Abstract
Fremstedal offers an account of Kant as a predecessor of existentialism. More specifically, Kant is claimed to anticipate existentialism by emphasizing human finitude and holding human consciousness to be characterized by mineness or self-referentiality. In addition, Kant makes human freedom the central philosophical issue, arguing that freedom is inescapable for human agents. Kant not only introduces the influential concept of autonomy, but he also holds that awareness of freedom leads to anxiety, and that anxiety in turn precedes moral evil. Because of moral evil, human agents suffer from self-deception, something that necessitates a radical self-choice, or conversion, by which the agent takes responsibility for himself as a natural and moral being. Finally, Kant prepares the ground for existentialism by developing an existential interpretation of religion that criticizes theodicies and emphasizes the hiddenness of God.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The present text draws partially on Fremstedal 2014 (a book that deals with Kierkegaard’s relation to Kant). References to Critique of Pure Reason use the pagination in the A and B editions (e.g., Kant 2007, A445/B473). All other references to Kant use the volume and pagination in the German Academy edition of Kant’s works (e.g., Kant 1900ff., vol. 6, p. 24).
- 2.
Yet Kant’s ethics anticipates Sartre’s idea of man as a “legislator deciding for the whole of mankind” as well as his view that “the act of lying implies the universal value which it denies” (1975, p. 351). Sartre (1975, p. 366) explicitly agrees to Kant’s view that “freedom is a will both to itself and to the freedom of others.” For Kant’s importance for Kierkegaard’s ethics, see Fremstedal (2014).
- 3.
Although Kant did not develop a phenomenology, he is still one of the forerunners of twentieth-century phenomenology (cf. Engelland 2010).
- 4.
Moreover, Kant argues that “Another can indeed coerce me to do something that is not my end (but only a means to another’s end) but not to make this my end; and yet I can have no end without making it an end for myself” (Kant 1900ff., vol. 6, p. 381).
- 5.
My interpretation here is based on Fremstedal (2020), except that that the present text does not focus on Kierkegaard.
- 6.
Kierkegaard represents an exception here since he tends towards moral realism (Fremstedal 2014, chapter 10).
- 7.
- 8.
See the chapters on Schelling, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre in the present anthology.
- 9.
Kant is concerned with self-deception that tries to ignore the demands of moral freedom. He is hardly concerned with forms of self-deception that exaggerate freedom and understate facticity. Nor does he give a taxonomy of self-deception, as Kierkegaard does (Fremstedal 2014, chapter 3).
- 10.
Like many existentialists, Kant was also highly concerned with freedom of speech, although he struggled with censorship and religious orthodoxy (cf. Kuehn 2001).
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
I am indebted to Andrew Chignell and Darrel Moellendorf here.
- 15.
Transcendental arguments represent one of Kant’s most discussed contributions to philosophy. Pereboom (2009) explains, “In Kant’s conception, an argument of this kind begins with an uncontroversial premise about our thought, experience, or knowledge, and then reasons to a substantive and unobvious necessary condition of this premise. Typically, this reasoning from uncontroversial premise to substantive conclusion is intended to be a priori in some sense.” Transcendental arguments can be found in both Kierkegaard and twentieth-century existentialism. Some accounts even identify transcendental and phenomenological methodology (see Engelland 2010, Part III). For Kierkegaard, see Fremstedal (2014, pp. 229–230).
Bibliography
Adams, Robert. 1987. The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Allison, Henry. 1995. Kant’s Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2002. On the Very Idea of a Propensity to Evil. The Journal of Value Inquiry 36: 337–348.
Bayer, Oswald. 2007. Theology the Lutheran Way. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Beiser, Frederick. 2006. Moral Faith and the Highest Good. In The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, ed. Paul Guyer, 588–629. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burnham, Douglas, and George Papandreopoulos. 2011. Existentialism. In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. http://www.iep.utm.edu/existent/. Accessed 1 February 2019.
Caswell, Matthew. 2006. Kant’s Conception of the Highest Good, the Gesinnung, and the Theory of Radical Evil. Kant-Studien 97: 184–209.
Chignell, Andrew. 2007. Kant’s Concept of Justification. Noûs 41: 33–63.
Collins, James. 1967. The Emergence of Philosophy of Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Crowell, Steven. 2017. Existentialism. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/existentialism. Accessed 8 January 2019.
Davenport, John. 2012. Narrative Identity, Autonomy, and Mortality: From Frankfurt and MacIntyre to Kierkegaard. London: Routledge.
