Marco Sgarbi

Immanuel Kant, Universal Understanding, and the Meaning of Averroism in the German Enlightenment

Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbras,Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna.1

Abstract

Johann Joachim Lange, in his Caussa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum (1723), characterized the allegedly overbearing influence that scholastic Aristotelianism exercised upon Italian culture during the Renaissance as an atheistic infection (labes) that had later spread all over Europe, including Germany. In the period of time that goes from G. W. Leibniz to Immanuel Kant, German philosophers, especially the ones who moved in the orbit of Christian Wolff’s influential school of thought, were undoubtedly attracted to the notion of universal understanding. In many cases, as acknowledged by Johann Gottfried Herder, such a fascination with universality and necessity as the defining characteristics of the intelligible world betrayed the influence of a particular strain of Aristotelianism – Averroistic Aristotelianism. This chapter intends to revisit the well-known controversy between Herder and Kant on the meaning of Menschengeschlecht, history and universal understanding, and to provide a contextualization to the question concerning Kant’s Averroism.

The Presence of Averroistic Motifs in the German Enlightenment

Did early modern German thinkers stop paying attention to Averroes? Were there undercurrents of Averroism during the eighteenth century in Germany? How did German authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was their perception of Averroes from the actual Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition? In this chapter, I will try to answer these questions by focusing on Kant and the philosophy of the German Enlightenment. It may seem odd to devote a paper to ascertaining the nature of Kant’s Averroism since it is highly likely that he had only a smattering of knowledge concerning Averroes’ philosophy. However, it may come as a surprise to discover that that one of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment and, indeed, a former pupil of Kant, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), characterized Kant’s critical philosophy as a form of Averroism.2

In the past two decades, three essays have been devoted to investigating possible relationships between Kant and the Averroistic tradition. The first essay, ‘El “averroismo” en la filosofia moral de Kant”, published in 1992, is by Fernando 1 Virgil, Aeneid, 6, 268-9: ‘They walked through the dark, in the desolate night populated by shades, along the lifeless regions where Pluto reigns.’ Quoted by Kant in his Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik in Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900-), II, p. 329.2 Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan, 33 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877-1899), XIII, pp. 345-346. For a reconstruction of the principal phases in the Herder-Kant controversy over the meaning of history, see: Rudolf Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken dargestellt, 2 vols (Berlin: Gärtner, 1880-1885), II, pp. 247-262; Philip Merlan, Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness: Problems of the Soul in the Neoaristotelian and Neoplatonic Tradition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), p. 114, n. 2; Allen W. Wood, ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 121-123.

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Montero Moliner. In 1996, Alparslan Açikgenç wrote on ‘Ibn Rushd, Kant and Trascendent Rationality’. Finally, the most recent article on the topic is ‘Wandering in the Path of the Averroean System: Is Kant’s Doctrine on the Bewusstsein überhaupt Averroistic?’, by Philipp W. Rosemann and published in 1999 (Rosemann 1999, 185-230).3 By characterising Kant’s philosophy as Averroism, Moliner intends to refer to the distinctively Kantian emphasis on universal values in ethical philosophy and the ensuing effacement of the role the individual in human action. Universality, in this view, is the necessary condition of morality, while individual motivations, including happiness, would be incompatible with a true ethical behaviour. It seems therefore that there is no room for the value of individual human experience in the field of moral philosophy.4 Açikgenç’s approach is a comparative analysis of Averroes’ and Kant’ views of rationality, with particular emphasis on the question of the difference between subjective and objective knowledge. Rosmann, finally, discusses the nature of the faculties and operations of the soul in Averroes’s Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros and in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. His conclusion is that Kant ‘could be considered an Averroist, in the sense of being a philosopher whose thought exhibits analogies with the Averroean theory of the agent intellect’.5

Other scholars had already dealt in a cursory manner with the question of the possible presence of Averroistic motives in Kant’s philosophy. Ernest Renan was the first, in his Averroès et l’averroïsme (1852), to put forward an interpretation of the Averroistic system from a critical point of view. He pointed out how Ibn Rushd’s notion of the ‘the unity of the intellect’ meant nothing but ‘the universality of the principles of pure reason and the unity of the psychological constitution of the entire human species.’6 In the field of Kantian studies, the first scholar who noticed the existence of strong similarities between Averroes’ rationalism and Kant’s criticism was Carl du Prel in 1889, in his ‘Kants mystische Weltanschauung’. Du Prel wrote his essay as an introduction to the Vorlesungen über Psychologie, part of Kant’s lectures that had been edited by Karl Heinrich Ludwig Pölitz in 1821 with the title Vorlesungen über Metaphysik. In Du Perl’s opinion, Kant had maintained the existence of one transcendental subject and each individual human subject could merely be seen as its manifestation in the world. This partial immersion of the transcendental subject in the world represented the reason for the unknowability of the noumena. In addition, Du Prel advocated the pre-existence of the individual in the transcendental subject, its incarnation in a sensible body and its return to the original subject after death. In this view, universal morality, expressed by categorical imperatives, would be the voice of the noumenic subject. In opposition to Du Prel’s theses, Heinz Heimsoeth published in 1924 an article on the relationship between personal awareness and the unknowable ‘thing-in-intself’ in Kant’s philosophy (‘Persönlichkeitsbewußtsein und Ding an sich in der Kantischen Philosophie’). Heimsoeth ruled out the possibility that Kant’s transcendentalism could be interpreted in Averroistic terms. He acknowledged, however, the lingering of an irresolvable 3 See Fernando Montero Moliner, ‘El “averroismo” en la filosofía moral de Kant’, Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, 9 (1992), 39-58; Alparslan Açikgenç, ‘Ibn Rushd, Kant and Transcendent Rationality: A Critical Synthesis’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 16 (1996), 164-190; Philipp W. Rosemann, ‘Wandering in the Path of the Averroean System: Is Kant’s Doctrine on the Bewusstsein überhaupt Averroistic?’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 73 (1999), 185-230.4 Moliner, ‘El “averroismo” en la filosofía moral de Kant’, 39.5 Rosemann, ‘Wandering in the Path of the Averroean System’, 229-230.6 Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’averroïsme, in Œuvres Complètes, ed. Henriette Psichari, 10 vols (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947-1961), III, p. 117.

