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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY...
goodness. For him, sin never constituted the whole of human nature, not even
its most obvious manifestations. Schleiermacher’s achievement was to correct
orthodox doctrine by presenting human nature and the powers inherent in
it as disturbed, rather than destroyed. In this respect too, he came from the
traditions of Enlightened protestant theology.
Kant rejected the notion of “original sin, that is, a sin committed by Adam
and Eve”, “as a result of which ... a tendency to commit similar transgressions is
said to have been inherited by their descendants on the grounds that all humans
were fully responsible for themselves”,% for “every bad action, if we are seek¬
ing its rational origin, must be looked at as if the human being had committed
it while in a state of innocence.”® Rather, he saw all vices as resulting from
an inadequate cultivation of natural talents or their unreasonable use. Kant,
however, did not want to belittle the ethical problem of evil. He developed this
nexus in the image of the “radical evil” in man.* In it he expressly rejected any
natural, biological notion of original sin because it fundamentally failed to ad¬
dress not only the phenomenon of human freedom and responsibility, but the
phenomenon of evil too. He criticized those who, all too optimistically, played
down evil, as well as those who, with supposed heroic pessimism, assumed that
humanity had been completely corrupted by evil.
The doctrine of the inherited sinfulness of human nature as a topos which
stood in the way of free rational activity by man was a focus of criticism in
the work of the young Hegel.®’ According to him, the subject emasculated by
the dogma of original sin was confronted in the doctrine of the dual nature
of Christ. However, in Hegel’s view the doctrine of original sin was not an
explanation of the wretchedness of the human condition, but only a theologi¬
cal concealment. For Hegel, belief in God elevated not man, but God Himself;
belief in Christ did not represent the incarnation of an absolute from the be¬
yond, but a projection into the beyond by those who were bound to this world.
But this criticism of the theological interpretation of man as a natural being
undoubtedly went beyond temporary philosophical and theological positions.
Gottingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972.
84 KANT, Immanuel, Mutmaflicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786), in K. Vorlander,., (ed.),
Kleinere Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie, Ethik und Politik, Philosophische Bibliothek, 47,
unchanged reprint of the 1913 edn, Hamburg, Felix Meiner, 1961, 64.
#5 KANT, Immanuel, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, inK. Vorländer (ed.),
Kleinere Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie, Ethik und Politik, Philosophische Bibliothek, 45,
unchanged reprint ofthe 1956 edn., Hamburg, Felix Meiner, 1961, 43.
86 Ibid., 183.
§7 Cf. KRÜGER, Theologie und Aufklärung (note 39).
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