The histories of liberal political thought and revealed religion have been inextricably intertwined since the birth of liberalism during the seventeenth century wars of religion. While liberals like John Locke1 were once so bold as to attempt to reconstruct Christian doctrine in order to harmonize it with liberal teachings, the more recent efforts of liberals—for example, John Rawls’s “political liberalism””2—seem on the whole much more modest. Rather than rely on a comprehensive doctrine that points to the “”metaphysical”” foundations of a liberal political order, many contemporary liberals tend either simply and self-consciously to speak for a contingent community of “”postmodernist bourgeois liberals””3 or, following Rawls, to articulate a conception of “”public reason”” that is very limited in its ambit. Because there seems to be no hope of finding a thick and rich common ground in a pluralistic society, characterized by a apparently permanent multiplicity of secular and religious comprehensive doctrines, Rawlsian liberals stay closer to the surface, offering and demanding arguments “”the essentials of which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational.””4 Abstaining from offering only reasons that are not acceptable to rational human beings as such is a “”duty of civility,”” through which one respects the autonomy of one’s fellows and does not expect them to live under rules to whose ground they may not have access.5
A number of Rawls’s religious critics have taken him to task for his idea of public reason, arguing either that it “”excludes the religious by drawing the boundaries of public reason so that comprehensive religious doctrines fall outside them for the most part”” or that the bifurcation of public and private reason marginalizes those “”for whom it is a matter of religious conviction that they ought to strive for a religiously integrated existence.””6 In his later essay, “”The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,”” Rawls moves toward an accommodation of these critics, conceding that “”reasonable comprehensive doctrines, religious or nonreligious, may be introduced in public political discussion at any time, provided that in due course proper political reasons—and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines—are presented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines introduced are said to support.””7 But the ultimate recourse to public reason remains a moral duty, not simply a matter of prudential political strategy. Those moved primarily by religious reasons must still be prepared to express themselves in terms of public reason. Through his emphasis on those in formal positions of political authority, Rawls also, to some degree, excuses citizens from the requirement that their personal political deliberations be conducted in terms of public reason as well.8
There remain problems, even with Rawls’s modified and more accommodating conception of public reason. Whether part of Rawls’s intention or not, the strictures of the public arena—the implicit or explicit claim that it is backward or impermissible or in bad taste to advance religious claims or arguments in public9—run the risk of undermining the vitality and profundity of religious discourse.10 What is authoritative in the public arena may well become authoritative in many or most aspects of our lives. And if what is authoritative is as thin as Rawls’s political conception, we run the risk of greatly impoverishing our intellectual and moral lives as individuals, members of associations, and citizens.
For the purposes of this paper, however, there is a still more crucial issue. Rawls’s political conception of justice, discussed and elaborated by means (ultimately) of public reason, lies at the center of an “”overlapping consensus”” of “”reasonable comprehensive doctrines.”” Now, Rawls insists that such a doctrine “”is an exercise of theoretical reason: it covers the major religious, philosophical, and moral aspects of human life in a more or less consistent and coherent manner.””11 This claim can be interpreted either modestly or immodestly. Either Rawls means that the deliverances of faith or revelation qualify as reasonable if they are articulated or expounded in a reasonable manner—in which case Thomism, for example, is a reasonable doctrine—or he means that reasonable religious doctrines are purely and simply products of human reason, that revelation does not enter into the picture, that faith is at most a subjective psychological feeling with no foundation in the world. Our suspicion that he means the latter is increased by the one example he gives of a reasonable comprehensive religious doctrine that can serve as part of an overlapping consensus—the Christianity of Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration.12 This is, of course, a Christianity that has already been reworked to render it consistent with liberal political principles. Other comprehensive religious doctrines—Rawls cites “”the views of Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century””13—do not qualify as reasonable, can at most join a modus vivendi, and cannot be admitted to an overlapping consensus.
Now, Rawls seems quite confident that such unreasonable views are by and large a thing of the past. The “”work of free practical reason within the framework of free institutions”” will over time generally yield reasonable comprehensive doctrines; this is “”the inevitable outcome of free human reason.””14
We are entitled to press him somewhat further on these matters. In the first place, how does free human reason work to produce comprehensive religious doctrines? Second, to what extent are the religious doctrines so produced worthy of allegiance and belief? While it is impossible to offer a comprehensive answer to these questions in the course of this paper, it is possible to begin an inquiry. In what follows, we will make use of Immanuel Kant’s attempt to treat religion “”within the boundaries of mere reason”” as an example of a rational comprehensive religious doctrine.
I. The Human Origins of Religion
It is no exaggeration to say that religion plays an important, albeit somewhat perplexing, role in Kant’s treatment of ethics and politics. Thus, for example, in Kant’s view, the leading positive benefit of the Critique of Pure Reason is “”that all objections to morality and religion will be for ever silenced….”” And in his discussion of enlightenment—the primary task of philosophers and intellectuals—””matters of religion”” comprise “”the focal point.””15 What is perplexing is that Kant appears at the same time to defend ordinary religiosity against the cavils and attacks of its rationalistic critics and to regard Biblical Christianity as merely the imperfect first appearance of a truly rational morality and religion. He is opposed equally to “”materialism, …atheism, [and] free-thinking,”” on the one hand, and to “”fatalism, …fanaticism, and superstition,”” on the other.16 Kant seems to be both a critic and the culmination of the Enlightenment.
This perplexity is related to another: while Kant insists that “”on its own behalf morality in no way needs religion,”” he nonetheless treats them as if they were intimately connected. For him, practical reason is a sufficient source of moral legislation and yet “”morality leads inevitably to religion.””17 We can begin, then, to assess the significance of Kant’s treatment of religion by examining why “”morality leads inevitably to”” it, and what sort of religion it is.
The first clear implication of Kant’s account is that religion—at least insofar as it is connected with morality—has a human origin. Human beings do not require revelation or any other immediate experience of the divine in order to be religious; rather, they are religious because they are both rational—that is, moral—and finite.
