WELCOME TO CRITICAL IDEALISM
“The most important issue is to know how one properly fulfills one’s place in creation and correctly understands what one must be in order to be a human being.” (Immanuel Kant, Comments in ‘Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,’ ed. by Maria Rischmüller, Hamburg 1991, 36) (McGaughey translation)
“Die größeste Angelegenheit des Menschen ist zu wissen wie er seine Stelle in der Schöpfung gehörig erfülle und recht verstehe was man seyn muß um ein Mensch zu seyn.” (Immanuel Kant, Bemerkungen in den ‘Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen,’ neu herausgegeben und kommentiert von Marie Rischmüller, Hamburg 1991, 36)
NEW PUBLICATION:
Douglas R. McGaughey, David Friedrich Strauß: A Reading of His Gospel Criticism and Metaphysics (Baden Baden: Georg Olms Verlag, 2025)
In the series:
Studies and Materials in the History of Philosophy
Available at no cost in pdf format on-line at Nomos Verlag:
https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/de/10.5771/9783487424491-1/titelei-inhaltsverzeichnis?page=1
HISTORICAL, SOURCE MATERIAL on PLATO’S SIMILES OF THE SUN AND LINE for those here from footnote 1 of the “Foreword:”
From McGaughey, Strangers and Pilgrims: https://criticalidealism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Platos-Similes-of-the-Sun-and-Line-from-Strangers-and-Pilgrims.pdf
From McGaughey, Religion Before Dogma: https://criticalidealism.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Platos-Sun-and-Line-Similes-from-Religion-Before-Dogma.pdf
Theology is far more than demonstrating why one can believe what one wished to believe in the first place, which is the ‘easiest’ thing to do for limited reason because it overlooks its assumptions. Rather, theology is concerned with the concealed possibilities of the universe and the imperceptible human capacities that make finite understanding and responsible agency possible in the world. No one can experience, reflect, understand, and give oneself ‘permission’ to act but oneself. In order to do so, though, the entire, visible and invisible universe is required. The un-likelihood that such a creature, which possesses both animal instincts/appetites as well as creative, transcendental consciousness, could exist constitutes for us a huge opportunity and responsibility. Why should such a creature choose to ignore, suppress, exploit, and persecute universal, transcendental capacities in itself and others rather than encourage cultivation of them to the degree possible under its/their circumstances? Why should such a creature take the differences among the phenomena of its world to justify anything but an opportunity for expanding understanding (a rare capacity in the universe)? At stake, is not an external accomplishment over which one has no control, but the exercise of one’s internal, imperceptible capacities with integrity over which one has control.
Furthermore, the Natural Sciences are far more than merely ‘opening of one’s eyes’. Although the increased mathematization of ‘reality’ by ever more sophisticated technology is staggering and thrilling, it is all an island of rational numbers on on a vaster ocean of irrational numbers – known since Pythagoras, at least. If we take the mathematization of reality along with its illimitability to constitute insight into the ‘mind’ of God (in an attempt to equate science and religion), then we are only engaging in the original human religious ‘act’ of elevating humanity (finite consciousness) onto the throne of God, which occurred long long before ‘secular’ philosophy is condemned for doing so. Nowhere but in finite, transcendental consciousness do we experience these capacities present to the degree that that are, but to think that the universe is governed by them constitutes a hubris of the highest egocentrism and turns our self-interest into God’s will.
Paradoxically, underscoring our finite impotencies and insecurities, elevating ourselves onto the throne of God is only a rapturous ignoring of our (actually, profound) limits. However, our limits are what make finite agency possible in the world. Our limits are the condition for experiencing our own magnitude and power, and our limits confront us with our responsibility for our agency. Paradoxically, imperceptible, finite consciousness in itself (yet, it is never experienced in itself, only in a world) has no limits because it is indivisible. Furthermore, finite, transcendental consciousness is capable of intentionally accomplishing things that nature, left on its own, could never accomplish. Immanuel Kant pointed out already in the mid-1770s that this finite, eminent, creative causality in principle gives us the power to destroy nature (Oh, that he were wrong!). Yet, only a finite, transcendental consciousness, who can exercise a creative, eminent freedom ‘above’ but never ‘separate’ from nature’s finite, efficient causality, can assume (but, obviously, is not required to take) responsibility for its finite agency. Why would we want to be less than what our capacities as finite, human, transcendental consciousness in this world of phenomena makes possible? This is not a justification of unbridled pursuit of self-interest but of assuming responsibility for our creative capacities.
