Kant and Wesley, Conceptually Considered

by Philip McPherson Rudisill

I am wondering about GMM, CPrR and Religion, and I wonder if pure practical reason gives us the way that we must go (if we are to be good people), but promises only that we have the strength to do what we must do grudgingly.

I wonder about this because the Wesleyan speak of a change in the heart (emotions and desires) such that a person finds not only is heshe able to give in imitation of the model of the so-called decent life, but as a member of the community of that life, because the individual begins to find it easier to give, and even so far that some caution might be necessary to avoid going "over the brink"* and falling into enthusiasms (which John Wesley, founder, will have understood, perhaps, slightly differently than did Kant).

[* The boundaries to which are always subjective and empirical.]

Now somewhere Kant speaks of complying with the commands of God +cheerfully+ as the indication of our love toward him (God) [assuming you are speaking of these concepts analytically, and not necessarily as though there were any such thing as God]. That is very interesting to me, for I do not see how someone could do such, i.e., live and act in that way, deliberately at all (and I am not quite sure what Kant has in mind here). But it is interesting that the Wesleyans assert that such will be the inevitable result of experience when one enters positively upon the Christian path.* The result of this engagement, they claim, will be as Kant requires in order to love (or show love) for God.

[* I am not sure at this point where and if the Wesleyans also assert that this result is not possible except through this experience which is called Christian. That calls for further discussion.]

This suggests to me a certain affinity between Wesley and Kant and it is roughly upon the pursuit of this affinity that my researches into mind and thought and faith take me (and may be of interest to others). More explicitly, I see this sort of picture emerging and share it with the forum:

1. space and time are imagined as containers and we come to see our own, subjective, split-finger space as contained within the container of space, e.g., that each eye is in a different part of this space (and which information, incidentally, is not derivable (and despite Kant's thinking in the Diss) from noticing the mind's penchant for disposing of things "here and there" and "now and then" which is all that is given to us in the envisagement (along with the coupling of the here and there through a path in space, and through the traversement of that path dynamically, .e.g, acceleration and deceleration [which, I think, is Aesth.8.II about the three contributions each of the external envisagement and the internal envisagement}.)

2. That was the first synthesis, I suppose (that Kant is saying in TDA.26.3), and then we continue and dream up next bodies in order to bring the "split finger" down to earth. The body is that which can be felt, and the specter is that which can be seen, and when they correspond we have a sighting of a real object, otherwise we are dealing with sheer specters, like the rainbow (and which then have an empirical progression through cloud faces to Necker boxes and finally to the pantomimic circle). This is an empirical concept and needed in order even to recognize a specter as a specter, for it could be that all objects split as do the finger, and we have no reason to think we could not see three or more fingers before our eyes--think about that!* **

[* This consideration was suggested by remembering Kant's assertion regarding the newly seeing man (at the end of the Preface to CPrR), namely: "what deceives me? my sight or my touch?" It was then that I realized that one of the most fundamental of all syntheses is that of the world of touch and the world of sight, which synthesis is resisted by the split-finger sighting. But then the conception of space as a pure invention of the mind enables us to put the otherwise irresistible split-finger space into this imagined contained, space, and see that each of the two eyes is a different view point, and that what we see is a mentally situated composite that does not exist in space on its own in that way at all.]

[** I do not know how the empiricists can think to get around this point. The fact of the split finger should not, by their accounts, be view as strange at all; for rather it should be considered as prime face evidence that objects do split into two parts,and that should suggests that we should not be surprised to see a three way split, or more; but not that what we see is not real!]

3. But this body is just a dreamed up object we need in order to be able to sight all objects as real in space. And so this holds of all objects.Even though it is an empirical concept.

4. the specter and the body have shape and extension, but only the body has impenetrability. This distinction we bring forth and notice in our observation of things of the world; and something similar takes place with regard to all empirical syntheses, e.g., that the shadow must lie on a surface and cannot walk through mid air. [All of this is coming out of the verbiage of the TDA.]

