Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone by Immanuel Kant

Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone Reviews

• 
  Luís

  Immanuel Kant seeks to carry out this work's enormous difficulty and merit. It is about trying to place religious thought and the feeling of religiosity within the scope of human rationality. Religion within the limits of Simple Reason is a work that aims to unveil the rational mechanisms that engender the perception of divinity, discarding, however, the direct interventions of God and the hypotheses linked to divine enlightenment by the work of the Divine Holy Spirit, by Dues or by his Angels and Saints. The author, in his investigations, assumes that the duality of existence represents good and evil. Fundamentally affects the individual, and only through inner clarification man can understand his role in the face of the universal struggle between good and evil, which is in the world but is also present within it. Throughout his book, he demonstrates that in all monotheistic religions, the dual principle exists. Yet, when compared, all these religions reveal common characteristics, suggesting ways of harmonizing man with nature and God.
  In short, what Kant intends in this work is to demonstrate that the experience of religiosity and contemplative ecstasy is also possible through the path of rational enlightenment and philosophical speculation, focused on the study of sacred works, especially concerning monotheistic religions and, even closer, to Christian faiths. To this end, it indicates ways of seeking divinity and "enlightenment" based on logical reasoning.
• 
  Erik Graff

  I read this after the Prolegomena but before the three Critiques. It is probably best read after reading at least the first two Critiques.
  
  Kant was of pietist parentage and took it seriously enough not to attend public services in keeping with the injunction to pray in one's closet. Well, come on, this is Kant we're considering here! Jesus' injunction isn't the reason Kant didn't go to church, Kant's agreement with the reason Jesus gave such advice is the reason--and such is the nature of this book.
  
  If you are not a Christian, but have familiarity with the scriptures, then Kant may make you reconsider.
  
  Rather than go into a lecture on the subject of Kant's ethical religion, see my article on the subject posted herein.
• 
  Rowland Pasaribu

  Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Religion, hereafter) is a passionate statement of Kant's mature philosophy of religion. As the title suggests, Kant believes that religious experience is best understood through rationalism, an important philosophical movement in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries that argues we know some things intuitively, not through experience, and that we can determine certain absolute truths by relying on this intuitive knowledge.
  
  In Religion, Kant explores the legitimacy of religious experience. He argues that organized religion often gets in the way of genuine religious experience, thereby threatening the moral development of humanity. This argument spans four sections.
  
  In Part One, Kant discusses whether human nature is inherently evil or inherently good. He thinks we have a predisposition to engage in good behavior, which comes in three instinctual urges: propagating the species, fostering meaningful, stable relationships with others, and respecting the moral law. Kant thinks that in addition to our inclination to be good, we have a simultaneous propensity for evil or immoral behavior. Kant suggests that we will see the truth of his thesis if we examine the evil abroad in the world around us. The state of current political and social life will convince skeptics that people are in need of moral development.
  
  In Part Two, Kant argues that it is possible for us to become morally good by following the example of Jesus Christ, who resisted enticing temptations, and by instituting a wholehearted change in behavior.
  
  In Part Three, Kant says it may be possible to create a society that fosters moral behavior. Such a society would emulate the ideal "church invisible," an association of individuals committed to living morally upright lives. Kant says that rituals and professions of faith are not essential for the establishment of a morally sound religious community. We can know our duty to observe the moral law without the aid of miracles or common religious practices.
  
  In Part Four, Kant continues to criticize certain aspects of organized religion. He says that much of existing organized religion does not help people improve their moral standing. Incantations, professions of faith, and even consistent participation in religious services cannot transform the morally corrupt into the morally upright.
  
  ***
  
  Philosophers since Kant have quarreled with two main problems that arise in this section. First, one might wonder why maxims—the rules that human beings formulate internally when they make choices—have to be either good or bad, rather than both at the same time. Second, one might question Kant's assertion that any action not performed wholly from a sense of duty is evil.
  
  Kant says that maxims cannot encompass both good and bad desires. He believes that every desire that we face, every impulse that competes for our ratification, falls into one of two categories: run-of-the-mill, everyday desires, or the desire to fulfill your duty and do what the moral law requires. He says we can only be good if we do what duty calls for, and when we act on everyday desires and impulses, as we often do, we are acting immorally.
  
  Kant excludes the possibility that maxims can include more than one desire or impulse. Professional philosophers have struggled with this issue, and most of them either admit Kant's belief that maxims are only motivated by one desire, or insist that maxims can, strictly speaking, include more than one desire or inclination. The latter theory appears to be more consistent with Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. For instance, Kant says in 6:24 that free action not based on the moral law must be based upon an everyday desire, and that "it follows that his disposition as regards the moral law is never indifferent (never neither good nor bad)." This quotation shows Kant's idea that an everyday desire and duty can be unified in one maxim, although the resulting behavior must be considered evil, not good.
  
  This brings us to the second problem: why do maxims forged from a combination of duty and everyday desire have to be considered evil? Again, philosophers have given two responses. Some have said that actions done from both duty and desire are not necessarily evil, but rather lack (in Kantian terminology) full moral worth. This response assumes that passages where Kant describes as evil actions motivated by duty and desire are merely exaggerations. Yet some philosophers have said that Kant did mean to call such behavior evil.
  
  Kant might mean to stress that our predisposition to evil is the real problem, not the moral worth of the actions themselves. In 6:30, Kant says that humans have an overwhelming tendency to engage in immoral behavior, and "the mind's attitude is thereby corrupted at its root, and hence the human being is designated as evil".
• 
  Wafaa Farouk

  لا يمكن قراءة الدين في حدود مجرد العقل دون الألمام بفلسفة كانط الأخلاقية
  و التي يرى فيها أن قوانين الأخلاق لا تنبع إلا من العقل ذاته مباشرة
  و لذلك فإن الأخلاق ليست بحاجة إلي الدين و حتى أن أفترض القانون الأخلاقي وجود كائن أسمى فهذا الفرض ليس هو الأساس في ظهور الأخلاق ..بل العقل
  و هدف كانط الأساسي في كتابه هو الخروج من التدين الظاهري العقائدي إلي التدين العقلي و تحرير الأنسان من الدين التاريخي إلي دين إنساني كوني صالح لكل الشعوب
  
  مقتطفات من الكتاب
  " إنّ الوهم والتعصب الديني هو الموت الأخلاقي للعقل، وبدون العقل لا يكون هناك دين ممكن"
  
  
  يدور كلّ من العقل والدين حول “مركز واحد”، وعلى الفيلسوف أن يكشف النقاب عنه. لكنّ ذلك لا يتسنّى إلاّ لمن قبل بفرضية وجود “دين عقلي محض” واعتباره هو “الدّين الأصيل”، من أجل أنّه هو “دين العقل المحض"
  
  لا يمكن لأيّ شيء مقدّس أن يكون أهلا لأن يُعبد إلاّ “من حيث أنّ الاحترام الذي يتعلق به ينبغي أن يكون حرّا
  
  على الدولة أن تترك المواطن حرّا تماما في أن يدخل أو لا يدخل في اتحاد أخلاقي مع غيره.
  
