Quotation
Last reviewed:
“I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”
Immanuel Kant · Critical philosophy · Enlightenment · 1787
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the preface as a limit on theoretical knowledge: speculative reason cannot know God, freedom, or immortality as objects, and that denial leaves room for a moral faith that is not a failed science. Glauben is trust or rational faith, not only membership of a church. A rival reading hears a religious confession, a believer subordinating knowledge to a creed, and the sentence can be pressed in that direction because the words are stark. It stands in the preface to the second edition, where he explains what the critique of metaphysics was for.
Did Immanuel Kant really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of the second-edition preface, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxx. The German is Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen. Faith here renders Glauben, which Kant contrasts with knowledge, not with a church creed alone. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood translate the Critique. Mary Gregor is the guide for the moral works. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Critique of Pure Reason, B xxx
Approximate date: 1787.
How to use it
An argument in a school in Canterbury about whether a science lesson should settle a question of God is close to the distinction he is drawing, and far from a demand to skip the lesson. Denying knowledge, in this sentence, is refusing a theoretical proof he thinks cannot be had, not refusing the experiment on the bench. The room made for faith is not a room made for ignoring evidence about the bench; Confusing those rooms is how the preface gets used in fights it does not adjudicate.
A mindset reading
The rival reading, that this is simply a pious confession, is not invented. The German is strong, and he did hold that moral faith has a legitimate place. What the preface does not say is that knowledge in general has been cancelled, or that a church supplies the premises the critique removed; Aufheben is a setting-aside of a pretension, the pretension of speculative reason to know the unconditioned; Keeping both the limit and the moral faith is the reading that matches the book's structure.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is Glauben, rational faith or moral belief, distinguished from Wissen, knowledge. The preface says he had to deny the second, in its speculative overreach, to make room for the first. Freedom, God, and immortality become postulates of practical reason in the second Critique, not items of theoretical proof. Guyer and Wood's English of the first Critique is the scholarly standard, and the familiar faith sentence is one rendering of B xxx; The church-creed reading and the moral-limit reading should both be visible to anyone who quotes it.
- knowledge
- meaning
- freedom
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the preface as a limit on theoretical knowledge: speculative reason cannot know God, freedom, or immortality as objects, and that denial leaves room for a moral faith that is not a failed science. Glauben is trust or rational faith, not only membership of a church. A rival reading hears a religious confession, a believer subordinating knowledge to a creed, and the sentence can be pressed in that direction because the words are stark. It stands in the preface to the second edition, where he explains what the critique of metaphysics was for.
Did Immanuel Kant really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. A standard English of the second-edition preface, Critique of Pure Reason, B xxx. The German is Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen. Faith here renders Glauben, which Kant contrasts with knowledge, not with a church creed alone. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood translate the Critique. Mary Gregor is the guide for the moral works. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Critique of Pure Reason, B xxx Approximate date: 1787.