Religion Within the Limits of Reason AloneImmanuel Kant

Kant published this work in 1793, and it brought him into conflict with the Prussian censor. The book asks what religion looks like when stripped of everything that exceeds the moral law. Kant's answer: Christianity, properly understood, is the symbolic expression of truths that practical reason can establish on its own.

The argument proceeds through four "pieces." The first addresses radical evil: the human will contains an innate propensity to subordinate the moral law to self-love, a corruption that affects the species universally. The second treats the ideal of moral perfection (the Son of God as archetype of the morally pleasing life). The third examines the visible church as an "ethical commonwealth" striving toward a purely moral religion. The fourth distinguishes true from false service of God, condemning priestly religion as fetishism whenever it substitutes ritual for moral transformation.

Kant does not reject Christianity. He reinterprets it. Every doctrine of grace, atonement, and election receives a moral translation. Whether anything is lost in the translation is the question that Kierkegaard will press most sharply.