Who was Immanuel Kant?
Answered from the commentary of J. N. Darby, William Kelly, Numerical Bible Notes and 2 others
Immanuel Kant was a philosopher whose system took hold in Germany. He wrote a classical treatise on Pure Reason and afterwards the "Critique of Practical Reason," which showed that he felt the first work was not enough. At the close of that second work he named two things that filled him with unfailing admiration and reverence: the starry heavens above and the moral law, or conscience, within. For bringing the religious element back in this way, Nietzsche called him an "idiot". Yet his critical spirit "was not checked with any excessive reverence".
His teaching is described in a few marks. He held that we know only phenomena, that consciousness moulds what we know, and that time and space are forms of thought. He placed religion in conduct. Monod set it against the gospel in this way: Kant's God says "Give me thy reason," while the living God says "Give me thy heart". Kant opposed, on philosophical grounds, the rule "Do unto others as thou wouldst be done by". In morality he held that if the will or fear of God is brought in, there can be no morality at all. Morality for him is pure reason applied to conduct, though at the end he admitted it is impossible to say how this can be done.
Darby, who sifted Kant's works with labour, gives the sharpest judgment. He calls Kant "a man not nearly so bad as the fruits of the philosophy he set going". Even so, he finds that Kant's morality "is merely natural conscience with the name changed," shut off from the relationships with God and man on which all morality rests. To call the object a phenomenon is "nonsense," Darby says, for a phenomenon already includes the one who perceives it. Kant's error was "not getting beyond thought". His theology "is as bad as the religion of the devil, or worse," because it has no divine affection in it. Though he did not mean it, his system un-deified God in Germany and deified man. Others trace further fruit from it. Mill's logic borrowed principles from Kant. Schleiermacher's system, which made Christian consciousness the judge of Scripture, was probably the fruit of Kant's philosophy. One writer even counts the Kantists among the forces of a coming German upheaval, and sees Germany's godless philosophy behind the war. In the end, the believer may know nothing of "the reveries of Kant" and still have true faith in Christ, the Wisdom of God.
The above is AI generated summary based on the writers below.
What the commentators say
The passages the answer is drawn from, the most direct first, with the words that bear on the question marked.
The heavens and their host were called forth by Jehovah's word; a majestic spectacle to arrest attention, wake up wonder and inquiry, and lift our thoughts above the earth. Preachers to us of our littleness and dependence, their testimony is manifestly in the line of His redemptive work. The philosopher Kant, whose critical spirit was not checked with any excessive reverence, unites "the starry heavens" with the "moral law" as that which filled him with unfailing admiration and reverence. And how easily might they have been shut out from our view, if God had not pleased to fling aside the veil, and bid us gaze! Whatever else those brilliant spheres were made for, they have surely been unveiled to impress us with the sight. They are an open Bethel: as, in the mind of the old patriarch, "the gate of heaven" is "the house of God."
Bishop Butler wrote: "Duties arise out of relations" ("Analogy," part ii., book ii., § 2). Secular Ethics, on the other hand, as expounded by such as Tolstoi, "makes Duty flow from man's moral power" (supposing that man is able to do his duty if he will) (W. Kelly, "Exposition of the Epistles of John," p. 190). Butler was followed by Kant, who, at the close of his "Critique of Practical Reason," declared himself impressed by (1) the heavens above, (2) the moral law — the moral faculty or conscience within. By writing that work he signified his sense of the insufficiency of his previous classical treatise on Pure Reason. For his bringing the religious element back into the calculation, Kant has been denounced by the nineteenth century Nietzsche as an "idiot"; that is, by the man who could write that "God is dead," and yet became himself in his last days definitely insane: this should afford reflection for Agnostics enamoured with his "Zarathustra." Harnack brings man back to saner sentiment: he has described virtuous Agnostics as "parasites, living on the faith of others."
