10/22/05 4:31 PM A sudden insight into Kant’s thinking. A description of a play. a descent into evil.

Yasuko and I were discussing excitedly our plans for the new house. God had blessed us (in my gullible eyes) just that AM at the lot where a neighbor introduced himself as an interested builder (which solved one of the many problems bothering me about this endeavor, now we have a builder).

Later I got to thinking of all the reasons that he would be a good choice. He offered references and he would want to do an especial good job since I would be living in the same neighborhood, and we would be constantly bustling into each other. Etc.

You see i had begun to become rational and less impulsive and I realized that this guy might be willing to take advantage of me since I was obviously, by my very speech, totally unaware of what would be involved, and so he might be willing to use that against me.

Then just now we were discussing our visit to the architect whom I had for a year just assumed was THE architect. Now it suddenly occurred to me that we should not go visit on Monday, as planned, with any suggestion that we had already settled on him, again, for fear that he might be driven by some necessity to take advantage of us on that score. In other words, the guy needs to know that there is another used car dealer down the street who sells cars too; in so many words.

Now I think we both are reasonably good people, for usually, in most cases,, the impulse that arises in situations is that of doing the right thing. Not a guarantee of a disposition, but an indication. Anyway, the point is that we subdued our natural (personal) inclination to assume the right and the good, and decided to be circumspect and to be careful for our own welfare. It’s sort of funny, its like we know that people are driven to violate the moral law, say: being totally upfront in all things subjected to: watch your advantage. We see it in ourselves now as we justify rational counter measures by not being totally upfront about everything ourselves. And this is also what is expected of us (and why Jesus so totally startled people).

And so I think this reveals what Kant is talking about in the natural evil. He said it arose even in people of good will. It was enough that they were people and that they deal with each other.

I think that may be a good example of the process of this evil rearing its head. The assumption is this: people are willing occasionally to violate the moral law. The conclusion is not that we must violate the moral law, but it is that we must ourselves change our behavior and become then of one soup with everyone else, good and bad, a soup of our own making.

Makes you appreciate the ideal Jesus who comes and does not succumb to this evil, but stands from childhood with sincerity and candor. If he had chosen on the architect, as I had, he would not hesitate to tell him so, and would not be like me now and insist on a front.

And so Jesus then in the Struggle for the Good becomes the means of awakening in every person the idea of the Son of God, something which we know that we could do because he ought to do it, i.e., don’t put on a front and simply do what is right and meet, i.e., the moral law. Now Kant rationalizes how it is possible for an individual to actually make that connection with the struggle for the good, e.g., he has got to believe that he is free of the penalty and even the state of sin. Etc.

Then we are convinced that we will seek to become like Jesus, our moral ideal in a human form, and then we have to figure out the best way to do that. For the world remains sinful and evil and we will be constantly tempted to fall back into evil at least as a reaction and as a necessary precaution and who knows what one will do in a real pinch? So our only hope is to band together. Since there is indeed an evil in the world in which we must live and which will be constantly tempting us in our natural interactions with others (even if they were good), it seems that the only rational hope would be for someone to join up with someone else of a like mind and to work together cooperatively for a common good, the good of the world. And so we end up with a duty that a person has to the species, I think that is the way that Kant is looking at it, a duty to the species to recognize the natural order of evil and to work together for the good of the species. We are not to just work out our own salvation, as it were, but to work for the good of the species. We owe this to each other, to help all get out of the mire of the natural evil that infects us through our own,, voluntary action (in taking on a particular disposition).


And then we need to explore how it is that a human affected vehicle of the true moral religion can remain just a vehicle and not the thing on its own. It is a matter of reading the texts in a moral way. Much liberty may be taken for this purpose.

Now the Christian church, the visible assertion of universality, is encumbered with faiths of historical fact. I think Kant sees the progression as I do: first it was the release from the rule of statute law imposed by a priesthood, and a subjugation to scripture as law, and now that is being dispensed with until you finally come up with my own notion of Paul as setting people free of anything except to believe that they could become like Jesus, and thus free from the dogma as any impediment to the conscience, and so where what is finally valued most commonly among them is that they are what my mother called “Christian in your heart” which encompassed then Jews and other people. I see the church then finally not longer requiring a belief in the resurrection as a condition of membership, but merely a willingness and a longing to live like Jesus, a Christian-in-heart. And then other members of the congregation, who actually believed in the resurrection would rejoice because they could then also see the actual work of God in their own lives,, at least to the extent that they were doing a loving act, a compassionate act, an honest act.

And so the Christian religion includes all people who are Christian-in-heart, and it certainly then includes all Christian-in-faith, to the extent they sincerely seek to exemplify the spirit of Jesus in their own lives. And so the advantage of the Christian-in-faith (in the resurrection) is that of joy, namely that the worthiness for happiness which is hoped for by the good-in-heart is revealed as a fact of history, namely Jesus did in fact arise from the dead.

Justifications for such a faith. The belief in the reality of such a man, and not like the tooth fairy, that he actually did live, and the further belief that he was right and that dead could not destroy a righteous man. We demand this morally of nature, that it may not keep a righteous man. And so for those of us who believe, as I do, in the resurrection of Jesus and the descent of a Holy Spirit, we are blessed and are encouraged in our pursuit of this now most certain prize of transformation and happiness, of success in our grand endeavor together against the forces of evil that lie snare everywhere.

What a conception! The man that we most admire did in fact live and indeed is even now alive. For those of us who believe that, we are blessed with the assurance of the factual, non-tooth fairy