Religion as Translation

Let us begin our survey with what has come to be known as the ‘Religion as Translation’ (RaT) interpretation.Footnote ³ This view is attributed primarily to John Hare (1996) and Bernard Reardon (1988), though only the former explicitly takes on the First/Second Experiment distinction. According to Hare, the First Experiment concerns the representation of ‘the relation between special revelation and reason … as the relation to between two concentric circles, with special revelation being the part of the larger circle not included in the smaller one, and the pure religion of reason being on the inside’ (Hare Reference Hare1996: 40). More specifically, RaT takes the First Experiment as concerned with the domain of overlap between ‘Biblical Theology’ (BT) and the ‘Pure Rational System of Religion’ (PRSR).Footnote ⁴ The Second Experiment then seeks ‘to show that certain items in the outer circle lead back within the inner circle when looked at in the light of, or translated in terms of moral concepts’ (Hare Reference Hare1996: 40). That is, outside what is often referred to as ‘general revelation’, which includes the moral teaching of the Bible and various matters of natural theology, the ‘special revelation’ of the outer domain involves doctrines given to us through revelation alone. These include ‘the central claims of Christianity in the traditional order of creation, fall, redemption, and second coming’ (Hare Reference Hare1996: 40).

RaT further characterizes the Second Experiment as ‘a kind of raiding party; leaving the inner circle, we investigate the outer circle to see if we can bring back any doctrines found there into the domain of pure reason by translating them under appropriate constraints’ (Hare Reference Hare1996: 40–1). In other words, the question of the Second Experiment is, according to RaT, to determine whether special revelation also contains elements of the PRSR, though contained in a manner less than apparent. The core aim of the Religion thus becomes to investigate this possibility in order to see whether ‘the central claims of Christianity’ can be understood as – or ‘translated’ into – tenets of the PRSR. This will become relevant as we move forward, but note that Hare does not consider the Second Experiment as providing a case for enlarging the PRSR, such as to include contents only available through special revelation. He instead takes it to be a ‘translation’ (some accuse him of a reduction) whereby Kant culls from special revelation its purely rational elements.

As illustration of this ‘translation’, we may consider the suggestion offered in Part Two of the Religion that in order to see in the Gospels a moral example we can follow, we should not elevate Jesus into ‘a supernaturally begotten human being’, one ‘above every frailty of human nature’ (6: 64). Instead, we should ‘translate’ the Gospels into a representation of human moral potential; though in doing so, we gain a practical reason to not represent Jesus as any more than human. In other words, what, according to RaT, primarily matters to the project of the Religion is the practical value of religious doctrine. With regards to theoretical reason, we may be agnostic regarding the supernatural elements of Christology; but with regards to practical reason, we find the Gospels to be of value insofar as they provide for us a representation of human moral potential.

It is far from obvious that Reardon approaches the Religion through similar exercises in ‘translation’, but be that as it may, we have here one of the interpretative camps found within the contemporary battlefield:

While Hare is not especially clear about the locus of the First Experiment, others (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 115; Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 34) presume his view to be that it precedes the Religion itself, taking place instead in the Canon of the First Critique, the Groundwork, Second Critique, and elsewhere as Kant constructs his moral theory, occasionally compares it to divine command theory, introduces the Highest Good and its postulates of God and immortality and even explores the problem of moral evil as found in his 1791 ‘Theodicy’ essay. By contrast, the Second Experiment is understood as taking place in the Religion, for we find in each of its four parts, a ‘raid’ on the ‘the central claims of Christianity’.

To some interpreters, this reading of the Religion is unsatisfying on the grounds that ‘the pure religion of reason gains nothing from translating Christianity’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 79).Footnote ⁶ Yet it is not so obvious that this should be seen as an objection. First of all, even if RaT’s critics are correct that its rendering of the Religion entails that the PRSR gains no new content from BT, that may very well reinforce the merits of the PRSR as a ‘complete religion’ (6: 162).Footnote ⁷

Second, if we view the main aim of the Religion to be a comparison between the PRSR and BT, that still speaks to its value, particularly for someone of Kant’s own time, someone who wished to reflect on whether or not ‘between reason and Scripture there is, not only compatibility but also unity’ (6: 12). If we remind ourselves that Kant himself was brought up in a Lutheran Pietist household and, by numerous accountings, suffered miserably through his many years at the strict Pietist Collegium Fridericianum,Footnote ⁸ it is hardly beyond the pale to imagine within the spectrum of human interests that he would want to explore how the intellectual views of his adult life might correlate to the doctrines that shaped his youth (as well as, of course, a significant share of the Western world).

