Just saw your reply. No doubt Kant respected and used scholastic ideas. I guess I was more thinking of his categorical imperative as an individual agent’s way of determining right/wrong, rather than looking to external sources from a community of set beliefs etc. it’s individualistic and it can be argued the Reformation emphasized, individualistic readings and interpretation of the Bible, individualistic forms of church doctrine, and also puts emphasis on the individual as directly engaging the texts’ meaning along with the individual as living out ethical living in everyday life versus through special liturgical practices or ways of living (monks, mass, works of the church or whatnot). But I found this which seems to be about this subject. @Moliere maybe this will help:
https://problemi.si/issues/p2018-2/03problemi_international_2018_2_kobe.pdf

So basically the CI becomes about individual responsibility as an agent and their will to determine right action rather than a set of fixed doctrine that one can turn to regarding this or that matter.

The article indicates that it is very much the pietistic aspect of protestant ism that influenced Kant. That is to say the aspect that it is ones justification through faith. He makes an interesting point that even the person making the rational decision can’t quite be sure that they made it out of respect for the moral law or self-interest or other intentions. This is similar to the Pietist idea that they can never know if they truly did something out of purely faith and not self interest or other intentions.

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https://problemi.si/issues/p2018-2/03problemi_international_2018_2_kobe.pdf

You might find that interesting as it seems to answer the question about the influence of Pietism.
TL:DR: Kant's notion of intent coming from true respect for moral law is likened to the Pietist's intent coming from true faith as the arbiter of if an action is moral, and that due to the ambiguity of knowing if this is case, it may be very difficult to know. This is of course opposed to consequentialists or people who look at practical outcome (or intent that merely LOOKS like it is morally willed). Clearly for this camp, the consequences are easier to discern than one's actual intent or how one is willing their intent, etc.

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That is, Pietism might well have inculcated in Kant a thing or two, but then, with respect to what was inculcated and is here in question, he took it over and owned it and established it on a whole other footing, one arguably far better. . — tim wood

Yes I would definitely agree here. I don't see the point to over-determine Pietism's affect on Kant's thinking, but I can understand that it possibly gave him some frameworks from which he could draw upon. I doubt it was anything like paying homage to Pietism, or because he thought of it doctrinally. Rather, some of the ways of thinking about things, the language, so-to-speak was was possibly a starting point how to look at certain problems. I think it's generally safe to assume people borrow ideas from the context they grew up in.

Pietism is a member of the set "Protestant", because it's Lutheran, and all Lutherans are Protestants.

I'm still hesitant, and starting to see how this is a technical question in the philosophy of religion more than about Kant at all: It seems we all agree on Kant, it's the other side that's not convincing -- but then that'd be to ask "What is Protestantism?", which seems to be the sort of set or word which does not have necessary/sufficient conditions -- so there's a lot of ambiguity in the assertion.

Peter Simpson makes this point almost exactly. — Leontiskos

Oh yeah? Where?

It's always nice to find agreement.

I am told that in Kant's later work he makes exceptions to the unknowableness of the noumenal on account of morality. — Leontiskos

Not quite, in my estimation. I'd prefer to say that he argues that there is more than one legitimate use or power of reason other than theoretical (scientific) knowledge.

Knowledge is still limited. There's the moral "proof" of God, but it's not the same as what we usually mean by knowledge. You don't come to know God through his argument, you come to realize belief in God is necessary for a moral being.

Right: that is the crucial (anti-religious) assumption at play. — Leontiskos

Yeh. Which, especially considering it's Kant, I'd say isn't warranted at all. Even in his philosophical work he's pro-religion, while obviously arguing for rationality too.

I didn't quite follow that conclusion, either. But it is Protestant at least insofar as it is individualistic, subjectivistic, and arguably fideistic. — Leontiskos

What do you make of the syllogism above? Where Kant is a Lutheran (due to Pietism), and all Lutherns are Protestants, therefore....?


has a good point in that he's not really "claimable" by religion -- in the culture wars sense -- but this is part of what I love about Kant as a philosopher. He cared about consistency enough to make sacrifices to it.

