Abstract
One of the most puzzling claims Kant makes about other philosophers is a claim about Spinoza, which says that his metaphysics “leads directly to enthusiasm [Schwärmerei],” associated in Kant’s times with religious fanaticism . In this chapter, I emphasize that there is a specifically Kantian sense of Schwärmerei, on which it turns out to be rooted in the very same propensity of the human mind that leads to the inevitable “transcendental illusion ,” underlying dogmatic metaphysics . Moreover, I argue that, despite his apparent critique of Spinozism , Kant shares a number of crucial tenets with Spinoza. Most importantly, as I try to show reading some of his later writings—in particular those fragments collected in the Opus postumum where Kant frequently turns to the metaphor of “seeing things in God ”—he can be attributed, in a certain sense, an account of divine immanence , accompanying what Ian Hunter has called “radical religious rationalism ,” a tendency to rationalize religious faith not at all foreign to Spinoza and his followers.
The original version of the book was revised: Acknowledgements have been changed as footnotes. The erratum to the book is available athttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65394-5_14.
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Notes
- 1.
The work on this chapter has been supported by the National Science Centre in Poland under grant no. UMO-2014/15/D/HS1/02751; DEC-2014/15/D/HS1/02751, subsidizing the research project The Enlightenment Ideas of Freedom of Thought and Conscience, and Contemporary Secularism at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
- 2.
O. Boehm , Kant’s Critique of Spinoza, Oxford University Press, New York 2014, p. 209 (italics A.T.).
- 3.
Y. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics. The Adventures of Immanence, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1989, p. 6ff.
- 4.
I. Kant, “Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,” in idem, Religion and Rational Theology , trans. A.W. Wood and G. di Giovanni, Cambridge University Press, New York 2001, p. 141 (RGV, AA 6:108).
- 5.
I. Kant, “The Conflict of the Faculties,” in idem, Religion and Rational Theology, op. cit., p. 267 (SF, AA 7:42).
- 6.
I. Kant, “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?,” in idem, Religion and Rational Theology, op. cit., pp. 14–15 (WDO, AA 8:142–143).
- 7.
L. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. E.M. Sinclair, Schocken Books, New York 1982, pp. 35, 140.
- 8.
On the claim that the Radical Enlightenment originates in Spinoza, see J.I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001. Israel emphasizes a secularizing tendency inherent in the Radical Enlightenment, along with such features as egalitarianism, democracy, individual liberty, and “a comprehensive toleration,” in his review article “Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment?,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (3), 2006, pp. 523–545. On the secularizing tendency in Spinoza, see J.I. Israel, Locke, Spinoza and the Philosophical Debate Concerning Toleration in the Early Enlightenment (c. 1670–c. 1750), Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam 1999.
- 9.
I. Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, op. cit., p. 15 (WDO, AA 8:144).
- 10.
I. Kant, Notes and Fragments, ed. P. Guyer, trans. C. Bowman, P. Guyer, F. Rauscher, Cambridge University Press, New York 2005, pp. 327–328 (HN, AA 18:436).
- 11.
Ibid., p. 327 (HN, AA 18:435).
- 12.
Cf. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. P. Guyer and A.W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, New York 1998, pp. 398–399 (A 320/B 377).
- 13.
I. Kant, Notes and Fragments, op. cit., p. 326 (HN, AA 18:434).
- 14.
I. Kant, Opus postumum, trans. E. Förster and M. Rosen, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, p. 225 (OP, AA 21:19).
- 15.
A. Ashley-Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis 2001, p. 34.
- 16.
Cf. F.C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1987, esp. pp. 44–91.
- 17.
See I. Kant, Opus postumum, op. cit., p. 225 (OP, AA 21:19).
- 18.
Ibid., p. 231 (OP, AA 21:26).
- 19.
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 386 (A 297/B 354; italics A.T.).
- 20.