Kant wrote: “The most important issue is to know how one properly fulfills one’s place in creation and correctly understands what one must be in order to be a human being.” (Immanuel Kant, Comments in ‘Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime,’ ed. by Maria Rischmüller, [Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1991]: 36: AA XX:41)
The Project’s Structure
The text is conceived not merely as an intellectual history of D.F. Strauß but as a reference work and consists of two volumes. It has an extensive Table of Contents as well as a thorough index. In the pdf version, one need only hit ‘ctrl-click’ on the page numbers in the T o C and the index, and one is taken to the page. The footnotes are also abundantly cross-referenced so that one can find the presentation of connected themes across the entire manuscript. Three Appendices provide material from Strauß: Appendix I: ‘Likely Historical Elements of Jesus’ (1862); Appendix II: ‘Annotated First Testament Concordance to, and Classical Legen References in, the Second Testament Gospels (1862); Appendix III: ‘Grounds for Skepticism in Christian Doctrine’ (1841); Appendix IV: Posthumus Poems from Strauß.
Part I of Volume I addresses the 1835 Life of Jesus Critically Examine and its aftermath, the revolution in Zurich in 1839, and why Schleiermacher was thoroughly read, but no option, for Strauß.
Part II of Volume I is an Historical Reader concerned with the revolution in Zurich in 1839. It includes an historical account of the events, a report published some ten years after the revolution by one of the major players (unusual, in that the accuracy of the report was signed-off on by representatives from all three protagonist groups). It includes, as well, academic reference letters in favor and opposed to Strauß’ appointment to the university, street pamphlets both pro and con regarding Strauß’ appointment , Strauß’ letter to the government, the letter from Thomas Scherr, Superintendent of Schools, in support of Strauß’s appointment, and the final report of the Aid Society for the Good of the Victims of September 6, 1839.
Part III that is Volume III follows Strauß’ metaphysical reflections after the publication of the Life of Jesus of 1835. It begins with his struggles and disaffection with Hegel and the Hegelians and his attempts to find a ‘religious’ option, which occupied him metaphysically down to his final work in 1872, The Old Faith and the New Faith. His odyssey is a documentation of 19th C German theology/philosophy that began with the anti-Kantian and anti-Enlightenment distortions of Hegel, Schleiermacher, Carl Daub, F.C. Baur, and others. Strauß had rejected Hegel’s meta-narrative of Absolute Spirit before so that his two volume Glaubenslehre in 1841, (contrary to his original intention) is not an account of restauration of Christian doctrine generally by means of an Hegelian Absolute Spirit narrative, as he had done with the single doctrine of incarnation in the 1835 Life of Jesus. Rather, the Glaubenslehre portrays Christian dogmatics as collapsing inward on itself with its own internal inconsistencies and contradictions. No support from ‘philosophy’ ‘outside’ Christianity is necessary. Although he escaped the Hegelian meta-narrative, he never escaped the anti-Kantian and anti-Enlightenment perspective of his earliest intellectual mentors in his odyssey in search of a metaphysical ground for ‘religion’.
