Freedom of Religion in Mendelssohn and Kant

This chapter compares the two philosophers’ great arguments for separation of church and state. Mendelssohn’s argument is contained in Part I of his 1783 Jerusalem. He holds that the state and any church employ two different means to the same end, human happiness, and that the state’s coercive methods have no place in religious practice. His argument is based on the religious premise that God is pleased only by the free rather than forced convictions of humans. Kant does not treat the separation of church and state in his 1793 Religion at all, because for him religious liberty is an immediate consequence of every human’s innate right to freedom, which is both the objective but also the limit of all state power. Religious liberty can therefore be treated from a purely political point of view, as Kant does in his 1797 Doctrine of Right.