The Coronavirus of 2020 (1): Background

Before turning to the planned blog for July, celebrating American Independence Day, it seems appropriate to celebrate having thus far survived the great global coronavirus pestilence of 2020.

      By way of contrast, the European pestilence of 1347 - 1351 C.E. was most likely an expression of bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis in fleas on rat-infested trade routes linking Asia and Europe.  After gaining entry into a human’s blood via a flea bite, this bacterium causes death via septic shock to the immune system.  Based on historical research long after the fact, this medieval plague is estimated to have killed between one-third and one-half of the European population.  This European pestilence, as well as today’s pandemic, caught their contemporary societies completely by surprise.  The Spanish flu of 1918 was deadly, but influenza outbreaks per se were not then unexpected.

      The pandemic of 2020 has been caused by the coronavirus, SARS CoV-2, which results in the disease, Covid-19.  After originating in bats and jumping species in Asia, SARS CoV-2 has spread globally; either directly from person to person via breathing; or indirectly from infected surfaces via hand-to-face contact.  Covid-19 can express itself in multiple ways, including, but not necessarily limited to, hyperactive immune response, pneumonia, breathing failure, stroke, excessive blood clotting, and system failure of multiple organs.

      According to the print edition of the Wall Street Journal, as of May 1, 2020 the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in 3,334,416 reported cases and 237,943 officially attributable deaths world-wide; while the corresponding U.S. data are 1,098,565 cases and 64,577 deaths.  Starting with these numbers and a total U.S. population of approximately 330,000,000, the U.S. Covid-19 mortality rate for 2020 will be co-determined by the cumulative number of daily Covid-19 deaths starting in May and running through December of 2020.

      According to initial U.S. federal reports, the upper bound on the estimate of U.S. deaths due to this outbreak of Covid-19 is 2.2 million; assuming that this outbreak will run its course during 2020, the implied upper bound on the U.S. mortality rate due to Covid-19 in 2020 is 0.67% (2.2 / 330).  In contrast, the plague of 1347 to 1351 could be associated with four consecutive years with an annual mortality rate of 12%, which would account for the death of 40% of the population.  (Note that 1 - 0.88^4 = 0.4, which is in a mid-range between the historical estimates of 0.33 and 0.50.)  Thus, the implied upper bound on the U.S. mortality rate due to Covid-19 in 2020 is about 18 times smaller than the historically estimated annual European mortality rate due to bubonic plague during the mid-fourteenth century (0.67% » 12% / 18).  On this metric, the bleakest U.S. outlook for 2020 would have to be multiplied by a horror-factor of 18 in order to capture the reality of the earlier bubonic plague. 

      The cultural memory of an epidemic with a very high mortality rate, like that in the mid-fourteenth century, has disappeared; leading less to thankfulness for the last 670 years of medical progress than to the overwhelming presumption that public health measures can now be taken that will swiftly eliminate coronavirus deaths without regard to economic consequences.  Without approved therapies or vaccines for Covid-19, however, this presumption implies that travel, trade, and commerce must be largely shut down; thereby magnifying the prospects for world-wide economic recession or depression; portending ruinous taxation, hyper-inflation, and expropriation; and auguring famine, civil chaos, and stark authoritarianism, if not indeed updated versions of the Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror.  As examples, note that the U.S. Department of Labor’s March-to-April grocery inflation rate for 2020 was 2.6%, the highest monthly increase since the mid-1970’s and the “Arab oil embargo”; that a U.S. Presidential order was required to balance the needs of workers and consumers while keeping meat-packing plants open; and that one U.S. Senator has already been vilified as the “Marie Antoinette of the Senate” for opposing nationalization of state pension debts that long predate the pandemic.

      A time of existential crisis may lead to a re-examination, on the part of individuals and of societies alike, of fundamental values or ultimate concerns.  The theologian Paul Tillich believed that human attitudes towards objects of theistic, religious devotion are expressions of ultimate concern.  These objects are experienced as most holy, real, and valuable.  Tillich’s approach does not address non-theistic religions; and the frequently casual attitudes of ancient pagans towards their civic deities does not seem to indicate existential attachment.  Thus, Tillich’s analysis seems to be largely restricted to Western societies in the Common Era.

