften) do not exhaust the range
of what we would today call “emotions,” and Kant does not think that emotions
in general are threats to self-mastery.
For more on the relationship between passions and emotions more
generally, cf. Sorenson 2002 and Borges 2004.
[12]
John Hare nicely summarizes the challenge:
If we want to keep morality as demanding as Kant says it
is, and if we want to concede what Kant says about our natural
propensity not to live by it, and if we want at the same time to reject
these traditional Christian doctrines [of grace], then we will have to find
some substitute for them. (Hare 1996:
37)
Hare does not include (1) in this description, although
denying (1) is a way to avoid Christian doctrines or their substitutes. One can simply admit the rigor of morality
and our propensity not to live by it, but claim that we have freely fallen
short and now are morally evil without any further hope of reform. This would be an option, but it is not one
that Kant is willing to accept. For
another description of the problem that closely follows the discussion in this
paper, cf. Frierson 2003.
[14]
In this respect, Kant’s treatment of ethical cosmopolitanism is quite
different than his treatment of political cosmopolitanism. In the political case, Kant claims that
nature can make use of our unsocial sociability to bring about a just political
order. Because political cosmopolitanism
deals only with actions and not with motives, we can be led to it by
considerations that are not specifically moral.
But in the case of ethical cosmopolitanism, the nature of the change is
more deeply ethical, and thus this ethical community cannot be coerced (6:96)
but can only come about through genuine effort towards moral reform.
[15]
See too 6:45, 6:61, and 7:328, where Kant makes clearer the connection
between our duty to morally improve and our need for divine grace. To understand the specific roles that grace
plays, it is important to remember the two very different problems posed by
radical evil (see footnote 13). First,
the stain of radical evil cannot be removed regardless of the extent to which
one improves in the future since one has done wrong in the past. Second, radical evil seems to undermine the
possibility of transformation by deliberately hindering one’s own moral
development, promoting a “propensity to evil.”
Kant addresses the first problem with a conception of atoning grace,
whereby one is justified before God, “after the fact,” so to speak. The second problem is addressed by a
conception of sanctifying grace according to which God actually
facilitates moral transformation. For
more on these different senses of grace, see Adams 1998, Frierson 2003:114-22,
Mariña 1997, Michaelson 1990, and Quinn 1986, 1984, and 1990. Kant distinguishes them throughout the Religion
(see e.g. 6: 143) and in the Conflict of the Faculties (see 7: 43-44).
[16]
For passages that more clearly connect this providence with divine mercy
in particular, cf. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 6:44;
and The Conflict of the Faculties, 7:43-4.
[17]
Similarly, in the Conflict of the Faculties, Kant repeats this
point:
If worst comes to worst
reason is entitled [befugt] to adopt on faith a supernatural supplement
to fill what is lacking for his justification (though [reason is] not to
specify in what this consists) . . ..
We need not be able to understand and state exactly what the means of this
replenishment is (for in the final analysis this is transcendent and, despite
all that God Himself might tell us about it, inconceivable to us); even
to lay claim to this knowledge would, in fact, be presumptuous. (7:43-44, my emphasis)
Like the Conflict of the Faculties,
the lectures on religion both before and after the Religion emphasize
the inscrutability of atoning grace and give little to no further details. The Religion was published in parts
during 1792-93. The Conflict of the
Faculties was written, at least in part, by December of 1793 (see letter to
Kiesewetter, Ak. 11: 456), but it was not published until 1798. In the Religion,
by contrast, although Kant does point out that grace is ultimately inscrutable,
he offers some details about the way in which atoning grace works. See Quinn 1986 for a discussion of these
details.
[18]
There are numerous problems with Kant’s account of divine mercy that I
do not discuss in this paper. For the
purposes of this paper, I assume that invoking divine mercy solves the first
problem. My primary interest here is on
the second problem. I discuss some of
the problems with mercy as a resolution to the first problem in Frierson 2003: 114-22. See too Adams 1998, Mariña 1997, Michaelson
1990, and Quinn 1986.
[19] The full context of the passage quoted
here shows that particularly clearly:
The only faith that can found a universal
church is pure religious faith, for it is a plain rational faith which can be convincingly communicated to
everyone, whereas a historical faith, merely based on facts [or on
revelation], can extend its influence no further than the tidings relevant to a
judgment on its credibility can reach (6:103).
