Through Narcissus' Glass Darkly: The Modern Religion of Conscience

One Unscaffolding Religious "Madness"

o n e Unscaffolding Religious ‘‘Madness’’ Flying up, crossing over, going forward. Passing through, getting deep enough. Breaking into, finding the way, living at the heart and going beyond that. Finally realizing that arriving is not the same as being resident. That what we do is not what we are doing. — j a c k g i l b e r t J. C. Lavater, the Swiss poet, mystic, and renowned physiognomist, wrote to Kant in 1775, seeking Kant’s opinion of his book on faith and prayer, Vermischte Schriften (1774). An ardent admirer of Kant who often wrote encouraging him to bring his new work to publication, Lavater apparently anticipated a positive endorsement. To his dismay, Kant’s 28 April 1775, reply was anything but favorable: ‘‘Do you realize whom you are asking? A man who believes that, in the final moment, only the purest candor concerning our most hidden inner convictions can stand the test and who, like Job, takes it to be sin to flatter God and make inner confessions, perhaps forced out by fear, that fail to agree with what we freely think.’’1 Kant then filled out his response, setting forth the principal lines of a perspective that would be published eighteen years later as Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793). ‘‘My presupposition,’’ he wrote in a postscript to the letter, ‘‘is that no book, whatever its authority might be— yes, even one based on the authority of my own senses—can substitute for 18 Unscaffolding Religious ‘‘Madness’’ 19 the religion of conscience.’’2 Distinguishing between the teachings of Christ and the historical reports about those teachings, between moral teaching and dogma, Kant insisted that that the moral law alone tells us what we must do to be worthy of justification, whereas dogma merely reports what God has done to help us see our frailty in seeking justification. Hence as historical reports of what God does, neither dogma nor confessions of faith, neither appeals to holy names nor observance of religious ceremonies purported to be a condition of salvation, are of any avail in making us any more worthy of the good. Rather, despite the ‘‘insuperable evil of our hearts,’’ nothing is needed for our ‘‘union with this divine force’’ beyond using our ‘‘natural God-given powers in such a way as not to be unworthy of His aid.’’3 But we may only humbly rely on this ‘‘hidden supplement to our deficiencies’’ if we have done what is in our power ‘‘not to be unworthy of his Law.’’4 So confident was Kant in this view that he declared: ‘‘But once the doctrine of the purity of conscience in faith and of the good transformation of our lives has been sufficiently propagated as the only true religion for man’s salvation (the faith that God, in a manner we need not at all understand, will provide what our frail natures lack, without seeking His aid by means of the so-called worship that religious fanaticism always demands)—when this true religious structure has been built up so that it can maintain itself in the world—then the scaffolding must be taken down.’’5 What is it about Kant’s religion of conscience, the criticism it embodied, and its seemingly new sense of certitude that became a catalyst for radical change in the history of European high culture? The religion of conscience served simultaneously as an attack on both Enlightenment moral utopianism and historical religious dogmatism. Against those utopians who believed that after the abolition of religious and political institutions, the natural bonds of human solidarity would reemerge, or those who thought that human satisfaction could be achieved once ‘Nature’ was mastered through technological self-assertion, Kant showed that freedom inevitably entailed the possibility of evil. Against those religious dogmatists who taught that conformity of human conduct with the divine commands would lead to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, Kant maintained that freedom implies the impossibility of eradicating evil. When, therefore, Kant called for the removal of ‘‘the scaffolding,’’ he had more in mind than the practices of the Christian Church. 20 Unscaffolding Religious ‘‘Madness’’ The subject of this essay is the broader reach of Kant’s call for removing such a scaffolding. As will become evident, the reach included epistemological assumptions and their political ramifications that underlay not only Christian...