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Written by a distinguished philosopher, this 
original interpretation of Kant's philosophy 
explains the essential thesis of Kant and calls 
to our attention the importance of Kant's 
belief that morality in human life is superior 
to both science and metaphysics. Thus, the 
ethical and religious elements of Kant's 
thinking emerge in new perspective. Dr. 
Kroner submits that Kant's world view 
derives not from his theory of knowledge 
but from his ethical principles and that 
moral dignity and the absolute worth of the 
moral will were of the highest moment for 
Kant. 

An authorized translation with revisions by 
the author, Kant's Weltanschauung is one of 
the first examples available in English of the 
so-called Heidelberg interpretation of Kant. 
The Heidelberg school put greatest stress on 
the moral and religious aspects of Kant's 
thought, as opposed to the school of Mar- 
burg, represented by such commentators as 

(Continued on back flap) 



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^KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG -- 






KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 



By 
RICHARD KRONER 

English Translation by 
JOHN E. SMITH 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 



An authorized translation of Kants Weltanschauung 
(Tubingen, 1914) with revisions by the author 



Library of Congress Catalog Number: $6-6640 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 37 
Cambridge University Press, London, N. W. i, England 
The University of Toronto Press, Toronto 5, Canada 

1956 by The University of Chicago. Copyright under 

the International Copyright Union, 1956. Published ig$6 

Composed and printed by THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

PRESS, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 



Foreword 



JIjVERYONE familiar with 

Kant's thought will admit that he is a difficult writer; 
to follow him through his intricate arguments and his 
complexity of expression constantly taxes the reader. 
Because of this, those reading and teaching Kant have 
frequently tended to stress every detail; they have at- 
tempted to catch his meaning by devoting the most 
painstaking attention to each passage. The result has 
been an overemphasis upon the details of Kant's sys- 
tem, particularly on the early part of the first Critique, 
and the consequent loss of a total perspective upon the 
Kantian philosophy. It is impossible to overestimate 
the confusion which follows; there are many who have 
mastered at least the rudiments of Kant's analysis of 
human cognition but who still remain largely in the 
dark about the more basic questions which his episte- 
mological inquiries were intended to answer. Thus 
there are few who can contemplate the details of Kant's 
theory fully aware that his entire epistemology was in- 
tended to decide whether man, with his limited capaci- 
ties, is capable of resolving the philosophical problems 
set forth in the "Transcendental Dialectic" of the first 



FOREWORD 



Critique. Frequently the problems of the third section 
of the Critique of Pure Reason are left to one side with 
the result that the basic meaning of Kant's criticism of 
knowledge is lost. Yet in spite of his rejection of specu- 
lative metaphysics, the fact remains that Kant's main 
concern was with the plight of human reason when 
confronted with questions which it cannot avoid but 
which it also cannot answer. The analysis of knowl- 
edge is not an isolated affair but a preliminary to de- 
termine the scope of human knowledge and the valid- 
ity of moral activity. When this fact is forgotten, the 
study of Kant degenerates into piecemeal consideration 
of epistemological details, and Kant's basic perspective 
is lost. It is a case of our having lost sight of the main 
purpose of Kant's thought because we have taken too 
myopic a view of his philosophy. 

Richard Kroner's book, Kant's Weltanschauung, 1 
will help to rectify this error. Drawing upon his vast 
knowledge of Kant's writing, he succeeds in setting 
forth the main drift of Kant's thought Kant's basic 
philosophical perspective. It is this perspective which is 
meant by the term "Weltanschauung," a term we have 
decided to retain in the English translation, partly be- 
cause it now has considerable currency in America, but 
chiefly because no English word or phrase adequately 

1. First published in German by J. C. B. Mohr (Tubingen: Paul 
Siebeck, 1914). 

m 



FOREWORD 

expresses what the author has in mind. Kroner seeks to 
draw together all strands of Kant's thought so that the 
critical philosophy can be seen as a whole and as a sus- 
tained attempt to communicate one idea the primacy 
of the willing subject over all knowledge and all spec- 
ulative constructions of reality. This one idea, as the 
reader will discover, represents Kroner's interpretation 
of Kant's Weltanschauung. 

Kantian scholarship of the past century has been so 
vast and varied that it would be a matter of great sur- 
prise if different schools of interpretation had not de- 
veloped. The so-called Marburg school is the one best 
known to English readers, and even those unfamiliar 
with the details have heard of the "back to Kant" 
movement associated with such commentators as Na- 
torp, Cohen, and Cassirer. Less known in this country 
is the interpretation of the Heidelberg school, associated 
with the names of Rickert and Windelband. Kroner's 
book is representative of this latter point of view. Those 
who participated in the "zuriick zu Kant" movement 
were inclined to regard post-Kantian speculation as 
misguided and thoroughly un-Kantian, a view which 
in turn led them to strip Kant of all vestiges of meta- 
physical thought, and thereby reduce him to a thinker 
concerned only with epistemology. For the Marburg 
school, going back to Kant meant going back to epis- 
temological philosophy and completely away from 



F ORE WORD 



speculative questions. The Heidelberg interpretation, 
on the other hand, while it also in a sense went "back 
to Kant/' was more concerned to discover the funda- 
mental moral questions which Kant's critical philoso- 
phy attempted to answer. 

Thus in Kant's Weltanschauung Kroner does not 
simply sweep aside Kant's successors as illegitimate 
heirs to his thought, but he shows how Kant in his 
own way tried to solve the same questions which 
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had attempted to solve by 
metaphysical speculation. The principal point estab- 
lished by Kroner's analysis is that for Kant the will, in 
the form of the individual willing subject, is supreme 
in human life and that as actual will it is superior to all 
knowing and superior to all speculative metaphysics, 
even to those in which will itself is made the central 
principle. Kant's Weltanschauung, according to Kro- 
ner, is the insight that the actualization of human free- 
dom in moral action is man's highest ability and duty, 
and that only in moral action itself do the dualities 
posed by speculative reason disappear. 

From this ethical perspective, Kroner interprets 
Kant's epistemological dualism, phenomenalism, and 
subjectivism, and instead of regarding these features of 
the first Critique as aspects of a self-contained theory 
of knowledge, he aims to show how each is required by 
Kant's ultimate conviction that morality is superior to 



FOREWORD 

metaphysical knowledge. This means that ethical con- 
siderations are first in importance and that far from 
being an appendage intended to supplement a skepti- 
cal epistemology, the ethical outlook actually deter- 
mines the Kantian theory of knowledge. 

In addition to being an important contribution in it- 
self, Kroner's interpretation serves to focus attention 
once more upon the whole outlook of Kant and to re- 
mind us that such a total perspective is operative 
throughout Kant's thought. 

Richard Kroner, formerly Professor in the Univer- 
sity of Kiel, came to America in 1940. Since then he has 
taught at the Union Theological Seminary in New 
York and more recently at Temple University, in ad- 
dition to lecturing at Vassar College, Yale University, 
and other institutions of higher learning. He is the au- 
thor of an excellent little book, The Religious Function 
of Imagination, and also of The Primacy of Faith, the 
Gifford Lectures for 1939, as well as Culture and Faith, 
a revised and enlarged version of an original philo- 
sophical system published by him in 1928 under the 
title: Die Selbstverwirftlichung des Geistes. His monu- 
mental two volume interpretation of the development 
of German Idealism, Von Kant bis Hegel, has, unfor- 
tunately, never been translated into English. When this 
is done it will greatly benefit English readers studying 
German thought. 



F ORE WORD 

Finally, a word about the translation itself. In most 
places the English follows the German closely, but in 
others, notably chapter iii on "Ethical Subjectivism," 
Kroner has made radical revisions. At times he has 
shortened sentences and at others he has recast the 
original completely. The entire translation has been 
checked by the author, but final responsibility for any 
errors in translation or infelicitous expressions rests 
with the translator alone. 

I am indebted to my wife for verifying many of the 
notes, and especially to Professor Lewis W. Beck of the 
University of Rochester who has kindly given of his 
time to prepare an index and to check the proofs; with- 
out his help the appearance of the book would most 
surely have been delayed. 

It is hoped that a small book on Kant in English 
which is both intelligible and suggestive will not only 
provide an over-all viewpoint for those already familiar 
with Kant but will also stimulate others to begin study 
of the Kantian philosophy with some understanding of 
the more basic questions behind Kant's formidable 
analysis of the structure of human knowledge and the 
goal of human freedom. 

JOHN E. SMITH 

NOTE. The notes to the chapters are by J. E. Smith, 
except the note to chapter v, which is by the author. 



Table of Contents 



INTRODUCTION ... . 1 

I. ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 6 

II. ETHICAL DUALISM 30 

III. ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 61 

IV. ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 92 

V. PRIMACY OF THE PRACTICAL 108 

INDEX 119 



Introduction 



XT is of the essence in a phil- 
osophical system to proceed by means of demonstra- 
tion, to supply objective reasons and not to depend on 
subjective motives, feelings,, and conjectures in place of 
argument. Nevertheless, the comprehension of the ra- 
tional, logical, and objective character of the concepts 
in a system can be facilitated if one penetrates the spirit 
and ethos alive in the system. When I refer to the spirit 
and ethos of Kant's philosophy, I do not intend to de- 
pict the character of the inner life of Kant as the biog- 
rapher might do, but rather I intend to concentrate on 
what should be called "Kant's Weltanschauung," which 
originates not from Kant as a person but from Kant as 
the author of one of the world's great philosophical 
systems. The ethical and religious views of Kant are, 
for this purpose, a better source than his epistemologi- 
cal theories. His ethical and religious views are more 
deeply rooted in the philosophical center of his person- 
ality and therefore of his Weltanschauung. 

Two great cultural powers are at the very founda- 
tion of the Kantian philosophy: natural science and 
moral life. The manner in which Kant pits these two 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

powers against each other constitutes the dynamics of 
his system. For in their reality he sees the foci around 
which all philosophical thought moves, and he regards 
it as of the utmost importance to co-ordinate the two 
within a system. His entire philosophy receives its par- 
ticular tone from a twofold insight. On the one hand, 
along with modem rationalists since Descartes and 
Galileo, he sees, in the exactitude of mathematical 
knowledge, the pattern and ideal of all theoretical study 
of reality; on the other hand, in spite of his full appre- 
ciation of scientific truth, he does not accord it any 
metaphysical significance. Kant is of the opinion that 
the point of contact between man and the supersensible 
and eternal sphere is to be discerned in the facts of 
man's moral life, in his self-determination, and in the 
laws of his moral will; for it is on these laws that the 
dignity and freedom of man rest. Putting together the 
two evaluations (natural science and moral life), the 
denial of a metaphysical knowledge of the supersensible 
world must inevitably result. Only mathematical rela- 
tions are knowable, and they are the objects which the 
mechanical and physical sciences can successfully treat. 
The world in which we as moral beings act and pursue 
our ends obviously cannot be penetrated by mathemati- 
cal knowledge; therefore this world cannot be grasped 
in its reality by any theoretical means. The supersensi- 



INTRODUCTI ON 

ble and eternal world is accessible only through moral 
activity; we are in the process of building it by living 
in accordance with moral laws. We make ourselves citi- 
zens of this world by overcoming the impact of the 
sensible world and in learning to control it by the 
moral self. The supersensible world of which we are 
members, inasmuch as we are conscious of our selfhood 
and act as free agents in the world of sense, can never 
be understood by theoretical means. It is nature only 
that can be objectively investigated and grasped by the 
natural sciences. In this sense, man as an agent con- 
fronts nature merely as the raw material of his activity, 
as something which can be molded according to his 
purpose. Exact mathematical knowledge is therefore 
exalted by Kant, for such knowledge alone represents 
the .true science of reality, and it alone produces objec- 
tive truth about its object. Yet, at the same time, the 
metaphysical value of this knowledge is rated low. Sci- 
ence does not penetrate into the supersensible, the in- 
finite, and the unlimited; science conveys theoretical 
information only about a subordinate part of the world, 
a part whose metaphysical insignificance appears most 
clearly when we consider that from it originates just 
those sensuous impulses and desires which undermine 
the dominion of moral reason. 
The abrogation of the comprehension of the super- 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 
sensible world thus originates from the double ap- 
praisal: the theoretical appraisal of the mathematical- 
physical method and the metaphysical appraisal of the 
moral will. If Kant had attempted to extend this meth- 
od, which he deemed to be the only legitimate and fea- 
sible theoretical method for knowing reality, to the 
world in which we live as active beings (as indeed the 
disciples of materialism and naturalism would like to 
do), then he would have been compelled to abandon 
the respect he had for moral life. Within a nature in- 
terpreted mathematically no morality can exist, because 
there every action loses its meaning; in such a world 
the will cannot set any purpose for itself, since mathe- 
matics alone orders and determines all things in its own 
inexorable and absolute way. If Kant, on the other 
hand, had admitted the possibility of a theoretical meta- 
physics of the supersensible world, he would have been 
compelled to give up the thesis that the mathematical 
and scientific method alone can comprehend reality in 
a theoretical way. Such a theoretical metaphysics would 
necessarily have tended to encroach upon nature as 
well, so that mathematical science would have been 
relegated to a place of secondary importance. 

Kant maintains the non-metaphysical but theoretical 
validity of mathematical science and the non-theoreti- 
cal but metaphysical validity of the moral life. He 



INTRODUCTION 



thereby apportions the value of theoretical knowledge 
and the value of the metaphysical and supersensible to 
the two cultural realms especially precious to him: 
mathematical science and the moral life. In this way 
he attempted to do justice to both realms without de- 
stroying the one by means of the other. 



I 

Ethical Voluntarism 



L 



LN HIS brilliant lectures on 
Kant, Simrnel 1 defends the thesis that Kant basically 
is a radical intellectualist and that the emphasis placed 
by him on the moral life in the last analysis results in 
an intellectualistic interpretation of the will. SimmeFs 
thesis is correct with respect to certain passages in 
Kant's ethics; however, if one takes into account the 
general spirit of Kantian philosophy one cannot call it 
intellectualistic. The great originality of his philosophy 
rests (as Windelband, above all, has pointed out) on 
the fact that it accords the highest place within the to- 
tality of the human consciousness and within the to- 
tality of Weltanschauung not to the intellect but to 
the will. Kant's philosophy is voluntaristic. 

This statement may perhaps mislead, in so far as 
modern man immediately connects with the term "vol- 
untarism" the metaphysics associated with Schopen- 
hauer. But nothing of this sort is to be found in Kant. 

1. Georg Simmel (1858-1918), German sociologist and philos- 
opher, concerned mainly with social and moral philosophy. 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

The whole Kantian Weltanschauung centers, not 
around the will in general, but around the morally 
good will or around the individual will which subjects 
itself to the moral law. Kant, moreover, does not regard 
this moral will as the hidden core, the substance of the 
world; he absolutely renounces the task of building up 
a scientific philosophy of the supersensible world out 
of the facts of moral life. He merely states that moral 
life points to the supersensible world. Hence, if one un- 
derstands by voluntarism a metaphysics in which the 
will is the center of reality, then Kant's philosophy is 
no voluntarism; Kant denies that knowledge of the 
will has any speculative significance. Schopenhauer's 
metaphysical and speculative voluntarism is infinitely 
more intellectualistic than Kant's philosophy. 

Kant's Weltanschauung emphasizes that the meta- 
physical significance of the will cannot be adequately 
expressed in a theory of the will but only by the activ- 
ity of the will itself in its moral capacity. Kant holds 
that metaphysics as a theoretical science is impossible 
precisely because the metaphysical dignity of human 
life rests in that activity and capacity. All metaphysics 
is necessarily intellectualistic and consequently exalts 
the intellect over the will. He, on the other hand, who 
declares that the will is supreme has to conclude that 
the nature of things is incomprehensible. Of course, 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

philosophical knowledge of the moral will is not de- 
nied by the rejection of a voluntaristic metaphysics, as 
Kant's ethics shows. But such ethical knowledge must 
confine itself to understanding the nature of morality, 
and it must also try to make the respective claims of 
natural science and morality compatible. Such an un- 
dertaking Kant regards as the main task of philosophy. 
He refuses, however, to expand ethics into a meta- 
physics of the will. We shall see later that such an ex- 
pansion beyond the boundaries of ethics constitutes, in 
Kant's view, the very principle of all speculative meta- 
physics. The intellect must yield its authority to that of 
the will, for the will can only play its own metaphysi- 
cal role in a world which is not fully comprehensible. 
The will can play its metaphysical role, not in so far as 
it is taken as the essence of the world, but only to the 
extent that it is the principle of action aiming at the 
good; for action is meaningless in an absolutely com- 
prehended world. Thus Kant's philosophy is one of 
ethical voluntarism. 

In Kant the metaphysical takes on an entirely new 
significance. It permeates actual life in a much more 
profound way than would be possible in a voluntaristic 
metaphysics. Such a metaphysics recognizes desire and 
will as the very nature of things or in Kantian terms 
the "thing-in-itself"; but according to such a metaphys- 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

ics man is not able to comprehend the thing-in-itsel 
by desiring and willing. Rather it is the intellect, with- 
out regard to the will, which discovers its metaphysical 
nature and function. Every beast is moved by desire 
and according to Schopenhauer even the stone has a 
will that draws it to the ground; yet without Schopen- 
hauer's metaphysics it is not possible to ascribe meta- 
physical dignity to the desire of the beast or to the will 
of the stone. The will takes on its metaphysical signif- 
icance only as a principle in a system, that is, only if it 
is no longer mere will but is transformed into thought, 
in short, into philosophy. 

But by this transformation voluntarism is itself 
changed into intellectualism. If, on the contrary, it is 
true that the metaphysical dimension of man is to be 
found in actual willing rather than in knowledge of 
the will, in the deed and not in the theory, then the 
real value of the metaphysical resides wholly in will- 
ing and doing and not in knowing. Consequently, the 
metaphysical dimension of man must no longer be 
sought in willing as such but only in moral willing. 
For if the will is no longer the principle of a meta- 
physical cosmology, it must be conceived as requiring 
a new quality which constitutes its metaphysical func- 
tion and dignity. 

If the metaphysical no longer manifests itself by its 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 
power of unifying the manifold of appearances, if it 
is no longer the ultimate ground of both the being and 
knowledge of this manifold, then an analogous mean- 
ing for the life of the will must be ascribed to it, which 
gives us the right to declare that this life itself repre- 
sents what we vainly sought in theory. Once the possi- 
bility of making the will the center of a metaphysical 
theory is dismissed, then the will can be conceived as 
making itself the center the ultimate center and unity, 
Such a will would then attain to the high rank of the 
metaphysical or supersensible. The metaphysical, in so 
far as man is able to reach it, is not reserved to those 
who attend to it by means of philosophical intuition or 
knowledge; rather, it is open to all those who subordi- 
nate their will to the supreme and ultimate end. This 
end transcends the finite wishes and desires of the indi- 
vidual and unites him with all mankind. Instead of 
assuming that philosophy with its logical deduction 
knows the will to be the essence of the world, we must 
acknowledge that philosophy only learns what the con- 
cept of the metaphysical means from moral will and 
practical reason: ethics thus replaces metaphysics. 

