Daniël Muller - Immanuel Kant o…

Society of Adventist Philosophers Conference 2023

16 November 2023

Immanuel Kant on the End of All Things:

Philosophical Eschatology as Theo-Political Critique
Daniël Muller
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

On April 10, 1794, Immanuel Kant addressed a letter to J. E. Biester, the editor
of the Berlinische Monatsschri!, informing him that he was on the verge of
submitting an essay with the portentous title “Das Ende aller Dinge” [“The End
of All Things”].[1] Alluding to Jonathan Swi!’s satirical A Tale of the Tub, Kant
assures Biester that the new essay “will be partly plaintive, partly funny to read
[teils kläglich teils lustig zu lesen]”.[2] This essay was written in response to the
ascendence of a new Prussian administration with a ravenous appetite for
repression. Several months a!er the essay was published, Kant was o#cially
censored by the “self-styled Christian prince” Friedrich Wilhelm II and his
cohorts who strictly prohibited him from writing on all matters pertaining to
religion.[3] This raises the question: why did Kant use the idea of the end of the
world as a linchpin for his critique of the new Prussian authorities’ enforcement
of their rigid vision of religious truth by political means? In order to answer this
question, I will $rst reconstruct Kant’s key arguments, and then show how he
playfully uses the concepts of ‘ends’ and ‘means’ to critique the coercive
policies of the Prussian regime

I. Going Out of Time into Eternity: The Moral Order of Ends

Written during the tumultuous period of the French Revolution, “The End
of All Things” strives to re%ect upon what the expectation of the end reveals
about the structure of human reason. Kant begins his essay by re%ecting upon
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 the philosophical implications that arise when thinking about the end of our
$nite individual life. His starting point is the “common expression, used chie%y
in pious language, to speak of a person who is dying as going out of time into
eternity” (8:327).[4] Kant notes that this saying would be vacuous if ‘eternity’ is
here understood as a never ending temporal sequence. For in such an in$nite
time-sequence, a person would successively move from t1 to tn without ever
leaving the space-time continuum. He therefore concludes that eternity must
be understood, literally, as an end of all time, i.e. as the cessation of time itself.
Despite the absolute termination of time, he argues that human persons would
nonetheless continue to exist in a manner incomparable with time, “of which
we are obviously not able to form any concept (except a merely negative one).”
[5]
Having sketched this brief argument for understanding eternity as
timelessness, Kant subsequently re-examines the transition from time into
eternity from a moral perspective. The ending of our historical lives as time-
bound creatures is simultaneously the beginning of our eternal lives as what he
calls ‘supersensible’ beings.[6] As such, we are no longer subject to time and
neither conditioned by physical causes. Kant therefore insists that the nature of
our post-mortem existence can only be determined by what he describes as
‘the moral order of ends’.[7] Since the ‘supersensible’ can only be understood in
moral terms, he concludes that “the idea of an end of all things takes its origins
from reasonings not about the physical but rather about the moral course of
things in the world”.[8] And as a hinge between our historical, time-bound,
physical lives and our eternal, timeless, spiritual existence, stands the ‘last day’,
which, with its settling of accounts for free creatures, is therefore “the real end
of all things in time”.[9]

