Mendelssohn, Kant, and Religious Pluralism

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-610
Author(s):  
Paul Guyer
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Church And State ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Moses Mendelssohn ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Religion Of Reason ◽  
Roger Williams

AbstractTwo foremost spokesmen for the German Enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant, continued the defence of the separation of church and state that was at the heart of the Enlightenment in general and advocated by such great predecessors as Roger Williams and John Locke and contemporaries such as James Madison. The difference between Mendelssohn and Kant on which I focus here is that while Mendelssohn argues against his critics that Judaism is the appropriate religion for a specific people without being appropriate for all, thus implying more generally that different religions are appropriate for groups with different histories, Kant argues first that Judaism is not a genuine religion at all, second that Christianity provides the most suitable symbols or aesthetic representations of the core truths of the religion of reason, and finally that in any case all historical religion will ultimately fade away in favour of the pure religion of reason. Kant’s assumptions are tendentious and his conclusion implausible; Mendelssohn’s view that religion and differences of religion are here to stay provides a far stronger basis for genuine toleration and a strict separation of church and state.

Reason and Experience in Mendelssohn and Kant

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Guyer
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Underlying Structure ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Moses Mendelssohn ◽  
Religion Of Reason ◽  
The Right ◽  
Breaking Work ◽  
Insight Into

This work examines the lifelong intellectual relationship between Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86). Both engaged in a common project of striking the right balance between rationalism and empiricism, they sometimes borrowed from one another, often disagreed with one another, and can usefully be compared even when they did not directly interact. Their arguments and conclusions on metaphysical issues such as proofs of the existence of God, immortality, and idealism are examined; their works in aesthetics are compared; and the path-breaking work of both on the “religion of reason” and the separation of church and state are contrasted. Both philosophers turn out to have much to offer: Kant sometimes provides deeper insight into the underlying structure of human thought, but Mendelssohn is often the deeper student of the variety of human experience.

scholarly journals From Atheists to Empiricists: Reinterpreting the Stoics in the German Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Morgan Golf-French
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
Stoic Philosophy

From the 1670s Stoic philosophy had been closely associated with atheism and the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. However, in 1771 the historian Christoph Meiners published a short essay on the concept of apatheia that revived interest in Stoic philosophy within the German lands. Over the following years, he and his colleague Dieterich Tiedemann developed a novel interpretation claiming that Stoicism closely prefigured the philosophy of John Locke and represented a source of valuable philosophical ideas. Immanuel Kant, his allies, and later Idealists such as Hegel adopted this empiricist interpretation, despite their otherwise deep philosophical disagreements with Meiners and Tiedemann. Tracing eighteenth-century German debates around Stoicism reveals how it came to be considered a form of empiricism. As well as contributing to recent scholarship on the reception of Stoicism, the article suggests a major point of intersection between currents of the Enlightenment usually only treated separately.

scholarly journals Management and communication ideas in the late 17th – early 19th centuries

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-53
Author(s):  
Denis Kislov
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
John Locke ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
World Order ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Government

The article examines the period from the end of the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, when on the basis of deep philosophical concepts, a new vision of the development of statehood and human values raised. At this time, a certain re-thinking of the management and communication ideas of Antiquity and the Renaissance took place, which outlined the main promising trends in the statehood evolution, which to one degree or another were embodied in practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. A systematic approach and a comparative analysis of the causes and consequences of those years achievements for the present and the immediate future of the 21st century served as the methodological basis for a comprehensive review of the studies of that period. The scientific novelty of this study is the demonstration of the theoretical heritage complexity of the Enlightenment for the general history of management and communication ideas. The article presents an analysis of the views and concepts of the late 17th – early 18th century thinkers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, who defend the right to freedom of communication and liberalization of relationships in the system: “person – society – state”, associated with their own understanding of the government role. French enlighteners François Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean d'Alembert, Etienne Condillac were much smaller theorists in management and communication issues, but their successful epistolary and encyclopedic communication practice, starting from the third decade of the XVIII century significantly increased the self-awareness of the masses. The influence of their ideas on the possibility of progressive development of social relations, on improving the national states manageability and on how of a new type scientists were able not only to popularize knowledge, but also to practically make it an object of public communication is shown. In this context, the author considers the importance of political and legal communication problems in the vision of Charles Louis Montesquieu and analyzes the republican governance ideas by Jean-Jacques Rousseau as an outstanding figure of the Enlightenment, who attached great importance to the forms and methods of forming of the state governance structures. At the end of the historical period under consideration, a comparative historical analysis of the most significant statements of such thinkers as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is presented. These founders of the scientific discourse around the problems of power and state, war and peace, the effectiveness of government and communication in relations with the people laid the enduring foundations of the theoretical argumentation of two opposing views on the cardinal problem of our time – the possibility or impossibility of achieving mutually acceptable foundations of a new world order peacefully, excluding all types of hybrid wars. The general picture of the scientific and technological achievements of this period, influencing the level of understanding of the management and communication functions of the state of that time, is given in comparison with the present.

