ABSTRACT

In Religion Within the
Limits of Reason Alone, Kant speaks of a "blessed and cursed eternity" for
the righteous and the wicked; and he also claims that Judaism cannot be a
religion because it lacks a doctrine of future rewards and punishments. 
Kant’s much earlier moral argument for God’s exis�tence assumes that the moral
law exists and that it can be fulfilled only by the retributive justice of an
om�nipotent God.

Kant’s view of the afterlife
raises basic problems for his ethical theory.  The orthodox view of the Last
Judgment appears to require that we become heteronomous vis-�-vis
God, whereas autonomy is the basic principle of Kantian morality.  Seen in
terms of divine power, the Last Judgment requires a God who can unilaterally
direct human wills so that justice is done, but the categorical imperative in
all its forms demands that God always respect human autonomy.

Following my article "Three
Types of Divine Power," I call the divine power (DP) of occasional
intervention "DP₂," and the noncoercive God has what I call "DP₃." 
While the omnicausal God of "DP₁" is nowhere to be found in Kant, I
find evidence of both DP₂ and DP₃ in the Kantian
corpus.  In this paper, I examine this evidence and propose that the concept
of "theonomy" is the only way that a Kantian can solve this problem.  In this
view, God has the power (DP₂) to set up the conditions for the
perfection of justice, but the rest is left to autonomous selves.  I conclude
with an analysis of selected texts that suggests that a truly Kantian Last
Judgment would be autonomous selves judging themselves.

Long-lasting darkness, ill
food, and wailing–to such an existence shall your conscience lead you by your
own deeds, 0 wicked ones.

–Zoroaster (Yasna 31:20)

The judge within will
pronounce a severe verdict. . . ; for a man cannot bribe this own reason.

–Immanuel Kant (R 72)

The inner reproaches of
conscience plague vicious men more relentlessly than the Furies.

–Kant (FPT 288)

God judges according to our
conscience, which is his representative on earth.

–Kant (LPT 128)

As scholars push Zoroaster’s
life back to 1,000 BCE, 300 hundred years before the Hebrew prophets, we have
even better reason to call him the ancient father of moral theology.^[i] 
The earlier he is dated the more impressive his belief in monotheism and human
freedom becomes.  His insistence on individual moral responsibility and its
consequences constitutes a significant break with ideas of collective
pollution in ancient societies.  In contrast to the amoral eschatologies of
Hades and Sheol, where all the dead, regardless of virtue, are destined,
Zoroaster’s hell is reserved only for the wicked. Unlike Christian hell,
however, Zoroastrians are not punished eternally (which to them would seem
unjust), but only for a period commensurate with their evil deeds.

Immanuel Kant’s focus on
conscience as the only convincing evidence of deity certainly places him among
the great modern moral theologians.  Many scholars believe that
Zoroastrian�ism is the most likely source of Judeo-Christian eschatology, and
even Kant, presumably drawing on contemporary Bible scholarship, could find no
evidence of a Last Judgment in the Hebrew Bible.  More significant and
intriguing, however, are Kant’s apparent sympathies, in the passages quoted
above, with a Zoroastrian Last Judgment as self-judgment.

In the late 1780s, when
Prussian authorities were calling into question the religious orthodoxy of
Kant and his colleagues, they would have been hard pressed to find, except for
the passages on self-judgment, anything wrong with Kant’s views on the
afterlife.  Even in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone
(hereafter Religion), a controversial theological work written during
this period, Kant speaks confidently of a "blessed and cursed eternity" for
the righteous and the wicked.  He also contends, with uncharacteristic
provocation, that Judaism cannot be a religion because "taken in its purity is
seen to lack this belief" in future rewards and punishments (R 117).  This
position is continuous with Kant’s earlier moral argument for God’s
exis�tence, which assumed that the moral law exists and that it can be
fulfilled only by the retributive justice of an om�nipotent God.