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tension in Kant’s ethical philosophy between the scholastic thesis of the individual immortality of the soul and the Averroistic doctrine of the unity of the mind in all human beings.7 More recently, in an article on Averroes’s view concerning the immortality of humankind (‘Averroes über die Unsterblichkeit des Menschengeschlechtes’), Philip Merlan confirmed Herder’s original thesis a form of Averroism can be traced in Kant’s moral philosophy. In his 1960 article, Merlan concluded that Herder was right ‘when he saw an Averroist in Kant.’8 In 1963, in his book Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness, Merlan devoted an entire chapter to demonstrating, not always convincingly, that Kant’s philosophy was compatible with Averroism. To the list of modern philosophers who could be interpreted in the light of Averroism, he added Wilhelm Windelband, Edmund Husserl, Georg Simmel and Erwin Schroedinger.9 Finally, it is worth mentioning that in the issue 16 of the journal Alif, published in 1996 and dedicated to Averroes and his legacy in the East and West, at least three articles focus on German philosophy and the Enlightenment.10

All these studies are based on generic comparisons between Kant and Averroes. The aim of this paper is to determine the nature and extent of Kant’s actual knowledge of Averroes. To this purpose, it is important both to establish what Kant could have known of Averroes’s philosophy and to understand what Herder’s motivations were in charging Kant with Averroism. In the rest of this essay, I will base my approach both on the history of sources and the history of problems. My attempt is to reconstruct the debate over Averroistic doctrines in the German Enlightenment and to draw attention on the sources that were available to Kant’s speculation. Investigating the Averroistic tradition, or traces of Averroism in the Enlightenment means to be confronted with such sweeping philosophical themes as ‘monopsychism’ and Spinozism. To limit the scope of my investigation, I will focus on the following questions: the mind-body relationship, the immortality of the soul and the oneness of the mind.

Averroism in German Eclecticism, in the Leibnizian-Wolffian School, and in the Aristotelian Tradition

Averroistic Aristotelianism was never as widespread in Germany as in Italy. In the German universities, regardless of whether Catholic or Protestant, Averroes was not studied in a systematic manner. Aristotle’s edition with Averroes’s commentary – the Giuntine, for example – had a scarce circulation. Initially, the lack of circulation was probably due to a widespread hostile attitude towards Aristotle by Protestant philosophers and to their preference for the writings of Philipp Melanchthon, who had never mentioned Averroes in his Liber de anima. Moreover, for its exegetic and 7 Heinz Heimsoeth, ‘Persönlichkeitsbewußtsein und Ding an sich in der Kantischen Philosophie’, in Id., Studien zur philosophie Immanuel Kants, ed. H. Heimsoeth, Bonn: Bouvier, pp. 227-257. See also Rosemann, ‘Wandering in the Path of the Averroean System’, 187.8 Philip Merlan, ‘Averroes über die Unsterblichkeit des Menschengeschlechtes’, in L’homme et son destin d’après les penseurs du Moyen Âge (Louvain and Paris: Nauwelaerts and Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1960), pp. 305-311 (310). See also Rosemann, ‘Wandering in the Path of the Averroean System’, 188.9 Merlan, Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness, pp. 114-137.10 Charles Butterworth, ‘Averroes, Precursor of the Enlightenment?’, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 16 (1996), 6-18; Harold Stone, ‘Why Europeans Stopped Reading Averroës: The Case of Pierre Bayle’, ibid., 77-95; Ernest Wolf-Gazo, ‘Contextualizing Averroës within the German Hermeneutic Tradition’, ibid., 133-163.

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philological interpretation, the bilingual Latin-Greek edition by Giulio Pace and Isaac Casaubon was preferred to the Giuntine edition.11

This does not mean that there was no knowledge of Averroes among German philosophers and teachers of philosophers. Averroistic doctrines circulated with the dissemination of works by Pietro Pomponazzi, but they were strongly opposed. A significant case is Nikolaus Taurellus (1547-1606), the most important German Aristotelian of his time, who criticized the doctrine of the double truth and of the oneness of the mind in his Philosophiae triumphus.12 Almost all seventeenth-century German Aristotelians embraced the doctrine of the individual immortality of the soul and rejected the theory of the unicity of the intellect.

