Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) by Immanuel Kant

Author:Immanuel Kant [Kant, Immanuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1998-11-26T06:00:00+00:00

Division two

Historical representation of the gradual establishment

of the dominion of the good principle on earth

We cannot expect to draw a universal history of the human race from religion on earth (in the strictest meaning of the word); for, inasmuch as it is based on pure moral faith, religion is not a public condition; each human being can become conscious of the advances which he has made in this faith only for himself. Hence we can expect a universal historical account only of ecclesiastical faith, by comparing it, in its manifold and mutable forms, with the one, immutable, and pure religious faith. From this point onward, where ecclesiastical faith publicly acknowledges its dependence on the restraining conditions of religious faith, and its necessity to conform to it, the church universal begins to fashion itself into an ethical state of God and to make progress toward its fulfillment, under an autonomous principle which is one and the same for all human beings and for all times. – We can see in advance that this history will be nothing but the narrative of the enduring conflict between the faith of divine service and the faith of moral religion, the first of which, as historical faith, human beings are constantly inclined to place higher, while the second has, for its part, never relinquished its claim to the preeminence that pertains to it as the only faith which improves the soul – a claim which, at the end, it will surely assert.

This history can have unity, however, only if merely restricted to that portion of the human race in which the predisposition to the unity of the universal church has already been brought close to its development. [6:125] For here the question at least of the distinction between a rational and a historical faith is already being openly stated, and its resolution made a matter of the greatest moral concern; whereas the history of the dogmas of various peoples, whose faiths are in no way connected, is no guarantee of the unity of the church. Nor can the fact that at some point a certain new faith arises in one and the same people, substantially different from the previously dominant one, be counted as [indication] of this unity, even if, inherent in the previous faith, were the occasional causes of the new production. For we must have a principle of unity if we are to count as modifications of one and the same church the succession of different forms of faith which replace one another – and it is really with the history of that church that we are now concerned.

For this purpose, therefore, we can deal only with the history of the church which from the beginning bore within it the germ and the principles of the objective unity of the true and universal religious faith to which it is gradually being brought nearer. – And it is apparent, first of all, that the Jewish faith stands in absolutely no essential connection, i.e. in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.