This paper attempts to deal
with a specific problem with Kant’s eschatology as it relates to his ethical
theory: Kant’s Last Judgment seems to require that we become heteronomous vis-�-vis
God, whereas autonomy is the basic principle of Kantian morality.  Seen in
terms of divine power, the Last Judgment requires a God who can unilaterally
direct human wills so that justice is done, but the categorical imperative
demands that God always respect human autonomy and self-determination.  As a
counter to Kant’s heterono�mous tendencies, which indicate that God aids in
the perfection of moral wills, I offer the idea of "theonomy" (inspired by but
not identical with Paul Tillich’s idea) as a way to reconcile moral autonomy
and eschatology.  In this view, God sets up the conditions for the perfection
of justice, but the rest is left to autonomous selves.             

A critic might say that since
Kant defines autonomy as simply the capacity for a moral agent to give itself
the moral law, then there can be no conflict between divine power and
autonomy.  There can be no violation of autonomy if God helps us obey laws
that we have put to ourselves.  While this is indeed Kant’s definition of
autonomy, such a strict interpretation would sever the connection between
moral reflection and moral action, something no moral philosopher would want
to countenance. This objection overlooks the Kantian axiom that "ought implies
can"–that a moral agent’s duty is within her power to fulfill.  As we shall
see, Kant explicitly recognizes the problem that divine aid conflicts with the
requirement that we use our own power to enact the moral law (R, 179). 
Therefore, there is an inseparable connection, in Kant and in moral theory in
general, between freedom, self-determination, and autonomy.  The principle of
autonomy is an empty concept without the engagement of the will and subsequent
moral action.  There is therefore very good reason why, in moral and political
discourse, autonomy has become essentially synonymous with self-determination.

Section I is an elaboration
of the conflict between Kant’s orthodox eschatology and his moral theory, as
well as a summary of inconsistencies within his views of the afterlife. 
Section II is a discussion of three types of divine power (DP): divine
omnicausality (DP₁), occasional divine intervention (DP₂),
and divine noncoercion (DP₃).  While the omnicausal God of Luther
and Calvin is nowhere to be found in Kant, both DP₂, compatible
with the Last Judgment, and DP₃, consistent with his moral theory,
are found.  In the concluding section, I analyse selected texts that suggest
that a truly Kantian Last Judgment would be autonomous selves judging
themselves. 

                                                 I

With regard to most religious
beliefs, Kant appears to be a good deist: petitionary prayer is a
"superstitious illusion" (R 183); the resurrection of the body is equally
irrational (CF 40); the Bible is a "vivid form of representation" of moral
truths (R 78); Adam and Christ are symbolic figures only (R 54-59, 69, 78);
and Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension are not admissible in a rational
religion (R 119).  Given these deviations from tradition, many readers are
surprised to find so many passages supporting orthodox eschatology.  In
Religion he writes explicitly about a "blessed or cursed eternity"; he
believes that Satan set up a "kingdom of evil. . . in defiance of the good
principle"; and, quoting Paul’s "death is destroyed," he declares that
"immortality commences for both parties, to the salvation of one, the
damnation of the other" (R 63, 74, 126).             

Although he believes the
afterlife to be eternal, Kant concedes that this is not something that reason
can decide.  Nevertheless, he rejects limited punishment, an option taken by
Zoroaster and John Adams,^[ii]
as not sufficient incentive to turn people away from sin (R 63fn.).  In
Religion Kant introduces the concept of radical evil, the "original" sin
against the moral law that produces "infinite guilt."  Kant states:  "It would
seem to follow, then, that because of this infinite guilt all mankind must
look forward to endless punishment and exclusion from the Kingdom of
God" (R 66, Kant’s italics).  But if the afterlife allows for moral
development and conversion (this is the view of the Second Critique), then
infinite time might enable some of the damned to redeem themselves.  For the
most part, however, Kant was inclined to believe that they would become even
more wicked in the afterlife (LPT 124; R 62).

