Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on the texts and translation
- Letters on the Kantian Philosophy
- First Letter: The need for a Critique of Reason
- Second Letter: The result of the Kantian philosophy on the question of God's existence
- Third Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the necessary connection between morality and religion
- Fourth Letter: On the elements and the previous course of conviction in the basic truths of religion
- Fifth Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the future life
- Sixth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The united interests of religion and morality in the clearing away of the metaphysical ground for cognition of a future life
- Seventh Letter: A sketch of a history of reason's psychological concept of a simple thinking substance
- Eighth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The master key to the rational psychology of the Greeks
- Appendix: the major additions in the 1790 edition
- Index
- Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy
Sixth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The united interests of religion and morality in the clearing away of the metaphysical ground for cognition of a future life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on the texts and translation
- Letters on the Kantian Philosophy
- First Letter: The need for a Critique of Reason
- Second Letter: The result of the Kantian philosophy on the question of God's existence
- Third Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the necessary connection between morality and religion
- Fourth Letter: On the elements and the previous course of conviction in the basic truths of religion
- Fifth Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the future life
- Sixth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The united interests of religion and morality in the clearing away of the metaphysical ground for cognition of a future life
- Seventh Letter: A sketch of a history of reason's psychological concept of a simple thinking substance
- Eighth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The master key to the rational psychology of the Greeks
- Appendix: the major additions in the 1790 edition
- Index
- Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy
Summary
I feel, dear friend, the difficulty of my undertaking, in which I pass from the historical to the [68] metaphysical ground for cognition of the immortality of the soul in order to demonstrate precisely the same incompatibility of the metaphysical ground with the common interest of religion and morality that I have perhaps only too hastily indicated with respect to the historical ground. You need worry very little about this hastiness in regard to the proofs that lie ahead since the very reason why I believed that this hastiness should be permissible in the one case summons me to a more rigorous investigation and more detailed elucidation in the present case. I have not been concerned with a hyperphysicist who accepts absolutely no other source for his religious conviction than a supernatural one, and for whom every pronouncement of reason on the basic truths of religion is suspicious precisely because he recognizes it as a pronouncement of reason. Rather, I know from your spoken and written remarks that you are all the more willing to grant reason its innate right to have the first say regarding those basic truths precisely because you are used to thinking of religion as a moral matter, and because you cannot think of any moral matter that could not and would not have to be decided before the tribunal of reason.
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- Reinhold: Letters on the Kantian Philosophy , pp. 76 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006