The will obtains its metaphysical dignity not through 
the instrumentality of metaphysics but through itself, 
in so far as it directs itself toward the good. Metaphysi- 
cal knowledge would only attribute to the will some- 



10 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

thing that the will itself could not attain by willing, 
namely, the quality of being the substance and the 
supreme principle of all things. The quality, on the 
contrary, which constitutes the metaphysical function 
of the will can be attained by willing and only by 
willing. Of course, ethics has to conceive this quality, 
and only in so far as it is conceived can it be called 
metaphysical. But, even so, the value of the metaphysi- 
cal does not depend on this act of conceiving; rather 
it depends on the moral achievement with which ethics 
is concerned. In short, all depends on the actuality and 
not on the theory of the deed. The metaphysical, conse- 
quently, is not what is universal and identical in all 
theoretical knowledge but what is universal and identi- 
cal in willing. Ethics conceives this as the form of the 
moral will, as the law not of a Supersensible Being but 
as the law of the Supersensible Willing. 

There is no metaphysical law of nature, but it is the 
moral law within our will which is the metaphysical 
law. It is the law of the supernatural or supersensible 
world. He who obeys that law rises above the level of 
the world of sense. He rises above that necessity and 
order which govern nature; he enters the realm of 
freedom and reason which transcends the phenomenal 
sphere. 

Cognition of what is never enables finite beings to 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

transcend the limits of the senses and thus of finitude 
and limitation; this cognition is confined to the nar- 
row circle encompassed by space and time. There is 
no ontological vision possible that would surpass these 
boundaries and penetrate into the precinct of the non- 
spatial and the non-temporal, i.e., the eternal By the 
subordination of the will to the moral law, however, 
man is able to free himself from the compulsion of 
natural necessity. If the will acts, motivated not by 
sense impressions, impulses, and desires, that is to say, 
by man's nature, but out of respect for the moral law, 
then it performs the miracle of mastering natural ne- 
cessity. In this way the will subjugates nature and es- 
tablishes a metaphysical order beyond it. With this in 
mind it is instructive to compare the three voluntarists, 
Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. 

Of the three, Schopenhauer least deserves the title 
of "voluntarist," if one understands by voluntarism a 
Weltanschauung which locates the metaphysical cen- 
ter of the human being in his will and his act. Scho- 
penhauer can rather be called an intellectualist. His 
metaphysics ennobles the will by means of philosophi- 
cal speculation but not through its own end and ob- 
jective. The will in his view cannot will the metaphysi- 
cal because it is itself the metaphysical by its own na- 
ture and not by its willing. It is being not willing 



12 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

which makes the will metaphysical. That being even 
Schopenhauer cannot help identifying with the philo- 
sophical concept of the will, although he claims to be 
an "irrationalist." This ontological identification be- 
comes especially clear if one bears in mind that, ac- 
cording to Schopenhauer, the metaphysical act in par- 
ticular is not to be found in willing but, on the con- 
trary, in the denial and negation of the will Whereas 
Kant insists that man attains metaphysical rank only 
if he exalts his will morally, i.e., if he actively partici- 
pates in the founding of the kingdom of reason: Scho- 
penhauer teaches, on the contrary, that man reaches 
his highest stage only in willing not to will at all. 

Not a mode of willing (as in Kant) but the capacity 
of not willing distinguishes man from all other beings 
and enables him to accomplish his metaphysical task. 
The condition for such an accomplishment is, of 
course, the knowledge and acceptance of Schopen- 
hauer's metaphysics or, at least, an intuitive compre- 
hension of its truth; in other words, the condition is a 
state of knowledge as well as of insight. Only the man 
who knows, not the man who wills, succeeds in ne- 
gating the will. The intellectual contemplation of the 
will as the nature of all things and as the source of the 
human tragedy is the liberating act, namely, the act 
which liberates man from acting altogether. Accord- 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 
ing to Kant, moral willing frees us from subservience 
to desire and sensuality, while reason makes the will 
free. According to Schopenhauer, reason makes us free 
from ail willing. 

Schopenhauer begins as a voluntarist but he ends as 
an intellectualist. The will is not, as he first main- 
tained, the absolute substance of the world, otherwise 
man could never overcome it. The ultimate and abso- 
lute is non-willing and non-acting; it is, as Schopen- 
hauer says, nothingness. A voluntarist, in the Kantian 
sense, can never proclaim that the world is ultimately 
tragic, he can never make nothingness his God, that 
is only possible for a quietist, a Buddhist, like Schopen- 
hauer. It is in accord with this conclusion that Schopen- 
hauer teaches that life and will are, in the last analy- 
sis, due to a guilt which is punished by suffering and 
death. In the end the will is not at all the true thing- 
in-itself, but rather the consequence of a metaphysical 
meta-voluntaristic, meta-ethical fall, a falling away 
from the true absolute which is nothingness. It is char- 
acteristic of the man that he says, "one can conceive 
of our life as an unnecessary and disturbing episode 
in the blessed calm of nothingness." If existence is 
completely meaningless, then what meaning can be 
given to willing? Had Schopenhauer's thought as ex- 
pressed in the last book of The World as Will and Idea 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

been made the starting point of his thinking, consistency 
would have led him to maintain that nothingness is 
the very essence of the world, while will and idea are 
merely illusions woven by the veil of maya. He whose 
eyes can pierce this veil liberates himself from illu- 
sions; he beholds the pure absolute nothingness,, the 
things-in-themselves without any intervening medium. 
At the end of his work Schopenhauer comes to this 
conclusion. He who is delivered from the will and 
beholds the truth, that is, the world as will and idea, 
turns into nothingness which in turn becomes true 
being. Only as long as we cling to existence do we 
believe that true nothingness, namely, the world, is 
something. "Behind our existence lies something else 
which is accessible to us only if we have shaken off 
this world." 2 

Schopenhauer is so deeply rooted in intellectualism 
that, in the last analysis, he not only abandons the will, 
but even voluntarism itself, his very metaphysics of the 
will. Kant had already fought against this thesis even 
before Schopenhauer had expressed it. Kant once said 
that "the brooding man" who attempts to liberate 
himself from all the evils of this world gets immersed 
in mysticism, "where his reason no longer understands 

2. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (trans.), The World as Will and 
Idea (London: Kegan Paul, 1906), I, 523. 

15 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

itself and its own intentions but prefers to roam about 
instead of confining itself within its proper boundaries 
as behooves an intellectual inhabitant of a sensuous 
world. Out of this misbehavior the monster system of 
Laotse arises, teaching that the highest good consists 
in nothingness, i.e., in the feeling of being swallowed 
up by the abyss of the godhead . . . only in order to en- 
able man to enjoy eternal calm and thus to reach the 
alleged blessed end of all things. This nothingness, 
truly conceived, is a concept which annihilates all un- 
derstanding and in which thought itself arrives at its 

end." 3 

As compared with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche is a 
much more consistent voluntarist. He does not main- 
tain that the will is the essence of the world. Rather 
he denies that this essence can be known and confines 
himself to proclaiming the importance of willing as 
such. He is a staunch defender of the will and makes 
willing an end in itself. Therefore he teaches that the 
highest expression of the will is the will to power, for 
he who risks all for the sake of willing is bound to de- 
sire the power to overcome all obstacles which would 
thwart him. Will to power is will to boundless willing; 
it is willing to the highest degree. However, this affir- 
mation of the will no longer has the support of Scho- 

3. "Das Ende allcr Dinge" (1794), Gesammelte Schnjten (Aka- 
demie Ausg.), VIII, 335 f. 

16 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

penhauer's voluntaristic metaphysic, and it remains 
suspended in air. 

Affirmation of the will may have a solid foundation 
within a voluntaristic metaphysics. It may also be 
meaningful in such a system to regard a great amount 
of will power as valuable and significant. If the world 
is essentially will, it is conceivable that the possessor 
of a great will can express the essence of the world 
more adequately than one with a meager will, and that 
the stronger will would be in greater harmony with 
the supersensible nature of all things. Of course, such 
an exaltation of willing would, even within a volun- 
taristic metaphysic, be possible only by means of a 
previous intellectualization of the will. Thus Spinoza 
gives metaphysical prominence to the powerful will 
but only by identifying will and intellect according to 
his formula, "will and intellect are one and the same 
thing." 

Nietzsche, however, discards every metaphysical in- 
terpretation of the will precisely because he is the true 
voluntarist; how then can he still assert that willing is 
meaningful? How can he ascribe any value to the 
naked insatiable desire? Why does he give so much 
importance to such a desire ? After all, it is innate as a 
natural force in all living beings, and as will to power 
it is in all human beings the most common and wide- 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

spread fact. If it is true that the philosopher should 
grant particular significance to the will and that the 
very meaning of the world is bound up with the 
question, what should we will, then man's will must 
be of ultimate importance. It is not mere quantity of 
will that makes the will significant and meaningful, 
for a very strong but valueless will is obviously worse 
than a weak one. Only the quality, not the quantity, 
only value and direction, not strength and force of 
will, can entitle the philosopher to give will the pri- 
macy over knowledge. 

An intellectualistic metaphysics lurks behind even 
Nietzsche's affirmation of the will, but this meta- 
physics endows the mere will with a value, a value 
which the will as such does not possess at all. The fol- 
lowing idea is behind Nietzsche's affirmation of the 
will: the sensible world alone really and truly exists, 
there is no supersensible, there is nothing metaphysi- 
cal. From this idea the conclusion immediately follows 
that the best we can and should do in this world is to 
enjoy it as much as possible. We are not to be de- 
ceived by the empty consolation of a world to come: 
all we have to gain we must gain here. This antimeta- 
physical metaphysics, born out of opposition to Scho- 
penhauer's nothingness and deifying the earth and 
everything earthly instead of nothingness, is indeed 

iB 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

able to bestow a value upon the will To the volun- 
taristically minded thinker, willing, of whatever sort, 
is better than denial of the will. Every activity is more 
precious than a boring inactivity or the sweet calm of 
nothingness exalted by Schopenhauer. The exagger- 
ated emphasis Nietzsche puts upon the will and upon 
existence as such is thus to be interpreted as the volun- 
taristic reaction against the intellectualist and Bud- 
dhist Schopenhauer, just as Nietzsche's campaign 
against Christianity is, in the last analysis, a cam- 
paign against Schopenhauer's ethics of compassion. 4 
Every reason to glorify the will to power disappears 
if one disregards the motive behind this campaign. 
The whole basis of Nietzsche's voluntarism is abol- 
ished when his metaphysics of this life is no longer 
set in opposition to Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the 
life to come. 

Only those who abandon the metaphysical (though 
also antimetaphysical) dogma that there is nothing 
at all but this visible universe can enter into Kant's 
Weltanschauung. Only they can take a stand with 
Kant who recognize that moral action harbors a value 
of its own which is dependent upon itself alone and 
includes the appreciation of a supersensible good en- 

4. Cf. Simmers instructive book, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche 
(Leipzig, 1920). 

19 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

tirely independent of earthly successes. Everyone is 
capable of this. No one wants to be a scoundrel or a 
villain; everyone despises wickedness as such and not 
only because he fears the disadvantages of evil be- 
havior. Everyone pays tribute to an unconditional 
value, a value which is not derived from any higher 
value but is itself the highest. Only at times the so- 
phisticated intellect fancies itself to have dispensed 
with such an allegiance or to have explained it away. 
"Concerning those ideas/ 5 says Schiller, "which pre- 
vail in the moral part of the Kantian system, only the 
philosophers disagree, all other human beings have 
always found themselves in agreement." In his moral 
analysis Kant reveals himself as the true voluntarist 
who relies more on what the will and the heart di- 
rectly pronounce than on any analysis a metaphysic 
could provide. 

All analyses center around finite and conditional 
relations. In morality, however, the unconditional is 
at stake. It is noteworthy that even Nietzsche has to 
acknowledge this sometimes. In his book, The Joyful- 
Science (Frohliche Wissenschafi), he raises the ques- 
tion, why do we want science and truth at all? He 
feels obliged to admit that this want does not always 
contribute to our welfare on earth, and that it may 
even cause great harm, and thus he concludes that the 



20 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

will to truth at least involves a kind of metaphysical 
faith which includes recognition of a world beyond 
that of life and nature. Nietzsche puts all these 
thoughts under the significant heading: "To what ex- 
tent are we still religious?" 

Kant's Weltanschauung is rooted precisely in that 
metaphysical faith which Nietzsche mentions here. 
Unfortunately Nietzsche did not even keep this faith 
to the end but denied truth and science themselves and 
thus destroyed the meaning of his own words. Kant, 
on the other hand, regards this faith as the firm 
ground on which we must stand in order to character- 
ize man's position in the world and the relation of the 
world to ourselves. 

Kant holds that the recognition of an imperative, 
guiding us not only when we seek the truth but guid- 
ing our will as its highest measure and goal, brings us 
nearer to the ultimate meaning of the world than any 
speculative or theoretical knowledge possibly could. If 
you follow the voice of your conscience, if you fulfil 
your duty, however large it may loom, then you will 
penetrate deeper into the unknown sphere of the 
supersensible than any kind of thought could do. 5 The 
good will surpasses all understanding; in this way the 

5. See, for example, L. W. Beck (trans.), Critique of Practical 
Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 248. 

21 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

word of the Gospel is transformed by the Kantian spirit. 
The moral imperative is not only a sure guide in life, 
but if we follow it we shall be transported beyond the 
limits of our existence or beyond the limit of that 
world which we can perceive and know through sci- 
ence. Thus within our will a light is kindled which 
illuminates another world, the world of absolute 
values, as a modern philosopher might say. If we sub- 
ject ourselves to the moral imperative voluntarily, not 
in subservient obedience, but in the way in which the 
scientist subjects his will to the imperative of truth, 
then our practical will is ennobled, just as our theoreti- 
cal will is ennobled by following the guiding star of 
truth. Kant is in complete agreement with Lessing. He 
is convinced that it is more worthwhile and worthy to 
strive for truth than to possess it, or as Lessing puts it, 
"If God held all truth sealed in his right hand, and 
all striving after truth (with the provision that I would 
eternally err) in his left, and said to me, 'Choose!' I 
would humbly point to the left hand and say, 'Father, 
give me that one, because pure truth is for you alone.' " 6 
The idea that man through the moral imperative is 
in harmony with a higher world, that moral action 
liberates him from natural necessity, determines Kant's 

6. Eine Du$U\, 1778, Sammtliche Wer\e, ed. Lachmann (1839), 
X, 49-50. 



22 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

Weltanschauung even more decisively. Behind this idea 
looms the further thought that the moral certainty con- 
cerning the existence of a supersensible world directly 
forbids us to go beyond it and demand knowledge of 
the supersensible. We are not only forever unable to 
possess such knowledge, we should not even covet it. 
For, as Kant says, "We know nothing of the future, 
and we ought not to seek to know more than what is 
rationally bound up with the incentives of morality 
and their end." 7 

If our ignorance were simply derived from the in- 
ability to know what we want to know, Kant's volun- 
tarism would only be the outcome of an intellectualis- 
tic resignation, a kind of philosophical subterfuge, a 
miserable substitute for the truth not accessible to man. 
It is in keeping with the spirit of Kant's philosophy to 
interpret it as a doctrine which bases our metaphysical 
ignorance on an ethical injunction prohibiting us to 
know theoretically metaphysical truth. In this inter- 
pretation Kant's primacy of the practical reason reaches 
its consummation. 

For Kant moral obligation is something ultimate 
and absolute; it signifies the limit and also the summit 
of all human consciousness. In fact, it signifies the peak 

7. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (trans.), Religion 
within the Limits of Reason Alone (Chicago: Open Court Publishing 
Co., 1934), p. 149, n. 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

of man's whole existence. To explain it or to derive it 
from a higher source would only deprive this obliga- 
tion of its unrelieved gravity and its inexorable rigor. 
He who is bold enough to presume that it is possible to 
transcend the limit of the moral consciousness, and to 
throw off the bonds which constrain us as moral be- 
ings, violates the eternal law and makes himself a 
companion of the gods or of the devil in order to 
escape the burden of duty. Not only does such a trans- 
gression run counter to the finitude of our intellect but, 
what is of greater moment, our moral conscience is 
opposed to it as well. We ought not to exercise our 
curiosity over any question that would surpass our 
ethical horizon. Morality is meaningful only as long as 
we are imperfect, i.e., as long as we strive. A metaphys- 
ical knowledge which in theory would do away with 
our imperfection would necessarily endanger the 
majesty of the moral law; it would enrich our theoreti- 
cal knowledge at the expense of our moral will. We 
are under the moral law and should never place our- 
selves above it, as metaphysical knowledge would do. 
We ought to overcome our imperfection instead of jus- 
tifying it, as a metaphysic seeking to explain the world 
must attempt to do. 

In order to understand the deep roots of Kant's 
moral Weltanschauung, we must bear in mind the 

24 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

words of Goethe: "Es irrt der Mensch, solang er strebt" 
One could render this in the spirit of Kant as: "Man 
strives only as long as he errs." If man ceases to err, he 
ceases to strive; he who pretends to absolute truth 
would surely relax in the unending moral struggle. 
Failing this, he would become indifferent to whether 
the world is essentially good and divine or whether it 
simply has no regard for moral and religious values. 
We have an excellent example of such a process in 
Schopenhauer's quietism. If, as Schopenhauer thought, 
the ultimate ground of existence is devoid of any ra- 
tionality and is nothing but a blind impulse, who, un- 
der these conditions, would any longer be interested in 
the struggle of life? Who in such a world would pur- 
sue ideal ends and carry them through conscientiously ? 
A man would try to do away with all moral commit- 
ments and indeed with the will itself; the voice of his 
illusory metaphysical knowledge would drown out the 
voice of his conscience and he would rather rely on his 
speculative certainty than submit to the commandment 
of the moral law. 

It is no accident that Schopenhauer speaks about the 
blessed calm of nothingness which he prefers to the 
will. But even an optimistic metaphysics finally ends 
in making the state of intellectual satisfaction superior 
to the untiring impulse of insatiable striving, for all 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

metaphysics looks down upon everything human as 
something that is not absolute and is even superseded 
by the absolute. Moral consciousness cannot be the ab- 
solute to the man who believes that he has penetrated 
into the core of all things; however, unless morality is 
ultimate its very nature and existence is denied for, 
according to Kant, it is the essence of the moral to be 
the ultimate. If, on the other hand, morality is an ulti- 
mate, then we must conclude that all speculative 
knowledge cannot be ultimate, for knowledge of any 
kind is subordinate to the moral law. 

