Introduction
Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell in their recent book The Evolution of Moral Progress emphasize that ‘recognizing our moral achievements and that our progressive social movements can succeed even in the face of overwhelming opposition can energize … further efforts at moral reform’ (Reference Buchanan and Powell2018: 9). The authors claim therefore that we need a theory of moral progress (10ff.). First, this theory should have a classifying function, but in addition, it should ‘provide an account of how the path of moral progress can be traversed that is compatible with [the relevant facts about human beings]’ to ‘show that moral progress is both feasible and permissible’. Furthermore, ‘it should also supply some specific guidance as to how moral progress can be achieved’ (27; cf. 31). Accordingly, a theory of moral progress provides us first with a better understanding of what moral progress consists in, and second with a practical guide to achieving it.
In contrast, postcolonial and decolonial theories have contested the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, hegemonic or neo-colonialist misconception. In her book The End of Progress, Amy Allen states that ‘the developmentalist, progressive reading of history … and the so-called civilizing mission of the West, which … continues to underwrite the informal imperialism or neo-colonialism of the current world … order, are deeply intertwined’ (Allen Reference Allen2016: 3). In current critical theory, Allen detects a propensity to combine the ‘commitment to progress as a future-oriented moral-political goal’ with a commitment to ‘the discourse of progress as an empirical history’ (6), ‘oriented toward the past’ (11–12). While the first conception comprises progress as ‘a moral-political imperative … that we are striving to achieve’, the second refers to ‘a judgment about the learning process that has led up to “us,” a judgment that views “our” conception of reason, “our” moral-political institutions, “our” social practices, “our” form of life as the result of a process of sociocultural development describing progress as a “fact”’ (12). While acknowledging the significance of the first conception as it allows us ‘to strive to improve the human condition’, Allen is clearly critical of the second since it ‘ignores the extent to which the distinctively European form of modernity … was a product not of Europe alone but of Europe’s interaction with the non-West’ (17).
Kant addresses questions of moral progress in his critical writings concerning the highest good as the final end of human action (Silber Reference Silber1963, Engstrom Reference Engstrom1992, Moran Reference Moran2012, especially ch. 1). Mainly in the third part of Religion, the question of how moral progress can be possible and ensured becomes the central topic of his analyses, both for the individual and at the social level (see Kleingeld Reference Kleingeld1995: 160). Here, Kant is concerned with the question of how morality can be realized in a community with other human beings, such that we can overcome the propensity to evil that we are confronted with in the presence of others, and with how the highest good can be realized in an ethical community. In the second division of this third part, he offers some historical-philosophical considerations regarding actual progress in the history of ecclesiastical faith.
In what follows, I will first summarize, with recourse to Kant’s critical writings, his conception of the highest good as the final end of moral action and explain the role the ethical community plays with regard to the highest good.Footnote 1 In section 2, I will analyse the idea of God as a legislator of this community and discuss why it should have the form of a church. In addition, the difference between the visible and the invisible church are examined as well as different functions of religious and ecclesiastical faith for the realization of moral progress, to which I return in section 3. Finally, in section 4, I will compare Kant’s moral-philosophical conception of an invisible church with his remarks on ecclesiastical history and return to the distinction between progress as an imperative and progress as a fact. The conclusion shows how Kant’s insights are in accordance with the argument that we should not look for comprehensive moral progress in history but adhere more to the idea of possible future moral progress.