Third, if the project of the Religion is understood as having practical import, seeking to promote the PRSR to an audience straddled between their Christian upbringing and Enlightenment commitments, a meaningful case can be made that the Religion was written to offer a path for religious reform. From Lessing’s explorations of the ‘ugly broad ditch’ between ‘the accidental truths of history’ and ‘the necessary truths of reason’, to the Jeffersonian Bible, composed to separate Christianity from its ‘mystical cover’, to Schleiermacher and the Liberal Christian movement who regard the Religion as one of their founding documents, RaT’s interpretation of the Religion situates it quite firmly within the central theological debates of the period.

Religion as Symbol

The next interpretation of the Two Experiments emerges primarily from Stephen Palmquist’s Kant’s Critical Religion. Palmquist there presents the First Experiment as pertaining to the Religion’s ‘transcendental elements’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2000: 142), and then some years later describes it as an exposition of ‘the essence of religion in terms of “an a priori rational concept”’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 34). The First Experiment thus ‘aims at constructing a “pure rational system of religion”’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2000: 143). The Second Experiment then ‘aims at assessing one particular empirical religion by “start[ing] from some alleged revelation or other and … examin[ing] [it] … in the light of moral concepts”’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2000: 143). Palmquist subsequently describes the Second Experiment as an attempt ‘to discern the extent to which Christianity exhibits this a priori concept (i.e., fulfils the necessary conditions for “actual religion”)’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 34). He also, as we will soon discuss more fully, ultimately divides the Second Experiment into two distinct stages.

One initial point of contrast between RaT and RaS (Religion as Symbol) is that the latter characterizes both the First and Second Experiments as advancing incrementally through each of the Religion’s four parts, with the earlier sections of each part devoted to the First Experiment, and the later sections devoted to the Second Experiment (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2000: 144). Also unlike RaT, RaS does not take the First Experiment to be just the principles of morality and natural religion found elsewhere in the Kantian corpus. RaS, rather, takes this experiment, and thus the Religion as a whole, as moving beyond the moral and religious topics offered in earlier texts. Each part thus begins with the First Experiment and its contribution to the expanding PRSR; each part then moves on to the Second Experiment, exploring this new content in relation to BT.

For example, in his Comprehensive Commentary Palmquist writes: ‘the first major task of Kant’s first experiment’ is found in Part One’s account of ‘what bare reason justifies us to say about the essential conditions of human nature’; he then presents the question of ‘how closely the traditional Christian understanding of evil conforms to this rational standard’ as an issue for the Second Experiment (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 106). Hence, in Part One, the First Experiment proffers such aspects of our moral nature as the rigourism of a supreme maxim that either makes us morally good or morally evil, the presence of a propensity to evil, three predispositions to the good, and how these various elements relate to one another. Part One then moves on to the Second Experiment’s query as to ‘how closely the traditional Christian understanding of evil conforms to this rational standard’. The story of Genesis is thus ‘tested’ by Kant to determine how well it comports with the PRSR. Some of its elements are thereby rejected (e.g. the historicity of its account of our origins, the biological inheritance of original sin), and some affirmed, though, Palmquist maintains, affirmed in two very different ways.

First, and more straightforwardly, the biblical story is taken to contain the essence of the rational account of moral evil presented by Kant earlier in Part One. But second, the biblical story importantly supplements rational religion, for according to RaS, since ‘human beings are not purely rational beings … bare reason is unable to answer many of the most important philosophical questions’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 116). RaS thus takes quite seriously this added role of special revelation, for it ‘is crucial for a proper understanding of his second experiment and hence of the entire book’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 116).

