c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

(UNDATED) At a recent service in our synagogue, Rabbi Darren Levine spoke about the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and his impact on Jewish religious thought.

The sermon set me thinking about a “Kantian moment” I experienced as a rabbinical student when I first entered the office of Samuel Atlas, who taught both Talmud and philosophy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. He was a brilliant product of the pre-World War II Jewish academies in Europe that were destroyed in the Holocaust.

Although three pictures were on Atlas’ wall, I was able to identity only two: Moses Maimonides and Atlas himself. I assumed the unknown third person, wearing clothes of the American Colonial period, was also a philosopher and I correctly guessed the trio represented Atlas’ philosophic Hall of Fame.

“Rudin,” Atlas called out. He never used first names. “Did you ever take a philosophy course in college?”

“Yes, sir. Several,” I mumbled. He replied, “Ah, then, you know that is a picture of the greatest philosopher of the modern age.” I was clearly on the spot, and I feared a wrong answer spelled disaster for me in Atlas’ class.

But with the professorial hint, I knew who it was. “Kant,” I confidently said. Atlas seemed pleased.

Whether Kant merited Atlas’ high praise, I leave to professional philosophers. But one thing is sure: Kant, two centuries after his death, continues to have an extraordinary influence on Western thought, behavior and religion.

Kant was a university professor in Konigsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) who stressed the concepts of personal autonomy and morality based on pure reason. It is Kantian teaching whenever people say, “You choose to do whatever you want to do, and I’ll do what I want to do.”

Whenever people stress reason and rationality as sources for religious beliefs, I hear the classic arguments of Kant. Revelation was an inadequate source of religious knowledge; only pure reason counted. He believed reason provided humans with a universal moral set of ethics valid everywhere and among all groups of people.

Kant was a foe of religions and political systems that oppressed individuals. But because Kant lived in the politically and religiously oppressive Prussian state, Kaiser Fredrick William II in 1792 removed the philosopher from his teaching position. When the kaiser died five years later, the 73-year-old Kant resumed his university lectures.

Kant asserted reason is the ultimate authority for morality. No action should be carried out simply because it is custom or traditional belief. He believed reason would always triumph over emotions, or social and political beliefs. For Kant it was “Reason above all things!”

It’s no surprise that Kantian philosophy had great influence on reform movements in Judaism and Christianity that stressed individualism and reason.

Kant is most famous for what he called the categorical imperative: “Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature.”

But that Kantian belief collapses in the real world that is driven by emotions, tribal and clan loyalties, religious extremism and laws not based on reason … all the things Kant detested.

Kant’s categorical imperative permitted disembodied ethical decisions totally divorced from reality. He taught that actions are performed not for good or pleasure, but for duty. And “duty is the necessity to act out of reverence for the law.” If a ruthless government or an evil leader issues orders that appear legal, rational and reasonable, a person must carry them out. It is a categorical imperative.

For Germany, for Jews and for the world, that line of Kantian thought led straight to the Auschwitz death camp, mass murders and the Holocaust.

Adolf Eichmann claimed he performed lawful duties to exterminate the Jews of Europe during World War II. Indeed, at his trial in the early 1960s, the Nazi leader told the Israeli court he carried out his task because killing Jews was a rational policy designed to rid Germany of “inferior” people; it was lawful and based on reason.

Incredibly, in his defense Eichmann cited _ you guessed it _ Kant’s “categorical imperative.” The Nazi first compared himself to Pontius Pilate; like the Roman governor of ancient Israel, Eichmann carried out lawful orders, although he claimed he did not morally approve of them. Eichmann quoted Kant’s assertion “that a law is a law, there can be no exceptions.”

But even Kant could not save Eichmann. He was hanged for war crimes _ Israel’s only act of capital punishment in its history.

MO/PH END RUDIN