A more extreme anti-intellectualism is hard to con- 
ceive. Kant boldly deduces the moral necessity of as- 
suming that the world is finally incomprehensible from 
the unconditioned validity of the moral "ought." If, 
like Spinoza or Leibniz, we fancy that we are able to 
know in what sense God dictated his laws to the world, 
then we could not take account of the testimony of 
moral consciousness in our attempt to comprehend the 
ultimate scheme of things. Even though metaphysical 
systems may try to reserve a place for moral action in 
the world as they view it, their Weltanschauung pre- 
cludes the truly moral spirit. The commandment of 
reason to subdue passions and inclinations becomes 
meaningless if the sequence of occurrences is ordered 
once and for all. If a divine substance is the essence of 

26 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

all things, if God's intellect and will so govern the 
world that our own consciousness is nothing but the 
incidental occasion for the display of divine power, 
then only one thing would really make sense, i.e., to 
contemplate this display and to comprehend its order 
theoretically. 

Every metaphysical system conceives of the world as 
something finished and thereby leaves the will with 
nothing to do. Hence it was consistent when Spinoza 
like Aristotle said that the contemplation of the idea of 
God is the highest virtue and when he called his 
metaphysics, i.e., the scientific knowledge of the eternal 
substance, ethics. He who takes his metaphysics to be 
the truth will not continue to strive any more than 
would the disciple of Schopenhauer; instead he will be- 
lieve that he has overcome the world and that he can 
be content with intellectual love of God. Kant there- 
fore held that such a metaphysic is not only an intel- 
lectual blind alley but also an aberration of moral 
reason, because a metaphysical system produces an 
illusory knowledge which shakes man's moral founda- 
tion and violates the majesty of the moral "ought." 
According to the view of the metaphysical thinkers, 
only he who agrees with their systems is virtuous. 
Kant, on the contrary, agrees with the common man 
that virtue can be possessed by the unlearned no less 

27 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

than by the learned; his philosophy is the most em- 
phatic protest against the view which would ascribe 
virtue only to a privileged class of men, such as philos- 
ophers or sages. Virtue is not knowledge; what is given 
to science will have to be taken from "con-science." 8 
From the foregoing it can be seen how closely Kant's 
doctrine of the limits of knowledge is connected with 
the spirit of his entire Weltanschauung. Amid the un- 
certainty and insecurity of earthly life the moral law 
stands as our only trustworthy guide. Our ignorance 
about metaphysical truth is as inescapable theoretically 
as it is necessary morally. It is implied in the very ideal 
of the "ought" as the unconditional imperative that, 
whatever may be the origin of the moral law, beings 
who are subject to it must be theoretically and practi- 
cally imperfect,, ever unfinished, ever on their way to- 
ward a distant goal They are forever striving and be- 
ing striven against, they are forever victors and van- 
quished. Beatific vision is granted to us only in 
aesthetic joy; it is denied us in the moral realm and 
therefore also denied in philosophical knowledge. 

8. The German text has a fine parallelism here, "was dem Wisscn 
gegeben wird, das wird dem Gewissen genommen werden mus- 
sen," which I am attempting to preserve in English by using the 
words "science" and "con-science." It is true, however, that "Wis- 
sen" would be more properly translated by the word "knowledge" 
as in the first part of the sentence. 

28 



ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM 

Artistic pleasure itself does not interfere with the 
significance of moral life because the two are not in 
conflict. Only an aesthetic Weltanschauung, that is, an 
aesthetic intuition expanded into a cosmic intuition, 
would conflict with the moral ought. Such an aesthetic 
intuition which results in an aesthetic metaphysics is 
regarded by Kant as both fallacious and misleading, 
like every mystical intuition which presumes to over- 
come our moral imperfection and thereby seduces us 
into believing in a metaphysics. The moral conscious- 
ness alone should determine our Weltanschauung. The 
ethical Weltanschauung, however, can never become 
metaphysics; indeed, in a literal sense it can never be- 
come an ethical "world intuition/ 5 since the world as 
a whole can never be understood from the standpoint 
of ethics. 

Fichte was the first to misinterpret (perhaps deliber- 
ately) Kant's philosophy by means of such a meta- 
physics. According to Kant, ethics replaces meta- 
physics. Kant's view is poles apart from the view that 
the world can be comprehended in a moral way; on 
the contrary, he insists that morality makes the world 
incomprehensible. 



29 



II 

Ethical Dualism 



JLHE problem of a monistic 

world system belongs among the most significant 
philosophical problems of all time. Therefore it will be 
of interest to ask whether Kant can be classified as a 
monistic thinker or not. What is frequently understood 
by monism in modern times is something rather super- 
ficial. Modern philosophy rarely recognizes the true 
duality which must be transformed into unity. It re- 
gards the contrast of the physical and the psychical as 
the highest contrast and therefore strives for a union 
of the two, i.e., for a psycho-physical substance or 
energy which would enable us to comprehend the 
world as a whole. But the world is not fully embraced 
simply by distinguishing and uniting body and soul, 
or nature and mind. The contrast which is deeper by 
far and which is made central by Kant is the contrast 
between nature and morality, between what is and 
what ought to be, dr- between necessity and freedom. 
Kant is a monistic thinker in so far as his philosophy 
leads to a faith in an ultimate unity of these separate 

3 



ETHICAL DUALISM 



realms, a unity in which nature is subordinated to 
moral ends. Such a unity is postulated by moral reason. 
Kant is, however, a dualist in so far as he denies the 
possibility of any theoretical knowledge of this unity. 
Thus we meet a conflict of motives operative in Kant's 
Weltanschauung; this conflict of monistic and dual- 
istic tendencies and claims touches upon the deepest 
problems of his, and indeed of all, philosophy. 

In so far as Kant regards the categorical imperative 
as an ultimate principle he is forced to retain the dual- 
ism of inclination and duty, of desire and will, and 
finally the duality of nature and freedom. Nevertheless 
the emphasis placed upon moral life leads him, para- 
doxically enough, to postulate a higher unity of the 
two realms. Moral decision and action would lose all 
their meaning if they took place in a world completely 
alien to them; or if moral intention had no relation 
whatever to an objective order transcending it; or if 
we were not able to believe that the human will is sup- 
ported by a divine will What renders moral activity 
metaphysically significant is precisely Kant's convic- 
tion that the supersensible speaks through morality; it 
is Kant's contention that the moral realm points to the 
ultimate ground of all being and all existence. 

From this it follows that the moral law leads to 
something which transcends both the necessity of 

3* 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

nature and even the normative character of the impera- 
tive itself. In the last analysis it postulates an ascend- 
ancy over existence; it points to a transcendent One 
which would ultimately unite the realm of nature and 
the realm of morality. The metaphysical quality of the 
moral law is not merely its moral quality. The moral 
law not only commands man to subject both his own 
nature and external nature to reason, but it postulates 
the confidence that such subjection is possible, that 
neither our natural impressions and desires nor the 
outer world of sense present insurmountable obstacles 
to our obedience to its moral command. This confi- 
dence or faith presupposes an original harmony be- 
tween what is and what we ought to do. It presupposes 
an order which is neither that of nature alone nor that 
of moral norms but one which guarantees that the 
moral commands can be carried through in the world 
in which we live. 

If we would understand this idea in a more concrete 
way, we must note the fact that in Kant's Weltan- 
schauung man is a point in which the two different 
world spheres of nature and morality meet. Man is a 
biological organism developed from the brutes, yet he 
is also much more than an animal. This temporally 
and spatially insignificant natural creature is, never- 
theless, a citizen of the supersensible world; man is 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

able by the power of his moral reason to establish for 
both himself and his actions a value which transcends 
all time and all space and puts him in touch with an 
eternal being. This overwhelming relationship per- 
meates Kant's thought throughout; it prompts him to 
assume a supersensible ground of nature and morality 
and leads him to postulate some ultimate subject as the 
author and sustainer of man in his dual status. 

The difficulty of uniting necessity and freedom al- 
ways reveals itself when we confront an ultimate 
monism. If we forget that this problem cannot be 
solved except on the basis of man's moral life, we 
might be tempted to think of nature as the ultimate 
monistic ground of all existence, but then this would 
mean that we reduce moral motivations to biological 
instincts or organic desires. Or it would mean that we 
interpret nature in a metaphysical fashion, thereby 
running the risk of losing both the clarity of the con- 
cept of nature and the precision of morality. All the 
categories which are peculiar to the sphere of moral 
life, categories like freedom, duty, conscience, motive, 
guilt, responsibility, etc., would then either be ignored 
or distorted. As compared with such a vague monism 
which supposes that one and the same thing is thought 
whenever the same word is used, Kant's position 
recommends itself because of its great clarity. He al- 

33 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

ways emphasizes differences without in the least ob- 
scuring them, but he also recognizes the unavoidable 
task of relating them to each other in a harmonious 
system. In die end he envisages the solution of this 
problem as one which in spite of its inescapable charac- 
ter can never be attained. 

The solution must be found because the idea of an 
all-embracing unity is legitimate. A reason must be 
given why the moral law is ordained for man as a sensi- 
ble being although it is addressed to him as a rational 
being. If the task which has to be performed were 
merely theoretical, there would be no necessary ground 
for preferring either nature or the moral realm as 
representing the unity of both. It is for moral reasons 
that nature cannot be regarded as constituting both 
itself and the realm of morality, but neither, on the 
other hand, can the moral law be the ground of its 
unity with nature. However, Kant seeks for the high- 
est synthesis not merely on theoretical but on primarily 
ethical grounds. The spirit of his Weltanschauung de- 
mands a moral world order as a postulate of moral 
reason. But it must not be obscured that Kant's attempt 
to solve this problem is not altogether free from am- 
biguities. It is these ambiguities that prompted his suc- 
cessors to transform his philosophy in a number of 
ways. 

34 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

Two motives not easily combined and in competition 
with each other determine Kant's doctrine at this 
point: an ethical and a religious motive. On the one 
hand, Kant is deeply convinced that all religious life 
must result from a moral disposition of mind, or even 
more that religious life is nothing but a special mode 
of moral life; on the other hand, he feels himself com- 
pelled to declare that God is higher even than the moral 
law. Thus a conflict of motives results which eventually 
threatens his Weltanschauung with an inner contra- 
diction. I will first describe in detail the ethical motive 
in so far as it tends to triumph over the religious one. 

Seen from the standpoint of this motive one can say, 
without fear of exaggeration, that in Kant's Weltan- 
schauung the moral law takes the place of God. God is, 
as Fichte ventured to put it later on, the or do ordinans, 
i.e., the ordering order which is actualized in our 
moral action. God is the moral imperative; his will ex- 
presses itself in the voice of our conscience, his curse in 
remorse, and his love in the blessed happiness of a pure 
heart. According to this view, there is no other service 
of God, no other glorification of God, but obedience to 
the moral law. 1 Kant has often been called the philos- 

1. L. W. Beck (trans.). Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 234; cf. Bestimmung des Be- 
griffs einer Menschenrasse (1785), Gesammelte Schrijten (Akademie 
Ausg.), VIII, 104. 

35 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 
opher of Protestantism; this is true if one takes serious- 
ly the emphasis he put on conscience as the highest 
tribunal of the moral and religious consciousness. In 
this respect the Kantian philosophy differs most from 
that of Thomism. The subjectivism which is here im- 
plied in Kant's Weltanschauung will be discussed 
later on. At this juncture I shall call attention only to 
the primacy of the moral consciousness, a primacy 
which holds even within the sphere of religion itself. 

It cannot be denied that here there is a certain proud 
independence which reveals a kinship with the senti- 
ments of the young Goethe as expressed in his poem 
"Prometheus." 2 This feeling of human independence 
is most clearly revealed in the idea of autonomy, in the 
idea that not God but we ourselves, in so far as we em- 
body pure practical reason, are the legislators of the 
moral law. We submit to the law not on God's behalf 
but for our own sake. It is our true will that must be 
done. 

The moral freedom of man is thus not merely a 
freedom from nature, but also a freedom from external 
supernatural powers. No one before Kant had ever 
exalted man so much; no one had ever accorded him 
such a degree of metaphysical independence and self- 

2. E. A. Bowring et d. (trans.), The Poems of Goethe (Cambridge 
cd.; Boston, 1882). 

36 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

dependence. Within himself man creates and preserves 
the supersensible as that excellence which distinguishes 
him from all other beings. The supersensible is precise- 
ly that trait which makes man what he is or rather 
what he ought to be. The idea of mankind and the 
idea of God are indeed so near to each other here that 
they almost coincide. Even God is dependent upon the 
moral law instead of the law being dependent upon 
him. 

But what place still remains in the world for a God 
who is so circumscribed ? What kind of dignity, what 
kind of majesty can still be attributed to him ? Is God 
so conceived anything more than an ideal of mankind ? 
Is he anything more than a postulate which agrees 
with our moral need, as Kant puts it, 3 but which never- 
theless remains problematic ? A contemporary thinker 4 

3. Beck, op. tit., p. 228. 

4. Kroner is referring here to Hans Valhinger (1852-1933), a 
member of the group of neo-Kantians who were engaged in repudi- 
ating the metaphysical systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in 
order to get "back to Kant" and to primarily epistemological ques- 
tions. Vaihinger's thought is distinguished from that of his col- 
leagues in the movement by its positivistic bent. In a book well 
known in English, The Philosophy of "As If" (Eng. trans, of 
Philosophic des Als Ob, 1911), Vaihinger developed the thesis that 
all domains of thought, science as well as religion, are dependent 
upon mental fictions which are both necessary and at the same time 
incapable of being defended as parts of knowledge. Those who in- 
terpret Kant as holding that we must act "as if* God exists (imply- 

37 



KANT S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

believed himself in agreement with Kant's view when 
he interpreted it as meaning that we ought to act as if 
God existed, and nothing more. Kant never used exactly 
these words but at times he expresses himself in a way 
which lends support to such an interpretation. What 
then is the right interpretation? Are not they on the 
right track who suggest that Kant was not absolutely 
in earnest when he propounded faith in God? 5 Did 
Kant perhaps merely say that faith is a moral need and 
a moral idea, but that nothing can finally be decided 
concerning the question whether God really exists or 
not? 

Such an interpretation would indeed be in harmony 
with the assertion that the moral law is fundamentally 
Kant's God and that there is no God beyond it. 

Such an interpretation cannot be maintained. 6 A 
man of the intellectual and moral stature of Kant 
seriously means what he says; all of his words and 
writings testify to a character of extraordinary moral 



ing either that God does not exist or that we know absolutely noth- 
ing about such a conclusion) have usually arrived at their view 
through the influence of Vaihinger's ideas. 

5. For example, even such a dependable scholar as J. E. Erdmann 
in his Versuch einer wissenschajtlichen Darstellung der neueren 
Philosophic (1848), III, 177 3 supports such a view. 

6. Heinrich Rickert, Fichtes Atheismusstreit und die Kantische 
Philosophic (1899). 

38 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

earnestness. Moreover, such an interpretation runs 
counter to Kant's whole Weltanschauung.fpaith in a 
supersensible unity of nature and freedom is a neces- 
sary consequence of Kant's entire system. Faith in the 
egistencejo^Godjprings from tJieveryJfoiindation of 
hjgjhought ancHai^ j tt 

When Kant says that it is morally necessary to believe 
in God he does not say that it is questionable whether 
God really exists; rather, he insists that the existence of 
God, though it cannot be demonstrated by theoretical 
reason, nevertheless is assured on moral grounds. With- 
in the confines of Kant's Wefeaiistliaiiiing no stronger 
argument could have been given.] 

To be morally necessary implies for Kant that God's 
existence is even more firmly established than it would 
be if it rested upon speculative arguments; for the 
moral law is on a par with the laws of nature with 
respect to certainty but surpasses them with respect to 
dignity of content. Theoretical reasons can be refuted; 
if God is proved he is also exposed to doubt, for 
theories and inferences may easily be erroneous. If 
God's existence is morally postulated it is irrefutable; 
it could be denied only if the validity of the moral law 
were denied, but that for Kant would mean that man 
should deny that he is man. If faith in God is a postu- 
late of moral reason, his existence is as unshakably cer- 

39 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

tain as is the validity of the moral law itself: this is 
Kant's authentic conviction. 

The morally postulated God exists just as surely as 
we ourselves exist as moral beings; after all, even our 
own existence cannot be theoretically demonstrated but 
is itself morally postulated. The same radical, almost 
religious, conviction which underlies Kant's doctrine 
of the moral law also underlies his doctrine of God's 
existence. Any doubt cast upon the second doctrine 
must necessarily affect the validity of the first. Conse- 
quently, the thesis which maintains that there is an un- 
expressed disbelief implied in the demand that we 
should always act as if God existed, not only miscon- 
ceives Kant's religious attitude, but also nullifies the 
ethical content and even the theoretical outcome of his 
Weltanschauung. 

In mentioning the inner ambiguity of Kant's Welt- 
anschauung, I did not mean to imply the absence of 
belief in God, as some misguided Kantians have er- 
roneously suggested. What I wished to emphasize was, 
not the absence of honest conviction on Kant's part, 
but rather the fact that within that conviction a con- 
flict exists between contrasting motifs. This conflict 
might be understood as arising out of the rivalry be- 
tween Kant's ethical voluntarism and his religious 
faith. Although Kant's doctrine of a postulated faith 

40 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

and a postulated God seems to be a logical consequence 
of his ethical views, it is true nevertheless that such 
moral and rational faith is not wholly consistent with 
the moral foundation of his Weltanschauung. Accord- 
ing to the ethical motif, the moral law is an absolute 
and an ultimate; according to the doctrine of the postu- 
late, the moral law is neither the absolute nor the ulti- 
mate, and it is this incongruity which disturbs the 
whole argument. Obviously Kant is oscillating between 
an ethical and a religious Weltanschauung without 
arriving at any definitive and satisfying resolution of 
the conflict. 7 From the religious point of view (which 
may at the same time be called a metaphysical tendency 
within the critical system), it is not legitimate for Kant 
to allow the moral motif to triumph; rather he must 
look for a transcendent unity embracing the realms of 
nature and morality, of necessity and freedom. The 
moral law is the ultimate for us, while that unity is the 
ultimate in itself (the "thing-in-itself"). 

Since Kant as a critical thinker excludes any compre- 
hension of the ultimate as it is in itself except through 
the mediation of the ultimate as it is for us, he is com- 
pelled to derive whatever knowledge of God may be 
possible within his system from the moral law. Thus 

7. The same point can be seen in Kant's Religion within the 
Limits of Reason Alone, trans. T. M. Greene and H. H. Hudson (Chi- 
cago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1934). 

