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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 October 2020
Current discussions of the early Jewish reception of Kantian philosophy are dominated by two major approaches. According to the first, this reception was governed by a universal Enlightenment rationalism that was present in Judaism no less than in Kantian philosophy. According to the second, it was the fact that Kantianism contained a latent Judaic kabbalistic philosophy that made it attractive to Jewish intellectuals. This paper departs from both approaches by showing that when Jewish intellectuals encountered Kantianism they found neither a universal rationality to which Judaism should conform, nor an esoteric Jewish metaphysics to which Kantian philosophy had already conformed, but something else entirely, namely a hostile philosophical religion that sought to reconstruct Judaism in its own image. As a result of the historical context in which this challenge arose, some Jewish intellectuals accepted this reconstruction as a rational reform, while others repudiated it as a Christian-rationalist assault on Jewish law and tradition. Characterized first by the absence of a defensive Jewish Schulmetaphysik that might combat Kantianism on its own grounds, and second by the preparedness of enlightened intellectuals to extort Jewish acceptance of Christian rationalism by withholding citizenship rights, this context made Kantian philosophy into an offer that was difficult for Jewish intellectuals to refuse, or accept.
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26 Kant, Religion, 66–8, 80–87, 142–3; AA 6: 60–62, 70–78, 128–9.
27 Kant, Religion, 185–205; AA 6: 167–85.
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33 Sorkin, Religious Enlightenment, 169–72.
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46 Ibid., 19–25.
47 Ibid., 25–30.
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53 For some recent examples see Guyer, Reason and Experience, 276–301. Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 31–58. Wood, Kant and Religion, 190–209.
54 Cf. Mendelssohn's comment: “To be sure, I am a great admirer of demonstrations in metaphysics … But nevertheless my conviction in the truth of the tenets of [natural] religion is not so entirely dependent upon metaphysical arguments that it is compelled to stand or fall with them.” Mendelssohn, Moses, “To the Friends of Lessing (1786),” in Moses Mendelssohn: Last Works (Urbana, 2012), 139–76, at 157Google Scholar.
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57 As claimed in Wood, Kant and Religion, 197–9.
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59 Ibid., 129.
60 Ibid., 56–66, 69–70, 79.
61 This dilemma was formulated most forcefully in the anonymously published Das Forschen nach Licht und Recht in einem Schreiben an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn auf Veranlassung seiner merkwürdigen Vorrede zu Manasseh Ben Israel (Berlin, 1782), written by August Friedrich Cranz. The same argument was repeated in “enlightened” works by Johann Friedrich Zöllner, Ueber Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem (Berlin, 1784), 148–79; and Schulz, Johann Heinrich, Der entlarvte Moses Mendelssohn (Amsterdam, 1786)Google Scholar.
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63 Ibid., 126–7.
64 As mistakenly claimed in Wood, Kant and Religion, 200; and in Guyer, Reason and Experience, 21–2, 288.
65 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 98–9, 127–8.
66 Ibid., 89–90, original emphasis. This conception of the two separate divine paths or dispensations was something that Mendelssohn maintained in his final works. See Mendelssohn, “To the Friends of Lessing,” 156–8.
67 Somewhat surprisingly, modern commentators continue to interpret Mendelssohn in this manner, ignoring his account of the two distinct paths to God, and claiming that Mendelssohn views the revealed positive laws of Judaism as grounded in an underlying universal rational religion. See, for example, Guyer, Reason and Experience, 287–9, 293. Gottlieb, Faith and Freedom, 46–8, 56–8. See also Beiser, Frederick C., The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA, 1987), 92–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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69 Kant, Religion, 138–41; AA 6: 125–7.
70 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 66–8, 126–8. For a lucid exposition of this crucial feature of Mendelssohn's understanding of Judaism, see Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn, Ch. 9.
71 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 97–8.
72 Ibid., 99–127.
73 Ibid., 129.
74 Ibid., 130.
75 Ibid., 134–5.
76 Kant, Religion, 138–51; AA 6: 125–37.
77 See Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 539–43.
78 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 95–7.
79 For Kant's censure see the remarks subtitled “Against Moses Mendelssohn” in Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice,” in Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, 304–6; AA 8: 307–8.
80 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 138. Cf. Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn, 550–52.
81 For readings of Ascher as a Kantian see Schulte, Die jüdische Aufklärung, 68–9, 184–98. Hiscott, William, Saul Ascher: Berliner Aufklärer. Eine philosophiehistorische Darstellung (Hanover, 2017)Google Scholar. See also the important early anglophone discussion of Ascher in Hess, Jonathan M., Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven, 2002), 136–67Google Scholar.
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86 Ibid., 103–6.
87 Ibid., 106–9. It should already be clear that, despite the borrowed nomenclature, Ascher's distinction between “regulative” and “constitutive” religions is only analogically related to Kant's use of the terms to signify, respectively, the use of reason to govern the understanding, and the use of the understanding to constitute objects of cognition.
88 Ibid., 128–31.
89 As claimed by Schulte, Die jüdische Aufklärung, 68–70.
90 Ascher, Leviathan, 132–4.
91 Ibid., 134–8.
92 Ibid., 139–45.
93 Ibid., 164–5.
94 Ibid., 165.
95 Ibid., 176–7.
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97 Ibid., 179–80.
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103 Fichte, Critique, 69–73.
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105 Fichte, Beitrag, 292–4.
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109 Ibid., 46–8.
110 Ibid., 50.
111 Ibid., 52.
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113 Ascher, Eisenmenger, 53–5.
114 Ibid., 57–9.
115 Ibid., 62–4.
116 Ibid., 67.
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120 Ibid., 73–7.
121 Ibid., 78–9.
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