Abstract
Theologically literate engagements with the work of Immanuel Kant of the kind exemplified in this study by Christopher Insole are enormously welcome. The former uneasy truce between between faculties of philosophy, in which Kant’s epistemology was the primary focus (often a focus of damning criticism), and faculties of theology and religious studies, where Kant’s denials that we can know God might be considered (and considered deficient) has long since given way to a new and daunting scholarly situation. On the one hand Kant’s works (including unpublished Reflexionen, his students’ lecture transcriptions and his own marginal notes) have been carefully re-edited, re-published and re-translated by teams of scholars supported by university presses. Textually unsupported claims about Kant’s philosophy, which includes a significant proportion of previous generations’ claims about Kant, are quickly refuted. On the other hand, exaggerated claims about the revolutionary nature of Kant’s philosophy have given way to a deeper historical appreciation of his place in a tradition of thought. This tradition includes proximate figures like Crusius, Hutcheson, and Wolff, but also slightly more distant bodies of work such as those of Descartes, Leibniz, Newton and Spinoza, together with the Scholastic Aristotelian traditions (the latter not monolithic) against which they defined themselves. A more historical account of Kant reveals a thinker with many strong continuities with prior traditions, especially in relation to questions of theology. A more historical account of philosophy in general permits more subtle inquiries into the relation between Kant’s and Descartes’ handling of ‘cause’, or the difference between Kant’s and Leibniz’s understanding of ‘experience’, or the lines of convergence and divergence in Kant’s and Newton’s use of ‘law’. Kant and the Creation of Freedom operates at this high level. It is historically sensitive, textually attentive and argumentatively deft.
As well as being concise and clear, Insole’s thesis is original and compelling. The question at the heart of the study is, ‘for Kant, if we are created, how are we free?’ This is accompanied by some further puzzles such as ‘is human freedom like divine freedom?’ and ‘what is the relation between divine and human action?’. Insole investigates all these questions, in enough detail to make his case but without burying the reader in an avalanche of texts, and in such a way as in each case to do three things. First, the relevant texts by Kant are marshalled. Second, rival interpretations of these texts are tested for the degree to which they do justice to the plain sense and the degree to which they are harmonious with other claims Kant makes. Third, Insole’s own interpretations of Kant’s claims are situated in the context of the longer theological tradition, in order to see how close Kant remains to or how far he seems to have strayed from that tradition.
Insole argues a number of theses, of which three stand out.
First, Insole demonstrates that, over time, Kant changes his mind about the relation of divine and human freedom. In his earlier work, Kant treats divine freedom and human freedom as broadly alike. In later work, however, Kant changes his view and insists that while they share a quality of freedom in the sense of being able to do what is good, they diverge in that human freedom means ‘being able to do otherwise’ and entails ‘being ultimately responsible for one’s actions’ (pp. 58-89). (For Kant, as for the long theological tradition, God does what is good, and one cannot assert that God is able to do other than what is good.)
Second Insole shows, with detailed exegesis of the relevant texts, Kant’s affirmation that human beings are capable of ‘noumenal first causation’. This has a number of steps. Insole clarifies what noumenal first causation is. This embraces the twin claim that causation can properly be ascribed to noumena (and not only to phenomena) and, derivatively, that noumenal substances (e.g. human intelligible freedom) act to bring about consequences. Insole acknowledges that such a claim will be rejected a priori by those commentators (such as Henry Allison) who defend Kant’s transcendental idealism via an account where noumena and phenomena are different ways of describing the same object (as in the case of ‘things in themselves’ and ‘appearances’). Such accounts are incompatible with the claim that noumena can be causes, because causes are only applicable to appearances. Insole responds to this with refreshing frankness: ‘I will make a number of wider interpretative claims about Kant that ascribe to him a position that would be incompatible with a ‘Kantian’ position, on some interpretations of transcendental idealism’ (p. 90). Furthermore, Insole suggests that the problem with such ‘Kantian’ positions is that they consciously set out the conditions for what a successful defence of Kant’s transcendental idealism requires, and then – precisely a priori – refuse all interpretations of Kant’s texts which do not fit. By contrast, ‘I attempt merely to set out what the parameters of Kant’s theory actually are, by his own self-understanding, even if we might prefer it to be otherwise’, says Insole modestly but radically (p. 91). Insole builds a meticulous forensic case, noting areas of difficulty and uncertainty, but always showing how the central issues relate to the wider problem of understanding human freedom in the light of God’s creation. I confess I was strongly attracted to interpretations like Allison’s before reading Insole’s study: it has led me to change my mind, and it may have the same disquieting effect on others.