Accordingly, RaS takes the Second Experiment as not just a test of how well BT serves as vehicle for the PRSR. Likewise, it does not simply seek to ‘translate’ BT into the PRSR. For rather, it also advocates for BT (or more specifically, special revelation), as providing new and important content for our religious lives. BT, therefore, does more than address ‘the natural need of all human beings to demand for even the highest concepts and grounds of reason something that the senses can hold on to’ (6: 109). The claim made by RaS is far more radical. Religious symbols are not just imaginatively enhanced vehicles for the PRSR. Footnote ⁹ Instead, RaS ascribes to BT a ‘mystical’ significance: ‘the door to transcendence can be recognized by reason, but it cannot be opened’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 116). Religion as Symbol thus treats BT and its symbols not just as vehicles for the PRSR, but as passageway to something more.Footnote ¹⁰

This dynamic, the movement from the First Experiment to each phase of the Second Experiment, can be seen perhaps the most vividly in RaS’s treatment of the Religion’s Christology. For as Palmquist states quite directly: Kant’s ‘appeal to the biblical notion of “the Son of God” cannot properly be understood without recognizing its grounding in Kant’s second experiment’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 164). So, where the First Experiment details the idea of a moral ‘archetype’ (Urbild), ‘available to all human beings by virtue of their rational capacity’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 165), the Second Experiment not only then correlates this moral principle with the Gospels, but also proposes that the Gospels speak to ‘what we might call a Christ-sized “hole” in the heart of humanity’s rational capacity’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 165).

As Kant explains, the rational ‘prototype’ (Urbild) is ‘present as model already in our reason’ (6: 62), but according to RaS, it cannot on its own function as a ‘motivating counterforce’ to our propensity to evil absent Jesus’s historical example (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 165). This supplement is needed because we otherwise would not be able to ‘believe we are capable’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 166) of taking the step imposed on us by Kant’s rigourism – i.e. either we prioritize self-interest over morality or vice versa. There is no middle ground to the moral status of our Gesinnung and thus its transformation ‘cannot be effected through gradual reform but must rather be effected through a revolution in the disposition of the human being’ (6: 47). Hence, one who has not yet undergone this transformation, one whose fundamental maxim prioritizes self-interest over morality, must undergo a revolution, a revolution that presumably will not seem even possible, since from the logic of self-interest, how could one ever choose to forgo it? The example of Jesus is thus offered, according to RaS, as proof that it can be done.Footnote ¹¹

Insofar as it might be feared that Kant is here ‘merely importing Christian notions into his supposedly rational system – that is, of letting the second experiment dictate to the first’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 165), Palmquist responds with a surprising defence: here revelation is needed ‘out of the necessity caused by its [reason’s] own limits’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 166). That is, according to RaS, ‘had the Christian revelation never come to pass … [we] may never have become aware of the archetype (Urbild)’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 166). RaS holds thereby that Kant ‘regarded the Christian Gospel as a genuine revelation’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 166). It provides for us not just ‘symbolic clothing’ for an otherwise deficient ‘bare reason’, but further content as well: content that ‘reason may never have been capable of formulating’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 166), content that ‘empowers us to “believe” in our own capacity to imitate the archetype of perfection’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 116).

While it may have first seemed as if the main difference between Religion as Translation and Religion as Symbol was just a matter of the First Experiment’s locale (i.e. antecedent to the Religion or within the Religion), Palmquist’s contention that the Second Experiment does not merely test Christianity but shows the need for a religious supplement to pure reason, marks out a clear difference between RaT and RaS. Accordingly, we may regard his treatment of the Second Experiment as having two stages: it first ‘tests’ biblical theology, to assess the extent to which it serves as vehicle for rational religion; but then it further discovers that special revelation adds something to our moral vocation that reason alone does not and cannot: a ground for belief that moral transformation is possible. To summarize:

Religion as Vehicle

A third approach to the Two Experiments is tendered in Lawrence Pasternack’s Reference Pasternack2014 commentary on the Religion.Footnote ¹² In contrast to our other interpreters, Pasternack prefers a more cautious approach to the text, acknowledging that ‘Kant does not tell us what the first experiment is’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 79). Moreover, unlike most interpreters of the Religion, Pasternack does not use the distinction as guide to his overall interpretation. He approaches the Religion instead by way of its continuity with the broader corpus, emphasizing in particular the relevance of the Highest Good to the Religion’s overall aims. As Pasternack observes, we can see this connection made explicit in various locations, including at the very opening of the Religion, where in its First Preface Kant employs the Highest Good to motivate the claim that ‘“morality … inevitably leads to religion” (6: 6)’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 79).

