Kant’s Allegory

Ian Hunter ( Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany ) notes that Kant’s “philosophical biblical hermeneutics” is “the intellectual method or spiritual exercise through which his rational theology performs the core task of university metaphysics.” Hunter elaborates that this task is “reconciling moral philosophy and revealed theology within a single discipline in accordance with the apologetic purposes of Christian metaphysics itself. Hence, if Kant places his philosophical interpretation of the Bible outside the bounds of scriptural exegesis, he does so in order to raise it above the latter, treating his metaphysical hermeneutics as the means by which human reason purifies itself of the historical conditioning in which orthodox exegesis remains mired.”

Hunter, clearly, thinks Kant is right to subject biblical exegesis to philosophical correction, but his summary (accurate, from my reading of Kant’s Religion ) demonstrates the truth of Milbank’ claim that we have a conflict of positioning discourses: Who’s going to tell the master story, the Bible or philosophy? Hunter’s use of the verb “purify” is on target as well, further evidence of the accuracy of Hamann’s attack on the purism of reason. And that “mired” is priceless; yes, history is a mire, and we can only get to truth if we get good and cleaned up.