Section 1
While in his historical-philosophical worksFootnote 2 Kant is primarily concerned with legal and political progress,Footnote 3 he treats questions of moral progress in relation to the ‘highest good’ as the ultimate purpose of human striving and acting. The realization of the highest good in its two meanings, namely the ‘supreme’ and the ‘complete’, should be possible.Footnote 4 Virtue as ‘supreme condition’ presupposes that the respective disposition completely conforms to the moral law, which Kant calls ‘holiness’; this holiness must therefore be ‘just as possible as its object is’ (CPrR, 5: 122). However, this can only be an idea of regulative function since human beings can always succumb to their inclinations and are never able to have a completely moral disposition (ibid.). If they should nevertheless aspire to it, it must be assumed that they can ‘in an endless progress … [attain] complete conformity’ (ibid.). Only if this possibility exists, can human beings be asked to strive for holiness. At the same time, as not holy but a finite rational being, a human being can never be sure to achieve this end. Thus, as Allen Wood highlights:
man … can only seek holiness through a maxim of steady progress toward it. Thus, when Kant speaks of the good man’s highest maxim as ‘the maxim of holiness of the disposition’, he is … referring to … a maxim of progress toward holiness, the maxim of ‘incessant counteraction’ against man’s propensity to evil. … ‘The maxim of holiness of the disposition’ is therefore only the maxim of constant moral progress … (Wood Reference Wood1970: 230)
Adoption of such a ‘maxim of steady progress toward holiness’ of course does not entail that we will ever in fact have morally improved, but rather refers to the idea that we can improve. For Kant, such possibility of progress requires however that the ‘existence and personality of the same rational being continues endlessly’, which he translates as the ‘immortality of the soul’.Footnote 5 Although as finite rational beings, we can only assume that we can gradually approximate perfection in our character, without this assumption we would face an ultimately futile prospect. Only the idea that human beings can get continuously closer to virtue by becoming more and more rational offers a way out.
In addition, we must also believe in the grace of God. Otherwise, given the fact that human nature is radically evil, it would not be possible for one, as Wood states, ‘to conceive of an appropriation of a “righteousness not his own,” and of the practical possibility of moral perfection’ (Wood Reference Wood1970: 236). As he emphasizes, ‘man makes himself morally “receptive” to grace by becoming good “insofar as it is in his power” to do so’ (241); only then will God ‘complete by his verdict of forgiving grace these imperfect efforts to attain complete moral perfection’ (245). As Kant highlights in the first part of his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, ‘everyone must do as much as it is in his powers to do’. However, as human power is insufficient, hope is required that ‘what does not lie in [our] power will be made good by cooperation from above’ (Rel, 6: 52).
In any case God is needed for a second reason, namely with respect to the condition of happiness commensurate with virtue, as the second element of the highest good. Yet, whether virtuous actions will in fact lead to happiness of course does not depend merely on the agent’s will, since they may always be confronted with unexpected obstacles. Only the assumption of a God who accomplishes what human beings could not despite all their virtuous efforts – namely to rationally organize the world as a whole – allows the virtuous to hope for happiness.Footnote 6
Although various points of interpretation might be discussed with regard to the summary just provided,Footnote 7 it should suffice for our purposes. In any case, in the third part of Religion, Kant complements his theses concerning the highest good, now focusing on the social dimension of human actions (Moran Reference Moran2012, Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014, Reference Pasternack2017, Reath Reference Reath1988). In these passages, he continues to be concerned with the question of how, or at least in what sense, human beings can overcome radical evil. His starting point here is the idea that ‘as soon as [a human being] is among human beings’ (Rel, 6: 94) ‘his nature … will be determined by ‘[envy], addiction to power, avarice and the malignant inclinations associated with these’,Footnote 8 and thus lacking a ‘principle which unites them’ human beings will endanger each other in their predisposition towards goodness and fail to progress against the propensity to evil.Footnote 9
The Critique of the Power of Judgement and other writings suggest that ‘[d]eceit, violence, and envy’ as motives referring to others confuse human beings in their moral nature.Footnote 10 To be sure, human beings cognize the moral law through the power of reason and are motivated through a corresponding feeling of respect to act accordingly. However, again, as Kant states in the third part of Religion, this moral attitude becomes corrupted by way of our relations with others.Footnote 11 And indeed, as Papish emphasizes,Footnote 12 this may even be so quite independently of any assumption regarding radical evil:
the failure to understand how others engage in [good works], and the failure to communicate or even fully grasp one’s own approach to virtue … can lead to social stagnation, confused or poorly articulated plans for action, distrust, and any number of civil conditions so divisive or problematic that we must regard them ‘as if’ they were the handiwork or machinery of evil. (Papish Reference Papish2018: 221–2)
In response to this prospect, Kant reflects on a social structure that can contribute to preventing or reducing this negative social influence on our moral predisposition.Footnote 13 For as long as such a structure is missing, human beings remain in a state that, while ethical, can be described as an ethical state of nature. This is a ‘state of an incessant combat through evil’ that ‘the natural human being ought to endeavor to leave behind as soon as possible’.Footnote 14
This ‘ought’, however, is a special duty not merely of individuals but of all humanity with regard to itself. Its collective character, for Kant, is based on the consideration that ‘every species of rational beings is objectively – in the idea of reason – destined to a common end, namely the promotion of the highest good as a good common to all’.Footnote 15 Thus, we must leave the ethical state of nature to avoid forfeiting that good to the propensity of evil.Footnote 16 In addition, insofar as Kant identifies the highest good as a common end, we seem constrained to look to some institutional structure to ‘protect’ it – in analogy to the protection of external freedom as the end of the politico-civil state (cf. Ebels-Duggan Reference Ebels-Duggan2009: especially 14). Even though individuals might be able to remain moral by virtue of their own reason, the realization of the morality of all others and thus of their own happiness would still be in danger. The realization of the highest good thus demands that all persons unite themselves ‘into a whole toward that very end, [i.e.] toward a system of well-disposed human beings’ (Rel, 6: 98).
