ABSTRACT
Immanuel Kant is the quintessential Enlightenment philosopher who, whilst not recoiling from subjecting it to thoroughgoing critical philosophical inquiry, was fully alert to the fact that, not least because of its social relevance, religion could not be dismissed out of hand. This chapter focuses on Immanuel Kant neglected metaphilosophical tractof an Adopted Exalted Tone in Philosophy, which was published in the intervening time in the Berlinische Monatsschrift of May 1796. At first sight, Jacques Derrida’s ‘hypercritical’ critique of Immanuel Kant appears to neglect the conditional nature of the formal distinctions underlying Immanuel Kant’s thought. One might want to argue that Derrida’s intonation is more in line with a contemporary mode of thinking in continental philosophy, which is wary of the kind of formalised approach, characteristic of Immanuel Kant’s thought, to the thinking subject and its a priori activity and to philosophy in general.