Kant’s explanation of this claim begins with the assertion that what is first for human beings is recognition of the moral law, which they, through their practical reason, give themselves. Because it must be universal—shared and understood by all rational beings in all circumstances—this law does not depend upon any particular end and is compatible with many different ends. In other words, the moral law is expressed for human beings in terms of categorical, not hypothetical, imperatives; its obligatory character does not depend upon the prior adoption of a particular end. This is not to say, however, that one who feels the compulsoriness of the moral law abandons all ends. On the contrary, like every finite being, he or she desires happiness; this desire may be regulated, but is not simply overturned, by the moral law. As Kant says, “”Pure practical reason merely checks selfishness, for selfishness, as natural and active in us even prior to the moral law, is restricted by the moral law to agreement with the law….””18
The problem is that in “”this world”” the moral pursuit of happiness is no more—and perhaps even less—likely to be successful than the pragmatic or prudential pursuit. In this world, the laws of nature do not necessarily conform to the laws of morality.19 A person who both seeks happiness and hears the call of morality has no easy way out: happiness is certainly not identical with morality, and morality, in this world at least, is apparently not a condition of happiness.20 The world is not evidently just; its order—if, indeed, it has an order—does not evidently support morality.
The requirements of morality and finitude can be harmonized if and only if two conditions are met: there must be a God capable of recompensing finite moral beings according to their deserts, and the soul must be immortal. That is, there must be time enough for a being to moralize himself or herself, thereby becoming worthy of happiness. Now, because, according to Kant, all our intuitions are bound up in space and time and limited by the laws of causality, we can neither experience nor know an eternal, immutable being—that is, a first or uncaused cause—or an immortal, unalterable substance. Because God and the immortal soul are simply not objects of our knowledge, their existence can neither be proven nor disproven theoretically; they are objects of faith.21 And the moral human being will characteristically have such faith; he or she cannot help but hope to be happy in accordance with his or her worth and to be worthy of happiness.22
Thus in his discussions of religion Kant constantly refers to human reason, its essential characteristics, and its limitations.23 We have already seen that, for him, religion is connected with human frailty or finitude, as is, indeed, our conception of moral laws as categorical imperatives. A perfect, self-sufficient, and rational being would necessarily have a perfectly moral will; such a being would not have to conceive of the moral law in terms of imperatives addressed to his or her will.24 Finite beings, however, usually experience a tension between what the moral law demands and what they demand; the moral law purports to limit their pursuit of ends. To gain as much force and influence as possible for its imperatives, practical reason, according to Kant, conceives of its own end, the “”highest good,”” which purports to reconcile morality and desire on the ground of the former. The highest good, in which virtue (as the worthiness to be happy) and happiness are systematically combined, meets “”our natural need, which would otherwise be a hindrance to moral resolve, to think for all our moral doings and nondoings taken as a whole some sort of ultimate end which reason can justify.”” Armed with the notion of the highest good, practical reason can do battle with the natural tendency of people to “”accommodate their duties to their inclinations.””25
Now, someone might argue that the highest good as an object of hope makes happiness, not duty, the incentive for obeying the moral law, thereby replacing autonomy with heteronomy. Kant insists, however, that duty still comes first, with the hope for happiness—not as reward, but as recompense—following inevitably in its place. A moral person does not do his or her duty because it will make him or her happy; he or she acts dutifully because he or she must, merely hoping that happiness will follow. Kant further subsumes this natural longing for happiness under the rubric of duty by asserting an obligation “”to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.”” He insists that the “”moral wish”” associated with the highest good is “”one to which no selfish mind could have aspired.”” Properly understood, a moral person’s goal is not to promote his or her own happiness, but rather that of all (in a world in which everyone is virtuous).26
Of course, the more likely the attainment of the highest good is, the more influence it will have on our deliberations. If we have a limitless span of time through which to moralize ourselves and if there is a benevolent and just God to arrange matters so that virtuous people are also happy, we can be confident that we will attain the highest good. In Kant’s view, then, the moral law requires that we have this faith in order that morality will be as effective as possible in us: “”we cannot be moral without believing in God.”” As he says, “”the concept of the Divinity actually originates solely from the consciousness of these [moral] laws and from reason’s need to assume a power capable of procuring for them the full effect possible in this world in conformity with the moral final end.””27
Now, to the extent that all rational beings hear the call of the moral law, there can always be a truly and purely moral religion. That is not to say, however, that every “”ecclesiastical faith”” is or has been truly and purely moral or, indeed, that such a religion has at all times been publicly present. In Kant’s view, it is only since the birth of Christianity that there has existed a religion that is to some substantial degree true to its moral core. While it is certainly true that prior to any faith “”the predisposition to the moral religion lay hidden in human reason,”” we always tend to stray from this foundation in our religious practice, and so “”ecclesiastical faith naturally precedes pure religious faith.”” Kant argues that the steps away from moral religion are predictable. There is, he says, a “”natural need of all human beings to demand for even the highest concepts and grounds of reason something that the sense can hold on to,”” so that “”we always need a certain analogy with natural being in order to make supersensible characteristics comprehensible to us.”” We thus tend to anthropomorphize the concept of God required by morality, which, in turn, leads to a corruption of religious service. We are tempted to deal directly with God as we would with a “”great lord of this world,”” who “”has a special need of being honored by his subjects and of being praised through signs of submissiveness….””28 Rather than simply acting morally, we are tempted into a cult of service. And this temptation is strengthened by the fact that we think we can more easily serve God through ceremonies than through constantly pursuing a moral way of life.29
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II. The Content of Moral Religion
The point of departure, then, for anyone who would recover the moral core of true religion is an extant ecclesiastical faith, which bases itself on a supposed history of God’s relation with humanity and tends to emphasize ceremonial service over good intentions and good works. Yet, this situation is redeemable, for “”every religion in part at least…must also contain certain principles of natural religion.””30 The task is to dispense, so far as possible, with the extraneous, accidental, and morally irrelevant aspects of this confession in order to move toward the pure religion of reason. In general, people must be told or reminded that they recognize God as God and God’s commandments as divine and obligatory because they have in themselves the source and touchstone of divinity, that is, the moral law they give themselves. If there is revelation—some appearance, manifestation, or evidence of God in this world—it is addressed to people who are already in principle capable of recognizing it for what it is. As Kant says, “”Inward divine revelation is God’s revelation to us through our own reason. It must precede all other revelation and serve as a judge of external revelation.””31
