A History of Philosophy in Epitome

by Albert Schwegler

Thus far Kant’s Critick of the Practical Reason. In connection with this we may here mention his views of religion as they appear in his treatise upon “Religion within the Bounds of Pure Reason.” The chief idea of this treatise is the referring of religion to morality. Between morality and religion there may be the twofold relation, that either morality is founded upon religion, or else religion upon morality. If the first relation were real, it would give us fear and hope as principles of moral action; but this cannot be, and we are therefore left alone to the second. Morality leads necessarily to religion, because the highest good is a necessary ideal of the reason, and this can only be realized through a God; but in no way may religion first incite us to virtue, for the idea of God may never become a moral motive. Religion, according to Kant, is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands. It is revealed religion when I find in it the divine command, and thus learn my duty; it is natural religion when I find in it my duty, and thus learn the divine command. The Church is an ethical community, which has for its end the fulfilment and the most perfect exhibition of moral commands,—a union of those who with united energies purpose to resist evil and advance morality. The Church, in so far as it is no object of a possible experience, is called the invisible Church, which, as such, is a simple idea of the union of all the righteous under the divine moral government of the world. The visible Church, on the other hand, is that which presents the kingdom of God upon earth, so far as this can be attained through men. The requisites, and hence also the characteristics of the true visible Church (which are divided according to the table of the categories since this Church is given in experience) are the following: (a) In respect of quantity the Church must be total or universal; and though it may be divided in accidental opinions, yet must it be instituted upon such principles as will necessarily lead to a universal union in one single church. (b) The quality of the true visible Church is purity, as a union under no other than moral motives, since it is at the same time purified from the stupidness of superstition and the madness of fanaticism. (c) The relation of the members of the Church to each other rests upon the principle of freedom. The Church is, therefore, a free state, neither a hierarchy nor a democracy, but a voluntary, universal, and enduring union of heart. (d) In respect of modality the Church demands that its constitution should not be changed. The laws themselves may not change, though one may reserve to himself the privilege of changing some accidental arrangements which relate simply to the administration.—That alone which can establish a universal Church is the moral faith of the reason, for this alone can be shared by the convictions of every man. But, because of the peculiar weakness of human nature, we can never reckon enough on this pure faith to build a Church on it alone, for men are not easily convinced that the striving after virtue and an irreproachable life is every thing which God demands: they always suppose that they must offer to God a special service prescribed by tradition, in which it only comes to this—that he is served.

To establish a Church, we must therefore have a statutory faith historically grounded upon facts. This is the so-called faith of the Church, In every Church there are therefore two elements—the purely moral, or the faith of reason, and the historico-statutory, or the faith of the Church. It depends now upon the relation of the two elements whether a Church shall have any worth or not. The statutory element should ever be only the vehicle of the moral. Just so soon as this element becomes in itself an independent end, claiming an independent validity, will the Church become corrupt and irrational, and whenever the Church passes over to the pure faith of reason, does it approximate to the kingdom of God. Upon this principle we may distinguish the true from the spurious service of the kingdom of God, religion from priestcraft. A dogma has worth alone in so far as it has a moral content. The apostle Paul himself would with difficulty have given credit to the dicta of the faith of the Church without this moral faith. From the doctrine of the Trinity, e. g. taken literally, nothing actually practical can be derived. Whether we have to reverence in the Godhead three persons or ten makes no difference, if in both cases we have the same rules for our conduct of life. The Bible also, with its interpretation, must be considered in a moral point of view. The records of revelation must be interpreted in a sense which will harmonize with the universal rules of the religion of reason. Reason is in religious things the highest interpreter of the Bible. This interpretation in reference to some texts may seem forced, yet it must be preferred to any such literal interpretation as would contain nothing for morality, or perhaps go against every moral motive. That such a moral signification may always be found without ever entirely repudiating the literal sense, results from the fact that the foundation for a moral religion lay originally in the human reason. We need only to divest the representations of the Bible of their mythical dress (an attempt which Kant has himself made, by moral explanation of some of the weightiest doctrines), in order to attain a rational sense which shall be universally valid. The historical element of the sacred books is in itself of no account. The maturer the reason becomes, the more it can hold fast for itself the moral sense, so much the more unnecessary will be the statutory institutions of the faith of the Church. The transition of the faith of the Church to the pure faith of reason is the approximation to the kingdom of God, to which, however, we can only approach nearer and nearer in an infinite progress. The actual realization of the kingdom of God is the end of the world, the cessation of history.

III. Critick of the Faculty of Judgment.—The conception of this science Kant gives in the following manner. The two faculties of the human mind hitherto considered were the faculty of knowledge and that of desire. It was proved in the Critick of pure Reason, that the understanding only as faculty of knowledge included constitutive principles apriori; and it was shown in the Critick of Practical Reason, that the reason possesses constitutive principles apriori, simply in reference to the faculty of desire. Whether now the faculty of judgment, as the middle link between understanding and reason, can take its object—the feeling of pleasure and pain as the middle link between the faculty of knowledge and that of desire—and furnish it apriori with principles which shall be for themselves constitutive and not simply regulative: this is the point upon which the Critick of the Faculty of Judgment has to turn.