    The orthodoxy of Kant’s
position is weakened by his admission that traditional eschatological events
and figures are "symbolical representation[s] intended merely to enliven hope
and courage and to increase our endeavors to that end" (R 125).  Behind the
symbols, however, is a strong, almost Manichean belief in good and evil
principles, which is clearest in the following passage:

Though this representation
[of heaven and hell] is figurative, and, as such disturbing, it is nonetheless
philosophically correct in meaning.  That is, it serves to prevent us from
regarding good and evil, the realm of light and realm of darkness, as
bordering on each other and as losing themselves in one another by gradual
steps. . . but rather to represent those realms as being separated from one
another by an immeasurable gulf (R 53fn.).

In other words,
eschatological symbols represent the philosophical truths of absolute good and
evil, the validity of retributive justice, and the necessity of the ultimate
judgment and division of the righteous and the wicked.

One of the first problems
with Kant’s eschatology is sorting out the various types of afterlife found in
his works.  First, there is the belief in the coincidence of eschaton and
noumenon, that means that the "end" already exists in an atemporal state of
moral perfection.  We find this view in works as far apart as Lectures on
Philosophical Theology, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
(hereafter Foundations), and parts of Religion.  In these
passages the operative phrase is "kingdom of ends," an ideal moral realm in
which each rational being is automatically a member.  During the winter of
1783-84 Kant introduced this idea: "If all men speak the truth, then a system
of ends is possible among them" (LPT 140; cf. 41).  This view continues in
Foundations, where the noumenal kingdom of ends, consisting of
self-legislating rational beings, contrasts with a phenomenal realm of
heteronomous beings obedient to an external law.  Again, membership is not
granted by God, but is acquired by reason: "He is fitted to be a member in a
possible realm of ends to which his own nature already destined him" (F, 54). 
Even though Religion introduces a significantly different eschatology,
Kant’s initial view is still present: "The constant seeking for the kingdom of
God would be equivalent to knowing oneself to be already in possession of this
kingdom"; and we must "consider ourselves always as chosen citizens of a
divine ethical state" (R 61, 93).

The kingdom of ends is Kant’s
most humanistic eschatology.  Until Kant speaks of God as uniting the realms
of nature and virtue (F 58), God seems to play no role in the noumenal kingdom
of ends, except as guarantor of the moral law. Sharon Anderson-Gold states
that "there is. . . a notable lack of reference to the role of theistic belief
in realizing such a realm. . . . The internal essence of the realm. . . does
not appear to require that there be" a God at all.^[iii]  
Using our three types of divine power, we could amend this by stipulating that
DP₁ or DP₂, where God intervenes in nature or aids or
maniputaltes human wills, is not required.  The kingdom of ends is most
compatible with the noncoercive God of  DP₃ and  full
self-determination.

The eschatology of the Second
Critique requires that God set up an afterlife in which nature and virtue are
harmonized so that "infinite progress" to perfection thorough "an infinitely
enduring existence" is possible (PrR 127).  The ideas of moral development and
a real afterlife make this view very different from the kingdom of ends. 
Although Kant once hints that divine aid may be necessary (PrR 132fn.), this
is inconsistent with his main argument.  The earliest passages on moral
progress in the afterlife make no mention of divine aid (LPT 125), and in the
Second Critique Kant contends that "the Christian principle of morality is not
theological and thus heteronomous, being rather the autonomy of pure practical
reason itself" (PrR 133).  A corollary to moral autonomy–usually phrased as
"ought implies can"–also requires that Kant’s eschatological pilgrims proceed
to perfection under their own power.  The Last Judgment of the Second Critique
is most compatible with a DP₂ God, one who would use divine
over-power in a limited way.  God would make the perfection of morality
possible, but would not at all compromise human wills.

