Both critics and defenders of Kant’sReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reasonhave raised worries about its alleged employment of an ‘Augustinian’ conception of moral evil as well as the accounts of grace and moral regeneration consequent to it. Combined, these aspects of theReligionare often seen as responsible for its principal ‘wobble’, ‘conundrum’ or ‘internal contradiction’, and are likewise among the key reasons why theReligionis commonly seen as at odds with the epistemic strictures and moral principles which shape Kant’s broader Critical (...) corpus. It is the purpose of this article to reassess these charges and to show thereby that rather than accepting this alleged Augustinianism, Kant engages with and ultimatelyrejectsits core tenets. (shrink)

The past decade has seen a sizable increase in scholarship on Kant’s Religion. Yet, unlike the centuries of debate that inform our study of his other major works, scholarship on the Religion is still just in its infancy. As such, it is in a particularly vulnerable state where errors made now could hinder scholarship for decades to come. It is the purpose of this paper to mitigate one such danger, a danger issuing from the widely assumed view that the Religion (...) is shaped by “two experiments.” We will begin with a survey of the four current interpretations of the experiments, and then propose one further interpretation, one that hopefully will help dismantle this alleged “conundrum” and thereby help scholarship on the Religion move beyond this early misstep. (shrink)