The faculty of judgment is the middle link between the understanding as the faculty of conceptions, and the reason as the faculty of principles. In this position it has the following functions: The speculative reason had taught us to consider the world only according to natural laws; the practical reason had inferred for us a moral world, in which every thing is determined through freedom. There was thus a gulf between the kingdom of nature and that of freedom, which could not be passed unless the faculty of judgment should furnish a conception which should unite the two sides. That it is entitled to do this lies in the very conception of the faculty of judgment. Since it is the faculty of conceiving the particular as contained under the universal, it thus refers the empirical manifoldness of nature to a supersensible, transcendental principle, which embraces in itself the ground for the unity of the manifold. The object of the faculty of judgment is, therefore, the conception of design in nature; for the evidence of this points to that supersensible unity which contains the ground for the actuality of an object. And since all design and every actualization of an end is connected with pleasure, we may farther explain the faculty of judgment by saying, that it contains the laws for the feeling of pleasure and pain.

The evidence of design in nature can be represented either subjectively or objectively. In the first case I perceive pleasure and pain, immediately through the representation of an object, before I have formed a conception of it; my delight, in this instance, can only be referred to a designed harmony of relation, between the form of an object, and my faculty of beholding. The faculty of judgment viewed thus subjectively, is called the æsthetic faculty. In the second case, I form to myself at the outset, a conception of the object, and then judge whether the form of the object corresponds to this conception. In order to find a flower that is beautiful to my beholding, I do not need to have a conception of the flower; but, if I would see a design in it, then a conception is necessary. The faculty of judgment, viewed as capacity to judge of these objective designs, is called the teleological faculty.

1. Critick of the Æsthetic Faculty of Judgment. (1.) Analytic.—The analytic of the æsthetic faculty of judgment is divided into two parts, the analytic of the beautiful, and the analytic of the sublime.

In order to discover what is required in naming an object beautiful, we must analyze the judgment of taste, as the faculty for deciding upon the beautiful. (a) In respect of quality, the beautiful is the object of a pure, uninterested satisfaction. This disinterestedness enables us to distinguish between the satisfaction in the beautiful, and the satisfaction in the agreeable and the good. In the agreeable and the good I am interested; my satisfaction in the agreeable is connected with a sensation of desire; my satisfaction in the good is, at the same time, a motive for my will to actualize it. My satisfaction in the beautiful alone is without interest. (b) In respect of quantity, the beautiful is that which universally pleases. In respect of the agreeable, every one decides that his satisfaction in it is only a personal one; but if any one should affirm of a picture, that it is beautiful, he would expect that not only he, but every other one, would also find it so. Nevertheless, this judgment of the taste does not arise from conceptions; its universal validity is therefore purely subjective. I do not judge that all the objects of a species are beautiful, but only that a certain specific object will appear beautiful to every beholder. All the judgments of taste are individual judgments. (c) In respect of relation, that is beautiful in which we find the form of design, without representing to ourselves any specific design. (d) In respect of modality, that is beautiful which is recognized without a conception, as the object of a necessary satisfaction. Of every representation, it is at least possible, that it may awaken pleasure. The representation of the agreeable awakens actual pleasure. The representation of the beautiful, on the other hand, awakens pleasure necessarily. The necessity which is conceived in an æsthetic judgment, is a necessity for determining every thing by a judgment, which can be viewed as an example of a universal rule, though the rule itself cannot be stated. The subjective principle which lies at the basis of the judgment of taste, is therefore a common sense, which determines what is pleasing, and what displeasing, only through feeling, and not through conception.

The sublime is that which is absolutely, or beyond all comparison, great, compared with which every thing else is small. But now in nature there is nothing which has no greater. The absolutely great is only the infinite, and the infinite is only to be met with in ourselves, as idea. The sublime, therefore, is not properly found in nature, but is only carried over to nature from our own minds. We call that sublime in nature, which awakens within us the idea of the infinite. As in the beautiful there is prominent reference to quality, so, in the sublime, the most important element of all, is quantity; and this quantity is either greatness of extension (the mathematically sublime), or greatness of power (the dynamically sublime). In the sublime there is a greater satisfaction in the formless, than in the form. The sublime excites a vigorous movement of the heart, and awakens pleasure only through pain, i. e. through the feeling that the energies of life are for the moment restrained. The satisfaction in the sublime is hence not so much a positive pleasure, but rather an amazement and awe, which may be called a negative pleasure. The elements for an æsthetic judgment of the sublime are the same as in the feeling of the beautiful. (a) In respect of quantity, that is sublime which is absolutely great, in comparison with which every thing else is small. The æsthetic estimate of greatness does not lie, however, in numeration, but in the simple intuition of the subject. The greatness of an object of nature, which the imagination attempts in vain to comprehend, leads to a supersensible substratum, which is great beyond all the measures of the sense, and which has reference properly to the feeling of the sublime. It is not the object itself, as the surging sea, which is sublime, but rather the subject’s frame of mind, in the estimation of this object. (b) In respect of quality, the sublime does not awaken pure pleasure, like the beautiful, but first pain, and through this, pleasure. The feeling of the insufficiency of our imagination, in the æsthetic estimate of greatness, gives rise to pain; but, on the other side, the consciousness of our independent reason, for which the faculty of imagination is inadequate, awakens pleasure. In this respect, therefore, that is sublime which immediately pleases us, through its opposition to the interest of the sense. (c) In respect of relation, the sublime suffers nature to appear as a power, indeed, but in reference to which, we have the consciousness of superiority. (d) In respect of modality, the judgments concerning the sublime are as necessarily valid, as those for the beautiful; only with this difference, that our judgment of the sublime finds an entrance to some minds, with greater difficulty than our judgment of the beautiful, since to perceive the sublime, culture, and developed moral ideas, are necessary.