4 1 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

two conflicting tendencies collide in Kant's conception 
of God; the supreme being, on the one hand, has to be 
morally postulated, and faith in him is to be vindicated 
on moral grounds alone, while on the other hand, 
Kant realizes that God is the absolutely sovereign and 
supreme being, beyond and above all relations, to be 
vindicated by nothing but himself. The tremendous 
height to which man is raised by Kant through the 
idea of moral autonomy and freedom necessarily makes 
it difficult to transcend ethics. The metaphysical signif- 
icance which Kant attributes to the moral will, and 
which forms the very center of his ethical voluntarism, 
inevitably detracts somewhat from his doctrine of faith. 
The God of faith appears as a God whose majesty is 
dependent on the majesty of the moral law. Kant was 
certainly the first thinker in the history of philosophy 
to assert and defend the full autonomy and self-suffi- 
ciency of the ethical will, but in so doing it appears 
that he did not do full justice to the religious life of the 
soul. He shattered philosophical intellectualism, but he 
fell, at the same time, into a philosophical "ethicism." 
This ethicism was as much a stumbling block to a full 
recognition of religious life as intellectualism had been 
an impediment to moral life. 

However, even the ethical principle somewhat suf- 
fers from Kant's doctrine of a postulated faith. 

42 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

Through this doctrine the idea of God tends to lose its 
majesty and sovereignty, just as the idea of the moral 
law in turn runs the risk of losing its clear and forth- 
right meaning. Kant introduced moral faith in order to 
guarantee that moral action has moral consequences in 
a world of sense which is morally indifferent. Reason, 
he argues, postulates a divine order of the world for the 
purpose of binding together the spheres of what is real 
and what ought to be real But is such a theory possible 
for Kant and is he consistent? Does not the autonomy 
and sovereignty of the moral law rest precisely on the 
contrast between morality and nature, between the "is" 
and the "ought"? Is not just this the essence of duty, ac- 
cording to Kant, that duty is opposed to the impulses 
and inclinations of nature? If the opposition between 
the two is mitigated, if we concede that there is a secret 
unity of the natural and moral realms, then, so it 
seems, the seriousness of the imperative is endangered. 
The very struggle of moral life, without which moral 
life is unthinkable, would then cease to exist. The 
ethical Weltanschauung inexorably demands an en- 
during tension betwen the will and its goal; the moral 
will loses its true power if this obstacle is eliminated. 
The moral law itself loses its meaning if the tension 
and the obstacle are removed. 
How can we reconcile the absolute sovereignty, the 

43 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

metaphysical ultimacy, of the moral law with the doc- 
trine that this law is restricted in its validity to the 
sphere of human life? How can we believe that we are 
obliged to lead a life filled with exertion and struggle 
against impulses and inclinations and yet also believe 
that this struggle at bottom is no struggle at all, that 
instinct and imperative are not ultimately antagonistic 
to each other? How can we believe that we are subject 
to one master who commands the two opposed spheres 
and moreover does so for moral purposes? Does this 
not imply that man as a moral being ought to live as if 
God did not exist or, as Kant says, "as though every- 
thing depended on him (man)/' 8 whereas man as a 
religious being should live as if God did exist? Does 
this not also imply that we ought to believe that we 
must work for the coming of the divine kingdom with- 
out any reliance upon an outward power which would 
help us, and yet that we also should believe that with- 
out the aid of God his Kingdom can never come? 
Does this not finally mean that whether God exists or 
not, the moral law loses its meaning? If God exists, the 
struggle is pointless and the power of the "ought" col- 
lapses; if God does not exist, the struggle is purposeless 
and the moral law becomes a mad tyrant which reason 
can no longer acknowledge. 
8. Ibid., p. 92. 

44 



ETHICAL DUALISM 



In the end the moral Weltanschauung is weakened 
by the religious postulates which, according to Kant, 
are its necessary correlates. In the one case God, postu- 
lated by the moral will, is not accorded his divine 
right; while in the other case the moral life severed 
from God is in danger of losing its moral meaning at 
the moment God is postulated. God as well as the 
moral law becomes ambivalent; they appear at the 
same time to be both independent and dependent upon 
each other, absolute and yet non-absolute. The moral 
certainty that God exists finally leads us to a position 
not so different from that taken by metaphysical 
knowledge; both sap the strength needed for the cam- 
paign against sensuality and desire, the campaign 
against evil. 

Kant once said that God in his wisdom has arranged 
matters so that we cannot prove his existence theoreti- 
cally. Could we prove it, we no longer would act from 
the sense of duty but from fear. 9 Should we not rather 
conclude that he who was certain of God's existence 
would not act at all, because he would then have only 
one desire left, namely, to contemplate the glory of 
God ? However this may be, Kant admits that the cer- 
tainty of God's existence seems to be more a hindrance 
than a help to the moral life. But is this certainty of a 

9. Beck, op. cit. f pp. 245-47. 

45 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

moral faith different from that of a metaphysical 
knowledge? This., as I have shown, cannot be Kant's 
opinion. 

The ambiguity of Kant's ethical Weltanschauung 
thus stands out clearly. Kant intends to exalt the moral 
law as the summit of man's total existence, and yet he 
also wants to put God above this summit. He cannot 
truly reconcile these two motifs. He can neither render 
to God his full sovereignty nor can he attribute to the 
moral law what he would like to attribute to it. It is 
precisely this ambiguity which prompted Kant's suc- 
cessors to reconstruct and thereby to demolish his philo- 
sophical edifice. But, unfortunately, they also failed to 
throw light on the darkness of this profound and 
puzzling problem. Perhaps this is because we finally 
encounter an eternal antinomy which even the in- 
genuity of Kant could neither evade nor solve, al- 
though he struggled to dispense with metaphysics just 
because he recognized the inevitability of such an 
antinomy. 

If we continue to grope for reasons for this contra- 
diction or discord within the Kantian Weltanschauung, 
we discover that they are inextricably tied to the very 
foundations of his ethical voluntarism. The idea of the 
imperative inexorably impels us to go beyond its con- 
fines. It is precisely from the standpoint of moral life 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

that it is impossible to desire the perpetuation of the 
contrast between inclination and duty, nature and free- 
dom. It is the final elimination of this contrast which 
should be considered the ultimate goal. The moral will 
ought to strive for the attainment of an absolutely 
moral state and this implies that such a will must strive 
for its own destruction. The moral imperative there- 
fore cannot be thought of as an ultimate in the way 
Kant's ethical Weltanschauung requires. 10 

The voluntarist who finds the metaphysical in the 
moral will itself is thereby driven to abandon his own 
position and finally to gain the insight that the volun- 
taristic view itself cannot be absolute. It seems that a 
Weltanschauung which refuses to take an absolute 
position cannot be a Weltanschauung at all, since the 
very meaning and function of Weltanschauung is to 
view existence from an absolute standpoint. If the 
ethical Weltanschauung cannot be ultimate, then it is 
for this very reason not Weltanschauung at all. Moral 
life, in spite of its exalted character, is not altogether 
appropriate for interpreting the totality of existence; 
for the sake of such interpretation it is necessary to 

10. Kroner's discussion of the implications of Kant's moral theory 
should be compared with Hegel's critical analysis of Kant in the 
section "Morality" to be found in his Phenomenology. See J. B. 
Baillie (trans.), The Phenomenology of Mind (London: Allen & 
Unwin, 1931), pp. 611-79. 

47 



KANT S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

adopt a standpoint which transcends the moral hori- 
zon. It is, however, neither my intention nor my task 
in this essay to consider the possibilities which might 
lead to a new approach to these ultimate problems. 

How does Kant himself try to overcome the difficul- 
ties which, as we have seen, arise in his picture of the 
world? The difficulties all originate from the same 
source. We human beings, according to Kant, find our- 
selves limited and finite, whereas the Weltanschauung 
at which we aim is necessarily bound to surpass those 
limitations and confinements. We can never complete- 
ly succeed in surpassing them, we can only strive for 
completion. Therefore we fall victim to a contradic- 
tion: Weltanschauung demands the completion of our 
striving, while our humanity prevents us from attain- 
ing it. As finite beings we can never reach wisdom; the 
highest thing we can accomplish is love of wisdom, i.e., 
philo-sophy. If finite and limited beings seek the in- 
finite and unlimited, the result can only be that the 
infinite and unlimited will be forced into a finite and 
limited mold. 

In this way we can clarify the ultimate contradic- 
tions within the Kantian philosophy and the obscurity 
of his Weltanschauung. The contradictions are not the 
result of Kant's personal shortcomings, rather they fol- 
low directly from his premises. Kant teaches that we as 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

human beings can only grasp the ultimate from our 
own position, and therefore only as an unattainable 
ideal, and not as a truth within our reach. The ethical 
premise requires that the goal be beyond our action, 
for should the goal be one which we could actually 
reach it would be no goal at all, and thus it could no 
longer be conceived in an ethical way; it would be 
something completely beyond our horizons. Only what 
is not realizable can be ethically commanded, a com- 
mand which can be absolutely fulfilled is no longer 
ultimate. Thus we conclude that Kant believes in a 
limitation of knowledge based on an ethical command. 
Even faith, in so far as it springs from the moral will, 
cannot change this basic insight. Faith, although it is 
not distinguished from knowledge with respect to its 
certainty, yet differs from it in that its content does not 
need to conform to the logical law of contradiction. It 
is just this difference which distinguishes faith from a 
philosophical system. Faith is unconcerned about the 
contradiction involved in its being ultimate, yet only 
ultimate within the horizon of man. 

In Kant's philosophy the access to the ultimate as the 
content of faith is, however, an ethical one and, to this 
extent, a rational one. Faith itself, therefore, is also ra- 
tional, and this in a sense doubles the contradiction and 
makes it less tolerable, because faith, being rational, 

49 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

leads us to expect a logically consistent resolution 
which is not forthcoming. Kant's God should be con- 
ceived as in agreement with the law of contradiction; a 
contradiction in the content of a rational faith offends 
reason. We cannot rationally believe in a God who is 
logically inconsistent, for the very idea of God de- 
mands that he is beyond all imperfections, even beyond 
those which are connected with the mode of belief. 
Within the scope of the Kantian Weltanschauung it is 
impossible that faith should be separated from its 
source in the moral will, and it is just on this account 
that faith cannot lay claim to interpret the world from 
a vantage point higher than that of ethics. The intrin- 
sic ambiguity of the voluntaristic Weltanschauung con- 
sequently cannot be avoided or overcome by the found- 
ing of a moral religion. 

So far as Kant is able to vindicate religious faith at 
all, such faith is completely dependent on the sphere 
of the moral reason which postulates it. In the last 
analysis Kant not only proclaims the primacy of prac- 
tical over theoretical reason but and this is even more 
decisive for his Weltanschauung he proclaims the 
primacy of the moral over the religious consciousness 
as well. Moral life can give faith its content but faith 
can never give to moral life its content. Faith can 
never provide a basis for the autonomy of the moral 

50 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

will; rather, it is the moral law which provides a basis 
for faith. Moreover, God can be interpreted from the 
standpoint of human striving while this striving can 
never be interpreted from God's vantage point. 

If, therefore, we take the word "Weltanschauung" 
literally, we arrive at the truly Kantian conclusion that 
we can never arrive at any Weltanschauung which is 
free from contradiction; what is ultimate in itself will 
ever remain what is ultimate for us, and therefore 
every Weltanschauung will inevitably encounter con- 
tradictions. What we can attain at best without contra- 
dicting ourselves is an intuition not of the world but 
only of our own life, and this is precisely the meaning 
of the expression "ethical Weltanschauung." Such a 
Weltanschauung is basically a vision of life or a doc- 
trine about the meaning of man. 

This meaning demands moral consummation of my- 
self and of all other personalities, in other words, it 
concerns the approach to a kingdom of heaven on 
earth. Faith in God supports and encourages the moral 
will in its arduous task. However, this support should 
never be allowed to diminish our obligation to work 
and struggle for the goal; on the contrary, God only 
helps him who merits such help through his own effort 
and action. Moral intentions vindicate faith in the real- 
ity of such divine assistance. From the point of view of 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

morality submission to the moral law is clearly com- 
patible with faith, whereas it would be immoral to 
infer from the existence of the Almighty that the 
moral law is void and man's exertion superfluous. We 
should never ask how a divine world government is 
logically possible, or how such a government can be 
reconciled to the fact of evil which Kant holds to be 
radical, or even how such a government can leave 
room for a moral law. Such questions aspire to some- 
thing that surpasses our capacity; they aspire to knowl- 
edge of the absolute. Faith is precisely that certainty 
which can be maintained by the moral will. This is the 
best definition which is in accord with Kant. 

The content of faith transcends reason. It is just as 
impossible to derive this content from logical principles 
as to derive the content of the will from logical princi- 
ples. Although Kant would not agree with Tertul- 
lian's credo quia absurdum, yet he would be inclined 
to say: I believe although I cannot comprehend; I be- 
lieve, not in order to comprehend (as Augustine says), 
not in order to acquire cognitive certainty by means of 
faith, but rather in order to support the will. Knowl- 
edge in Augustine's sense would merely achieve a too 
easy compromise between faith and reason, whereas 
true faith points to the superrational as well as to the 

52 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

supersensible. Kant rejects all attempts at such a com- 
promise. 

The incomprehensibility of the Divine does not mean 
something merely negative; it is not simply a resigna- 
tion of the intellect. Instead Kant wishes to replace 
metaphysics and its intellectual claims by the will and 
the rational faith which is grounded on it. However, 
with such a basis faith is nothing but the functionary 
of the will. The incomprehensible becomes in its posi- 
tive significance the goal of striving; the content of 
faith performs the function of assuring us that this 
goal can be reached. It is in this sense that the famous 
words, "I felt obliged to deny knowledge in order to 
make room for faith/' should be interpreted. In accord 
with the spirit of Kant's Weltanschauung we can as- 
sert that faith takes the place of metaphysical knowl- 
edge, because Kant's metaphysics is thoroughly volun- 
taristic and dualistic. Kant denies knowledge not pri- 
marily for the sake of faith but in order to make room 
for the will. Not faith, but the life of the will is the 
focal point of Kant's Weltanschauung. 

Only now can we fully understand how completely 
the term voluntarism is justified as a characterization 
of the ultimate intention of the Kantian philosophy. 
Kant is so far from countenancing any form of intellec- 
tualism that he proves the moral necessity of faith al- 

53 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

though this faith logically contradicts itself. 11 Facing 
the ultimate questions man can only take a moral, not 
a rational, position. What indeed could be a better in- 
dication of Kant's anti-intellectualism ? For the way in 
which a thinker tries to answer the ultimate questions 
reveals his standpoint more clearly than does any de- 
tail of his system. 

Only now can we fully appreciate in what sense 
Kant's philosophy is dualistic and in what sense it is 
monistic. The unity of the two separate realms of 
nature and freedom is an object not of knowledge but 
of faith alone. A monistic philosophy is therefore im- 
possible. We shall never be able to understand how the 
same being, namely man, can at the same time be a 
creature of nature and yet participate in a supernatural 
moral order. Nor can we understand what kind of 
"sameness" conjoins the opposite spheres apart from 
the moral consciousness which commands us to obey 
its law in the midst of an indifferent or resisting 
nature. We shall never be able to conceive the reason 
of this duality from a monistic point of view. 

Man's moral consciousness demands that he believes 
in an ultimate unity of the spheres (otherwise he could 
not even act, much less hope that moral actions would 
have moral consequences), but his Weltanschauung 

11. Beck, of. cit., pp. 322-23, n. 

54 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

must be rooted in the dualism of the spheres. Only 
where the separation of nature and freedom exists can 
he find any meaning in moral effort and action, and 
only where he finds this meaning does the very word 
Weltanschauung become meaningful The world has 
meaning according to Kant only on the presupposition 
that human actions are meaningful. "Meaning of the 
world" is not a theoretical but a practical concept. The 
philosophical dualism is therefore the precondition of 
the very question concerning the ultimate meaning of 
existence. 

In a world interpreted monistically norms as well as 
ends, rules as well as purposes, would be meaningless. 
Consequently such a world would itself be devoid of 
meaning; it could never satisfy the human longing for 
meaning. Such a world could not even give a clue as to 
the riddle of why we puzzle about ourselves or how be- 
ings like ourselves are possible at all. Such a world there- 
fore could never give rise to any philosophy whatsoever. 
If this is true, then the world can be meaningful only 
if it is meaningful to us, only if it is so organized that 
the life of our will is meaningful. And thus an original 
duality must exist as a moral necessity. Only the duality 
of beginning and end, of a point from which the will 
departs and a point toward which it strives; only the 
duality of what is and what ought to be, the duality of 

55 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

the real and the ideal, is in conformity with the moral 
consciousness. 

But just as the idea of what ought to be constantly 
points beyond itself (because every achievement calls 
forth new duties and tasks), so the idea of an absolute 
meaning also leads beyond itself. We must admit that 
there cannot be any meaning at all beyond that of 
purpose and end, and that meaning implies purpose 
(if it is not actually identical with it). Nevertheless, 
we are led to assume that there is an end beyond all 
ends, a purpose beyond all purposes an absolute mean- 
ing beyond all relative and finite meanings. All human 
striving postulates such a definitive and ultimate goal, 
for as human it is forever incomplete and as striving it 
always posits a meaning beyond itself an absolute 
meaning implying an absolute fulfilment, and thus an 
absolute unity transcending the duality which charac- 
terizes our human situation. However, we have no 
concept of such a unity. We find ourselves unable to 
understand what absolute fulfilment means in concrete 
terms, or what end it is which has no longer to be 
willed because it is forever realized. Beyond the duality 
of beginning and end, beyond the tension of the real 
and the ideal and consequently of good and evil, all 
meaning seems to disappear. We cannot want such a 
meaning to exist, because it would destroy the mean- 

56 



ETHICAL DUALISM 

ing of our own life. Kant quotes with approval the 
words of the poet Haller: 12 

The world with all its faults 

Is better than a realm of will-less angels. 

Kant's vision of life thus demands an ethical dual- 
ism. Within ourselves there is a capacity for rising 
above the level of nature, above the level of this earthly 
world, and indeed above even the cosmos itself. The 
moral will soars above the confines of time and space 
into the supersensible and it acquires an eternal value 
by subjecting itself to the moral law. In a world which, 
without freedom and without consciousness, blindly 
obeys mathematical laws, in a world of organic beings 
who are slaves of their impulses and desires and who 
are subject to and determined by the end of self- 
preservation, man stands as lawgiver and sovereign. 
For man stamps upon things the seal of his freedom 
and by establishing state and church he creates norms 
and patterns of moral community. Thus he founds 
within the scope of the world of sense a supersensible 
order and gradually brings the Kingdom of God into 
existence. 

In contrast to this philosophical pride which exalts 
man, a much more modest view is also to be found in 
Kant. The ethical greatness of man is counterbalanced 

12. Greene and Hudson, op. cit., p. 58. The original is .in 
Albrecht von Haller, fiber den Ursprung des IJbds (1734). 

57 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

by his ethical weakness and corruption, the metaphys- 
ical horizon is limited by the physical roots of man's 
existence. There is radical evil in every human being 
which revolts against the legislation of the moral con- 
sciousness and persuades man to regard moral reason 
as an invidious tyrant from which he should try to 
escape. Kant denies that the contest between the good 
and the evil incentives in man, whether in the individ- 
ual or in society, in private or in public life, can ever 
end. Man will always be divided into a lord and a 
bondsman or slave. If he makes his inclinations the 
maxim of his decisions and actions, the moral law 
transforms itself into an inexorable judge which con- 
demns and punishes. Kant is a moral pessimist. We are 
not born to find peace and rest in any state of the soul, 
rather the law is an ever present goal spurring the will 
on toward the good, though impulses and inclinations 
continually tempt us in the direction of evil. 