  "ينبغي التّمييز بين مشرّع الجماعة الحقوقيّة ومشرّع الجماعة الأخلاقيّة: في السياسة يكون الجمهور هو ذاته واضع الدساتير؛ أمّا في الجماعة الأخلاقيّة فإنّ الشّعب لا يحق له أن يضع المبادئ الأخلاقية"
  
  
  "وحين تكون القوانين الحقوقيّة شرعيّة فإنّ مراعاتها هو “أمر إلهي”. ولذلك حين تتمّ معارضة قانون مدني غير مخالف للأخلاق بقانون آخر، “مأخوذ بوصفه إلهيا”، فإنّ علينا أن نحكم على هذا القانون الأخير بوصفه قانونا “منحولا"
  
  
  
• 
  Phil

  It is not uncommon for people to complain that Kant’s philosophy is overly intellectual or abstract, that it is irrelevant to everyday human concerns, or (that crime of all crimes!) that his writing is dry and boring. Even if, par charité chrétienne, we entertained the highly dubious demand that philosophy be concrete, entertaining, and immediately relevant to everyday life—demands no one could plausibly level against the natural or social sciences—these complaints would not testify to the abstractness, irrelevance, and dryness of Kant’s work, but only to a lack of familiarity or understanding on the part of the complainers. Certainly, none of them have read any of Kant’s writings on religion—or if they have, they have not understood it. From his first sketch of a moral argument for belief in God in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) to his final account of the relationship between historical and rational faith in the Conflict of the Faculties (1798), Kant’s work on religion finds addressing him some of the most profound question of human existence: the need for significance, the limits of understanding, and the struggle to reconcile our animal and rational natures.
  
  Historically speaking, Kant’s philosophy of religion has been neglected by professional philosophers and by scholars alike as compared to the epistemology elaborated in his first Critique and the moral theory articulated in his second. This is especially true of Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), which has been dismissed as incompatible with the rest of his critical philosophy and lambasted as a concession to the religious sensibilities of his time virtually since the moment of its publication. Goethe famously wrote to Herder in 1793 that, by introducing “the blot of radical evil” into his philosophy in Religion, Kant had “slobbered” on his “philosopher’s cloak” so that “even Christians would be enticed to kiss its hem.’’ About forty years later, Heinrich Heine dismissed Kant’s entire philosophy of religion as an attempt to appease his manservant Lampe, who was distressed by the apparently anti-theistic thrust of the Critique of Pure Reason. Only in the last few decades have English-language commentators finally begun paying the book the attention that it deserves.
  
  As evidenced by its division into four “pieces,” Religion was originally devised as a series of articles. It was hastily given the form of a book-length treatise after a run-in with the Prussian authorities. The first piece, “On the Radical Evil in Human Nature,” amounts to a kind of secularization of the Christian doctrine of original sin. Against the prevailing optimism of Enlightenment thought, Kant insists that human beings are, by nature, evil. Although we have dispositions to be good, we are at the same time afflicted by a propensity to evil that inclines us to subordinate the moral law to other incentives in the construction of our maxims. Yet at the same time, we have—as per the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)—an absolute duty to subordinate all incentives to the moral law. Only by doing so are we entitled to hope for happiness in a future life. The existentially pressing question for Kant is therefore how human beings can make themselves morally worthy—or as he puts it here, how they can make themselves “well-pleasing to God”—thereby making themselves worthy of happiness.
  
  The second piece, “On the Struggle of the Good With the Evil Principle,” attempts to resolve the conflict between inclination and duty that practically every human being has experienced at one time or another. The question for him is not merely how human beings can come to change their outward behaviour, but how they can undergo a change of heart, overcoming their propensity to evil and becoming “new men.” Kant’s answer is nebulous and has been the subject of much scholarly debate. What is certain is that, in his view, practical reason necessarily gives rise to the ideal of a morally perfect disposition, which it represents as an “archetype of humanity” contained in God from all time, and which it can make intuitively available only in the Christ-like figure of a person who, suffering through the worst trials, nonetheless vanquishes the temptation of the evil principle and performs his moral duty. According to Kant, living up to the moral demand requires imperfect beings like us to have practical faith in the availability of this perfect disposition as a condition of possibility of undergoing the change of heart required to become well-pleasing to God.
  
  In the third piece, “The Victory of the Good Principle and the Founding of a Kingdom of God on Earth” Kant turns his attention from the individual to the social. He maintains that, even after a change of heart, the moral convert is always in danger of falling under the domination of the evil principle through the corrupting influence of others. It follows that moral converts also have a duty to extricate themselves from this precarious situation. According to Kant, they can achieve this only by restructuring their social relations in the form of what he calls an “ethical community”—that is, a voluntary organization governed by moral laws that are at the same time regarded as the commands of a supreme legislator, i.e., as the commands of God. In other words, the ethical community necessarily takes the form of a church. Only by restructuring our social relations in this way can we hope to overcome the evil propensity in human nature and usher in the Kingdom of God on earth.
  
  The fourth and final piece, “On Service and Pseudoservice Under the Dominion of the Good Principle,” elaborates the relationship between historical religious traditions and the pure rational religion in this ushering in of the Kingdom of God. On Kant’s account, the administrators of the visible church—of historical religious traditions—also serve the invisible church—the rational religion elaborated in his three Critiques and Religion—only when they tailor their teachings to the dictates of pure practical reason. Thus, the exegesis of sacred texts must take its guidance from the moral law, such that the stories and prescriptions found in scripture are never interpreted as conflicting with the dictates of morality. The point, which is frequently misunderstood, is not that religious authorities ought to modify the meaning of certain passages according to external standards. Rather, it is that human reason is able to discover moral truths and that moral truths, as moral, cannot possibly contradict the will of God. Thus, passages that appear to conflict with this will must be reframed, as they have necessarily been improperly interpreted.
  
  So where does this leave us? Well, on the one hand, there can be no doubt that Religion is very much a product of its time, and much more so than most of Kant’s other critical writings. Its account of “pure rational religion” is notoriously Christian-centric, not to mention outrageously prejudiced against judaism, Islam, and Hinduism (looking at you, Ak. 6:184). The moral argument for belief in God that it presupposes is also supremely unconvincing. On the other hand, it shows Kant answering profound moral and social questions with startling insight and ingenuity. The first point of note in this regard is his account of the moral community, which anticipates certain insights of the communitarian critique of ethical formalism from Hegel onward. Contrary to the impression one might get from reading only the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant recognizes that human beings are social and emotional creatures. The key insight of his concept of the ethical community is that human moral striving requires the support of the concrete relations, institutions, and practices, as well as of the inspiring images and ideals, furnished by an ethical form of life. This point would later be developed by 19th and 20th century thinkers who were much more sensitive to its implications for cultural difference.
  
