Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: Metaphysics as Science
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant
Contextualization.
This text pertains to Critique of Pure Reason (1781). The basic problem Kant addresses is whether metaphysics can be a science. Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia, one of four children. His father was a craftsman of modest means. His mother’s influence on his education was significant. These were the first notable events in his life. He dedicated his life to teaching, eventually becoming a professor and rector at the university in his hometown. He died in 1804, never having left his city. Kant is a key figure of the Enlightenment.
Kant’s Intellectual Development
Kant’s intellectual biography can be divided into two periods: his writings before 1770, the pre-critical stage of rationalist inspiration, and after 1770, a period of silence for eleven years, after which he published in 1781. This work marks the beginning of his critical phase.
The Enlightenment Context
The vital coordinates for understanding Kant are within the context of the Enlightenment. This era was characterized by absolute trust in reason as the driving force of humanity. Kant urged everyone to use their own reason to overcome intellectual immaturity.
Kant’s Rationalist Philosophy
Kant was a rationalist thinker who considered reason the only valid instrument for understanding the world. He classified his philosophy as transcendental idealism. The objects of knowledge depend on the subject. Things do not need us to exist, but they do need us for knowledge.
Influences on Kant
He received influences from: Leibniz and Wolff, from whom he received his initial rationalist philosophical training; and David Hume, whose original Newtonian physics and naturalized explanation of the scientific method had a major influence.
Kant’s Impact
Kant’s philosophy has had a great influence on contemporary philosophy, especially in the fields of ethics and politics.
Metaphysics and Science
This text argues that metaphysics is not a science. Kant attempts to determine if it can become one. Metaphysics should be understood as philosophy, which is not as rigorous as science, even if others try to make it so. The arguments against metaphysics as a science are that there is no agreement among its supporters.
Summary (Paragraph 2)
Kant questions why metaphysics is not a science. He believes that reason can solve the problem of metaphysics if the incorrect path is not followed.
Analysis and Explanation
This text addresses the basic problem Kant poses: whether metaphysics can be a science. The reasons for this investigation are twofold: first, science has advanced in all fields, while metaphysics remains the same problem as in Plato and Aristotle; and second, while science builds universal, objective, and necessary agreements, philosophers do not agree.
Conditions for Science
Kant establishes two types of conditions for something to be considered science: empirical and transcendental. That is, any science must be based on data from experience and also on prior conditions. These transcendental conditions are necessary, universal, a priori, and make experience possible.
Types of Judgments
There are different types of judgments. Analytical judgments merely develop what is already known. They are universal and necessary. Synthetic judgments add external information.
A Priori Judgments
A priori judgments are known to be true without experience. Only synthetic a priori judgments can be scientific. Therefore, scientific judgments are the only synthetic a priori judgments.
The Transcendental Project
The objective is to explain how these judgments are possible. It will be divided into three parts: transcendental aesthetics, which explains how a priori judgments are possible in mathematics; transcendental analytics, which explains how they are possible in physics; and finally, transcendental dialectics, which investigates if they are possible for metaphysics. If so, metaphysics would be a science; if not, it would not be.
A Priori Judgments in Mathematics
To explain how synthetic a priori judgments are possible in mathematics, Kant studied the primary cognitive faculty: sensibility. Sensibility allows us to have sensible intuitions without the need for experience. Sensibility provides pure intuitions, that is, space and time. Sensibility is the first passive faculty that receives data from the exterior, and pure intuitions are the structural forms. The phenomenon is what we obtain (what appears).
Mathematics and Sensibility
Kant then questions if synthetic judgments are possible in mathematics. He focuses on two branches of mathematics: geometry and arithmetic. They are possible because this science is based on pure intuitions of sensibility: space and time, which are prior conditions of experience and all sensible intuitions.