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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 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 240 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:22