In light of this approach, Pasternack sees less relevance to the First/Second Experiment distinction, and what he does say is more reserved, particularly with respect to the First Experiment. Instead of advancing a specific view, he opts instead to accept the text as irresolvably vague, for the only claim we can infer from it is that ‘whatever the first experiment is, it must be understood as conceptually or logically prior to the second’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 79). To Firestone however, this is a major shortcoming in Pasternack’s commentary, for his reticence ‘leaves readers in the dark’ (Firestone Reference Firestone2015) as to ‘where one experiment begins and the other ends’ (Firestone Reference Firestone2015). Yet this is in fact part of Pasternack’s point: the text is vague, and in the absence of Kant explicitly mentioning an ersten Versuch, it is best to leave it an open question as to what he intended. Pasternack does, nevertheless, grant that whatever (and wherever) this First Experiment is, it must in some way relate to ‘the construction of the pure rational system of religion from an a priori procedure rooted in moral concepts’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 79). But more specific claims should be regarded as no more than conjecture.

With regard to the Second Experiment, however, Pasternack is less diffident. He writes, for example, that it centrally involves a comparison of ‘the elements of Historical Faith associated with “alleged revelation” to the Pure Rational System of Religion’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 79). This, comparison, however is evaluative, for he takes the Second Experiment as doing more than offering a piecemeal comparison between the PRSR and BT.

According to Pasternack, the Second Experiment is guided by a general rule or ‘evaluative standard’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 80) according to which any religious system, be it pure or historical, can be assessed. That rule he proposes to be based upon Kant’s employment of ought implies can – and more specifically, on the requirement that whatever is essential to our becoming ‘well-pleasing to God’ must be ‘convincingly communicated to everyone whereas a historical faith, merely based on facts, can extend its influence no further than the tidings relevant to a judgment on its credibility can reach’ (6:103). In other words, since the content of an alleged revelation ‘can extend its influence’ only to a limited audience, whatever is required of us in order to become ‘well-pleasing to God’ must be available to one and all. Pasternack then draws from this that the PRSR, as based upon reason alone, will therefore be adequate to ‘Saving Faith’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 80). Christianity, likewise, meets this test of being a ‘complete religion’, though that is, as the Religion documents, established by virtue of what is shared between the PRSR and BT.

Hence, Pasternack does not treat the Religion as either successful or failed Christian apologetics. He rather reads it as a philosophical work, one which explores how historical faith is to be understood in relation to the PRSR. The Second Experiment examines the obvious test case: Christianity, but it could just as well investigate other historical faiths. Where those who read the Religion as Christian apologetics ignore or brush off passages where Kant favourably compares other religions to the PRSR (e.g. 6: 108, 111, 140), such passages are more salient to what might be called Pasternack’s Religion as Vehicle (RaV) reading, for many historical faiths can serve as vehicles for the PRSR. Such an ecumenicalism is, in fact, of considerable significance according to RaV, insofar as the second half of the Religion promotes a ‘Universal Church’ for all humanity. For as Kant states: ‘There is only one (true) religion; but there can be several kinds of faith … [and thus] one and the same true religion can nevertheless be met with’ (6: 107).

Let us now look once again to the opening of Part Two, and see how RaV renders Kant’s Christology. Quite in contrast to most readers of the Religion, Pasternack sees little significance in Kant’s use of Urbild. Referencing the first Critique, he writes: ‘Kant regards the hypostatization of the Urbild to be an “exaggerated expression” (A318/B375). Urbilder are, more mundanely, just entities of the mind, instruments of regulative judgment through which “the understanding is directed towards a certain goal” (A644/B672)’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 135). The moral ‘prototype’ (Urbild) is thus just the ‘ideal of practical perfection’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 136), an ideal that ‘is present as model already in our reason’ (6: 62), and so what the Gospels then offer is just a more ‘vivid mode of representing’ our moral ideals (6: 83).