Kant refers to the idea of an institution in which these unified endeavours may be realized as an ‘ethical community’. He considers this idea to be entirely different from that of a community of all acting in accordance with moral laws (Rel, 6: 98). For in the case of the moral law, we know that the required action could also be performed by us – an individual ‘ought’ implies an individual ‘can’. By contrast, here we must work ‘toward a whole of which we cannot know whether as a whole it is also in our power’ (ibid.) – a collective ‘ought’ does not imply an individual ‘can’. To compensate for individual weaknesses, or as Papish emphasizes, to avoid ‘moral misunderstandings’ (Papish Reference Papish2018: 203), what is required is to unify ‘the forces of single individuals, insufficient on their own … [to achieve] a common effect’ (Rel, 6: 98). Yet, each individual remains subject of this duty and must ‘so conduct himself as if everything depended on him. Only on this condition may he hope that a higher wisdom will provide the fulfillment of his well-intentioned effort’ (101).
Section 2
Most crucially for our purposes, this hope for a completion of our limited efforts toward virtue requires the ‘presupposition of another idea, namely, of a higher moral being’ (Rel, 6: 98). Why exactly, beyond what we have already seen? First, in accordance with the already described function of the practical postulate, to compensate for the inadequacies of the individual’s own actions: no one can set up an ethical community on their own. But whether others will contribute their part is uncertain. To strive for this realization, human beings must be able to hope that others will contribute their share to the realization of this collective duty. This hope again implies the idea of a higher being that can carry out what transcends our possibilities.
An additional function of this idea of a God, however, becomes visible when Kant also defines the ethical community as one of ‘a people of God under ethical laws’ in which ‘all individuals must be subjected to a public legislation’ (Rel, 6: 98). In a political community, the element that creates commonality must of course be public legislation. Therefore, ‘all the laws binding [these individuals] must be capable of being regarded as commands of a common lawgiver’ (ibid.). In contrast to a political community, however, in an ethical community ‘the people, as a people, cannot itself be regarded as legislator’ (99). The aim of such community is to promote morality. But since this consists in the right internal disposition, it is excluded from the start that it can be ‘subject to public human laws’ (ibid.). To such laws, only actions can be subject, since they alone are effects in the world accessible to others. Dispositions would need a different legislator, ‘with respect to whom all true duties, and the ethical duty, must be represented as at the same time his commands’ (ibid.). Only a lawgiver ‘who knows the heart’ and ‘give[s] to each according to the worth of his actions’ is able to ‘penetrate to the most intimate parts of the dispositions’ (ibid.). In Kant’s view, such a legislator corresponds to the ‘concept of God as a moral ruler of the world’.Footnote 17 As a result, ‘an ethical community is conceivable only as a people under divine commands, i.e. as a people of God, and indeed in accordance with the laws of virtue’.Footnote 18 Thus I agree with Pasternack and others that, despite Kant’s emphasis on individual responsibility, ‘God is clearly presented as … the only one who can establish the ideal ethical community’.Footnote 19
At the same time, Kant rejects the idea that these laws of virtue can ‘be thought as proceeding originally merely from the will of this superior’ (Rel, 6: 99; emphasis added except for the word in bold font). For if these laws had their bindingness only through God and their origin only in him, they could not be considered to be ‘ethical laws’ or to refer to a disposition to the corresponding duty as ‘free virtue’ (ibid.). According to Kant, moral responsibility presupposes moral autonomy through which human beings can give themselves the moral law by virtue of their reason. If God were the legislator of those laws, then exactly this thesis of Kant would be in jeopardy. Thus Johannes Keienburg, for example, worries that the assumption of God as ‘origin and the supervisory authority of all morality contradicts Kant’s own premisses’ (Keienburg Reference Keienburg2011: 132; my translation) that morality is only possible under a free will (131). How can God be the Lawgiver and humans at the same time act as autonomous beings?