The eschatology of
Religion offers some surprising changes.  Along with a "blessed" and
"cursed" eternity, there is also an ethical commonwealth on earth, both
presumably established with divine aid.  Kant also introduces the idea of
"radical evil," which involves a fundamental inversion in the ordering of
moral incentives.  In radical evil priority is given to attaining happiness,
and it alone becomes the incentive for conforming to the moral law.  In other
words, in radical evil inclination always wins out over duty.  Before
Religion Kant could think of moral perfection as a gradual reformation of
the human will, but now he can only conceive it as a "revolution in man’s
disposition" (R 41).   Kant sees his dilemma and the thesis of this paper
clearly: "If a man is corrupt in the very ground of his maxims, how can he
possibly bring about his revolution by his own powers. . ."? (R 41).  Kant
remains confident that moral agents can hope that they can do this on their
own power (R 46), but this now seems very problematic with the assumption of
radical evil and the many references to the necessity of divine aid.  Before
Religion Kant was generally consistent in the view that human beings
could be redeemed by simply exercising their rational natures; now it seems
that Kant has returned to what looks like orthodox Christian soteriology.

                                               II

 Christian theology has
always assumed a view of divine power that is at odds with autonomy, and the
idea of human self-rule has always been condemned as the original sin.  In the
history of Christian thought at least three views of divine power can be
discerned.  First, there is the belief in divine omnicausality (I abbreviate
it DP₁), which holds that God is the only subject of power–the
active, immediate, and origina�tive cause of all things and events.  Martin
Luther, John Calvin, neoorthodox theologians, and contemporary evangelical
Carl Henry believe that this is the correct view of divine power.  Let Luther
speak for them all:

By the omnipotence of God. .
. I do not mean the potentiality by which he could do many things which he
does not, but the active power by which he potently works all in all. . . .
This omnipotence and the fore�knowledge of God, I say, completely abolish the
dogma of free choice.^[iv]

Luther would be dismayed to
learn that the option that he rejects–"the potentiality by which he could do
many things which he does not"–has become the most prevalent conception of
divine power in contemporary theology and philosophy of religion.  Al�though
God could exercise all power, God instead chooses to delegate power to a
self-regulating nature and self-determining moral agents.  (This type of
divine power, attributed historically to Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, Arminius,
Leibniz, and Kant, is abbreviated DP₂.)  In the current literature,
this God has the power to bring about any logically possible state of
affairs.  In addition, this deity possesses what Nelson Pike calls
"over-power"–"veto" power, I call it–or the coercive power of traditional
theology.  This is a direct power (as in DP₁) for God to perform
mira�cles, to "harden hearts," to make himself incarnate (if that is not a
self-contradiction), and ultimately, to bring nature and history to an end,
and to judge the righteous and the damned.   Opposed to both DP₁
and DP₂ is the view of process theism (DP₃), in which
God is the preeminent cosmic power but God cannot unilaterally control nature
nor contravene free choices.

There is much evidence to
demonstrate that DP₂ is indeed Kant’s view of divine power: "Every
event in the world is directed by God’s supreme will, the divine direction is
partly orderly and partly extraordinary"; and "not everything
happens through divine direction, even if everything is subject to
it" (LPT 154, 155; Kant’s italics).  Kant’s distinction between "orderly" and
"extraordinary" causation corresponds nicely with the delegated power of a
self-regulating nature and Pike’s "over-power."  Later in Religion Kant
states that God is "the creator. . . of the order of nature, as well as the
moral order"; and that in performing miracles God, using his "veto" power,
causes "nature to deviate from its own laws" (R 81).  Kant reminds us that we
can have no knowledge of how God causes miracles, except that we can be sure
that a beneficent deity would have good intentions in every instance.

Regarding the origin of evil,
the three types of divine power generally correlate with three solutions to
the problem.  The logical implication of DP₁ is that God is the
origin of evil.  Both Luther and Second Isaiah agree: "Since. . . God moves
and actuates all in all, he necessarily moves and acts in Satan";^[v]
"I form light, and I create darkness: I produce well-being, and I create evil,
I Yahweh do all these things" (Is. 45:7, AB).^[vi] 
With their rejection of creatio ex nihilo, process theists see the root
of all evil in primordial chaos (Whitehead’s "creativity"), thereby mitigating
to a great degree divine and human responsibility. 