  The second point of note is the relationship Kant envisions between rational and historical faith. This constitutes one of the first attempts to outline what we would now call modernized religious faith—that is, a religious faith that has adapted itself to modern conditions, including notably the advance of the natural sciences and the development of secular political morality. The epistemic framework provided by Kant’s transcendental idealism leads him to “deny knowledge in order to make room for faith,” thus eliminating any possible conflict between religious conviction and scientific knowledge. Similarly, the universal morality captured in his categorical imperative sets rational limits to what commandments can follow from religious beliefs. This latter point is elaborated in the final piece of Religion, where Kant expresses the duty of different faiths to adapt themselves to one and the same set of universal moral strictures, thus anticipating crucial developments in the liberal political theory of the 20th century, which find their most notable expression in John Rawls’s concept of “reasonable” comprehensive doctrines. Although there can be no doubt that much of Kant’s philosophy of religion is of merely historical interest, this should suffice to remind us that there is something here that is still philosophically significant.
• 
  Leo

  Interesting work but I know too little about the subject to have a good opinion. But it was pretty readable.
• 
  Clif

  When I was a youngster, I had to attend church regularly. I went through the confirmation process to become an official member of the Methodist Church, but the entire experience never touched me either emotionally or intellectually. I understood that the underlying idea was to come together with others with the guiding principle to be kind to one another but the theology and the Bible appeared utterly archaic, unbelievable and with no application to modern life. Virgin birth? Raising the dead? Eternal life or eternal damnation? It was nothing more to me than a very elaborate fairy tale with an almost childish emphasis on threat and promise that said nothing at all about the real world. I came away from it with no inclination to follow any religion and genuine puzzlement at how any intelligent person could be religious, that is, having a faith with no evidence to support it.
  
  Little did I know that the 18th century had produced a man deeply concerned with religion being compatible with reason, understandably so at a time when reason was sweeping all before it in a new appreciation of the world that produced undeniable, provable laws of nature which religion over many centuries had been speaking of with no concrete understanding at all. For the lack of anything to compete with it, humanity accepted the tales of who and what we are that were told by unknown writers who texts were declared god-given. Immanuel Kant attempted to address my inability to place religion in a rational world view 200 years before I was born, and he makes an impressive case without ever bringing the supernatural into the picture. I was all ears.
  
  For Kant, undeniably a Christian and a Protestant, there is only a single religion, it is open to human beings by way of our innate ability to reason and it has as a foundation the duty of each individual to follow the moral law, as a free choice, with the goal of each one valuing all others and being valued by them. This religion is timeless (outside of history) and universal.
  
  That's it. No dogma, no theology, no clergy, no established church. Who could not be impressed? Quite a few, who are invested in any one of the plurality of what we commonly call religion, who do not appreciate the specifics of their particular version of what they hold to be truth being called irrelevant.
  
  This multitude of religions Kant calls faiths. A faith is local, historical and tied to specific events. As such, none of them have universal appeal and all require beliefs to be held about why the world came to be, Christianity being no exception.
  
  Kant says of a deity that even if it exists there is no way that human beings can have any idea of the nature of such a thing, let alone know what it wants. This makes revelation meaningless. Praise is pointless. Going through routines to show obedience such as doing good deeds or confessing or even going to church do not earn salvation. All of the elaborate liturgies, houses of worship and daily religious habits such as prayer are theater but for one thing, that they appeal to the common man for whom the abstract idea of duty to morality as the supreme good in itself cannot be grasped. Thus we have the many "ecclesiastical churches" as Kant terms them with their sacred stories and characters that at their best can only point one in the direction of the one universal church standing outside of time.
  
  This is heady stuff, but Kant's analysis of the Christian faith is marvelous. Calling it the sole faith dedicated to universal morality, Kant proceeds to dissect the story of Christ as a way of relating the religion of reason to the mind of man. It is in this discussion that it dawned on me why the preposterous stories of the Bible could make some kind of sense, whereas looking at them at face value, for me, did not.
  
  Kant writes that Christ being half human and half divine is a way of telling you and me that achieving a moral life is not beyond human capacity, we can make the attempt as well. The details of Jesus' life are not important, nor is he himself important as a figure in history. He may not have existed as he is described and that doesn't matter. It is only through the interpretation of the story that we gain anything of value and the same can be said of other religions that have their own important stories and persons. All alike point to the one universal timeless church of reason.
  
  Studying the Bible or any sacred text to guide morality is not productive. There is no one right reading of any part of the Bible, but any part of the Bible can be made to show moral value through interpretation. Attempting to see the Bible as a whole that must tie together without contradiction or even to be consistent as a prescription for behavior is impossible, as is the belief that it is the word of a god. Kant takes quotations from the Bible frequently to illustrate their meaning in support of the church of reason and his reasoning is quite powerful, but it is clear that a moral life is quite possible without reference to any religious text
  
  What he is driving at is that it all comes down to you and, even then, you cannot know if you have succeeded in always choosing the right path in life. You are not qualified to be the judge of the content of your heart (the root of your behavior). The best any person can do is to make the maxim of valuing all others as ends rather than means his/her duty to observe at all times. To be able to look back on past behavior can provide feedback that one is on the right path, but never complacency as the challenge does not end until one's life ends. Even at the end, one still cannot be the judge of oneself. Here, again, positing an all seeing god capable of knowing our heart is an aid in helping us to believe we have the chance of salvation as grace received by an imperfect being from one that is, as perfection itself, in a position to judge. This shows the practicality of the faiths mankind knows, while not saying they are true.
  
  Kant makes a very powerful case and in the process takes an extensive look at what has been called evil. From what I've written so far, you can guess that the idea of satan is practical as is the story of the Fall. If all the mythology works to make men behave better toward each other, then that is all to the good, though Kant doesn't hesitate to say the history of human civilization does not tell us this is so. Kant admits that from youth we see some people behaving very well and others quite badly as if each is predisposed to this or that behavior. He also admits that the concept of free will is a must for his thesis to hold together. He states that there may be a physical reason for every bit of our behavior but that until it is shown to be the case (and science since has steadily made more clear that it is) free will must be supposed.
  