I wouldn't go so far to "claim" Kant for any side at all. He's a philosopher that cares more about consistency than religion/atheism -- and his philosophy is even addressing a lot of those points that come up, so perhaps this is why he's attractive to both a/theists.

I'm still hesitant, and starting to see how this is a technical question in the philosophy of religion more than about Kant at all — Moliere

I feel the same way, but perhaps from a different point of view. I don’t think we have the authority to suggest for Kant anything he didn’t admit for himself.

I’m not saying he never mentioned the influence his religious upbringing may have had on the formulation of his moral philosophy, only that I’ve yet to find out about it. And from that it follows necessarily at least I have no warrant for understanding such philosophy as if it were conditioned by it.

Oh yeah? Where?

It's always nice to find agreement. — Moliere

So now that I look again he is appealing more to the Machiavellian-Hobbesian context than Rousseau in particular, but it is similar:

Morality becomes a kind of universalizing of self-interest. [...] , one will find that it is little more than an elaboration of Hobbesian peace. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble

The broad idea is that Kant universalizes self-interest, which results in a communal ethic.

Not quite, in my estimation. I'd prefer to say that he argues that there is more than one legitimate use or power of reason other than theoretical (scientific) knowledge. — Moliere

Okay, interesting.

Yeh. Which, especially considering it's Kant, I'd say isn't warranted at all. Even in his philosophical work he's pro-religion, while obviously arguing for rationality too. — Moliere

Yes, and many would agree that Kant is unconsciously influenced by his religious upbringing in various ways.

What do you make of the syllogism above? Where Kant is a Lutheran (due to Pietism), and all Lutherns are Protestants, therefore....? — Moliere

...Therefore Kant is a Protestant? Sure, but I think what is desired is a more direct link between Kant's thought and Protestant thought.

↪tim wood has a good point in that he's not really "claimable" by religion -- in the culture wars sense — Moliere

Right.

I feel the same way, but perhaps from a different point of view. I don’t think we have the authority to suggest for Kant anything he didn’t admit for himself.

I’m not saying he never mentioned the influence his religious upbringing may have had on the formulation of his moral philosophy, only that I’ve yet to find out about it. And from that it follows necessarily at least I have no warrant for understanding such philosophy as if it were conditioned by it. — Mww

All philosophers are conditioned by factors they fail to recognize or admit, and these factors are identified by scholars.

I found a five-minute lecture - is that what you were referring to? If a longer, can you provide a reference? — tim wood

I think this is probably the one I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuvshyo0knI, especially the section on Kant's background.

Sure, why not. But can you in a sentence or three sum up just what his religious "orientation" was? — tim wood

So from a Catholic perspective Kant is extremely individualistic, subjectivistic, and fideistic. Individualism and subjectivism are common to both Protestantism and the Enlightenment (and probably not coincidentally). Fideism is the separation between faith and reason, and the separation is found in different ways in different forms of Protestantism. Folks like Kant and later Schleiermacher emphasize rationalism and protect religion/faith by giving it a purely internal and separate character, and this internalizing is also in line with Pietism.

My read is that he found in Pietism certain claims that were founded in Pietist faith that he Kant found grounded in reason, reason for Kant being the more compelling, and dare we say, the more reasonable. — tim wood

Sometimes thinkers embrace and defend their nascent traditions, and sometimes they react against them, but in either case the nascent traditions are exercising their influence. For Kant I would say it is both, but I would say that Kant never really deviated from the fundamental manner in which Pietism sees the world fideistically. Religion for Kant is always somewhat separate and other, and his morality also participates to some extent in this same kind of opacity and sanctity. Obviously fideism dovetails with Enlightenment thinking, and I would argue that Enlightenment autonomy is in no small part inheriting from the Reformation itself, but in any case, there are various interrelating influences.

Or if I may be permitted a metaphor, religion is like a stool with two legs: it does not stand on its own. Kant attached a third leg, and now at least some of its ideas can stand on any surface. Do you find any fault in this? — tim wood

It might represent a rough portrait of Kant's approach, sure. The exchanges between Kant and Hamann are rather interesting in this regard.