Things did not change at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The period that goes from 1690 to 1720 was characterized in Germany by a renewal of philosophical culture. The most important philosophical events were the growing fame of G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716), the popularity of Christian Thomasius’s philosophy, the development of a distinctively German tradition of eclecticism, the increasing influence of Pietism and the emerging of Christian Wolff (1679-1754) as a leading figure in the field of academic philosophy.

The philosophical setting was strongly influenced by religious topics, and Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition (and therefore also Averroism) became the favourite targets of philosophical criticisms. Aristotelians and Averroists were portrayed as a typical product of intellectual hubris, in no need of religious revelation and confident in the power of unaided reason. Not only were Aristotelianism and Averroism deemed to be wrong from an intellectual point of view; they were also seen as perilous sources of atheistic and heretical views.13 As shown by Harlod Stone, this trend was inaugurated by Pierre Bayle’s entry in his Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697, 1702), which would be one of ‘the unwitting causes of Averroes’ disappearance as a major philosophic influence’. The problem is that ‘Bayle left his eighteenth-century readers dubious of the value of philosophic speculation and uncertain about how revelation could provide a basis for rationality.14

In this context, Averroism and its related doctrines were all considered by the proponents of the eclectic movement as impious and atheist. The most famous representative of German eclecticism was without doubt Johann Franz Budde (1697-1702), who not only proposed a general renewal of scholastic philosophy and the rejection of all forms of syncretistic solutions, but was also the first to be seriously and systematically involved with writing history of philosophy.15 In his historical works he dealt with Averroism within the Aristotelian tradition and he accused both of atheism. Emanuele Coccia has already identified the most important passage that Budde addressed again Averroes in his Theses theologicae de atheismo et superstitione , published in 1716:

Averroes opinion (one should say Aristotle’s opinion) admits only one mind in the world, one, numerically one, to the point that there would be only one soul in all human beings, is no longer reasonable. How can we conceive on one

11 Stone, ‘Why Europeans Stopped Reading Averroës’, p. 78. 12 See Peter Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutschland (Leipzig: Meiner, 1921), p. 256.13 Mario Longo, ‘The History of Philosophy from Eclecticism to Pietism’, in Models of the History of Philosophy, ed. Gregorio Paia and Giovanni Santinello (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 301-386 (307).14 Stone, ‘Why Europeans Stopped Reading Averroës, p. 87.15 Longo, ‘The History of Philosophy from Eclecticism to Pietism’, pp. 343-372.

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mind alone in all human beings, without any extension? From such idea one would infer that this mind is material... And since human beings have not only different but often contrary thoughts in their minds, one should say that the same mind would contradict itself at the same time and in the same human being... What can be more ridiculous?16

In the Analecta historiae philosophicae, published originally in 1706, Budde took on a significant and original historiographical approach towards Averroism that would enjoy a great success until the end of the eighteenth century. He looked at Averroism as a form of Spinozism before Spinoza. In Budde’s view, Averroism is in good company with all the Aristotelians, the Eleatics, David of Dinant, Renaissance Neo-Platonists, Andrea Cesalpino and the Neo-Stoics.17 Budde’s reconstructions and judgments influenced the perception Averroism in Germany until the end of the Enlightenment and Averroism became synonymous with Spinozism.

The charges of atheism levelled at Averroism by Johann Joachim Lange (1670-1744), a student of Budde in Halle, were more specific. In his treatise on the origin of God and natural religion against the claims of atheism (Caussa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum), he criticized Aristotle and the schoolmen, especially the interpreters of natural philosophy, for the atheistic implications of their doctrines. Lange was particularly severe against Aristotle’s theory of the eternity of the world and his denial of divine providence.18 In his opinion, the mistakes of Averroists and Aristotelians could all be reduced to two: the eternity of the world and the unicity of the intellect for all human beings. Lange devoted the ‘Proposition’ 11 of the first part of his treatise (‘Protheoria’) to an examination of the process through which Italy, despite it had become the seat of studies during the fifteenth century, turned out to be a ‘factory of atheism’ (atheismi officina) as a result of its cultural subjection to scholastic Aristotelianism (subserviente philosophia Aristotelica) and spread the ‘infection’ to the rest of Europe.19 Among the Averroists and atheists, Lange included David of Dinant, Girolamo Cardano, Pietro Pomponazzi, Andrea Cesalpino, Cesare Cremonini and Giordano Bruno.20 Lange extended his charges of Averroism, Spinozism and fatalisms to an emergent philosophical trend at the time, the Wolffian school of philosophy.21

