Reincarnation — the Thoughts of Immanuel Kant
I’ve recently done a series of articles on reincarnation¹, something I believe in. At the very least a strong case can be made for it on the basis of available evidence². Not all spiritual people believe in reincarnation, however, and argue against it. On Medium an example would be Spirit Dharma³. I also have a friend, a devotee of the spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff, who makes similar arguments. The essential point of disagreement seems to be whether or not one believes in the existence of the soul.
According to many modern thinkers, in the wake of the Enlightenment, all thoughts of religion, spirituality, and the supernatural should have been left behind, and relegated to the dustbin of history; humanity should have grown out of all such ‘superstitions’. In this new series, therefore, I’m going to explore just how many intelligent, sophisticated thinkers still believe in reincarnation in modern times, despite what ‘Enlightenment’ thinking might say.
I’ll begin with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). According to one online source he “is considered the most influential thinker of the Enlightenment era and one of the greatest Western philosophers of all times… Besides establishing himself as one of the foremost Western philosophers, Kant also made an important contribution to science and is considered one of the most important figures in the development of modern science… His main contribution to the rise of modern science was its liberation from theology”⁴.
It’s worth pausing a moment to reflect on the phrases I’ve italicised. Kant was an Enlightenment figure, interested in science and its advancement, and was aware of the problems of traditional religion. We might therefore expect him to be an atheist, or argue against spiritual ideas. On the contrary, Kant talks about “the transcendental hypothesis, that all life is properly intelligible, and not subject to the changes of time, and that it neither began in birth, nor will end in death… If we could see ourselves and other objects as they really are, we should see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, our community with which neither began at our birth nor will end with the death of the body”⁵.
In an early work he had also said: “In view of the endless duration of the immortal soul throughout the infinity of time, which even the grave itself does not interrupt… shall the soul remain forever attached to this one point of world-space, our earth?” He goes on to contemplate the possibility of the soul’s future reincarnation on other planets which would be “a new dwelling place for us to occupy after we have completed the period of time allotted for our sojourn here”⁶.
According to many modern thinkers Kant would be considered crazy for thinking such things. On the other hand, perhaps he is actually the greatest thinker of the Enlightenment era.
I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics, and astrology. All these articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here).
===============================================================
Footnotes:
1. Reincarnation and Christianity, either on Medium or on my website, Reincarnation — Memories of Past Lives, on Medium or on my website, and An Interesting Anecdote, on Medium or on my website.
2. see, for example, the research of Ian Stevenson and Erlendur Haraldsson in the second article in footnote 1.
3. see: https://medium.com/@SpiritDharma/heaven-on-earth-7d83596d4a0b
4. http://www.philosophers.co.uk/immanuel-kant.html
5. Critique of Pure Reason, Part II: i.iii
6. Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, (General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens), Königsberg and Leipzig, 1755, Part III, Appendix, Conclusion
