On Kant’s Understanding of Revelation.

Abstract

On Kant’s Understanding of Revelation. In this paper, I examine Immanuel Kant’s viewson revelation. Considered Kant’s critical philosophy it might be thought that there is no roomfor revelation in his philosophy at first sight. But looking at his later philosophy, in which heinvestigate the answer of the question of “What may I hope?”, we see that he seriously deals withthe issue of revelation. According to him there are two kinds of revelation: inward revelation(reason) and external/historical revelation. The relation between this two revelations looks like“concentric circles”, the former is narrover and the latter is larger. Kant tries to interpret theelements of external revelation, such as Jesus Christ, original sin etc., in terms of the narrowerone and argues that there is not only a “compability” between reason and (Christian) revelation,but also a “unity”. I argue that Kant’s interpretataions of external revelation are, especially insome cases, very coercive and thus his attempt to reconcile reason and Christianity is veryquestionable