Proponents of DP₂
generally subscribe to the "free-will" defense–that evil is the result of
moral agency–and Kant falls in line with this group.  He suggests that God,
using his "extraordinary" power, could have made everyone a member of the
kingdom of ends "by divine decree" (LPT, 156), but chose instead to allow free
agents to make themselves worthy of happiness.  In answer to the question of
why God did not eliminate the rebel Satan, Kant answered that "in its dominion
over the government of rational beings. . . Supreme Wisdom deals with them
according to the principle of their freedom, and the good or evil that befalls
them is to be imputable to themselves" (R 73-4).  Please note, as opposed to
the hypothetical critic mentioned in the introduction, how Kant fuses
questions of autonomy, freedom, and self-determination. Giving ourselves the
moral law (strict Kantain autonomy) is obviously not sufficient, but must be
combined with the freedom and power to fulfill it.

Consistent with a DP₂
position Kant speaks frequently, both early and late, of the necessity of
divine intervention for the perfection of virtue.  "If we act as well as lies
in our power, what is not in our power will come to our aid from another
source, whether we know in what way or not" (PrR 132fn.).  God "makes good
their inability to fulfill this [moral] requirement themselves" (R 132); and
"that what is not in his power will be supplied by the supreme Wisdom in some
way or other. . . ." (R 159).  In his very last work "On History" Kant
concluded that moral progress will require supernatural influence, and
Despland observes that in the last decade of his life Kant resorted, more and
more, to Providence and divine intervention in history.^[vii]  
These passages pose a grave threat to freedom and self-determination, because
God is not only setting up the conditions for moral perfection, but also
reordering human wills so they will succeed.

At the same time, from the
Second Critique on, Kant is aware that God’s use of "extraordinary" power
undermines self-determination.  He makes it clear that not even God is exempt
from the second form of the categorical imperative:  we are "never to be used
merely as a means for someone (even God) without at the same time being
[ourselves] an end, and thus the humanity in our person must itself be holy to
us" (PrR 136).  If God’s aid is to help us reach our own ends, then there is
no violation of the second form of the categorical imperative.  But God’s
general administration of justice would involve the use of all humanity as a
means for a  divine end.  It appears that Kant’s commitment to Christian
eschatology does commit him to the latter as well as the former.

Kant’s commitment to DP₂
undermines another essential principle in his moral theory, namely, that
"ought implies can."  It would be a cruel joke of nature that we are allowed
to discover moral laws within our soul, but then find that we do not have the
capacity to fulfill them.  Kant states that the kingdom of ends is an ideal
that can become real "through our conduct" (F 55fn.17).  Repeatedly Kant
reaffirms the Stoic view of moral self-determination: "Man must make or have
made himself into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or
is to become" (R 40).  Even here in Religion, where we find the most
references for the necessity of divine over-power, Kant rejects it as both
irrational and ruinous to autonomy.  Divine intervention "contradicts
spontaneity. . . , according to which such a good cannot come from another but
must arise from man himself, if it is to be imputable to him" (R 134).  Please
note the clear link between autonomy and self-determination in each of these
passages.

The most significant passage
on divine intervention appears in this discussion of nature and grace in
Religion:

The concept of supernatural
accession to our moral, though deficient, capacity. . . is a transcendent
concept, and is a bare idea, of whose reality no experience can assure us. 
Even when accepted as an idea in nothing but a practical context it is very
hazardous, and hard to reconcile with reason, since that which is to be
accredited to us as morally good conduct must take place not through foreign
influence but solely through the best possible use of our powers (R 179).