      Today’s Zeitgeist demands, however, that the criteria for “ultimate concern” be generalized so as to include globalism, environmentalism, and identity politics, etc.; as well as metaphysical interests in a personal God and in Being itself.  This generalization of Tillich’s original notion dilutes its significance while widening its application.  “Ultimate concern” may now pertain to traditional worship, praise, and prayer or to the quest for some ultimate good, such as the Holy Grail, Absolute Knowing, or (one presumes) the Minimal Carbon Footprint. 

      The analysis of “ultimate concern” - - on the occasion of the war against SARS CoV-2 - - is reminiscent of an earlier era in which national survivals were imperiled.  Between 1942 and 1944 the BBC radio service broadcast three talks by C. S. Lewis regarding the moral, spiritual, and intellectual content of Christianity.  These talks offered spiritual clarity and encouragement to a beleaguered people and were subsequently collected as the book, Mere Christianity, in 1952.  (Today, the fraction of the population tuning in to such broadcasts might be smaller, but that is a sociological effect not dealt with here.)  In the June posting to this blog we will examine some arguments from Mere Christianity.

Externalization (3): Philosophy of Religion

In a scene set in the London of the early 1920’s, the Academy Award winning 1981 film, Chariots of Fire, portrays a prominent, young, female opera singer going to a restaurant with a prominent, young, male Olympic-athlete-in-training.  At one point during dinner conversation she languidly, yet forcefully, expresses the spirit of their age toward religious differences: “People don’t care!”  This response would also seem to encapsulate a common Western attitude toward religious differences in the 2020’s: All legitimate religions are said to be aiming not only at the same truth but also at a therapeutic Zeitgeist (spirit of the age).  One thinks of Philip Rieff’s 1966 book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud, in which the psychological person is said to have replaced the religious person.  Rieff maintained that - - in the perceived race to provide consolation - - therapy and techniques of self-realization would rapidly replace religion.  More recently, the ascendency of the psychological person has also been seen in the Oprah television phenomenon.

      Among some Western opinion leaders of the 2020’s, nothing could be less therapeutic than Hegel’s fairly opaque writing on religion and Zeitgeist dating back to the 1820’s and even earlier; but yet his views on developing natural consciousness, Reason, Nature, Spirit, Religion, and Absolute Idea continue to find intellectual resonance.  The Absolute Idea is self-determining Reason externalizing itself as Nature and Spirit in order to entertain movements of thought (theses, antitheses, and syntheses) leading to enhanced knowledge.  Externalization amounts to “losing track of one’s self-consciousness while thinking about a topic.”  Spirit (both individual spirits and societal Zeitgeister) returns to the Absolute Idea with each synthesized increment of knowledge, consistent with the final cause of Absolute Knowing.  In Hegel’s terminology, “entäuβern” means “to externalize, renounce, relinquish, divest, dispose, or part with.”  Externalization (Entäuβerung) into Nature and Spirit is also called bifurcation (Entzweiung) or unfolding (Entfaltung).  [An introduction to Hegel has been given in the last two months’ blog posts, as well as in the Hegel chapter in my book, An Initial View of Final Causes.]

      Synthesis preserves whatever elements of truth are originally present in thesis and antithesis, even as apparent contradictions between them are cancelled (aufgehoben).  Hegel’s Axiom, “Thought is Being,” implies that Thought reaching higher levels of knowledge is the same as Being perfecting its essence and becoming self-aware.  Over time, Thought and Being each become more of what they truly are.  This spontaneous development of natural consciousness is the Absolute (virtually the same as the Absolute Idea).  The Absolute is not a freestanding power that thwarts the will of individuals and societies; it is the expression of the efforts of individuals and societies; and it does not exclude unintentional effects.

