Contested Kant: Disputing Kant’s Impact on Theism

Immanuel Kant’s Kritik der Reinen Vernunft affected both philosophical thought directly, and more general cultural trends indirectly: about this there is no doubt. But the character of this effect has been debated.

Kant and his writings have been seen variously as champions of theism and as destroyers of faith. Was the net impact of his texts to solidify belief in God as a solidly rational viewpoint, or to undermine any rational foundation for theism?

Norbert Hinske documents both hypotheses. Hinske identifies Moses Mendelssohn as an originator of the view that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason poses a threat to theism:

Für Mendelssohn, der aufgrund seiner Krankheit Kants Werk freilich nur vom Hörensagen kennt - „aus unzulänglichen Berichten meiner Freunde oder aus gelehrten Anzeigen, die selten viel belehrender sind“ -, ist die Kritik also ein Werk, das alle „vernünfitgie Erkenntniß Gottes“ zu zerstören droht.

Mendelssohn’s view was amplified and transmitted through the writings of Ludwig Ernst Borowski:

Mendelssohns Rede vom „alles zermalmenden Kant“ hat Karriere gemacht. Schon Borowski erwähnt sie 1804 in seiner immer wieder nachgedruckten Kantbiographie. Zum Substantiv verschärft, ist das Wort vom Alleszermalmer dann zu einer der geläfigsten Charakterisierungen Kants avanciert.

This view of Kant seeped from the world of academic philosophy to a broader audience through, e.g., the writings of Heinrich Heine, who echoed the words of Mendelssohn and Borowski, and saw Kant as a destroyer of faith and hope.

On the other hand, Hinske describes the early Kantians at the University of Jena, who saw Kant as the defender of theism. In the Kritik, Kant finds arguments for and against the existence of God to be futile, because reason is based on, or arises from, the forms of perception. God is not a perception, i.e., not a phenomenon, but rather a thing-in-itself: a Ding-an-sich. As a noumenon, God is not subject to the type of reasoning which is based on the forms of phenomena.

The early Kantians at Jena, philosophers and theologians, saw Kant as constructing a defense of theism against any allegedly rational arguments for atheism. If one accepts Kant as he expresses himself in the first Kritik and other writings, then one cannot countenance arguments against the existence of God.

Two centuries later, Kant remains a mixed picture. Perhaps the reason for conflicting readings of the Kritik is that, on the one hand, Kant removes the possibility of rational argumentation from both sides: he will accept no line of reasoning which hopes to establish either atheism or theism. He places the existence of God as a question which is beyond pure reason. It is such points in Kantian thought which later give a starting point to Schopenhauer and postmodernism in the sense of post-rationalism.

On the other hand, Kant famously points to the existence of God as a necessary hypothesis in the second Kritik. But Kant finds his way to God in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft in a manner that disappoints both theists and atheists. The atheists are unhappy that Kant has pointed to the necessity of God’s existence, but the theists are also unhappy, because Kant doesn’t leave room to prove that God has the robust collection of metaphysical characteristics of traditional theism.

Kant’s Squabbling Children: Conflicting Thinkers Base Themselves on the Same Texts

Any philosopher — which is to say, any philosophical text — if it is much read at all, will find itself as the real or alleged foundation for conflicting schools of thought. Radical empiricists and Scholastic Thomists both claim Aristotle as their heritage. Triumphant nationalist imperialists and Marxist-Leninists both claim Hegel as their father.

This is certain true of Immanuel Kant, as Norbert Hinske writes:

Selten ist ein Buch so gegensätzlich aufgenommen und verstanden worden wie Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Diese Gegensätze lassen sich bis in die ersten Jahre nach Erscheinen des Werks zurückverfolgen.

Not only do competing philosophical schools claim Kant as their foundations, but separately, there are competing interpretations of Kant — interpretations which are incompatible with each other. Hinske cites how Moses Mendelssohn understood Kant to be one whose influence was primarily destructive: Kant’s analysis was, for Mendelssohn, a skepticism which dismantled nearly everything.

Will man auch nur die äußersten Pole jener schwierigen Rezeptionsgeschichte markieren, so kann man auf der einen Seite Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin nennen. Gleich im „Vorbericht” seiner Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes spricht er 1785 von dem „alles zermalmenden Kant”, und er fügt ein paar Seiten später hinzu, er hoffe nur, daß dieser „mit demselben Geiste wieder aufbauen wird, mit dem er niedergerissen hat”.

Mendelssohn was primarily concerned that Kant’s texts would promote atheism. This would have surprised Kant, who considered himself a theist. But Mendelssohn was not alone in considering Kant as dangerous to faith.

Yet the opposing view — that Kant’s writings were edifying to faith, and supported not only theism, but a robust theism — was embraced by a group of theologians, who saw Kant as a bulwark against materialism. These enthusiastic admirers of Kant were grouped largely in the university in Jena.

They reasoned: if Kant, as they read him, showed that pure reason alone could not demonstrate the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, then it was also true that he showed that reason could not demonstrate the opposite. The early Kantians in Jena saw Kant as removing rational argumentation from the arsenal of the atheists. Kantianly, one could not demonstrate that God doesn’t exist, and one could not demonstrate that there is no immortal soul.

The theologians in Jena argued that, if Kant’s pure reason was undecided on these questions, then practical reason would open the door for a Moraltheologie, in which God would appear as necessary.

It is clear that even during Kant’s lifetime — both Moses Mendelssohn and the early Kantians in Jena were active in the 1780s — Kant was both seen as a dangerous skeptic whose texts fostered atheism and seen as formulating a philosophy which removed reason and rational argumentation from the atheist’s arsenal.