Hence, for RaV, questions about the historicity of the Bible are just not relevant to its moral function; in fact, they can endanger that function by fomenting what Kant calls ‘moral unbelief’ (see: 6: 63, 84, 120). Moreover, in opposition to those who prefer to read the Religion as Christian apologetics, Pasternack emphasizes that while ‘[w]e find in the Gospels a representation that helps us grasp moral perfection and so helps guide us in our own efforts … we should not conflate this with a metaphysical claim about the ideal becoming flesh’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 136). Quite unlike the views proffered by others (especially RaA, as we shall see below), RaV takes Kant to be agnostic about both the Gospels’ historicity and their supernaturalist claims. The aim of the Second Experiment is thus similar to its portrayal by RaT: for Kant ‘did not see himself as rejecting Christian doctrine, but rather getting to its core, a core that is also available to the Pure Rational System of Religion’ (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2014: 165). In sum:

Religion as Apologetics

The fourth and most extraordinary reading of the Two Experiments appears in Chris Firestone and Nathan Jacobs’ seminal In Defense of Kant’s Religion. According to these authors, there is no other viable explanation as to why Kant would have written the Religion except in order to demonstrate the truth of Christianity, a truth that Transcendental Idealism was likewise created to serve. As discussed earlier, they attack RaT on the grounds that its ‘translation’ project effectively makes the Religion into a valueless text, for it ultimately concludes that ‘the pure religion of reason gains nothing from translating Christianity’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 79). Similarly, Firestone dismisses Pasternack’s interpretation of the Religion as grounded on Kant’s doctrine of the Highest Good. While Firestone concedes that Kant’s interest in the Highest Good can be used as an explanation for why he would write about religion (since it is, for Kant, by virtue of the Highest Good that ‘morality … inevitably leads to religion’, 6: 6), he nevertheless does not see this as explaining why Kant would write about the Christian religion in particular (Firestone Reference Firestone2015).Footnote ¹⁴

With regard to Palmquist’s RaS, their critique is less direct. Their dismissal of RaT and RaV is based on their view that Kant would not have had interest in exploring Christianity except in order to defend it. Yet RaS just as much as Firestone and Jacobs’ Religion as Apologetics (RaA) takes Kant’s Religion as showing that there is a genuine need for special revelation. Their criticism seems to stem, instead, from their dislike for Palmquist’s architectonic and what they see as his failure to bring the so-called ‘conundrum’ literature of the 1980s and 1990s to the forefront of his scholarship. Hence, while they could have found in Palmquist an ally, stylistic differences occluded greater philosophical kinship.

Where RaA and RaS differ is more in the details of their apologetics and in how they see the Two Experiments unfolding through the text. Recalling our previous summary of RaS, each of the Religion’s four parts contain both experiments. Each part begins with the First Experiment’s construction of the PRSR, and then each part turns to the Second Experiment, moving from an initial comparison between the PRSR and BT, then on to a defence of some elements of BT absent from the PRSR. In contrast to this, RaA claims that the First Experiment develops through the Religion’s first three parts, with the Second Experiment taking place solely in Part Four. According to this view, the First Experiment turns to special revelation, identifying ‘the doctrine of radical evil, his prototypical theology, and his vision of the ethical commonwealth’ as the key ‘advances on his critical philosophy, without which it is incomplete’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 115). In other words, the First Experiment discloses for us the items of special revelation that Kant’s Critical philosophy requires, but could not come to via our natural capacities.Footnote ¹⁵

They then characterize the Second Experiment, and so the Religion’s fourth part, as setting out Kant’s account of the philosophical foundation for special revelation as well as ‘the apparatus surrounding this foundation’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 226). The authors, unfortunately, do not tell us what this philosophical foundation looks like, or how we can circumvent Part Four’s claim that ‘nowhere in experience can we recognize a supersensible object’ (6: 174). In fact, in the very pages where Firestone and Jacobs claim that Kant sets up this foundation he, rather, quite forcefully protests that any proposed ‘method’ for identifying ‘inner revelation … always remains a self-deception detrimental to religion’. And even more bluntly: ‘To want to perceive heavenly influence is a kind of madness’ (6: 174). So, while they claim that ‘Kant’s emphasis in Book Four, [is] … on the priority of belief in Christianity’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 226), the text seems far more a polemic against ‘requiring a revelation as necessary to religion’ (6: 178).

The prospects for RaA are clearly gruesome. But let us nevertheless complete our study by once again exploring Kant’s Christology in light of its reading of the Two Experiments.

Unlike RaT, RaS and RaV, RaA treats Kant’s Christology as taking place solely within the First Experiment. But as their rendering of the First Experiment is actually quite close to the RaS two-stage Second Experiment, it is unsurprising that they follow RaS by also regarding the prototype (Urbild) as grounds for moral hope. Nonethless, there are differences in some details.