What's curious to me is that Kant tries to justify a Christian morality with "pure reason," and if this were possible or if Kant had been successful then I think the questions about his religious background might not loom so large. But if—as is generally accepted—"pure reason" is insufficient to justify such strong, categorical moral claims, then the effect is that Kant ends up sneaking in religious or transcendent principles through the back door. My sense is that Kant's arguments for high-octane (religious) morality are creative and interesting, but also faulty. I don't think the project is impossible, but I don't think Kant succeeded. Most people, for example, do not think that Kant's absolute prohibition on lying holds good. The Kantian successors are basically trying to find ways to rationally justify a high morality or a high view of reason, and some of them (such as Nagel) are haunted by this question of whether their system really holds up without robust religious or metaphysical-anthropological presuppositions.

Oh. Ok. Thanks.

If Kant never mentioned the influence his religious upbringing may have had on the formulation of his moral philosophy, [then] I have no warrant for understanding such philosophy as if it were conditioned by it. — Mww

Do you think this a sound argument?

Putting aside the liberties taken with my statements, yes.

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That is, Kant as either a Pietist apologist, or as the sui generis thinker he's usually regarded as being. — tim wood

Or else it's not as black and white as you purport. This should not be hard to see given that both options you give seem to me to be caricatures.

Regarding burdens of proof and the like, the fact that some here take Kant to be a sacred cow doesn't count as a good reason to exempt him from the sort of analyses that are applied to all humans and thinkers. Lots of us don't take Kant to be a sacred cow, and therefore we will assess him the same way we we assess other cows. The birth narratives and childhood stories of sacred figures are jealously guarded, and Kant seems to be no exception. Apparently some secular followers of Kant are threatened by Kant's religious upbringing, and therefore that upbringing must be expunged or laundered lest Kant fail to be "claimable" by secularism. I don't see this approach, this reaction against Kant's background, as especially measured or unbiased.

But the greater the claim, the more to be resisted, if for no other reason - aside from being wrong - that it tends to vitiate and trivialize Kant's thinking and its effects and value — tim wood

In looking at the ideas and their descent/influences/etc., I have no interest in trivializing any thinker. What would the point be? I like to see as much as possible of a thinker's ideas, where they come from and where they go to understand a perspective, not to trivialize.

I don't think him being a Pietist -- and the similarity between his philosophy and the religion from which it was formed -- undermines or trivializes the philosophy. As you say you still have to address the arguments and such.

It's more that the religious origin gives me a perspective on him as a thinker because it makes sense of the philosophy -- in the formal sense of his ethics then, yeah, no religion is necessary. That's a big part of enlightenment thinking, and he's an enlightenment thinker.

Why would the religious origins and influences trivialize him, in your view? That's certainly not my aim. My aim was more to elucidate to someone who didn't understand the distinction between theoretical and practical reason.

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…..it is a different matter altogether to read it out of him. — tim wood

I like it.

The point I made earlier is that Kant's thinking is reason based and religion is not. — tim wood

This is the sort of modern Enlightenment canard that now stands in disrepute, but you are of course welcome to continue holding it and/or arguing for it. It is possible that the postmodern consensus is mistaken.

That said, I find Kant's morality irrational or at the very least hopelessly opaque. I agree with Simpson:

Kant only secures the nobility and freedom associated with morality at the cost of shifting both into a sphere that lies completely beyond human grasp. The free acts of the will that constitute moral goodness and moral choice are beyond human explanation and comprehension.[27 - footnote to ch. 3 of the Groundwork] — Peter L. P. Simpson, Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble

But the greater the claim, the more to be resisted, if for no other reason - aside from being wrong - that it tends to vitiate and trivialize Kant's thinking and its effects and value — tim wood

There would be the danger of something like a genetic fallacy in a thread on Kant's arguments, but this thread is literally about Kant's religious influences. The constant refrain that I am hearing from you and @Mww is the dogmatic claim that Kant's philosophy simply did not have religious influences. Now for those of us who who think that two things can be held simultaneously, namely that influences can be acknowledged without the thought being invalidated, this is not a problem. It seems that for those who think that to admit influences is to invalidate the thought, it must be denied that their favored thinkers had any influences at all!