  Thus one arrives at the great irony of this work. After showing that traditional religious mythology is not to be believed as true on the basis of reason, and then using reason to show that one can make a very strong case for religion based on reason alone, and even a practical case for mythological belief if it moves people toward good behavior, the entire reason-based structure stands on the faith that free will exists. At the time he wrote, free will was accepted just as the idea of a god was accepted, on faith, for there was nothing else to consider. I would argue that not believing in free will is far harder than not believing in a god. Who can find it easy to think that there is no "me" standing over the mind/body and directing daily behavior?
  
  Kant's was a marvelous intellect eager to address the most difficult problems of philosophy. I found Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone revealing and quite educational if not satisfying.
  
  I want to thank Jonathan Bennett and his website
  Early Modern Texts for translations from the German into readable prose, overcoming the hurdle of the often opaque writing for which Kant is known.
• 
  mohab samir

  إن الدين الطبيعى هو دين العقل المحض وهو دين أخلاقى فى أساسه قائم على قوانين حرية الإرادة البشرية وأهم ما يميزه انه دين باطنى قادر على أن يصل لعقل كل إنسان بنفسه او نقله من شخص لآخر بمجرد ان يكشف له عن خبايا عقله المحض الذى يتضمن القانون الأخلاقى بشكل طبيعى ولا يحتاج اإلى المعجزات أو الخوارق للإيمان به كما يكتفى هذا الدين الكونى الطبيعى بحسن النية الأخلاقية الباطنة المصاحبة للفعل على المستوى العملى والتجريبى حتى ننال الرضا الإلهى ولا يحتاج الى طقوس أو احتفالات أو عبادات لا تحمل فى ذاتها أى قيمة لذاتها وهى ضرب من تدين العبيد ولا تصلح كدين كونى فمن المستحيل أن يصل هكذا دين إلى كل عقول البشر بقناعة تامة .
• 
  Ali Reda

  Along the same lines of his Critique project, Kant talks about religion and the limits of reason. Kant says that in order to act freely, we must have some power to ratify or reject our desires. Maxims allow us to accept or reject a given desire, and hence allow us to act freely. Because a maxim is good, only duty inspires it, human nature can only be good (in accordance with duty) or evil (in accordance with everyday desires). In order to be morally responsible you must not only have an intention to do something, you must also have a maxim or principle that puts the final stamp of approval on your intentions. The moral law is part of what makes us rational creatures. But we certainly can demote the moral law, and the tendency to do this is what makes us essentially evil. He argues that when we make decisions, we often put our inclinations first, combine them with our sense of duty, or ignore duty altogether. In his eyes, each of these tendencies qualifies human beings as morally evil.
  
  That, through the moral law, man is called to a good course of life; that, through unquenchable respect for this law lying in him, he finds in himself justification for confidence in this good spirit and for hope that, however it may come about, he will be able to satisfy this spirit; finally, that, comparing the last-named expectation with the stern command of the law, he must continually test himself as though summoned to account before a judge – reason, heart, and conscience all teach this and urge its fulfilment.
  
  Here we then have a complete religion which can be proposed to all human beings comprehensibly and convincingly through their own reason
  
  Kant offers an illuminating metaphor of two concentric circles—the inner one representing the core of the one religion of pure moral reason and the outer one representing many revealed historical religions, all of which should include and build on that core. Existing religious traditions are important if they provide the opportunity for moral reflection.
  
  A religion, accordingly, can be natural, and at the same time revealed, when it is so constituted that men could and ought to have discovered it of themselves merely through the use of their reason, although they would not have come upon it so early, or over so wide an area, as is required. Hence a revelation thereof at a given time and in a given place might well be wise and very advantageous to the human race, in that, when once the religion thus introduced is here, and has been made known publicly, everyone can henceforth by himself and with his own reason convince himself of its truth. In this event the religion is objectively a natural religion, though subjectively one that has been revealed.
  
  Kant criticizes certain aspects of organized religion as a whole. He starts by denying the certainty of revelation and the the limitations time, place and language of this revelation.
  
  Pure religious faith alone can found a universal church; for only [such] rational faith can be believed in and shared by everyone, whereas an historical faith, grounded solely on facts, can extend its influence no further than tidings of it can reach, subject to circumstances of time and place and dependent upon the capacity [of men] to judge the credibility of such tidings.
  
  Every faith which, as an historical faith, bases itself upon books, needs for its security a learned public for whom it can be controlled, as it were, by writers who lived in those times, who are not suspected of a special agreement with the first disseminators of the faith, and with whom our present-day scholarship is connected by a continuous tradition. The pure faith of reason, in contrast, stands in need of no such documentary authentication, but proves itself.
  
  People demand divine revelation, and hence also an historical certification of its authority through the tracing back of its origin. Now human skill and wisdom cannot ascend so far as heaven in order itself to inspect the credentials validating the mission of the first Teacher. It must be content with evidence that can be elicited, apart from the content, as to the way in which such a faith has been introduced – that is, with human reports which must be searched out little by little from very ancient times, and from languages now dead, for evaluation as to their historical credibility.
  
  For how are the unlearned, who can read it only in translation, to be certain of its meaning? Hence the expositor, in addition to being familiar with the original tongue, must also be a master of extended historical knowledge and criticism, in order that from the conditions, customs, and opinions (the popular faith) of the times in question he may be able to derive the means wherewith to enlighten the understanding of the ecclesiastical commonwealth.
  
  Now even though the announcement of such an historical event, as well as the faith in rules of conduct based upon it, cannot be said to have been vouchsafed solely or primarily to the learned or the wise of the world, these latter are yet not excluded from it; consequently there arise so many doubts, in part touching its truth, and in part touching the sense in which its exposition is to be taken, that to adopt such a belief as this, subjected as it is to so many controversies (however sincerely intentioned), as the supreme condition of a universal faith alone leading to salvation, is the most absurd course of action that can be conceived of.
  
  He says that much of existing organized religion does not help people improve their moral standing. Professions of faith, and even consistent participation in religious services cannot transform the morally corrupt into the morally upright. Kant Also thinks that like all formally organized religions encourages "religious delusion." Those suffering from religious delusions think that simply believing in a religious doctrine makes them better in God's eyes. Kant thinks it deluded to believe that God is pleased when we profess faith in Jesus, for example. Kant says there are three kinds of religious delusions, all of which we should avoid. We should not believe in miracles, since we do not have direct, empirical evidence of miracles occurring today or in the days of old. Kant also speaks against religious mysteries, since their existence also cannot be proven through reason.He also denounces clericalism as promoting such misguided pseudo-service, which mistake participation in these practices for true moral conduct.
  