One way to deal with this incongruity is to emphasize that Kant does not identify the foundation but only the promotion of morality as the end of the ethical community: as rational beings we still give ourselves the moral law.Footnote 20 The assumption of a lawgiver with exceeding authority leaves Kant’s justification of morality untouched and just serves to guarantee that we really comply with the moral law in community with others. Thus reason remains always the author of the moral law, and God is only the co-author of the laws in an ethical community,Footnote 21 determining only their form as ethical laws. Nevertheless, Kant ascribes the function of a ‘moral ruler of the world’ to the divine authority who sanctions our actions (Rel, 6: 99). To my mind, the most convincing way to fit this into Kant’s framework is simply to reduce it to the role of God with regard to the highest good, namely as the one who can save us by grace and if we, by acting virtuously, became worthy of happiness, make us indeed proportionally happy, without us acting however on this hope nor counting on it.
However, since for Kant such a community is to be that of ‘a people of God under ethical laws’ (Rel, 6: 98), it becomes clear why it is only conceivable for him in the form of a church. Hereby, of course, I manifestly endorse a non-secular reading of Kant’s conception of an ethical communityFootnote 22 in addition, as above, to that of his conception of the highest good. For church is, as Kant stresses again just shortly after, conceived as nothing else than ‘an ethical community under divine moral legislation’ (Rel, 6: 101). However, this is not as one might think to speak of a Christian community of faith administrated and represented by the clergy in an organized institution. As Wood explains, Kant considers church as ‘a community devoted to the strengthening in its members of religion, the inner disposition to fulfill all duties as divine commands’ (Reference Wood1970: 192). On the other hand, Kant a little further on compares church to
the constitution of a household … under a common though invisible moral father,Footnote 23 whose holy son knows the father’s will and yet stands in blood relation with all the family members, takes his father’s place by making other members better acquainted with his will; these therefore honor the father in him and thus enter into a free, universal and enduring union of hearts. (Rel, 6: 102)
The proximity of this analogy to Christian images is quite obvious but the moral meaning is paramount.Footnote 24
In equal keeping with the Christian tradition, Kant differentiates further between the ‘invisible’ and ‘the visible’ church. Luther, for example, distinguishes following Augustine between the ‘invisible’ or ‘spiritual’ and ‘the visible Church’.Footnote 25 Likewise, Calvin distinguishes between the visible and the invisible church (Calvin Reference Calvin2002: IV.1.7, p. 628). Whereas the invisible church is the church of the truly elected, the visible church also has dissemblers in its ranks.Footnote 26
For Kant, church as invisible is a ‘mere idea of the union of all upright human beings under direct yet moral divine world-governance’. As such, ‘it is not the object of a possible experience’ (Rel, 6: 101). The visible church, however, is ‘the actual union of human beings into a whole that accords with this ideal’.Footnote 27 Thus Kant characterizes the (true) visible church as being open to all human beings and as being based on moral incentives. Moreover, its members belong to it by free will. Finally, it should only be modifiable in administrative concerns. Its constitution should be unchangeable.Footnote 28 No doubt, the visible church that Kant had in mind does not coincide with any existing institutionalized Christian churchFootnote 29 because the churches that existed at the time of his writing were at odds with each other and were by no means exclusively based on a morality guided by reason. In addition, most human beings did not deliberately choose to be members of a church or any other religious community. Moreover, their ecclesiastical constitution was always subject to change.Footnote 30
Kant’s true visible church diverges from the invisible only in its form of appearance and not in its content or in its claim to truth. It provides the invisible idea with the necessary reality in experience, for a church, as a ‘union of many human beings of equally many dispositions in a moral community, needs a public form of obligation’ (Rel, 6: 105, translation slightly adapted) and therefore an organization handed down historically. And it is the task of human beings to accordingly realize and organize such a community. This argument might support a more secular reading of Kant’s ethical community. However, even though Kant emphasizes the efforts of human beings, that community should still be organized in form of a church: they must strive for its realization by giving it, on the one hand, a public obligation in the form of (divine) statutory laws and, on the other hand, acting virtuously and, as I will explain shortly, approximating its ecclesiastical faith to pure religious faith. Indeed, many of the attempts at realizing such a church have shown a rather ‘unhappy result’ (ibid.), but human beings should not give up the idea that its approximation is possible.
