A Medival Formula in KantAuthor(s): Edgar WindReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Warburg Institute, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1938), p. 64Published by: The Warburg InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750025 .Accessed: 22/04/2012 04:47

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Warburg Institute is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of theWarburg Institute.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=warburghttp://www.jstor.org/stable/750025?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

A MEDIEVAL FORMULA IN KANT

t is generally admitted, even by loyal Kan- tians, that the methods of classification

employed by Kant owe much to the scho- lastic tradition. Defenders of Kant have been anxious to assert that these traces of scholastic terminology affect merely the ex- ternal form of Kant's presentation and do not penetrate to the centre of his thought. But distinctions between surface and depth are always pernicious in intellectual matters; and it is neither a correct nor a very flattering reflection on Kant to claim that the form and the spirit can be separated in his argu- ments without detriment to their meaning.

Actually, if we were to leave out from Kant's writings those parts which are strik- ingly medieval in form, we should have to omit even one passage which is generally -and justly-regarded as one of his most characteristically personal expressions. In discussing the three metaphysical questions which, according to his system, are insoluble as problems but indispensable as guides -"God, Freedom, and Immortality"-he summarizes them in a formula which appears to be distinctly eighteenth century, Prussian, and Protestant :

Alles Interesse meiner Vernunft (das spekulative sowohl als das praktische) vereinigt sich in folgenden drei Fragen :

I. Was kann ich wissen? 2. Was soll ich tun? 3. Was darf ich hoffen?'

Yet these three questions are the literal translation of a Latin formula employed by mediaeval commentators on the Bible for distinguishing the three mystical "senses" of the Scriptures :

Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quid speres anagogia.

This verse, apparently written by Agostino di Dacia in the 13th century and repeated ever since,2 was applied by Nicolaus de Lyra to the interpretation of St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians,3 and it is exactly in this

1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Transzendentale Methoden- lehre, 2. Hauptstiick, 2. Abschnitt.

2 Cf. Encyclopedia Italiana, s.v. Bibbia. s Postilla in Galat. IV, 24. The three phrases which I have italicized in quoting

the verse represent the three modes of the mystical interpretation. Under this heading they are listed together by Nicolaus de Lyra, and opposed as a unit to the literal interpretation. In speaking of the "four-fold sense" of the Scriptures, he therefore quite consistently classes the three mystical modes as a separate group : "Habet enim sacra scriptura qua-

context that it was quoted and criticized by Luther.4 It is very likely, therefore, that Kant became acquainted with it through the medium of Lutheran theology.5

With the growing insistence of Protestants on the literal understanding of the Bible, the allegorical, moral, and anagogical interpre- tations were looked upon by the Lutheran doctors as unpermissable whimsies of the imagination." Kant himself, as a militant advocate of Enlightenment, was certainly averse to the mystical interpretation of the Bible, and in his use of the mediaeval formula he divested it of all its doctrinal associations as a Christian guide to the reading of the Scriptures. What had once been an exege- tical device for extracting hidden meanings from the revealed texts of the Bible, became with him a logical scheme for defining the domain of metaphysics : a realm of questions which, according to Kant, must always be asked but are never meant to be answered.7 It is the most telling case of a secularization.

To express this distinctly anti-theological view, Kant made use of a theological formula, and thereby appropriated to himself what his ecclesiastical opponents would claim as their privileged tongue. This spirit of critical irony pervades more of Kant's writings than is generally admitted. It is perhaps at the root of the wider problem, of which the subject of this note is only one specific instance : the blending in Kant's intellectual technique of the Protestant and the scholastic temper.

E. W.

druplicem sensum, scil. historicum, qui per voces significatur, et mysticum, qui per rem significatam intellegitur : et hic est triplex: moralis quando intellegitur quid agendum sit, allegoricus quando designatur quid creden- dum, anagogicus quando signatur quid sperandum." (Italics mine).

4 Cf. Ernst von Dobschtitz, Vom vierfachen Schriftsinn, Die Geschichte einer Theorie, in Harnack-Ehrung, 1921, pp. 1-13. See this article also for bibliographical references.

5 This conjecture is supported by the fact that an alternative reading of the verse, which says quo tendas instead of quid speres, is quite frequent among Catholic authors, whereas the Protestant theologians-from Luther down to Heinrici (cf. Realencyklopddie fur Pro- testantische Theologie und Kirche, s.v. Hermeneutik)--say regularly quid speres, to which Kant's "Was darf ich hoffen?" corresponds.

6 Cf. Heinrici, loc. cit., Dobschiitz, loc. cit. The treatises on Rhetoric by Melanchthon make the case very explicit.

7 "Kein Tadel ffir unsere Deduktion . . ., son- dern ein Vorwurf, den man der menschlichen Vernunft diberhaupt machen miisste." (Grundlegung zur Meta- physik der Sitten, Schlussanmerkung.)

64

Article Contentsp. 64

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the Warburg Institute, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1938), pp. i-iv+1-84Front Matter [pp. i-iv]The Arts in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem [pp. 1-21]The Poetical Sermon of a Medival Jurist: Placentinus and His 'Sermo de Legibus' [pp. 22-41]Trinitas Creator Mundi [pp. 42-52]Blake's 'Ancient of Days': The Symbolism of the Compasses [pp. 53-63]Miscellaneous NotesA Medival Formula in Kant [p. 64]Blake's 'Glad Day' [pp. 65-68]A Simile in Christine de Pisan for Christ's Conception [pp. 68-69]Mary in the Burning Bush [pp. 69-70]The Seal of St. Nectan [pp. 70-71]A Portable Altar in the British Museum [pp. 71-72]The Literary Sources of the 'Finiguerra Planets' [pp. 72-74]'Apollo and the Swans' on the Tomb of St. Sebaldus [pp. 75]The Four Elements in Raphael's 'Stanza della Segnatura' [pp. 75-79]A Note on Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's [p. 80]'Adamas Mourned by the Nymphs' in Schedel's 'Liber Antiquitatum' [pp. 80-81]'Good Counsel': An Adaptation from Ripa [pp. 81-82]'Grammatica': From Martianus Capella to Hogarth [pp. 82-84]