  Between a shaman of the Tunguses and the European prelate who rules over both church and state, or (if, instead of the heads and leaders, we only want to look at the faithful and their ways of representation) between the wholly sensuousp Wogulite, who in the morning lays the paw of a bear skin over his head with the short prayer, "Strike me not dead!" and the sublimated Puritan and Independent in Connecticut, there certainly is a tremendous distance in the style of faith, but not in the principle; for, as regards the latter, they all equally belong to one and the same class, namely of those who place their service of God in something (faith in certain statutory articles, or the observance of certain arbitrary practices) which cannot by itself constitute a better human being. Only those whose intention is to find this service solely in the disposition to good life-conduct distinguish themselves from those others by crossing over into an entirely different principle, one exalted far above the other, namely the principle whereby they profess themselves members of a (invisible) church which encompasses all right-thinking people within itself and alone, in virtue of its essential composition, can be the true church universal.
  
  We should not believe that religious rituals or professions of faith will make us more righteous in God's eyes. Kant claims that as long as we are earnest in trying to become morally upright, as long as we act in true devotion to duty, God will take care of the rest. Religious practices can be either good expressions of devotion, if they bind us together in moral community or bad expressions of mere pseudo-service, if designed to ingratiate us with God. Kant wants to clarify that good religious groups are those that value the moral improvement of their members over the observance of ritual and dogma.
  
  Whatever, over and above good life-conduct, man fancies that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is mere religious delusion.
  
  People are fooling themselves if they think they really understand God. Professing to know what God is and what he wants does absolutely nothing for our own moral improvement.
  
  But, if this very faith (in a divine Trinity) were to be regarded not just as the representation of a practical idea, but as a faith that ought to represent what God is in himself, it would be a mystery surpassing all human concepts, hence unsuited to a revelation humanly comprehensible, and could only be declared in this respect as mystery. Faith in it as an extension of theoretical cognition of the divine nature would only be the profession of a creed of ecclesiastical faith totally unintelligible to human beings or, if they think that they understand it, the profession of an anthropomorphic creed, and not the least would thereby be accomplished for moral improvement.
  
  Kant goes on to explain that all religious faiths involve something holy that people can comprehend, this holy quality is usually embodied in a moral ruler of the world, a deity who has the final word on all moral questions and concerns. Some faiths articulate the relationship between the moral ruler and humanity better than others. For Kant, true religions believe in a God who is as a morally holy lawgiver, a benevolent ruler, and a just judge and administrator of his laws. He speaks against a concept of God a World-Ruler who transforms this duty into a command to us, a figure who demands reverence to him which makes us act as slaves for him because this turns religion from morality through reason to idolatry.
  
  there is something which so exalts the soul, and so leads it to the very Deity, who is worthy of adoration only because of His holiness and as Legislator for virtue, that man, even when he is still far from allowing to this concept the power of influencing his maxims, is yet not unwillingly sustained by it because he feels himself to a certain extent ennobled by this idea already, even while the concept of a World-Ruler who transforms this duty into a command to us, still lies far from him. But to commence with this latter concept would incur the danger of dashing man’s courage (which goes to constitute the essence of virtue) and transforming godliness into a fawning slavish subjection to a despotically commanding might.
  
  In that which concerns the moral disposition everything depends upon the highest concept under which one subsumes one’s duties. When reverence for God is put first, with virtue therefore subordinated to it, this object [of reverence] becomes an idol, that is, He is thought of as a Being whom we may hope to please not through morally upright conduct on earth but through adoration and ingratiation; and religion is then idolatry. But godliness is not a surrogate for virtue, whereby we may dispense with the latter; rather is it virtue’s consummation, enabling us to be crowned with the hope of the ultimate achievement of all our good ends.
  
  Kant says to escape all those dogmas, interpretation is necessary to make sense of religious scriptures, and that existing religious practices and religious scriptures do not always interpret correctly. Kant says that clever people of considerable moral fortitude should be responsible for interpreting a given religious tradition. Individuals whose primary loyalty is to reason are in the best position to ensure that religious practices improve people's morals. Kant thinks that such interpreters are needed because some aspects of religious doctrine actually run contrary to moral principles. (Read Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling to see the opposing point of view).
  
  
  
  Kant reinterprets Christianity, He starts by the role of Jesus Christ, and humanity's proper relationship to Jesus, saying that the idea of Jesus Christ, stripped of particular religious beliefs surrounding him, is simply the idea of a perfect moral being. A morally perfect being must be capable of falling from grace but able to resist the fall. According to Kant, we can wash out evil by modeling ourselves on this perfect moral being. Jesus should be merely an example that can inspire us to engage in moral behavior. Then he moves to the idea of original sin. Kant rejects that because of Adam and Eve, all humans are born sinful. He thinks the biblical story of Adam and Eve should be understood allegorically, not literally. Kant says we fall from grace not because of Adam and Eve, but because of our own bad behavior. We are not guilty for the sins of Adam and Eve, but guilty for using our free will to choose immoral desires and thoughts. Finally he come to the idea of salvation through faith in Jesus, his main complaint is that it isn't enough to absolve human beings of their sins.
  
  There is absolutely no salvation for human beings except in the innermost adoption of genuine moral principles in their disposition
  
  From our human perspective, religion—both revealed and natural—should be regarded as "the recognition of all duties as divine commands".Kant makes a particularly provocative claim, that, ultimately, there is only one (true) religion, "the religion of morality", while there can be various "historical faiths" promoting it. From this perspective, Judaism, Islam, and the various denominations of Christianity are all legitimate faiths, to be located in Kant’s metaphorical outer circle, including the true religion of morality, his metaphorical inner circle. However, some faiths can be relatively more adequate expressions of the religion of moral reason than others.
  
  Hence to start off with this knowledge, and to let the historical faith which harmonizes with it follow, is not only an act of prudence; it is also our duty to make such knowledge the supreme condition under which alone we can hope to become participants in whatever salvation a religious faith may promise. So true is this that only as warranted by the interpretation which pure religious faith gives to the historical can we hold the latter to be universally binding or are we entitled to allow its validity (for it does contain universally valid teaching); meanwhile the moral believer is ever open to historical faith so far as he finds it furthering the vitality of his pure religious disposition. Only thus does historical faith possess a pure moral worth, because here it is free and not coerced through any threat (for then it can never be honest).
  
  Kant likes the fact that Christianity's message can be communicated to human beings. Furthermore, humans can evaluate Christianity's moral teachings without any special training. They do not need scholarly ability, special insight, or divine election to understand Christianity. Christianity is both a natural and a revealed religion, and Kant shows how the gospel of Matthew expresses Kantian ethics, with Jesus as its wise moral teacher. According to Kant, a comparison between Judaism and Christianity shows how revolutionary the Christian faith can be. In his view, Judaism has restricted its membership to an exclusive group of people, thereby thwarting any possibility of developing into a universal church whose laws would apply to all people. Also Judaism's core principles are more akin to public laws than to internal moral principles.
  
  Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.
  
  For Kant, faith is useless unless individuals devote themselves to their own moral improvement. He believes that the innate good in people will cause them to turn away from ecclesiastical faith and religious practices, and toward moral religion. He does not claim that people will convert to moral religion because it is simpler than traditional religions. In fact, moral religion is more demanding than ecclesiastical faith, for it requires every individual to take full responsibility for becoming a better person. In the end, if we do not discover this truth, we are responsible, for we did not search our own hearts long enough to uncover it.
  
  There exists meanwhile a practical knowledge which, while resting solely upon reason and requiring no historical doctrine, lies as close to every man, even the most simple, as though it were engraved upon his heart–a law, which we need but name to find ourselves at once in agreement with everyone else regarding its authority, and which carries with it in everyone’s consciousness unconditioned binding force, to wit, the law of morality. What is more, this knowledge either leads, alone and of itself, to belief in God, or at least determines the concept of Him as that of a moral Legislator; hence it guides us to a pure religious faith which not only can be comprehended by every man but also is in the highest degree worthy of respect.
• 
  Dionysius the Areopagite

  Another great surprise in my life, found on another evening examining the aisles of an ancient, indispensable library. When it comes down to the mind-breaking process of contemplating the ontology of religion, this text is a feast for those put off by the current religiosity of atheism. Don't tell me that nothing comes next. Don't tell me what comes next. Just drink wine with me atop a mountain and tell me what you've seen. And don't you dare ask for a donation; my donations are time, cigars, laughter, peace, and the other things, the holiest of all, next to the written word, which the good woman in my life knows all about. Have made a note to purchase the book. Shipment in. Too much damn work. Must get to the sea. Unto the Delaware River!
• 
  Rebecca

  Kant's work is indispensable for understanding aspects of the Enlightenment that ruptured the early Modern worldview. The book requires lots of time - his sentences are unbelievably long, but his program and logic are keys for understanding the post-modern condition.
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  Dan Glover

  This gets a 3-star (liked it) not because I agree with Kant's understanding of religion or with his overall philosophical project, but because it was so helpful to understand the thought historically downstream of him (and Hume, who impacted Kant) regarding religion and Protestant Christianity.
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  Alex Lee

  In his late age, Kant presents a final last word on religion, as seen from his phenomenonal system. It's kind of amazing that even though he was an old man when he wrote this, the church didn't try and kill him after he wrote it.
  
  Despite his many pleas that he isn't writing about scripture, that this is best left to the experts in church, and he only uses this as an example for philosophy, Kant ends up writing a very damning view indeed on how religion fits in with everything else he's already written about; ethics, subjectivity to name two subject areas.
  
  Kant basically proposes that reason itself is insufficient to account for religion. That God and ethics are beyond reason, although reason itself plays an important part in constituting the right path to religion. While he can't find any real natural state of man internally that is the root of good or evil, because man has free will, Kant does admittedly find that man can be evil if he chooses to be swayed by the opinions of others, to follow a sensuous path, to satisfy his own animal desires, or if he chooses to have dominion over others. In fact, Kant basically finds all forms of contingency to be evil; all ways of man to limit his focus to things in the here and now, the earthly pleasures, to be sure, but also in terms of religious rituals, in what he calls "historical faith"... that time tested ways of being faithful can be ways in which the very hierarchy of a religion can be antithetical to what ethics and morality is about.
  
  When Kant talks about the role of the state, he means that we need an overarching state (of Being) in order to unify us, so we can be good neighbors. This seems right and fair. This primarily second point of view on us, the small other, is a way in which we can get along with one another. And yet this is not enough. He introduces a 3rd point of view, that is, religion, because we need universal principles that can objectively tell us where the boundaries of our relationship with our neighbors lie. That is to say, it's not enough for people to negotiate the boundaries of their own social interaction, people need a third position, one that supercedes the second point of view (but does not limit it or replace it) in order to have a true ethics. This point of view is religion itself.
  
  What's interesting about this book is that Kant is speaking about something beyond the boundaries of what he can speak about. The limits of reason on religion is that reason itself can only service religion, it cannot define it. Instead, Kant uses this tool of reason to demonstrate (conclusively or not, up to you) how corrupt our faith can get, how "beside the point" everything can be. If God and religion are beyond us, and that's something that seems obvious, then we can only adhere to the strictest purest point of worship, to follow the guidance of religion for its own sake. He says this pretty clearly... and it may as well be from the Bhagavad Gita: 1) do your duty (with no thought of the fruits of labor) and 2) love everyone else as your self...
  
  With this, he lists false conclusions that corrupt these two principles. For instance, while reason is instrumental to sorting out sensuous (visible) distractions, reason itself cannot run the show, for it cannot replace the binding that religion and God can afford us, to each of us individually, and to all of us collectively.
  
  In this sense, this book is built on the same principles of intangible, inexpressibles such as his Critiques are; understanding which cannot be expressed but through the sensuous, for example. Or the legislative law of desire, which also cannot be expressed but through the sensuous. In each, but especially here, Kant seems to say that the way to have a taste of the completeness of Being lies solely in reasoning that directs us towards a sublime. Like as in Critique of Judgement, we turn our attention outwards, towards a position in the suprasensible that cannot be felt through ecclesiastical faith, unlimited and non-contingent (unlike historical doctrine).
  
  If anything this makes Kant a kind of neo-Plato.
  
  Overall I thought the book was well written (or at least also, well translated). In particular, Kant writes these long sentences because he's being very particular. He needs to outline what that particularity is, so he asks that we keep one thought in our head, while he detours it with examples, and asides. Then, we can return to the idea that has transgressed itself, and continue on (Hegel does this in extreme). So if you can get used to his unadorned language, his lengthy sentences and his complex but very specific thought, you'll find that this book isn't so hard to read. Kant is thorough too. He has a slight sense of humor but its always in service of this dogmatic reason, getting to the edge of what can be thought. This time, to bring us to the font of religion itself, right on God's doorstep.
• 
  James Henderson

  I still remember the refreshing feeling I had when I first read Kant in my Philosophy class on Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. We had just finished reading the utilitarian ethics of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, so the approach of Kant's categorical imperative seemed much more reasonable in comparison. That said, I am not now nor have I ever been a follower of Kant's ethics, but they are preferable to some ethical principles.
  It was with this in mind, and a little reading in Kant since then, that I took up Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone as part of a class on enlightenment literature at The Basic Program of the University of Chicago. This book too is refreshing in its rational approach to morality. And while I am not convinced by his argument that it is morally reasonable to "act as if there be a God" I could follow his arguments for that approach to morality. The book provides an argument consistent with The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and is worth reading for all interested in ethics and Kant.
• 
  Kerri Whitehouse

