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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES
IN PROTESTANT GERMANY IN THE SECOND HALF OF
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
——o—
HANS ERICH BÖDEKER
For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), as one among many, the Enlightenment, most
aptly summarized perhaps as the rise of the faith in the ability of the individual
to think for oneself, was primarily a struggle against theology. This was one of
the most constant factors in his worldview, and in the worldview of many of
his German contemporaries. Kant saw the “regulations and forms” of theology
as the “shackles of an internal state of tutelage.”’ He thus considered the main
thrust of the Enlightenment to lie in religious matters, an opinion he expressed
several times, and not only in his 1784 essay on the Enlightenment.” Advocates
of the Enlightenment aimed to be able to exercise reason openly and freely,
and to think for themselves without being directed or influenced by anyone
else. Attaining one’s “maturity” in this sense was understood as the freedom
to “[make] public use of one’s reason in every respect”. And rational thinking
expressed itself precisely both in doubts about dogmas and in criticism of
the social face of institutional Christianity. For the German Enlightenment
too, Christianity was no longer a self-evident truth; it subjected theology and
church to a continuous process of criticism.
' Quoted from LIEPERT, Anita, Aufklärung und Religionskritik bei Kant, Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Philosophie, 22 (1974), 359-70, here 362.; cf. CRUMBACH, Karl-Heinz, Theologie in kritischer
Öffentlichkeit. Die Frage Kants an das kirchliche Christentum, München - Mainz, Kaiser, 1977.;
WINTER, Aloysius, Der andere Kant. Zur philosophischen Theologie Immanuel Kants. Europa
memoria, Vol. 1, Hildesheim, Olms, 2000.; HÖFFE, Otfried (ed.), Immanuel Kant, Die Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Berlin, Akademie, 2010.
? _KANT, Immanuel, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? in Preußische Akademie der
Wissenschaften (ed.), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8, Berlin, Georg Reimer, 1902, 35. (hereafter
cited as KANT, Schriften AA, i.e. Akademiausgabe)
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