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MARTIN MOORS
CONCLUSION
In contrast to what has been said on the later Schelling’s tautegorical paradigm
for interpreting the manifestation of truth of, or respectively, in mysteries,
Kant’s philosophical discourse on mysteries in religion, which is critically
determined by the rationalized matrices of his moral philosophy, puts itself
completely outside of any positive philosophy about revelation. In no way
does the critical Kant’s dealing with mysteries cling to any consciousness of
self-positing truths of existence. On the contrary, in order not to fall prey to
sheer aberrations of a reason that has strayed beyond its limits, Kant does
not leave off warning the philosopher never to incorporate the mysteries
of religion into the maxims of thought and action. In the particular case of
mysteries (as one of the four parerga to Religion within the Boundaries of mere
Reason), such an aberration of reason is called illumination (Illuminatismus),
i.e., “presumed enlightenment of the understanding,” which is, as he states,
“the delusion of the initiates [Adeptenwahn].”'" With this critical warning
which is addressed to the initiates into the mysteries of religion, Kant proves
himself a herald of Enlightenment-thought making philosophical thinking on
religion and its mysteries dependent on “the maxim of a reason that is never
passive.”'!” But if reason may never be passive, how then can it be receptive
to the mysteries of existence which, in revealed religion, are acknowledged as
that which really matters in human life? Can, finally, philosophy at all survive
if it self-conceitedly puts its principles of truth-cognizance over and against
the positivity of existence?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, translated by Robert
M. Wallace, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, The MIT Press, 1983.
Kant, IL, Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Königlich
Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, Georg Reimer, 1910-,
Vol. 1 (Abbreviated as Ak)
Kant, I., Critique of Judgment, translated, with an introduction, by Werner S.
Pluhar, with a foreword by Mary]. Gregor, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing
Company, 1987.
ll Religion, Ak 6, 53. Illumination (Erleuchtung) is also an important issue in Kant’s essay
What does it Mean to Orient oneself in Thinking? (1768), where he ironically ascribes it to
“those favored by beneficent nature” (Ak 8, 145).
12 Critique of Judgment, translated, with an introduction, by Werner S. Pluhar, with a foreword
by Mary J. Gregor, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1987, 160-161, in Ak 5, 294.
+ 240 +
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