Section 3
Thus the realization of the true visible churchFootnote 31 becomes the aspiration of all moral progress. All human beings should strive to achieve it jointly by founding a visible community on the (invisible) idea of the unification of all human beings under divine commandments. Admittedly, Kant considers it as rather ‘presumptuous’ to declare the laws founding the church ‘straightaway as divine and statutory’, ‘in order to spare ourselves the trouble of improving the church’s form further’ (Rel, 6: 105). However, he deems it
just as arrogant peremptorily to deny that the way a church is organized may … also be a special divine dispensation, if … the church [seems obviously] in perfect harmony with moral religion, and if, in addition, we cannot see how it could ever have made its appearance … without the requisite preparatory advances of the public in religious concepts. (105–6)
In my view, this passage equally indicates that Kant does not want to release human beings from their duty or responsibility to establish an ethical community.Footnote 32 Yet, he admits the limitation of human capacities to conceive of its possible divine origin: such knowledge exceeds our knowledge just as we cannot know whether particular actions are morally good. In any case, here again, moral progress is described by Kant as a duty (common to all) and not as a fact.
Thus a certain tension becomes manifest. Admittedly, an ethical community must be perceptible to the extent that all members find themselves unified in an institution with a shared principle manifesting itself in some form of visible practice. Yet, the right choice of the highest maxim underlying all moral action is not perceptible to the public. The ethical community shall, for one thing, be visible through statutory laws held as divine, but then again, Kant assigns such laws, relative ‘to our purely moral judgment’, as ‘arbitrary and contingent’ (Rel, 6: 168). Accordingly, to regard such laws as ‘essential to the service of God in general’ Kant considers a ‘delusion of religion, and acting upon it’ would mean acting ‘directly contrary to the true service’ (ibid.). How may it nevertheless be possible, asks Flikschuh for example, that the ‘visible church of the invisible community of the worshipers express … outwardly the divine will without thereby taking on the characteristics of a public legislative power and jurisprudence whose claim to authority Kant afterwards rejects as counterfeit service’?Footnote 33
The complex relation between the visible and invisible church may become at least slightly clearer by taking into account Kant’s corresponding distinction between religious faith and ecclesiastical faith. While true religious faith merely implies ‘[fulfilling one’s] duties toward human beings’ (Rel, 6: 103) and thus equals moral faith (see Wood Reference Wood1970: ch. 5), ecclesiastical faith as a historical belief in divine revelation tends towards the obedience to statutory laws (106). Unambiguously, a true church is based on the obedience to the moral law as its constitutive principle, which means that it is based on religious faith. Thus Kant is certain that we do not have to do other than to act morally to worship God (112). Yet, he also considers religious faith as insufficient to establish a church (103) because honouring God only by ‘mere reason’ is not possible in a church (105). He explains this by the fact that human nature is finite: human beings cannot consider themselves obligated by virtue of obedience to God unless they seek ‘to please him through passive obedience, however morally indifferent the actions might be in themselves’ (103). Kant concludes that ecclesiastical faith is better placed than religious faith to motivate human beings to unite themselves in an ethical community and thus precedes the latter (106), for he perceives a ‘natural need of all human beings to demand for even the highest concepts and grounds of reason something that the senses can hold on to’.Footnote 34 This need ‘must also be seriously taken into account when the intention is to introduce a faith universally’ (109).
Hence, it is to ecclesiastical faith that Kant ascribes the important task of accommodating the weakness of human nature. Yet, he does not spell out how human participation in ecclesiastical faith can become finally representative participation in ‘true religion’, necessary for the realization of an ethical community as a kingdom of God. An ‘historical’ ecclesiastical faith, he argues, does not serve the actual moral end and is ‘something in itself entirely indifferent, and one can do with it what one wills’ (Rel, 6: 111; translation slightly modified). It is only as a ‘means to [the] promotion and propagation’ of ‘moral legislation, through which God’s will is originally engraved in our hearts’ that Kant gives serious weight to ecclesiastical beliefs (104): examining the historical faith in revelation and its statutory laws is necessary to determine whether they harmonize ‘with the universal practical rules of a pure religion of reason’.Footnote 35
The duty to approximate ecclesiastical faith more and more to religious faith, and thus to reason, implies an epistemic dimension of progress.Footnote 36 As Kant admits, we all know the moral law by means of our reason and thus we should also know that true religion only consists in fulfilling one’s ‘duties toward human beings’. However, if ecclesiastical faith is not identical with pure religious faith but only gradually approaching it, then its moral content may only become gradually epistemically accessible. This process might be understood as a form of epistemic progress eventually leading however to progress in practice. The actual content of religion consists, for Kant, in the ‘moral improvement of human beings’ (Rel, 6: 112). All interpretations of the Bible should take that as their principle of orientation.Footnote 37 Only insofar as traditional ecclesiastical faith corresponds to this end does it have moral authority (cf. ibid.). Acknowledging indeed a certain utility of ecclesiastical faith,Footnote 38 Kant thus denies any existing church’s authority to determine itself which parts of the doctrines are relevant for true religious faith. Instead, he claims that ‘scholars submit their interpretations to public scrutiny’ (114), namely through reason shared by all human beings, and thereby ‘remain always open and receptive to better insight’ (ibid.). Here again, some sort of epistemic moral progress (equally not separable from practical progress) comes into play: human beings must be able to count on the agreement of the community, a point by which Kant reduces the content of ecclesiastical faith to its rational core.
To the assumption that individual moral progress is required and possible a further notion of progress is added, phrased as a duty to bring ecclesiastical faith closer to bare religious faith and thus to reason. This progress is both epistemic and practical: human beings must understand that ecclesiastical faith should equal religious faith. However, again, religious faith mainly consists in ‘[fulfilling one’s] duties toward human beings’ (Rel, 6: 103). Only then is the ethical community realized as a ‘Kingdom of God’ (101). And yet again, this idea of social progress is formulated as an imperative rather than an empirical fact, leaving it indistinct whether and how far any historical church, with its ecclesiastical faith, helps to realize that objective.
Kant’s conception of an ecclesiastical faith is based, as Flikschuh observes, on the idea that its ‘pragmatic function, leading the ignorant from the historical traditional belief of revelation to pure religious faith’ (Flikschuh Reference Flikschuh and Höffe2011: 199, my translation), is temporally limited: ‘As soon as the ignorant are instructed, the ecclesiastical faith is needless’ (ibid.). Flikschuh considers it bizarre that ‘there should be a possibility of anyone ignorant in regard to reasonable faith’ (ibid.) because, for Kant, each human being already has access to this faith merely by virtue of reason – without any idea of epistemic progress implied. With respect to this function, ecclesiastical faith would be redundant.Footnote 39 Yet, Flikschuh sees a different ‘function of ecclesiastical faith indicated by Kant’: the ‘fortification of rational faith’, for ‘ecclesiastical faith preserves the “secrets” of the hope for God associated with morality’.Footnote 40 Concerning this second function, Flikschuh regards it as ‘senseless to strive towards an abolition of ecclesiastical faith’.Footnote 41 The fortification of morality can never be completed, and thus it is not a transitional phenomenon but rather temporally unlimited, a Sisyphean task – there is no persistent development and thus no progress without the possibility of regress.
Yet, Kant advocates the gradual overcoming of the traditional forms of belief. For both our ‘physical’ and our ‘moral predisposition’Footnote 42 demand that we free religion ‘of all statutes that rest on history and unite human beings provisionally for the promotion of the good through the intermediary of an ecclesiastical faith’, so that finally the ‘pure faith of religion will rule over all’Footnote 43 – although this can only imply an ongoing process whose realization we cannot envisage in finite time.
This teleological perspective thus includes the hope that ecclesiastical faith might be overcome one day, and so it is only an early stage of true religious faith; the practice of faith in existing visible churches is in a way infantile. The obedience to holy rules could have been sensible in the past but becomes ‘bit by bit dispensable, yea, finally, when a human being enters upon his adolescence, turns into a fetter’ (Rel, 6: 121). When the human being has finally become an adult (122), everyone may follow the law that they prescribe for themselves and that they acknowledge ‘at the same time as the will of the world ruler revealed to [the]msel[ves]’ (ibid.). This will create an invisible conjunction of all who follow its order, for which the rules of the existing visible churches have at best initiated and prepared (ibid.).