B. Spinoza, Complete Works, trans. S. Shirley, Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis and Cambridge 2002, p. 20.
- 21.
This is the place in which Spinoza addresses the views of those (mostly Cartesians) who think of the relations between man and nature in terms of a “kingdom within a kingdom.” Accordingly, they single out a domain of specifically human phenomena, such as emotions, which they claim to be governed by different laws than the phenomena of nature. Spinoza rejects this approach. “But my argument is this,” he says, “in Nature nothing happens which can be attributed to its defectiveness, for Nature is always the same, and its force and power of acting is everywhere one and the same; that is, the laws and rules of Nature according to which all things happen and change from one form to another are everywhere and always the same. So our approach to the understanding of the nature of things of every kind should likewise be one and the same.” Ibid., pp. 277–278.
- 22.
See Ethics II, prop. 13–15.
- 23.
See Ethics II, prop. 7.
- 24.
Cf. J.I. Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, p. 37, where Spinoza’s philosophy is rendered as “a comprehensive and consistent system of naturalism, materialism, and empiricism, eliminating all theism, teleology, miracles, and supernatural agency.”
- 25.
I. Kant, Opus postumum, op. cit., p. 242 (OP, AA 21:51).
- 26.
Ibid., p. 241 (OP, AA 21:50).
- 27.
I. Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770, trans. D. Walford and R. Meerbote, Cambridge University Press, New York 1992, p. 405 (MSI, AA 2:410).
- 28.
The doctrine of seeing things in God can be found in Malebranche’s Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion and the Search after Truth.
- 29.
If the very activity of cognizing the empirical reality takes one closer to God, then one may wonder what use there could be of religious institutions. Indeed, in his lifetime, Spinoza was associated with certain Protestant circles, such as the Collegiants, called “Christians without the Church.” See L. Kołakowski, Chretiens sans Église: La conscience religieuse et le lien confessionnel au XVIIe siècle, trans. A. Posner, Gallimard, Paris 1987; S. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, Cambridge University Press, New York 1999.
- 30.
I. Kant, Theoretical Philosophy…, op. cit., p. 130 (BDG, AA 2:85–86). Kant also claims that for its imperfections and deficiencies the world cannot be “an accident of God” (ibid., p. 134 (BDG, AA 2:90)), an argument apparently attacking a strawman since Spinoza rejects the reality of imperfections. Finally, Kant argues that since nature manifests order, beauty, and harmony, it must be a work of an “intelligent creator,” a “Wise Being” who has authored the essences of things (ibid., pp. 164–166 (BDG, AA 2:123–125)).
- 31.
B. Spinoza, Complete Works, op. cit., pp. 197–199.
- 32.
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 119 (B xxxiv).
- 33.
I. Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.C. Meredith, Oxford University Press, New York 2007, p. 280 (KU, AA 5:452).
- 34.
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 431 (A 380).
- 35.
I. Kant, Opus postumum, op. cit., p. 213 (OP, AA 22:54).
- 36.
Ibid., p. 214 (OP, AA 22:56).
- 37.
Ibid., p. 222 (OP, AA 21:15).
- 38.
Although it has been read by many commentators as a sigificant addition to, if not a sudden change of, Kant’s earlier metaphysical views. Cf., e.g., E. Adickes, Kants Opus postumum dargestellt and beurteilt, Reuther und Reichard, Berlin 1920; C.C.J. Webb, Kant’s Philosophy of Religion, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1926, Ch. 6; B. Lord, Kant and Spinozism. Transcendental Idealism from Jacobi to Deleuze, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2011, Ch. 7.
- 39.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant speaks of the legislative function of reason in several places: He mentions the “legislation of our reason” (A 701/B 729) and the “guidance of a morally legislative reason” (A 819/B 847). He also explains what reason’s legislation consists in: “Now the legislation of human reason (philosophy) has two objects, nature and freedom, and thus contains the natural law as well as the moral law, initially in two separate systems but ultimately in a single philosophical system.” I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 695 (A 840/B 868). Throughout the Critique of Practical Reason Kant speaks about (practical) reason legislating the moral law, a function he equates with autonomy .