16 Johann Franz Budde, Traité de l’athéisme et de la superstition, tr. L. Philon (Amsterdam: Pierre

Mortier, 1740). See also Id., Theses theologicae de atheismo et superstitione (Leiden: Johannes Le Mair, 1767, p. 153: ‘Quantumvis autem impia pariter ac inepta sit haec sententia [i.e.: unam numero mentem seu unum intellectum, non per singulos divisum, sed communem omnibus inesse], tanta tamen olim Averrois fuit auctoritas, ut plurimi viri docti in eam ingredirentur, praesertim in Italia.’ See Emanuele Coccia, La trasparenza delle immagini: Averroè e l’averroismo (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2005), pp. 24-25. 17 Johann Franz Budde, Analecta historiae philosophicae (Halle: Orphanotrophii, 1724, pp. 309-359.18 Johann Joachim Lange, Caussa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum (Halle: Orphanotrophii, 1723), pp. 32-36, 129-143.19 Lange, Caussa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum, p. 70: ‘Quemadmodum Italia, renascentibus seculo XV. Et deinceps litteris, litteratorum sedes fuit praecipua: sic subserviente philosophia Aristotelica etiam atheismi officina facta est; Gallia tamen ac Anglia aliisque regionibus eadem labe ex parte infectis.’20 Lange, Caussa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum, pp. 71-75.21 Lange, Caussa Dei et religionis naturalis adversus atheismum, pp. 16-17: ‘Sic dicti Idealistae sunt, qui statuunt, nihil existere, nisi spiritus materiae expertes, seu simplicia, quae aliis etiam monades vocantur. Et cum simplicium suorum naturam in ideisatione (ut ita loquar) seu perceptione ideali collocent, mundum materialem et ejus corpora habent pro ideis simplicium, seu pro lusu imaginationis,

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At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the followers of Wolff reacted against the eclectic movement. To be sure, Christian Wolff was no Averroist. His views derived from Leibniz’s philosophy, which contained various criticisms against Averroes’ philosophy and the Aristotelian tradition. In the Theodicy (1710), in the ‘Preliminary Dissertation on the Conformity of Faith with Reason’, Leibniz had referred to a sect of early modern Italian philosophers who had disputed the ‘conformity of faith with reason’ advocated by him. ‘They were dubbed “Averroists”,’ ... Leibniz,

because they were adherents of a famous Arab author, who was called the Commentator by pre-eminence, and who appeared to be the one of all his race that penetrated furthest into Aristotle’s meaning. This Commentator, extending what Greek expositors had already taught, maintained that, according to Aristotle, and even according to reason (and at that time the two were considered almost identical), there was no case for the immortality of the soul.22

Leibniz examined the reasoning that, in his opinion, had led to the Averroistic heresy among Italian philosophers during the Renaissance:23

The human kind is eternal, according to Aristotle; therefore, if individual souls die not, one must resort to the metempsychosis rejected by that philosopher. Or, if there are always new souls, one must admit the infinity of these souls existing from all eternity; but actual infinity is impossible, according to the doctrine of the same Aristotle. Therefore it is a necessary conclusion that the souls, that is, the forms of organic bodies, must perish with the bodies, or at least this must happen to the passive understanding that belongs to each one individually. Thus there will only remain the active understanding common to all men, which according to Aristotle comes from outside, and which must work wheresoever the organs are suitably disposed; even as the wind produces a kind of music when it is blown into properly adjusted organ pipes.24

Leibniz also added that

others who adhered less to Aristotle went so far as to advocate a universal soul forming the ocean of all individual souls, and believed this universal soul alone capable of subsisting, whilst individual souls are born and die. According to this opinion the souls of animals are born by being separated like drops from their ocean, when they find a body, which they can animate; and they die by being reunited to the ocean of souls when the body is destroyed, as streams are lost in the sea. Many even went so far as to believe that God is that

qualis est in somnio, ordinato tamen.’ See ibid., pp. 49, 64.22 G. W. Leibniz, Essais de theodicée sur la bonté de dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal, in Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. J. Gerhardt, 7 vols (Berlin: Weidmann, 1885; repr. Hildesheim: Olms 1960-1961), VI, p. 53; Theodicy, ed. Austin Farrer, tr. E. M. Huggard, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1985), pp. 77-78.23 It may be worth pointing out that Leibniz’s argument is strikingly similar to the one advanced by Girolamo Cardano in his De immortalitate animorum (1545). See José Manuel Valverde’s essay in this volume.24 Leibniz, Essais de theodicée, in Philosophischen Schriften, VI, p. 53; Theodicy, pp. 77-78.

