Panel: SECULAR REVELATION: REASON, RELIGION, AND POLITICS IN GERMAN IDEALISM



704.3 - KANT AND FICHTE ON REVELATION: UNIVERSALITY AND SECULARISM

AUTHORS:
Smith A. (McGill University ~ Montreal ~ Canada)
Text:
In response to the heated Jacobi-Mendelssohn debate on Spinoza and Lessing, the question of revelation was addressed with explicit urgency first by Fichte in his 1792 text An Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, followed successively in 1793 by Kant's Religion Within the Limits of Mere Reason. Even though Fichte's text was published first it cannot be read without Kant's own later text, as it is written in Fichte's best impression of Kant's voice and style. This is why it was originally assumed to be written by Kant when it was mistakenly published without an author's name. However, it cannot be read as expositing Fichte's own philosophy—especially its later mature version and iterations, most notably the 1806 Die Anweisung zum sieligen Leben [Guide to the Blessed Life]—but rather as secondary literature on Kant. It is what Kant should have said if he was philosophically consistent, at least according to Fichte. In my paper, I argue that Fichte's account of revelation is a more thoroughly Kantian one than Kant's own. Kant wants to preserve the value of Biblical revelation through philosophy, even if in the limited sense of material that needs to be translated into philosophical truth-claims. Fichte, as I argue, shows that when Kant's philosophy is interpreted consistently (notably in light of the Critique of Practical Reason) it entails the full replacement of Biblical revelation by a secular universal reason.