      The development of natural consciousness leads to Religion, or self-aware Absolute Being. The present writer reads Hegel as follows: Religion, immanent in a matrix of particular religions existing at any one time, has evolved from natural to aesthetic to revealed.  Over time, any particular religion has the possibility of asymptotically approaching the status of revealed, true Religion, in which Spirit knows itself as Spirit.  Which particular religion, if any, in today’s matrix has the best chance of asymptotically leading to true Religion is an enigma.  Until the end of time, Spirit is always evolving and updating the matrix of particular religions.  This evolution does not exclude unintended consequences and surprising discontinuities on its route towards unshakeable orthodoxy.  Thus, any current particular religion could turn out to be a dead end, superseded by the development of some other particular religion.  Hegel’s successors could not agree whether the final orthodoxy would be left-Hegelian (proto-Marxist) or right-Hegelian (orthodox Christian).  The present writer concludes that Hegelian theory presents the development of natural consciousness as the key to understanding the process of philosophy and theology, but does not guarantee the ultimate content of Religion.

      God, the ultimate condition for the possibility of religious experience, remains only an abstraction until the Absolute Idea externalizes itself as Nature and Spirit in pursuit of Absolute Knowing.  Hegel maintained that natural consciousness recognizes an immediate presence of God and does not rely on introspection of its thoughts in order to infer the existence of God as an external entity (¶ 758 in Phenomenology of Spirit).  Speculative knowledge (das spekulative Wissen) regards God as pure Thought, Essence, Being, Existence, and Self (¶ 761). Existing independently of any finite being, God is Being itself, i.e., Absolute Being or the highest degree of reality.  Finite beings are more or less real in proportion as they are more or less self-determining, which is to say, more or less rational.  Thus, one arrives at the familiar Hegelian principle, “the real is the rational, and the rational is the real.”  In view of Hegel’s Axiom, God is also Thought itself, possessed of Absolute Knowing, devoted to the recollection of its lived experiences, and “sunk in the night of self-consciousness” (¶ 808).  

      In the Introduction to his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel observes that “one could easily arrive at the view that a widespread, nearly universal indifference toward the doctrine of the faith formerly regarded as essential has entered into … public [consciousness, and] … the work of salvation has taken on a significance so strongly psychological … that only the semblance of the ancient doctrine of the church remains.”  Thus, even in the 1820’s Hegel was battling against the indifferentism expressed on the 1920’s film vignette previously cited.  The task of the philosophy of religion is, in Hegel’s view, to show that God can be known cognitively.  Hegel proposed a four-fold theory of religious knowledge: Faith, or immediate knowledge, is the certainty that God exists, albeit without insight into the necessity of that existence.  Feeling, or the subjective aspect of immediate knowledge, has the critical shortcoming that it cannot make judgments of true or false, or of good or evil, until it has been fortified by thought.  Representation (Vorstellung) is the content of faith in pre-rational form, as in Biblical stories that bear allegorical, metaphorical, or mystical senses.  Finally, thought is the content of faith in rational form, which provides context, relationships between ideas, and universality.  In a memorable passage, Hegel emphasizes the preeminence of thought in religious knowledge: “Animals have feelings, but only feelings.  Human beings think, and they alone have religion. 

      For Hegel, Christianity was, generally speaking and from all indications, the fullest expression of revealed, true Religion available in his time.  There were parallels between orthodox Christianity and his dialectical philosophy.  For example, in the Biblical text, Philippians 2:7-8, divine consciousness appears as Christ, who “emptied himself … obedient to the point of death …” (English Standard Version) or “entäuβerte sich selbst … gehorsam bis zum Tod …” (Schlachter 2000).  This emptying was an essential part of the process of God reconciling the world to himself in Christ (Second Corinthians 5:19).  This divine emptying and reconciling is an analog of self-consciousness externalizing itself while resolving contradictions in its understanding of the world and, thus reconciled, returning to itself. 