After such an unequivocal
defense of autonomy, it is extremely puzzling to find that Kant immediately
reinstates divine intercession by arguing that both this and the idea of
freedom are equally mysterious.  As such, they are, Kant claims, also equally
impossible; therefore, they are equally usable for practical purposes!  This
is imminently unconvincing considering Kant’s moral theory, where the
intuition of freedom is an indubitable fact and where morality is impossible
without that intuition.  Kant’s use of the principle of the "equity of
mystery" appears to fail utterly.  An altogether poor argument is made weaker
by Kant’s admission that there is really no equity: we experience freedom and
there is nothing supernatural about its exercise, but Kant confesses that we
can know nothing about supernatural intervention.

Obviously the Christian and
Stoic Kant are at odds with one another, so what are we to do to rescue him
from this dilemma?  How can God help without violating human autonomy?  God
must join nature and virtue in such a way as to prevent backsliding and
self-deception, but preserve self-determination at the same time.  One
alternative would be to hold Kant to a noumenal kingdom of ends.  Here divine
"aid" would be not be necessary:  God would do nothing except guarantee the
foundations of morality.  This would amount to a rather strict form of deism
and a DP₃ that requires far less divine activity than does process
theism, which actually maximizes noncoercive intervention with God supplying
an "initial aim" for every actuality.

From the Second Critique
onward Kant is firmly committed to DP₂ and substantial divine
intervention.  This includes the granting of immortality, the melding of
nature and virtue, and the administration of justice.  Something like
Tillich’s concept of theonomy appears to be a possible solution: God makes the
perfection of virtue possible, but human beings actualize it by themselves.  I
believe that we can see the outlines of a Kantian theonomy already in the
Foundations.  Here Kant suggests that God could unite the kingdom of ends
and the kingdom of nature, such that the former is no longer a mere idea but a
reality.  Furthermore, Kant argues that the worth of autonomous actions still
remains, because "the essence of things is not changed by their external
relations, and without reference to these relations a man must be judged only
by what constitutes his absolute worth; and this is true whoever his judge is,
even if it be the Supreme Being" (F 58).  Kantian theonomy is summed up nicely
in this passage from Lectures on Ethics:  "God wants mankind to be made
happy.  He wants men to be made happy by men, and if only all men united to
promote their own happiness. . . God has set us on the stage where we can make
each other happy.  It rests with us, and us alone, to do so" (LE 54-5).

Despland suggests that
Tillich’s concept of theonomy could have helped Kant explain the influence of
Christ in the life of faith.^[viii] 
Without naming Tillich in the following passage, Despland proposes a more
general Kantian theonomy:

Rational free men might after
all be in need of specific divine help in history.  Rather than endangering
the autonomy of men and making them superstitious slaves, this divine help
restores autonomy to captive men and thus brings them to free maturity.  More
precisely, it enables men to make of autonomy not a formal principle governing
human thinking, but an effective power governing human relationships.  It
enables absolute freedom to incarnate itself and give motivation and content
to human actions themselves.^[ix]

The divine action Despland
envisions is surely more than Kantian freedom can stand.  Despland’s language
reminds one of more conservative views of Christian freedom in which true
liberty is achieved through conformation to the divine will.  The advantage of
the DP₂ theonomy proposed above is that divine intervention does
not affect human wills, but only the conditions under which those wills can
operate.

                                                III

 In speaking of divine grace,
says Nicholas Wolterstorff, Kant wants to give God "the power of making the
person who is guilty not guilty."^[x] 
But this leads to a great internal contradiction: on the one hand, Kant
accepts the Stoic view of strict autonomy and moral self-sufficiency; but on
the other, Kant has God intervening and altering our moral status.  As
Wolterstorff phrases it: "Our situation is not that we do not know how God
wipes out guilt.  Our situation, given the Stoic principle, is that we know
God does not."^[xi] 
In Religion Kant follows his earlier view of divine judgment: our moral
lives are judged as if they were already complete.  (Since there is no time in
God’s vision, that is the only way God could do it.)  Kant wants to call this
judgment "grace," but Wolterstorff contends that this is nothing but divine
justice:

Thus Kant cannot have it both
ways: he cannot hold that we can expect God’s forgiveness, since God’s failure
to forgive would violate the moral order of rights and obligations, and also
hold that God’s granting of forgiveness is an act of grace on God’s part.^[xii]

A grace that is required is
not grace at all.  Since Kant’s goal is a moral, rational religion, the
Christian concept of grace as freely given must be eliminated. 