II. No Play Without A Resolution: The Expectation and Nature of the End
A!er brie%y discussing the advantages and drawbacks of two systems
pertaining to the eternal future of humans, Kant comes back to the main thread
and asks a two-fold question that is central to his whole essay: “But why do
human beings expect an end of the world at all? And if this is conceded to
them, why must it be a terrible end (for the greatest part of the human race)?”
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 [10] His answer to the $rst question is that, upon rational re%ection, it appears
to human reason that the continued existence of the world only has value
inasmuch as the rational agents in it are attuned to what he calls “the $nal end
of their existence”.[11] If, however, humans are not, for whatever reason, able to
fully realize their ultimate purpose, then the very created order itself appears
meaningless to them, “like a play having no resolution and a&ording no
cognition of any rational aim”.[12] For Kant, the perceived worth of the
persistence of the world is thus closely aligned to the complete attainment of
the highest aim for us as reasoning creatures.
The second question concerning the terrifying nature of the expected end
is, in Kant’s view, based upon our conviction about the true moral condition of
humanity. Given that our corruption is “great to the point of hopelessness”, it is
no wonder that “the omens of the last day” are all of such a dreadful type: the
sheer awfulness of the anticipated apocalypse is, a!er all, fully commensurate
with the abyssal corruption of humanity taken as a whole. Indeed, Kant even
laconically goes on to say that it is “the only end (for the greatest part of
humanity) that accords with highest wisdom and justice, employing any
respectable standard”.[13]
Following his further comment that some people see end-time signs in
seemingly unprecedented moral decline and rare natural phenomena, Kant
dryly remarks that it is not in vain that humans “feel their existence a burden,
even if they themselves are the cause”.[14] He observes in this regard that the
cultural and economic advancement of humanity, as might be expected, runs
faster than the pace of moral progress. This chronic imbalance is, he thinks,
deeply disturbing and potentially damaging to our moral as well as physical
well-being, because “the needs grow stronger than the means to satisfy them”.
[15]
Regardless of this pessimistic assessment, Kant still believes that the moral
thread of humanity, which ‘runs with a lame foot’, will one day surpass the
ethically debilitating forces of cultural and economic advancement. He
therefore urges his readers to “nourish the hope that the last day might sooner
come on the scene with Elijah’s ascension than with the like descent of Korah’s
troops into hell, and bring with it the end of all things on earth”.[16] Even so, he
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 also acknowledges that this “heroic faith in virtue” is much less e#cacious in
altering people’s behavior than the scenes of terror that are thought to precede
the end of all things.[17]

III. Kant’s Clari!catory Note: The Three Categories of the End of All Things
A!er these sobering remarks about the moral condition of humans, Kant
injects a clari$catory “Note” in which he explicitly states that he is playing with
“ideas created by reason itself,” whose referents (if they have any) are totally
outside the grasp of reason. But although these ideas are, strictly speaking,
beyond our ken, they should not be seen as empty. These eschatological
concepts are rather o&ered to us by what he terms “lawgiving reason itself”, not
to brood over their intrinsic nature but rather “with a practical intent”, namely
“to think of them in behalf of moral principles directed toward the $nal end of
all things”.[18] By thinking of such concepts in support of moral maxims aimed
at the ultimate purpose of humans, they obtain their “objective practical
reality”. Since we, therefore, as Kant says, have “a free $eld before us,” we are
able to classify “the universal concept of an end of all things” in various
categories that bear a particular relation to our severely limited rational
cognition.
Kant divides up ‘the universal concept of an end of all things’ in three
distinct subcategories: “(1) the natural end of all things, according to the order
of divine wisdom’s moral ends, which we therefore (with a practical intent) can
very well understand; (2) their mystical (supernatural) end in the order of
e#cient causes, of which we understand nothing, and (3) the
contranatural (perverse) end of all things, which comes from us when we
misunderstand the $nal end.”[19] While the $rst category of the order of ‘moral
ends’ has already been discussed, Kant will now provide an analysis of the $nal
two categories, the last of which will be crucial to his response to the Prussian
authorities’ imposition of their religious views by political means.