      In summary, and in the opinion of the present writer, the Hegelian dialectic proposes to specify the process by which on-going philosophical and theological developments occur and to facilitate an understanding of the religious past and present.  In Hegel’s philosophy of religion, God can be known cognitively via faith, feeling, representation, and thought, thereby increasing the chances of successfully “walking by faith and not by sight” (Second Corinthians 5:7).  The Hegelian dialectic does not, however, predict the relative future success of any particular religion (including the many branches of Christianity), because unintended consequences of rational actions jeopardize the future development of any particular religion: A promising and orthodox particular religion today may become a desiccated husk tomorrow. 

      (Unless the author is swept away by the rapidly evolving coronavirus pandemic, the next posting date for this blog will be July 1, 2020.)

Externalization (2): Phenomenology

Last month we investigated the philosophical terms alienation and externalization.  For Sartre, subject and object (or self and world) arise in tandem during an externalization of pre-reflexive consciousness.  For Hegel, self-development occurs by experiencing the world objectively during externalization (Entäuβerung) or self-alienation (similar to losing oneself in one’s object of inquiry), followed by a return to self.  The verb entäuβernmeans “to reverse a state of inwardness,” i.e., to externalize; intensifies the verb äuβern (to say, utter, express, or externalize); and also bears the sense “to renounce, relinquish, divest, dispose, or part with.”  Phenomenology is Hegel’s way of thinking about consciousness itself, consistent with his view that Thought is Being.

      The translator, A. V. Miller, numbered all 808 paragraphs in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Phänomenologie des Geistes).  In one computer-based search of the German text for the sub-string “entäuβer”, 44 instances were found.  The first instance, in Miller’s ¶ 229, occurs in a section on the freedom of the self-consciousness to surrender marks of individuality.  Through these “moments of surrender,” consciousness itself is said to obtain the certainty, “to have divested itself of its ‘I’” (“seines ‘Ich’ sich entäuβert zu haben”).  In so doing, consciousness turns its immediate self-consciousness into a thing or objective existence.

      Central to the thought of Hegel was the idea that movements of thought occur in consciousness, be that the consciousness of individuals or the collective, cumulative consciousness of all rational beings.  Within consciousness, dialectical thought-pairs occur as thesis and antithesis (e.g., Being and Nothing) and are resolved on a higher plane of insight (or truth or knowledge) as synthesis (e.g., Becoming).  “Thought-pairs occurring” is the same as “consciousness externalizing itself as thesis and antithesis.”

      Synthesis preserves whatever elements of truth are originally present in thesis and antithesis.  Apparent contradictions between thesis and antithesis are cancelled (aufgehoben).  But it is axiomatic for Hegel that Thought is Being, because the burden of proof that they are different has never been met.  Therefore, the spontaneous process of Thought reaching higher levels of knowledge is the same as Being perfecting its essence and becoming aware of itself.  This spontaneous process of consciousness, Thought or Being becoming itself, is the Absolute.  Hegel sometimes speaks of the Absolute as rationality in Being and of the Absolute Idea as self-determining Reason.

      The Absolute Idea externalizes itself into Nature and Spirit in order to fulfill the self-development (self-unfolding) of consciousness.  In other words, Spirit, acting through its individual spirits, investigates Nature and returns to the Absolute Idea with increased knowledge.  Spirit, acting through its succession of Zeitgeister, investigates politics, history, art, religion, etc. and likewise returns to the Absolute Idea with increased knowledge.  This “returning” is actively experienced: As Hegel remarks in ¶ 802, everything that we know must come before us as lived experience.

      The pinnacle of Hegelian philosophy, Absolute Knowing, is the final cause of the development of consciousness.  Developmental levels include the sense-certainty of external things; the perception of the external world; the understanding of things and forces indicative of a supersensible realm; self-consciousness leading to inter-subjective alienation; Reason, which is the certainty of consciousness that it is all reality; Spirit, which is Reason that is conscious of itself as its own world, and of the word as itself; Religion, which is Spirit aware of itself as Spirit and conscious of self-aware Absolute Being; and Absolute Knowing, which is the grasping of all truth in philosophical form. 

