Rousseau, Kant: Social Contract, Judgments, and Critique of Pure Reason
Rousseau: The Social Contract and the General Will
To improve society and ensure equality and freedom, Rousseau proposes the social contract: an agreement between citizens to obey the laws, giving rise to civil or political and moral freedom. This is achieved through the general will: a collective, permanent, and rational desire to act in the community’s best interest. The general will is the union of all individual wills in a society.
- Social Contract: An agreement where each person places themselves and their power under the supreme direction of the general will, considering the community as an indivisible whole formed by citizens.
The goal of the general will is the same as that of the citizen: to act in the common interest, considering oneself a social person and setting aside individual desires. Thus, all citizens share the same general will, but each has their own individual will.
The general will determines laws through direct democracy, where citizens are guided by the desire to express the collective will. This leads to true civil and political freedom. The State does not seek the happiness of citizens but moral equality through the rule of law.
Kant: Theory of Judgments
- Analytical Judgment: An a priori, universal, and necessary judgment that expands our knowledge because the predicate is implicit in the subject. Example: “The whole is greater than its parts.” (Relations of ideas)
- Synthetic Judgment: A posteriori judgment, not universal or necessary, that expands our knowledge because the predicate’s information is not implicit in the subject. Example: “All X native people are more than 1.90m.” (Knowledge of facts)
- Synthetic Judgments a priori: An a priori, universal, and necessary judgment that expands our knowledge because the predicate is not implicit in the subject. Example: “The line is the shortest distance between two points.”
Science is composed of synthetic judgments a priori. By understanding the conditions that support these judgments, we can determine the foundations of science and whether metaphysics can be a science. Kant explores this in his Critique of Pure Reason, establishing the foundations of his theory of knowledge.
The Critique of Pure Reason and Its Structure
Transcendental Aesthetic
- Sensitivity: The ability to capture impressions through external or internal senses.
Impressions are placed in space and time. Therefore:
- A priori forms of sensibility: The forms or molds through which individuals perceive impressions in our sensitivity, before experience. External senses require both space and time, while internal senses require only time. These are transcendental conditions that enable knowledge.
- Pure Intuition: Direct, unique, and individual knowledge. There is no plurality of space and time, but parts of space and time intervals that flow continuously. Pure means they do not come from experience, serving as empty coordinates in which individuals organize impressions.
Kant also studies mathematical knowledge, stating that space and time are the conditions for mathematics, with space being the basis of geometry and time of arithmetic.
The Analytical Transcendental
- Understanding: The ability to develop concepts to understand the views captured by sensitivity.
There are two types of concepts:
- Empirical Concepts: Concepts derived from our understanding using pure concepts.
- Pure Concepts or Categories: Concepts inherent in our understanding that allow us to construct empirical concepts. They are fundamental for absorbing and making judgments about our experiences. Pure concepts are transcendental and a priori conditions of our knowledge. Kant discovers these concepts through the metaphysical deduction of the categories: an analysis of classical logic. Some categories include: universal-total-quantity, quality, negative-denial, relation-hypothetical-causality/dependence, modality-problematic-possibility/impossibility.
According to Kant, the fundamental principles underlying physics are synthetic judgments a priori, while the categories are transcendental a priori conditions that enable them.
Kant also states that our knowledge has limits. The noumenon is reality itself, which cannot be grasped by sensitivity, while the phenomenon is the manifestation of that noumenon. Sensitivity applies space and time to the phenomenon, and understanding applies categories, creating the empirical concept.