According to RaS, in order for us to believe in our moral potential, we must have an example of an actual moral success. Jesus thus serves as this example, requiring, however, Jesus to then be just like us, as ‘a naturally begotten human being’ (6: 63). For Firestone and Jacobs, however, the picture is very different. As they are more orthodox in their Christian commitments, Firestone and Jacobs seek to preserve the divinity of Jesus Christ as well as to disallow the possibility that any human being could overcome the state of sin through just rational principles. To them, ‘Kant’s premises in Book One undercut the possibility of such [moral] renewal’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 156), and so they maintain that ‘Kant must cognize a moral ideal outside of and distinct from our corrupt species’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 156). The prototype of Part Two, which they describe as ‘a transcendental entity’, thus stands outside our fallen nature (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 156).

Put differently, Firestone and Jacobs follow Augustinian convention by regarding original sin in terms of a corruption of our own powers as agents; and so for them, original sin makes moral conduct impossible for us, since we are as a result, ‘slaves to sin’.Footnote ¹⁶ Accordingly, they present Kant as likewise following Augustinian convention, such that ‘only the descent of the prototype can restore the possibility of genuine moral freedom’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 166). For RaA, then, Kant follows the distinctly Christian balance between a pessimism about human nature and the optimism conveyed by the Good News. That optimism, however, is not to be gleaned from our own natures, but rather from a being made intelligible to us through what they call Kant’s ‘Transcendental Platonism’.

As RaA presents the opening of Part Two of the Religion, the prototype is not, as it was portrayed by RaV, a mere intentional object ‘present as model already in our reason’ (6: 62). It is also not, as characterized by RaS, a rational model of what is morally possible for all of us, though made possible through the example of the historical Jesus. The prototype, according to RaA is, rather, a supernatural being, one that, despite their already dubious ‘Transcendental Platonism’, is not quite as much Platonic as Scotist: ‘We also find that this idea exists within God, not merely as a concept but as a being, or substance, that proceeds from God’s own being’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 158).

While on the one hand, they draw from RaS that this ideal provides the rest of humanity with moral hope, they differ in that they follow the Augustinian view of our passive reception of grace, such that the aid we receive is through ‘a gracious condescension on the prototype’s part’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 164). Hence, as they read Kant, we cannot raise ourselves up, but rather must just hope for help ‘from without’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 164); and, all the more radically as a reading of Kant, they assert that ‘only the decent of the prototype can restore the possibility of genuine moral freedom’ (Firestone and Jacobs Reference Firestone and Jacobs2008: 166).

Let us now see what can be said of the Two Experiments in light of the above. Clearly, their reading of Part Two depends upon a number of theses shockingly at odds with how Kant is understood by most philosophers. They endorse a loosely Scotist metaphysics; they reject the freedom of the will (for unless saved, we are slaves to sin); they reject autonomy (for we cannot through our own powers act from duty). Hence, in order to fulfil the First Experiment, whose aim is to bring Kant into alignment with Christian orthodoxy, they forsake widely established features of both the theoretical and practical sides of his Critical philosophy. Of course, if we do not read Part One’s treatment of original sin as endorsing its Augustinian variant, Kant would not then place us in the pickle whereby we would need Christ’s aid. But, as Firestone and Jacobs routinely protest, Kant would never have written the Religion except as Christian apologetics. Though little is ultimately explained with regards to the Second Experiment’s alleged demonstration of the Kantian foundations of special revelation, we have been able to make relatively legible how they approach the First Experiment. In sum:

Review of Findings

Before moving on to the new interpretation that will be tendered below, let us take stock of our findings thus far. What should be most apparent is that, with the exception of Firestone and Jacobs’ RaA, there is a rough consensus between the other main interpreters of the Two Experiments. RaT, RaS and RaV all concur that the First Experiment has something to do with the construction of the PRSR, though there is some debate as to its specific content and locale. Similarly, all but RaA portray the Second Experiment as attending to the scope of overlap between the PRSR and special revelation, though again, there are various differences in the details. Perhaps it is worth noting here that Pluhar and di Giovanni (via personal correspondence) fall into this near-consensus, for they both see the First Experiment as related to the construction of the PRSR, and the Second Experiment as directed to its relationship to special revelation.

It is, however, ironic that with so much overlap in how the Two Experiments are understood, there is so much disagreement as to Kant’s ultimate goals in the Religion, particularly, as Palmquist notes, on ‘whether Kant’s position is compatible with Christianity’ (Palmquist Reference Palmquist2015: 343).