This duty or imperative to approach the telos of a kingdom of God is associated, according to Kant, with the idea of progress identifiable in the gradual cessation of mere statutory laws and other ceremonies, or in the gradual approximation to the true church as one acts more and more in conformity with the moral law. Yet, it is not clear whether approaching the ideal of an ethical community does really lead to moral progress (beyond the idea that human beings can realize the highest good only jointly) and how this progress can be further defended against the persisting weaknesses of human nature. For morality requires the right choice of maxims and thus a ‘revolution … in the mode of thought’, yet realizing the ethical community might only lead ‘to a gradual reformation in the mode of the sense’ (Rel, 6: 47), however progress made here may contribute to strengthen it.
Section 4
Thus we still do not clearly know whether and how moral progress can be realized. Yet, by expecting an approximation of ecclesiastical faith to religious faith or to the true church, Kant gives a normative criterion to evaluate the progress of an ethical community. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how and where such degrees of progress can be measured; and it is important to understand such progress not as tantamount to moral progress but rather as a ‘progress of ecclesiastical history’ (Brachtendorf Reference Brachtendorf and Höffe2011: 152, my translation).
Kant traces back such a development of ecclesiastical faith in the second division of the third part of Religion, as the ‘Historical representation of the gradual establishment of the dominion of the good principle on earth’. Here, where a backward-looking perspective is adopted for the first time, Kant first explains why he thinks Judaism does not qualify as an example of such ecclesiastical history. Namely, it does not constitute an ethical but instead a merely political community.Footnote 44 Moreover, Judaism lacks a public recognition of ‘its dependence on the restraining conditions of religious faith, and its necessity to conform to it’ (Rel, 6: 124). Therefore, it does not fulfil the conditions for the formation of an ‘ethical state of God’, nor is it possible for it ‘to make progress toward its fulfilment, under an autonomous principle’ (ibid.). Hereafter, Kant concentrates in his historical depiction on Christianity alone. For him, the ideal of the true church has already been realized in the life and ‘meritorious death’ of Jesus Christ, who ‘announced himself as one sent from heaven while … declaring … that servile faith … is inherently null; that moral faith, which alone makes human beings holy … is on the contrary the only one which sanctifies’ (128).
However, it is not possible, Kant concedes, to deduce from this exemplary sanctifying life-conduct ‘what effect its doctrine had upon the morality of its adherents’, since Christianity of that time had no ‘learned public’ that could have confirmed it (besides the fact that moral progress is not in any case perceivable) (Rel, 6: 130). The further development of Christianity Kant evaluates clearly negatively: futility, blind superstition, bad hierarchies, religious disputes as well as the takeover of the mundane realm by a clergyman who ‘ruled over kings … by means of … his threat of excommunication’ (131). In addition, he refers to the crusades and wars between Christians and finally to ‘bloodthirsty hatred against their otherwise-minded confreres in one and the same so-called universal Christianity’ (ibid.). Thus Kant summarizes the history of Christianity as abuse of power in the name of religion (ibid.).
Despite this evaluation of factual Christian history, Kant still sees its ‘true first purpose’ shining in Christianity, namely ‘the introduction of a pure religious faith, over which there can be no dissension of opinions’ (Rel, 6: 131). All quarrels and schisms result for him from ‘a bad propensity in human nature’ by which what initially was thought to serve as a means for introducing bare religious faith, namely converting the people ‘to the new faith, through its own prejudices’, became in fact its foundation (ibid.). Contrary to the true nature of original Christianity, in real ecclesiastical history the teaching of Jesus Christ did not serve as a support for morality and did not lead to any factual progress. Instead, there took effect in Christianity the ‘bad propensity’, the overcoming of which led Kant to introduce the duty to realize an ethical community.
