Immanuel Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Understanding Reason
Contextualizing Kant’s *Critique of Pure Reason*
The fragment belongs to the work of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. In this work, Kant answers the question, “What do I know?”, adopting a transcendental approach. The author tries to solve the critical problem: How can our understanding fully form a priori concepts to which all objects of experience conform and necessarily conform?
In three different sections of the work (Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic), Kant studied these structures in advance of reason. He makes an additional distinction of imagination into three basic cognitive faculties:
- In the Transcendental Aesthetic, he studies the a priori forms of sensibility (ability to have impressions), which are space and time.
- In the Transcendental Analytic, he investigates a priori forms of understanding (ability to make judgments), which are called categories or pure acts.
- Finally, in the Transcendental Dialectic, he studies ideas as a priori forms of reason (the human capacity to unite trials to form arguments).
To understand the philosophy of the author, it is necessary to know some of his biographical data.
Kant’s Life and Influences
He was born in 1724, in the Prussian town of Königsberg, into a humble family where his mother always instilled the values of Pietism, a religion raised by the break with the Lutheran Church. At eight, he entered the Collegium Fridericianum, led by Schultz, the most important figure of Pietism. At sixteen, he entered the University to study theology, studies he soon abandoned in favor of philosophy and science.
Keep in mind that these are years in which Kant receives a powerful influence from Martin Knutzen, a Newtonian professor of logic and metaphysics, in an environment where the prevailing rationalist philosophy was that of Wolf. In 1754, he began his teaching career at the university of his hometown. In 1770, Kant obtained a university professorship, which he opened with the famous work Dissertatio, ending his pre-critical period and thus starting the critical period. He died in 1804.
Kant’s Philosophical Periods
Kant’s work falls into three periods:
- The pre-critical period, which includes works of a scientific and metaphysical nature, in which Kant pursued a dynamic conception of reality in the wake of Leibniz and Newton.
- The critical period, to which his great works belong: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment.
- The post-critical period, which highlights the work: Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone.
Kant and the Enlightenment
Kant is an Enlightenment philosopher who questioned “What is Enlightenment?”, responding in an article of the same name that dates from 1784: “The Enlightenment is the departure of man from his self-incurred immaturity.” Enlightenment is the critical emancipation of the individual and the rebellion of reason against all forms of intellectual guardianship, whether political or religious.
Kant clearly states this by subjecting everything to the court of reason to make it govern both in how ethical-political action is performed. Reason only pays sincere respect to what is able to withstand public scrutiny and is free. Therefore, the magic word for all the enlightened is education: educating the people to achieve freedom and form a critical conscience.
D’Alembert and Diderot’s Encyclopedia, which undertook to collect the knowledge of its time and spread culture to provide instruction and information, contributed to this. Kant would also contribute, with a critical consideration proposed to submit to the scope and value of human rationality.
He set aside the rationalism of Descartes, the skepticism of empiricists like Hume or Locke, and irrationalism, with its overvaluation of feeling. Before them, he refined his critical philosophy. It is critical because, unlike other philosophies, it does not want to self-conceive as a doctrine; it aims to broaden knowledge itself and determine what must be done, but simply to show the limits of reason.
The Kantian conception of reason and the enlightened emerged, favored by the heroic image of a Copernicus or a Galileo opposed to prejudice and superstition, or connected to the modern ideal of autonomy like that of Descartes. The author summed up his whole philosophical problematic into three questions: What do I know? What can I know? What can I expect? Issues ultimately reducible to this one: What is man?