- 40.
I. Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, op. cit., p. 177 (RGV, AA 06:177).
- 41.
Ibid., p. 262 (SF, AA 07:36).
- 42.
This is why an early twentieth-century Spinoza biographer, Jacob Freudenthal, claimed that Spinoza’s religion “ist die Religion der Erkenntnis” and George Santayana labelled it a religion of science . See W. Eckstein, “The Religious Element in Spinoza’s Philosophy,” The Journal of Religion 23 (3), 1943, pp. 153–163.
- 43.
See I. Hunter, “Kant’s Religion and Prussian Religious Policy,” Modern Intellectual History 2 (1), 2005, pp. 1–27.
- 44.
L. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, op. cit.
- 45.
Y. Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics…, op. cit., p. 12.
- 46.
I. Kant, Correspondence, trans. A. Zweig, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, p. 153 (Br, AA 10:178).
- 47.
B. Spinoza, Complete Works, op. cit., p. 506.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 518.
- 49.
Simply put, the idea of the intellectual love of God can be rendered as seeing oneself as a part of the objective order, thus—sub specie aeternitatis. Here is what seems to be its adequate description, provided in the Ethics: “The mind’s intellectual love toward God is the love of God wherewith God loves himself not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he can be explicated through the essence of the human mind considered under a form of eternity. That is, the mind’s intellectual love toward God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself. … This, the mind’s love, must be related to the active nature of the mind …, and is therefore an activity whereby the mind regards itself, accompanied by the idea of God as cause …; that is …, an activity whereby God, insofar as he can be explicated through the human mind, regards himself, accompanied by the idea of himself. And therefore … this love of God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself.” Ibid., p. 378. Cf. also L. Kołakowski, Jednostka i nieskończoność. Wolność i antynomie wolności w filozofii Spinozy, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2012, p. 152.
- 50.
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 361 (A 252/B 308–309).
- 51.
I. Kant, Opus postumum, op. cit., p. 218 (OP, AA 21:11; italics A.T.).
- 52.
I. Hunter, Rival Enlightenments. Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany, Cambridge University Press, New York 2003, p. 51.
- 53.
Ibid., p. 312.
- 54.
Ibid., p. 340.
- 55.
See I. Hunter, “Secularization: The Birth of a Modern Combat Concept,” Modern Intellectual History 12, 2015, pp. 1–32.
- 56.
The two works in which Kant develops the “proof” are: A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (1755) and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763). For some research on the early Kant’s ties with Spinozism see, for example, F.G. Nauen, “Kant as an Inadvertent Precursor of 18th-Century Neospinozism. On Optimism (1759),” Kant-Studien 83 (3), 1992, pp. 268–279; N. Hoffer, “The Relation between God and the World in the Pre-Critical Kant: Was Kant a Spinozist?,” Kantian Review 21 (2), 2016, pp. 185–210. On Kant’s pre-Critical “proof,” see my “Spinoza’s God in Kant’s Pre-Critical Writings: An Attempt at Localizing the ‘Threat’,” Kant Studies Online 2015, pp. 65–102.
- 57.
Of course, this is only one of the possible ways of understanding secularization, and secularism, a way endorsed, as it seems, by Israel but rejected by other authors, for instance, Hunter. Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor (in Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, trans. J.M. Todd, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2011) have argued that secularism does not have to consist in relagating religion from the public sphere, and thus in replacing the religious point of view with the point of view of “mere reason,” but I space does not permit me to consider this topic.
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Tomaszewska, A. (2017). The Divine Immanence, Kant’s Religious Rationalism, and Spinoza. In: Tomaszewska, A., Hämäläinen, H. (eds) The Sources of Secularism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65394-5_11
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