Saul Ascher’s early writings on religious philosophy were clearly influence by Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy. In the 1790s, however, one can discern that Ascher was beginning to break with Kant in certain ways, for example, in his direct criticism in 1794 of the antisemitic elements in Kant’s religious criticism of 1793. Ascher’s work on the sociology of revolutions of 1799/1802 already contains abolitionist elements and his turn away from the categorical imperative. This essay lays out the shift in Kant’s influence on Ascher’s philosophical works of the 1790s.