Religion within the limits of reason alone [antikvár]

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF KANT'S RELIGIONby Theodore M. GreeneThe Enlightenment, which began in the seventeenth century and flourished in the eighteenth, constitutes one of the great spiritual movements of modern Europe. In it we see the Renaissance working itself out through the agencies of its scientific and philosophical discoveries. Because of its influence on Kant, who was in so many essential respects a thinker of the Enlightenment, we should recall at the outset the main characteristics of this movement. It was essentially revolutionary, directed against the authority of intellectual and religious tradition. The positive force at its core was a determined assertion of the freedom of the individualfreedom in affairs social and political, intellectual and religious. This spirit expressed itself most emphatically in a new and extravagant belief in the power of reason. Faith in the old presuppositions and authorities, for so long considered valid beyond question, gave way to a spirit of criticism. Faith was now sought exclusively by the path of argument; logical demonstration, like that found in Euclid, was considered the sole adequate basis for conviction; reason claimed to be autonomous and set itself up as the unique court of appeal. And with reason thus ensconsed, the mysterious depths of life, the indefinable and incalculable, received scant recognition or appreciation. To strictly religious values the age was for the most part blind. Whatever, from the point of view of reason, had about it an air of mystery fell under suspicion; man's feelings, passions, and sentiments were in ill repute. Thus the movement took on an austere and barren coldness, which was welcomed in the beginning as is the first breath of mountain air after the suffocating heat of the plains; in time, however, it chilled men through and drove them back to a new appreciation of the sunnier and warmer sides of human life.If ratiocination was the organon of the age, humanity, somewhat abstractly viewed, was its chief concern. The Enlightenment fol-' The content of this essay has been taken largely from my doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Professor Norman Kemp Smith and presented in 1924 at the University of Edinburgh. My thanks are due to Professor Hudson for his invaluable assistance in the selection, condensation, and extensive rewriting of this material. I must assume responsibility for the ideas embodied in this essay; the remainder of the volume, however, is the product of our joint labors together with those of Professor John R. Silber who has made the revisions and additions for the Second Edition.