      Hegel notes in ¶ 808 that History is a conscious process of Spirit externalized or emptied out into Time (an die Zeit entäuβert), creating a languid succession of Zeitgeister bearing knowledge and returning to self-consciousness (the Self).  This succession is time-consuming, because the self has to penetrate and to digest the mass of knowledge so returned (“weil das Selbst diesen ganzen Reichtum seiner Substanz zu durchdringen und zu verdauen hat”).  Ultimately, the Self knows what it is; withdraws within itself; and devotes itself to the recollection of its lived experiences, “sunk in the night of self-consciousness.”  In other words, “the goal, Absolute Knowledge, or Spirit that knows itself as Spirit, has for its path the recollection of Zeitgeister as they are in themselves and as they accomplish the organization of their realm.”

Externalization (1): Linguistics

In Franz Kafka’s novella, The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung), Gregor Samsa experiences himself one morning as a “monstrous vermin, bug, or insect” (einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer), enduring isolation, alienation (Entfremdung), and dehumanization.  An Entfremdungseffekt [based on the root word, fremd (strange or alien)] is the creation of perceived estrangement or alienation via the presentation of a person or object without normal context.  Such a presentation (de-familiarization or de-naturalization) may serve as the first step in an attempt to see something anew.  While analyzing the Entfremdungseffekt in theatrical works, Berthold Brecht coined the synonym, Verfremdungseffekt, to indicate an attempt to increase understanding by breaking down the wall between the audience and the actors.  [The prefix ver- typically connotes a transgression of boundaries, as in the example of verlängern (to prolong or exceed a length-boundary).]  An example of the “V-effekt” would be an actor temporarily departing from his script during a play in order to lecture the audience directly.

      Alienation is related to externalization.  For Sartre, subject and object (or self and world) arise in tandem during an externalization of pre-reflexive consciousness: Assuming a primordial, stable self leads only to “bad-faith,” renunciation of freedom, and alienation.  For Hegel, self-development (development of the natural consciousness) occurs in stages: One treats oneself as an objective thing in a process of externalization (Entäuβerung), which is also known as self-alienation (Sich-Entfremdung).  One then proceeds to experience the world objectively, formulate various theses and antitheses, resolve contradictions, synthesize higher levels of insight, and “return to oneself” more fully aware of Truth and Being.  The “return to self” is Hegel’s Zu-Sich-Zurückkehrung.  Externalization is an intellectual process for Hegel, related to losing oneself in one’s object of inquiry and returning to self-consciousness with additional insights; whereas Marx “stood Hegel on his head” by emphasizing economic production as that which may be alienated from an individual.

      Regrettably, the native speaker of English can be led astray by the term Entäuβerung because of the following train of thought: The German verb prefix ent- is sometimes used for the English equivalent of un-, dis-, or de-.  For example, entfesseln means to unchain; entdecken means to discover; and entblättern means to defoliate.  Applying this logic to the verb äuβern (to say, utter, express, or externalize thought in some manner), one might infer that ent + äuβern = un + to externalize = to internalize.  Such an inference would be wrong and would “stand Hegel on his head” in yet another manner!  How might we put this train of thought back on its tracks?

      A more comprehensive review of the German verb prefix ent- reveals that three general areas of meaning exist, pertaining to: (1) the beginning of an activity, (2) the separation or removal of something, and (3) the reversal of a state or process.

      (1) Examples of beginning: The verb entstehen can be thought of as “to begin to stand,” i.e., “to originate or come into existence.”  The verb entbrennen can be construed as “to begin to burn,” or “to flare up.”  An implicit sense of “to begin” also occurs in the meaning of entsprieβen, “(to begin) to sprout from”; of entspringen, “(to begin) to arise or issue from”; and of entleeren, “(to begin) to make empty,” or more simply, “to empty.” 

