Kant’s Anti-Judaism and Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the influence Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise exerted over Immanuel Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Specifically, it focuses on Kant’s critique of Judaism, arguing that Kant’s harsh assessment of the Jewish religion was likely indebted to Spinoza’s writings. Yet it also demonstrates that Kant’s anti-Judaism was hardly a mere restatement of Spinoza’s critique of Judaism but diverges from Spinoza’s account in slight but nonetheless crucial ways. Kant’s depiction of Judaism, moreover, carries out a crucial task in his argument for rational religion that has no counterpart in Spinoza’s Treatise: Judaism constitutes in Kant’s system the principal foil to his conception of rational religion. This chapter therefore shows how Kant adopted many aspects of Spinoza’s critique of Judaism but deployed Spinoza’s account in the service of a philosophical agenda—rationalizing religion—that Spinoza explicitly rejected.