“This is a brilliant and much needed book. Dorrien’s magisterial achievements to date lend his voice a special authority, but in this book, the reader is simply compelled by the deft interplay of nuance and overview.”
Catherine Keller, Drew University
“Gary Dorrien is a superstar interpreter of modern religious thought. This unique, fascinating, aggressively
revisionary book will have no competition until books appear to argue against it.”
Frederick Ferré, University of Georgia
“This book is a brilliant and much needed account of the influence of Immanuel Kant and the tradition of post-Kantian idealism on modern theology.”
William Stacy Johnson, Princeton Theological Seminary
“No one else I know could have written this book, which will be the dominant treatment of its subject.
Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit is a magisterial interpretive history of one of the most important theological deltas of our time.”
Robert C. Neville, Boston University
“In its lucidity, comprehensiveness and narrative power, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit is without equal. One can only marvel.”
Cyril O’Regan, Commonweal
What role, if any, did Immanuel Kant and post-Kantian idealists such as Hegel play in shaping modern
theology? In Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit, noted theologian Gary Dorrien argues that Kantian and
post-Kantian idealism were instrumental in the foundation and development of modern Christian theology.
In this thought-provoking new work, Dorrien contends that while pre-Kantian rationalism offered a critique
of religion’s authority, it held no theory about the creative powers of mind, nor about the spiritual ground and unifying reality of freedom. As Kant provided both of these, he can be considered the originator of modern religious thought. Dorrien reveals how the post-Kantian idealists also played an important role, by fashioning other forms of liberal religious thought through alternative solutions to the Kantian problems of subjectivity and dualism. Dorrien carefully dissects Kant’s three critiques of reason and his moral conception of religion, and analyzes the alternatives to Kant offered by Schleiermacher, Schelling, Hegel, and others. Dorrien goes on to provide a substantial account of the development of liberal theology in Britain, and the thought of Paul Tillich and Karl Barth, showing how these, as well as the dominant traditions of German liberal theology, and even the powerful critiques of liberal religious idealism proffered by Kierkegaard and the left-Hegelian school, were rooted in Kantian or post-Kantian idealism.
Presenting these notoriously difficult arguments in a wonderfully lucid and accessible manner, Dorrien solidifies his reputation as a pre-eminent social ethicist. Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit offers deeply illuminating insights into the impact of nineteenth-century philosophical idealism on contemporary religious thought.
