Immanuel Kant, by Shao Kai Tseng. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2020. xviii + 209 pp. $12.00.
In this balanced, nuanced, and sympathetic account of Kant’s thought, Shao Kai Tseng intends to correct what he considers the flawed Neo-Calvinist interpretations of Kant, which he attributes chiefly to Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987), and Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977). They, relying on the scholarship of their generation, mischaracterized Kant as a theological agnostic and empirical skeptic. Such interpretations, Tseng contends, are outdated. In response, Tseng offers an alternative interpretation based on a close, analytical reading of Kant’s works within their historical context. Building upon the work of John Hare, Tseng argues that although Kant’s enterprise attempted to translate Christian theology into a philosophy and religion of pure religion, it failed in two respects: his separation of faith and knowledge and his effort to account for hope by explaining the atonement. Tseng, moreover, interprets and evaluates Kant’s thought by way of a charitable, Neo-Calvinist understanding of revelation and philosophy as developed by Herman Bavinck (1854–1921).
Chapter 2 is a survey of Kant’s thought. In keeping with this stated methodology above, Tseng situates Kant’s thought within its historical context. In so doing, Tseng shows that Kant formulated his philosophy in reaction to the rationalism of Rene Descartes (1596–1650) and the radical empiricism of David Hume (1711–1776). At the core of Descartes’s philosophy was that the naked reason of the self can give one a God’s eye view of both the world and God himself. This in essence was the Cartesian paradigm that Kant sought to overthrow. Kant’s philosophy countered Descartes’s by arguing the following. First, naked human reason does not have the power to apprehend who God is. Second, human reason can be assured that God ought to be, and divine revelation strengthens this assurance. Third, the self is not the starting point for human knowledge of the world but instead the reciprocal interaction between experience and the intellect. Hume postulated that between notions of sensations and ideas are impressions, which are closely related to sensations. Ideas of experience originate from these impressions which serve as the ultimate source of knowledge. However, there are some ideas that do not originate from sense experience. At this point, Hume distinguished between “matters of fact” and “relations of ideas.” The sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic constitute the former and every other kind of affirmation is the latter. What we consider human knowledge consists mostly of matters of fact. These matters are known through experience and are only contingently true. Reasoning concerning matters of fact is founded on the relationship between cause and effect. Knowledge of this relationship emerges from experience when one observes particular objects joined to each other. Thus, reasoning in terms of cause and effect is merely an activity of the mind subjectively developed through experience. Hume further contends that notions of material and spiritual things are merely inventions of psychological habits. The idea that there are substances behind our ideas of external phenomena result from a secret mechanism in mental processes that lead to baseless beliefs. Kant countered that if there is no objectivity to what we think about causality and the laws of nature, then science would have no foundation. Moreover, one would have no idea as to whether he/she was interacting with real beings outside himself/herself. Also, one would not be sure as to whether he or she really is. However, what concerned Kant the most regarding Hume’s empiricism and skepticism was the existence of God.
Kant contended that if one cannot make sense of either the moral or natural world, one cannot have any certainty of God’s existence. Like Hume, Kant rejected traditional metaphysics and the rationalism developed by Descartes. However, Kant endeavored to refute Hume in order to provide a rightful place for science, morality, and religion. He does this byconfining “scientific knowledge” exclusively to the phenomenal world (that which is perceived through the senses) while relegating religion to the noumenal realm, or the realm that cannot be apprehended by the senses. This allowed him to formulate his transcendental theology based on pure reason alone in which our thoughts about God are real objects, and the clarifications we give to them are necessary for practical reason (ethics). These thoughts about God, however, are not true thoughts about God as such thoughts would be impossible. Furthermore, this transcendental theology cannot establish the existence of God; it can only confirm the importance of an idea about a necessary and real being. This serves as the basis for God as the supreme moral legislator. The moral religion stemming from this raises the question of hope for deliverance from “sin” by means of some divine assistance. To address this, Kant first identifies the problem of sin as “self-love.” Christ’s death, although necessarily true historically, provides the hope of atonement in that it shows the possibility of living a moral life pursuant of happiness by giving up the kind of happiness that stems from self-love. Tseng proceeds to develop Kant’s philosophy in extensively by way of sustained analysis of his major works.
Chapter 3 is Tseng’s extensive and trenchant assessment of Kant’s thought. Tseng devotes most of this discussion to Kant’s severance of faith from knowledge. In so doing, Kant is concerned with restoring theology’s rightful place as a “science.” In other words, he inquires into how it is possible for one to attain to a theoretical knowledge of God. The author commences his examination by establishing Kant’s role in preparing the conditions for the development and reception of modern theology. From there he goes on to note that Kant’s transcendental idealism required human knowledge to be limited by the context of the knower. Because the human mind can only process sensory data through space and time, its knowledge is limited solely to that which is phenomenal and historical. Following from this, the author rightfully notes the difficulty that this raises for the Christian understanding of God. If indeed, as Christians profess, God transcends spatial and chronological limitations, having created space and time, then how can this infinite God become the subject of human knowledge? In dealing with the question, Tseng surveys the various attempts to answer it during the nineteenth century, observing that the most prominent solution to this difficulty raised by Kant was to historicize religion, or discern religion as an active phenomenon moving through the course of history, as was the case with both Friedreich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and G.W. F. Hegel (1770–1831). The answer Tseng ultimately proposes to the apparent severance of faith and knowledge by Kant entails an appropriation of Bavinck’s doctrine of revelation as well as Anselm’s notion of “faith seeking understanding.” Tseng appropriates Kant’s view of the ultimate unknowability of God. However, Tseng maintains, this transcendent, unknowable God reveals himself through the Incarnation and the Holy Scriptures. This fact of God’s own revelation becomes the starting point for the Christian knowledge of God takes seriously the limited capacity for the human intellect to “understand God,” while at the same time establishing a basis for certainty about the knowledge of God through faith and illumination affected by the Holy Spirit.
Tseng’s work succeeds not only in demonstrating its thesis, but also in its effort to correct the previous misinterpretations of Kant that for at least the last century and a half have presented us with a type of bogeyman and caricature. Interpreting Kant’s corpus within its historical context enables us to appreciate a significant thinker who sincerely sought to find a solid ground for the Christian amid the formidable attacks by Hume. At the same time, Tseng clearly demonstrates how, although well-intentioned Kant’s project was, it not only fell short of its objective, it also exacerbated the problem resulting from the separation of faith from knowledge. Immanuel Kant makes accessible as it can the otherwise very abstract, convoluted, and, frankly, dense thought of this important thinker. This work is suitable as a textbook in upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in Kant specifically and modern philosophy in general. Immanuel Kant presents a refreshingly corrected view of the philosopher while making an invaluable contribution to this field.