   
I believe it is crucial for Kant moral theology to preserve a
noninterven�tionist view of divine judgment.  Just as Wolterstoff has argued
that Kant the moral rationalist cannot support unconditional grace, I contend
that Kant cannot maintain a traditional view of the Last Judgment.  The view
most consistent with human autonomy is a doctrine of self-judgment, and Kant
appears to recognize this on several occasions:

The concept of each rational
being as a being that must regard itself as giving universal law through all
the maxims of its will, so that it may judge itself and its actions from
this standpoint, leads to . . . a realm of ends (F 51; my italics).

Furthermore, if anyone is
apprehensive that his reason, through his conscience, will judge him too
leniently, he errs, I believe, very seriously.  For just because reason is
free, and must pass judgment even upon the man himself, it is not to be bribed;
and if we tell a man under such circumstances. . . that he will soon have to
stand before a judge, we need but leave him to his own reflections, which
will in all probability pass sentence upon him with the greatest severity
(R 64fn.; my italics).

When, therefore, he considers
the verdict of his future judge (that is, of his own awakening conscience. .
.), he will not be able to conceive any other basis for passing judgment than
to have placed before his eyes at that time his whole life and not a mere
segment of it, such as the last part of it or the part most advantageous to
him (R 71; my italics).

As I have demonstrated in
another work, there are ancient traditions–in
Zoroastrianism and Tibetan Buddhism–of self-judgment, which have been
corroborated, some would say, by ongoing studies of near-death experiences (NDEs).
Especially intriguing is the parallel between the "life-review" of the NDEs
and Kant’s idea that we must judge our lives as a whole, and not in the parts
most agreeable to us.  In many NDEs life-reviews are initiated by a "great
being of light" who accepts us unconditionally as completed spiritual wholes. 
During these life-reviews, it is the self, not God, who does the judging, by
viewing its life and owning up to its past deeds.  The great being of light is
like Kant’s holy will who does not judge, but simply accepts us as
"well-pleasing to God, at whatever instant [our] existence be ter�minated" (R
61).  While God has already "credited to us" the spiritual wholeness that he
atemporally sees, the temporal "accuser within us would be more likely to
propose a judgment of condemnation" (R 70).  For Kant rational persons will be
harder on themselves than either God or their peers.

In The Metaphysical
Elements of Justice Kant seems to undermine my thesis by rejecting the
concept of self-judgment as a "great sophistry."  He explains:  "No one
suffers punishment because he has willed the punishment, but because he has
willed a punishable action.  If what happens to someone is also willed by him,
it cannot be a punishment.  Accordingly, it is impossible to will to be
punished (MMJ 105). But here Kant is speaking of "judicial" punishment, not
"natural" punishment, and Last Judgment as self-judgment would definitely be a
form of the latter.  The heteronomous homo phenomenon cannot be trusted
to judge himself, because in him self-deception and lapses of conscience are
habitual.  The autonomous homo noumenon, however, realizes the maxim
that "vice punishes itself"; and that "if you vilify him, you vilify yourself;
if you steal from him, you steal from yourself; if you kill him, you kill
yourself" (MMJ 101).   Members of the kingdom of ends are colegislators of the
moral law, but criminals, because of their criminal acts, are no longer
members of the kingdom of virtue and cannot act as their own judges.  The
social contract is for homo phenomenon, not homo noumenon. 
Therefore, we can trust only the latter to be their own judges, for their
unobstructed reason cannot be bribed.

