Critique of Traditional Metaphysics: Kant’s Perspective
Critique of Traditional Metaphysics
Kant’s Refutation of Metaphysical Proofs of God’s Existence
Referring to Kant, one cannot understand the metaphysical proofs for the existence of God. In the *Transcendental Dialectic*, Kant pointed out that the ontological argument is invalid because it cannot prove the existence of God from the idea (essence). He also criticizes the validity of the arguments of the Thomist routes, either because he rejects that causality is an ontological relationship (for Kant, causality is a category) or because the arguments, subsequently systematized, infer the existence of God through the cosmological argument and the physico-theological argument, inferring the existence of a basis for reality through the contingency of the world and theology.
Regarding the paralogisms, Kant’s critique demonstrates that it is impossible to prove the substantiality, simplicity, and identity of the soul. Concerning the world, he provides antinomies regarding whether the world has an origin or is eternal, whether it is infinite or finite, whether there is a first cause or not, and whether a necessary being belongs to the world or not.
Kant’s Argument from the Foundations of His Theory of Knowledge
Kant’s argument stems from the foundations of his theory of knowledge: if you cannot go to science without experience, experience alone does not provide access to knowledge of the self or to the knowledge of God from the innate idea of it. For Kant, metaphysics is a tendency of reason to ask questions, but experience cannot follow. Thus, metaphysics is constantly jammed; it is an arena of endless disputes because, since the time of Plato and Aristotle, the same issues are still being discussed without reaching an answer. Metaphysics seeks to go beyond the borders of experience and is awarded its own territory. However, metaphysics as a science is not possible. In the *Critique*, Kant asks how the physical and mathematical sciences are possible and if metaphysics is possible as a science, to which he answers negatively. Metaphysics becomes a theory of knowledge. You can only know the objects of experience that are governed by the power of knowledge; it is only possible to know objectively what the concepts are that govern the objects of this experience.
Kantian Idealism and the Limits of Knowledge
According to Kantian idealism, only the following are knowable:
- The phenomena
- The forms that allow a priori knowledge of empirical objects
Empirical objects are in themselves unknowable, and since there are no innate ideas, no knowledge is possible beyond the boundaries of possible knowledge. This is what Kant calls the transcendental application of the concepts of reason against the principles of thinking.
Knowledge of the soul or the existence of God is beyond the scope of knowledge because this is the limit of the applicability of the a priori forms of sensibility and understanding to objects of experience. It is clear that experience is not the only source of knowledge, but intellectual knowledge cannot be carried out except through the application of the categories to objects of experience, as knowledge begins with experience. Knowledge is always the chaotic matter of impressions; the ideas of reason cannot be applied to objects of experience. Therefore, it aims to determine isolated, supersensible objects of experience, but as the forms are empty and are filled with data supplied by experience, it is clear that:
- The ideas of reason cannot be applied to objects of experience. This is the transcendental illusion; reason produces transcendental ideas relating to the synthesis of phenomena in the idea of the world, the synthesis of perceptions in the idea of the self, and the synthesis of all conditions of thought in the idea of pure reason.
Kant’s theory of knowledge is a form of empiricism because outside the objects of experience, nothing can be known, and idealism because, although they are known a priori, empirical forms must be able to refer to these objects. Kant denies the invalidity of the concepts of metaphysics; as Hume said, the concepts are of the mind (since they are a priori) but are not valid due to their inapplicability to experience. Reason, by its very nature, tends to go beyond all possible knowledge and is awarded a territory in the synthesis of all objects of thought in general.