42 Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 1 Introduction If reaching a consensus on Jung’s favorite philosopher were to be attempted, the most serious candidate would be Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) (Shamdasani 2013, 22). This claim can be supported from several positions. Firstly, there exist a number of references to Kant throughout Jung’s work; secondly, the way Jung argues for his fundamental psychological concepts; and thirdly, his meta-reflections on psychology in general, are explicitly linked to Kant’s philosophy. Anyone expecting Jung to have engaged with Kant with academic precision would, however, be disappointed. Rather than striving to faithfully follow Kant’s ideas, Jung freely adapted them to suit his own theoretical requirements. He did so with a healthy dose of self-criticism: “From a philosophical standpoint my empirical concepts would be logical monsters, and as a philosopher I should cut a very sorry figure… As a philosopher and speculating heretic I am, of course, easy prey” (Jung CW11 1952, 306–307). We may confirm his words, as Paul Bishop has already in his detailed analysis (Bishop 2000, 1996). This perspective needs to be adjusted, however, because Jung’s goal was not to develop a philosophical theory or to rigidly follow Kant, but rather to create a psychological method suitable for modern man – an endeavor that, according to Jung, would be impossible without the involvement of philosophy. The significant presence of Kant in Jung’s psychology has also been highlighted by several other authors, including Colacichi (2021), Kime (2013), Nagy (1991), Balanovskiy (2016), and Bär (1976). Jung’s distinctive interpretation of Kant was also influenced by the selection of literature through which he encountered Kant, and it certainly did not consist of works that could today be classified as critical editions – interpretations aiming for the most faithful transmission of the original work’s meaning. One such influence was the interpretation of Carl du Prel (1839–1899). Jung’s library contains du Prel’s book Das Rätsel des Menschen, and in Jung’s writings we also find references to another of du Prel’s works, Die Philosophie der Mystik (Du Prel 1892, 1885). Carl du Prel published a pseudo-critical edition of Kant’s Vorlesungen über Psychologie, in which he attempted to show that his own mysticism was Kantian – specifically by searching for connections between Kant and Swedenborg, particularly Swedenborg’s visions (Josephson-Storm 2017, 208). Du Prel’s mysticism would later come to be known as parapsychology (Sommer 2009, 59). In Die Philosophie der Mystik, he claimed that through dreams or somnambulistic states, one could reach Kant’s Ding an sich by transcending space and time – an idea that already sounds like an invitation to a séance (Du Prel 1885). In Das Rätsel des Menschen, he reflects on other ideas inspired by Kant, such as how the constitution of man simultaneously represents both the source of his identity and the limits of his knowledge and reason (Du Prel 1892). Another way Jung engaged with Kant was through the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, who built upon Kant but significantly reinterpreted him, transforming Kant’s Ding an sich into will, thereby psychologizing his theory. Schopenhauer turned the unknowable reality behind phenomena into a dynamic principle of the world that could be grasped through introspection (Schopenhauer 1818). Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (1818) was Jung’s very first contact with Kant. Jung later stated in Memories, Dreams, Reflections that, unlike Schopenhauer’s “pessimistic” view of the world, Kant brought “light” into his own reflections (Jaffe 1998, 70). Jung’s library also contains other distorted Kantian references, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s book Immanuel Kant (1916). Jung was undoubtedly influenced by the Neo-Kantian movement as well, particularly the Marburg and Baden schools. The peak of this movement, between 1895 and 1912, coincides with Jung’s formative student years, during which he maintained his greatest interest in Kant (Röd-Holzhey 2006, 48). The aim of this text is not to decipher whether Jung was a Kantian or not. He disqualifies himself from this debate simply by the fact that his theoretical effort is to conceptualize the unconscious through its tangible effects. Loosely translated into Kantian terms, his primary interest is thus noumenon, about whose nature, he claims, it is both possible and desirable to formulate hypotheses. It would therefore be more feasible to limit ourselves to the question of what Jungian material has been actually brought into “light” thanks to Kant. Unlike Bishop’s strict philosophical deconstruction of Jung’s thought, which highlights distortions of Kant’s ideas, I will adopt a more moderate approach. My goal, instead, is to reconstruct Jung’s thinking and intentions, which often become apparent precisely through the way he employed Kant. Philosophical ideas were a strong initial inspiration for Jung and encouraged his own elaborations. The inaccuracy with which he incorporated Kant into his psychological concepts is the obverse of his creativity. Jung was by no means the first “dilettante” in the history of philosophy. Consider, for example, Nietzsche’s interpreta-
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