Kantʼs Religion of Reason and the Image of Concentric Circles

Abstract

Kantʼs treatise “Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason” (1793) was previously translated into Russian under the title “Religiya v predelah tolʼko razuma”. In the new translation, its title is “Religiya v granicah odnogo tolʼko razuma”. It is the only Kant’s work that title Kant repeatedly tried to clarify in the years following its publication since the provoca tive title addressed serious philosophical problems in the lapidary form. Today, researchers still face these problems: the nature of religiosity beyond the narrow bounds of reason, the sources of the religion of reason, the relation between the religion of reason and biblical theology, the relation of the religion of reason to the Bible and to the historical church, the extra-denominational or supra-denominational character of Kantʼs position. Some of these issues Kant elaborated in “Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason” and later treatises, while some of them he only indicated in the same works. To explain his own position clearly, he – probably under the influence of A.M. Beloselsky-Belozersky – used the image of concentric circles. Further he clarified this image with another image of a “man” and “garments”. The narrow sphere (or a circle) is the religion of reason, and the wider sphere is the religion of Revelation. The image of concentric circles was influenced by the Kantian understanding of religion as something that has a predominantly moral content and the assertion of the autonomy of morality. The developing of biblical criticism and the application of the entire arsenal of philological tools to theology was another Kant’s argument in favor of this understanding of the religion. Kant intended to free the inner core of the unchanging and most important truths of morality and religion from the destructive and relativizing influence of scientific and theological disputes.