Reason," Kant shows heaven to be the Seat of Righteousness, that is, the association with all the good. The Resurrection and Ascension of Christ signify, "when regarded as ideas of reason," the beginning of the new life, and the entrance into the above named association. (Religion within the Bounds of the Pure Reason, p. 138.)
It is remarkable how Kant proceeds further to describe without any hesitation the condition of the soul after death, in that it exchanges its sensuous vision which it enjoyed during life, with the spiritual vision, and that this is the other world! (Politz, p. 255.)
As regards the objects of that world they remain the same; they are not different in substance but only changed in being seen spiritually!
Erdmann in his Reflexionen, No. 1277, remarks on this passage:—
"The other world will not present other objects, but only the same objects seen (intellectually, that is) in their relations to ourselves; and the knowledge of things through the divine vision, and at the same time the feeling of blessedness through this, is no longer the world but is heaven."[1]
When one comes into the other world he does not come into connection with other things, as if with another planet, but one remains in this world, only having a different vision. The other world is heaven for me if I have lived a righteous life and enter into the society of such righteous spirits, and therewith enjoy spiritual vision. It is true this view of the other world cannot be demonstrated, but it is a necessary hypothesis of reason (which can be maintained against its opponents).[2]
Kant here becomes so enthusiastic as to call "very sublime" the thought of Swedenborg about the spiritual world, which according to him [Swedenborg] is a very real universe—even though in the work "The Dream of a Visionary," &c., he had called Swedenborg
- ↑ This reflection of Erdmann is evidently an attempt on the part of the modern decadent philosophy to adapt Kant's truly splendid conception to the materialism of modern thought in explaining away a real life after death and reducing heaven to a certain state of mind in this world.—F. S.
- ↑ Wanting in Politz.