From this evaluation of early Christianity Kant skips to his own time, praising the fact that in it ‘the seed of the true religious faith’ has been sown and only needs to continue to ‘grow unhindered’ (Rel, 6: 131). Thus, possibly in contrast to his intentions and to readers’ expectations of a development history of factual progress, Kant states that the current positive situation does not result from any continuous learning progress but is solely the outcome of ‘reason’.Footnote 45 Reason is in fact identified as the indicator for such improvement, freeing itself from the ‘burden of a faith constantly exposed to the arbitrariness of its interpreters’ (132). Thus ecclesiastical faith does not only need a rational content but also believers enlightened by reason, and thus human beings who have already carried out a ‘revolution in the mode of thought’ (47) and only need to carry out a reform in the mode of the senses (ibid.). They are supposed both to acknowledge the utility of the rational message contained in the scripture and equally understand that neither disputing about all other elements nor urging anyone to believe in the content of this book beyond this message is conducive to moral progress. Furthermore, as Kant emphasizes, churches only fulfil their function of teaching the moral doctrine by explaining ‘what we must do to become worthy of [happiness]’ (133). And this knowledge, he adds, could also be accessible by mere reason without membership in a factual church (ibid.).
The foundation of an ethical community was supposed to serve, for Kant, to overcome the propensity to evil and to strengthen the natural predisposition to good. But it is the enlightenment of reason that has in fact transformed and advanced the existing churches. So we could conclude that the church can be conducive to the morality of its members simply insofar as it recognizes its own limits and does not demand from its members anything that cannot also be asked for by reason.Footnote 46
Therefore, arguably, what is called for is a mere politics that does not interfere with questions of belief; rather it is, according to Kant, the ‘duty of the rulers’ (Rel, 6: 133) to safeguard these two principles of modesty in the interpretation of ecclesiastical faith and in its limitation to the protection of moral faith.
In his remark on ‘representation in a historical narrative of the future world’, Kant notices that it ‘is not itself history’ that allows for empirical prognoses (Rel, 6: 135). Instead it ‘is a beautiful ideal of the moral world-epoch brought about by the introduction of the true universal religion’ (135–6). Thus, according to Kant, we should ‘consider ourselves as actually the chosen citizens of a divine (ethical) state’. And concluding the third part he quotes Luke: ‘The Kingdom of God cometh not in visible form. … For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you!’ (136). Hence, Kant ends his history of progress in Christianity by claiming that we cannot empirically know its actual purpose, and therefore, this purpose cannot be part of history but rather must be inherent as a task in each human being. Indeed, while Kant does not believe that we can establish the ethical community and thus realize the highest good without religion and its institutions, he at the same time expects religion to be not only not unreasonable, but rather to arise from reason itself. So I would agree with the proponents of a theological interpretation that Kant does not defend a secular idea of the highest good in his Religion, but at the same time emphasize that in his view God, religion and church are based on reason to an extent that might in fact threaten the very distinction.
Kant’s focus on reason and Christianity,Footnote 47 and his clearly contemptuous assertions concerning Judaism and IslamFootnote 48 in his Religion, do not make him a forerunner of critical, postcolonial social theory, even if one might concede him a more progressive position with respect to other aspects of his work.Footnote 49 In any case, concerning the idea of progress and the role it plays in realizing morality, the conclusions one can retain from Kant’s Religion and other writings prove ambivalent. First, Kant obviously focuses on progress as imperative. Second, he nevertheless seems to tell an empirical story about Christianity which might be interpreted at first as an empirical story about factual progress. Yet, as Kant makes equally clear, there is no such continuous story but just evidence that the Christianity of his time might have been morally better than that of the Crusades or of the religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Footnote 50 This comparative evaluation, however, seems to result mainly from the estimation that, as a guiding principle, reason (accessible to all human beings and not only to Christians) in fact became effective. How this happened nevertheless remains an open question insofar as it refers to a revolution in the mode of thought. Third, Kant claims that the end of all progress – the highest good – can only be reached jointly, presumably in the mode of some sort of universal community.Footnote 51 Yet, and perhaps exactly for the latter reason, as such an imperative, Kant’s conception of progress may, after all, provide some sort of guideline for critical social theory – since particularly the idea that we can only progress in morality by striving jointly for an ethical community makes his practical philosophy more easily compatible with critical or postcolonial approaches. However, it remains to be seen just what secular form or forms might in fact be taken on by an ethical community as outlined by Kant.Footnote 52 And it remains unclear whether a possible prospective, empirically observable progress, in the form of what might be described as an approach of the visible church to the ideal of the invisible church, or as that of societal ecclesiastical beliefs to a commonly practised morality guided by reason, can indeed be considered as specifically moral progress. For first, moral progress per se cannot be empirically observed. Second, given the finitude of human nature, it can never be permanently guaranteed – it will always remain a Sisyphean task.
