Are we the Citizens of just one empirical world? Have all reminiscences to the transcendental become atavistic in the political domain? This article defends the lasting relevance of the kantian doctrine of analogy for the significance of both religion and politics in post-modern times. The symbolic representation of the indemonstrable concept of practical reason itself functions as well in politics as in religion in the manner of a typology of the law and a legislation, which must be understood as the (...) always indirect representation of the absolute good will. Only this idea avoids the empirical illusions of an imaginary self-sufficient political or religious authority. All authority based on the concept of God as legislator as far as a promulgator of the moral law, with its intrinsic character of obligation, is conceived as unavoidable for the finite reason. Therefore the execution of the king during the French revolution as a legal act in itself is inconceivable as far as it intended the abrogation of the representation of the instance of executive obligation as such. All political doctrines that would claim the installation of the moral kingdom of God on earth are equally chimerical. Since Kant only claims the idea of legislation of practical reason and the guarantee of the viability of morals in the empirical world when evoking God in practical philosophy and calling upon the historical Christian religion, his theological political doctrine goes beyond the ideological political and religious setting of his time and it remains on the contrary a valuable warning for actual political and religious terrorism. (shrink)

In this article the importance of the representational character of politics is illustrated on the basis of the philosophy of Kant. The vanishing of the noumenal in post-modern thinking seems to imply fundamental changes in the sensitive response – aesthetics of the beautiful and the sublime – to politics. In the Kantian paradigm the meaning of our affective response to the violence of (human) nature is ruled by a moral perspective of practical reason. Although the representation of practical reason in (...) the empirical is only possible in an indirect way by means of a schematism of analogy, the corresponding – subjectively teleological – aesthetic feelings both of harmony in the beautiful and of resistance in the sublime do symbolize in a reflective judgement the morally determined character and the objectively conceived teleology of nature in the system of rights of a single state as well as of the cosmopolitan world order. (shrink)

Met de verlichting komt de mens centraal te staan als de verantwoordelijke in het spanningsveld van vrijheid en determinisme. Daarmee dreigt hij zich ook de schuld van alle kwaad op de hals te halen en wordt de theodicee een antropodicee. Hij kan daar op twee manieren onderuit komen: ofwel wordt alle dwingende natuurwetmatigheid secundair en is nog slechts het morele kwaad relevant, ofwel wordt de vrijheid zelf herleid tot het natuurlijk determinisme. Kant wist echter die spanning in het verlichtingsdenken overeind (...) te houden. (shrink)

In The disenchantment of the world Marcel Gauchet defined Christianity as the religion of the exodus from religion, which also functions as a paradigm for a political interpretation of religion and the understanding of modern secular politics. However, Gauchet himself asserts that he considers the primitive heteronomous religion as the standard for understanding any religion. I intend to show on the contrary that he is mainly relying on modern auto-critical and hermeneutical Christian religion as the interpretative scheme for all religion (...) and modern politics. This raises the question whether we can ever leave the auto-reflexivity of that auto-critical religion. Can there ever be any religiosity without a religion . If not, does it make sense to speak of religiosity without religion, finding its way out in the political, or do we come across the same aporias: how to define the modern political without empirical politics? I conclude that modern, empirical politics benefit from the auto-critical, self-obliging, ethical attitude of the Christian religion and that the modern constitutional state as well as the religious expression might suffer from leaving it. The alternative seems to be the loss of social cohesion as well as the rise of religious fundamentalism. (shrink)

Based on their critical analysis of Kant's "Critique of Judgment", the authors of this book show from different perspectives in what way the Kantian concept of the sublime is still a main stream of inspiration for contemporary thinking.