An initial theological formulation in his The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity (1838) is a classic case of Scholastic ‘Intellectualism’, which he formulated as a ‘religion of reason’. It takes God to be the source of the eternal, conceptual order of the universe, which God Himself cannot violate (in contrast to the Scholastic ‘Occasionalism’, which placed the divine will prior to divine thought). Feuerbach put a quick end to such ‘Intellectualism’ for Strauß because of its anthropomorphic projections. After his two volume Glaubenslehre of 1841 had demonstrated the internal collapse of Christian doctrine, Strauß went silent on theology. It was only twenty years later in the 1860s after reading Reimarus’ corpus and under the influence of his comrades who were calling for a ‘return to Kant’ that he put together in his Life of Jesus Examined for the German People of 1864 he proposed an account of a ‘religion of humanity‘ as an alternative both to the ‘religion of the Christ‘ of Christian dogmatics and to the ‘Intellectualist’ religion of reason of The Transient and the Permanent. His return to Schleiermacher in The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History was a final, devastating break in which he rejected all ultimate, eminent causality capable of intervening into history to restore humanity to ‘perfect God-consciousness’ or any other form of ‘perfection’. However, his final work, The Old Faith and the New Faith of 1872 concluded that the historical evidence in the gospels is not only insufficient for a biography but also insufficient to identify the teaching of the historical Jesus. Rather than take the conclusion of his thesis of the genetic mythical principle in 1835 that the gospels are theological archetypes formulated on the basis of First Testament pericopes (a method embedded in Luke 22:37; 24:27; and 24: 44), Strauß’ subsequent writings all were searching for a materialistic and historical anchor for religion. This led him in The Old Faith and the New Faith in 1872, ironically, to a mirror account of Hegel’s creation of the universe and emergence of finite consciousness out of Absolute Spirit with a thoroughly materialist account of consciousness arising out of nature (hylozoism). Instead of finite consciousness constituting the location for Absolute Spirit to finally ‘return’ in awareness to Itself, in Strauß’ ‘nature religion’, finite consciousness is the place where nature ‘turns inward’ on itself to continue its material advance. In other words, although Strauß initially embraced the Hegelian notion of ‘science’ as the identification of the imperceptible, ‘real kernel’ (the eternal ‘idea’) at the core of sets of perceptible phenomena, by the end of his career he had shifted to a materially reductionistic, empirical, ‘hypothetico-inductive’ science with which we are so familiar today.
Synopsis
D.F. Strauß is known for his 1835 Life of Jesus Critically Examined that was taken by his opponents to be claiming not only that the Christian gospels are myth but also that Christian faith was merely a fiction. Volume I examines the 1835 Life of Jesus and proposes that Strauß’ gospel criticism offers a segue into the rich investigation of the attempts to reconcile religion and science in gospel scholarship at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th Centuries. His biblical criticism has, by no means, been made irrelevant by subsequent, biblical criticism.
Not so well known is that the shallow reading of Strauß as an ‘enemy of Christ’ fueled a political revolution in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1839 after Strauß had been appointed to the chair for Biblical Theology, Church History, and Dogmatics by the Canton government.
Even less well known are his reflections on three key scholars who deeply influenced him: G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and F.C. Baur, Strauß’ professor. Strauß’s theological perspective in the 1835 Life of Jesus was thoroughly Hegelian. Baur’s theology was also Hegelian, but both Baur and his student rejected the Hegelian Christology that viewed the Christ either as a unique union with God, which occurred beyond history, or as those few ‘philosophers’ who grasped the significance of the Hegelian Double Negation. Yet, Strauß differed with Baur in the formulation of his own Christology in 1835. Whereas Baur’s Christology was thoroughly Pauline (the historical Church is the body of the spiritual Christ), Strauß’ Christology was universalistic in that it viewed all of human consciousness as the location for spiritual union with God through Christ. In other words, Strauß’ 1835 Life of Jesus was not intended to destroy Christianity but meant to be the preservation of the core Christian doctrine of salvation.
Already, the early Strauß stood at arms length from Schleiermacher because of the latter’s rejection of ‘reason,’ but he wrestled with a core teaching of the early Schleiermacher’s On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, which took consciousness in every moment to be the finite location of the unity of the finite with the infinite, a teaching thoroughly compatible with Strauß’ other two mentors, Hegel and Baur.
Even more overlooked, though, is that within five years of the 1835 Life of Jesus, Strauß rejected all three intellectual mentors. After freeing himself from the Hegelian metaphysics of Spirit (Geist), he commenced a metaphysical odyssey that led to his formulation of several alternative Christological options. His 1872 The Old Faith and thee New Faith, though, is Strauß’ confession of his reductionist materialism with an epistemology that materially mirrored Hegel’s Spirit (Geist) metaphysics. Whereas the Hegelian epistemology saw human consciousness as the ‘turning point of indifference’ away from empirical, historical experience to unite with Absolute Spirit (Absolute, infinite, eminent causality), Absolute Freedom (‘above’ nature’s restrictive and restricted freedom), and Absolute Reason (as causal explanation of ‘all that is’), the later Strauß takes human consciousness to be nature’s inward turn on itself to continue its progressive advance in history, which is, emphatically, the empirical world.