IV. Everlasting Temporal Flux and Stable Moral Character

In the next section, Kant quotes the angel of Revelation 10:5-6 saying “that
henceforth time shall be no more”. He ironically notes that “if one does not
assume that this angel “with his voice of seven thunders” (v. 3) wanted to cry
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 nonsense, then he must have meant that henceforth there shall be no
alteration”.[20] Here he mainly elaborates upon the argument that he
formulated in the very $rst pages of his essay, namely how change in the world
can only occur within time. For Kant, the angel of Revelation 10 therefore
represents not the ful$llment of certain speci$c biblical time prophecies, but
rather “an end of all things as objects of sense”.[21] But although the
termination of time implies the end of all alteration in the sensible world, Kant
maintains that our moral disposition — being itself supersensible, i.e.
supraphysical — is not similarly subject to the shi!ing sand of temporal
mutation and transformation. We therefore ought to treat our maxims, our
subjective principles of action, as if our moral character is not temporally
changeable, regardless of the fact that we might constantly make steps towards
moral progression into an endless future. Kant gives the following example to
illustrate how this rather paradoxical abstract idea is actually closely aligned
with reason’s practical intent.
Suppose ‘eternity’ is an in$nite temporal duration rather than an absence
of all time. And suppose further that a person is experiencing the best possible
moral and physical well-being in the here and now, continually advancing
towards the highest good as their $nal goal in life. Even if such a person would
be acutely aware of the immutability of his or her moral character, he or she
would still not be truly satis$ed, Kant insists, if their moral as well as physical
condition would be subject to constant change for an in$nite future duration,
i.e. this is not the kind of stu& that should be contingent upon the vicissitudes
of an everlasting %ux. For his or her current condition will always continue to
be a relative evil or suboptimal state in comparison with the new phase of
moral progress that he or she is about to embark upon.
From this perspective, the anticipation of an unending evolution toward
the ultimate aim of the highest good, is simultaneously the expectation of an
unbounded series of relative evils. And although these relative evils might
ultimately be compensated by an outweighing good, they will nevertheless
never a&ord the morally virtuous actor with truly abiding contentment. Such a
person could only $nd genuine contentment by assuming that he or she can
accomplish their ultimate moral goal at some point of time in the in$nite
future.
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 A!er these ruminations on ‘the order of divine wisdom’s moral ends’, Kant
barely spends a paragraph on the second subcategory of the concept of the end,
namely the ‘mystical (supernatural) end’, about which, according to him, we
cannot understand anything at all.
When we do try to think about the end of time as a supernatural event rather
than as an idea of practical reason, we will inescapably stumble into a form of
mysticism, because we are striving to rationally move beyond the limits of our
human cognitive capacities. In this regard, Kant derogatorily dismisses Chinese
philosophers who “exert themselves to think and sense their own nothingness”.
Their intensely sought a!er “eternal tranquility”, this “supposedly blessed end
of all things” is, for Kant, a concept in which “all thinking itself has an end”.[22]