Kant's Weltanschauung therefore does not favor the 
attempt later made by Fichte to lead man to beatitude. 
Kant leaves no doubt that he does not believe in the 
possibility (or even the moral value) of a beatific 
state of mind. Man is eternally imperfect, he is forever 
(even beyond the grave) in the making, never reaching 
his goal, always divided against himself. The deification 
of the soul which the mystics describe is to Kant a 
product of a vain enthusiasm which produces in us the 

5* 



ETHICAL DUALISM 



illusion that we are endowed with a capacity which 
we do not in fact possess. Kant explicitly denies that 
any man can have an intimate intercourse with God., 
such as the self-styled "favorite of heaven" 13 claims to 
enjoy. The claim of mystical certainty and of mystical 
union with God militates no less surely against our 
moral undertaking than does the overambitious claim 
to metaphysical knowledge. 

We are driven from paradise, and the assiduous ful- 
filment of our duties alone can point the way toward 
the heavenly goal Thus the Kantian God is enthroned 
in awesome majesty and, in relation to us, stands at an 
unapproachable distance. The divine love cannot be 
acquired and enjoyed like a piece of property; it can 
only be the remote fruit of that worship of God which 
is synonymous with moral conduct and which is in 
most cases hard and trying. Although Kant endeavors 
to adjust the Christian idea of the forgiving and re- 
deeming God to his moral Weltanschauung, it cannot 
be denied that the God of wrath and vengeance is 
more in accord with his outlook. This Weltanschauung 
does not veil or mitigate the dreadful fact that in God's 
world evil exists and that the good man no less than 
the wicked must suffer. It is this fact above all which 
makes our existence, as well as the existence and the 
very nature of God, an impenetrable mystery. 

13. Greene and Hudson, op. cit., p. 189. 

59 



K A NT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

Kant's moral pessimism is nevertheless compatible 
with a certain moral optimism. Kant would perhaps 
not deny that the sum total of the evil in the world 
surpasses the amount of pleasure and joy allotted to 
man, but he would not conclude from this that life is 
unworthy to be lived. He would insist that we can live 
a worthy life if we struggle against the moral evil in 
our breast, and that even misfortune and hardship con- 
tribute to the victory which we may win. The moral 
law is stern and rigorous, but there is victory at the 
end, even though this end looms only in the infinite 
distance and entangles the thinking mind in insoluble 
contradictions. We are never permitted to despair either 
of ourselves or of the world, neither are we allowed to 
believe that we can ever reach perfection. Kant depicts 
man as hovering between the extremes of ignorance 
and knowledge, of good and evil, of God and Satan 
(although he does not believe in Satan as a person). 
But man is not a hybrid in which the opposites disap- 
pear by neutralizing each other; rather he participates 
in their antagonism and is therefore divided against 
himself. Man experiences to the full the opposition 
which is the mark of himself as well as it is character- 
istic of the world in which he lives; in the face of this 
opposition he has to develop himself and form his 
Weltanschauung. 

60 



Ill 
Ethical Subjectivism 

VOLUNTARISM and dualism 

determine a third facet of Kant's Weltanschauung: its 
subjectivism. Like voluntarism and dualism this third 
trait is basically ethical, and indeed it is because of its 
thoroughly ethical character that both voluntarism and 
dualism are bound up with it. If the moral will is the 
center of the human self if this self centers in moral- 
ity and if morality is the center of Weltanschauung, 
then this Weltanschauung must be subjective, for the 
human self is human just to the extent to which it is 
the self of a willing and thinking subject differing fun- 
damentally from all objects that can be willed or 
thought. Even the moral faith which ensues from the 
basic moral aspect of life and the world is subjective. 
Although it is faith not in man but in God, it is never- 
theless not a faith in any object or objective entity but 
in the supreme subject, in the absolute self. This is the 
reason why God cannot be known in a theoretical and 
objective way, but only in an ethical, i.e., subjective 
way. 

6x 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

However, it is not easy to understand how the sub- 
ject as an ethical self is related to the subject as theo- 
retical intellect or understanding, or how Kant's ethics 
supplements his theory of knowledge. It is difficult to 
understand how both ethics and epistemology are inte- 
grated with each other and how they constitute one 
consistent whole. The usual explanation is that the sub- 
jectivism of Kant's ethical Weltanschauung is based 
upon the subjectivism of his epistemological theory 
which he calls "transcendental idealism." In order to 
examine this thesis we must turn to the problem of the 
inner relation between the two types of subjectivism 
the ethical and the transcendental one. We must ask 
which of the two is more characteristic of Kant's Welt- 
anschauung, and which of the two is dominant in the 
fabric of his feeling and thought. All I have said so far 
leads one to suspect that the ethical subjectivism is more 
significant and decisive than the epistemological or 
transcendental. We shall see that this is indeed so. 

If morality is possible at all, the duality of nature and 
freedom must exist, and its existence must be a limita- 
tion of knowledge. Freedom cannot be a quality or 
property of the subject in the sense in which colors, 
powers, or potentialities are the qualities or properties 
of objects. Man is not "free" as the possessor of a 
"natural" property; he is not free as a result of some 

62 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

natural endowment, but he ought to will and to act 
as a free subject. He ought to will and to act as a 
subject in the proper sense, since freedom belongs to 
the subject (person) and never to an object which is 
impersonal. This contrast is a precondition of morality. 
The contrast between theoretical (scientific) knowl- 
edge and practical (moral) volition, or between theo- 
retical and practical reason, is likewise such a precondi- 
tion. Practical reason does not know objects, it does not 
know nature; it knows rather the purposes of the will, 
its norms, its goal The kind of knowledge which is 
appropriate in the field of the sciences objective, the- 
oretical, impersonal knowledge cannot be applied in 
the fields of willing and acting. The two fields limit 
each other. This essay therefore set out with the thesis 
that Kant acknowledges the validity of both science 
and morality in principle and that this dual acknowl- 
edgment is the root of his entire philosophy. We can 
now see that this same acknowledgment requires the 
basic subjectivism found in his philosophy. 

The theoretical knowability of nature is correlative 
with the objectivity of the natural phenomena, whereas 
the subjectivity of the moral will is correlative with the 
practical character of aims and ends, purposes and 
norms, imperatives and ideals. This contrast is not re- 
solvable as long as morality exists. Nature has to be re- 

63 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

stricted so that the moral will has a field of its own; 
theoretical knowability itself has to be restricted so that 
freedom can grow. The concept of a limited realm 
called nature springs therefore from the ethical spirit 
of Kant's Weltanschauung; it springs from its volun- 
taristic, dualistic, and subjectivistic features. If practi- 
cal, i.e., moral reason did not differ from theoretical, 
i.e., scientific reason in that the former directs the will 
while the latter conditions the sensible world, the whole 
opposition between freedom and nature (i.e., the realm 
of necessity in the sense of causal order) or between the 
moral and the physical law would never arise. This op- 
position follows from Kant's ethical subjectivism. It is 
this subjectivism which restricts the sphere of both ob- 
jectivity and of natural objects and at the same time re- 
fuses to allow nature to exhaust the whole of existence. 
It is true that the whole of existence does include 
both nature and freedom, objects and subjects, the the- 
oretical and the practical If this whole realm could be 
known theoretically if science could be extended to 
include the moral life if, in other words, we as sub- 
jects were only another kind of object (as psychology, 
especially in its behavioristic form, makes us believe), 
then ethical subjectivism would not be an ultimate 
truth. But in this case ethical voluntarism and ethical 
dualism would also have to be excluded from meta- 

64 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

physics, and instead there would ensue a speculative in- 
tellectualism and monism, a metaphysical naturalism 
and objectivism. We have seen that Kant denies this 
possibility most emphatically. Nature has to be re- 
stricted for the sake of freedom. The "whole realm of 
existence" cannot be theoretically known (in the way 
proposed by a speculative and metaphysical monism). 
The moral will and moral action are independent of 
natural causality; they do not belong to the phenom- 
ena subject to physical necessity. If either one of the 
two opposites, nature and freedom, has a legitimate 
claim to be regarded as a key to the comprehension of 
the whole realm of existence, it is not nature the 
sphere of the objects that is to be so regarded, but free- 
dom the sphere of the subjects. Not a scientific ob- 
jectivism but only an ethical subjectivism would be ade- 
quate for comprehending the whole. Such a compre- 
hension, however, is altogether impossible, precisely 
because moral reason is not theoretical or speculative, 
not metaphysical, that is, not objective but subjective. 
Moral reason regulates the life of persons, it does not 
conceive or contemplate all things as a whole. 

From the point of view of ethical subjectivism we 
can now understand the doctrine of epistemological 
subjectivism. If it is true that practical reason regulates 
the life of the will and the realm of moral existence, is 

65 



KANTS WELTANSCHAUUNG 

it not possible that theoretical reason (or intellect) reg- 
ulates the realm of natural existence, in so far as this 
realm is regular at all? This indeed is the core of Kant's 
famous thesis that the intellect prescribes its laws to na- 
ture, and this in turn is the gist of his transcendental 
idealism or phenomenalism. This phenomenalism is 
the outcome of his ethical subjectivism. Nature de- 
pends in the last analysis, not on the theoretical subject 
by virtue of its subjective forms or categories of the 
understanding, but primarily on the moral subject as 
being in the center of Kant's Weltanschauung. Episte- 
mological subjectivism is a consequence of the ethical 
and not the reverse. 

The limitation of nature as the realm of causal neces- 
sity and mathematical order is thus a consequence of 
moral freedom and a postulate of moral reason. Fichte 
has emphasized (and even overemphasized) this point 
by transforming Kant's ethical Weltanschauung into 
an ethical metaphysics; nature is, as he says, nothing 
but the "material of duty." Kant is more critical and 
cautious here as elsewhere; he does not base nature on 
the moral imperative by deriving the logical forms of 
the natural order from the idea of freedom and self- 
hood. If that were possible ethical subjectivism would 
turn into a speculative theory, a possibility which Kant 
expressly denies. The "primacy of practical reason" 

66 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

must not be extended (and thereby falsified) by mak- 
ing it the principle of a theoretical (metaphysical) 
knowledge of the Absolute Ego. Kant rejects this Fich- 
tean presumption. The duality of nature and freedom 
cannot be theoretically understood or derived from a 
supreme principle, even if this principle were freedom 
itself, which indeed does limit nature. This limitation 
is expressed in the doctrine of transcendental idealism. 
This doctrine answers the question of how the human 
intellect is able to discover laws of nature or how na- 
ture (the realm of objects) can be known objectively 
by the thinking subject. 

The answer rests upon the sovereignty of reason over 
nature, and this sovereignty is the result of ethical sub- 
jectivism. Even the expression "the intellect prescribes 
to nature its laws" has a "practical" connotation, for 
prescribing is a kind of practical action. Kant interprets 
the relation between theoretical reason (or understand- 
ing) and nature by analogy to the relation between 
practical reason and will. The logical forms, i.e., the 
highest principles of the natural order, are conceived 
as norms, rules, regulative concepts all these terms 
play a decisive role in the Critique of Pure Reason. And 
all these terms indicate that Kant interprets the opera- 
tion and function of reason, even in the theoretical 
field, along the lines of ethical legislation; he alludes 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

directly in one passage to the idea that the root of rea- 
son as such is practical. In that passage Fichte may have 
found the courage of his ethical speculation. Nature in- 
deed depends upon reason, for it is rational and scien- 
tifically knowable only on this account. Reason, be it 
practical or theoretical, is legislator in both fields, but 
the idea of legislation itself is a practical one. In this 
way the ethical subjectivism is also victorious in episte- 
mology, although Kant avoids Fichte's exaggerations. 
The subjectivism of reason leads to the thesis that the 
objects, inasmuch as they are scientifically comprehen- 
sible, are conditioned by the subject, i.e., by reason. 
Without this theoretical subjectivism objective truth 
cannot be discovered: objectivity depends on subjectiv- 
ity, for without a subject that knows there are no ob- 
jects to be known. Subjective knowledge is not the op- 
posite of objective knowledge, rather knowledge as 
knowledge is always an operation or an activity of the 
thinking subject, and the subjectivity of knowledge 
does not preclude it from being objective, but, on the 
contrary, it makes its objectivity possible and meaning- 
ful. Objectivity means rationality and thus subjectivity. 
This subjectivity should not be confused with the so- 
called "subjectivity" of the human senses or indeed 
with any psychological or physiological theory what- 
soever. In Kant's epistemology the term "subjectivism" 

68 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

always points exclusively to the thinking subject, to the 
"transcendental/ 5 i.e., the "ruling" or "commanding" 
understanding, to sovereign reason. Kant's subjectivism 
therefore should not be interpreted by any comparison 
with Locke, Berkeley, or Hume; it is totally different 
from the doctrine that knowledge consists of "subjec- 
tive" impressions and ideas. Just as Kant's concept of 
the subject is inseparably connected with the concept 
of reason, likewise his subjectivism is by no means psy- 
chological but logical and ethical. Kant's ethical sub- 
jectivism is predominant throughout his philosophy. 
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant calls space and 
time "forms of pure intuition." None of his theses is 
more open to misinterpretation and none was more 
widely attacked or defended than this famous doctrine. 
Kant conceives of space and time primarily as princi- 
ples of mathematical knowledge both pure and applied. 
Nature can be known mathematically because space 
and time are both forms of human intuition and there- 
fore forms of nature herself. Space and time are subjec- 
tive and therefore objective too, for it is the knowing 
subject which is the legislator here. Space and time are 
the forms that order the sphere of objects which can be 
known mathematically. The doctrine of space and time 
is invoked for the purpose of explaining the possibility 
of mathematical physics, but it has an ethical back- 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

ground and an ethical implication. The knowing sub- 
ject is able to encompass the sphere of objects because 
it is on the same level as the moral subject. Man as a 
subject is not a mere product of nature because, and to 
the extent that, he is a moral agent: free and autono- 
mous, the author and initiator of his own actions. He 
is what he is in both fields, the theoretical and the prac- 
tical., because he is the representative of pure reason or 
because pure reason is embodied in him as a subject. 
Thus the subjectivism of the epistemological interpre- 
tation of nature has its roots in the subjectivism of the 
ethical interpretation of man. 

Man as a moral will and moral person does not be- 
long to the objective world, he does not belong to the 
world of objects he is superior to the whole spatial- 
temporal order. This is the meaning of his being a sub- 
ject. As such, he is superspatial as well as supertem- 
poral. He belongs to a purely intelligible or (to employ 
the Greek term) noumenal sphere. In this fact lies the 
foundation of his moral dignity. The subjectivism of 
nature therefore does not mean that man's psychologi- 
cal or physiological constitution transforms nature by 
the process of knowledge or that man adapts the ex- 
ternal world to his internal conditions, thus, in a sense, 
anthropomorphizing it. On the contrary, nature is ra- 
tionalized by the knowing subject and thus elevated to 

70 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

its true essence or to its essential truth. Nature has no 
truth outside, or apart from, its rationality. Science 
comprehends the objects as they really and truly are. It 
is the intellectual dignity of man corresponding to his 
moral dignity which enables the scientist to purify the 
sensible world so that it can be interpreted in mathe- 
matical symbols. In this respect Kant's doctrine is not 
a subjectivism at all. 

The subjectivism of Kant's epistemology as well as 
that of his ethics heightens and exalts the significance 
of man. As the ethical realm is not degraded or de- 
based by the subjectivity of the moral will, the realm 
of scientific knowledge is likewise not impaired by the 
subjectivity of nature. Instead, it is rational sovereignty 
and power which is manifest in both fields and which 
corresponds to the majesty of truth and morality. Na- 
ture is essentially subjective; a non-subjective nature 
would be a non-rational nature it would not be na- 
ture at all. For what we call nature is determined by 
the rational character which makes scientific investiga- 
tion and the foundation of scientific explanation pos- 
sible. A non-subjective knowledge of nature is absurd. 
If our knowledge in so far as it is rational is subjective, 
then nature too is necessarily subjective; but whether 
there is anything that exists beyond the horizon of the 
subject and of subjective knowledge at all (as Kant's 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

expression "thing-in-itself" seems to suggest) is an- 
other question. By no means can this transcendent 
thing be an "object" in the sense of scientific objects 
and in the sense required by scientific objective knowl- 



BfC. 



The conclusion, therefore, that the epistemological 
subjectivism does not restrict the possibility of know- 
ing objects is justified. If this possibility were restricted, 
such restriction would concern not the knowledge of 
the objects qua objects of knowledge but rather the 
knowledge of the objects in so far as they are more 
than objects of knowledge. But what else can objects be 
except objects? In what sense can they surpass objec- 
tivity and be something more than objects of knowl- 
edge? The theory of scientific knowledge as Kant de- 
velops it in the Critique of Pure Reason cannot satis- 
factorily answer these questions; they transcend the 
concept of the object as much as they transcend the en- 
tire horizon o epistemology. They point to those prob- 
lems which Kant regards as insoluble precisely because 
they cannot be solved by means of epistemological 
thought. If the sphere of objects is subjective in the 
sense of being a restricted sphere,, this must mean that 
objects (nature as such) belong to a wider realm, that 
they are a fragment or segment of a larger whole. 

It is not then the subjectivity of knowledge which is 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

the restricting factor, but rather that the objective 
sphere itself is restricted precisely because it is objec- 
tive. Nature as such is not the whole; it is not fully 
known or knowable by scientific methods because by 
such methods it is not known in the perspective of the 
whole. Science is restricted because it investigates and 
explains the objects in a merely objective way, i.e., one 
which is not meta-objective: science investigates and 
explains in a merely physical and empirical, not in a 
meta-physical and speculative way. Nature as a re- 
stricted realm is truly known by science as it really (ob- 
jectively) is, but this type of knowledge is restricted. In 
so far as nature is envisaged from the perspective of the 
whole of reality, the natural sciences cannot know it, 
and the theory of scientific knowledge (i.e., epistemol- 
ogy) cannot even define what is meant by nature in 
this sense. Scientific knowledge is subjective just be- 
cause it is scientific and not speculative. 