At
the same time, however, Kant does not require that all religion be freed from
these historical details immediately. “Due to a peculiar weakness of human
nature, pure faith can never be relied on as much as it deserves, that is,
enough to found a Church on it alone” (6:103) and thus “because of the natural
need of all human beings to demand for even the highest concepts and grounds of
reason something that the senses can hold
on to . . . some historical ecclesiastical faith or other, usually already
at hand, must be used” (6:109).
Nonetheless, the goal of cosmopolitan ethical community is to increasingly
purge faiths of their impure elements, or at least to marginalize those
contingent features as merely vehicles for universal religion.
Robert Adams (Adams 1998: xxxi) rightly
leaves “to the reader” the issue of “whether Kant believes that an ethical
community that would dispense with all commitment to historically conditioned
doctrines and practices is a real historical possibility or . . . an ideal to
be approximated.” For my purposes, it is
unnecessary to resolve this issue, since on either reading, it is the ideal
that should govern the pursuit of cosmopolitan ethics (that is what it means,
after all, for it to be an “ideal to be approximated”).
[20] Romans 3:23-4. Although Kant does not explicitly quote this
passage in the relevant context, the doctrine of divine mercy expressed in it
underlies his whole account.
[21] Kant even interprets this son of God to
be one’s own self, in a sense. For
details, cf. Quinn 1986.
[22] Kant is not, of course, primarily
interested in outlining membership requirements for being a part of ethical
community. Anyone sincerely committed to
the promotion of virtue can be a part of such community, and even those not
seriously committed can be a part in the sense that an ethical community should
welcome them as a way of helping cultivate their commitment to virtue. Nonetheless, the question here is whether
Kant thinks that one truly can be sincerely committed to promoting virtue
without certain religious beliefs, that is, whether these beliefs should be
made part of the program by which ethical communities seek to promote
virtue. I thank an anonymous reviewer
for Faith and Philosophy for forcing
me to clarify this point.
[23] The fact that Kant says “possibility or
actuality” here could mean that the actuality of the objects is no less
contested than their possibility, or it could mean (as Wood may read it) that
not contesting the possibility of the objects might be sufficient for practical
life, even without any commitment to their actuality, but that a belief in
their actuality is permitted as well.
[24]
These passages and others have led Robert Adams to claim that “There is
no place in the Kantian scheme of things for prevenient grace – that is, for divine assistance that precedes our
first turning toward the good” (Adams 1998: xxi). For views that are more open to the
possibility of prevenient grace, see Mariña 1997 and Frierson 2003.
[25]
Immediately after this passage, Kant adds, “we are not thereby denying
that . . . there might yet be something in the mysteries of the supreme wisdom
which only God can do” (6:171). Thus
Kant’s worry here is not about belief in divine mercy altogether, but only a
concern about the practical effects that mistaken beliefs about divine
mercy might have. Cf. 6:117-8.
[26] As Kant insists in his discussion of the
postulates of practical reason, this “moral necessity to assume the existence
of God” or of divine mercy should not be confused with a “duty to assume the
existence of anything” (5:125). Working
out the nature of the requirement to believe in divine mercy would involve
distinguishing between a strict “duty to believe” and a requirement that is
both rationally and psychologically connected to one’s duties. Fully working out this distinction is beyond the
scope of the current paper, for which I need only the concept of a “moral
necessity” to believe, rather than a duty in a strict sense.
[27] Kant describes this conflict clearly at
6:117, in the second prong of his “antinomy” of divine mercy.
[28]
In Wood 1992: 403, Allen Wood makes a similar comparison, though to a
different purpose.
[29] The nature of this rational necessity
can be spelled out in more detail through further analogy with the postulates
of practical reason. Kant’s discussion
of the sort of assent that is warranted here is provided in the Critique of
Practical Reason (5:110-48). I will
not here arbitrate between the different ways of interpreting his claims there,
although this religious interpretation of Kant’s cosmopolitanism depends at
least upon not reading this assent as merely
a matter of acting “as if” these claims are true.
[30] Even in the Critique of Practical
Reason, some aspects of Kant’s discussion (e.g. 5:143) are more
psychological. For the purpose of this
paper, I merely want to highlight this psychological aspect of the postulates. It is not my intention to make any claim
about shifts between the second and third Critiques.
[31] Kant explicitly discusses the proper way
to interpret Scripture in both Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and The Conflict of the Faculties. His own use of Scripture could be helpfully
studied as a model of the general method he lays out in those discussions.
[32] I
would like to thank the organizers of the Conference on “200 Years after Kant”
(November 2004) and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for inviting
me to participate in this conference and for making it possible for me to visit