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universal soul, although others thought that this soul was subordinate and created.25

Leibniz called the supporters of this philosophical doctrine ‘monopsychites’ and he pointed out that such an opinion was ‘almost universally accepted amongst scholars in Persia and in the States of the Grand Mogul’. This view had then been resumed by Spinoza, who, Leibniz continued, ‘it is known that recognizes only one substance in the world, whereof individual souls are but transient modifications’.26 Worse than the Averroistic position was for Leibniz the one held by the Buddhists, who reduced everything to nothingness, considered to be the source of all things.27 At least, thought Leibniz, the Averroists maintained that everything was bound to fade away in one active mind. Among the Averroists, Leibniz included Pietro Pomponazzi, Cesare Cremonini and Andrea Cesalpino. He then detected traces of Averroism in Claude Guillermet de Bérigard and Gabriel Naudé. The Naudaeana, in particular, showed that Averroism was well and alive in Italy at that time.28

In Leibniz’ opinion, the Averroistic doctrines were indefensible and even extravagant. He believed that his system of pre-established harmony would be the best cure for this evil:

For it shows that there are necessarily simple substances without extension, scattered throughout all Nature; that these substances must exist independently except from God; and that they are never separated from organic body. Those who believe that souls capable of feeling but incapable of reason are mortal, or who maintain that none but reasoning souls can have feeling, Christians in general and Cartesians in particular, offer a handle to the Monopsychites and to Averroists.29

To strengthen his demonstration, Leibniz added a well-known argument derived from the soul of the animals, for ‘it will ever be difficult to persuade men that beasts feel nothing; and once the admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can die, it is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our souls.’30

In the tradition of Wolffian philosophy – the kind of philosophy which shaped Kant’s philosophical apprenticeship –, Averroism played a relevant role in the discussion of such themes as pre-established harmony, the relationship between the mind and the body and the immortality of the soul. Wolffian philosophers paid more attention to Averroistic and monopsychistic themes than the eclectic philosophers ever did. In keeping with the principles of Wolff’s metaphysics, a number of philosophers were of the idea that the thorniest questions deriving from Averroes’s philosophy would disappear once the mind had been identified with the monad and its immortality accepted. This was the opinion advocated by, among others, Johann Peter Reusch (1691-1758), Friedrich Christian Baumeister (1709-1785), Georg Bernhard Bilfinger (1693-1750) and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762), whose works were read and commented upon by Kant in his lectures.

25 Leibniz, Essais de theodicée, in Philosophischen Schriften, VI, p. 54; Theodicy, p. 78.26 Leibniz, Essais de theodicée, in Philosophischen Schriften, VI, p. 55; Theodicy, p. 79.27 Leibniz, Essais de theodicée, in Philosophischen Schriften, VI, p. 56; Theodicy, p. 80.28 Leibniz, Essais de theodicée, in Philosophischen Schriften, VI, p. 57; Theodicy, p. 81.29 Leibniz, Essais de theodicée, in Philosophischen Schriften, VI, p. ; Theodicy, p. 80.30 Ibid. See also Leibniz, Considerations sur la doctrine d’un Esprit Universal Unique, in Philosophischen Schriften, VI, p. 529-538 (529).

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To complete my reconstruction of the reception of Averroism in the cultural milieu prior to Kant, we need to refer briefly to the movement of the so-called ‘pure Aristotelianism’, which was the most important philosophical current in Königsberg until the first two decades of the eighteenth century in Königsberg. ‘Pure Aristotelianism’ originated in Padua from the Alexandristic interpretation of Aristotle and became very popular in German universities through the works of Jacopo Zabarella (1532-1589) and Giulio Pace (1550-1631), who had been acquainted with the Averroistic reading of Aristotle during the sixteenth century. Averroistic doctrines were discussed in particular in the course of lectures on natural philosophy, every time the question of the origin and immortality of human soul was raised. Paul Rabe (1656-1713), the last significant Aristotelian of Königsberg, tried to make sense of the most characteristic Averroistic positions in his Cursus philosophicus (1704), a comprehensive companion to Aristotelian philosophy. In his opinion, the passive or material intellect was not the same as the human soul and, like the active intellect, it could be separated from the body.31 However, since only the active intellect existed separately as immortal and eternal, the possibility of interpreting the passive and active intellect as one substance remained open. [non so se However, since è giusto… volevo dire che “Per Rabe solo l’intelletto attivo è immortale e eterno, quindi non potrebbe “essere” averroista, nondimeno però lascia a aperta la possibilità di interpretare l’intelletto passivo come un’unica sostanza, cioè non lo esclude e quindi non preclude un certo averroismo. While the universal principles of knowledge would be the potential object of the passive intellect, the active intellect was conceived of as the eternal actualisation of those principles.32 In any case, despite Rabe’s lingering interest in the Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle, it is safe to say that Königsberg Aristotelianism had long moved away from Averroes.

Was Kant an Averroist?

Leibnizian and Wolffian influences on Kant’s perception of Averroism are particularly evident in his lectures on metaphysics based on Baumgarten’s Metaphysica (1739). Baumgarten addressed the question of the origin of the human soul and its immortality in the section dedicated to rational psychology, as it was usual in the Wolffian school. Of Kant’s lectures on metaphysics there are eight different versions spanning from the early 1760s to the late 1790s. One might say that, for more than thirty years, Kant was exposed to the question of Averroism in his lectures, even if only indirectly. One of the versions of the lectures, the oldest one dated 1762-1764, is particularly interesting for our subject because it was transcribed