That is not to say that the task of one who introduces moral religion will be easy, a truth that can be seen in the history of Christianity. That religion was introduced among a people “”whose heads, filled with statutory dogmas of faith, have been made almost incapable of receiving the religion of reason.”” Those who propounded the new religion were compelled to speak in terms intelligible to their audience “”without directly offending against their prejudices,”” offering, for example, new miracles to subvert the authority of the old religion, “”which without miracles could never have had any authority.””32 But once the new religion is established and begins to influence and improve our manner of thought, we must try to rid ourselves of the accidental attributes accompanying its introduction, which may have been necessary for its propagation but are now “”fetters.”” Kant does not of course propose to abandon the Bible, for it has exercised too valuable and beneficent an influence “”on the hearts of men.”” Furthermore, “”we cannot expect that, if the Bible we have were once discredited, another would arise in its place.”” But the errors of its human authors must be corrected; the work “”has to be made intelligible by adjustments and conjectures consistent with the whole.””33 This requires a new rational and moral interpretation of the sensibly tenable elements of Scripture, showing how these stories and images reflect and teach the rational truth. Our moral and intellectual progress can only be sustained if a figurative interpretation supplants the literal interpretation of the Bible. Kant argues that “”[w]e shall…find that this is how all types of faith…have always been treated, and that rational and thoughtful teachers of the people have kept on interpreting them until, gradually, they brought them, as regards their essential content, in agreement with the universal principles of moral faith.””34 On occasion, Kant himself attempts such Biblical exegesis, “”ascrib[ing] to the text (philosophically) the meaning it admits of for morally practical purposes (the pupil’s edification)….””35
Of course, to be able to offer such interpretations, Kant must already know the essential details of rational moral theology and religion. What precisely are the conceptions of God and the afterlife demanded by human moral reason? Kant first of all makes it clear that were it not for our hope for the highest good, we would have no moral need of a conception of God.36 Hence every morally necessary attribute of God follows from God’s connection with the highest good. Since we hope for happiness apportioned in accordance with worthiness to be happy, we must conceive and believe in a deity who can judge us and arrange for our compensation and punishment. To judge us, God must know our intentions; to know our intentions, God must be omniscient. To reward and punish us, God must at least be omnipotent.37 But omnipotence is insufficient, for a “”merely”” omnipotent God need not have any regard for the moral law. If God’s justice is to accord with morality, God’s will must be identical with the moral law; it must be holy. In other words, we may regard God as the author of the laws we give ourselves through our practical reason.38 To summarize then, God’s government of the world is tripartite: God is the holy lawgiver, the benevolent governor, and the just judge.39 Human subjection to morality is crucial in this characterization. Were it not for our subjection to the moral law, we would merely hope for happiness and believe in and love a simply benevolent God. But since we hear the call of morality, we expect God’s benevolence to accord with justice. As Kant puts it, justice follows when benevolence is limited by holiness; we love God as benevolent, respect God as holy, and fear God as just.40
We may then ask what we can expect this God to do. First, God creates an orderly, hierarchical, purposive world, in which human beings, as moral beings, are the crown of creation. Through their practical reason they can legislate for themselves in such a way as to “”[make] possible a system of all ends,”” avoiding both serving simply as links in a chain of mechanical causation and arbitrarily pursuing disorderly and conflicting ends.41 It would seem, then, that God creates a world that could be made into a “”system”” or “”kingdom”” of ends through proper human legislation and action. But the human beings God creates—however perfectible they might be—are finite and fallible. No individual is sufficiently strong or moral to bring a moral order into being.42 This order could perhaps be engendered through the united moral efforts of all human beings. But such unity may be too much to ask of finite and fallible beings, so God must intervene to bring them together. God must, so to speak, found “”one nation under God””—an ethical community—for which God serves as legislator, executive, and judge.43 If, however, God is not to render every sort of human role and effort superfluous, God must intervene only to complete what human beings have already begun. God must guarantee that their moral intentions are fulfilled. God’s action is only a supplement to, not a substitute for, that of human beings, who must do all they can on their own. As Kant says, “”[e]ach must…so conduct himself as if everything depended on him. Only on this condition may he hope that a higher wisdom will provide the fulfillment of his well-intentioned effort.””44
Now, this goal of human striving, this “”beautiful ideal of the moral world-epoch,”” will not exist in this world, but in the next. Human beings, who begin from a state of “”radical evil,”” may make progress toward, but do not reach, moral perfection or worthiness to be happy in this life. Infinitely far removed from goodness, they require an eternity to reach it.45 To be able, then, to attain the highest good, human beings must have immortal souls. Because, however, they have no experience of the next life, it would seem that they cannot know what to expect. How can they know whether they will be recompensed or punished in the next life for their conduct in this life? Arguably, everyone merits punishment, for no one can become morally perfect in this life. But this doctrine might discourage any effort at self-improvement, so Kant proposes another: it is proper, he insists, to assume that progress made in this life will continue in the next. A person who is making himself or herself better will continue to do so; a person who is not will not get any better. Furthermore, the Omniscient God, Who stands outside time, will regard temporal actions and intentions as indicative of a timeless disposition and judge people accordingly. What to us seems like an endless succession will be a completed whole for God. Those who are trying to be good will seem to God to be good; those who are not will seem evil. Our future happiness thus depends entirely on our earnest and continual attempts to improve ourselves in this life.46
The theology and religion demanded by human practical reason seem, then, to amount to little or no more than this: whatever we are unable to do for ourselves to bring the highest good into being, God will do for us. Here we can raise two questions. First, can we not call these postulates of practical reason fictions or illusions? And if we can, should we not in the name of clarity try to dispense with them and with the notion of the highest good, which seems to call for them? In other words, we must try to understand why Kant spends so much time considering religious matters, especially since he acknowledges that there is no way in which religion affects the validity of the moral law.