      (2) Examples of removing: The verbs entfesseln, entehren, entarten, entblättern, and entgiften refer to removing chains, honor, form, leaves, and poison, respectively; are rendered in English by verbs containing the prefix un-, dis-, or de- (unchain, dishonor, deform, defoliate, and detoxify); and do not mean beginning to have chains, honor, form, leaves, or poison.  As another example, compare the verb entrücken (to remove from) to the verb rücken (to move, march, or approach): “die Musik hat sie der Gegenwart entrückt” means “the music removed her from the here and now,” not “the music began to move her in the here and now.”  Finally, the verb entfalten refers to removing folds and is translated as “to unfold” or “to develop”; it does not mean “to begin to fold.”

      (3) Examples of reversing:  The verbs enteilen, entfernen, entfliehen, and entkräften refer to reversing states of unhurriedness, proximity, residence, and strength, respectively; and are rendered in English by the expressions “to hurry away,” “to move far away,” “to flee,” and “to weaken.”  The prefix un-, dis-, or de- may also be used in this case: The verb entdecken, referring to a reversal of a state of ignorance, is translated as “to discover”; while the verb entfremden, referring to a reversal of a state of familiarity, is interpreted as “to de-familiarize” or “to alienate.”  The essential point is not whether the prefix un-, dis-, or de- is used, but whether there is an implicit understanding of reversal.  Hence, we can at last resolve the conundrum from which this investigation began: The verb entäuβern means to reverse a state of inwardness, i.e., to externalize; merely intensifies the verb äuβern (to say, utter, express, or externalize); and can also be rendered as “to renounce, relinquish, divest, dispose, or part with.

      The translator, A. V. Miller, numbered all 808 paragraphs in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press, 1977).  In one computer-based search of the corresponding German text for the sub-string “entäuβer” (which should find the strings Entäuβerung, entäuβern, and entäuβert), 44 instances were found.  The very first instance occurs in a section on the freedom of the self-consciousness, in Miller’s paragraph 229, where “moments of surrender” enable the consciousness to obtain “the certainty of having truly divested itself of its ‘I’ and of having turned its immediate self-consciousness into a thing, into an objective existence” (“die Gewiβheit, in Wahrheit seines ‘Ich’ sich entäuβert [zu haben], und sein unmittelbares Selbstbewuβtsein zu einem Dinge, zu einem gegenständlichen Sein gemacht zu haben”).

      Thus did an intellectual industry dedicated to the analysis of externalization and alienation come into being!  In next month’s blog post we will consider in more detail the role of externalization in Hegel’s Phenomenology.

Timelessness, Natural Law, and Natural Religion

In his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant notes that all rational knowledge (Vernunfterkenntnis) is either material (concerned with determinant objects, either of nature or of freedom) or formal (concerned with the form of understanding and reason themselves).  Philosophy, the study of all rational knowledge, is hence divided into physics (natural philosophy), ethics (moral philosophy), and logic, respectively.  All knowledge that lacks any empirical component is “pure,” or a priori.  Logic, being formal, is pure.  In contrast, physics and ethics have both empirical and non-empirical (metaphysical) components, giving rise to the metaphysics of nature and of morals, respectively.  

      In the Groundwork, Kant relegates the empirical part of ethics to practical anthropology, proposing instead to investigate the metaphysics of morals (Metaphysik der Sitten, sometimes abbreviated as Moral) in order to explain the absolute necessity carried by moral laws.  For example, “‘Thou shalt not lie,’ could not hold merely for mankind (Menschen), other rational beings (andere vernünftige Wesen) having no obligation to abide by it … the ground of obligation must be looked for … solely a priori in the concepts of pure reason.”  Practical rules in current worldly circumstances can never be absolute moral laws.  What is absolute is that one ought never to act except in such a way that he or she can also will that his or her subjective maxim becomes a universal law.

      A precept is a guiding principle or rule that is used to control, influence or regulate the conduct of an agent.  (In this discussion, “precept” is equivalent to “moral precept,” as opposed to some relatively minor point of etiquette or to some matter of belief or doctrine not necessarily tied to conduct.)  Those precepts, if any, having royal or divine origins are referred to as commandments, because of their authoritative source (variously described as worthy of respect, overpowering, or awe-inspiring): The commandment-giver is capable of meting out extremes of reward or punishment to agents following or violating the commandment.  Those precepts, if any, arising autonomously within each rational agent (due to rationality per se) Kant refers to as categorical imperatives, which are considered to be likewise worthy of respect (Achtung).  Of course, it is not clear that a rational agent, other than Kant himself, would reliably experience enough Achtung in order to avoid occasional backsliding.