31 Paul Rabe, Cursus philosophicus, seu compendium praecipuarum scientiarum philosophicarum (Königsberg: Boye, 1703), p. 1141. On Rabe, see Riccardo Pozzo, ‘Tracce zabarelliane nella logica kantiana’, Fenomenologia e Società, 18 (1995), 58-69; Id., ‘Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues’, in The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy, ed. R. Pozzo (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), pp. 173-192 (181-186); Id., ‘L’ontologia nei manuali di metafisica della Aufklärung’, Quaestio, 9 (2009), 285-301; Marco Sgarbi, ‘Kant, Rabe e la logica aristotelica’, Rivista di Storia della Filosofia, 64 (2009), 269-293; Id., ‘Metaphysics in Königsberg Prior to Kant (1703-1770)’, Trans/Form/Ação, 33 (2010), 31-64; Id., Logica e metafisica nel Kant precritico: L’ambiente intellettuale di Königsberg e la formazione della filosofia kantiana (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010); Id. La Kritik der reinen Vernunft nel contesto della tradizione logica aristotelica (Hildesheim: Olms, 2010). 32 Rabe, Cursus philosophicus, p. 1142.

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by Herder, who twenty years later would charge Kant with Averroism.33 The origins of this accusation can probably be traced back to these lectures. All the lectures on metaphysics are more or less the same, even if during the course of time, Kant added his own personal thoughts on Baumgarten’s book. The most significant courses of metaphysics are the Metaphysik Mrongovius and the Metaphysik Volckmann, datable around 1782 and 1784. It is a recurrent feature that the final chapter of the lectures deals with the problem of the immortality of the soul. In the Mrongovius’s transcription, the chapter begins with the following three questions: ‘Will the soul continue to live? 1. Will it continue as a human being (Mensch) or as an intelligence (Intelligenz)? 2. Does this survival derive from the constitution of its nature (and therefore it is truly immortal), or from a special divine decree? 3. Will this survival be general or particular?’34 Each of these three questions provides evidence to determine whether Kant can be characterised as an Averroist. The answers remained the same throughout the thirty years during which he lectured on metaphysics. In his rational psychology, Kant demonstrated the persistence of the soul as substance, its survival after death as intelligence and its survival as a person.35 The soul of human beings survives as an intelligence to preserve the foundations of ethical life. The survival of the human beings concerns the individual and not the species, even if the condition of the soul before its birth was devoid of self-consciousness and consciousness of the world. As such, the soul lacks identity and is part of the corpus mysticum, i.e., the intelligible world.36 It is therefore apparent that, according to Kant, before their birth, minds are part of a universal intellect, and that after their birth, minds become separated from the others. In this case, one might say that Kant’s Averroism would be a parte ante and not a parte post. And yet Herder accused Kant of being a fully-fledged Averroist.37 Can we say that a blatant form of misunderstanding lies behind such a charge?

In 1766, some years after Herder’s transcription, Kant published a fascinating essay, the Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik. In this writing, which deals with the relationship between the sensible and the intelligible world, Kant set out to explain the allegedly supernatural experiences of Emanuel Swedenborg, who claimed to be able to talk with immaterial spirits. Although he declared himself unable to describe them, Kant acknowledged the existence of immaterial beings in the world. ‘[I]mmediately united with each other,’ he argued, ‘they might form, perhaps, a great whole which might be called the immaterial world (mundus intellegibilis),’ ruled by spiritual laws (Wirkungsgesetze pneumatisch).38 This immaterial world, Kant went on to say, ‘can be regarded as a whole existing by itself’.39 He then specified the key feature of this world: it ‘would primarily comprise all created intelligences. Some of these are combined with matter, thus forming a person, and some not’.40 The intelligible world, or corpus mysticum, would be

33 See Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik Herder, in Gesammelte Schriften, XXVIII, pp. 3-166.34 Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik Mrongovius, in Gesammelte Schriften, XXIX, p. 910.35 Kant, Metaphysik Mrongovius,, p. 912.36 Immanuel Kant, Metaphysik L1, in Gesammelte Schriften, XXVIII, p. 284.37 Laura Anna Macor, Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1748-1800). Eine Begriffsgeschichte (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 2013), § 34.b.38 Immanuel Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik in Gesammelte Schriften, II, p. 329; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, ed. Frank Sewall, tr. E. F. Goerwitz (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1992), p. 56.39 Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, p. 330; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, p. 56.40 Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, p. 332; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, p. 59.

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therefore the whole body of intelligences. In the Träume eines Geistersehers, Kant maintained that the human mind was the only one to possess a real intelligence already in its sensible life. For this reason, he argued, we should regard

the human soul as being conjoined in its present life with two worlds at the same time, of which it clearly perceives only the material world, in so far as it is conjoined with a body, and thus forms a personal unit. But, as a member of the spiritual world, it receives and gives out the pure influences of immaterial natures.41

Kant added that,

[a]mong the forces which move the human heart, some of the most powerful seem to lie outside of it. They consequently are not mere means to selfishness and private interest, which would be an aim lying inside of man himself, but they incline our emotions to place the focus in which they combine outside of us, in other rational beings.42