The whole moral world is wholly and absolutely outside their reach. Morality they have - none; they will tell me it is the pursuit of the good of all. And what is that good? and who is to decide it? Their happiness; but for no two men is it the same, if I take man's thoughts. It may be scalping, or opium, for the existence of passions forms no part of their philosophy. Many good people are not aware where philosophy has got to. Kant, in his treatise on morality, - a man not nearly so bad as the fruits of the philosophy he set going - declares in terms that if the will of God, or fear of God, be introduced, there can be none. It is a principle outside man. Morality is the principle of pure reason applied to practical conduct. But he admits at the end that how the principle of pure reason can be so applied it is impossible to say. Mill tells me that justice is the animal desire for vengeance modified by utility to all. Kant's is merely natural conscience with the name changed, and shutting out relationships with God and man, on which all morality is based. Mill, remark, feeling a motive was needed as a rule, makes vengeance the motive. Animal vengeance the sole motive of morality - the rule; one which has been never settled yet, save by Christ.
If you are troubled by objectors as to the age of man, there is a book published at Philadelphia by Lippincott, Southall on "The Recent Origin of Man," who has made mincemeat of the Lyells, Lubbocks, Geikies, Evans', and company, and is thoroughly versed in the subject - a much more complete thing than your Blending Lights. I had read enough to throw them overboard, as having no solid foundation, but this man is thoroughly up in the subject, and has not left them a leg to stand on. I have been reading the German rationalists, Ewald, Bleek, and even Kuenen (Dutch), having to meet it everywhere. I find it poor and impudent, rejecting all idea of inspiration out and out, and making a system of legends and compilations each after his fancy, and even changing from edition to edition. - has on his own leave published my (Pacific) notes on Mill, quite unfit to be published. I only hope they may be useful to some. If a trumpet be blown, the Lord will sometimes come in if it be His trumpet. I have gone through what is material in Kant too, and noted - a real labour from his style, but I have sifted it. I do not wonder, though he did not mean it, in its un-deifying God in Germany and deifying man: his system does it. But we must wait on Him; He only has power, and He works in grace. Prayer and supplication to Him will surely be answered. Constant dependence in the sense of our own nothingness, and in us no good thing, and Christ all, and the utmost simplicity of truth fed by the word, and that in our ministry, and we shall be happy with Him and serve Him.
“The philosophy of Germany is an important affair which concerns the whole human race and our great grandchildren alone will be in a position to decide whether we should have praise or blame for having worked out our philosophy in the first place—our revolution in the second. I think the order we have adopted was worthy of a methodical people. Heads which philosophy has employed in meditation might have been mowed down at pleasure by revolution; but philosophy have made no use of heads thus dealt with by revolution. But nevertheless, my dear countrymen, be in no distress, the German revolution will neither be the more gay nor the more mild that it was preceded by the Critik of Kant, the transcendental Idealism of Fichte, and the Philosophy of Nature. These doctrines have developed revolutionary forces which now only await the moment to explode and fill the world with terror and admiration. Then will appear the Kantists, who will hear no more of reverence in the world of deeds than in the world of ideas, and who will turn up without pity, with axe and sword, the soil of our European life in order to extirpate the last roots of the past. On the same scene will come the Fichteans, whose fanaticism of will can be mastered neither by fear nor by interest; for they live in spirit and despise matter. But the most fearful of all will be the Philosophers of Nature when they take an active part in a German revolution, and identify themselves in the work of destruction, for if the hand of the Kantist strikes firmly and surely, because his heart is innacessible to any human respect, the Fichtean despises all dangers because they have for him no real existence; the philosopher of Nature will be terrible indeed when he places himself in communication with the original powers of the earth, conjures up the hidden resources of tradition evokes the full force of the antique German Pantheism and re-awakens that ardour of battle which the old Germans displayed—an ardour which had not for its object destruction, nor even victory, but merely the pleasure of the combat itself. Christianity has softened to a certain extent that brutal rage of battle but it has not been able to extinguish it; and soon as the Cross, the restraining talisman is broken, you shall see let loose again all the ferocity and frenzied exaltation of the Berserkers, sung by the poets of the north. The old war-like divinities will rouse themselves from their fabulous tombs and wipe the dust of ages from their eyelids. Thor [the God of war] will be stirring again with his gigantic hammer, and woe to the cathedrals! There will be performed a drama, compared to which the French Revolution was but an innocent idyll. The nations will group themselves around Germany as on the ascending benches of an amphitheatre, and great and terrible are the games which await their eyes.”