Kant approaches the first question by taking up the relationship between theoretical and practical reason. Because we can have no theoretical knowledge of a transcendent, supersensible realm, we cannot actually know anything about God and the soul. But our inability to grasp these things theoretically also makes us unable definitively to rule out the possibility that they exist. With the silence of theoretical reason, practical reason comes to the fore. The latter affords us one kind of certainty: we know that we are subject to the moral law. For the sake of carrying out our duties, we must have faith in these practical postulates. God and the immortality of the soul are thus “”things of faith,”” which we do not purport to advance as objects of theoretical knowledge. We may believe in them, but we cannot know them scientifically. So long as we do not pretend by our practical faith actually to extend our theoretical knowledge—so long as we do not confuse faith and science—no one can present a decisive objection to these postulates.47
It is possible to argue that the postulates follow only indirectly from the moral law. We all, regardless of the status of our faith, hear the call of duty: “”[T]he doctrine of virtue stands on its own (even without the concept of God)….””48 The real question is whether and why the highest good must be presented as the necessary end of moral striving. Kant himself concedes that a person may rise sublimely above the limitations of ordinary human moral reason, acting in accordance with the categorical imperative without the comforting hope that a just God will ultimately assure the attainment of the highest good. A certain sort of atheist, in other words, may be moral.49 The notion of the highest good would seem then to be necessary only to strengthen the moral resolve of some people, but not of all. The dignity of acting in conformity with the moral law—a feeling certainly available to everyone—may be an adequate incentive to moral action. And by introducing the notion of the highest good, Kant may be said to risk a reintroduction of the fundamentally mercenary goal of happiness as the primary incentive of right action. The clarity he intends to engender by his exposition of the moral law may be replaced by confusion.50
III. Hope, Moral Activism, and the Highest Good
Why does Kant take this risk? We may begin to answer this question by noting that he is concerned not only with assuring that people properly conceive the moral law, but also with encouraging them positively to act.51 Now, there are two sorts of circumstances in which this concern comes into play. In one, a person must choose between doing or not doing something which could harm or injure another. The person may know that what he is tempted to do is wrong, but cannot master the inclination to do it. The right thing to “”do”” is not to act, to leave the other person alone, to respect the other’s rights. Rules prescribing such inaction comprise a large part of classical liberal morality.52 There are circumstances, however, when morality seems to require action as opposed to inaction. Failing to act may not positively harm another—it may be consistent with respect for his or her person—but the one who fails to act may not do all the good he or she can. For example, Socrates does not actively abet those intent on unjustly executing Leon of Salamis, but he also does not assist the victim or otherwise prevent the harm.53 Kant wishes to encourage positive moral action as well as moral abstention, insisting that Hobbes’s negative formulation of the Golden Rule tells only part of the story. Thus he blames religious monasticism and asceticism for “”render[ing] a great number of individuals useless to the world,”” argues that we have a duty to promote the happiness of others, and suggests that “”it is…salutary to keep ourselves at a respectful distance from”” the idea of grace “”lest…we…let ourselves be tempted into a state of inertia where in passive idleness we expect from above what we ought to be seeking within us.””54
That Kant seeks to encourage moral action can be confirmed by another line of reasoning. To the extent that we anticipate the future in deliberating about action, we either hope for or fear certain consequences. In turn, those who wish to encourage or discourage action can appeal to these hopes and fears. If we examine hope and fear, we shall find that the utility of each depends on the situation. If we wish to discourage selfish action, fear may work better than hope. Since we cannot pursue happiness without first securing our life and liberty, we can likely be persuaded or compelled to forgo unjust pursuits by threats to our life or liberty. In and of itself, hope is not as effective a tool of dissuasion. An inherently uncertain promise of future compensation is a poor substitute for the immediate prospect of gain. Consequently, those like Hobbes who wish primarily to secure inaction tend to rely more on fear than on hope. On the other hand, if we wish to encourage action, we might more successfully appeal to the latter than to the former.55 While people can indeed be forced to act out of fear, they will likely act grudgingly and half-heartedly. Given the hope of attaining or achieving something good, however, they may act more enthusiastically. Fear works against human longings for the good, giving rise to evasiveness and hypocrisy. Hope works with these longings, opposing laziness and complacency. As Kant says, “” all hoping is directed to happiness….””56 Finally, to the extent that it is successful, fear engenders a kind of narrow selfishness and servility.57 People are made to attend to their bare self-preservation and to act or not to act involuntarily. By contrast, because it is consistent with courage—””which is an essential component of virtue””—and willing cooperation, hope is consistent with dignity and nobility.58
Now, Kant constantly discusses hope in connection with religion. Indeed, he identifies “”philosophy of religion”” as his answer to the question, “”What may I hope?””59 Kant’s almost exclusive focus on hope in religious matters distinguishes him from his liberal predecessors, most of whom either strongly emphasize fear or speak of a combination of hope and fear—dominated by the latter—in connection with religion. The variability of the things in this world, so the typical liberal account goes, combined with our inability either to understand or to control them, makes us “”acknowledge a dependence on invisible powers, possessed of sentiment and intelligence.””60 While this religious fear born of ignorance might have certain salutary political uses, it can also easily be abused by ambitious and seditious politicians. Consequently, Kant’s liberal predecessors generally, if not necessarily openly, make war on religion, aiming at least to weaken it and to subordinate it to the civil power.61 In early liberal politics, religion has at most an uneasy role as an auxiliary.
Kant’s analysis of the sources of “”true”” religion leads him to reevaluate its role. While he acknowledges that “”fear first produces gods (demons),”” he argues that “” it is reason by means of its moral principles that can first produce the concept of God….””62 Furthermore, the hope he connects with this rational conception of God is quite different from its classical liberal counterpart. Hobbes, for example, presents hope simply as “”Appetite with an opinion of attaining….”” The desire itself is entirely personal and pre-rational, not necessarily connected with a sense of justice. Reason enters in, if at all, only to offer a prudential assessment of the prospect of satisfaction. By contrast, hope to attain the highest good is rational, according to Kant. The desire with which it is associated has been transformed by reason. Thus we hope not to attain this or that thing, but happiness in general, which requires at least the pragmatic assessment and combination of various pleasures. And our hope is not simply personal, but rather for a wholly new world. In this new world, our desire will be satisfied only because we have come to deserve it. We hope not simply for happiness, but for deserved happiness; we must work to justify our hope.63 Under these circumstances, a religion that appeals to hope is not an enemy or a strange political bedfellow, but a necessary ally.
Thus in general Kant says little about punishment or damnation, preferring to present the union of morality and happiness as an attractive goal for all to pursue.64 His image of the afterlife is “”a beautiful ideal of the moral world-epoch,”” “”a symbolic representation aimed merely at stimulating greater hope and courage and effort in achieving it [the highest good or the kingdom of God on earth].”” It is not enough, Kant says, merely to know the moral law; without these religious hopes, “”the glorious ideas of morality are indeed objects of approval and admiration, but not springs of purpose and action.”” He recognizes that the disposition to act is crucial in fulfilling the moral law.65 Hope to attain the highest good helps turn passive acknowledgment of the moral law into the active endeavor to fulfill it. Hope is not a consolation, but rather a spur to action.
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IV. The Highest Good in this World and the Next
Now, someone might argue that the highest good is a notion particularly ill-suited to Kant’s purposes. Located as it seems not at the end of history but outside time altogether, it could turn us away from this world. Furthermore, to the extent that God seems to play a role in securing it, the highest good might encourage us to await God’s intervention, rather than acting on our own.66
To construct Kant’s response to this argument, we must closely examine his accounts of the highest good.67 More often than not, he clearly states that the world in which the highest good is realized must be “”for us a future world.”” But he also insists that we have a positive duty to “”endeavor to produce and to further the highest good in the world….”” The highest good is not just an object for which we passively hope, but also a goal we must actively try to attain “”so far as may be possible”” in this world. As Kant says, “”The concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws….””68 The “”otherworldly”” highest good can be understood as an ideal, “”transfer[ring] us according to the idea into a nature in which reason would bring forth the highest good were it accompanied by sufficient physical capacities; and it determines our will to impart to the sensuous world the form of a system of rational beings.””69 In thinking about the highest good, we imagine the world we would bring into being here and now, if only we had the power. We put ourselves, as it were, in the place of God. While Kant repeatedly asserts that we lack this power in its fullness, he never insists on any determinate limit to our capacity to approximate ever more exactly the highest good. Thus, on the one hand he says that “”reason…does not have causality in respect to nature as a whole”” and that “”the acting rational being in the world is not at the same time the cause of the world and of nature itself,”” so that “”his will cannot by its own strength bring nature, as it touches on his happiness, into complete harmony with his practical principles.”” On the other hand, he concedes that “”no one can affirm that it is impossible of itself that rational beings in the world should at the same time be worthy of happiness…and be in possession of happiness proportionate to this worthiness.”” Indeed, he goes so far as to say “”that it is within our power to render most ill harmless to us, indeed to make our world into a paradise, and to make ourselves worthy of an uninterrupted happiness.””70 If we can exercise an ever-increasing control over nature, making it serve our needs ever more generously, why can we not actually attain the highest good in this world?
Perhaps the recalcitrance of external nature is not our principal obstacle. First, Kant argues that human happiness is not a determinate concept. Our desires are so complicated and variable “”that nature, even if it were entirely subjected to [our] elective will, could receive absolutely no determinate, universal, and fixed law….”” Secondly, much human misery may be self-inflicted, caused by the various sorts of contentiousness and immorality—indeed, the radical evil—to which we are prone. And, finally, such prosperity as there is may not be distributed according to moral desert, either because it is simply maldistributed or because human beings are not yet worthy of happiness.71 Making ourselves perfectly moral may be much more difficult than conquering nature. “”The true courage of virtue,”” Kant says, “”does not so much consist…in resolutely standing up to the evils and sacrifices which must be encountered, as in facing the evil principle within ourselves and overcoming its wiles.””72 It is self-conquest, not the conquest of nature, that requires, so to speak, an infinite amount of time. Furthermore, only we can moralize ourselves; God cannot do so for us.73
Even here, however, Kant presents the daunting task in this-worldly terms, speaking of “”a duty which is of its own sort, not of human beings toward human beings, but of the human race toward itself,”” aiming at “”the promotion of the highest good as a good common to all.””74 This is a social or “”special”” duty because it addresses a problem that cannot simply be solved individually. There is, he says, an “”ethical,”” as well as a “”juridical,”” state of nature. While the latter consists in the absence of a judge who can authoritatively ascertain and enforce individual rights and duties, the former consists in the absence of a generally accepted, universally valid principle of duty; not everyone acknowledges the moral law. Since there is no true public moral orthodoxy, there is much room for confusion, self-deception, and hypocrisy. Rather than making themselves better, people in this state can make one another worse. Not only does the situation give rise to “”[e]nvy, the lust for power, greed, and the malignant inclinations bound up with these,”” but it also makes possible explicit and public conflict among apparently acceptable moral principles. Even if the aforementioned vices were not somehow ingrained in human nature insofar as it is social, the ethical state of nature would pose a problem, for it threatens morality in principle.75 Disagreement about proper moral principles may leave even those with the best of intentions without adequate moral guidance. And since the real problem faced by “”radically evil”” individuals is the adoption of the wrong maxims to guide their actions, the subordination of morality to interest or pleasure, it is important that they have a clear view of the character of the moral law.76 Hence, people must leave the ethical state of nature, but needless to say, no one can do so alone. Everyone must exit simultaneously.
The ethical state of nature must be replaced by an “”ethical community,”” a cosmopolitan union of human beings under universal laws of virtue. This community is not a political order under external laws; rather, everyone agrees voluntarily to obey the moral law. Each acts in a manner and for an end perfectly reconcilable in principle with everyone else’s similarly motivated actions. Were such circumstances actually to obtain, there would be no need to force anyone to conform to the law and to respect the rights of others. All the laws would be “”purely internal.””77 This community resembles a church, whose members acknowledge a deity regarded less as the original source of the moral law than as the “”moral ruler of the world,”” who gives to “”each according to the worth of his actions.””78
It is important to stress that this church is more than an unorganized group of moral individuals. They must not just accidentally share common principles, but must explicitly acknowledge their community. As Kant says:
We have seen that to unite in an ethical community is a duty of a special kind…, and that, though we each obey our private duty, we might thereby derive an accidental agreement of all in a common good, without any special organization being necessary for it, yet that such a universal agreement is not to be hoped for, unless a special business is made of resisting the attacks of the evil principle…by the union of all with one another for one and the same end.79
To attain the highest good as a social good, each person must not merely try to act as the moral law demands in each particular instance, acting as if he “”could go after his private moral affairs”” and hoping that everything will simply fall into place. Each person must in addition have this comprehensive end in mind, seeking to further it however he can.80
Furthermore, like any community, the ethical community needs someone to “”administer”” its affairs. While it “”really has nothing in its principles that resembles a political constitution,”” it does have “”servants“” who (for example) propagate the doctrine on which its members have agreed. Kant suggests that if everyone finally agreed on the one true set of principles, there would no longer be any need for officials or servants, as distinguished from “”citizens.”” There would no longer be need for an elite group of intellectuals to defend the dictates of practical reason against threats inherent in the ethical state of nature. Were this unity of true principles established, “”all right-thinking human beings”” would be servants of the “”pure religion of reason.”” The “”visible church”” would wither away, leaving only the “”church invisible.””81
Of course, that time has not yet arrived. In our situation, we can look forward to “”the enduring conflict between the faith of divine service and the faith of moral religion….”” While writers like Kant have “”openly stated”” “”the question….of the distinction between a rational and a historical faith,”” we still remain inclined to put the latter first. Whatever may be the case with enlightened individuals, the human race as a whole has not clearly understood the primacy of morality in religious matters. The ethical state of nature persists, with many churches declaring themselves “”the only universal one.””82 We must nonetheless hope, Kant says, that “”in the end religion will gradually be freed of all empirical grounds of determination, of all statutes that rest on history””; and “”[t]hus at last the pure faith of religion will rule over all, ‘so that God may be all in all.'””83 At the same time, he indicates that this “”idea”” is “”never fully attainable,”” that it is “”a work whose execution cannot be hoped for from human beings, but only from God himself.”” All we can expect from our own efforts is “”a continuous approximation to that church…, which constitutes the visible representation…of an invisible Kingdom of God on earth.””84
It is not clear, however, that we can speak meaningfully about closing the gap between the ethical state of nature and the ethical community. Either there is a universally accepted, true moral orthodoxy, or there is not. For the former to exist, everyone must be fully rational, fully capable of comprehending the truth, and fully free from moral confusion and self-delusion. So long as it is possible to misconceive the moral law, so long as people are apt to interpret the law in terms of their desires, there is an indeterminable gulf between the two states. Now, Kant seems to argue that two decisive events—the first promulgation of the moral law in Christianity and then his clear and pure presentation of it—have made the confusion of interest and duty less likely. But this confusion follows from a failure of practical reason—either in itself or in its influence on the human will—and it is questionable whether any rational argument can in and of itself remedy such a failure. At the same time, there are limits to the ability of any non-rational strategy or argument to make people listen to reason. Indeed, by virtue of the fact that such appeals fall short of being fully rational, they may well perpetuate a people’s or an individual’s tutelage. Only a simple appeal to the reason everyone is supposed to have may be capable of success, at least in theory, if not necessarily in practice. All this means, however, is that we cannot give an account of the movement of a people toward full rationality. It is not possible to give a “”quantitative”” account of the distance between two “”qualitatively”” different states.85
Yet the impossibility of giving a precise account may be advantageous. Two of the most important features of Kant’s presentation are its emphases on the continuity of this world and the next and on the social or communal aspect of moral improvement and movement toward the highest good. With respect to the first point, Kant’s account can profitably be compared with that offered by traditional (Augustinian) Christianity. In the latter view, there is virtually no comparison between this life and the next. Virtue in this life merely “”conduct[s] perpetual wars with vices,”” with absolutely no opportunity for rest. Our peace or blessedness “”is mere misery compared to that final felicity.”” We can find true peace only when we shed the “”ensouled body,”” which “”weigh[s] down the soul in its corruption.”” Our worldly peace “”is rather solace of our misery than positive enjoyment of felicity.”” Because we can only patiently…endure”” our present state, we ought to orient ourselves entirely toward the next life; this life is a mere “”pilgrimage”” or “”captivity.””86 Kant, on the other hand, asserts that we must believe that the struggle toward moral perfection begins in this life and continues in the next. It does not, strictly speaking, matter whether or not we are embodied, because our real problem is our propensity freely to choose immoral maxims of action.87 Since the next life is similar to this one, we cannot know how much or little progress we can make here on earth toward moral perfection. The more progress we can make, the closer we can come to actually deserving happiness in this life. Consequently, we cannot devalue this life as much as traditional Christianity tends to.
Of course, from the traditional Christian perspective, the decisive difference between this life and the next concerns happiness, not moral struggle.88 While Kant seems to agree that deserved happiness is an object of otherworldly hope, he also makes claims that narrow the difference between this world and the next. Most importantly, he points to the possibility of self-contentment following from “”a consciousness of mastery over inclinations and thus of independence from them and from the discontentment which always accompanies them….”” Now, such mastery is possible only if there are inclinations against which to struggle; the virtue that leads to contentment is required by and tested in the struggle.89 In a curious way, a person can be contented with himself only if he is at the same time confronting the sources of discontentment in himself and the world. For Kant, human contentment consists not in actually enjoying tranquility, but rather in actively making progress toward it:
The greatest happiness a man can experience is to feel that he is the originator and builder of his own happiness and that what he enjoys he has acquired himself. Man can never feel contented without work…. [M]an feels that he is alive only when spontaneously active, and he is contented only when he is industrious.90
Of course, this “”negative satisfaction”” falls short of the “”positive participation of feeling”” available through divine agency in the next life or of that “”bliss”” following from “”complete independence from inclinations and desires.”” Yet, the very self-sufficiency implied by self-contentment is appealing, since “”at least in its origin, it is analogous to the self-sufficiency which can be ascribed only to the Supreme Being.”” Self-contentment is thus both God-like and available in this world.91 And since the next life also consists in perpetual self-conquest, it is not clear that anything genuinely different is available to human beings there. Of course, Kant still insists on the heterogeneity of happiness and virtue as constituents of the highest good, and hence on the distinction between self-contentment and happiness; he does not let us forget—if, indeed, we could—our desires, which will certainly spur us on to action here and now. Kant’s account thus appears at least to be less unfavorable to this world than that traditionally offered by Christianity.92
Another important feature of Kant’s account is its focus on the ethical community, the need to cooperate in the conquest of—especially—human nature. Salvation is achieved not by individuals who happen also to lead a social life, but by members of a community working together.93 While both moral autonomy and accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal savior can seem to be essentially private, membership in an ethical community makes the relationship with God primarily social or congregational and gives the self-legislation a social dimension. The laws we give ourselves “”must be represented as at the same time [God’s] commands….””94 Because we cannot regard the next life as anything but a continuation of this one, we must attempt to create this community here on earth. We must actively seek opportunities to unite with others to work toward this moral end.
Thus, while Kant seems to accept the notion that salvation is finally a matter of God’s grace, he argues that God’s action merely supplements our own. There is no way to distinguish what human beings can accomplish for themselves from what God does for them. The more they can do, the less God will do. Human beings can be increasingly independent as authors of their participation in the highest good.95
Finally, it is illuminating to consider the character of hope, to which Kant’s account of the highest good is directed. In the first Critique Kant expresses the interests of his reason in terms of three questions, the last of which is, “”What may I hope?”” While the answers to the first two questions—””What can I know?”” and “”What ought I to do?””—are exclusively the provinces, respectively, of theoretical and practical reason, the third is not simply connected with either. We cannot be obliged to have a hope, so the answer to the third question is not given by practical reason.96 And because hoping regards future, not present, experience, the answer is also not given by theoretical reason. But because our hopes are connected with potential objects of experience, theoretical reason can put forward or tolerate hypotheses with respect to them. In turn, these hypotheses can guide our practical reason, which “”is concerned not with objects in order to know them but with its own capacity to make them real (according to knowledge of them)….””97 Hope for the highest good can give practical reason an object to be realized as far as possible.
We might then ask why Kant does not simply and immediately offer an historical, rather than a religious, account of how we can realize our legitimate hopes. To the extent that we try to attain our hopes in this world, it must be possible to describe our progress. And to be sure, while he does speak of historical progress, he takes pains to distinguish “”philosophical chiliasm”” from its theological counterpart. While the former “”hopes for a state of perpetual peace, based on a federation of nations united in a world-republic,”” the latter “”awaits for the completed moral improvement of the human race.””98 Yet, if the former goal somehow accords better with nature and with our capacities, why not present it as the sole end of our striving?99 There are many reasons why Kant may not be inclined to place too much weight on history. Regardless of its end, its “”progress”” must be marked by conflict. It is not a pretty sight, which “”may well give rise to endless doubts about my hopes….””100 Furthermore, in a natural process there seems to be no room for free human agency; everyone seems to be subject to natural mechanisms, to be mere links in a causal chain.101 In other words, history, as a natural process, does not seem to be consistent with human dignity. Those who contribute to, but do not enjoy, the end of history are to that extent mere means rather than ends in themselves. It is unjust that some people, rather than others, enjoy their status as the ends of creation.102 Arguably, then, too great an emphasis on history could undermine attachment to the moral law. People might, for example, despairingly abandon morality altogether or embrace the unlimited use of natural mechanisms for the sake of a moral end, fighting one last war to end all wars or to extirpate evil for all time. Their vision darkened or dazzled by history, people could lose sight of the requirements of justice.
The ultimate otherworldliness of Kant’s doctrine of the highest good may serve to remedy these problems. It is a constant reminder of our clear but indeterminate finitude, of the necessity always to keep striving decently without knowing precisely what we can attain in this life. The doctrine reminds us, in other words, that it is in principle impossible for any finite beings to be or to constitute the unconditional cause of nature as a whole. At the same time, by positing a connection between our actions in this world and our fate in the next, the doctrine gives us a reason to continue acting morally and hopefully. Thus, by assuring us of justice Kant’s doctrine of the highest good reduces the possibility of despair. And by reminding us that we cannot definitively settle accounts on our own, it reduces the possibility of what might, following Kant, be called “”despotic moralism.””103
From this presentation, Kant’s account of this-worldly history, of the workings of “”Nature”” rather than God, might seem superfluous.104 He may, however, have feared that an otherworldly quietism might follow from too great an emphasis on God’s completion of human intentions. People might be content merely to mean well, while Kant seeks to promote “”the straining of every means so far as they are in our control.”” Thus, his prospective account of history purports to show how we can “”work [our] way up”” to happiness “”as far as is possible on earth”” in such a way as “”to make [ourselves] by [our] own conduct worthy of life and well-being.”” In this activity, we “”should be able to take for [ourselves] the entire credit…and have only [ourselves] to thank for it.”” History, in Kant’s view, is an alternative to theology.105 Having been to some degree humbled and brought up short by religion, we are made proud by history.
