Edward Kanterian’s book is a concentrated synthesis of the complex relationship between thought and faith, reason and revelation in the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The author has managed to provide a concise history of the tradition of intensive thinking, which can hardly be systematized in a rigorous way. The apostles of pre-modern and modern thought, on whose legacy the current mentality is built, are analyzed in turn. The most important are: Erasmus, Luther, Montaigne, Pascal, Bayle, Newton, Boyle, Locke, Hume, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolf and Kant. But lesser-known figures are also thoroughly explored with an updated bibliography. In short, we are dealing with a direction of modern thought, the reader has at hand not only the bibliography necessary to get acquainted with the history of this period, but also an encyclopedic presentation of the most important directions of argumentation from the dawn of modern intellectualism.

The relationship between faith and reason is explored both historically and conceptually, the book can also be read as an X-ray of modern European philosophy up to Kant, illustrating how philosophical reason is constantly marked by religious themes and only occasionally by scientific problems. Kanterian points out that we are dealing with an intellectual history that can hardly be defined as purely philosophical, secular, and revolutionary-scientific, but rather one that intersects and intersects with—too many and varied—systems of theological thought. But these classifications, it should be added, do not accurately reflect early modern culture, but rather our way of perceiving and adapting that intellectual ferment that dominated Western European culture. Theological, metaphysical, and natural philosophical subjects overlap so much that some answers that we today classify as scientific answer only some theological challenges, while other philosophical-metaphysical solutions answer only questions strictly related to theological discourse. This should not be surprising for the simple reason that for a long time in European thought, theology and philosophy overlapped to the point of identity. The Kanterian scholar demonstrates that the intellectual constant of the early modern age is purely theological (especially related to the role and possibility of revelation), which troubled even the most rationalist minds. In other words, pre-Kantian thinking is philosophic-theological, and this is seen not only in thinkers ordained as “pure” philosophers (such as Descartes), who seem untainted by theological questions, but also in theologians who try to abstract. from philosophy and its history as far as possible. Thus, there is a direct connection between theology (especially from the Protestant ethos) and modern philosophy. But not only a direct connection, somewhat expected, but also an irreversible influence from the most unexpected corners of the Reformation, such as Zwingli. Without the theological program proclaimed by Luther, the beginnings and great questions that give specificity to modern thought would have a completely different meaning and would have a completely different fate.

Therefore, to understand Kant and the themes that tormented him in this way, it is not enough to read the work and the analytical exegesis that tries to clarify as much as possible the structure of his philosophical system. One more ingredient is needed, namely the one that concerns history modern philosophy up to Kant and its interpenetration with theological thinking (especially Lutheran and Reformed). These interpenetrations are rarely addressed by Kantian exegesis, most often witnessing a one-sided historical reconstruction that emphasizes the crescendo of rationalist philosophy from Descartes to Kant, contrasting it with empiricism. Yet in Kanterian’s erudite book we see that the discourse of modern thought, whether rationalist or empiricist, has been polished by direct contact with theological questions. It Weltanschauung theologically, it not only shook and socially restructured the beginning of the New Age, but also became a source of reference for the most complex minds in the history of philosophy.

Given these coordinates, it is often impractical to study the arguments of philosophers just for the sake of argument without seeing WHO accurately formulates a certain type of argument, Why and in what for context. If we did not know who the author of the text was, this would be permissible, perhaps even ideal, but when the argument can be found and attributed, the context can clarify much, perhaps even more than the intent of the text. Of course, an argument has value in itself and should be evaluated according to its validity, but this could only be achieved if philosophical arguments were launched anonymously, without knowing who is formulating them. Even in such a situation, we will still wonder why such arguments were formulated at a certain time and not earlier or later. Philosophical thinking, essentially mind, has its own history, that is, tradition (similar to Christian theology, which builds its identity on two axes: Scripture and synodal tradition, and they are twins), and this is why philosophers are mostly impossible to understand outside of their own tradition of thinking. This emphasis on the traditional-contextual element in philosophy is somewhat at odds with the modern mode of exegesis, which favors only argumentation. Such a solum argumentum and that’s it. Or, the exegesis of any type of argument must take into account, but not in an absolute way, of course also the sender, but especially the intellectual framework in which the relevant content of the thought is formed. This framework can be expanded in many directions, but in this case the metaphysical-religious context is of primary importance. In other words, philosophy has a history and cannot be understood outside of it, and Kanterian does this incredibly convincingly.

Even when Kant revises metaphysics and opposes the possibility of transcendental knowledge (especially related to the knowledge of the existence of God), this way of problematizing and reasoning is a tribute to philosophical and theological thinking, which is concerned with such epistemo-metaphysical problems, while the answers obtained are more or less herald critical idealism. We can conclude that we are undoubtedly dealing with the expansion of apologetics at the heart of rationalism. In other words, the Kantian “Copernican revolution” cannot be thought outside of its intellectual prehistory, which goes back to the dawn of the modern era. This background informs Kant and many of his themes. The Kantian revolution is actually the endpoint of a revolution that began several centuries earlier. Kant’s solutions are clearly different, but the way the problems are formulated is specific to pre-Kantianism. For this reason, and the Kanterian emphasizes this very clearly, Kant cannot be understood without Protestant-type theology, and sometimes even Pietism, which is intensively engaged in early modern philosophy, as well as the Collegium Fridericianum (especially through Martin Knutzen). ), where Kant studied in his youth. So Kant is a product of his own city, Königsberg, but also of his era. More specifically, the author shows that Shulphilosophy, an intellectual and pedagogical current that has its roots in the Lutheran and Calvinist reforms and dominated the German space for more than a century before Kant. Here the Kanterian is somewhat at odds with the whole attempt of Anglo-Saxon philosophy (which ultimately traces its roots to the Marburg School and its exponent, Hermann Cohen), which portrays Kant as a thinker almost contemporary to us and, finally, secular. Philosophical concepts that seem essentially strictly Kantian are defined historically, in this case theologically. Transcendental dialectics did not arise out of nowhere, and, moreover, the apparent neutrality regarding fundamental religious questions is more related to the Lutheran theological revolution than to the scientific revolution. The context determines not only the interrogative content, but also the formulating method. Although the proposed answers are not theological in nature, the Kantian critical turn must be reconsidered in light of the ideological archeology proposed by the Kantians. Like it or not, Kant’s thinking is closer to theology than to science, as are the most important pre-modern and modern thinkers. In other words, Kant would belong more to the Middle Ages than to the Enlightenment. In the way it contextualizes Kantian thought, Kanterian’s book resembles what Allan S. Janick and Stephen S. Toulmin do in Wittgenstein’s Vienna (published 1973, Rom. ed. 1998, Humanitas), where we we are dealing with the reinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy according to the cultural context. _Read the entire article and comment on it at contributors.ro