Kantian Transpositions: Derrida and the Philosophy of Religion

Notes

109 notes introduction epigraph: Nancy, L’impératif catégorique, 59, quoted in Fenves, review of L’impératif catégorique, 1136. 1. FK, 8, italics in the original. 2. WA, 50. 3. WA, 49. 4. Naas, Miracle and Machine, 6. 5. Ibid., 310. 6. For a thorough overview of such literature, see Shakespeare, Derrida and Theology, chapter 7. Chapter 1 1. Jaeschke, Reason in Religion, 2. 2. Ibid., 3. 3. Ibid., 3–4. Jean Greisch notes that the first known use of the phrase “philosophy of religion” is by Sigismund von Storchenau (1731–1797), a Jesuit and Wolffian philosopher who published a Philosophie der Religion in 1772 (expanded to seven volumes over the years 1773–1781). This title was probably inspired by A. F. Ruckersfelder’s Philosophia de religione naturali (1770). Nevertheless, as Greisch writes, the contents of this work conformed to the classic natural theology , with the apologetic intent of defending Catholicism as the true religion. Consequently, Greisch claims that the true philosophical profile of the “philosophy of religion” takes form with Karl Reinhold’s Letters on the Kantian Philosophy (1786–1787). This would largely conform to Jaeschke’s historical conclusions. See Greisch, Le Buisson ardent, 31. 4. This is also the position of Louis Dupré. Unlike Jaeschke, Dupré does not follow the fate of Kant’s ethicotheology as such, but rather claims that, after restricting reliable theoretical knowledge to the phenomenal sphere, thereby precluding any claims of theoretical knowledge concerning the transcendent, “Kant left no avenue open to the religious object but that of experience itself.” A Dubious Heritage, 4. Consequently, for Dupré, the fundamental challenge that Kant bequeathed to all subsequent attempts to think religion philosophically was to find out how theoretical support for God’s existence could be demonstrated on the basis of experience alone, and how that experience could be “legitimated within the context of human autonomy.” Ibid., 3. Thus Dupré’s study of the philosophy of religion after Kant begins with Schleiermacher, and traces this prob- 110 N O T E S T O P A G E S 4 – 8 lematic into the work of Husserl, Blondel, and Duméry. James Collins, on the other hand, in The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion, makes his beginning not with Kant, but with Hume. Hume was no doubt a central figure in the religious controversies of Kant’s time, and Hamann and Jacobi exploited his writings to great effect. For the place of Hume in these religious controversies, see Beiser, The Fate of Reason, 89–91, as well as di Giovanni, “Introduction.” It nevertheless remains that while Hume—at least according to Jaeschke’s criteria—no doubt interpreted religion and the philosophical justifications for it in light of his own empiricist philosophy, it was never his project to establish a “philosophy of religion ” as such. 5. Jaeschke, Reason in Religion, 4–5. 6. For a detailed examination of Kant’s treatment of the traditional proof for the existence of God in the first Critique and beyond it, see Wood, Kant’s Rational Theology. 7. Jaeschke, Reason in Religion, 5. 8. “Now let us ask: what is the minimum of theology required for religion? What is the smallest useful cognition of God that can accordingly move us to have faith in God and thus direct our course of life? What is the smallest, narrowest concept of theology? It is that we need a religion, and that the concept is sufficient for natural religion. There is this minimum, however, if I see that my concept of God is possible and that it does not contradict the laws of the understanding .—Can everyone be convinced of this much? Yes, everyone can, because no one is in a position to rob us of this concept and prove that it is impossible. Hence this is the smallest possible requirement for a religion. Provided that this alone is made a ground, there can always be religion.” LPR, 28:998. 9. Kant goes on, in the same passage, to say that this possible God “is not the maximum of theology. It would be better if I knew that such a being actually existed.” Ibid., 28:998–99. 10. CPrR, 5:146. 11. CPrR, 5:147. 12. “Natural morality must be so constituted that it can be thought independently of any concept of God, and obtain zealous reverence from us solely on account of its own inner dignity and excellence.” LPR, 28:1002–1003. 13. CPrR, 5:110. 14. CPR, A 806...