According to Hare, the Religion is internally vitiated by a conflict between Kant’s ‘Stoic Maxim’, according to which one’s moral achievements need be solely the result of one’s own efforts, and his sympathies with the doctrine of original sin, which seem to demand an appeal to grace. By contrast, Pasternack sees the Religion as internally consistent, though defends that consistency on the grounds of Kant’s divergence from core Augustinian precepts, while both Palmquist and Firestone and Jacobs take the Religion as appropriating all that is needed from Christianity, even (in the case of the latter authors) at the expense of the received views regarding Kant’s ethics.

What I think the above discussion helps to show is that there may be far less significance to how one reads the Two Experiments than what Firestone and Jacobs and Palmquist assert. It seems much more the case that interpreters come to an understanding of the Religion’s overall structure, themes, and goals, and then apply their understanding of the text to the passage at 6: 12. This becomes all the more evident when we attend to the fact that the passage does not explicitly enumerate the alleged ersten Versuch, nor clearly tell us what this ersten Versuch involves. Even what is says about the zweiten Versuch is still nowhere near as robust as some have claimed. While 6: 12–13 does tell us that the Religion investigates whether there is ‘not only compatibility but also unity’ between some portion of BT and the PRSR, it offers little to settle key normative issues, including the necessary and sufficient criteria for a ‘complete religion’, whether rational religion depends (because of our weaknesses) on a historical vehicle (as per RaV), or whether it depends (because of its intrinsic weaknesses) upon further revelatory content (as per RaS and RaA).

In other words, despite how much some interpreters have put on the shoulders of the alleged Two Experiments of 6: 12, it is best to look elsewhere for answers to the more disputed questions regarding how – or if – Kant appraises Christianity. The Two Experiments cannot bear the interpretative weight, for even if there were a complete consensus as to how to read the scant passage at 6: 12, many of the most important and most disputed evaluative questions would not there find their answers.Footnote ¹⁷

These reservations, however, are just preliminaries for the view to which we now turn, one that will cut even more deeply against the relevance of the passage from which the debate over the Two Experiments has arisen. For as we shall now discuss, it may very well be the case that this entire debate flows out of an utterly banal misunderstanding.

The Two Experiments

What I am now not going to do is to explain how the above can be separated into the First Experiment and the Second Experiment. Instead, I am now going to argue that it is a sheer misunderstanding of the text to think that anything in the above sets out a division between a so-called First and Second Experiment. Or more precisely: my view is that Kant does not in the Preface to the second edition of the Religion assert that the project of the Religion is guided by two distinct experiments. The culprit here, the cause of all this confusion, is in how the key passage has been translated: Aus diesem Standpunkte kann ich nun auch den zweiten Versuch machen.Footnote ¹⁸

In their 1934 translation of the Religion, Greene/Hudson chose the English ‘experiment’ for the German Versuch. Then, in 1996 and 2009 respectively, di Giovanni and Pluhar each followed this convention, likewise using ‘experiment’ here. This, I think, is a mistake … or rather the mistake, the one that is centrally responsible for our current interpretative conundrum and the many hours that have been devoted to it. In order to see the weaknesses of this choice of terms, consider, first, that Kant could have used the cognate Experiment, as he does often enough elsewhere (e.g. Bxiii, 5: 92, 7: 98). But he did not. He instead used Versuch, a term which could, as Pluhar in fact footnotes at 6: 9, just as well be translated as the more gentle ‘attempt’.Footnote ¹⁹

Second, consider that the passage in question comes on the heels of Kant explaining the meaning behind the title of the Religion – and Versuch was, during the period, routinely used in titles to mean ‘attempt’ or even ‘essay’. Locke’s Essay, for example, was translated as Versuch über den menschlichen Verstand. We also have Tetens’s 1777 Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung, Fichte’s 1792 Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung, Reinhold’s 1795 Versuch einer neuen Theorie des Vorstellungsvermögens, and so on.

But even more to the point, Kant himself was clearly fond of using Versuch in his own titles, including:

Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebäudes nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen abgehandelt (1755)

Versuch einiger Betrachtungen über den Optimismus (1759)

Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen (1763)

Versuch über die Krankheiten des Kopfes (1764)

And, in the year just prior to the Religion, his ‘Theodicy’ essay bears the title: Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee.

