Wojciech Kozyra

It is common to accuse Christian supersessionism of responsibility for the Holocaust. This article qualifies this claim by arguing that the theological ideology that directly preceded and aided the Holocaust was unequivocally hostile to this traditional Christian doctrine. It is German neo-Marcionism – which deliberately fought against replacement theology – that provides a direct religious context for the Nazi solution to the Jewish question. Kant appears in this picture as the first modern German Christian who consistently pursued an anti-supersessionist agenda of “purifying” Christianity by radically severing it from its Jewish roots.

Spinoza and Kant are considered to be polar opposites with respect to ethics. The radical difference between them is supposed to consist in Spinoza’s ethical egoism, or interest-based Strebensethik, and Kant’s duty-cantered, deontological Sollensethik. I challenge this opposition and argue that both in Kant and Spinoza we deal with a notion of the self’s realization that is “interest”-based and therefore does not involve self-sacrifice. I show, on the one hand, that the streben in Spinoza’s Strebensethik consists in realising one’s essentially human interest, which resides in ethical-rational action, and, on the other hand, that sollen in Kant’s Sollensethik is in fact a streben of the Kantian “proper self” (eigentliches Selbst) after the realization of its ethical-rational interest.

Spinoza is often presented as an important source for Kant’s view on Judaism and the Old Testament. This claim is often made on the basis of the alleged affinity between the relevant ideas of the two thinkers. In this article, I agree with scholars who point out that Spinoza’s direct influence on Kant’s view of the Old Covenant can be doubted, and further argue that the substance of their ideas about the Hebrew Bible is fundamentally different. I discuss their views on biblical hermeneutics (here showing some affinity between them), the Mosaic law (its content and divinity), and especially the significance of Judaism for Christianity, where the discrepancy between Kant and Spinoza regarding the Old Covenant becomes particularly evident.

The main focus of the article is the analysis of Kant’s notion of Judaism and his attitude toward the Jewish nation in a new context. Kant’s views on the Jewish religion are juxtaposed with those of Mendelssohn and Spinoza in order to emphasize several interesting features of Kant’s political and religious thought. In particular, the analysis shows that, unlike Mendelssohn, Kant did not consider tolerance to be the last word of the enlightened state in matters of its coexistence with religion. The author also argues that Kant’s fascination with Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem was premature and that his later disappointment with Mendelssohn’s persistent adherence to Jewish orthodoxy reflects his understanding of the condition of Judaism in the context of the new era of Enlightenment. Moreover, the paper addresses in a novel way the relevant connections between Kant and Spinoza, showing substantive similarities between their notions of Judaism and Christianity, and provides an overview of Kant’s historical involvement with Jewish issues, which are significant given the argumentative structure of the article.