V. The Perverse End of All Things: Kant’s Theo-Political Critique

In the $nal part of Kant’s essay, he playfully employs the concepts of ‘means’
and ‘ends’ to explore the third subcategory of the end: ‘the
contranatural (perverse) end of all things’. His $rst sentence immediately sets
the tone for the whole section: “The end of all things which go through the
hands of human beings, even when their purposes are good, is folly, i.e. the use
of means to their ends which are directly opposed to these ends.”[23] Kant here
seems to use the word ‘end’ in the $rst clause of this sentence in the sense of a
$nal result or outcome. On this reading, he seems to be arguing that everything
that humans manage to undertake will inevitably be contaminated by a
disturbing disconnection between the purportedly good ends they seek and the
discrepant means they are willing to consider to achieve such ends.
In contrast to the self-contradictory nature of folly, Kant argues that
wisdom consists in adopting means that are congruous with “the $nal end of all
things — the highest good”.[24] But solely God acts in such a fully consistent
manner, and the single thing that might be appropriately conceived as human
wisdom is when someone doesn’t act ostensibly contrary to this notion of
wisdom.[25] Whereas humans, through trial and error, can hope to strive
towards such perfect consistency, they will never be able to do so completely.
This deep discrepancy between means and ends explains, for Kant, the vast
variety of political-theological projects throughout history that have sought to
use political authority to enforce religious precepts. He thus ironically exclaims:
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 “Hence too the projects — altering from age to age and o!en absurd — of
$nding suitable means to make religion in a whole people pure and at the same
time powerful, so that one can well cry out: Poor mortals, with you nothing is
constant except inconstancy!”[26]
These e&orts to make religion simultaneously ‘pure’ and ‘powerful’ are
ultimately based upon a profound misunderstanding of “the $nal end of all
things” — the ultimate purpose of free rational and moral agents. However,
Kant, perhaps surprisingly, also holds out the possibility that there might be
somewhat similar projects that are worth endorsing.
Suppose these political-theological projects have been su#ciently
successful that a particular community has become willing to receive the “pious
doctrines” as well as “a practical reason which has been illuminated by them”,
which, Kant adds, is “absolutely necessary for a religion”.[27] If the “sages” in
such a community organize such projects as fellow citizens rather than
ecclesiastical rulers, and if most of the people in the community agree with
them based upon their own felt needs directed toward “the necessary
cultivation of its moral disposition”, then Kant would give his go-ahead. Even
though they might be on a good path, it is still uncertain whether they have
chosen proper means to realize their goal: it remains to be seen whether the
chosen means are exclusively directed towards morality. Kant therefore seems
open to certain political-theological projects, on the condition that they have
democratic support and are solely directed towards the cultivation of moral
character. Yet, are such political-theological projects compatible with the nature
of Christianity? I now turn to Kant’s $nal thoughts on the love worthiness of
Christianity and its incompatibility with any form of imposed authority.

VI. The (Moral) Love Worthiness of Christianity and Imposed Authority

On the last two pages of the essay, Kant provides his argumentation for why
Christianity has something about it which is “worthy of love”.[28] He suggests
that love, which is manifested by voluntarily incorporating the volition of
another into your own rules for action, is a necessary supplement to the deep-
rooted imperfection of human nature. With this de$nition of love, Kant now
elucidates why the imposition of authority is inherently inimical to
Christianity. If you add any form of authority to Christianity, whether human
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 or divine, and even if you have the best of intensions and a supremely
commendable goal, then you will nonetheless eliminate its worthiness to be
loved. In this regard, Kant states that “it is a contradiction to command not only
that someone should do something but that he should do it with liking.”[29]
He further notes that Christ does not speak like a general who demands
obedience, but rather like “a friend of humanity who appeals to the hearts of
his fellow human beings on behalf of their own well-understood will, i.e. of the
way they would of themselves voluntarily act if they examined themselves
properly.”[30] Christ can win over the hearts of human beings when they
already have an understanding of the laws pertaining to their moral duties.
Kant hereby foregrounds the primacy of freedom for the attribute of ‘worthy to
be loved’: “The feeling of freedom in the choice of the $nal end is what makes
the legislation worthy of its love.” While Christ also announces rewards and
punishments, Kant emphasizes that these are not be be conceived as incentives
for action, because otherwise these sel$sh motives would, once again, cease to
make Christianity to be worthy of love.
Finally, Kant, peering into the future, sketches an eschatological scenario,
the basic contours of which will not be unfamiliar to an apocalyptically literate
Adventist audience:[31]
“If Christianity should ever come to the point where it ceased to be
worthy of love
(which could very well transpire if instead of its gentle spirit it were
armed with commanding authority), then, because there is no
neutrality in moral things (still less a coalition between opposed principles,
a disinclination and resistance to it would becoming the ruling
mode of thought among people; and the Antichrist, who is taken to be
the forerunner of the last day, would begin his — albeit short — regime
(presumably based on fear and self-interest); but then, because
Christianity, though supposedly destined to be the world religion,
would not be favored by fate to become it,
the (perverted) end of all things, in a moral respect would arrive.”[32]

