Kant’s Philosophy: Influences, Ethics, and Postulates
Influences on Kant’s Philosophy
Kant’s philosophy was shaped by several key intellectual currents:
- Rationalism (Wolff): The belief that scientific knowledge must be universal and necessarily true, implying a priority of the subject in knowledge.
- Empiricism (Hume):
- Experience is not universal and must be extracted (consequently, experience can only be identified with synthetic a posteriori judgments).
- Knowledge can only refer to what is given to the senses (consequently, metaphysics is impossible as a science).
- The Enlightenment: Emphasized reason in understanding both reality and the practice of morality.
- Newton:
- His physics led to the consideration of the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge.
- His mechanistic view of nature led Kant to consider the existence of deterministic laws in the natural world, implying that humans are not free.
- Rousseau: His work led Kant to question the power of knowledge and science to achieve true happiness for humanity.
Lasting Effects of Kant’s Philosophy
- Conception of humanity guided by the autonomy of the will.
- Current moral reflection is based on the concepts of universality, autonomy, and freedom, which are the foundation of Kantian ethics.
- The question of whether science can provide answers to all human problems is not simply the problem of the limits of knowledge.
Critique of Practical Reason
The Critique of Pure Reason concluded with the impossibility of metaphysics as a science. However, this does not preclude other ways to reach the objects of metaphysics. Human personality is not solely the activity of theoretical knowledge; among other things, there is a form of spiritual activity called “conscience,” which contains principles under which people govern their lives.
This set of principles, called Pure Reason, can lead humanity to the apprehension of metaphysical objects.
Kant’s ethical theory is formal, unlike previous material ethics, which Kant believed had three shortcomings: they are empirical, their precepts are hypothetical, and they are heteronomous.
Kant proposes an ethic that is:
- Universal (the contents should be a priori and apply to everyone)
- Categorical (its precepts are not subject to any condition)
- Autonomous (the will gives itself its own law).
Kant’s ethics does not provide any specific purpose or tell us what to do, but rather focuses on whether the human will itself can be good or bad. A moral act has full moral worth when the person performing it has been determined to do so only because it is the morally right thing to do. For the will to be truly pure, moral, and valuable, actions should be governed by categorical imperatives; one should act only out of duty.
The foundation of Kantian ethics is to perform actions from duty, without any other purpose.
Postulates of Practical Reason
Having established formal ethics, Kant poses demands or postulates that ethics entails. He stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that neither the immortality of the soul nor the existence of God were objects of knowledge. The field of affirmation of these realities is Practical Reason, where they can be encountered, but we must accept them as postulates.
The fact that the will is autonomous demonstrates the existence of freedom. Therefore, the first condition of the possibility of moral consciousness is to postulate freedom of will. Freedom is one of the postulates of practical reason. Another postulate is the immortality of the soul, since it is a necessity of the moral conscience that good will be rewarded with happiness and evil be punished.
The other postulate is the existence of God; the immortal soul’s existence makes sense only if there is a God who rewards and punishes.