This is one of the hallmark errors of Enlightenment thought: "If we receive from the past or from others then our thought is not legitimate" (and the truth of the matter is almost exactly opposite to this). The current errors of philosophy are a variation on this theme. Now it is said that if some proposition exists in language, then it cannot express a truth that transcends the immanent frame of that language (given the linguistic reduction). Or—closer to Kantianism—if some proposition is derived from "phenomena" then it cannot express a truth that transcends the immanent frame of the subject (or their transcendental conditions - given the subjectivistic reduction). More sensible non-Enlightenment approaches do not take such a reductionistic avenue, and are therefore not as wary of admitting influences on thinkers.

The constant refrain that I am hearing from you and Mww is the dogmatic claim that Kant's philosophy simply did not have religious influences. — Leontiskos

You did not hear any such thing from me. Actually, I don’t know what you heard, but I know I never said any such thing.

Do you even know what Kant's (own) religion was? Answer: you don't. — tim wood

. The SEP article I linked states the following:

Throughout Kant’s writings, we find ample discussions of religious issues. These are, in many instances, clearly affirmative, though they are often framed within objections to theoretical reason’s encroachments into the domain that is instead proper to faith. Although his discussions of God and immortality are familiar to most Kantians, the Critical corpus moves well beyond just these. Especially in the 1790s, we find detailed treatments of biblical hermeneutics, miracles, revelation, as well as many distinctively Christian doctrines such as Original Sin, the Incarnation, Vicarious Atonement, and the Trinity.

Unfortunately, however, the many positive elements of Kant’s philosophy of religion have been eclipsed by its initial negative moments, moments not meant to oppose religion, but rather reflective of the Lutheranism (or more precisely, the anti-liturgical Lutheran Pietism) of his youth. Just as with Luther’s own negative polemics against religious despotism and scholastic arcana, we see in Kant a parallel dialectic, where he, rather than opposing religion, sought to free it from the “monopoly of the schools” and set it on a footing suitable to “the common human understanding” (Bxxxii). Hence, as we will discuss through this entry, the statement that Kant sought out the limits to knowledge [Wissen] in order to “make room for faith [Glaube]” (Bxxx), is not an empty bromide, but rather the key anthem for his overall philosophy of religion.

Which seems to indicate that Kant's religion is Lutheran, and Pietist. Do I know it now, or is this not enough to infer that his religion is Lutheran, and Pietist?

And just here an assumption I think unjustified, or that at least requires explanation to be sensible. His philosophy is formed from, comes out of, his religion? — tim wood

What about this part of the article I linked previously? Are the authors of that article stating unwarranted assumptions?

The point I made earlier is that Kant's thinking is reason based and religion is not. The result being that while it's possible to read Pietism into Kant - as well as almost anything else if a person has a viewpoint and ambition - it is a different matter altogether to read it out of him. . — tim wood

Was it a point, or an assertion?

I think that's the part where we're disagreeing -- religion, in Kant's writing, is bounded by reason, and so it is reasonable to be religious: these things aren't in conflict in Kant's philosophy, but rather this was the whole point of it: to figure out how one could believe in both science and theology from a rational perspective.

You did not hear any such thing from me. Actually, I don’t know what you heard, but I know I never said any such thing. — Mww

You in the sense that you affirmed <this claim>, and @tim wood in the sense that he is creating an artificially high burden of proof for the thesis that Kant's work might have religious influences.

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you affirmed <this claim> — Leontiskos

C & P the claim.

But none of these account for the way, the how, and the why of his own analyses. — tim wood

Why not?

