Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy: Exploring Knowledge, Morality, and Man
Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy
Key Questions
- What can I know? This question, explored in the Critique of Pure Reason, examines the limits of scientific knowledge and truth.
- What should I do? This question, addressed in the Critique of Practical Reason, delves into the principles of morality and freedom.
- What can I hope for? This question concerns religion and history.
- What is man? This fundamental question connects the previous three and is the subject of anthropology.
Metaphysics as a Science
Kant investigated whether metaphysics qualifies as a science. He argued that scientific knowledge requires both empirical data and universal, necessary principles that precede experience.
Judgments
Relationship of Information
- Analytic Judgments: The predicate is contained within the subject. These judgments are universal, necessary, and non-extensive (they don’t expand our knowledge). Example: The whole is greater than the part.
- Synthetic Judgments: The predicate adds information to the subject. These judgments are extensive but not universal or necessary. Example: This woman from Cordoba is beautiful.
Relationship to Experience
- A Priori Judgments: Independent of experience, universal, and necessary. Example: The whole is greater than the part.
- A Posteriori Judgments: Dependent on experience, not universal, and not necessary. Example: This woman from Cordoba is beautiful.
Kant’s Critiques
Critique of Pure Reason
- Transcendental Aesthetic (Sensibility): Studies the sensory conditions of knowledge (space and time) and the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments in mathematics.
- Transcendental Analytic (Understanding): Examines the understanding and the conditions for synthetic a priori judgments in physics.
- Transcendental Dialectic (Reason): Investigates reason and the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments in metaphysics.
Transcendental Aesthetic (Sensibility)
Kant’s a priori forms of sensibility, space and time, shape our perceptions. The combination of sensory input with space and time creates the phenomenon. This is Kant’s “Copernican Revolution”: the object conforms to the subject’s way of knowing, not vice-versa. Synthetic a priori judgments are possible in mathematics through these forms.
Transcendental Analytic (Understanding)
Understanding allows us to think about objects. Sensibility and understanding are interdependent. Kant distinguishes between empirical concepts (from experience) and pure concepts (a priori). Physics utilizes synthetic a priori judgments. Kant’s transcendental idealism posits that we only know phenomena, not the noumenon (the thing-in-itself).
Transcendental Dialectic (Reason)
Reason unifies knowledge through ideas like the World (external experience), the Soul (internal experience), and God (connecting both). These ideas unify knowledge but lack real content.