Finally, not engaged at all is that Strauß’ three primary mentors were part of a vehement anti-Kantianism already at the end of the 18th C and beginning of the 19th C that unconscionably distorted Kant’s philosophical theology (Kant’s own label). The distortions of Kant in the name of Spirit (Geist) metaphysics echo down through the subsequent two centuries and have their spokespersons yet in the 20th C (John Dewey), the 21st C (Axel Honneth and the Frankfurter School), and all those consciously and unconsciously related to that anti-Kantian trajectory. Although Strauß distanced himself from his early mentors of Spirit (Geist) metaphysics, even he never undertook for himself a careful study of Kant that would have challenged their distortions. Although this ‘turn inward’ on the part of nature could be just Strauß’ final jab at the Hegelians, Schleiermacher, and Baur, what is crystal clear is that Strauß overlooked the grave gaps in his materialistic epistemology – a set that, themselves, mirror the gaps in Hegelian epistemology.
A reading of Strauß’ gospel criticism and metaphysics provides, then, an opportunity to engage the world of reflective biblical criticism and volatile (and violent) attempts to reconcile religion and science at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th Centuries as well as an opportunity to engage the metaphysical options to (and their distortions of) Kant over the first two-thirds of the 19th C that persist down to this day. Especially with respect to Kantian Critical Idealism, the result of this study of Strauß’ metaphysical odyssey is a contribution to the recovery of Kant as a philosophical theologian who is focused on finite transcendental consciousness; finite, intentionally (not merely instinctually) creative, eminent causality; and finite reason – to be sure, requiring the ‘necessary’ (but not causally determining) existence of a non-Personal God as the origin of all that is. Kant’s transcendental consciousness with its limited reason and its intentionally creative, eminent causality is imperceptible, yet deducible and inseparable, from (but not reducible to) the historical, causal nexus of material determinism. Finite, transcendental consciousness is, then, the one location where nature is open-ended because the imperceptible capacities of finite, transcendental consciousness are required for there to be anything like enduring understanding achievable by hypothetico-inductive science as well as responsible agency in an empirical world. Something ‘new’ (however little) happens here, and that ‘newness’ allows for the assumption of responsibility. Kant is more than ever relevant to our own age once the distortions that began in Kant’s life-time, flourished in the first two-thirds of the 19th C, and continue to flourish today are themselves de-mythologized just as Strauß de-mythologized the Christian gospels.
TWELVE POTENTIAL AUDIENCES FOR
DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUß:
A READING OF HIS GOSPEL CRITICISM
AND METAPHYSICS
In addition to the information of the Historical Reader addressing September 5/6, 1839, and Strauß’ identification of what he took to be the ‘historical’ elements in the gospels (Appendix I), the listing of the 50+ examples of ‘First’ Testament prototypes that can be identified as inspiring the gospel authors’ narratives (Appendix II), examples of the reading of Church History in itself is its criticism without requiring an ‘external’ philosophy (Appendix III), and sample reflective poems from Strauß (Appendix IV):
Defenders of Christianity as well as Gospel Critics
who believe Strauß’ Life of Jesus Critically Examined of 1835 was an attack on Christian doctrine will be confronted, on the contrary, with Strauß’ attempt to ‘restore’ Christian doctrine – illuminated by Plato’s Simile of the Line (Republic 509c-511e), which he shared in common with Traditional Theism. Whereas Traditional Theism’s Logos theology of Personal Theism beyond history is illustrated by a vertical reading of the line, Strauß’ Hegelian immanent theism of 1835 is illustrated by a reclining version of the line of Hegel’s meta-narrative of Absolute Spirit. As well, the Gospel critic who believes that Strauß is to be venerated as a ‘biblical martyr’ but has been left on the trash heap of history in light of the developments in source, form, redaction, and sociological criticism will encounter versions of the 20th C exegetical criteria (dissimilarity, coherence, and multiple attestation) as well as physical lawfulness already in Strauß’ 1835 Life of Jesus Critically Examined . S/he will find, as well, in Strauß’ genetic mythical principle, Norman Perrin’s literary criticism that views the Gospel writers as ‘authors,’ not historians. To be sure, Strauß himself ignored the implication that gospel criticism is anchored in theology, not history, whereas Perrin acknowledged that his literary criticism was only the beginning and not the end of the hermeneutical task. Although Strauß tried his best with his ‘second’ Life of Jesus in 1864 to anchor religious understanding in what remained historically after textual criticism, by 1872 in The Old and the New Faith he recognized that the gospels do not have sufficient historical evidence either to write a biography even of Jesus’ teaching year(s) or to determine just what it was that he taught, much less view him as a lone, unsurpassable exception as a religious teacher. Strauß’ writings witness to his understanding of religion undergoing a shift from a religion of Jesus, to a religion of reason (Scholastic Intellectualism), to a religion of humanity, and, in the end, to a religion of nature.