Nor do I say consciousness moulds, nor that we only know phenomena, as Kant, etc., though there are apparent truth in this. God has so constituted things, and me, and others, that certain things produce certain effects and impressions on me. If a man with jaundice sees yellow, it is merely that he for the moment is so constituted, being in an abnormal state; but the knowledge of the constitution in both is in the same thing producing regularly the former effect.
To say with Kant, that the object is a phenomenon is nonsense, because the phenomenon includes the perception in me. If it appears, it appears to some one. But a thing is what produces the effect. If it be asked, What is it? I cannot tell. Not a phenomenon, but what has produced a certain idea in me and others. What I think of first is my perception; but perception makes me think of what produces it. A dream only shews that memory and combination, without the conscious will. may continue in that state.
Next, Mr. A. asks, Are phenomena disguises? Mr. Spencer, in his Classification of the Sciences, says that "Science is that which treats of the forms in which phenomena are known to us," and elsewhere "of the phenomena themselves." What does this mean but the forms of forms? "It may seem at first sight hard to believe, but what he really intended is that science treats of things, with time and space. Kant had called time and space forms of thought, to which Mr. Spencer demurs, and calls them forms of things. But in his formula he does not call things things but phenomena, and consequently makes time and space forms of phenomena. One thing however is manifest that for Mr. Spencer things are phenomena and the forms of things are time and space. Here comes boldly into view the conception of Mr. Spencer as to the place and office of phenomena or appearances. He usually contrasts phenomenon and reality, not phenomenon and substance. This assumes that the phenomenon is not a reality; whereas be it an appearance, an image, a reflection, or even a shadow, it is a reality as truly as the substance it discloses: "The shadows on the sun dial have played the part of important realities in many a juncture of urgency" (pp. 320-323).
We are next told that "no less loud and bitter in the Talmud are the protests against 'lip-serving,' against 'making the law a burden to the people,' against 'laws that stand on hairs,' against priests and Pharisees! The fundamental mysteries of the new faith are matters totally apart; but the ethics in both are, in their broad outlines, identical. That grand dictum, 'Do unto others as thou wouldst be done by,' against which Kant declared himself energetically from a philosophical point of view, is quoted by Hillel, the president, at whose death Jesus was ten years of age, not as anything new, but as an old and well-known dictum 'that comprised the whole law.' The most monstrous mistake has ever been our mixing up, in the first instance, single individuals, or classes, with a whole people; and next, our confounding the Judaism of the time of Christ with that of the time of the wilderness, of the Judges, or even of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Judaism of the time of Christ (to which that of our days, owing principally to the Talmud, stands very near) and that of the Pentateuch are as like each other as our England is like that of William Rufus, or the Greece of Plato that of the Argonauts." (pp. 437, 438.)
31 It is a great blunder to think that our knowledge of qualities is all that constitutes religion or even the basis of human affection. All this reasoning I deny. Besides, attributes are not known by man so as to form a religious basis. If they are, shew the example before Judaism or Christianity. The theology of Kant is as bad as the religion of the devil, or worse - it has not a divine affection in it.
As far back as research goes there has been RELIGION, however we may choose to define it, as with Bousset, "personal relation to God" (p. 23, cf. Liddon, "Elements," p. 19). As to the discussion whether it lies in conduct (Kant), or knowledge (Fichte), or feeling (Schleiermacher), see Achelis, "Sketch," pp. 98-100. Surely it extends to the whole man (Mark 12:30 and parallels).