Here Kant envisions a bleak future scenario in which Christianity, ‘instead of its
gentle spirit’ becomes ‘armed with commanding authority’. His theo-political
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 critique[33] consists of the idea that the new Prussian regime’s attempts to
enforce religion through political power is not only based upon a profound
misunderstanding of ‘the $nal end’ of free rational and moral agents, but that
these e&orts are particularly in con%ict with the moral love worthiness of
Christianity.
In case this scenario would someday materialize, then, far from Christianity
being favored by fate to become the world religion, this would rather usher in
‘the perverted end of all things,’ understood in a moral manner: the ultimate
perversion of the true freedom-loving core of Christianity and the distortion of
the ultimate aim of rational and moral agents.[34]

VII. Conclusion
Now we are positioned to suggest an answer to the initial question: why does
Kant use the idea of the end of the world as a linchpin for his critique of the
new Prussian authorities who were trying to impose their vision of religious
truth by political means? Kant employs the eschatological concept of the end
and its derivatives, because it allows him to speak about the proper and
improper relationships between ‘means’ and ‘ends’. And he argues that such a
mismatch between means and ends is the result of a profound
misunderstanding of the $nal end of all things in a moral sense. Eschatology is
thus employed for the purposes of ethics. The end of all things as an idea of
reason thus shows how theological concepts can serve as normative resources
for philosophical critique of the illegitimate use of political power.
Kant’s philosophical eschatology exempli$es his conception of the
relationship between theology and philosophy, whereby philosophy should
demonstrate the limits of speculative cognition and show how theological
concepts can morally be put to work through practical reason. Kant’s re%ections
about the regulative signi$cance of the end of the world as an idea of reason
constitutes an e&ort to delineate an appropriate moral application of
theological concepts, which become practical in various concrete contexts.
Kant’s playful use of eschatological concepts ultimately coalesces into a
$nal warning. Written in an age in which people widely believed that
Christianity was destined to be the world religion (an idea inextricably bound
up with Western modernity’s imperial universalist pretensions), Kant’s vision of
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 the possible future of Christianity was a bit of a shocker. But his future
prognosis was not a stale prediction but rather a prophetic warning to not let it
happen.
Although seemingly pessimistic, Kant’s last words in the essay can be
considered a prophetic call, using eschatological concepts to remind his readers
of the moral love worthiness of Christianity, which is centered in its freedom-
loving core. Kant thereby challenges us to think and act in harmony with our
$nal telos as humans and to strive towards greater consistency between the
adoption of our means and ends. In these times from climate crisis to
‘Christofascism’, we can’t a&ord to remain indi&erent to this Kantian call.

SOAP Conference 2023

[1] Translation of “The End of All Things” (8:327-339) by Allen Wood in Immanuel Kant,
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Allen Wood
and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017.
[2] Otfried Ho&es calls this essay “ein Meisterstuck philosophischer, mit Melancholie gefarbter
Ironie” [“a masterpiece of philosophical irony tinged with melancholy”, my translation].
Immanuel Kant, Munchen, 1933, S. p. 39.
[3] Karl Ameriks, ”Once Again: The End of All Things” in Kant on Persons and Agency, ed. E.
Watkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 213.
[4] “The End of All Things”, p. 221.
[5] Kant remarks that the radical (in)conceivability of an end of all time and a subsequent
timeless state of being has both something horrifying as well as attractive to it: “for one cannot
cease turning his terri$ed gaze back to it again and again (nequeunt explore cords tuned.
Virgil).” It is frighteningly sublime partly because it is obscure, for the imagination works harder
in darkness than it does in the light. Yet in the end it must also be woven in a wondrous way
into universal human reason, because it is encountered among all reasoning peoples at all
times, clothed in one way or another” (p. 221).

[6] Seemingly assuming a Platonic timeless ontology, he argues that this transition constitutes a
shi! from the historical, time-bound, physical world to an eternal, timeless, supersensible
realm.

[7] “The End of All Things”, p. 221.

