ABSTRACT
Readers of the Religion who believe that Kant endorsed the Augustinian account of moral depravity have, quite understandably, dismissed the text as a radical departure from the rest of the Critical Corpus. For more than two hundred years, Kant's Religion has been castigated and denounced, both censored as an improper critique of Christianity and yet also condemned as a "capitulation" to Christian orthodoxies. While a charge of Pelagianism may be devastating to a Christian theologian, it is without philosophical teeth, for hardly would the philosopher shutter at the thought that they might be taken as a moral optimist. Many interpreters have used Kant's claim that humanity as a whole is morally corrupt as their basis for linking the Religion to the Augustinian tradition. The most notorious of the Religion's alleged "wobbles" is what many claim to be its flagitious importation of Augustinian doctrines.
