His Proper Name is Lucifer

The idea of life as self enclosed and purposeless if of course not simply a product of our own age. It is the natural product of the advance of science and has developed over a long period. It has already in fact developed over a long period. It has already in fact occasioned a whole era in the history of philosophy, beginning with Kant and leading on to the existentialism and the analytic philosophy of the present day. The chief characteristic of this phrase of philosophy can be briefly stated: Kant abolished God and made man God in His stead. We are still living in the age of the Kantian man, or Kantian man-god. Kant’s conclusive exposure of the so-called proofs of the existence of God, his analysis of the limitations of speculative reason, together with his eloquent portrayal of the dignity of rational man, has had results with might possibly dismay him. How recognizable, how familiar to us, is the man so beautifully portrayed in Grundlegung, who confronted even with Christ turns away to consider the judgement of his own conscience and to hear the voice of his own reason. Stripped of the exiguous metaphysical background which Kant was prepared to allow him, this man is still with su, free, independent, lonely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave, the hero of so many novels and books of moral philosophy. The raison d'être of this attractive but misleading creature is not too far to seek. He is the offspring of the age of science, confidently rational and yet increasingly aware of his alienation from the material universe which his discoveries reveal; and since he is not a Hegelian (Kant, not Hegel, has provided Western ethics with its dominating image) his alienation is without care. He is the ideal citizen of the liberal state, a warning held up to tyrants. He has the virtue which the age requires and admires courage. It is not such a very long step from Kant to Nietzsche, and from Nietzsche to existentialism and the Anglo-Saxon ethical doctrines which in some ways closely resemble it. In fact Kant’s man had already received a glorious incarnation a century in the work of Milton ; his proper name is Lucifer.

Extracted from the Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch