Dennis Auweele

Most philosophers do not read Kant’s philosophy of religion as providing a foundation for Christianity, or even as in line with it. Recently, however, a number of so-called “affirmative Kantians” have argued that Kant’s philosophy of religion explicitly aims at recovering the spirit of Christianity. In this article I scrutinize this claim with regard to Kant’s conceptualization of “grace” as a supplement to his moral theory. Contrary to these “affirmative Kantians,” I argue that Kant’s account of grace stems from Kant’s moral pessimism, not from any sense of the shortcomings of human beings in fulfilling their duties or the religious need for supernatural cooperation. Kant’s concept of grace tries to moderate this pessimism by providing what is needed for the possibility of moral progress. But simply by the way in which Kant regards grace as a rational concept needed for his moral theory, it seems to me that his philosophy of religion runs counter to certain central convictions of Christianity.

The work of the later Schelling seems antithetical to that of Nietzsche: one a Romantic, idealist and Christian, the other Dionysian, anti-idealist and anti-Christian. Still, there is a very meaningful and educative dialogue to be found between Schelling and Nietzsche on the topics of reason, freedom and religion. Both of them start their philosophy with a similar critique of the Western tradition, which to them is overly dualist, rationalist and anti-organic. In response, they hope to inculcate a more lively view of reality in which a new understanding of freedom takes center stage. This freedom can be revealed and strengthened through a proper approach to religion, one that neither disconnects from nor subordinates religion to reason. Religion is the dialogical other to reason, one that refreshes and animates our attempts to navigate the world autonomously. In doing so, Schelling and Nietzsche open up new avenues of thinking about freedom, reason and religion.

Schelling’s later philosophical thought and Schopenhauer’s philosophy undeniably have a Kantian pedigree. Their respective philosophies have had their major impact, however, in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century. For reasons that are both historical and systematical, the later Schelling (after 1809) and Schopenhauer were not deemed valuable interlocutors in the post-Kantian debates of the early nineteenth century. The reason for this, I argue, is that they go against the idealistic flow of the times. Instead of developing Kant’s positive concept of autonomy as self-grounding reason (such as Hegel), they expand Kant’s notion of a free arbitrariness (Willkür; most often translated as power of choice). I wonder: When one goes against the flow, does one then not return to the source? In this paper, I show how Schopenhauer and Schelling (1809–1815) both start from Kant’s negative concept of freedom and develop a way to experience such freedom through a non-conceptual intimation.

sThe salience of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels for philosophical reflection is undeniable. By providing a myriad of often dialectically mediating perspectives on certain subjects, he can serve as a rich fount for philosophical polemic. Many readers have been prone to confine the philosophical import of Dostoevsky’s prose to such a polyphony of dialectically interacting perspectives. In this article, this topic is taken up with a focus on the differing points of view on human salvation espoused by the protagonists of The Brothers Karamazov. It will be argued that Dostoevsky held to a view that only through certain existential struggles the human agent can attain a full-blooded experience of redemption. This argument will be made from the dialectical development of predominantly Ivan and Alyosha Karamazov.

The historical period of the 18th and early 19th century is usually perceived as the high point of human self-emancipatory optimism. Specifically, the Enlightenment believed that reason would guide humanity from darkness to the light. Ay, there's the rub, so rhymes the Bard of Avon, for wherefrom arriveth the urge to flee the dark? The rationalist propensity to remodel and re-invent the world is testament to a dreary and pessimistic analysis of the human condition. Thus, the Enlightenment made a largely self-content analysis of the natural, traditional and historical condition of humanity which suggested that underneath its emancipatory, rationalist optimism lurks an unspoken perspective on reality that, in the verse of Alexander Pope, on weak wings, from far, pursues [its] flights. In this dissertation, I have called that perspective the horror of existence : the tacit acknowledgment that whatever is naturally and historically presented to the human agent is to be treated with suspicion. Nietzsche even declared such squinty eyes part and parcel of the bad blood of Western metaphysics in its ignoble resentment towards the vitalistic full-bloodedness of existence. Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer are the protagonists in the investigation into the pessimistic focal point that looms underneath the Enlightenment s alleged optimism. Three points of inquiry are central to unravelling this pessimism. First, it is to be established that Immanuel Kant the proverbial vanguard of the Aufklärung actually subscribed to a sense of pessimism. Virtuous duty is the code word of Kant s ethics: to act in a fashion in opposition to certain countermoral inclinations. While Kant calls such behavior autonomy in the supposed fullest sense of the term, such autonomy is lacking in appeal in comparison to the pursuit of happiness. If rational morality is left unassisted, it remains in the perennial danger of being ineffective. The human agent is ill-disposed towards the moral law and radically inclined to overturn the moral world order. Accordingly, Kant turns to certain religious tools to bestow a kind of moral education that would augment the appeal of morality without ever making the human agent in any way inclined to moral virtue. At best, the human agent is justified in his/her rational faith to moral progress. In sum, while Kant believed that immanent rationality is the appropriate guide for moral pursuits, it is lacking in appeal to the finite and frail human agent. Second, it is to be shown that Schopenhauer s more overtly pessimistic philosophy is a continuation of a certain philosophical impetus at work in Kant s philosophy. After Schopenhauer questions the irresistible appeal of rationality, he finds that the Kantian recalcitrance to morality could very well be understood as self-justified self-expression of a blind, amoral will. Since even Kant admitted that rationality lacks in appeal to draw humanity in line, why would rationality be the most intimate aspect of noumenal reality? Instead, the human agent is mired in a depravity from which only his/her own frail and quasi-powerless tools can facilitate an escape. Accordingly, an ethics of compassion, a sublime piece of art, a pessimistic religion and proper philosophical insight can facilitate an escape from reality and turn the human agent to blissful nothingness. Third, it is to be shown that Kant and Schopenhauer s specific sense of pessimism is a philosophical translation of a certain theological perspective on the interplay between nature and goodness. Instead of thinking about nature and good as on a continuum, the Protestant Reformation introduced a radical dualism between nature and goodness which requires nature to be radically reformatted. No good is to come from the exercise of nature: works do not justify. Similarly, Kant and Schopenhauer reiterate how a radical change in the normal behavior of the human agent is the only escape from his/her depraved condition. But how do you fuel a quest for health if that which would do the healing is diseased to its core?

Kant’s concept of grace in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason is a difficult topic, exegetically speaking. Obviously enough, Kant subscribes positively to a notion of divine assistance. This appears awkward given his rationalist ethics rooted in personal autonomy. This has given cause to interpreters of Kant’s philosophy of religion – both early commentators and today – to read Kant’s account of grace is uniquely rationalist. This would make grace a rational expectation given personal commitment to good works. The argument of this paper is that grace is a hyperrationalist element in Kant’s practical philosophy because of the potentially problematic consequences of Kant’s views of human nature. Human nature is namely not particularly prone to be responsive to the rational moral law and therefore requires a number of pedagogical tools that facilitate moral agency.

Schelling’s views of evil in Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom is usually thought of as a radicalization of Kant’s argument for the propensity to evil in human nature in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason. In this paper, I argue that Kant does not provide a full transcendental deduction for the ground of evil in human nature because this would give a rational reason for there to be evil, Schelling provides a theological–metaphysical reconstruction of Kant’s argument by providing a non-rational ground for evil and the difference between Kant and Schelling lies in how they conceive of the actualization of the ground of evil—through intelligible deed or protohistorical choice—which has repercussions for how they think of conversion.

Recently, William Desmond’s metaxological philosophy has been gaining popularity since it proposes a powerful counterweight to the dominance of deconstruction in certain areas of contemporary philosophy of religion. This paper serves to introduce Desmond’s philosophy and confront it with one specific form of Postmodern theology, namely John Caputo’s “weak theology.” Since Desmond’s philosophy is—while thought-provoking and refreshing—not well known, a substantial part of this paper is devoted to fleshing out its central concepts: perplexity, metaxology, and hyperbolic indirection. Afterwards, I argue for the advantages of a metaphysical (Desmond) over a deconstructive (Caputo) approach to philosophy of religion/God.