The Enlightenment and Kant: Historical Context and Philosophical Impact

Posted on Dec 3, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Historical and Sociocultural Framework

Eighteenth Century

The 18th century, often called the “Age of Enlightenment,” was marked by significant historical events and intellectual movements:

  • The “Cathedral” Period
  • Revolutionary Wars
    • War of American Independence (1776)
    • French Revolution (1789) – Ideals: liberty, equality, fraternity
  • Early Industrial Revolution (from 1750)

The Enlightenment

A cultural, philosophical, and political movement.

Kant: “Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity.” (Sapere aude, dare to think for yourself).

  • The Encyclopedia (1751-1766) of Diderot and d’Alembert defended Enlightenment ideals, systematizing all knowledge “to change the common way of thinking.”

Features:

  • Autonomous Reason: Freed from religious and political tutelage.
  • Secularization: Fight for human dignity; according to Kant, man is an end in himself.
  • Ideal of Progress: Towards a fairer society, thanks especially to scientists like Newton, the paradigm of modern physics.
  • Tolerance: Among religious communities; theism, as defended by Voltaire, is a typical phenomenon.

Society: Rise of the bourgeoisie and the beginning of capitalist liberalism.

Politics: In England, a constitutional monarchy; on the continent, enlightened despotism (“Everything for the people, but without the people”). In Prussia, Frederick the Great was a prime example of such a despot and a fervent defender of freedom of thought.

Philosophical Framework

Kant represents the overcoming of the two preceding philosophical systems:

  • Rationalism: Founded by Descartes and continued in Germany by Leibniz and Wolff, who posited the possibility of metaphysics.
  • Empiricism: From the British Isles (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume), who considered a science of metaphysics impossible.

Influences on and Impact of Kant’s Thought

Influence

Three main currents of thought intersected in Kantian philosophy:

  • Rationalism of Wolff: Kant studied Wolff’s dogmatic metaphysics at the University of Königsberg, adopting the thesis of the possibility of universal and necessary knowledge of phenomena and the existence of a priori elements in knowledge.
  • Empiricism of Hume: Kant credited Hume with awakening him from his “dogmatic slumber.” He agreed with empiricists that all knowledge begins with experience.
  • The Enlightenment: Kant was the most representative figure of this movement in Germany. He was heavily influenced by:
    • Newtonian physics: Taken as a model of synthetic a priori knowledge, along with a mechanistic and deterministic view of nature.
    • Rousseau: His vision of the spirit, morality, and freedom; the idea that man must be free and independent for morality to exist.
  • Ancient Philosophers: Plato (concept of the Idea, though for Kant, Ideas are God, the soul, and the world, existing in relation to the subject) and the Stoics (sense of duty).

Impact

The clearest impact of Kantian thought is found in 19th-century German Idealism:

  • Authors like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel radicalized Kant’s thought. In contrast to Kant’s “transcendental idealism” (where the subject determines the conditions of knowledge), they proposed an active subject of knowledge that determines the entire process. Reason has no bounds: “Everything real is rational, and all the rational is real,” eliminating the distinction between phenomenon and noumenon.

Kant’s thought also influenced various other authors:

  • Marx: In his vision of freedom and critique of capitalism, arguing that economic exploitation objectifies people, treating them as means rather than ends.
  • Schopenhauer: Continued the Kantian distinction between phenomenon and noumenon (thing-in-itself), identifying the latter with the will, a principle directing irrational reality.
  • 20th-Century Kantians: Authors like Cohen and Natorp synthesized Kant with contemporary science.
  • Wittgenstein: Interested in the limits of knowledge, though his theories are based on establishing the limits of language.
  • Neopositivists: Followed Kant and Hume’s metaphysical skepticism, asserting the impossibility of metaphysical knowledge.
  • Ethics:
    • Scheler: Values-based ethics, though material.
    • Sartre: Formal ethics of freedom, though atheistic.
    • Habermas: Theory of communicative action, a dialogic and consensual vision of Kantian ethics.
    • Rawls: Theory of justice, where the concept of the “veil of ignorance” reflects universal Kantian formalism.