Ideas as the ‘Divinity of Our Soul’: Kant's Theocentric and Platonic Model of Human Cognition

Abstract I pursue Kant's characterization of the ideas of reason as the ‘divinity of our soul’ with the aim of correcting a highly influential reading of his philosophy as rejecting the theocentric cognitive model, one measuring human cognition against the norm of the divine intuitive intellect. I begin by establishing the reliance of the Critical epistemology on such a model. This reliance comes to light in Kant's theory of the epistemic role of ‘ideas of reason’ as fashioning our cognition “after the model of the intuitive (archetypical) understanding,” or as he also says, after “a highest reason of which our reason is only a weak copy.” I then explore the common Platonic origins of Kant's doctrine of ideas and theory of the intuitive intellect. This reveals how the imputed function of ideas represents a self‐conscious nod to the theocentric model of Plato's “spiritual flight” towards a God's‐eye view of reality, an endeavor Kant describes as “deserving respect and imitation.”