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KEY THEMES AND TOPICS

ENTHUSIASM

In the Kantian philosophical lexicon, the English term enthusiasm can express both the German terms Enthusiasmus and Schwrmerei . However, from the beginning of the 1760s, Kant differentiates between the two concepts as Herders annotations to Kants lectures testify ( LE 175177). In a footnote in Obs Kant writes:

Fanaticism [ Schwrmerei ] must always be distinguished from enthusiasm [ Enthusiasmus ]. The former believes itself to feel an immediate and extraor-dinary communion with a higher nature, the latter signifies the state of the mind which is inflamed beyond the appropri-ate degree by some principle, whether it be by the maxim of patriotic virtue, or of friendship, or of religion, without involv-ing the illusion of a supernatural com-munity. ( Obs 251n.; cf. DSS 348, 365)

What distinguishes fanaticism from enthu-siasm is the belief in the implication of a supernatural and divine cause in the deter-mination of the activity of the mind. In par-ticular, Kant has in mind the British moral philosophers such as Shaftesbury and also Pietism.

In the contemporary essay EMH , Kant gives concrete examples from morality by distinguishing enthusiasm from fanaticism and considering the latter as a negative aspect of the life of the mind, which is deceived by false appearances (or chimeras):

This two-sided appearance of fantasy in moral sensations that are in themselves good is enthusiasm [ Enthusiasmus ], and nothing great has ever been accom-plished in the world without it. Things stand quite differently with the fanatic ( visionary , enthusiast [ Schwrmer ]).

The latter is properly a deranged per-son with presumed immediate inspira-tion and a great familiarity with the powers of the heavens. Human nature knows no more dangerous illusion. ( EMH 267)

In CJ , Kant asserts that enthusiasm arises when the idea of the good is connected with affect. This state of mind, Kant says, seems to be sublime, so much so that it is commonly maintained that without it noth-ing great can be accomplished. In particular, enthusiasm is aesthetically sublime, because it is a stretching of the powers through ideas, which give the mind a momentum that acts far more powerfully and persistently than the impetus given by sensory representa-tions ( CJ 272).

Fanaticism, instead, is a delusion of being able to see something beyond all bounds of sensibility, i.e., to dream in accordance with principles (to rave with reason) [. . .] ( CJ 275). In CF , Kant explains the anthro-pological importance of the concept of enthusiasm:

[T]he passionate participation in the good with affect, i.e., enthusiasm (although not to be wholly esteemed, since all affect as such deserves censure), provide[s] through this history the occa-sion for the following remark which is important for anthropology: genuine enthusiasm always moves only toward what is ideal and, indeed, to what is purely moral, such as the concept of right, and it cannot be grafted onto self-interest. ( CF 86; trans. amended)

In this last moral sense enthusiasm is referred to also in CPrR (cf. CPrR 157) and it is extremely important for Kants ethics and philosophy of history. MS

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KEY THEMES AND TOPICS

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FURTHER READING

P. Fenves (ed.), Raising the Tone of Philosophy. Late Essays by Immanuel Kant, Transformative Critique by Jacques Derrida (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

G. Johnson, The tree of melancholy: Kant on philosophy and enthusiasm, in C. Firestone, S. Palmquist (eds), Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 4361.

S. Meld Shell, The Embodiment of Reason. Kant on Spirit, Generation, and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pt. 5.

ETHER NATURAL SCIENCE, EULER

ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH (ETHICAL COMMUNITY) RELIGION

EVIL RADICAL EVIL

EXALTATION ENTHUSIASM, PIETISM

EXPERIENCE (SENSIBILITY)

Kant uses the notion experience in two ways. It means either (1) perception and what is given through it, and that which is abstracted from perceptions by means of induction, which is the indispensable basis and necessary ground of all empirical knowledge (B1) or, far more frequently, (2) the correspondence of perceptions ( Refl 2741) or connected perceptions (B161) constituting such knowledge; experience in the latter sense is a necessary connection or

synthesis of perceptions (A176=B218; P 275 [5]). For Kant, experience and knowledge are inextricably bound up.

Although he admits that it may not be immediately obvious, or recognized by some of his modern predecessors, Kant holds that experience [. . .] contains two very heteroge-neous elements, namely a matter for cognition from the senses and a certain form for order-ing it from the inner source of pure intuiting and thinking (A86=B118) ( form ).

On Kants view, without both these mate-rial and formal conditions, an objective unity of representations and thus experience, in the second above-mentioned sense, itself is not possible. Kant often talks about possible experience (e.g. B73, B127) or the possibil-ity of experience, which indicates that Kants main concern are the conditions of possibil-ity of both the experience of objects and the objects of experience (B197=A158) rather than mere experience.

Kant believes that failure to recognize this led philosophers such as Locke and Hume to mistaken positions regarding the source of our concepts and our cogni-tion. Locke and Hume fail to recognize that there are formal conditions necessary for the possibility of experience, as they think that material conditions alone are sufficient to produce experience. Kant believes that for them the senses do not merely afford us impressions but also put them together, and produce images of objects [. . .] (A120n.).

On this view, experience is something we have independently of any subsequent actions of either the understanding ( judgment, deduction ) or imagination . As a result of failing to recognize that experience is a composite of that which we receive through impressions and that which our own cogni-tive faculty [. . .] provides out of itself (B1), Kant believes that the empiricists are led to the

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