Is Kant the greatest mystic of modern times?

Letter to Rabbi Doctor Michael Avraham
 
**Topic: A fundamental problem in Kantian philosophy**
 
Hello Rabbi,
 
I am addressing you with a philosophical matter that has been troubling me for a long time. While studying Kantian philosophy, I discovered a seemingly fundamental problem that may somewhat undermine the method, and despite extensive searches in the academic literature, I have not found a discussion of it.
The problem goes to the heart of the Kantian enterprise. Kant builds his entire philosophy on the assumption that he is engaged in phenomenology – the study of how human consciousness perceives reality. He assumes that our consciousness, which is clearly corporeal and human, observes phenomena and shapes them into an experience through pure categories and intuitions. His entire system is based on the distinction between the phenomena we experience and the thing itself, which remains beyond all possible knowledge.
But here the fundamental problem emerges. Kant apparently cannot know what our consciousness actually observes. It can observe physical manifestations of the divine infinity, or alternatively ordinary physical phenomena that have no connection with the divine. Kant himself blocks the possibility of answering this question, since he claims that the thing itself is unknown in principle and unknowable.
On the other hand, when we examine the way Kant describes the thing itself, it becomes clear that he attributes very specific properties to it. The thing itself is so abstract and indefinite that it cannot be included in the scope of a phenomenon. Our consciousness cannot grasp it in any way. It has no possible title or description. It exists beyond every category and every concept. But this description is precisely the classical philosophical definition of divine infinity – that which is beyond every description and title, that which exceeds any final definition.
It is important to clarify that I am not talking here about God in the religious sense of a commanding or personal being, but about the philosophical concept of infinity – the reality that is beyond all limitation and description. This is a concept that appears in many philosophers from Plotinus to Spinoza, and is always characterized by exactly the same qualities that Kant attributes to the thing itself. In fact, the more Kant emphasizes the absolute inability to know the thing itself, the stronger his identification with philosophical infinity. The absolute transcendence that he describes is precisely what defines the divine in philosophy.
If the thing itself is indeed the divine infinity, a far-reaching conclusion follows: all the phenomena that our consciousness sees are in fact expressions of the divine infinity. What Kant thinks of as “innocent” phenomenology—a neutral account of how we perceive things—turns out to be in fact an account of how the divine infinity reveals itself to finite consciousness. This is a profound paradox: Kant wanted to separate phenomenology from ontology, to limit philosophy to the realm of how we know without making claims about what really exists. He even explicitly claimed that he rejected the concept of ontology. But if phenomena are expressions of infinity, then his entire philosophy becomes an ontological study of the divine—the exact opposite of what he intended.
The situation is even more ironic when you consider the implications. Kant becomes, unintentionally and unknowingly, the greatest mystic of modern times. All his detailed description of how consciousness shapes experience through categories, how time and space are forms of observation – all this becomes an accurate description of how the divine infinity is revealed and shaped into a phenomenal world that finite consciousness can perceive.
It should be noted that if this is indeed the case, then the Kantian system also solves in this way some of the most classic philosophical problems. The problem of multiplicity from unity, which occupied philosophers from Plotinus to Schelling, receives an elegant solution: multiplicity is created by the forms that consciousness imposes on the experience of the unitary infinity. The problem of the relationship between the finite and the infinite, which troubled Spinoza and others, is also solved: the finite is the way in which infinity is revealed through the limitations of human consciousness.
Any attempt to claim “I deal only with phenomena” presupposes knowledge of what is beyond phenomena – precisely the knowledge that Kant claims we do not have. The attempt to do a “non-ontological” philosophy turns out to be fundamentally inconsistent.
And of course the implications for modern philosophy are enormous. If the argument is correct, the secular revolution that followed Kant is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The Enlightenment thought it was freeing man from “superstition” and putting human reason at the center, but in fact it described with great precision the way in which human consciousness encounters the divine infinity in every moment of experience. Modern science, conceived as a secular project detached from metaphysics, becomes an investigation of the ways in which infinity is expressed in the law and order of the phenomenal world.
My extensive search of the academic literature did not turn up any discussion of this specific problem. I found many critiques of the thing itself, comparisons between Kant and Berkeley, and discussions of the status of transcendental consciousness, but not the simple and fundamental question of what exactly our consciousness observes and what the meaning of the inability to answer this question is.
 
I would love to hear your professional opinion on the argument, its logical validity, and the question of whether it is appropriate to develop it into a comprehensive academic study. In other words, where did I fall?
 
Best regards,
Israel