Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: A Commentary by James J. DiCenso (review)

When reading Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), it is vital to remember Kant’s own methodological reflection about what he is attempting. He is translating historical and “revealed” doctrines into the “pure religion of reason” (35, quoting Religion 6:12). Accordingly, Kant takes the doctrines of historical Christianity as mediated through Lutheranism: original sin, incarnation, redemption through grace, and membership in a redeemed community. Kant then attempts to maximize the sense and usefulness of these doctrines, from the perspective of the needs of practical reason, as it meets human limitations and frailties. James DiCenso, in this excellent commentary, firmly understands that Kant is undertaking just such a translation. As a result the commentary admirably avoids unproductive exegetical wrangles that can arise from the text, when it is treated too straightforwardly as a piece of constructive philosophy. For example, we do not need to agonize about how Kant’s ambitious conception of freedom is compatible with his attempt to make sense of original sin. Kant did not make up the doctrine of original sin. It is there in the tradition, and he does his “best” to translate it into the terms of his philosophy, as the persistent tendency in human beings to prioritize a “nonmoral end” (59). Similarly, in Kant’s translation of the language of grace, he is not invoking freedom-threatening divine action, but, as DiCenso puts it, he is “reinforcing our motivation, courage and capacity for self-reflection” (72).

DiCenso’s reading is intelligent and sympathetic, always seeking to maximize coherence in Kant’s text, just as Kant seeks to maximize the coherence of traditional doctrines. A number of central themes emerge powerfully from DiCenso’s treatment: Kant’s drive toward universal rather than parochial religious conceptions; the independence of morality from traditional religious doctrines; a sanguine approach to indifferent “ritualistic” and culturally-embedded elements of religion; an aversion to voluntarism and arbitrary conceptions of divine power; and a studied refusal to affirm or deny those things that cannot be known (for example, whether the historical individual Jesus was the “Son of God”). Particularly distinctive is DiCenso’s emphasis upon Kant’s interest in “shared social institutions” that “support or oppose the moral law” (15). Also notable is DiCenso’s discussion of Kant’s claim that there “is only one (true) religion” but “several kinds of faith” (157). DiCenso draws out that any ethically oriented historical religion, and not only Christianity, can be translated into the “one true faith” of practical reason (163).

DiCenso’s sympathy for Kant’s project is a strength of the book, but also a source of some more problematic elements, not so much in terms of what is said, but of what is not said. The problems come in two areas: where more pressure could be put on Kant himself; and where the particular genre of Religion is projected too grandly onto Kant’s entire philosophical theology.

DiCenso is clearly enthused by Kant’s project, and considers that it extends respect to all religions. Many traditional practitioners of these historical religions would consider, rather, that it shows a broad contempt for all historical religions, insofar as they fail to deliver Kantian results. There are also some deep exegetical puzzles, largely glossed over by DiCenso. At points in the Religion, Kant implies that we do evil when we are overtaken by our sensuous impulses. But in other passages, and more consistently with other texts and commitments, Kant insists that our movement toward evil occurs at a noumenal level, where sensuous impulses are not present. On this conception, the empirical story of our being “tempted” is an effect, rather than a cause, of an inscrutable turning away from the good. DiCenso faithfully reports both trajectories in Kant’s text, but says nothing about the emerging inconsistency. DiCenso even implies a problematic solution, involving an “interface” between our (moral) noumenal selves...