Kant’s Philosophy: Reason, Ethics, and the Social Contract
Kant’s Critique of Rationalism and Empiricism
Rationalists (or dogmatists) are Cartesian-rationalists. They believe that metaphysical knowledge is possible based solely on pure concepts (reason), without any experience, leading to the construction of a philosophical system. Kant accused them of being too critical, not self-reflective enough, with the concept of reason that they use because it starts from the premise that it must be true. The truth of the postulates of reason becomes a dogma. For Kant, this means running the risk of building a completely vacuous philosophical system without any relation to tangible reality.
Empiricists (or skeptics) are followers of Hume. They believe that knowledge is limited to experience. Everything that goes beyond it (metaphysics, basically) is an empty statement. Hume’s criticism of the concept of causality leads many empiricists to remain skeptical in the field of knowledge: future developments are not a priori requirements. This is something that Kant cannot accept because, for him, not all knowledge comes solely from experience. Despite this, Kant always praised Hume who, lest we forget, he credited for having awakened him from the dogmatic slumber of reason.
Kant’s Copernican Revolution in Epistemology
A perfect relationship is produced in humans between sensitivity and understanding, each with its a priori forms. This is very important because that is what leads Kant to hold that knowledge begins with experience, but not everything comes from it. This is a third way between radical empiricism and dogmatic rationalism. In the history of philosophy, it has remained as a new Copernican revolution. Kantian epistemology would have meant a revolution similar to that which once led Copernicus to propose his heliocentric system, definitively changing a worldview that was in force for many centuries. With Kant, a whole philosophical tradition in which two streams coexisted and were faced, empiricism and rationalism, found a first synthesis, which would have an enormous influence on subsequent philosophy. Also, his idea that the subject is an active entity, not merely passive in the process of knowledge, amounted to putting the subject at the center of the system, like the Sun, and not the Earth as before.
Transcendental Illusion and the Limits of Reason
The key distinction between the conception of Kantian and other dogmatic reason is that for Kant, as shown, not to use the ideas as their own experience or had anything to do with it. This is what leads to metaphysics and thus falls into what Kant called transcendental illusion: taking for real objects which are but mere ideas, making an illegal use of the categories applicable beyond experience. In humans, there is a natural tendency to fall for this kind of illusion, which philosophical critique should try to neutralize. The conditions for a tremendous, and we could say definitive, critique of Metaphysics are given.
Kant’s Categorical Imperative and Duty
An ethics of this type produces a series of obligations, i.e., imperatives. An imperative is a command, a practical principle that prescribes how we should act. In the framework of Kantian ethics, imperatives are categorical imperatives.
The Categorical Imperative is based on duty for duty’s sake. Duty supersedes any type of external constraint to the individual and is based on the obligation to respect the laws arising from moral reason. To act from duty is to do so for all people in all circumstances and without any personal interest or otherwise. We must act only on the basis of our consciousness.
The Social Contract and the Republican Constitution
We must seek a rational social order based on law, in a Social Contract, which guarantees both the freedom of individuals and the aspiration for peace, moving away from despotism. This social contract of which Kant speaks is also a hypothetical situation in which individuals, who have guaranteed their safety and survival in a natural state, agree, through a pact, to establish a legal framework to be respected and bound to ensure equal treatment for all individuals. Only in this way can man overcome his egoistic and aggressive tendencies and enjoy a horizon of peace.
Social order can only be secured by a Republican Constitution.
Legal Freedom and the Republican State
As we saw, the idea of Liberty is a metaphysical argument from pure reason, but it becomes a requirement from the perspective of Practical Reason. Kant here refers to ‘legal freedom’, which constitutes an essential condition of any republican constitution. It affirms the freedom of men while their attachment to a series of laws that they themselves have made. This legal freedom within the Republican State will be complemented, as we shall see, by the law of nations and cosmopolitan law.