Subjectivism thus conceived implies the method of 
scientific rationality, and, since this method restricts the 
mode of knowledge, subjectivism also implies that in 
such knowledge we do not have absolute knowledge. 
We would know nature absolutely if we could know it, 
not merely by scientific means, but also by knowing 
either the whole of reality or knowing reality through 
the concept of this whole. Schelling, later on, con- 

73 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

structed such an absolute knowledge of nature in his 
famous "philosophy of nature." Kant, on the contrary, 
denied such a philosophy just as he denied Fichte's 
metaphysics of an Absolute Ego. We do not know, and 
can never know, what nature ultimately is, how it is 
ultimately one with freedom or how it looks from the 
point of view not of man but of God. Subjectivism, like 
voluntarism and dualism, figures in Kant's Weltan- 
schauung precisely because it imposes a restriction upon 
our power of comprehension; it is the ethical root of 
subjectivism which brings about this imposition, since 
it demands that there be "room for freedom." The con- 
trast between freedom and nature, between subject and 
object, is essential to the primacy of moral reason and 
must not be obliterated by any claim to a higher knowl- 
edge. Nature can be known only subjectively, for if it 
could be known absolutely freedom could likewise be 
known absolutely. But then morality would be de- 
stroyed, for morality cannot survive inclusion in an ab- 
solute system. Where it is so included (as in the case of 
Hegel's system) its distinctiveness is lost and man's 
moral dignity is thereby eclipsed. 

The real opposite of subjectivism is therefore not ob- 
jectivism but absolutism. Kant's epistemological sub- 
jectivism does not restrict scientific knowledge because 
it denies its objectivity, but because it denies its abso- 

74 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

luteness. The objects are known by physics and the nat- 
ural sciences as they objectively are, but they are not 
known as they are "in God." We do not see things in 
God, as Berkeley claims that we do. Our sense percep- 
tion and our intellectual conception, even at best, do 
not penetrate into the divine mystery of all things; in- 
stead, they are human powers, and, being human, they 
are both subjective and objective but never absolute or 
divine. The mutual dependence of subjectivity and ob- 
jectivity rests upon the split of man's consciousness into 
the consciousness of nature, i.e., the objective world and 
the consciousness of his own self and the realm of per- 
sons. It is because of morality and freedom that this 
split cannot and must not be overcome. The duality of 
science and action must be preserved at all costs. Sub- 
jectivity and objectivity are bound together just as the 
knowing subject is bound up with the objects known. 
That is the reason why Kant's epistemology culmi- 
nates in the famous dictum: "The conditions for the pos- 
sibility of the experience of the objects are at the same 
time the conditions for the possibility of the objects 
themselves." In this principle the identity of the objec- 
tivity of the objects and of the subjectivity of knowl- 
edge with respect to their supreme conditions is di- 
rectly emphasized. As long as we stay within the con- 
fines of Kant's epistemology, we can never transcend 

75 



K A N T S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

the limitation of this mutual relation of objects and 
subject. Kant refuses to allow any concept of an Abso- 
lute which would be both objective and subjective as is 
the case with the Absolute in the systems of Schelling 
and Hegel 

Kant's theory of knowledge definitely separates the 
human and the divine. We are human and, that is to 
say, finite, because our knowledge of the objects is 
separated from the knowledge of God and, in this 
sense, relinquishes any claim to final truth. The truth 
of science is forever finite and restricted just as man's 
moral achievements are forever finite and imperfect. 
The third division of the Critique of Pure Reason, the 
so-called "Transcendental Dialectic," is dedicated to the 
explicit demonstration of these limits of theoretical 
knowledge. 

The limitation of knowledge is not to be attributed 
to the inadequacy of the understanding alone; it is 
rather the consequence of the mutual relation of ob- 
ject and subject. It is the consequence of the primacy of 
the subject, that is, of ethical subjectivism. The world 
as a whole, the human soul, and God cannot be known 
by the human understanding, because they can never 
be made the objects of sense perception and theoretical 
conception in the same way as can natural phenomena. 
They are names for something that transcends the 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

"forms" of sense intuition as well as of rational intellec- 
tion, and they are not in space and time as the objects 
of physics are. They are in the proper sense meta- 
physical and they therefore resist the methods of 
physics and of the finite intellect as such. They are not 
conditioned by the same categories that condition 
everything natural, and they are in that sense supra- 
natural. They cannot be investigated, analyzed, and 
subjected to experiment as can the objects of science. 
They transcend the scientific horizon and are, in this 
sense, "transcendent." The relation between object and 
subject which enables man to know objects is no longer 
valid here. 

The subjective conditions which give the under- 
standing its strength and power in the field of the nat- 
ural sciences are the duality of object and subject, the 
dependence of the objects upon the subject, the spatial- 
ity and temporality of the natural phenomena. These 
are no longer conditions of those transcendent "ob- 
jects" which Kant calls "Ideas" in order to distinguish 
them from the phenomena of nature. The world as a 
whole is not a phenomenon in the same sense as all 
events and substances within the world are phenomena. 
The soul is not an entity capable of being experienced 
in the same way as are psychological data and proc- 
esses. And God the Idea of an entity which comprises 

77 



KANT S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

all entities and is more real than any simple thing is 
beyond all possible experience and beyond the horizon 
of all possible objective knowledge. 

Only a pre-Kantian dogmatism could hold that God, 
soul, and world are knowable by rational means. In 
that sense many philosophical systems, even at present, 
are still pre-Kantian in a systematic, though not in a 
historical, sense. Indeed, all naturalism of whatever 
kind is pre-Kantian, the naturalism of Bergson no less 
than that of Alexander or Driesch, the naturalism of 
Marx as well as that of Feuerbach or Strauss, although 
all these thinkers lived after Kant. None of them un- 
derstood the truth behind Kant's subjectivism, and 
therefore all of them disregarded his warning and con- 
sidered themselves justified in setting aside the limits 
which he had imposed. These limits, rightly con- 
sidered, are no limits imposed upon human knowledge 
from outside. It is not correct to say, as has been re- 
peatedly done by critics, that Kant in the "Dialectic" 
taught agnosticism or rational resignation; at least, it 
is not correct to say this in the sense in which Kant's 
critics generally have. In warning us to be wary of any 
dogmatic metaphysics and in proving that reason is not 
endowed with the power of knowing the world, the 
soul, and God, Kant certainly does away with a certain 
type of knowledge. But the question is, what type? 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

Clearly, Kant rejects that philosophical knowledge 
which tends to deal with the transcendent Ideas as if 
they were concepts of finite things belonging to the 
spatial-temporal world and subject to the same rational 
categories which control the substances and processes 
within that world. But to renounce such knowledge is 
by no means to espouse what has been called agnosti- 
cism. On the contrary, it simply excludes spurious 
knowledge and dispels the illusion of a knowledge 
which is really no knowledge at all. Kant's rejection of 
metaphysical knowledge actually guards against the 
falsification of the true nature of transcendent Ideas. 
Only if the world, the soul, and God were finite things 
would such knowledge as Kant rejects be possible; but 
then they would not be what they are, they would not 
represent a sphere which definitely transcends nature. 
Kant's restriction is therefore in no way a statement of 
resignation but, on the contrary, a triumph of clarifi- 
cation. 

It is the inadequacy of objective knowledge and even 
the nature of an object itself, rather than the inability 
of the subject, which entails the limitation of knowl- 
edge in relation to the transcendent Ideas. It belongs to 
the nature of an object to be finite, conditioned, and 
incomplete just as it belongs to the nature of objective 
knowledge not to reach the Infinite, the Unconditional, 

79 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

and the Perfect. This is the reason why God and the 
world cannot be known as nature can. Thus, Kant does 
away with limits rather than imposing them, because 
he frees the Ideas from the bondage in which they were 
placed by metaphysical dogmatism. It is only subse- 
quent to this that Kant reaches intellectual resignation. 
It is not because the intellect is unable to comprehend 
the transcendent Ideas as it does scientific objects, but 
because being human the intellect is finite and there- 
fore unable to understand the reality of the tran- 
scendent Ideas. In this sense the Ideas are "mere" Ideas, 
i.e., subjectively conditioned. 

To be sure, science investigates and comprehends the 
reality of its objects, and, seen from this standpoint, 
science succeeds in its own field better than metaphysics 
does in the field of the Ideas. The objects are accessible 
because they are controlled by the intellect; the Ideas 
are transcendent because they transcend the intellect. 
It is for this reason that objective knowledge of the 
Ideas is not only impossible but not even to be desired. 
The Ideas transcend the whole sphere of objectivity 
with regard to both objects and objective knowledge. 
Still, there is a defect in knowing them merely as 
Ideas, but it is not the defect of a subjective rather than 
an objective knowledge, but the defect of a subjective, 
that is a finite, knowledge. This defect characterizes 

80 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

the limitation of the human intellect and stamps that 
intellect as human. A divine intellect would be able to 
understand the Ideas not merely as Ideas but in their 
reality. But even so, the divine intellect would not 
know the Ideas as objects in an objective way, as nature 
is known to us, but it would know them "face to face," 
i.e., in their fulness and totality. 

Kant develops the hypothetical idea of the divine 
intellect in his third Critique, the Critique of Judgment. 
He conceives this intellect as not being discursive like 
the human intellect which cannot grasp truth without 
moving around it, taking one step at a time, stopping 
to analyze and then to reconstruct. The divine intellect, 
on the contrary, is intuitive and knows the truth in one 
glance. The Ideas, inasmuch as they are mere Ideas, i.e., 
Ideas separated from reality, are a product of human 
understanding. This separation is a result of discursive 
thinking and, in that sense, it is merely subjective. The 
divine intellect in its knowing of the truth does not 
have to proceed one step at a time, it does not need to 
separate reality and Idea, for it is infinite and unre- 
stricted. God, and God alone, knows the full truth at a 
glance. He alone knows himself, the world, and the 
soul. Man knows only the Idea of God, the world, and 
the soul. It is this which constitutes the inevitable and 
definitive limitation of human knowledge. One can 

81 



KANTS WELTANSCHAUUNG 

say that die entire separation of object and subject as 
well as that of theoretical and practical reason is only 
human; in the comprehension of God it does not exist. 
How far this comprehension can be fathomed by us is 
a difficult question which I will discuss later on. Here 
I only want to emphasize that the subjectivism of 
Kant's epistemology is in accord with his general view 
which stresses the limitation of man for the sake of his 
moral task and life. 

In the divine intellect nature and freedom, object 
and subject, are not separated as they are in the human. 
Since man is basically a moral being, this separation is 
necessary. He could not strive and struggle, he could 
not be a responsible person, if this separation were not 
characteristic of his human lot. The epistemological 
subjectivism of the transcendent ideas is based there- 
fore, as is that of objective knowledge and the objects 
themselves, on the ethical subjectivism of Kant's 
Weltanschauung. Not the knowing, but the morally 
willing and acting, subject is subject in that distinctive 
sense which sets man off as finite in contrast to the 
infinity of God. Moreover, the epistemological princi- 
ple of limitation, the so-called "agnosticism" of Kant, 
is in perfect agreement with the biblical Weltan- 
schauung which also separates God and man in prin- 
ciple and which likewise holds that men cannot 

82 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

fathom the mystery of God just because God can be 
known only in so far as he reveals himself. Kant is less 
not more agnostic than the Bible, since he at least ad- 
mits a certain comprehension by means of reason alone, 
though not of God himself, but of the Idea of God. In 
this comprehension practical reason the reason of the 
willing and acting subject has predominance, not the 
reason of the scientific or speculative intellect. 

Man is, in the true sense, a subject only in so far as 
he wills and acts. This is true even of the subject which 
seeks scientific knowledge, for we can know nature 
only through voluntary and active investigation of her 
phenomena. Science never comes to an end; it is a 
dynamic activity (not a process) precisely because the 
scientist himself is, above all, a human subject, finite 
and imperfect as long as he does not see and grasp the 
full and total truth. If he could ever reach this goal, he 
would no longer be a scientist, a human subject, but he 
would be "like God." The object of theoretical knowl- 
edge exists as an object only within the horizon of the 
human consciousness, whereas the object of the will 
never exists at all for it is ever fleeting, ever to be real- 
ized but never real Its realization is an eternal task. 
From the practical perspective theoretical knowledge 
itself is determined by the will the will to know the 
truth. And seen from this perspective, knowing, like 

83 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

all other human activity,, is never ending; truth its 
supreme and ultimate "object" is never grasped. This 
is the deepest insight in Kant's epistemological sub- 
jectivism. 

On the basis of this insight the transcendent Ideas 
assume the significance of intellectual tasks never com- 
pletely fulfilled and forever standing at the horizon of 
human science, while science itself takes on signif- 
icance as an approach toward the solution of these 
tasks. In this way, ethical subjectivism is not only the 
background but even the very life of science. Science is 
basically an ethical undertaking; this is its ultimate and 
most exalted conception. The ethical ideal thus pene- 
trates the theoretical sphere itself and appears within 
it as its supreme master and interpreter. Kant speaks 
directly of the Ideal of (theoretical) Reason as the cul- 
mination of the entire theory of knowledge. It is only 
now that the whole depth of Kant's subjectivism opens 
before our eyes: it is not that we know the objects only 
subjectively, but that our very knowledge is part and 
parcel of our moral existence. This is the innermost 
essence of his subjectivism. 

Epistemology, then, finally becomes a province of 
Kant's ethical Weltanschauung. All interpreters of 
Kant (and they are in the majority) who believe that 
the epistemology is the center, the ground, the very 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

essence of Kant's philosophy, and that his ethics repre- 
sents only a subsidiary venture, an appendix or merely 
a part besides other parts in his thought, ignore the 
inner structure of the whole. While Kant did not go as 
far as Fichte, who constructed his system with ethics as 
its root and as its goal, Kant did pave the way toward 
such a system. He avoided the consequence drawn by 
Fichte because he was not as willing as Fichte to sub- 
ordinate the theoretical activity of scientific knowledge 
exclusively to ethical thought. He was aware of a cer- 
tain self-dependence of nature, and, as we have seen, he 
never abandoned the indissoluble duality of nature and 
freedom, and therefore of theory and practice, of intel- 
lect and will. Consequently, he maintained the duality 
of epistemology and ethics and did not proceed to the 
establishment of an all-embracing system. In his 
Weltanschauung we can find an unsystematic^ even an 
antisystematic tendency. It is precisely because of this 
feature that it is more accurate to speak of Kant's 
Weltanschauung and not of his system. 

The antagonism of object and subject is an integral 
and enduring factor in Kant's Weltanschauung. Neither 
speculation nor moral faith can do away with this 
antagonism. Kant's philosophy, revolutionary as it is, 
preserves a great deal of common sense, of English 
empiricism. Kant understands even better than the em- 

85 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

piricists themselves what the nature of experience is. 
Science depends upon experience because the subject 
operative in scientific investigation is human and finite 
and, for the same reason, the objects are finite, being 
objects of a finite knowledge or phenomena. The logi- 
cal impossibility of replacing experience by any ra- 
tional construction or intuitive insight rests upon the 
ethical impossibility of replacing action by speculation. 
The ethical goal can be attained only approximately, 
and this is true of the cognitive goal as welL Both are 
goals, because in both cases the willing subject is the 
subject in the most appropriate sense. Although cogni- 
tion of the truth is, precisely speaking, at its goal, 
science is infinitely separated from it. For cognition as 
well as action is always incomplete and fragmentary. 
The incomplete character of the objective world and 
objective knowledge thus depends upon the limitation 
or imperfection of the ethical subject. 

Nature as the totality of objects corresponds to man 
as the subject of objective knowledge. Nature itself is 
as finite (ie., incomplete and imperfect) as man is, for 
one correlates with the other and cannot be conceived 
without the other. The finite human understanding of 
the ethical subject requires, as its counterpart, just such 
a finite world as the one in which we exist. This world 
is conditioned and even "created" by the human under- 

86 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

standing, i.e., by the intellect of a being that is not 
creator but creature. Many philosophical systems have 
conceived of theoretical reason as being infinite, per- 
fect, and divine. Kant, on the other hand, thinks of 
theoretical reason as being finite, imperfect, and hu- 
man, because he holds that the intellect and the will 
are on the same level. If it is true that the forms of 
nature are rooted in man's intellect, then it follows that 
they are also indirectly rooted in man's will, although 
Kant avoids logically deriving any of these forms from 
the will 

Is such a view not somewhat precarious ? Is it not ab- 
surd to interpret nature as the creation of the human 
intellect? Is not man rather a creature of nature her- 
self? And is it not possible to assume that an infinite 
and unrestricted intellect would know nature as it is 
"in itself," i.e., free from the imperfections which at- 
tach to human knowledge ? Is it not much more nat- 
ural to grant such a possibility and thus to think of 
nature herself as infinite, perfect, and divine? Is not 
nature the creator while man is the creature, and does 
not nature thus ultimately coincide with the infinite, 
perfect, and divine intellect? Such a view would issue 
in an absolute subjectivism superior to Kant's ethical 
subjectivism because the subject would no longer be 
man but God; it would be a meta-ethical subjectivism. 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

Only this absolute subjectivism, so it seems, would no 
longer stand in contrast to any epistemological objec- 
tivism but would be identical with it, because only such 
an intellect would penetrate the objects absolutely, 
thereby bridging any chasm between cognition and 
absolute truth. 

However, such a view is excluded by the very prin- 
ciples of Kant's Weltanschauung. The idea of nature 
as no longer restricted leads precisely to that kind of 
speculation which Kant regards as both fallacious and 
detrimental to morality. It leads to an uncritical, that 
is to say, dogmatic, identification of nature and God, of 
object and subject. It totally abandons the solid ground 
of human experience and thought. Nature freed from 
all restrictions is no longer nature as investigated and 
understood by science; scientific knowledge freed from 
all restrictions is no longer scientific knowledge such 
as we alone can acquire. When the restrictions are set 
aside, striving and error disappear and with their dis- 
appearance the phenomenal world itself must go. The 
total identity of subject and object, of nature and God, 
implies total destruction of all our concepts; it is the 
total night in which all differentiation and therefore 
all comprehension vanishes. 

Kant calls the possibility which is an impossibility 
for us a regulative ideal, i.e., a concept which signifies 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

the limit of all insight. The regulative ideal is peculiar 
in that its content is no longer commensurate with the 
content of all concepts within the limit; and yet its 
content cannot be conceived except as the limiting case 
of all those concepts. The numbers zero and infinity 
are thus border cases of the numerical system. They are 
numbers in so far as we can conceive them, and yet 
they no longer compare with all other numbers. When 
we use them in calculus we notice that they do not 
obey the arithmetical rules; they are abnormal num- 
bers and yet they are nothing but numbers. The episte- 
mological borderline case is akin to the numerical one. 
It marks the maximum of knowledge which can be 
conceived in terms of knowledge attainable to us alone, 
and yet it is unattainable in those terms. Our knowl- 
edge is conditioned by only a partial identity of object 
and subject, namely, a partial identity of the con- 
ditions or forms of the objects and of the intellect, 
and by a partial incongruity of matter and form in the 
objects and of sense and reason in the subject. When 
this approaches the vanishing point as is the case in 
total identity (the borderline case of knowledge) then 
the concepts of subject and object, of form and matter, 
are themselves done away with and consequently even 
the concept of their identity becomes incomprehensible. 
Since to know means to subjectify what is objective, it 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

follows that we do no longer know anything when sub- 
ject and object are regarded as identical. 