  Essential reading for any ethic modules/degrees
• 
  Cătălina

  Oh, philosophy! Such an illumination. This is a book that gives you goosebumps and you should read only books like these.
• 
  Thibault Da Costa

  Aussi profond que complexe.
  Considéré comme le fondateur du criticisme, Kant établit son jugement à partir des saintes écritures pour mieux en faire ressortir les irrationalités et proposer ainsi une croyance religieuse pure qui se fonde sur la raison.
  « La hauteur de son génie est à la mesure d’un style désespérant, de phrases sans fin ; Emmanuel Kant est pourtant accessible à tous ceux qui, philosophes ou non, se donneront la peine de surmonter leur répugnance et le sentiment que ce n’est pas écrit pour eux. »
• 
  Recep Alan

  Bir şeyi ilahi bir emir olarak tanımadan önce ödev olarak bilmem gereken din ise doğal dindir.
• 
  Tim Newcomb

  Kant’s 1793 “Religionsschrift” has been one of his more popular books due to its simple nature. This work concerns “the relationship of religion to human nature” and is more Theological and Exegetical in nature than Philosophic. It is inherently Epistemological, as Kant strove to fix both Natural science and Theology by keeping them both in their respective dialectal parameters. Living through the heart of the Enlightenment, Kant observed the Epistemological problems brought about by One-World Newtonian Mechanical Reductionism and the bad counter-reactions that Protestant apologists made. Like Hegel, Kant wants to restore faith as the "guardian of the speculative mysteries". He criticizes the church nearly as much as the Materialistic Rationalist camp.
  
  On a personal level, Kant was raised in a Pietist Lutheran family, and was almost a Deist himself. He was a Christian apologist, but hated organized religion and did not maintain any religious practices himself and was part of no religious community. Salvation, to Kant, is synonymous with living a moral life. He rejects outward spiritual practice, is very anti-Catholic, anti-miracles and any practice which is mystical in nature including, oddly enough, prayer. Some biographers have commented that the simple-minded clergy and theologians of his day were mind-numbingly below Kant’s intellect, which developed an understandable disdain for attending church and listing to their drivel. Still, you see a very explicitly Luthern understanding the Scripture and the use of it, so he did not fall far intellectually from his Lutheran roots. He is very anti-clergy, which is in keeping with the Lutheran Pietist movement which emphasized strongly individualism and oftentimes denounced the need for church entirely.
  
  He holds faith to be extremely individualistic, as a movement of the mind towards a categorical moral standard. Naturally, this cuts out any kind of communal spiritualism or need for a church community and certainly any institution. He uses Luther’s metaphysical position of claritas scriptura to establish an even more radical and individualistic version of Sola Scriptura. He defines faith very narrowly as: “Faith (as a habitus, not as an actus) is the moral way of thinking of reason in believing that which is inaccessible to theoretical knowledge. It is therefore the persistent principle of the mind, that which is a condition for the possibility of the highest moral end.”
  
  He holds a typical Aristotelian-Medieval Anthropology reminiscent of Augustin’s Original Sin, in keeping with Luther, but understands it within his Transcendental Moral framework. For being a Rationalist’s Rationalist, he is quote comfortable with mysteries. For example, he holds Divine Election and Free Will as perfectly compatible in a mystical antinomy, in contrast to Luther’s heavy emphasis on Predestination and denunciation of the concept of Free Will. He sees the fallen nature of man as the result of libertarian Free Will, a disconnect between the "Moral-legislating World Originator" and the individual’s choice to live according to the Imperative.
  
  Kantian Roots of Jungian Archetypes
  
  In several of his works, Kant muses about Christ being the apotheosis of a primordial Archetype, what the founder of Analytic Psychology, Carl Jung, would call the “Archetype of Self-Consciousness” which resides in the Collective Unconscious. He does not consider the biological or genetic factors in the creation of the “supersensous substrate” but gets close:
  
  …the Son of God, if we imagine that divinely minded man, as the archetype for us.. in the appearance of the God-man there is not what comes to mind or can be known through experience, but the archetype lying in our reason, which we subordinate to the latter (because so much can be perceived from his example, being found according to that), actually the object of saving faith, and such faith is one with the principle of a life pleasing to God.
  
  Hegel would go on to call this apotheosis of the Hero Myth archetypically manifest in Christ as a “Uniform Plurality” (Gleichförmige Pluralität”). Kant’s Moral Teleological apologetic model, which Hegel developed further into a line of thought called Kanto-Hegelian Ontotheology, relies on these intrinsic rational archetypes:
  
  Moral teleology, on the other hand, which is no less firmly founded than physical teleology, but rather deserves preference because it is based a priori on principles inseparable from our reason, leads to what is required for the possibility of a theology, namely, to a definite concept of the supreme cause, as a world cause according to moral laws, consequently to such a cause as satisfies our moral final purpose: for which nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.
  His apologetic model has limits, Kant admits. The Immortality of the Soul, free will and the existence (Dasein) of God are all empirically unprovable but are postulates of Rationality itself. These a priori realities of “pure philosophy, i.e. Metaphysics, are necessary for Reason and the application of Reason to the material work, i.e. science, to exist at all.
  
  Kant is arguing against Secular and Protestant tendencies to commit Futurism- that is, seeing beliefs as independent and formless from it’s predecessors. Jung argues the same thing- that the Hero myth which the Christian claim is rooted in originates from an elemental Psychic state, genetically universal to all humans. Hegel recognized this same fact in his Lectures on Religion: "The idea of the Incarnation, for example, runs through all religions. Such general concepts also assert themselves in other spheres of the Geist." Because it is biological, it is universal and has manifested in many forms across human history and in virtually all cultures. It is the ideological manifestation of human physiology; the dramatized representation of the emergence of human consciousness itself. The ancient archetypical death-and-resurrection Hero Archetype (the 'good dream' as St. Lewis put it)- is rooted in emergent biology and expresses itself in the deepest levels of unconscious psychology.
  
  Specifically, the conceptualization of Christ is rooted in the Egyptian Sun-god Horus, which was a reworking of the Mesopotamian deity Marduk (who could 'speak magic words') which made it’s way through the Roman iteration of Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, into Christianity. Conversely- the word 'Satan' evolved from the word Seth, the Egyptian god of Chaos. Yet the assumption that this makes the Christian claim of the Incarnation of the Theanthropos 'not true' or simply a myth like any other is itself rooted in the Nominalistic assumptions within the Western Rationalist Religion, particularly modernism. Ironically, this Modernist and post-modernist argument is itself religious dogma.
  
