Summary |
What
unites Kant’s social, political, and religious philosophies is the role
autonomy plays in each of them. A
foundational claim of Kant’s political philosophy is that the state’s
role is to allow its citizens as much external freedom as possible
(freedom from constraint) while not attempting to improve their virtue
(their inner freedom, or ability to resist their own sensible desires).
Similarly, a central goal of Kant’s philosophy of
religion is to delineate what a proper church would be and to explain
why we need it. The ideal church is one where confessions of belief (e.g., in
particular miracle claims) are not required, but the attempt to live
one’s life in conformity with the moral law is.
We must strive to build such a church because we each begin our lives
radically evil (disposed to subordinate our moral obligations to our own
happiness); and, while we can each free ourselves from its thrall, we
risk falling back into radical evil so long
as there are others in hock to it. Consequently, we are called to build
a church organized around combating our innate radical evil in order to
go some way to bringing about the highest good (a state where there are
perfectly virtuous people who are happy
in proportion to their virtue). In other words, the Kantian state
allows for outer freedom while the Kantian church focuses on enhancing
our inner freedom. Kant’s social philosophy (which includes his
philosophy of education) links together his political and religious
philosophies: we are to encourage those ways of thinking and behaving
that will conduce to the realization of the
ideal church and state, and discourage those that oppose their
establishment. |