Kant’s Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
Value:
Kant engaged with the earlier rationalism and empiricism of modern philosophy but did not accept them due to their dogmatic rationalist metaphysics. However, he assigned a significant role to reason, alongside the ideas of the soul and God.
He rejected the radical empiricism that led to skepticism.
Hume’s Emotivism: Kant disagreed with Hume’s emotivism, believing that moral imperatives are derived from reason. He agreed with Hume’s statement, “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” for its facilitating role.
Newtonian Physics: Kant accepted Newtonian physics, believing that science explains knowledge.
Rousseau’s Influence:
“Man is not only intelligence; moral consciousness also allows us to discover the role of freedom.”
– Kant agreed with Rousseau’s ideal of education focused on autonomy and freedom but later preferred the methods of the English school.
– Rousseau placed emphasis on man in the individual state of nature, while Kant focused on man in society.
Hobbes’s Influence: Kant considered Hobbes’s description of the human being as antisocial.
1. Critique of Pure Reason: The Kantian Conception of Knowledge
The Four Kantian Questions:
- What can I know?
- What should I do?
- What can I hope for?
- What is man?
The Criticism:
After reading Hume, Kant turned to criticizing the dogmatism surrounding the possibilities and limits of reason.
The Transcendental Idealism Turnabout:
Kant is known for adapting things to our reason both within us and externally. In transcendental idealism, Kant proposed that the subject should be considered in a way that provides the content.
Judgments:
Judgments are statements uttered by an individual who is committed to their truth.
On Subject-Predicate:
- Analytical Judgments: The information provided by the predicate is contained in the subject, so the truth is necessary.
- Synthetic Judgments: Subject and predicate are not related and expand knowledge; therefore, truth is not necessary.
On Experience:
- A Priori Judgments: The truth is evident and not dependent on experience; they are universal and necessary.
- A Posteriori Judgments: The truth needs to be tested experimentally, making them dependent on experience.
The Three Parts of the Critique of Pure Reason:
- Transcendental Aesthetic: Critique of Sensibility
- Transcendental Analytic: Critique of Understanding
- Transcendental Dialectic: Critique of Reason
2. Judgments, Space and Time, Categories, and the Critique of Traditional Metaphysics
Judgments:
These are statements uttered by an individual who is committed to their truth.
On Subject-Predicate:
- Analytical Judgments: The information provided by the predicate is contained in the subject, so the truth is necessary.
- Synthetic Judgments: Subject and predicate are not related and expand knowledge; therefore, truth is not necessary.
On Experience:
- A Priori Judgments: The truth is evident and not dependent on experience; they are universal and necessary.
- A Posteriori Judgments: The truth needs to be checked experimentally, making them dependent on experience.
It seems that analytic judgments are a priori and synthetic judgments are a posteriori. However, there are also synthetic a priori judgments, which possess the advantages of both and lack their drawbacks. Being synthetic, they extend knowledge, and being a priori, they do not need to be checked for truth.
The Three Parts of the Critique of Pure Reason:
- Transcendental Aesthetic: Critique of Sensibility
- Transcendental Analytic: Critique of Understanding
- Transcendental Dialectic: Critique of Reason
Transcendental Aesthetic: Space and Time
It deals with sensibility, the first faculty of knowledge, which does not reflect reality itself but only the way it affects us.
Any manifestation of reality is given in space and time, which are a priori forms of sensibility. We do not need experience to know them. This leads to the conclusion that both science and mathematics, including geometry and arithmetic, provide a priori judgments.
Transcendental Analytic: Categories
Understanding appears to establish how the above affects us, judging and setting categories, namely the way the world is comprehensible to humans.
There are 12 categories, of which the most important is causation, central to empiricism. Understanding has an a priori structure, causality, which connects phenomena together.
Transcendental Dialectic: Ideas
Reason attempts to unify the knowledge gained earlier into concepts that are more general and abstract until it reaches first principles:
- Soul
- World
- God
- I
Therefore, metaphysics is not possible as a science because it does not progress like science. However, its themes—freedom, God, and the soul—can be admitted as “postulates” of practical reason.
3. Critique of Practical Reason and Ethics in Kant: Concept of Practical Reason and the Concepts of the Imperative
Practical Reason and Ethics:
Unable to answer scientifically about the soul, God, or the world, Kant passes them to practical reason. When theory limits us, we will rely on practice.
Characteristics of Kantian Ethics:
- Autonomous: The rule is self-imposed by the self.
- Formal: The way any moral standard can be universalized.
- Deontological: Acting out of duty.
Autonomous:
It starts with freedom, which is the starting point. Unlike nature, the self is defined by its autonomy, and freedom is the ability to obey the law that one gives to oneself, with decisions determined by one’s own right.
Formal:
Only the universal is searched for by reason. Now, it is rational to do so by law, that is, universally, as is the case in formal Kantian ethics. It proposes how we should act, not what to do. To act morally is to propose a model.
Deontological:
For Kant, the moral act is that which we do out of respect for duty, doing what needs to be done because that is what should be done.
Categorical Imperative:
It is universally valid and must be followed even if it goes against our inclinations. It offers the option to act otherwise by rational demand. Your particular moral decisions must be such that they can be universalized.
Kant puts it in different ways:
- “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
- “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.”
- “Act as if you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.”
- “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”
4. The Moral Law as the Categorical Imperative
Characteristics of Kantian Ethics:
- Autonomous: The rule is self-imposed by the self.
- Formal: The way any moral standard can be universalized.
- Deontological: Acting out of duty.
Autonomous:
It starts with freedom, which is the starting point. Unlike nature, the self is defined by its autonomy, and freedom is the ability to obey the law that one gives to oneself, with decisions determined by one’s own right.
Formal:
Only the universal is searched for by reason. Now, it is rational to do so by law, that is, universally, as is the case in formal Kantian ethics. It proposes how we should act, not what to do. To act morally is to propose a model.
Deontological:
For Kant, the moral act is that which we do out of respect for duty, doing what needs to be done because that is what should be done.
Categorical Imperative:
It is universally valid and must be followed even if it goes against our inclinations. It offers the option to act otherwise by rational demand. Your particular moral decisions must be such that they can be universalized.
Kant puts it in different ways:
- “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
- “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.”
- “Act as if you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.”
- “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”
5. Postulates of Practical Reason: Freedom, Immortality of the Soul, and Existence of God
General Schemes:
Practical Reason postulates:
- Immortality of the soul: Ensures progress toward the supreme good, virtue = happiness.
- Freedom: Ensures the autonomy of the will and the existence of moral law.
- Existence of God: Ensures a rational world where there is a supreme good.
Postulates:
Kant explains a postulate as being unprovable but reasonable. Thus, immortality, freedom, and God appear as postulates. To achieve happiness, one must be virtuous, at least after death, hence the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, as well as the freedom to choose our actions.