      For Kant, moral precepts and rationality itself (the a priori concepts of pure reason and the categories of the understanding) are logically prior to empirical phenomena and, as such, are timeless and uncreated.  In contrast, the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135-1204 C.E.) maintained that moral precepts originate simultaneously with the creation of humankind.  On this view, moral precepts were created after “five days’ worth” of creation had already occurred; i.e., moral precepts are created in time, albeit it in undocumented (i.e., unrecorded or prehistoric) time.

      In the context of Maimonides’ theory, moral precepts are referred to as elements of natural law.  (See David Novak, “Does Natural Law Need Theology?” in First Things, November 2019.)  Subsequently to the inception of natural law, various human civilizations got around to writing down moral codes with varying degrees of success.  Regarding the motivation for individuals to adhere to moral precepts, Kant emphasizes respect (Achtung) for the timeless moral law and the autonomy of rational agents; whereas Maimonides emphasizes ingrained deference to (or fear of) a timeless, divine authority that also makes appearances in time.

      Recapitulating the natural-law theory, one might say that there is one creation event for the physical universe, including the time axis itself; followed by, in prehistoric time, the creation of humankind and the natural (moral) law itself; followed by, in historic time, the writing up of moral codes in various cultures.  In this theory, one must avoid equivocation on the term “creation” (of the physical universe, of humankind, or of civilizations); on the term “prehistoric” (after a creation event but before the origin of mankind versus after the origin of mankind but before documented history); and on the term “natural law” (in physics or in ethics).

      In at least one respect, Maimonides’ natural-law analysis has an advantage over Kant’s timeless-precept approach: Maimonides can explain why God held Cain immediately responsible for Abel’s death in prehistoric time, even though the written norm against murder would not be given until much later at Mt. Sinai.  According to Maimonides, the precept against murder already existed in Cain’s day and was, or should have been, ingrained (non-inferentially) in Cain’s conscience.  In contrast, it would seem to have been too onerous a Kantian requirement to expect that Cain should have been able to perform the world’s first “universalization of subjective maxim” (a particular kind of inference) in order to ascertain de novo that murder is illicit.

      Kant’s impressive account of the timeless source of moral obligation implies that moral reasoning is available to all rational agents in a secular universe.  This reasoning is based on the universalization of subjective maxims and is analogous to the Biblical account of the “Golden Rule.”  In contrast, for Maimonides, natural law seems to appear in time in a way that is only accidentally amenable to mankind’s rational faculties and that could elude the faculties of hypothetical rational agents on a distant exoplanet.

      The concept of timelessness has served Kant less well in religion.  Kant seems to have implied that all revealed religions overlap a common domain representing a unique, timeless natural religion of reason (Vernunftreligion), which exists as an aid in motivating moral choices and as a part of the domain of pure reason.  (See the October 2019 posting to this blog.)  This natural religion of reason, if it exists, is available to all introspective, rational agents.  But as a matter of historical record among the world’s revealed religions, it seems never to have occurred to any of the leaders of the non-Christian religions that there is any such real overlap.  Instead, this purported “natural religion of overlap” seems to be a watered-down version of Christianity that is credible only to some Deistic or Enlightenment thinkers in the West, or to their intellectual successors.  

      Kant’s timeless view of Vernunftreligion led him to some views that are distinctly unorthodox from the Christian perspective: While quoting from a minor Kantian text, T. M. Greene notes on p. LIX of his Introduction to Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Harper, 1960) that Kant considered resurrection to be unimportant, “for who is so fond of his body that he would wish to drag it about with him through all eternity if he could get by without it?”  It would seem to be more appropriate to say that religion has both transcendent (timeless) and immanent (historical) aspects.