A third point to consider is that there are numerous passages where Kant refers to what he is writing, has just written or is about to write as Versuch, and if one reviews their context, they are for good reason translated as ‘attempt’. Anyone familiar with German will agree that it is non-controversial that Versuch often means ‘attempt’, and likewise grant that the term is routinely used in contexts where an author is about to embark on some exposition, explication, defence or argument. Throughout the Kantian corpus, such uses of Versuch read in the hundreds, but let me offer here just a modest sampling:

In light of the three broad points so far discussed (more will follow), let us consider the passage in revised di Giovanni translation. Aus diesem Standpunkte kann ich nun auch den zweiten Versuch machen: ‘From this standpoint can I now also make this second attempt’.

With the word changed to ‘attempt’, a new possibility thus begins to take form. Recall that the passage appears towards the opening of the Preface to the second edition, a Preface that is centrally about why Kant decided to compose a second edition. Hence, it may be that the meaning here is quite simply that Kant is now issuing this second attempt to engage in a comparison between the PRSR and BT. Now consider as our fourth piece of evidence Kant’s use of Versuch through the Religion’s first and second Prefaces:

1. * The Preface to the first edition uses Versuch to describe the project of the text, a comparison between the ‘pure philosophical doctrine of religion’ and ‘biblical theology’.

2. * The Preface to the second edition uses zweiten Versuch to describe the project of the text, a comparison between the ‘pure religion of reason’ and ‘alleged revelation’.

3. * The Preface to the first edition uses the non-enumerated Versuch to describe the project, with no mention of any other Versuch.

4. * The Preface to the second edition uses the enumerated zweiten Versuch to describe the project, with no mention of any other Versuch – any other Versuch, that is, other than the Versuch of the Preface to the first edition: for after Kant discusses what seems the success condition of the zweiten Versuch (i.e. whether the PRSR and BT have unity), he writes: ‘I noted in the first Preface that this unification (Vereinigung), or the attempt (Versuch) at it, is a task to which the philosophical researcher of the religion has perfect right’ (6: 13).

Fifth, and finally, let us look at what each of the two prefaces says about the aim, strategy or target of the aforementioned uses of Versuch:

1. * In the Preface to the second edition, in its account of the zweiten Versuch, Kant describes it as comparing the PRSR to BT so as to determine whether ‘there is not only compatibility but also unity (Einigkeit)’ (6: 13).

2. * The Preface to the second edition then refers back to the Preface of the first edition, to what it had to say about ‘this unification (Vereinigung), or the attempt (Versuch) at it’ (6: 13).

3. * In the Preface to the first edition, Kant uses nearly the same language, explaining that via the Religion ‘the attempt (Versuch) is made for the first time to consider them as united (Vereinigung)’ (6: 10).Footnote ²¹

Unfortunately, the pattern here is hidden by the Greene/Hudson and di Giovanni translations. They vary the English terms used for Vereinigung, and so do not capture the overlapping accounts of the Versuch as depicted in both the first and second Prefaces. But once we put aside the translations and look at Kant’s German, it is hard not to take references to the Versuch as all related to the singular project of comparing one domain to the other in order to possibly find ‘unity’. The second Preface tells us that the Religion will explore the question of unity (Einigkeit); it then refers us back to the issue of ‘unification’ (Vereinigung), as raised in the first Preface; and so as Kant indicates, the first Preface likewise explains that through the Religion ‘the attempt (Versuch) is made for the first time to consider them as united (Vereinigung)’.

Thus the evidence present in the original German strongly supports the conclusion that the enumerated zweiten Versuch of the second Preface refers to the same project as the unenumerated Versuch of the first Preface: they both refer to the project of considering the Einigkeit/Vereinigung of BT and PRSR. It is just that Versuch becomes enumerated as zweiten Versuch in the Preface to the second edition – simply because it expresses the fact that, through the second edition, the Versuch put forward by the Religion is being reissued. Kant thus offers by way of the second edition this zweiten Versuch – this second attempt – at considering whether there is any ‘unity’ between BT and the PRSR.

In sum: there is no first/second experiment distinction whatsoever. There is merely the first iteration of the project as offered in the Religion’s first edition, and its second iteration as offered in the Religion’s second edition. Whatever else the Religion is doing, whatever testing, comparing, raiding, translating, and so forth, that is for the main body of the text itself to disclose.