Kant’s Philosophy: Legal Freedom, Copernican Revolution, and Morality
Kant’s Core Philosophical Concepts
Legal Freedom: Kant defines it as “the right not to obey any foreign law but as far as I could give my consent.”
The State must ensure the exercise of freedom through law.
For the law to be sound and agreed upon, members of a state are not subjects but citizens. The law makes free citizens, who are subordinate only to the law and have previously given their consent, and makes them equal before the law.
Finally, the law grants citizens legal personality.
The Copernican Revolution in Philosophy
Copernican Revolution: Kant proposed a revolution to understand how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible.
In astronomy, Copernicus realized that to understand the motion of celestial objects, it was necessary to change the relationship (all objects in the sky and the sun revolve around the earth) by placing the sun at the center, and the earth revolves around the sun.
In philosophy, Kant deemed a similar revolution necessary. Previous philosophy supposed that knowledge was based on experience, the knower was passive, and the object known influenced the subject, causing a reliable representation.
He proposes to reverse the relationship and accept that in the cognitive experience, the knowing subject is active, and the knower shapes the known. According to Kant, we can understand synthetic a priori knowledge if we accept that things must conform to us.
In short, the Copernican revolution makes mention of the fact that we can only understand a priori knowledge if we assume that we only know phenomena, not things in themselves or noumena, if we accept transcendental idealism as the true philosophy.
Transcendental Illusion
Transcendental Illusion: The word ‘transcendental’ in Kant refers generally to the conditions that allow a priori knowledge. The illusion is not “really” in the object, according to Kant, but in the judgment about the object. Illusions may be of various kinds: empirical illusions, which often occur when the power of judgment is misled by the imagination; logical illusions, which are produced by fallacies; and finally, transcendental illusions, produced when we try to go “beyond” the empirical and use categories as if they were transcendental objects. Transcendental dialectic is defined as the “logic of illusion.” The study of transcendental illusions is performed in the “transcendental dialectic,” which “is content to expose the illusion of transcendental judgments while taking care not to be deceived by them.”
The Imperative in Kantian Ethics
Imperative: When we use reason to govern our conduct, we get mandates or imperatives. The formal moral imperative does not contain material content about what to do. It contains only one categorical imperative that does not express what to do. It says that what you do can be regarded as a duty if you can will that it becomes a universal duty.
The Kantian imperative is formal, categorical, single, rational, and a priori.
My will decides which moral maxim I follow.
The need to consider each rational human being as an end in itself. Currently, Kantian morality is considered a procedural moral system. It does not establish a table of duties, but rather a procedure to determine if a precept can be considered moral or not.