For Kant the punishment of
self-judgment is this-worldly as well as other-worldly, and it begins during
the change of heart that leads to obeying the moral law within.   While the
immoral person "laughs at the fear of those inner reproaches which plague
honest people" (FPT 288), the latter experience the pain of the consequences
of earlier transgressions. This self-inflicted punishment begins the process
of satisfying divine justice (R 67).  For Kant this is the correct meaning of
the story of Adam and Eve and Paul’s discourse about the "old" and "new" man
in Christ.  "Everything. . .that would be due him as punishment in that
quality (of the old man) he gladly takes upon himself in his quality of new
man simply for the sake of the good" (R 69fn.).  The virtuous should be
willing to give up happiness in this life, judging themselves and doing
penance for their radical evil.

Kant believes it is
significant that in the New Testament Christ as the Son of Man is the one who
judges:  "This seems to indi�cate that humanity itself, knowing its
limitation and its frailty, will pronounce the sentence in this selection [of
the good from the bad]–a benevolence which yet does not offend against
justice" (R 131fn.; Kant’s italics). Kant’s humanistic interpretation of the
Son of Man actually has some support in the Hebrew Bible, but later it becomes
just another title for the divine messiah and judge of orthodox Christianity.
Kant’s attempts at a biblical justification for his views are obviously
strained, and they definitely pass the breaking point when Kant makes it clear
that guilt is not transferable and that each one of us must bear it on our
own.  Therefore, there can be no vicarious atonement of Christ, or any other
atoning act of God.  Radical evil is a type of sin "which only the culprit can
bear and which no innocent person can assume even though he be magnanimous
enough to wish to take it upon himself for the sake of another" (R, 63).  If
radical evil is "the most personal of all debts," then we must atone for it in
the most personal of all ways, namely, self-judgment.  As Despland states: "By
the very nature of his rationality man cannot partake of any good unless he
partakes of it by his own judgment and by his own activity.  And he can always
know what his own judgment is."^[xiv]

In his impressive study of
Religion, Despland stresses a distinction between conscientiousness and
perfection, "which always distinguishes between form and content in the moral
life, or between the method of decision-making and the attainable results."^[xv] 
I believe that this distinction can aid us in offering an alternative to
Kant’s eschatology.  We could propose that the goal of the afterlife is a
conscientious assessment of our actions rather than an endless pursuit of
moral perfection.  Using Heideggerian terminology, the goal of human life is
authenticity (Eigenlichkeit)–owning (eigen) up to what we have
done–not complete conformation with the moral law.  This solution would
eliminate the infinite guilt that Kant believes accrues by attempting an
impossible moral task.   As I have argued in  previous work on self-judgment,
the disembodied existence of an afterlife would make temporizing and
self-deception–common obstacles to honest self-realization–essentially
impossible.  Once Last Judgment as self-judgment is over, the afterlife would
end in the peace of Nirvana.  This proposal goes far beyond the juridical
Judeo-Christian eschatology and even the limited afterlife of Zoroaster, which
is still based on retribution, to a nonjudicial Buddhist-existentialist model
of attaining internal peace.  This solution eliminates the goal of moral
perfection and also the divine aid that this impossible goal requires.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge
the constructive comments of Allen Wood,  Marvin Henberg, Walter Gulick,  and
Darrell Johnson.

ABBREVIATIONS FOR KANT’S
WORKS

CF:
The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor (New York: Abaris
Books, 1979).

F:
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (New
York: Macmillan, 1985).

FPT:
"On the Failure of All Attempted Philosophical Theodicies," trans. Michel
Despland in Despland, Kant on History and Religion (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973).

LE:
Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (New York: Harper & Row,
1963).

LPT:
Lectures on Philosophical Theology, trans. Allen Wood and Gertrude M.
Clark (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978).

MMJ:
Metaphysical Elements of Justice: Part I of The Metaphysics of
Morals, trans. John Ladd (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

PrR:
Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill,
1965).

R:
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene
and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960).