The Viewer of Science as the Demolisher of Myth in the Gospels
will find not only that Strauß, in fact, enables the reading of ‘three levels’ of the mythic in the gospels. He rejects the first, literal reading of the mythic, but he defends myth on the basis of the second, de-mythologized level of myth that distinguishes between the perceptible ‘husk’ and the imperceptible ‘kernel’ of the narratives. The ‘true’ ‘kernel’ of the Gospels for Strauß in 1835 is the Incarnation of Absolute Spirit becoming aware of Itself in finite consciousness. When it came to the miracle stories, though, Strauß followed the Göttingen Mythic School’s hermeneutical strategy of identifying the historical fact, the philosophical/theological idea, or the particular religious symbol at the core of the miracles. Although acknowledging these two ‘level’s of the mythic that sought to avoid the conflict between religion and science, Strauß did not pursue the implications of his conclusion that the gospel authors were not historians but theologians. Having never escaped the distorted reading of Kant by his mentors, he did not appreciate a ‘third level’ of the mythic: the turn to the religious, transcendental conditions of possibility of theoretical and practical reason as well as aesthetic judgment that make possible the genetic or creative process that the gospel authors employed to produce their narratives. Kant calls reflecting/reflektierende judgment the activity of discerning the necessarily a priori imperceptible relationalities in a confusing set of phenomena in order to understand (not create) the conceptual order in the set. Kant calls re-produced/bestimmende judgment the application of a concept that previously was acquired through deduction’s of the imagination’s application of the ‘Law of Association’ by reflecting judgment to a set of phenomena that leads to knowledge (although to be tested in sensus communis for its universality and checked by critique to avoid systematic distortion or what Kant called ‘seduction’). The first two levels of the mythic in the gospels, the literal reading and the de-mythologized reading, are both matters of re-producing judgment with the value of the second ‘level’ that its ‘kernels’ of meaning are preserved and past on even by the narrator unaware of their significance. However, the generation of the mythic narrative in order to portray an understanding of who Jesus of Nazareth was is an example of the third level of the mythic: reflecting judgment. To be sure, the gospel author employs her/his and/or the community’s theologically, doctrinally re-produced judgments as the intent of the narrative, but the process of generating the new narrative requires the application of intentional (not merely instinctual), creative, autonomous freedom with its own moral criteria, which offers a correction to narrow dogmatic claims.
The Social Historian
encounters a political revolution on 5/6 September 1839 that has all the classic elements of a culture war: a long history of social uproar between conservatives and liberals, xenophobia, complete ignoring of the ‘facts’ and ad hominem attacks based on superficial opinions, stirring up of general hatred against the opposition, use of social media to flame emotions with no check on limits to the public expression of hatred, ‘woke’ education, employment of the crowd to further personal interests, exploiting the situation for business aims, fake news, mis-reading of situations, and leaders acting impulsively. Zurich experienced the death of a political leader and 14 of the economically disadvantaged opposition as well as serious wounding of 14 others, the destruction of careers, and the fall of the Canton government of Zurich. There’s something all-too familiar about this picture after 185 years. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) said: “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
The Christian Church Historian
who takes Strauß to be an example of the philosopher seeking to place humanity on the throne of God will encounter a Strauß and his professor, F.C. Baur, who demonstrate that the criticism of Christianity requires no ‘external philosophy’ but only its historical investigation to expose the contradictions, inconsistencies, and irreconcilable antitheses of its own dogmatics. Furthermore, along the way one will discover that, even before the Apostle Paul claims that God’s revelation is intended to confuse the worldly wise (especially the philosophers), humanity had already placed itself on the throne of God. There is no conception of God (Animism, Polytheism, Henotheism, Monotheism, Pantheism, Panlogism, Immanentism, Gnosticism, the Personal Theism of Christian Platonism (‘Intellectualism’) and Christian Aristotelianism, ‘Occasionalism’/‘Voluntarism,’ Mysticism, Hegel’s meta-narrative of Absolute Spirit, Schleiermacher’s perfect God-consciousness, 20th C Process Theology of Dipolar Theism with its Pan-en-theism, etc.) that is not an anthropomorphic projection of humanity upon the divine throne. All theology is worldly wisdom! However, not all ‘worldly wisdom’ is anti-religion.