5. Experience develops. It is based on the object as a thing on its own, i.e., per Hume's Sec. 118 (back button to return here), i.e., not there transcendentally, but empirically. It is really there, and we are merely looking at it, and it is not changing, but only our perspective of it is changing. Etc. The fundamental of experience. [And all of which was originally dream up by the human in order to have experience.]

6. The mind leaps past the limitations of the categories of experience and tries to use these in general, like Plato did. Failure and despair, etc. Antinomies.

7. The explanation touching law and religion: the object is dreamed up and we really do not know what is +(super) really+ there, but only that +something+ is. We are permitted to conceive of a being, the man, who not only has to do what he does (understandably), but also intends to, and this purposefulness is seen as under his control; and how this is to be reconciled, and so we are in the Third antinomy and its solution.

8. From here we move rapidly through GMM and CPrR and end up with Religion, where we are told not only that we are free (which we learned in CPrR), but also that is is possible to think of our selves as good, albeit with tendencies otherwise, and thus as always in need, e.g., that we cannot gladly give to others, unless we have a physical "turn on" in some way, like the sexual turn on (for example, and to be quite be emphatic and clear), and so we are lost, for we cannot love God, and this we must do (why Kant requires this in Religion I cannot now remember nor conceive).

9. But then enters Wesley and proclaims: the religion that Kant conceived exists (I proclaim to you from experienced fact) and it is call Christian, and one of the great benefits of this faith is that it leads inexorably to the fact of giving with increasingly natural cheer that which you would otherwise want to keep for yourself (indeed and even in the name of prudence). And because of this we (Wesleyans) are able to assert that Kant's demand for such a love of God as a result of his conception of religion (in Religion) has been fully satisfied in the faith of our originator and Lord. And if you doubt, you have merely to engage those of the faith or even better, to seek this transformation of yourself, by really and truly desiring it.

Thusly, in about this form do I conceive of the +Wesleyan+ reply to the challenge of Lord Russell in his essay "On Why I Am Not A Christian" to proceed, somewhat in this "synthesis" of Kant and Wesley, leading through theoretical (and Kant's justification of the empiricists' experience) and then through the practical to the moral religion and then (leaving Kant) to the fact of a faith, i.e., a living, moving faith in the practical sense of Kant, and to an experience with that faith that satisfies the demands of pure reason, when applied practically to a religion.

That is sort of the gist of my own quest, for what it is worth.

PS This also explains, I think, my recent attempt to differentiate between the commitment to the maxim and one's actual conduct. I can honestly see myself getting better, for example, in cheerfully giving now what I would have made a face about earlier; and yet I suddenly fall apart and shout at people and generally act like one of the damned (to coin an expression). The reason that this holds together is because we are not talking about satisfying others as to our internal state, but rather because we are talking about what the sinner does (in the Christian lingo) when heshe sees himself in sin, namely seeks to learn how heshe got there and so to be able to avoid that descent again in the future, and, in cases of perceived weakness of will, to resolve to get it right the next time. Both of these, as internal states, are completely dispensable with them who seek merely to convince others, e.g., a distant God, of their internal state.

Thus, subjectively expressed, I see the Golden Rule as the moral law, and I see the maxim to follow this rule no matter what, as the "commitment" which gives me unity with Christ (which is something that I happen to desire).* And so, in order to avoid falling into and out of grace like a jumping jack, I appeal to what I perceive to be Kant's thinking, namely: it is the character as the +conscious and conscientious+ acceptance of the Golden rule that gives my life authenticity (in this faith) in the face of behavior which simply cannot be derived from this rule. Wesley (and Kant, too, I would think) speak to the internal experience and not to the persuasion of others with regard to an empirical fact, i.e., the state of my heart (commitment to a supreme principle of action).

[* Now, of course, the moral law commands universally and we can discern the respect we have for this law through the internally conducted justifications that we make to ourselves (not to speak of speaking to others) with regard to our own conduct, even if we do not consider these closely. For example, the murder may exclaim to himself, in the face of an internally condemning thought, "Well, he was old anyway" or "he was only a faggot",i.e., using whatever subjectively acceptable means of deprecation of the moral degradation into heshe had sunk (by choice) that were available.