Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion

1. The Tree of Melancholy: Kant on Philosophy and Enthusiasm

43 one The Tree of Melancholy Kant on Philosophy and Enthusiasm Gregory R. Johnson Kant is commonly regarded as a partisan of the Enlightenment and an opponent of religious and philosophical enthusiasm (Schwärmerei).1 I wish to argue, however, that Kant’s attitude toward enthusiasm throughout his philosophical career is better described as ambivalent fascination rather than unalloyed hostility. My case is based upon two considerations regarding Kant’s account of enthusiasm’s basis in human nature. First, Kant held that the enthusiast possesses the same melancholic temperament as the fanatic, visionary , crank, hypochondriac, and philosopher. So on Kant’s account of temperament , philosophy and enthusiasm are close kin. Both are fruits of the tree of melancholy. Of all of the fruits of melancholy, I will establish furthermore that philosophy and enthusiasm are the closest to one another, because they are both motivated by the drive to attain absolute knowledge of the supersensible. Second, Kant did not just recognize the kinship of philosophy and enthusiasm in the abstract; he recognized it in the degenerations his own melancholic character was prone to exhibit—degenerations that included crankiness, hypochondria , and a morbid fascination with the grotesque, pathological, and paranormal . These degenerations, along with Kant’s understanding of the melan- Philosophical Foundations for Kantian Theology 44 cholic temperament of the philosopher, point to the fascinating possibility that, as I will argue, Kant’s critical philosophy can be seen as a philosophical therapy for his own melancholy nature. A proper understanding of Kant’s view of enthusiasm helps bring the critical project into focus. There was, and still is, a prominent secularizing strain of Enlightenment thought that is categorically hostile to and dismissive of religion, mystical experience, and metaphysical speculation. Such thinkers are attracted to Kant’s arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason against the possibility of knowledge of the supersensible, particularly knowledge of God and the immortality of the soul. They are also attracted to Kant’s case for the limitation of reason’s employment to the realm of sense experience. These philosophical conclusions are seen as necessary steps toward a completely secular, this-worldly culture. But confining reason to the sensory realm was not Kant’s ultimate goal. Nor did Kant think mankind’s highest aim is the ‘‘mastery and possession of nature.’’ Instead, as Kant famously said in the first Critique, he found it necessary to limit reason in order to make room for faith—not necessarily traditional religious faith, but a moral faith based in practical reason—in the very things the philosophers claimed to demonstrate and the enthusiasts claimed to perceive , namely, the existence of a provident God and the immortality of the human soul. To see Kant’s project properly, we must appreciate that, while his mind may have belonged to the Enlightenment, his heart belonged with the enthusiasts. What Is Enthusiasm? According to Kant, ‘‘Enthusiasm,’’ a term he associates with mysticism and illuminism, ‘‘is . . . a pious arrogance, and is induced by a certain pride and quite excessive self-confidence to get nearer to heavenly natures and to elevate itself by an astonishing flight over the usual and prescribed order. The enthusiast speaks only of immediate inspiration [Eingebung] and of contemplative life.’’2 Kant does not use Schwärmerei to refer merely to religious enthusiasm, for the desire to know ‘‘heavenly natures’’ is a philosophical as well as a religious concern—hence Kant’s references to the contemplative, that is, philosophical life. For Kant, enthusiasm refers to all attempts to achieve immediate, intuitive knowledge of the supersensible, including those of such philosophers as Plato and Spinoza, who appeal to mystical or intellectual intuition (OBS 108–109). Unfortunately, the enthusiast’s direct knowledge of the supersensible is not available to the rest of us. In Kant’s words, ‘‘there is no longer any public touchstone of truth.’’3 But Kant holds that reason cannot work unless there are common, publicly available standards of truth and falsehood. Thus Kant branded all claims of direct knowledge of the supersensible ‘‘the death of all philosophy.’’4 Furthermore, Kant regarded enthusiasm as not only bad for The Tree of Melancholy 45 philosophy, but bad for the public, for conflicting claims about religion that cannot be settled by reason tend to be settled by force. Thus it would be natural to conclude that Kant was an implacable enemy of enthusiasm.5 But this is not the whole...