Page 109 [109]
OCR
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 seeking 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 address 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 theological 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 beyond, 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). e 107 "