These forces promote, according to Kant, the hidden tendency to compare our judgment on what is good or true with the judgment of others, combining such opinions into a harmonious whole. For Kant, this was the proof that our own judgment depends upon ‘the common human understanding (allgemein menschlich Verstand), and it becomes a reason for ascribing to the whole of thinking beings (das Ganz denkender Wesen) a sort of unity of reason (eine Art von Vernunfteinheit)’.43 This universal human understanding produced in turn the rule of the general will, which confers upon the world of all thinking beings ‘a moral unity, and a systematic constitution according to purely spiritual laws’.44 Kant emphasised the unity of all minds in one universal mind (the Geisterwelt) and took it as the foundation of morality. In his opinion, the rule of the general will and the common human understanding could be compared to some sort of Newtonian law of gravity.45 In all likelihood, when writing the Träume eines Geistersehers, Kant had been influenced by the ideas of the English moralists Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686-1743) and George Cheyne (1673-1743), who believed in the existence of a moral ‘gravity’.46 Through the years, Kant changed his mind and developed a formal theory of a moral universal which was first formulated in the 1784 pamphlet Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltgebürglicher Absicht (‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’), precisely the work that would trigger Herder’s critical response concerning the alleged presence of Averroistic themes in Kant’s philosophy. Herder’s discussion in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichite der Menschheit is particularly intriguing and is worth reporting in full:

41 Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, p. 332; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, p. 60.42 Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, p. 334; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, p. 62.43 Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, p. 334; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, p. 63 (with slight change to Goerwitz’s translation).44 Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, p. 335; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, p. 64.45 Kant, Träume eines Geistersehers, pp. 335-336; Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, pp. 65-66.46 See Giorgio Tonelli, ‘Kant’s Ethics as a Part of Metaphysics: A Possible Newtonian Suggestion? With Some Comments on Kant’s “Dream of a Seer”’, in Philosophy and the Civilizing Arts: Essays Presented to Herbert W. Schneider, ed. Craig Walton and John Peter Anton (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1974), pp. 236-263.

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We can speak, therefore, of an education of mankind. Every individual only becomes man by means of education, and the whole species lives solely as this chain of individuals. To be sure, if anyone [Herder is referring here to Kant], in speaking of the education of mankind, should mean the education of the species as a whole and not that of so many individuals comprising it, he would be wholly unintelligible to me. For ‘species’ and ‘genus’ are merely abstract concepts, empty sounds, unless they refer to individual beings. Thus, if I were to attribute to such abstract concepts every perfection, culture and enlightenment of which man is capable, I should contribute to the actual history of man no more than if I were to speak of animalkind, stonekind and metalkind, and decorate them with all the noblest qualities which, if they really existed, in any one single individual or entity, would cancel each other out. Our philosophy of history shall not pursue the path of the Averroan system, according to which the whole human species possess but one mind (and that of a low order), which is distributed to individuals only piecemeal.47

Kant replied to these criticisms in the review of Herder’s Ideen he published in 1785 in the Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung. Kant argued ironically that if Herder were right, then an exponent of such philosophy (i.e., Averroistic philosophy) would be an ‘evil’ man.48 He then defended himself by stating that

If ‘the human species’ signifies the whole of a series of generations going (indeterminably) into the infinite (as this meaning is entirely customary), and it is assumed that this series ceaselessly approximates the line of its destiny running alongside it, then it is not to utter a contradiction to say that in all its parts it is asymptotic to this line and yet on the whole that it will coincide with it, in other words, that no member of all the generations of humankind, but only the species will fully reach its destiny.49

Kant was annoyed less by Herder’s misunderstanding of his thought than by his being accused of Averroism. Kant characterized the misunderstanding as ‘a trifle’. More important for him was the fact that Herder seemed to be an author ‘to whom everything that has been given out previously as philosophy has often been so displeasing.’50

But what might Kant have said in his writing of 1784? Could Herder’s charge have derived from reading the Träume eines Geistersehers? In the Idee, Kant maintained that individuals, even whole nations, when following their purposes, proceed unconsciously towards a natural goal.51 Human beings need countless series of generations, each of which passes its own ‘enlightenment’ to its successor in order 47 Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, pp. 345-346; tr. F. M. Barnard, in Herder on Social and Political Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 312.48 Immanuel Kant, ‘Recensionen von J. G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Theil 1.2.’, in Gesammelte Schriften, VIII, p. 65; ‘Review of J. G. Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity. Parts 1 and 2’, tr. Allen W. Wood, in Kant, Anthropology, History, and Education, p. 142.49 Ibid.50 Ibid.51 Immanuel Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, in Gesammelte Schriften, VIII, pp. 17-31; Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, tr. Allen W. Wood, pp. 108-120.

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finally to bring the seeds of ‘enlightenment’ to complete fulfilment in mankind which is completely consonant with nature’s purpose.52 In the human being (as the only rational creature on earth) the natural dispositions that are directed to the use of reason are to be fully developed in the kind, not in the individual.53 It is therefore safe to say that Kant elaborated a philosophical view according to which human reason in its universality cannot be developed in the individual but only in the species. The history of human beings should become the history of mankind, namely the history of universal reason in its making. Here it is important to stress the conditional tense, for Kant is aware that universal reason is simply a hypothetical condition in order for the human beings to act morally. There is no really existing universal mind or reason for Kant.