[8]Idem, p. 222.
[9]Idem, p. 222.
[10] Idem, p. 224.
[11] Idem, p. 224. Kant understands the word ‘end’ (in German: ‘End’ or ‘Zweck’) in two distinct
but related senses: (1) as terminus, as chronological termination as well as (2) as telos, as
teleological destination. More speci$cally, he connects the world’s $nite temporal duration with
what he considers to be our moral self-determination and a $nal ethical evaluation.
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 [12] Idem, p. 224.
[13] Idem, p. 225.
[14] Idem, p. 255.
[15] Idem, p. 225.
[16] Idem, p. 225. It is perhaps possible to detect in Kant’s moral optimism a glimpse of the
postmillennial idea of the perfectibility of society.
[17] Idem, p. 225.
[18] Idem, pp. 225-226.
[19] Idem, p. 226.
[20] Idem, p. 226. Since Kant thinks that the end of time implies the end of change, he believes
that this is the reason why “the inhabitants of the other world” are represented as “striking up
always the same song, their “Alleluia!,” or else eternally the same wailing tones ([Rev.] 19:1-6;
20:15): by which is indicated the total lack of all change in their state” (p. 227). It seems that the
presupposition of a Platonic timeless ontology leads Kant to think that our post-mortem
existence will be characterized by a complete absence of time and change.
[21] Idem, p. 226.
[22] Idem, p. 228.
[23] Idem, p. 228.
[24] Idem, p. 228.
[25] The idea of an end of all things might also be seen as an regulative ideal in terms of which
we can conceive our current moral and political e&orts in the Anthropocene: making an end to
the world in which people, animals and land are used (seemingly without end) as mere means
to an end without succumbing to the abiding temptation of thinking that, while striving for a
di&erent world, the end justi$es the means.
[26] Idem, p. 228.
[27] Idem, p. 229. In contrast to the rather individualistically oriented earlier sections, here
Kant introduces clearly communal and democratic notions such as “the community,” “ fellow
citizens” and “the people at large”.
[28] Idem, p. 229.
[29] Idem, p. 229.
[30] Idem, p. 230.
[31] Compare Immanuel Kant’s on authority and the love worthiness of Christianity with Ellen White:
“When men indulge this accusing spirit, they are not satis$ed with pointing out what they suppose to be a
defect in their brother. If milder means fail of making him do what they think ought to be done, they will
resort to compulsion. Just as far as lies in their power they will force men to comply with their ideas of
what is right. This is what the Jews did in the days of Christ and what the church has done ever since
whenever she has lost the grace of Christ. Finding herself destitute of the power of love, she has reached
out for the strong arm of the state to enforce her dogmas and execute her decrees. Here is the secret of all
religious laws that have ever been enacted, and the secret of all persecution from the days of Abel to our
own time.” MB 126.2

Christ does not drive but draws men unto Him. The only compulsion which He employs is the constraint
of love. When the church begins to seek for the support of secular power, it is evident that she is devoid of
the power of Christ—the constraint of divine love.” MB 127.1
[32] Idem, p. 231.
[33] It is striking that in this last paragraph Kant seems to be using militaristic vocabulary and
language of dominion to point out a speci$c conceptual connection between this political-
theological power-wielding and the mindset of those who refuse to accept it. If Christianity
possibles becomes armed with commanding authority, then this will lead to pervasive aversion
and hostility becoming the ruling mode of thought among a people. Kant seems to be
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 suggesting here that if one starts to exercise coercive power, then this will somehow reproduce
itself and have a mirror-e&ect in widespread resistance becoming the ruling mode of thought.
[34] To what extent can we think of concepts in Adventist theology in behalf of moral
principles directed toward the ultimate purpose of humans and the whole of creation in the
context of climate crisis? And in which ways does Kant’s theo-political critique of a new regime
using political means to enforce religious beliefs speak to current developments of
‘Christofascism’?
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