Dorrien, Gary. 2012. Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Engelland, Chad. 2010. The Phenomenological Kant: Heidegger’s Interest in Transcendental Philosophy. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 41: 150–169.
Formosa, Paul. 2007. Kant on the Radical Evil of Human Nature. The Philosophical Forum 38: 221–246.
———. 2013. Is Kant a Moral Constructivist or a Moral Realist? European Journal of Philosophy 21: 170–196.
Fremstedal, Roe. 2014. Kierkegaard and Kant on Radical Evil and the Highest Good: Virtue, Happiness, and the Kingdom of God. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2020. Søren Kierkegaard’s Critique of Eudaimonism and Autonomy. In Perfektionismus der Autonomie, ed. Douglas Moggach, Nadine Mooren, and Michael Quante, 291–308. Munich: Fink.
Henrich, Dieter. 2008. Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1900ff. Gesammelte Schriften, vols. 1–29. Berlin: Reimer (later de Gruyter).
———. 1999. Practical Philosophy. Ed. and Trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2001a. Religion and Rational Theology. Ed. and Trans. Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2001b. Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and Jerome Schneewind. Trans. Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2004. Lectures on Logic. Ed. and Trans. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2007. Critique of Pure Reason. Ed. and Trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2009. Anthropology, History, and Education. Ed. Günter Zöller and Robert Louden, Trans. Mary Gregor, Paul Guyer, Robert Louden, Holly Wilson, Allen Wood, Günter Zöller and Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kleingeld, Pauline. 1999. Kant, History, and the Idea of Moral Development. History of Philosophy Quarterly 16: 56–80.
Kosch, Michelle. 2006. Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kuehn, Manfred. 2001. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Louden, Robert. 2011. Kant’s Human Being: Essays on His Theory of Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Madore, Joël. 2011. Difficult Freedom and Radical Evil in Kant: Deceiving Reason. London: Continuum.
Marina, Jacqueline. 2000. Making Sense of Kant’s Highest Good. Kant-Studien 91: 329–355.
Morgan, Seiriol. 2005. The Missing Formal Proof of Humanity’s Radical Evil in Kant’s Religion. The Philosophical Review 114: 63–114.
Muchnik, Pablo. 2009. Kant’s Theory of Evil: An Essay on the Dangers of Self-Love and the Aprioricity of History. Lanham, MD: Lexington.
Neiman, Susan. 1997. The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2004. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pereboom, Derek. 2009. Kant’s Transcendental Arguments. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/kant-transcendental. Accessed 4 April 2014.
Pihlström, Sami, and Sari Kivistö. 2016. Kantian Antitheodicy: Philosophical and Literary Varieties. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pinkard, Terry. 2010. German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rudd, Anthony. 2012. Self, Value, and Narrative: A Kierkegaardian Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1975. Existentialism is a Humanism. In Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kaufman, 345–369. London: Penguin.
———. 1998. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. London: Routledge.
Scheler, Max. 1928. Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. Darmstadt: Otto Reichl.
Schulte, Christoph. 1991. Radikal Böse. Die Karriere des Bösen von Kant bis Nietzsche. Munich: Fink.
Stern, Robert. 2012. Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stewart, Jon. 2010. Idealism and Existentialism: Hegel and Twentieth-Century European Philosophy. London: Continuum.
———. 2015. Søren Kierkegaard: Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Timmermann, Jens. 2013. Divine Existence and Moral Motivation. In Kant und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht. Akten des XI. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, ed. Stefano Bacin, Alfredo Ferrarin, Claudio La Rocca, and Margit Ruffing, vols. 1–5, vol. 3, 669–678. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Varga, Somogy, and Charles Guignon. 2017. Authenticity. In The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/authenticity. Accessed 25 January 2019.
Verstrynge, Karl. 2004. The Perfection of the Kierkegaardian Self in Regulative Perspective. Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 473–495.
Welz, Claudia. 2008. Love’s Transcendence and the Problem of Theodicy. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Wimmer, Reiner. 1990. Kants kritische Religionsphilosophie. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Wood, Allen. 1970. Kant’s Moral Religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
———. 2003. Kant and the Problem of Human Nature. In Essays on Kant’s Anthropology, ed. Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain, 38–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zammito, John. 2002. Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fremstedal, R. (2020). Kant and Existentialism: Inescapable Freedom and Self-Deception. In: Stewart, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44571-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44571-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44570-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44571-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)