Fideism is the separation between faith and reason, and the separation is found in different ways in different forms of Protestantism. Folks like Kant and later Schleiermacher emphasize rationalism and protect religion/faith by giving it a purely internal and separate character, and this internalizing is also in line with Pietism. — Leontiskos

Understanding Kant's Protestant fideism is very helpful in situating his thought, and this recognition is commonplace among many scholars. This kind of fideism is something of a novelty, at least in the form it took in Kant. For example:

The key text representing the revolutionary move from his pre-critical, rationalistic Christian orthodoxy to his critical position (that could later lead to those suggestions of heterodox religious belief) is his seminal Critique of Pure Reason. In the preface to its second edition, in one of the most famous sentences he ever wrote, he sets the theme for this radical transition by writing, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” (Critique, B). Though never a skeptic (for example, he was always committed to scientific knowledge), Kant came to limit knowledge to objects of possible experience and to regard ideas of metaphysics (including theology) as matters of rational faith. — Kant's Philosophy of Religion | IEP

Here is Nietzsche:

Kant: inferior in his psychology and knowledge of human nature; way off when it comes to great historical values (French Revolution); a moral fanatic a la Rousseau; a subterranean Christianity in his values; a dogmatist through and through, but ponderously sick of this inclination, to such an extent that he wished to tyrannize it, but also weary right away of skepticism; not yet touched by the slightest breath of cosmopolitan taste and the beauty of antiquity— a delayer and mediator, nothing original (just as Leibniz mediated and built a bridge between mechanism and spiritualism, as Goethe did between the taste of the eighteenth century and that of the “historical sense”. . . — Nietzsche, The Will to Power, #101

This is a theme that George Grant takes up, namely Kant's "great delay." Kant sets up the religious stopgap that morality cannot be had without God, and Nietzsche finally replies: Then we cannot have morality.

Kant's fideism whereby morality gets sequestered off on its own seems intricately bound up with the very sort of religion that Pietism represents, and not a few have noticed this. I'd say this is fairly crucial if one is to understand Kant in his historical context. Kant's fideistic move to protect morality (but also faith) is taken right out of the playbook of Pietism, which did the exact same thing to shelter interior religion from the quasi-rationalistic Lutheran orthodoxy of that time.

Yes or no?

My thinking is that Kant is protestant, through and through, because while he accepts there are other possible ethics he believes the only rational faith is believing in the Christian doctrine of immortality, free will, and the existence of God.

It's not so much about the baptism into community but about how God influences your ethical life as an individual rational being. — Moliere

I don't think there is one Protestant ethical outlook. One potent vein of Protestantism is Calvinism, which disconnects your actions from reward or punishment. You don't act ethically for a reward, but rather because your life has no meaning other than to glorify God. For Baptists, God loves you and is ever-forgiving, so at any point, you can be "born again" into innocence by just waking up out of your degradation. I don't think either one has much to do with community vs individuality, but the Catholics had explored that opposition pretty thoroughly before Protestants came along.

Protestant faith belonged to those who struggled against the aristocracy's control over social structure, so there's an element of egalitarianism to it, like Hussites whose grave stones are all the same, no matter who you were in life. It's equality in death.

The broad idea is that Kant universalizes self-interest, which results in a communal ethic. — Leontiskos

I'd push back here a bit. Self-interest is definitely a Hobbessian point, and to some extent Locke, but Rousseau -- by my understanding -- is more a romantic. "Man is born free, and yet everywhere is in chains"

The chains here being dogmatism: Sapere Aude, in theoretical and practical life.

Also since he believes that self-interest is something which makes an action not-moral -- an act can follow the moral law and so be legal, but it's the motivation towards the moral law which qualifies a particular as as moral or not moral -- I'd say that Kant inherits some of this Romanticism with respect to human beings: We are valuable ends unto ourselves.

In a way what becomes sacred is less the metaphysics of morals and more the individual making choices (with the strict confines around that so that many moral individuals acting together can eventually find consistency with one another, ala Perpetual Peace)

I don't think there is one Protestant ethical outlook — frank

That's true.

Though the same can be said for Christianity as a whole, too.

The protestant bits are what's already been highlighted, and comes more from my familiarity with protestant churches. He "fits" in with them and it's part of his origins as a person. It's his historical lineage and influence.

"Protestant" maybe isn't any thesis at all, but a historical category?