The very concept of knowledge is therefore bound 
up with Kant's ethical subjectivism; only ethically sub- 
jective knowledge can be understood as knowledge. 
The theory of knowledge ends where ethical subjectiv- 
ism ends, for they are mutually dependent upon each 
other. Only a world subjectively restricted can become 
the object of knowledge, only a subject likewise re- 
stricted can be conceived as the knowing subject. 

But does this not imply that the only conceivable 
knowledge is that of the natural sciences and that the 
only conceivable object of knowledge is nature? In a 
sense this is really Kant's conviction. Wherever Kant 
speaks of objective knowledge, of theoretical reason and 
so on, he always has in mind the natural sciences. But 
what about the knowledge of his own critical philos- 
ophy ? How does the theory of knowledge comprehend 
philosophical cognition itself? Kant does not philoso- 
phize about his philosophy. He inquires into the 
spheres of the natural sciences and of morality, into art 
and religion, but he hardly ever touches upon the prob- 
lem of philosophy itself. Kant has no epistemology of 
philosophical knowledge, and some of his difficulties 
are connected with this defect. Like most great discov- 
erers he was naive with respect to the nature of the very 

go 



ETHICAL SUBJECTIVISM 

instrument which helped him to make his discovery. 
It is not my intention to correct Kant or to fill the gap 
in his system, 1 I must, however, discuss one important 
concept which in many ways illuminates this gap with- 
out filling it: the concept o the thing-in-itself. 

1. A German thinker, Emil Lask, who was killed in World War 
I, tried to fill this gap in his book, Die Logi^ der Philosophic und die 
Kategorienlehre (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1911). 



IV 
Ethical Phenomenalism 



JLs NOT the thing-in-itself 

precisely that object which is supposed to transcend the 
limits of knowledge and which, therefore, cannot be 
grasped in any but a subjective way? Is not the thing- 
in-itself that transcendent reality from which we are 
forever cut off by an insurmountable barrier ? Is not the 
pre-Kantian conception of knowledge thus introduced 
anew into epistemology ? Does this not mean that we 
return to an epistemological conception which insists 
that the object must be absolutely independent of the 
subject and that the subject does not condition the 
object in any respect ? All the considerations of the pre- 
ceding chapter safeguard us from falling victim to such 
an erroneous interpretation. As long as we stay within 
the limits of the Kantian epistemology, such a false 
argument is unlikely. When we leave epistemology 
behind, the whole contrast between object and subject 
is no longer valid. The thing-in-itself can therefore 
even be regarded as an object of divine knowledge. 
The real meaning of the concept under consideration 

92 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

is not epistemological at all. It is founded on the ethical 
contrast between nature and freedom and derives its 
power from this moral source. Ethics, as it were, de- 
mands the limitation of epistemology, and this means 
that epistemology is being limited in the interests of 
morality. The thing-in-itself, seemingly an object tran- 
scending knowledge, becomes instead the objective of 
striving; it corresponds not so much to the knowing as 
to the willing subject. Kant had to insist upon the limi- 
tation of knowledge and thereby upon the unknowable 
thing-in-itself for the sake of the realm of freedom in 
which the will unfolds itself. The objectivity of the 
thing-in-itself thus discloses itself not as the objectivity 
of a new object of knowledge but as the objectivity of 
duty the object of the will. Despite the fact that the 
will is even more subjective than the intellect, this new 
objectivity is of a higher grade than the objectivity of 
nature and of natural knowledge just because it points 
to the supersensible. To be sure the object of the will 
restricts the realm of merely theoretical objects, but it 
also enlarges the human horizon. In this way theo- 
retical knowledge is restricted because it does not ex- 
haust the content of the human consciousness. With- 
out the thing-in-itself we could never understand the 
practical aspect of science, the emphasis placed upon 
progress, and the significance of the intellectual con- 

93 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

science of the scientist. This ethical element within 
epistemology which gives knowledge its peculiar sub- 
jectivity also leads man to an objectivity superior to all 
knowledge. It is a symptom of a narrow mind to insist, 
as some are inclined to do, that theoretical objectivity 
eclipses morality. It is true that we as moral beings are 
most impressed by our imperfection and our subjective 
finitude as an almost unbearable burden. However, it 
is the same imperfection and the same finitude which 
also limit our theoretical understanding. 

It is the peculiar glory of the ethical to enlarge the 
mind's horizon to an ever increasing extent and to 
open up for it a vista of infinity. By leaving natural 
knowledge with its desire for truth forever unsatisfied, 
the thing-in-itself bestows a peculiar nobility upon 
scientific knowledge. The infinite embodies an object 
never to be possessed and an objectivity transcending 
any attainable objectivity. The thing-in-itself symbol- 
izes ultimate truth, forever attracting the searching 
mind from a distance never to be spanned. Every truth 
actually reached is really penultimate, finite and there- 
fore not satisfying. This is the ultimate reason why 
Kant calls the object of natural knowledge, phenom- 
enon or appearance. Everything encompassed by sci- 
ence is finite and therefore can be put down as appear- 
ance. Every human intellect is limited because the will 

94 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

also must be provided for; the will demands freedom 
which in turn necessitates limitation of the objective 
sphere. Thus the objective sphere must be conceived as 
a phenomenal one. 1 Nature takes on a phenomenal 
aspect for the sake of morality, and this means that its 
limitations are postulated by freedom. Nature must 
appear in such guise, not because man is unable to dis- 
cover what might be called its reality or actuality, but 
because man has the moral capacity and duty to will 
something that is beyond nature. The thing-in-itself is 
thus the goal of man's moral quest. 

Nature ought to be nothing more than appearance; 
such a view is demanded by the ethical spirit of Kant's 
Weltanschauung. Schelling, in a poignant passage of 
his Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism, 
makes this same point: 2 "Have you never guessed, how- 
ever darkly, that it is not the weakness of your reason 
but rather the absolute freedom of your will which 
makes the noumenal world inaccessible to any objective 
power ? Have you never guessed that it is not the limi- 
tation of your knowledge but rather your unlimited 

1. It .is at this point that a great many English-speaking inter- 
preters have misunderstood Kant's language by identifying what is 
here called his "ethical phenomenalism" with a psychological or 
physiological phenomenalism. 

2. F. W. J. von Schelling, Philosophische Briefe uber Dogmatismus 
und Kriticismu/' (1795), Wcrfy, I, 340. 

95 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

freedom which keeps the objects of knowledge within 
the confines of mere appearance?" We can never have 
any knowledge of nature which would not be frag- 
mentary, which would not raise new questions and 
which would not be problematic and essentially incom- 
plete. Nature in itself is merely appearance because as 
such it never exists for itself but only for us. It is, as it 
were, the counterpart of our finite understanding 
which is finite just because of our supernatural free- 
dom. 3 
At this point we can no longer avoid the question 

3. Sometimes it has been held that our knowledge of nature is 
more than a knowledge of appearance because science transcends 
the horizon of sense perception and penetrates into the essence of 
sensible things. This is a typical misinterpretation and one already 
rejected by Kant himself. If the term "essence" points to that ulti- 
mate truth meant by the term "thing-in-itself," then science does not 
produce a knowledge of the essence of things. [T.M. Greene and H. H. 
Hudson (trans.) , Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (Chica- 
go: Open Court Publishing Co., 1934) , p. 58,] Certainly, Kant some- 
times used the expression "in-itself" in a loose sense; thus he would 
say, for example, that science knows nature in its truth and, he would 
add, "nature~in-itself." Compare the following from the first Critique: 
**When, therefore, we say that the senses represent objects as they 
appear, and the understanding objects as they are, the latter state- 
ment is to be taken, not in the transcendental, but in the merely 
empirical meaning of the terms, namely as meaning that the objects 
must be represented as objects of experience, that is, as appearances 
in thoroughgoing interconnection with one another, and not as they 
may be apart from their relation to possible experience (and conse- 
quendy to any senses), as objects of the pure understanding" Critique 
of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, p. 274 (A 258 = B 314) . 

96 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

raised at the end of the last chapter: Does philosophy 
suffer the same restriction as science? Is philosophical 
truth also to be distinguished from ultimate truth? Is 
philosophy as well as science forever engaged in a 
progress which has no end? Must we therefore con- 
clude that philosophy, like science, apprehends appear- 
ance and nothing more ? Or, in other words, is Kant's 
phenomenalism to be extended over the whole of hu- 
man knowledge? This would seem to be absurd be- 
cause the whole distinction between science and philos- 
ophy would then break down and, even worse, 
philosophy thus restricted would be in no position to 
set the limits of science. Consequently, the whole enter- 
prise of epistemology as well as of ethics would ulti- 
mately be impossible. Yet we are not allowed simply 
to conclude that philosophy does succeed in knowing 
the thing-in-itself, or that the thing-in-itself grasped by 
the philosopher is that unattainable phantom for which 
science must forever continue to search. Metaphysics 
prior to Kant thought of the thing-in-itself as its proper 
object of knowledge; Kant revolutionized this view. 
He gave up such dogmatic metaphysics by recognizing 
that the whole relation between the object known and 
the knowing subject never includes the thing-in-itself. 
Nevertheless, the problem involved here is not solved 
by this negative attitude alone, and it is a genuine 

97 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

problem because the relation between object and sub- 
ject as it exists in science characterizes a concept of 
finite knowledge only. What then is the ultimate rela- 
tion between the pre-Kantian dogmatism and the 
Kantian criticism of the thing-in-itself ? 

Whatever conception of knowledge may be implied 
by a theory of philosophical knowledge, two things are 
clear: first, such a theory cannot deny the validity of 
scientific truth and, second, the basic distinction be- 
tween scientific and philosophical knowledge must not 
be obliterated. In other words, the relationship between 
object and subject must be maintained, but it must not 
be applied to philosophical knowledge. The theory of 
scientific knowledge is a theory of the relation between 
subject and object, but the theory itself must not be 
understood as one more instance of this same relation- 
ship but rather as an example of self-knowledge. It is 
true that the knowing subject makes itself an object of 
inquiry, but in so doing the very term "object" changes 
its meaning and takes on the meaning of "subject- 
become-object" in which both are identical. Thus, the 
thing-in-itself can no longer be an object in the sense of 
the old metaphysics. 

The object in the epistemological sense is always de- 
pendent upon the knowing subject and is thereby 
phenomenal, whereas the subject, even if it is made to 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

stand in the position of an object, is not phenomenal 
but noumenal. In a way, the subject is a thing in itself; 
it is, as Fichte calls it, an ego in itself. Is perhaps the 
thing-in-itself nothing else but the subject? Kant re- 
coils from drawing this conclusion but he approaches 
it, and Fichte was not completely disloyal to Kant 
when he insisted that the ultimate conception of the 
thing-in-itself leads to the idea of an absolute ego. Kant 
did not go so far because he makes ethics not meta- 
physics the fundamental discipline. The subject in the 
true sense is the moral person. The theory of scientific 
knowledge is overarched, not by the theory of philo- 
sophical knowledge or by a metaphysics of an absolute 
ego, but by the ethical insight that the moral subject 
does not belong to the phenomenal world but to a 
realm of freedom. 

Kant's philosophy is raised above the level of natural 
science inasmuch as it understands such knowledge to 
be knowledge of a morally free subject related to a 
world of phenomena. However, it would be wrong to 
conclude from this supremacy and from the insight 
that nature is only appearance that philosophy is able 
to reach the thing-in-itself. Although the term "appear- 
ance" seems to require the term "reality" as its counter- 
part, and although one might identify the thing-in- 
itself with reality in its ultimate sense, nevertheless, 

99 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

there is something in between appearance and reality, 
and this is the subject to which the objects appear. This 
subject should not simply be interpreted as being true 
reality and consequently a thing-in-itself, although in a 
sense, it takes on the function of the thing-in-itself. 
Certainly the subject to which the objects appear does 
not itself appear but is a presupposition or an a priori 
principle of the phenomenal world. Even so, this prin- 
ciple is not what appears and therefore is not ultimate 
reality. 

In his ethics Kant goes a step further; here he would 
say that the human will inasmuch as it is subject to the 
moral law is not merely an appearance but appears to 
itself. Is the will perhaps the thing-in-itself ? Schopen- 
hauer proceeded along such a line, thereby yielding to 
the temptation to produce a new metaphysics of the 
will. It is Kant's ethical Weltanschauung which for- 
bids him to take such a step. However, it is true that 
will or self, as conceived by ethics, points in the direc- 
tion of the thing-in-itself. Just as the knowing subject 
stands between the extremes of appearance and ulti- 
mate reality (certainly nearer to reality than to appear- 
ance), so the morally willing and acting self likewise 
stands between these extremes but even nearer to ulti- 
mate reality. Consequently we must acknowledge a 
truth in between the merely finite and outer truth of 

100 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

scientific knowledge and the absolute and ultimate 
truth which science can never reach. This truth would 
not be as empirical as scientific truth nor as metaphys- 
ical as speculative truth. It would not be merely prag- 
matic, but it would also not be dogmatic; it would be 
critical and ethical. This is the truth of Kant's philos- 
ophy. 

Philosophy occupies the middle ground between the 
two opposite extremes of truth and is thus enabled and 
entitled to mediate between the age-old antagonists, 
physics and metaphysics, experimental and speculative 
knowledge. Kant's philosophy fully recognizes the 
truth of science and acknowledges the function of ex- 
perience in contrast to the premature claims of meta- 
physical systems which claim to possess that truth to 
which science can never attain. Kant thus assures sci- 
ence of the fulfilment of its highest aspirations (even 
more surely than any philosopher before or after him 
had done) by dethroning metaphysical systems. On 
the other hand, Kant's philosophy claims to have tran- 
scended the horizon of science and to have become the 
heir of metaphysics. Kant regards himself as the cus- 
todian of that ultimate knowledge which the meta- 
physician pretends to possess, but which no human 
being can ever attain. The realm of the things-in- 
themselves remains uncomprehended and incompre- 



101 



RANTS WELTANSCHAUUNG 

hensible, although ethical philosophy partly compre- 
hends it as the realm of freedom and thereby mediates 
between the separated domains of appearance and real- 
ity, between that truth which is merely for us and the 
truth in itself. Here we return to the same antinomy 
which we met previously in the discussion of ethical 
dualism. Ethical phenomenalism interprets nature as 
appearance and the moral will or the ethical subject as 
thing-in-itself. At the same time, the ethical phenom- 
enalism criticizes such an interpretation as constituting 
metaphysical knowledge of the thing-in-itself. In the 
last analysis it remains true that the realm of freedom 
cannot be fully understood or conceived because it is an 
objective of the moral will and of the moral faith but 
not an object of the understanding. Some further con- 
siderations should be added in order to show that the 
thing-in-itself presents what is finally an insoluble 
problem. 

First, we must take note of the distinction between 
the incomprehensibility of the thing-in-itself and the 
partial comprehensibility of nature. Natural knowl- 
edge is always in the making; discoveries and theories 
progress toward the whole which can never be grasped 
because the sum total of partial knowledge is no sub- 
stitute for knowledge of the whole. Nature seen from 
the standpoint of knowledge is a restricted realm, 

102 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

whereas the thing-in-itself as the ultimate objective of 
philosophy is beyond all restriction and therefore de- 
mands an equally unrestricted knowledge. The ulti- 
mate is without boundaries, except for those which are 
self-imposed. Inasmuch as philosophy is the science of 
the ultimate and not of the phenomena only, in so far 
as it concerns the essence and not the appearance of 
things, and to the extent to which it desires not a frag- 
ment of the whole but its totality, it cannot even ap- 
proach its goal as natural knowledge can. There is an 
absolute incommensurability between philosophy and 
the thing-in-itself. Even in speaking of the contrast be- 
tween the opposites philosophy shows that its goal is 
not attained, since the very meaning of the thing-in- 
itself rigorously excludes all opposition. What we mean 
by thing-in-itself is precisely an absolute unrelatedness; 
in regarding it as reality in contrast to appearance we 
are introducing a relation. 

The thing-in-itself as contradistinguished from ap- 
pearance, from the finite, the subjective, or from any- 
thing else, is to that degree itself a finite concept condi- 
tioned by its opposite. In this way essence is condi- 
tioned by contingency or existence, totality by partial- 
ity, the ground by its effect or consequence, substance 
by accident and so forth. All these concepts are finite 
to the extent to which they do not grasp the unrelated 

703 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

or the unconditioned. But this, according to Kant, is 
just our logical and ethical situation. We as human 
beings can only progress by moving from the appear- 
ance to the essence, from the part toward the totality. 
The thing-in-itself in the last analysis is a goal that we 
can never reach. Indeed our whole being is a moral 
goal; we never are what we ought to be, we are always 
in the making both as agents and as knowers. Phenom- 
enalism just because its perspective is ethical leaves the 
thing-in-itself in that metaphysical twilight which 
marks the borderline between knowledge and igno- 
rance. Appearance and reality, essence and existence 
and similar correlates have an ethical connotation in 
Kant's Weltanschauung and lose their meaning if de- 
prived of such connotation. 

When Kant refuses to give a definition of freedom 
(he calls freedom an inscrutable power and he speaks 
of our inability to explain how freedom is possible; see 
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Mor- 
als, and Religion within the Limits of Reason 
Alone) 4 " the idea that freedom cannot be known in the 
same way as the natural phenomena can is uppermost 
in his mind. Thus he measures philosophical compre- 

4. Greene and Hudson, op. cit., p. 158 n.; L. W. Beck (trans.), 
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Critique of Practical 
Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy (Chicago: Univer- 
sity of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 113. 

104 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

hension by naturalistic standards, standards not to be 
applied when knowledge of freedom is at stake. Never- 
theless, the main drift of his argument can be justified, 
for if we could fully understand the realm of moral 
will and action, we would also be able to grasp the rela- 
tion between freedom and nature so that our natural 
knowledge would then cease to be merely natural. 

However, the philosophical incomprehensibility of 
the ultimate truth implies that the ultimate relation- 
ship between nature and freedom cannot be known. In 
both cases the restriction of knowledge does not rest 
upon the theoretical impossibility of combining free 
will and natural causality but upon the ethical neces- 
sity of opposing freedom to nature. It is just because 
philosophy culminates in ethics that the opposition be- 
tween nature and freedom ought not to be tran- 
scended, and consequently that the domain of things- 
in-themselves is to be conceived as the realm of the 
moral will or of pure practical reason. Inasmuch as 
Kant tries to give an ethical definition of the essence, 
in contrast to the appearance, of things, he feels logical- 
ly compelled to conclude that the realm of freedom 
itself is as inscrutable as is the ultimate essence of 
things. 