  Jung makes the case that the emergent biological roots of the Hero-Myth make the story of Christ more than merely factually or historically true; it is super-rational, truer than true: the highest form of truth possible. Newman phrased this as "Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness". In other words, Consciousness contains both objective and subjective truth; the biologically ingrained Hero Myth is not an illusion of the mind, but a precept of the truest true. This primordial story only incarnated fully one time in human history across all cultures and religions. The Universal only Particularized, the Multiplicity met the Singularity, the All became the One, the unknowable became knowable and the Infinite was made manifest through Finite form only once. And nothing could be more meaningful than the Divine becoming Human because Meaning itself exists at the intersection of the Particular and the Universal. He is the discrimination of composite natures; unitemporal and eternal, unique and universal, supernatural and natural simultaneously.
  
  Kant’s apologetics follow a similar track as Jung, only along moral lines instead of Psychological. Kant argues that the moral Atheist is incongruent to his own worship, for the very recognition of a Transcendental Good is also de facto a belief in God: "how will he [the atheist] judge his own inner purpose by the moral law which he actively worships?"
  
  His aim here is to keep both natural science and theology within their respective dialectal parameters, and reconcile the antinomies of Newtonian Rationalism and Moral Teleology:
  
  

  Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and persistently the reflection deals with it: the starry sky above me, and the moral law within me. Both I must not seek and suspect as shrouded in darkness, or in exuberance, except my sight; I see them before me and connect them directly with the consciousness of my existence.

  
  
  The Metaphysician of Konigsburg
  1755 General Natural History and Theory of Heaven:
  https://bit.ly/3FbUrcK
  1764 Observations on the feeling of the beautiful:
  https://bit.ly/3uf7XWJ
  1766 Dreams of a Ghost-Seer:
  https://bit.ly/3XIPFut
  1783 Prolegomena to any future metaphysics:
  https://bit.ly/3uewAD0
  1785 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals:
  https://bit.ly/3XGObRt
  1786 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science:
  https://bit.ly/3GUz4Ob
  1787 Critique of Pure Reason:
  https://bit.ly/3gMJ0i9
  1788 Critique of Practical Reason:
  https://bit.ly/3UdFBGZ
  1790 Critique of Judgment:
  https://bit.ly/3FdzkGK
  1793 Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason:
  https://bit.ly/3FdEL8E
  1795 Toward Eternal Peace:
  https://bit.ly/3ioyLRH
  1797 Metaphysics of Morals:
  https://bit.ly/3gNkddY
  1798 The Dispute of the Faculties:
  https://bit.ly/3AVMVQO
• 
  Nils G

  Det är svårt att betygsätta denna bok, främst för att jag inte kunde tolka första halvan av den. Ondskans rot i friheten och Kants förslag på hur trossamfund bör utformas för att främja moralisk utveckling gör den andra halvan intressant och värd att läsa dock.
  
  Mitt tips: läs den på engelska. Min svenska version var från 1927 (vilket kanske förklarar dess svårtydda natur)
• 
  Joseph Sverker

  Efter att ha läst Religionen inom det blotta förnuftets gränser är det omöjligt att inte se Kant som en teologisk tänkare. Gudsbegreppet är antaget rakt igenom boken. Det är mer vilken roll denna gud ska ha i relation till förnuftet, sedesläran och uppenbarelsen som Kant resonerar kring här. Jag har inte läst hans tre "kritiker" och kommer säkert att göra det någon gång framöver, men jag är glad att jag började just här, för det sätter t.ex. hans kritik emot gudsbevis och andra religionskritiska tankar i en tydligare kontext. Det sätter även hans tankar kring förnuftets begränsningar i ett intressant sammanhang.
  
  Man kan få känslan att "Gud" på ett sätt är ett bihang i Kants filosofi. Det är inte helt klart hur han tänker sig Guds relation till etiken, eller jag förstod den inte helt ska jag snarare säga. Men samtidigt är det tydligt att Kant behöver ha en moralens högsta för att få sin etik att gå ihop och jag håller med honom där. Kants kritik mot skrift-religion och uppenbarelse-religion är väldigt tydlig och det är väl inte helt omöjligt att det är en direkt kritik (reaktion emot?) hans pietistiska skolgång.
• 
  Mark

  The chapter Kant is most known for (the first one on radical evil) is perhaps his best known where he takes a view similar to Hobbes' view of the state of nature, Hobbes' view being an ontologizing of violence. The only difference is Kant seems to think evil occurs in dispositions, and that this evil is magnified by society. So it left me wondering if Hobbes' Leviathan would really make any difference for Kant. Unique to Kant is he has an eschatology, and a surprisingly a high view of the church (highly reinterpreted in Kant's critical philosophy), distinct in its role from the state, functioning as a vehicle of to move human beings from the particularity of empirical faith to a religion of reason. For that reason the first chapter does not make much sense apart from the later chapters, at least I found it to be that way. I highly enjoyed the progression of argument, that footnotes alone were enjoyable to see Kant tease apart certain logical issues in his argument.
• 
  Todd Dow

  This book has been extremely influential to my faith. Kant rationalizes and justifies faith in this logical examination of something that is not easily rationalized.
  
  This is a dense read but I find it to be a good counter to Nietzsche and some of the others who attacked and discounted religious thought.
  
  This is highly recommended for anyone interested in theology and intellectual pursuits of truth.
  
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  Athénaïs  

  ,,ბოროტებას მართალია ქვეყნის დასაწყისი უშვებს,მაგრამ მაინც არა ადამიანში,არამედ სულში,რომელიც თავდაპირელად უფრო ამაღლებული დანიშნულებისა იყო. ამით საერთოდ ყოველი ბოროტების პირველი დასაწყისი ჩვენში წარმოგვიდგება როგორც ჩვენთვის გაუგებარი,ხოლო ადამიანი მხოლოდ ცდუნების ძალით ბოროტებას მიცემული,ე.ი არა საფუძველშივე წამხდარი,არამედ მაინც გაუმჯობესების უნარიანი.''
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  John Yelverton

  This book was so pathetic, I don't even know where to start. It truly felt like someone had given Kant a catechism, and he summarily decried what made sense and what didn't without any background into what he was saying. Not only is his understanding if religion poor, but the fact that he has the hubris to declare what is and is not reasonable in a religion is just sad.
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  Alexander Smith

  A good read to get the gist of prominent debates of an introductory phil of religion course. That being said, I don't feel like I needed to know this for my own purposes. My use of the area is more related to Descartes and Spinoza. This was a good read if only to know where I disagree with Kantian reason.
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  booklady

  Recommended by
  Dinesh D'Souza in
  Life After Death: The Evidence.
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  Tijmen Lansdaal

  Cutest piece of Kant ever. Essential to understanding his morality (which without the legality distinction is usually raped into a kind of deontology that is completely incomprehensible), but kinda vague to a non-believer like myself in its religious usage of language.