In Defense of Kant's Religion

7. Book Three of Religion

181 π Book Three of Religion As we move into Book Three, we approach the vision portion of the problemsolution -vision shape of Kant’s first experiment in Religion. Prior to analyzing this vision from the vantage point of our reading of Books One and Two, however, we should say a word regarding how interpreters typically approach Book Three. As mentioned above in chapter 3, Gordon Michalson’s research on Kant began with an emphasis on Kant’s notion of historical faith as a vehicle for rational religion. This emphasis represents an influential trend in the field of Kant-studies, which reads Religion through a Book-Three lens. The later career of Allen Wood is in many ways typical of the field in this regard. Wood avers, ‘‘The historical function of ecclesiastical faith is to serve as the vehicle for pure rational religion. But it is also to serve as the shell in which rational religion is encased and from which humanity’s historical task is to free the religion of reason. . . . The plain intent here is to abolish the church’s hierarchical constitution.’’1 With this abolishment of the church’s hierarchical constitution on the horizon of Wood’s understanding of Religion, Kant’s prototypical theology becomes less important to Kant’s rational religion than the corporate struggle to realize the good principle here on earth. The recent work of Peter Byrne and Sharon Anderson-Gold echo the sentiments of the later Wood. Their respective interpretations provide what we might term a moral-humanist approach to interpreting Religion. In his book The Moral Interpretation of Religion, Byrne emphasizes the Book-Three presentation of an ethical commonwealth as the argumentative apex of Religion. To juxtapose Byrne’s interpretive strategy with our own, Byrne sees Book The Defense of Kant’s Religion 182 Three not as the vision portion of Religion, but as the solution portion. Where we see the solution to radical evil taking place in Kant’s articulation in Book Two of rational faith in the prototype, Byrne sees Kant’s so-called solution to radical evil in Book Two to be controversial and wholly inadequate. The real solution in Religion, for him, is found in the collective moral agency of humanity in Book Three. Citing the difficulties noted by Michalson and others, Byrne writes, ‘‘It is a key part of Kant’s argument in Religion that the creation of the ‘Kingdom of God,’ which is the society of all people on earth ruled by moral laws alone, is possible only through ‘a public form of obligation.’ ’’2 The genius of Religion, as Byrne sees it, is not the anatomy of moral redemption laid out in Book Two, but the meta-ethical implications of seeing the moral law (which was shown to be personally taxing to the point of despair in Books One and Two) as a corporate set of ethical demands that humans can strive to achieve in unison. This movement to the corporate allows Kant’s moral philosophy to use the strength of civil institutions to make the quest for moral renewal more plausible . Byrne writes, ‘‘Kant’s underlying thought here—surely a plausible one—is that only in and through cooperative human effort can the full human power to combat evil and pursue good be realized and enhanced.’’3 In brief, Byrne finds Kant’s solution to radical evil in the collective moral agency of human beings and the socio-political implications of this ethical community. Like Byrne, Anderson-Gold argues in Unnecessary Evil: History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant that collective moral agency is the key to understanding Religion. As she puts it: Kant’s analysis of the conditions of enlightenment points beyond the individual and identifies the need for the development of an enlightened public . If evil is rooted in the sociocultural aspects of the human condition, it goes deeper than external institutions. External institutions are the result of sociocultural processes that must become the subject of moral improvement . By reconceptualizing the overcoming of evil as a social process, it is possible to build a bridge between Kant’s ethics and his philosophy of history.4 Anderson-Gold theorizes that in order to overcome the conundrums created by the introduction of radical evil, Kant’s philosophy of religion needs more than merely individual resolutions to pursue the good; it needs a corporate resolution in conjunction with sociocultural processes aimed at producing justice. Anderson-Gold writes, ‘‘In introducing the...