Introduction

Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is rarely read cover to cover or studied as a whole. Readers tend to focus on just Part One, sometimes Parts One and Two, but usually stop there, paying little to no attention to Parts Three or Four. The secondary literature on Religion accordingly reflects this imbalance, resulting in not only a reductive reading, where the text is treated as primarily an extension of Kant’s moral anthropology, but also, given the subject matter of Part One, it is usually taken to be an overall gloomy and pessimistic text, one that casts humanity in a very grim light. ¹