Should we not, by the same token, conclude that 
nature no less than freedom is incomprehensible in so 

105 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

far as it is related to the unknown and unknowable? 
Is it not arbitrary on the part of Kant to call the objects 
of nature phenomena, while he speaks of the free will 
as a causa noumenon, thus designating appearance as 
natural and essence as moral? If the things-in-them- 
selves surpass all cognition, as Kant asserts, would it 
not be consistent to include freedom as well as nature 
under the title of appearance ? Such a line of argument 
rests on a merely formalistic basis. Such a point of view 
is logical only in a superficial sense; in a deep sense it 
is illogical because it neglects the centrality of ethics 
and assumes a perspective neutral to the ethical cause. 
It is precisely the greatness of Kant that he does not fall 
victim to such a speculative formalism, for he flatly 
denies the possibility of any trans-ethical philosophy. It 
is his studied conviction that the contrast of appearance 
and essence, the contrast of phenomenon and nou- 
menon, should be taken as an ethical contrast and noth- 
ing else. 

His philosophy thus gets beyond a knowledge of ap- 
pearance just because it is philosophy and not science, 
but it falls short of a knowledge of essence just because 
it is an ethical philosophy and not a dogmatic meta- 
physics. When Kant conceives of nature as a phenom- 
enal realm, his intention is not so much psychological 
(and not even epistemological), as ethical; nature is 

106 



ETHICAL PHENOMENALISM 

phenomenal because it is nothing but the material of 
the moral will. Nature is phenomenal not because man 
looks at it only through his own eyes or through spec- 
tacles; such an epistemological phenomenalism would 
evidently lead to a metaphysical, and this means meta- 
ethical, phenomenalism. Instead, nature is phenomenal 
because man as a moral person is never permitted to 
derive his ultimate ends from nature; on the contrary, 
he is required to subject nature to his own ultimate 
ends. Nature is merely phenomenal because it is desti- 
tute of ultimate ends and of an absolute meaning; both 
end and meaning are finally connected with the moral 
will which uses nature as a means and thereby super- 
imposes the realm of freedom upon nature. The term 
"appearance" thus gains its full significance only in 
ethics. 



107 



V 
Primacy of the Practical 

AN PREVIOUS chapters the 

knowledge of nature was distinguished from the moral 
will on the basis of their relation to their objects. The 
knowledge of nature, as we have seen, attains its object, 
while the will remains forever separated from its goal. 
Later, however, we observed that this distinction could 
not be fully maintained, since in the pursuit of scientif- 
ic knowledge the knowing subject is always at the 
same time a willing and acting subject. Science is not a 
timeless possessor of the truth but rather a temporal 
undertaking proceeding toward truth, although it 
never reaches truth in an absolutely satisfactory way. 
This fusion within the scientist of knowledge and will 
is not merely of a psychological and therefore external 
character but also of an epistemological importance. It 
is grounded in the subjectivism of Kant's Weltan- 
schauung; but this subjectivism in turn is of ethical 
origin and is part of the ethical phenomenalism with 
which we have been dealing. 
Thus we must understand that it is the ethical 

108 



PRIMACY OF THE PRACTICAL 

Weltanschauung which prompted Kant to discover the 
peculiar method of his philosophy,, a method best called 
"analytical," because Kant analyzes the several func- 
tions of the subject and separates them from each 
other. Even the separation of subject and object is an 
outcome of this analytical method, a method dictated 
by an ethical consciousness which finds it necessary to 
distinguish ideality and reality, end and means, pur- 
pose and action, essence and appearance. The same 
method prevents Kant from ever reaching or re-estab- 
lishing the "whole" of these contrasting concepts. 
Philosophical speculation would be wholly satisfied 
only if this restitution were possible, if it succeeded in 
finding the ultimate ground from which these con- 
trasts arise. Only then could philosophy succeed in de- 
riving the opposites from a primordial One and in re- 
uniting them by means of it. But the ethical conscious- 
ness and the analytical method (which are mutually 
interdependent) preclude this ultimate solution. Hu- 
man reason can understand the world and man only 
by separating them; this restriction characterizes Kant's 
entire Weltanschauung. 

Earlier we had to acknowledge the fact that the 
ethical dualism cannot be transcended, now we have to 
acknowledge the fact that the ethical phenomenalism 
cannot be transcended either. Were it possible to com- 

109 



KANT S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

prehend or to intuit the appearance as the appearance 
of an underlying essence, and were it possible, more- 
over, to express this comprehension or intuition in a 
discursive, dialectical fashion (as Hegel claims to do), 
ethical phenomenalism would no longer be ethical, 
and it would no longer serve the innermost motif of 
Kant's Weltanschauung. In the speculative system of 
Hegel the ultimate duality is allowed to be absorbed by 
an ultimate One, because the contrast of appearance 
and essence, of phenomenon and noumenon, of things- 
for-us and things-in-themselves is no longer ethically 
determined and interpreted, but instead it is understood 
logically, ontologically, cosmologically, and theologi- 
cally. Consequently in Hegel's system the essence is no 
longer opposed to the appearance as the ideal to the 
real or as the goal to the process or as the "ought" to 
the "is," but both are inwardly and absolutely united in 
the ultimate One, whether it is called Idea (as in 
Hegel's Logic) or Mind (as in the Phenomenology and 
the Encyclopedia). This One by itself and with itself 
finally unites all the opposites and all distinctions; it is 
the unity of Concept and Being, of Idea and Reality, of 
Knowledge and Will. Such a solution would be anath- 
ema to Kant. 

Ethical phenomenalism denies the possibility of such 
an absolute system, since the moral will denies its truth. 



/JO 



PRIMACY OF THE PRACTICAL 

There is no ultimate reconciliation in Kant's Weltan- 
schauung because there is an everlasting striving and 
acting. There is no intellectual intuition that could pos- 
sibly be at man's disposal; in Kant only the idea of 
God's incomprehensible way of knowing is character- 
ized in this way. Since no one of the basic metaphysical 
oppositions can be overcome by thought, the opposi- 
tion between natural science and critical philosophy 
can never disappear; there is no place for a "philosophy 
of nature" in Kant's Weltanschauung. 1 

1. It is true that the Critique of Judgment by uniting the oppo 
sites of nature and mind, of necessity and freedom, provides at least 
a measure of such a philosophy. In this last of the great Critiques 
Kant, to a certain extent, accomplishes what appears to be a meta- 
physical synthesis embracing the products of analytical thinking. 
The beautiful and the organic represent this synthesis. Kant deals 
with both in the Critique of Judgment from one and the same point 
of view. It was this work which inspired first Schelling and later 
Hegel and encouraged them to create their synthetic systems, With- 
in the frame of Kant* s Weltanschauung, however, even the Critique 
of Judgment does not alter the primacy of ethical thought and the 
triumph of the analytical method. It was Schelling who abandoned 
the ethical phenomenalism and tried to replace it with his naturalis- 
tic aestheticisnx The idea suggested by Kant that works of art as 
well as the creatures of organic nature represent the unity underly- 
ing the contrast between appearance and essence, or between object 
and subject, found in Schelling an enthusiastic and original defend- 
er. He was fascinated by the possibility of unifying the two spheres 
of Kant's Weltanschauung by means of a speculative philosophy of 
art, and he dared to articulate this bold metaphysical vision. 

Kant, on the contrary, never yielded to any such temptation. Al- 
though he agrees that the masterpiece and the organism provide a 
bridge between the separated realms of nature and mind, he insists, 



III 



KANT S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

The final truth would include both the truth o 
science and the truth of philosophy, but no human 
knowledge can ever obtain that truth. In so far as it is 
conceived as the ultimate truth, it is opposed to the 
proximate truth which we can know, i.e., it is con- 
ceived only from the standpoint of a separation which 
conforms to the facts of moral life and to the horizon 
of the moral consciousness. 

Philosophy would accomplish its own ultimate task 
only if it could get beyond all the analytical separations ; 
but in that case it would go beyond ethics itself, some- 
thing which is both ethically and logically prohibited. 
An Idea that passes beyond the opposition of the phe- 
nomenal and the noumenal sphere may be conceivable 



nevertheless, that this bridge does not really unify them. Instead, art 
and the organic are themselves separated from nature and mind in 
that they form a third realm distinct from the other two. Although 
the asethetics of the beautiful and the teleology of the organic do 
offer a synthesis of what is separated in science and morality, this 
synthesis has neither the power nor the right to claim metaphysical 
truth. Ethical dualism and phenomenalism still stand as the final 
word. Neither art nor life enables us to know the hidden ground of 
nature and mind that ultimate essence which would explain and 
produce its own appearance. On the contrary, both the artistic work 
and the organic being belong to the world of phenomena. 

The Critique of Judgment, therefore, in spite of the new vistas it 
opens and the number of suggestions it offers, limits the horizon 
just where it was limited before. The final result is the primacy of 
ethical thought and moral action; ethical phenomenalism proves 
permanently victorious. It is not the organism but the moral will 
and moral freedom wh.ich must be regarded as the absolute purpose. 

112 



PRIMACY OF THE PRACTICAL 

as an Idea but its object, its real counterpart, would be 
beyond human reason. It would be neither phenomenal 
nor noumenal, and there is no third possibility which 
we can either experience or understand. Natural sci- 
ence would be perfect only if the appearances could be 
known as the effects or manifestations of an uncondi- 
tional ground, but this ground can never be known 
and its very concept is opposed to the concept of its 
consequent. When the duality of object and subject is 
given up, the thinking mind ceases to operate in the 
manner of the sciences. We cannot even imagine what 
an object would be that is also subject or what a subject 
would be that is also object. Here we reach the absolute 
limit of human knowledge. 

We are now fully able to understand what we mean 
when we think of the concept of the absolute essence 
and of the thing-in-itself: we mean something am- 
biguous, something that we cannot comprehend either 
from the ethical perspective or from a meta-ethical ab- 
solute, and therefore from an altogether problematic, 
point of view. This ambiguity generates the apparent 
contradiction according to which the sphere of the 
things-in-themselves is impenetrable by human thought 
and yet is conceived by Kant as the realm o the ideal 
and the goal of freedom and of the moral person. If we 
yield to the temptation of an absolute solution, we en- 

113 



K.ANTS WELTANSCHAUUNG 

danger ethical comprehension; if we stick to this com- 
prehension we thwart perfect and absolute knowledge. 
It is Kant's conviction that philosophy can grasp the 
thing-in-itself only within the limits of ethics, and that 
it therefore can never grasp absolute, i.e., meta-ethical 
truth. Kant does not deny that the ethical truth tran- 
scends itself, that it points to something beyond itself, 
and that this truth is not ultimate but only proximate. 
But the ultimate demand of the thinking mind in- 
volves us in unavoidable contradictions. The demand, 
even as a demand, is conceivable only if we adhere to 
the separation of an ultimate and a proximate truth, 
and if we maintain in addition that we are moving 
from one to the other. 

If, however, we conceive the demand in this way, we 
destroy its meaning since it is just the negation of such 
a separation which is actually demanded. Within the 
absolute truth no movement from a proximate to an 
ultimate knowledge is meaningful. Consequently, the 
very demand itself involves the mind in an insoluble 
problem, which we cannot fully grasp even as a prob- 
lem, although we cannot cease trying to do so. The 
Idea of an absolute unity of all oppositions, necessary 
and unavoidable though it is, nevertheless contradicts 
itself and, what is worse, obliterates the ethical mean- 
ing of the oppositions. Thus it destroys the very mean- 

114 



PRIMACY OF THE PRACTICAL 

ing of philosophical truth and o scientific truth as 
well. Here the antinomy between the ethical and the 
religious elements of Kant's Weltanschauung once 
again comes to the fore, this time in the guise of the 
antinomy between the proximate and the ultimate 
truth. 

This antinomy is not soluble within Kant's philos- 
ophy; it is its necessary limit. Earlier I said that, for 
Kant, the ultimate in itself must always remain an ulti- 
mate for us, and yet this should not really be the case 
inasmuch as it is an ultimate "in-itself." Now we can 
grasp more clearly the logical structure of Kant's thesis. 
Since his phenomenalism is of ethical origin and im- 
port, the contrast between the "in-itself" and the "for 
us" is itself to be ethically interpreted: it is a contrast 
for us only. The phenomenalism is ethical, that is, sub- 
jectivistic. A meta-ethical phenomenalism is not pos- 
sible because the duality of essence and appearance, of 
the noumenon and the phenomenon, would then no 
longer be tenable. The meta-ethical is in no sense ob- 
jectively in-itself any more than it is subjectively in- 
itself; it is beyond the alternative of "in-itself" and 
"for us," beyond the opposition of object and subject, 
as it is also beyond the opposition of nature and self- 
hood, of necessity and freedom. It is beyond all possible 
distinctions and therefore beyond all thought and 

1/5 



KANT S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

knowledge. It is not an absolute Object, an absolute 
Being or an absolute Substance, because these categories 
of objective thinking are not allowed to enter into the 
ultimate problem since they cannot solve the final 
antinomy. 

Moreover, the meta-ethical must not be compre- 
hended as an absolute Subject that would objectify it- 
self in nature (as Schopenhauer asserts), nor is it to be 
regarded as an absolute Mind or Spirit that conceives 
itself and thereby creates the material world (as Hegel 
asserts). Instead it represents a definitive barrier even 
to any attempt at solution; it represents, in the lan- 
guage of religion, the mystery of God. Neither our 
own nor any kind of knowledge we may imagine can 
grasp this mystery; the very concept of possible knowl- 
edge breaks down when thought tries to penetrate this 
Unknowable. The ultimate truth is no longer of cogni- 
tive value, it is not a truth which any understanding 
can comprehend because even the distinction between 
understanding and truth is no longer valid when we 
reach the "in-itself." The ultimate truth is no longer 
truth in the sense of science and philosophy; it is in no 
way a logical truth. It is at this point that theory, be it 
physical, metaphysical, ontological, or epistemological 
comes to an end. Only the moral faith of the ever striv- 
ing and seeking man can embrace it. 

116 



PRIMACY OF THE PRACTICAL 

The final truth is meta-philosophical, meta-theoreti- 
cal, meta-theological. By no conceivable method can 
such truth be apprehended or comprehended. The con- 
cept of the Absolute is self-contradictory and no dia- 
lectical device can solve this final contradiction. Kant 
paradoxically agrees with the mystic in this respect, 
despite the fact that he is otherwise opposed to mysti- 
cism. This final contradiction once more characterizes 
the ethical and critical line of Kant's Weltanschauung 
in a definitive way. As Plato ends in myth, Kant ends 
in moral faith. It is the glory of these two thinkers who 
try to comprehend the totality of experience by their 
thought that they do not violate what is beyond the 
power of thought. Thus Kant is able to assert and to 
maintain that not the intellect but the moral will (and 
faith based upon the moral consciousness) reaches to 
the very limit of human existence. He holds that ethics 
is related to ultimate truth neither through the medium 
of metaphysics nor through that of religion, but by 
virtue of its own ultimate validity (just as the natural 
sciences are related to their relative truth by virtue of 
an immanent rationality which is the rationality of the 
empirical objects themselves). 

Even the dignity and autonomy of moral reason, 
however, do not entitle the thinking mind to assume 
that this reason actually performs what cannot be per- 

j/7 



KANT'S WELTANSCHAUUNG 

formed at all by human reason. Instead, moral reason 
is just as limited as scientific understanding. In spite 
of the sovereignty and self-dependence of the moral 
sphere it points to a reality that begins exactly where 
human reason ends: the reality of God. If we could 
will as God wills, we could also know as God knows. 
But not only do our will and our knowledge dwindle 
in the face of God, but we are not even in the position 
to truly understand God's knowledge as knowledge 
or to understand God's will as a will. 

A creative and productive intellect and an omniscient 
intuitive will are self -contradictory concepts. An intel- 
lect which creates its contents is no longer an intellect 
as we experience it, and a will which contemplates is 
no longer what we know as will; in neither case do we 
conceive what is meant by an intellect and a will in 
God. These terms when we use them as means for un- 
derstanding God transcend the capacity of our thought. 



118 



Index of Names 



Alexander, Samuel, 78 
Aristotle, 27 
Augustine, St., 52 

Baillie, J. B., 47 n. 

Beck, L. W., 21 n., 35 n., 45 n., 54 n., 

104 n. 

Bergson, Henri, 78 
Berkeley, George, 69, 75 
Bowring, E. A., 36 n. 

Cassirer, Ernst, vii 
Cohen, Hermann, vii 

Descartes, Rene, 2 
Driesch, Hans, 78 

Erdmann, J. E., 38 n. 

Feuerbach, Ludwig, 78 
Fichte, J. G., 37 n., 58, 66, 68, 74, 
85,99 

Galileo, 2 

Goethe, J. W. von, 25, 36 
Greene, T. M., 23 n., 41 n., 57 n., 
59 n., 96 n., 104 n. 

Haldane, R. B., 15 n. 
Haller, A. von, 57 n. 
Hegel, G. W. F. von, 47 n., 74, 110, 

llln., 116 
Hudson, H. H., 23 n,, 41 n., 57 n., 

59n.,96n., 104n. 
Hume, David, 69 



Kemp, J., 15 n. 

Kemp Smith, Norman, 96 n. 

Kroner, Richard, vi, ix 

Lask, Emil, 91 n. 
Laotse, 16 
Leibniz, G. W., 26 
Lessing, G. E., 22 
Locke, John, 69 

Marx, Karl, 78 



Natorp, Paul, vii 
Nietzsche, F. W., 12, 



Plato, 117 

Rickert, Heinrich, vii, 38 n. 

Schelling, F. W. J. von, 73, 95, 1 1 1 n. 
Schiller, J. C. F. von, 20 
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 7, 9, 12 ff ., 19, 

25,27,100,116 
Simmel, Georg, 6, 19 n. 
Spinoza, B. de, 26, 27 
Strauss, D. F., 78 

Tertullian, 52 
Vaihinger, Hans, 37 n. 
Windelband, Wilhelm, vii, 6 



PRINTED IN U.S.A. 



(Continued from front flap) 

Cohen and Cassirer, which considered him a 
thinker primarily concerned with epistemol- 
ogy. 

RICHARD KRONER is Professor Emeritus at 
the University of Kiel, Germany, and at 
Union Theological Seminary. He is also 
Permanent Visiting Professor at Temple 
University and at the University of Bern; 
has taught at Freiburg, Dresden, and Ox- 
ford; and delivered the Gifford Lectures at 
St. Andrews in 1939-40. Dr. Kroner is the 
author of a monumental two-volume study 
of the development of German idealism, 
Von Kant bis Hegel Among his other 
works are The Religious Function of 
Imagination; The Primacy of Faith 
(Gifford Lectures); How Do We Know 
God? Culture and Faith (University of 
Chicago Press, 1951); and an introduction 
and translations in HegeFs Early Theo- 
logical Writings (with T. M. Knox 
[University of Chicago Press, 1948]). 

JOHN E. SMITH is Assistant Professor of 
Philosophy at Yale University. 



p 



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