Kant's critical hermeneutic of prayer

Journal of Religion

Volumn 77, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 584-604

  Palmquist, Stephen R ^a  

^a HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY   (Hong Kong)

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EID: 66249114655     PISSN: 00224189     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/490067     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. Much of what follows is based on material from two talks I gave on similar topics: "Kant's Philosophy of Prayer," for the Erasmus Society at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, on September 8, 1995, and "Why Should We Pray? An Examination and Critique of Kant s Views on Prayer," for a colloquium of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University, on November 16, 1995. I would like to thank the many people who contributed comments and questions on those two occasions. Without their input, this article would have been considerably less clear.
2. Kant uses phrases such as "true religion" and "true church" on a number of occasions throughout his principal book on religion, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason-hereafter Religion. (Quotes from Religion are taken from the translation of T. M. Greene and H. H. Hudson, published under the misleading title Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone [New York: Harper & Row, I960].
3. For an explanation and defense of my way of translating the title, see "Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality:'" Kant-Studien 83, no. 2 [1992]: 129-48.) As I have argued elsewhere (see especially ibid.), such phrases designate not the abstract ideal of "moral" (or "pure") religion but, rather, any real-life manifestations of religion that embrace reason's pure moral religion as their core element (see, e.g., Religion, p. 115 (106)). Note that references to Kant's works will cite the pagination of the relevant volume of the Berlin Academy edition, with the English pagination being given in parentheses only for translations that do not specify the former, such as Religion.
4. Clement C. J. Webb, Kant's Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1926), p. 20.
5. For a fuller explanation of the Copernican revolution as it relates to Kant's epistemology, see sec. III. 1 of my book, Kant's System of Perspectives (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1993).
6. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), p. A371;
7. see also p. A375 and Palmquist, Kant's System of Perspectives, pp. 173-75.
8. Religion, pp. 170-71 (158-59).
9. A much more detailed defense of this qualified nonreductionist interpretation is given in Palmquist, "Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?"
10. See Religion, pp. 52 (48), 72 (66), 117 (107), 118 (108), 142 (133), 182 (170), 191 (179), 191 (180), 193(182).
11. See chaps. 7 and 8 of my book, Kant's Critical Religion (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, in press).
12. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (London: Methuen, 1930), p. (99)-hereafter Ethics. (Note that this version of Kant's lectures does not have corresponding page numbers in the Academy edition of Kant's works. All page numbers are therefore given in parentheses, referring only to the English translation.) This and the following quote are both part of a whole section of Ethics devoted to the topic of prayer (pp. (98-103)).
13. That section and Religion, pp. 194-98 (182-86), constitute the two main texts for any attempt to interpret Kant's views on prayer. Since the Ethics passage is reconstructed from students' lecture notes and was not written by Kant himself, I am putting more weight on the Religion passage.
14. Ethics, p. (102).
15. Kant clarifies the spirit-letter relationship in the following two passages: "To perform an action ⋯ without a good disposition is to comply with the letter of the law but not with its spirit" (Ethics, p. (47)). "The spirit of the moral law commands the disposition, its letter commands action" (ibid., p. (73)).
16. Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Abaris, 1979), p. 10; cf. p. 56.
17. Kant likewise says in Religion, p. 197 (185), that "not all men stand in need of this means (of conversing within and really with oneself, but ostensibly of speaking the more intelligibly with God)." This negative statement clearly implies that some people do stand in need of such a means. Kant's parenthetical remark should not be taken merely as a sarcastic jibe poking fun at anyone who is foolish enough to believe prayer enables them to communicate with God; while he would no doubt be reluctant to interpret prayer in the literal way many religious believers do (to the extent that he claims people who do interpret prayer in this way cannot be entirely sincere and draws special attention to the embarrassment and confusion experienced by a person who is found by others to be engaged "in behavior indicative of prayer" [ibid., p. 195n (183n)]), Kant himself does assume in numerous other passages that prayer has some authentically communicative aspect. His point here is more subtle and must be interpreted in light of his conviction that God is best conceived as living within us, so that the line between getting to know God and getting to know one's own true self cannot be clearly demarcated. Indeed, Kant's whole philosophy can be regarded as the elaboration and defense of a new, morally sensitive or "Critical" mysticism, as I have argued throughout Part 4 of my forthcoming book, Kant's Critical Religion (n. 11 above).
18. see Matt. 6:9-13.
19. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, trans. A. W. Wood and G. M. Clark (London: Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 155. It is important to note that, when Kant claims in Religion (n. 2 above), p. 197 (185), that the quickening of the "spirit of prayer" will require "that the letter of it⋯ [must] finally fall away," he adds the following qualification in brackets: "at least as directed to our own advantage," thus implying that other forms of verbal prayer may well be wholly compatible with the spirit of prayer.
20. Much of the relevant evidence is presented in chap. 10 of Palmquist, Kant's Critical Religion (n. 11 above).
21. Willibald Klinke, Kant for Everyman, trans. Michael Bullock (London: Routledge &: Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 17-20. Klinke reports (p. 19) that Kant once "told his friend Hippel, that looking back on that enslavement of youth filled him with terror and dread."
22. See, e.g., Psalm 59:11-16;
23. On Easter Sunday, 1996, just before completing this article, I attended an Anglican church in Hong Kong. The prayers, jointly led that day by a family from the congregation (and used here by permission), provided an excellent case study for a Kantian interpretation of prayer. From the first words ("Loving Father") to the last, every part of the prayer served to awaken the moral spirit of love and self-sacrifice in the dispositions of all who listened. After a few stimulating words of praise and thanksgiving, the father set the scene by announcing that we would "pray for our world, our community, and ourselves" and by asking that we be given God's disposition in these matters ("to see the world through your eyes ⋯"). One daughter then prayed for the poor, asking for God's intervention, then adding: "Show us what we can do to help this happen." The mother followed with a prayer for orphans and those who work with orphans, including the petition: "We pray that people's eyes would be opened to see the need and their hearts would be moved to action." After the father prayed "for Hong Kong at this time of uncertainty," asking for wisdom to be given to the leaders, the second daughter prayed "for the street sleepers and prisoners in Hong Kong that we would be generous towards them." The son then asked God to "help us to be quick to say sorry" and "to love one another." Following a time of silent prayer, the second daughter closed with a brief reminder of the meaning of Easter. Of course, any of these prayers could be improperly used as an excuse not to be improve one's life conduct, to wait instead for God to do the changing. However, that would be contrary to their obvious intent, which was to stir the hearts of all who prayed along. Kant might not have been able to affirm some of the more doctrinal statements included in the prayers offered on that day, but he undoubtedly would have acknowledged that the exercise as a whole could be readily justified philosophically because of its clear moral content. Likewise, the theological beliefs of the family saying those prayers prevent them from appreciating Kant's reasons for maintaining an agnostic position on various theoretical issues, but they would certainly appreciate and affirm his concern that prayers must not be used to conceal lazy or immoral life conduct. This, it seems, is a living example of what Kant meant when he encouraged the two sides to be "at one."