Third, Kant’s account of grace is obscure. Attempts to place Kant in the familiar three-fold pattern of alternatives (occasionalism, mere conservation and concurrence) fail because Kant displays contrary tendencies. Kant is emphatically not an occasionalist: he refuses the idea that God is the sole cause of all effects in the world (and its corollary, that human action contributes nothing). Kant is not straightforwardly a mere conservationist: he refuses the idea that God’s action is constrained to creation and conservation of substances (and its corollary, that God contributes nothing to effects in the world). Finally, Kant does use the language of ‘concursus’ and its German equivalent ‘Mitwirkung’, but he means by this something significantly different from what the Patristic and medieval traditions mean by the concurrence of grace and nature. This is one of the finest parts of the book, elegantly interpreting the longer tradition and Kant’s texts side-by-side, and showing that while the same terms (e.g. ‘concursus’) may be in play, their meanings are significantly divergent. Insole shows that Kant finds he is unable to explain the cooperation of grace and nature (which, for Kant, solely concerns human free action); and Insole suggests that this is unsurprising, since those theologians who insist on it do so via what he calls ‘elements of theological grammar’ (or what, in another idiom, might be named ‘properly basic beliefs’) rather than via explanatory arguments. Kant refuses to deal in ‘grammatical’ considerations in Insole’s sense; and so he is left with unresolved puzzles.
En route, canards are skewered. Insole’s tone is measured and courteous throughout, but there are many moments where a quiet humour is discernible as well-known claims by prominent scholars are efficiently dispatched. Rae Langton’s claims about the pre-critical Kant’s handling of divine will (namely that it is absolute and God can do as he pleases in relation to how substances act as causes) receive a typical treatment. Insole chooses not to point out that Langton’s account displays an extreme voluntarism that would be quite repugnant to a rationalist like Kant. ‘I make no comment on Langton’s wider interpretation’, he says mildly, having just shown that this wider interpretation treats the creation of substances as entirely separable from the relations between substances that follow from their being so created, as if God erratically conjures a scattered mass of individuals into existence with no thought as to if or how they might have anything to do with each other. Insole is content, in silence, for his reader to stare in disbelief at the idea that Kant (or any figure broadly situated in the Christian tradition) might hold such a view. Instead, he patiently tests Langton’s claims against the texts, noting with almost comical understatement, ‘The problem with Langton’s reading is that Kant does not actually say [the things Langton attributes to him]’ (p. 50). He goes on, with equally quizzical reserve, to suggest that Langton’s claims might justifiably be said to be at least compatible with the paragraphs cited, were it not for all the other passages, not cited, where Kant (echoing the Christian tradition out of which he writes) discusses the divine intellect whenever discussing the divine will, and not only refuses to separate intellect and will in God but stresses the harmony between substances that is sustained by that divine intellect. Kant is no voluntarist.
This is not an isolated case. Insole does a great service to theologians who might otherwise be enthusiastic about the deliverances of philosophers, especially when they talk about God. Insole lays out with relentless courtesy the ways in which contemporary philosophers project a monstrous and fantastical God (one whose action competes with that of creatures, one who is an external and alien cause, one who is a being like other beings only bigger) on to Kant’s texts. Insole shows, with discipline and understatement, that such a view of God is starkly at odds with the medieval tradition that formed Kant. This should be enough to throw doubt on the attribution of such views to Kant. However, Insole seems to acknowledge that his philosophical interlocutors are a bit shaky on the medieval theological tradition, or that they might (through wishful thinking) believe Kant to make a clean break with it, and so he follows up his claims with detailed textual evidence that shows not only that Kant cannot hold such views but that he clearly does not hold them. If the effect of these arguments is to persuade philosophers that a degree of competence in medieval theology is required in order to gauge the amplitude of Kant’s proximity to or distance from his forebears, that will be a welcome outcome. More realistically, at least in the short term, it may persuade readers that reports of Kant’s murder of the medieval tradition are greatly exaggerated.
One can quibble with Insole’s rhetorical strategy: the compelling textual demonstrations are accompanied, especially towards the end, by the exuberant suggestion that Kant may be a continuing and live theological resource owing to his implicit apophaticism. Besides detracting from the force of the interpretive arguments, this unlikely suggestion is a symptom of a broader difficulty that runs through the text. Insole ostensibly compares ‘Kant’ with ‘medieval thought’. This is excellent. It would, however, be more persuasive if a stronger (by no means absolute) distinction were made between philosophical claims (e.g. about causation, about ideas, about freedom) and theological claims (e.g. about grace, about divine attributes, about creation). This would enable one to see that Kant might have strong continuities with medieval philosophy while exhibiting strong discontinuities with medieval theology, or vice versa. Doing this without making baseless essentialist stipulations about ‘philosophy’ and ‘theology’ is a challenge, but the high quality of this ground-breaking study of Kant indicates that its author is more than equal to the task. There is no finer theological engagement with Kant in print.