SECTION III. Opining, Knowing, and Believing[1734]

OPINING, KNOWING, AND BELIEVING

Kant first distinguishes between conviction (Ueberzeugung) and persuasion (Ueberredung). A judgment which is objectively grounded, and which is therefore valid for all other rational beings, is affirmed with conviction. When the affirmation is due only to the peculiar character of the subject, the manner in which it is asserted may be entitled persuasion. Persuasion is therefore “a mere illusion.” Conviction exists in three degrees, opinion, belief, and knowledge. In opinion we are conscious that the judgment is insufficiently grounded, and that our conviction is subjectively incomplete. In belief the subjective conviction is complete, but is recognised as lacking in objective justification. In knowledge the objective grounds and the subjective conviction are alike complete.

After pointing out that opinion is not permissible in judgments of pure Reason, Kant develops the further distinction between pragmatic or doctrinal belief and moral belief. When a belief is contingent (i.e. is affirmed with the consciousness that on fuller knowledge it may turn out to be false), and yet nevertheless supplies a ground for the employment of means to certain desired ends, it may be called pragmatic belief. Such belief admits of degree, and can be tested by wager or by oath. What may be called doctrinal belief is analogous in character, and is taken by Kant, in somewhat misleading fashion, as describing our mode of accepting such doctrines as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. They are adopted as helpful towards a contingent but important end, the discovery of order in the system of nature. This account of the nature of Ideas is in line with Kant’s early view of them as merely regulative. Taken in connection with his repeated employment of the term ‘moral sentiments’ (moralische Gesinnungen), it tends to prove that this section is early in date of writing.

In moral belief the end, the Summum Bonum, is absolutely necessary, and as there is only one condition under which we can conceive it as being realised, namely, on the assumption of the existence of God and of a future life, the belief in God and immortality possesses the same certainty as the moral sentiments.

“The belief in a God and another world is so interwoven with my moral sentiment that as there is little danger of my losing the latter, there is equally little cause for fear that the former can ever be taken from me.”

As I have just suggested, this basing of moral belief upon subjective sentiments, which, as Kant very inconsistently proceeds to suggest, may possibly be lacking in certain men, marks this section as being of early origin. But in concluding the section, in reply to the objection that, in thus tracing such articles of faith to our “natural interest” in morality, philosophy admits its powerlessness to advance beyond the ordinary understanding, Kant propounds one of his abiding convictions, namely, that in matters which concern all men without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial distribution of her gifts, and that in regard to the essential ends of human nature the highest philosophy cannot advance beyond what is revealed to the common understanding. The reverence which Kant ever cherished for the memory of his parents, and for the religion which was so natural to them, must have predisposed him to a recognition of the widespread sources of the spiritual life. But Kant has himself placed on record his sense of the great debt which in this connection he also owed to the teaching of Rousseau.

“I am by disposition an enquirer. I feel the consuming thirst for knowledge, the eager unrest to advance ever further, and the delights of discovery. There was a time when I believed that this is what confers real dignity upon human life, and I despised the common people who know nothing. Rousseau has set me right. This imagined advantage vanishes. I learn to honor men, and should regard myself as of much less use than the common labourer, if I did not believe that my philosophy will restore to all men the common rights of humanity.”

The sublimity of the starry heavens and the imperative of the moral law are ever present influences on the life of man; and they require for their apprehension no previous initiation through science and philosophy. The naked eye reveals the former; of the latter all men are immediately aware. In their universal appeal they are of the very substance of human existence. Philosophy may avail to counteract the hindrances which prevent them from exercising their native influence; it cannot be a substitute for the inspiration which they alone can yield.