Kant’s Philosophy: Knowledge, Ethics, and Metaphysics
Kant
Types of Cases
Analytical
In analytical judgments, the predicate is contained within the subject. Understanding the subject is achieved through predicate analysis. These judgments are always true, universal, and necessary, but they do not advance knowledge in the scientific sense.
Synthetic
In synthetic judgments, the predicate is not contained within the subject but is added through experience. While they have broad meaning, they are not scientifically universal or necessary. A priori synthetic judgments, however, are based on something independent of experience, forming the foundation of universality. The “Critique of Pure Reason” examines these judgments.
Cognitive Faculties
Kant identifies three cognitive faculties: sensibility, understanding, and reason.
Sensibility
The first part of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” the Transcendental Aesthetic, focuses on sensibility. It includes:
- Space and Time as A Priori Forms of Sensibility: Sensory data is organized through space and time, which are a priori structures. This organization enables objective knowledge. Space is the a priori form of external experience, while time is the form of internal experience. They are pure forms, providing the basis for universal and necessary sciences like geometry and arithmetic.
- Imagination: Imagination mediates between sensibility and understanding. It synthesizes sensory intuitions with concepts of understanding using transcendental schemas.
Understanding
The Transcendental Analytic examines understanding and categories. After imagination’s synthesis, judgments are formed, leading to objective knowledge. Understanding uses a priori categories, or pure concepts, to unify the object in judgment. This process constitutes the phenomenon of knowledge and is both experiential and universally necessary.
Reason
The Transcendental Dialectic assesses the validity of science. Kant’s metaphysics, based on rationalist ideas (the substantial self, the world as a whole, and God), is not considered science as it relies on ideas rather than a priori judgments. These ideas are essential for human development but do not constitute knowledge.
Kant’s Ethics
Kant’s ethics revolves around principles or laws governing moral conduct, known as imperatives.
1. Hypothetical Imperatives: These are conditional obligations, serving as means to an end and are not moral.
2. Categorical Imperatives: These are unconditional, universal commands, representing duties as good in themselves. Kantian ethics is based on duty imposed by the will itself.
Morality is the unconditional categorical imperative, self-imposed by an autonomous will. It is formal, not determined by any sensible object or empirical content. Laws are imposed unconditionally.
Postulates of Practical Reason: These are unprovable propositions that depend on an unconditionally practiced a priori law.
- Freedom: Essential for morality; without freedom, moral obligation is impossible.
- Immortality of the Soul: Necessary to achieve the highest good, the coincidence of virtue and happiness, which is not attainable in this world.
- Existence of God: Guarantees the union of soul and the highest good, acting as the necessary and perfect cause outside the soul’s scope.