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To the extent that this restoration or preservation of pride is essential for the promotion of moral activism, it is consistent with the this-worldly purpose of Kant’s religious teaching. It may be that only when history is understood in the light of the highest good and when the highest good is taken in conjunction with history that the properly moral balance of honorable intentions and prudent, worldly efforts aimed at success can be attained. Kant’s balancing—or, if you will, juggling—of these doctrines reveals a quite sophisticated concern with the psychological dimension of human moral action. While he certainly presents the moral law in all its purity, Kant also writes about moral matters in a statesmanlike way, attempting to pave the way for moderate moral activism.106
V. Religion and Politics
As is well-known, Kant’s treatment of religion landed him in political trouble. The publication in 1793 of Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone led King Friedrich Wilhelm II to threaten “”unpleasant measures”” if Kant did not desist from commenting on religious matters.107 Kant’s response to this edict was, in the first place, to promise, “”as [a] most loyal subject”” of the King to “”refrain altogether from discoursing publicly, in lectures or writings, on religion, whether natural or revealed.”” While the King was alive, Kant kept this “”carefully”” stated promise, drafting, but not publishing, that part of The Conflict of the Faculties in which, among other things, he discusses his relation to the publicly enforced orthodoxy.108 In that work he argues both that a public religious orthodoxy can be of the utmost political importance and that his work in no way threatens it. Both claims warrant careful scrutiny.
Kant pays obeisance to the notion that the government of a state may dictate the religious doctrines its citizens are taught. Members of the clergy, he says, are “”tools of the government”” in propagating certain doctrines. While these doctrines inevitably are concerned with the “”eternal well-being”” of the citizens and consequently seek to “”guide [their] most secret intentions,”” the government’s only real or legitimate interest in these matters is to have “”subjects who are tractable and morally good.””109 To the extent that public religious disagreements—the “”so-called religious struggles,”” which are really just “”squabbles over ecclesiastical faith””—are inimical to the public peace, the state may enforce harmony. For Kant, the political concern with religious matters is purely temporal; the state cannot care about the salvation of souls. Since a person’s conscience cannot be forced, all that political compulsion can produce is “”the habit of hypocrisy,”” which “”undermines, unnoticed, the integrity and loyalty of the subjects [and] sharpens them in the simulation of service also in civil duties….”” For this reason, a publicly-enforced orthodoxy may well be inferior to a system in which there is a multiplicity of sects, for the latter indicates that “”the people are allowed freedom of belief.””110 Both arrangements are in principle permissible; it is up to the government to judge which at the moment better promotes the public peace.111
Inasmuch as he seems to defy the public orthodoxy, Kant could be said to contradict the very political principle he defends. He insists, however that his writings and lectures do not threaten the state’s legitimate regulation of doctrines, asserting that his arguments are intelligible only to scholars and will neither be noticed nor understood by ordinary people.112 So long as such scholarly disputations “”are not carried on from the pulpit,”” the state ought not to be concerned with them. In making this claim, Kant insists on a unique and important role for the university and, within it, for the philosophical faculty. The university, he says, is a “”public institution to which…all the sciences are entrusted for cultivation and defense against encroachments….”” If—as for the purpose of his argument he concedes—the “”welfare of souls”” is the first interest of the commonwealth, the “”welfare [or “”flourishing””] of the sciences”” is the second.113 Whatever the state’s interest in regulating the lives and opinions of its citizens, “”the interests of the sciences”” can be pursued without prejudice to this concern within the walls of the university. And since the so-called “”higher faculties”” of theology, law, and medicine must follow the laws in training future practitioners, the scientific role of the university becomes the special responsibility of the “”lower”” philosophical faculty. This latter faculty must be free to engage in criticism, “”to discover the truth for the benefit of all the sciences and to set it before the higher faculties to use as they will….”” The activity of the philosophical faculty is thus in the first instance intramural, for its criticisms are directed, not directly at the government or the people, but at the other faculties.””114
But Kant does not expect that this intellectual ferment and its results will always remain merely academic. Prompted by the philosophical faculty, the other faculties will take on a double role, dutifully teaching what is legally required and at the same time critically reasoning about it. At the very least, they will be less zealous in teaching what they acknowledge as false. And in the likely event that they are asked to advise the government in doctrinal matters, they will recommend reforms. Thus, “”it could well happen that the last would someday be first (the lower faculty would be the higher)—not, indeed, in authority, but in counseling the authority (the government).”” The rational insights of the scholars will become the matter for sermons. Sectarianism will wither, and “”when the illusion arising from this opinion disappears through popular enlightenment, the fearful authority of the clergy based on it [will] also [fall] away.””115 Kant’s short-term modesty is consistent with the greatest hopes and expectations for the future.
We might reasonably ask why the government should not defend religious orthodoxy against the long-term threat posed by Kant. His first answer is baldly to assert that “”it is not the government’s business to concern itself with the future happiness of the subjects and show them the way to it….””116 But why should the government not avail itself of this apparently powerful hold on its citizens? While he often argues that conscience cannot be forced, that belief cannot be compelled, Kant does not fully endorse the claim that spiritual power is politically useless. He admits that “”what the secular supreme power cannot do, the spiritual power can. It can prohibit even thought, and actually hinder it as well….”” While the exercise of such power is inconsistent with moral autonomy and enlightenment, this would not, in Kant’s view, dissuade governments from attempting to make use of it. Hence he relies on another argument that may hit closer to home: a government that tries to use spiritual power to achieve its ends plays with fire. Clerics are ambitious and, given the opportunity, will seek