Those interested in Schleiermacher
will find an analysis of Strauß’ take on Schleiermacher in the 1835 LJ, in the 1839 essay on Schleiermacher and C. Daub, in Strauß’ 1841 Glaubenslehre, and in the 1865 Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. Themes covered are Strauß’ evaluation of Schleiermacher’s methodology; Strauß’ attempt at reconciliation with the Schleiermachians in the third edition of the Life of Jesus Critically Examined; 7 problematic elements to Schleiermacher’s ‘feeling of absolute dependence;’ a criticism of Schleiermacher’s attempt at reconciling science and faith; Schleiermacher’s ‘subjectivity’ in contrast to Hegel’s ‘objectivity;’ Schleiermacher’s Sabellian, Modalistic Monarchian Christology; Strauß’ embracing of Schleiermacher’s notion of immortality as the ‘eternal’ in the ‘present’ from Schleiermacher’s early work, Speeches on Religion; Schleiermacher’s rejection of any grounding role for philosophy in theology; Strauß’ identification of 8 themes in Schleiermacher that one finds already and ‘more adequately articulated’ in Spinoza; and the problems that confront Schleiermacher’s insistence that the Gospel of John is from a single author who was the only eyewitness gospel writer; as well as the contradictions between Schleiermacher’s and John’s theologies.
The Student
who seeks a segue into the German anti-Kantian, anti-Enlightenment, and ‘speculative’ metaphysics of the first half of the century encounters a Strauß who is the neck of the hour glass of 19th C German reflection. Although Kant was the elephant in the room already with the Life of Jesus Critically Examined in 1835 and was half-heartedly embraced with his Life of Jesus Examined for the Germa People of 1864, Strauß never escaped the anti-Kantians of his earliest mentors, which left him with no viable option to Hegelian Idealism than reductionist materialism in The Old and the New Faith of 1872. With his rigor and with his errors, Strauß offers a unique opportunity to sort out the entangled threads of major intellectual currents that shaped the century, as well as a concrete example of the establishment of reductionist materialism by the end of the era.
The Natural Scientist
who expects to find in Strauß the 19th C champion of the empirical sciences over against the mythic fantasies of the Christian gospels will be confronted in Strauß with Hegelian ‘science,’ not the scientific, hypothetico-deductive method. The paradigmatic defender of the latter is neither Hegel nor Strauß but the maligned Immanuel Kant. Kant’s account of reason (pursuit of understanding of phenomena, not ultimate, causal explanations) starts with the limitations that are required to experience a world of appearances (no direct access to things-in-themselves) that turns to consciousness to identify the imperceptible conditions, capacities and lawfulness (which today would include statistical significance and algorithms) of reflecting judgment that, in turn seek imperceptible relationalities in perceptible phenomena, to develop mental, category schemes of ever-greater coherence in order to account for and explain phenomena to the best of our finite abilities – whose task is complete only when it returns to the phenomena for its confirmation.
The Post-Metaphysician
who rejects all meta-narratives that take humanity out of the world either ‘religiously’ or ‘philosophically’ and who rejects philosophies of ‘presence’ to embrace ‘traces’ upon ‘traces’ all-the-way-down that eliminates anything remotely like truth except the one truth that there is no truth, will be presented, thanks to Strauß’ career-long, incomplete wrestling with Immanuel Kant, a ‘metaphysics’ not of objective truth claims or of causal explanation of reality either of Idealism (Hegel) or Materialism (Strauß in 1872) but the Kantian ‘necessity’ claims of the imperceptible conditions and capacities that make it possible for consciousness to experience, understand, and exercise responsible agency in the world. Where traditional metaphysics start and post-metaphysics stumbles, Kant already has completed his task of illuminating ‘metaphysics’ as a product of critique (extending/erweiternde a priori synthesis), which establishes what is necessary for experience, understanding, and responsible agency rather than ‘truths’ of mere criticism (elucidating/erläuternde analysis).
