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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY...
one", he insisted during the atheism dispute;'** “both are interventions by the
transcendental, the former through action, the latter through faith.”!** This,
however, remains tied to the “moral revelations of the spirit, which gain reality
in action.”!?5
According to Kant, morality was merely the “most important part of the
highest good”, and “moral principles teach us not so much how to be happy as
how to be worthy of happiness." Fichte, by contrast, considered morality as
self-sufficient enough to translate the “Kingdom of God” into reality, even if
only by an endless process. This systematization, which led to a totally ethi¬
cized Christianity, did not mean that religion had been sacrificed to morality
and absorbed by it, but only that religious truths were rigorously related to an
ethical view of self and could only be perceived as such. Neither the Enlight¬
ened theologians nor Fichte, despite this ambivalence, ever suggested that its
ethical foundation accounted fully for the truth of religion. Under the influence
of the Enlightenment the religious impulse slowly gave way to a moralizing
that promoted independence. This new development appears as a process of
gradual transformation of the religious awareness of sin and repentance into
moral self-discipline.'*”
V
In order to circumscribe Enlightened religion, the supporters of the Enlighten¬
ment coined, among others ideas, the notion of “private religion”. It served as a
shorthand term for the self-determination of religious belief, for the individu¬
alization of religion and for the distancing from the protestant church. The
claim to autonomy led to an individualistic undogmatic religion as a result of
the criticism of traditional religion. Enlightened reasoning became the test for
religion’s humanity. The subjective religion manifested the claim to be entitled,
distinctly, to give voice against the Church’s pretension. This individualiza¬
tion of religion exhibited a crucial feature of the Enlightenment religiosity. The
Enlightened Christians no longer assumed the Church to be the sole bearer of
183 FICHTE, Appellation an das Publikum (note 179), 193 — 238, 209.
184 Tbid.
185 STRACK, Friedrich, Im Schatten der Neugier. Christliche Tradition und kritische Philosophie im
Werk Friedrich von Hardenbergs, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1982, 206.
186 KANT, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (note 131), 143, 169.
17 Onthis cf. the fruitful approach in KITTSTEINER, Heinz-Dieter,From grace to virtue: concerning
a change in the presentation ofthe parable ofthe prodigal son inthe 18th and early 19'* centuries,
Social Science Information 23 (1986), 955-975.
e 123"