Kant’s Philosophy: Knowledge, State of Nature, and Ethics
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. Regarding the theory of knowledge, a basic concern of modern philosophy, Kant synthesized Hume’s empiricism and Descartes’ rationalism. He acknowledged Hume’s observation that knowledge arises from the senses, but also supported Descartes’ view that not all knowledge originates from experience. This synthesis, known as Kantian criticism, posits that knowledge is based on a blend of experience (a posteriori) and elements not derived from experience (a priori).
Concerning the Theory of Knowledge, Kant used the physical sciences and Newtonian mathematics as a model of scientific knowledge. According to Kant, this blend of analytical and synthetic judgments created synthetic a priori judgments. This means that Newtonian science is universal (true in all cases) and possesses the necessary characteristics of analytic judgments, while also being extensive in knowledge, a characteristic of synthetic judgments.
State of Nature and the Social Contract
While Aristotle believed that society and the State arise naturally from humans’ inherent sociability, Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant argued that sociability stems from a pact, a social contract. For these contractarian thinkers, the natural state of man is a pre-social state. However, there are differences among these three thinkers:
- Hobbes: Hobbes hypothesized that the State of Nature must be a continual war of all against all, because homo homini lupus est, i.e., man is a wolf to man. He assumed that this untenable situation forced man to establish a social pact to preserve his life and establish private property. This covenant is artificial, since man is antisocial and solitary by nature.
- Rousseau: Rousseau believed that in the State of Nature, human beings lived in a semi-wild state and were neither good nor bad (amoral). He assumed it was a happy time of humanity in which there were no biological differences. However, with the development of agriculture and mining, wealth and private property emerged, creating inequality among men. Therefore, the emergence of a social contract, also considered artificial by Rousseau, became necessary.
- Kant: For Kant, the state of nature was a state of savage and lawless freedom, in which man lives under the threat of violence because everyone does whatever he pleases or what rules your instincts. He considers that the social pact is the first moral obligation that we set people: leave the State of Nature and seek peace, justice and freedom.
Ways of Achieving Peace
The issue of peace had been considered throughout the 18th century by several authors. Two authors who have little to do with Kant’s Perpetual Peace are the Abbe Saint-Pierre and Rousseau. Kant studied the work of Saint-Pierre and Rousseau. Its central idea was to establish a kind of Christian Republic, a concept that Voltaire considered absurd, since it relied more on a growing Enlightenment, namely, greater tolerance.
Kant’s notion of peace reflects in part the proposal of Saint-Pierre in the sense of the need for an institutional framework, as well as sharing Voltaire’s optimism in the evolution of reason and tolerance, and their distrust in the possibility of establishing a link between wolves and dogs, that is, between countries with different political regimes. Between Saint-Pierre and Voltaire, Rousseau takes an intermediate position. On one hand, he supports the idea of the abbot of the need for a European confederation, but on the other hand, has less confidence than Voltaire in the triumph of reason.
Metaphysics
On the concept of metaphysics, Kant agrees with Hume, saying that metaphysics fails in its attempt to become a science, burying the attempt to match the Metaphysics of mathematics or physics (sciences); but he thinks that we can not condemn it because it does not provide scientific answers to our questions. Kant says that metaphysics has become the foundation of morality against Hume’s moral theory: emotivism, which asserts that reason is incapable to influence behavior and that feelings prompt us to act in one way or another.
Ethics and Politics
Kant, like Plato and Aristotle, believed that ethics and politics must go hand in hand, though Kant adds that the law is required for full development.