The Pluralist
who celebrates diversity to the point that all external or internal criticism is taken to be dogmatism and imperialistic colonialization of the mind as well as the traditionalist who embraces the intolerance of intolerance to defend her/his convictions from any and all criticism (and, by the way, as justification to ignore the other) will encounter a ‘pure’ religion that has nothing to do with superiority and condescension but is grounded in the universal, imperceptible elements, conditions, and capacities that make possible the creative ‘culture of skills’ of theoretical reason (not merely instrumental reason) as well as the ‘culture that promotes the moral will’ of practical reason. This ‘pure’ religion does not consist of an external finger-wagging moralism and privileging of the adherents of one, so-called exceptional and single, religious, Grand Narrative in this or the next life but as the religion of the ordinary that affirms the internal dignity of all (regardless of external identities) and grounds success and meaning not exclusively in the ambiguities and deceptions that are external accomplishments and applause in this or the next life. Rather, success and meaning consist in internal satisfaction that can arise only through intentional creativity and the assumption of personal responsibility for one’s agency and that can only come about by the larger horizon of mutual support and encouragement of a community (an imperceptible, Commonweal of ‘God’) that understands the significance of the imperceptible, causal orders of nature (closed deterministic) and consciousness (open-ended creativity) governed by universal, moral principles.
The Student of Aesthetics
who takes aesthetics to only refer to the beauty of objects and overlooks the sublime (Plato) and/or treats beauty and the sublime as synonyms (Hegel); and/or, to the extent aware of Kant’s Critique of the Capacity of Judgment, takes it to be an indicator that he colored outside the lines of instrumental reason in an attempt to ‘create a place’ not only for beauty but also for the sublime as well as having capriciously tacked on a tangent about teleological judgment in nature (almost half of the third Critiqued), will encounter a Kant who does not treat aesthetics as an emotional, frosting on the cake that supplements rationality but, rather, an aesthetics at the very core of rationality. Kant analyzes aesthetic judgment as a capacity of judgment (Urteilskraft) not of aesthetic predicates applied to external or internal ‘objects.’ It is precisely as internally, transcendental capacities of reflecting judgment that Kant establishes the connection among beauty, the sublime, and teleological judgment as a necessary (but not causally necessary) set of transcendental principles that unite autonomous freedom and nature, with the issue of ‘jumping a gap’ between freedom and nature having been misunderstood (especially by Hegel) to be the indicator that Kant is trapped in a metaphysical dualism.
Anti-Metaphysicians and Opponents of Enlightenment
will be challenged by a reading of Kant, which includes his philosophical anthropology. Those 1) who view Kant as a mere perpetrator of metaphysics and reduce him to a ‘talking head’ of cold, calculating, instrumental reason and who take him as having collapsed everything into merely subjectivity; and/or those 2) who take Kant’s notion of autonomy to mean rejection of all traditions and institutions; and/or those 3) who take Enlightenment to mean the setting loose of freedom’s random spontaneity in the pursuit of merely subjective self-interest; and/or those 4) who view Kant’s notion of ‘reason’ to be ‘weak’ and ‘barbarous’ because it demeans ‘knowledge’ and ‘science’ will encounter a very different Kant: Re. 1) (‘talking head’) Kant’s descriptive ‘metaphysics’ (neither created by nor causally explanatory of finite consciousness) deduces out of perceptible phenomena the imperceptible capacities of transcendental consciousness that are required for there to be any and all finite experience, understanding, and responsible agency in the world. Kant stands in awe in the face of the universe and places feeling (not as merely random, vague, and amorphous irrational feeling) at the core of both ‘theoretical’ (understanding) and ‘practical’ reason (agency). Rational feeling is attraction to (Lust for) lawfulness but repulsed (Unlust) by unlawfulness. Kant takes rational feelings to be ‘passion’ [Lust/Begehrungsvermögen] for universal lawfulness, principles, and maxims ‘as if.’ This ‘desire’ for order is not a desire to impose a human order on nature and society but the quest for the deduction (not subjective creation or causal explanation) of the universal, imperceptible order deducible out of phenomena. In short, the imperceptible orders of nature is not created by humanity, and morality is not merely adherence to civic law and/or relative, social norms. In addition to the ‘passion’ (Lust) for the imperceptible, universal order in phenomena, one will encounter in Kant an alternative response to the ennui, pain, suffering, and injustice in life profoundly different from Stoic indifference, Epicurean serenity and satisfaction, Cynic viewing of ennui, pain, suffering, and injustice as a lesson to toughen oneself, or ‘melancholy’ (belief that ‘pain’ is the fundamental condition of all life that makes suicide attractive). Rather. ennui, pain, suffering, and injustice are the ‘negative’ spur, grounded in autonomous freedom, that generates the ‘passion’ (Lust) of intentional creativity in response to them. Re. 2) (autonomy) Kant’s notion of autonomy is of a finite, eminent, causal capacity of autonomous freedom embedded in, but irreducible to, a ‘deterministic,’ natural order. Autonomy is a finite causality that can invoke the natural, lawful causality of nation but, precisely as a causal system, can/ought to be governed by the lawful maxims of morality. This is a Kant who warns of the dangers for finite understanding and responsible agency of embracing a divine, infinite, eminent causality as well of the danger implicit in autonomous freedom when not exercised responsibly. Kant’s ‘autonomy,’ then, consists of both ‘freedom-from’ nature but an open-endedness in nature as a capacity of ‘freedom-for’ that allows it intentionally to create things that nature on its own cannot and that alone makes moral responsibility possible (but, obviously, not necessary) because it has the power to reign in self-interest on the basis of moral principles. Re. 3) (Enlightenment) Kant’s notion of Enlightenment means to free oneself from one’s own self-inflicted immaturity to develop one’s own capacities and to assume responsibility for one’s own creative agency. This is because: a) no one can experience (much less, understand) for someone else self-consciousness, the appearances of phenomena, beauty, the sublime, or the required teleological order of nature (theoretical reason); b) no one is able to act for someone else much less is able to know the maxim that the other invoked to give her-/himself permission to act because the individual alone can give her-/himself permission to act on the basis of good or evil, moral maxims (practical reason). Re. 4) (‘weak and barbarous’ reason) Kant’s transcendental reason, which is possible because of the capacity of aesthetic judgment, is by no means weak but, rather, possesses the capacity to destroy the world with its autonomous freedom. For Kant reason is by no means barbaric because, although it denies Absolute Knowledge, it champions culture (to be sure, not merely the culture of skills but a culture that promotes the moral will guided by universal maxims). In short, one encounters here a Kant who is a champion of the natural sciences’ ‘theoretical’ reason (not limited to instrumental reason) but who subordinates ‘theoretical’ reason to ‘practical’ reason – precisely what is so absent in today’s ‘pragmatic’ social order that measures everything in terms of consequences, not accountability.
American Pragmatists
will encounter a reading of John Dewey’s German Philosophy and German Politics that demonstrates its perpetuation of the pre-figured, anti-Kantian and anti-Enlightenment narrative that shaped Strauß’ mis-understanding of Kant. This Kant narrative is as much in need of de-mythologization as the gospels were for Strauß. The genetic mythical principle employed by Strauß´ also applies to this distorted Kant narrative. Here its focus is on the Kant-narrative talking points that make up a mere aggregate of disparate prototypical impressions which Kant ‘must have’ meant even if one doesn’t find them in Kant’s writings. In this case, the genetic mythical principle functions analogously to the ‘First’ Testament prototypes that were gleaned by the gospel authors to record their (and their communities’) impressions of what Jesus of Nazareth ‘must have’ meant. In addition, the ‘blind spot’ of Dewey’s ‘empirical philosophy’ is identified to be ‘systematic distortion,’ the weakest link in the chain of pragmatism’s epistemology, which only appears to turn the ‘vice’ of open-ended revision in the ‘correspondence theory of truth’ into a virtue. However, so long as the sociological order encounters no anomaly, there is no reason to challenge the systematic distortion of a community. De-mythologization of both the gospels and Kant makes possible the retrieval of ‘pure’ religion that is grounded not in anthropomorphic projections and eternal self-interest but in the required conditions of possibility and capacities as well as the ‘culture that promotes the moral will,’ which make understanding and responsible agency in the world possible. Our self-understanding and nature hang in the balance.