Kant and the Enlightenment's Contribution to Social Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Gelfert
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Epistemology Of Testimony ◽  
Historical Trajectory

ABSTRACTThe present paper argues for the relevance of Immanuel Kant and the German Enlightenment to contemporary social epistemology. Rather than distancing themselves from the alleged ‘individualism’ of Enlightenment philosophers, social epistemologists would be well-advised to look at the substantive discussion of social-epistemological questions in the works of Kant and other Enlightenment figures. After a brief rebuttal of the received view of the Enlightenment as an intrinsically individualist enterprise, this paper charts the historical trajectory of philosophical discussions of testimony as a source of knowledge, via such philosophers as C. Thomasius, C. A. Crusius, J. M. Chladenius, G. F. Meier, and finally Kant. Building on recent work on Kant's epistemology of testimony, the paper considers Kant's broader contributions to social epistemology. This includes an analysis of Kant's comments on the social basis of contingent epistemic standards, e.g. in the sciences, as well as on problems arising from the management of what Kant calls the growing ‘volume of knowledge’. Special attention is paid to the relation between Kant's views and contemporary problems arising both in the context of education and from our increased reliance on scientific experts.

Four Principles of Traditional Theories of Rights

1999 ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Beth J. Singer
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Legal Theorist

This introductory chapter provides a critical analysis of the central features of traditional and contemporary theories of rights as well as criticisms of those theories. Even as human rights come under attack in one part of the globe after another, various bodies are trying to extend the protection afforded by rights to peoples—even to nonhuman animals and the environment—and also to widen the scope of rights to cover such diverse entitlements. Concurrently, especially in the United States, the concept of rights is being subjected to intensive scrutiny, and new understandings of the nature and ground of rights are emerging. Contemporary rights theory has three main sources: (1) the Christian tradition of natural law; (2) the Enlightenment theorists Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant; and (3) the American legal theorist Wesley N. Hohfeld. Theories in this tradition assert or assume, inter alia, the following interrelated principles: Individualism; A priorism; Essentialism; Adversarialism.

The Philosophical Legacy of the 16th and 17th Century Socinians

1998 ◽  
pp. 100-105
Author(s):  
Marian Hillar
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
James Madison ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
Secular Power

The doctrines of the Socinians represent a rational reaction to a medieval theology based on submission to the Church’s authority. Though they retained Scripture as something supra rationem, the Socinians analyzed it rationally and believed that nothing should be accepted contra rationem. Their social and political thought underwent a significant evolutionary process from a very utopian pacifistic trend condemning participation in war and holding public and judicial office to a moderate and realistic stance based on mutual love, support of the secular power of the state, active participation in social and political life, and the defense of social equality. They spoke out against the enserfment of peasants, and were the first Christians to postulate the separation of Church and state. The spirit of absolute religious freedom expressed in their practice and writings, ‘determined, more or less immediately, all the subsequent revolutions in favor of religious liberty.’(1) The precursor ideas of the Socinians on religious freedom later were expanded, perfected, and popularized by Locke and Pierre Bayle. Locke’s ideas were transplanted to America by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who implemented them in American legislation. The rationality of the Socinians set the trend for the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment and determined the future development of many modern intellectual endeavors.

Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem (1783) and The Jewish Vision of Tolerance

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-106
Author(s):  
Shmuel Feiner ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moses Mendelssohn ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) wrote Jerusalem with his back to the wall. His Jewish identity and liberal outlook were challenged in the public sphere of the German Enlightenment, and this was his last opportunity to write a book that would perpetuate the essence of his faith and his values as the first modern Jewish humanist. The work, which moves between apologetics for his faith and political and religious philosophy was primarily a daring essay that categorically denied the rule of religion and advocated tolerance and freedom of thought. Neither the state nor the church had the right to govern a person’s conscience; and, no less far-reaching and pioneering: these values are consistent with Judaism. In the summer of 1783, seven years after the resounding voice of protest against tyranny and in favor of liberty and equality was heard in the American Declaration of Independence, less than six years before the French Revolution, but only two years and two months before his death, the man who was called the “German Socrates,” a highly prominent figure in the Enlightenment, published one of the fundamental documents in Jewish modernity.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Randall
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Thought

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....

John Locke and the Authority of Church and State

Anglophonia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-296
Author(s):  
Graham Alan John Rogers
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Church And State

Transitional Figures: Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, James Madison

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Greenwood Onuf
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Final Stage ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Human History ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Mutual Exchange

Foucault’s sense of the modern epoch finds Kant everywhere in the background. If, for Kant, nature appears to accommodate our needs, human reason nevertheless has a purpose beyond ourselves; nature’s purpose dictates our use of reason. Kant had us use reason to progress from savagery to animal husbandry and the cultivation of the land, mutual exchange, culture, and civil society. Better known are Smith’s four stages of human history: the Ages of Hunters, Shepherds, Agriculture, and Commerce. Set back by nomadic barbarians, Europe belatedly developed a novel society of independent nations, ever vigilant (and often enough at war), committed to improving their productive capabilities and reaping the benefits of commerce. Rationalization and positivism marked the final stage, which in turn required a positive legal order grounded in unimpeachable sources of law. These James Madison definitively articulated when he was U.S. secretary of state.

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