Kant’s non-Averroism is apparent in his later views on ethics in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (‘Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals’), published in 1785. Of the eight formulations of the moral law, the so-called ‘formula of humanity as an end in itself,’ reveals traces of Averroistic thought. The formula states that one should act in such a way that humanity, whether in one’s own person or in the person of any other, be always treated as an end in itself, and never as a means to an end.54 Allen Wood has reconstructed the logical steps underlying the inference. The ground of the moral principle is the principle according to which rational nature exists as end in itself; this is how human beings necessarily represent their own existence; however, each rational being also represents his or her existence by relying on precisely the same rational ground which is valid for me; therefore, this rational ground works as an objective principle, from which, as a supreme practical ground, all laws of the will must be derived. Kant’s renown practical imperative – to use humanity always as an end, never as a means – is pivoted around the notion of humanity as the embodiment of universal reason.55

Kant supports the existence of a universal reason according to which human beings must act ‘as if’ this universal reason is the reason of every individual man who decides to act. Universal rationality, insofar as it represents mankind, would therefore be in the individual and would be the source of its actions. It is a categorical imperative and as such the imperative is a universal rule and is not constitutive for the individual. Universal rationality is an end towards which we must tend if we want to act in a moral way, and not an actual object existing in reality. Therefore, Kantian Averroism, if it can be called Averroism, is only hypothetical and regulative. It is along these lines that Moliner has developed his reflections on Kant’s Averroism in moral philosophy.

Herder was not the only one to charge Kant with Averroism. Merlan has already noticed that in 1797 Karl Arnold Wilmans, a student of medicine in Halle, wrote a dissertation entitled De similitudine inter mysticismum purum et Kantianam religionis doctrinam (‘On the Similarity between Pure Mysticism and the Kant’s Religious Doctrine’), according to which Kantian doctrines resembled Averroism and mysticism.56 Wilmans supported the idea that Kant was close to the Averroistic doctrine in his moral thought because human beings, once separated from their bodies, share their minds with the rest of mankind. Wilmans’s dissertation would have

52 Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte, p. 17; Idea for a Universal History, pp. 108-109.53 Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte, pp. 18-19; Idea for a Universal History, pp. 109-110. 54 Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, in Gesammelte Schriften, IV, p. 429.55 Allen W. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 124-125.56 Merlan, Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness, p. 131.

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been just one of the many dissertations of the time on Kant’s religious thought, if Kant himself had not included a letter of Wilmans as an appendix to his Der Streit der Fakultäten (“The Conflict of the Faculties”).57 Having in mind Herder’s criticisms, Kant understood Wilmans position, but he disagreed with him nonetheless, stating that he did not want agree with him ‘entirely’.58 The word ‘entirely’ is extremely significant, because it means that in a broader sense Kant agreed with Wilmans. Wilmans wrote a letter to Kant on 20 January 1798. We know part of the content of this letter from Kant’s reply of on 4 May 1799.59 Here Kant made clear that he could not accept the distinction between the materiality of the understanding (Verstand) and the immateriality of reason (Vernunft), a distinction that Wilmans had presented as characteristic of the Kantian philosophy. Kant rejected the charge that his philosophical system created a rift within the subject between the understanding (governing the process of organizing the multiplicity of representations) and reason (in charge of transforming the unity of the experience into a consciousness). It is evident that Wilmans’s charge was that of Averroism, i.e., of assuming a real distinction between a material singular understanding for each individual and a universal reason for the whole of mankind.60 Kant rejected Wilmans’s interpretation but he did not provide any further explanation. In the meantime, Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann (1767-1843), a student of Kant, replied to the accusations of Averroism and mysticism in his book Prüfung der Kantischen Religionsphilosophie in Hinsicht auf die ihr beygelegte Aehnlichkeit mit dem reinen Mystizism (“Examination of Kant’s Philosophy of Religion with Respect to the Alleged Similarity to Pure Mysticism”), published in 1800. Since Kant wrote the preface to Jachmann’s book, one might assume that he was in agreement with his former student in rejecting possible Averroistic and mystical interpretations of his philosophy.61

One might therefore conclude that, while Kant was no Averroan (and certainly no Averroist), his philosophy, nevertheless, lent itself to possible Averroist interpretations. One might wonder why other philosophers at the time like Schelling or Hegel have never been directly charged with Averroism. One possible reason may lie in the contemporary perception of Kant as a representative of the Enlightenment. Considered from the point of view of this philosophical view, the doctrine of the equality of all human beings based on the universal scope of their reasons could no longer be taken as a form of Averroism.

57 Karl Arnold Wilmans, ‘Anhang von einer reinen Mystik in der Religion’, in Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, VII, pp. 69-75.58 Immanuel Kant, Der Streit der philosophischen Facultät mit der theologischen, in Gesammelte Schriften, VII, p. 69.59 Immanuel Kant to Karl Arnold Wilmans, in Gesammelte Schriften, XII, pp. 281-282.60 Ibid., p. 282.61 Immanuel Kant, ‘Vorrede’ to Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann’s Prüfung der Kantischen Religionsphilosophie, in Gesammelte Schriften, VIII, 8, p. 441.

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