Understanding the Philosophical Impact of Immanuel Kant
Kant
Marco Historical, Socio-Cultural and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) lived in the XVIII century, which is the century of the Enlightenment that reason defended and gambled on the spread of education and culture to all social strata. Reason and science finally lit the learned men who were very critical and believed nearly all illustrated in the progress of mankind through the development of reason. Encyclopedias and dictionaries appeared. The eighteenth century was a time of transformations since politically, socially, and economically…
As the model of state politics was the absolute monarchy and despotism in some enlightened countries, the social structure was fundamentally an aristocratic society. There was a demographic revolution and a substantial increase in the population based on agriculture. The disappearance of the wars of religion marked a significant change. It was a time of major developments in art, literature, and science with geniuses like Mozart.
Philosophical Framework illustrated as well understood as an exercise of philosophical criticism of undoubted reason. Rationalism and Empiricism are the theories concerning the knowledge of Kant’s rationalism, which assumed certain ideas of reason (innate) without having first considered how reason reaches them. Rationalists defended the certainty of the metaphysical and the use of divinity as the ultimate guarantor of truth. Empiricism agreed with the empiricists on the need for experience, but Kant saw empiricism more as an escape than a solution to the problem of the foundation of knowledge. In this context, Kant defended the value of reason to demonstrate a commitment to critical thinking and autonomy.
Influence received in college from Knutzen, who introduced him to the physics of Newton. It has been pointed out that Kant’s philosophical work was significantly impacted by Hume’s empiricism and also by the tremendous influence of Rousseau.
The Philosophy of Kant Kant claims that all his philosophy revolves around the following questions: What can I know? What should I do? What can I expect? The first seeks to determine with precision the origin of nature and the limits of human knowledge. In his work, he responds scientifically. Kant’s critique of pure reason considers man as a moral being, responsible for their behavior in response to the Critique of Practical Reason and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. The third question is about the kind of happiness one can expect, which he addresses in works such as Ideas for a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Sense. These three questions can be summed up in one: What is man?
What do I know? The theory of knowledge or the Critique of Pure Reason approaches the topic of knowledge. Kant indicates the conditions that enable scientific knowledge. The overcoming of rationalism and empiricism in its first phase was as a rationalist philosopher because he believed that reason could know empirical realities based on certain innate ideas, without resorting to experience. However, impressed by the late abandonment of empiricist philosophy and rationalism, he concluded that our knowledge cannot extend beyond experience. Yet, Kant could not share the consequences entailed by empiricism and proposed a new way of understanding knowledge, which is only possible from the existence in our mind of a series of empty concepts or structures that not only come from experience but are implemented in the field of it, thus producing the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. As science was knowledge, he sought to find out if it really was a science through judgments, analytical judgments, and synthetic a posteriori judgments.
Kant’s Doctrine of Transcendental Idealism in the Critique of Pure Reason considers three sections: aesthetic sensibility, transcendental, where he studied the requirements that make it possible to excite mathematics, synthetic judgments a priori, and transcendental analytic, where he addresses the problem of reason and the possibility of metaphysics as a science.
Aesthetics Kant’s transcendental set here that experience is the source of knowledge. Space and time are the a priori conditions that are general and necessary for our perception. Space and time are somewhat subjective conditions that make sensitive knowledge possible.
Analytical Kant’s transcendental states that perceiving something does not necessarily mean understanding or interpreting it. To think of the phenomenon, concepts are needed. There are two kinds of concepts: generalizations of empirical experience and a priori concepts that proceed from no experience but are produced spontaneously by understanding. The empty categories of understanding are ways of thinking that unify and synthesize data from sensitive phenomena. The categories perform the same function with respect to phenomena that space and time do with respect to sensations. Kant deduces the existence of categories of understanding, which will enable formulating judgments. The only conclusion is that there is knowledge in the strict sense when the phenomenon provided by sensitivity is unified and organized by the categories provided by understanding. Kant’s work represents a real Copernican revolution in the field of knowledge. Knowledge is built from the intervening factors and elements from the subject of things that come to it. The synthetic a priori judgments in Kant’s physics are intended purely for physical nature, and by nature, he means all phenomena in terms determined by general laws. These laws are made by synthetic judgments a priori. In contrast to Hume, Kant thinks that the laws of nature are a priori: they are not taken from experience yet apply to the validity of the same. Additionally, he reclaims the principle of chance, which is based on the category of cause, and is therefore universal and necessary a priori.
Dialectic deals here with Kant’s transcendental operation of reason and the possibility of metaphysics as a science. Reason is a faculty that aims to reduce the knowledge of understanding to the least number of principles. This means that every time one tries to find more general judgments that may explain a greater number of phenomena, they look for general conditions. This leads to what he calls the unconditioned. Such unconditioned ideas include three a priori ideas of reason: the idea of God, the soul, and the world. These ideas are constructed by reason itself and do not refer to any object in the conclusion of experience. In reason, the attempt to unify the variety of reasoning through understanding leads to the totality of knowledge. Through ideas about the world, we think of these objects alone, but we cannot know their existence. The impossibility of metaphysics as a science, understood as a set of judgments about God, the soul, and the world, is as impossible as science. However, as the natural tendency is inevitable, reason tends to seek the unconditioned to extend its knowledge beyond the ideas of experience. These ideas possess a dual function: they indicate the limits of our knowledge and propel us in this sense. In this context, Kantian theory of knowledge is defined as transcendental idealism because we do not know things as they are; rather, the subject builds them at least partly in order to provide a priori a number of structures that make knowledge possible.
What can I do? The Kantian Ethics. Rational activity is not limited to knowledge of human objects. It also requires knowing how to act, as our behavior must be guided by reason. Kant distinguishes between theoretical reason and practical reason. The difference between the uses of reason is that while theoretical reason manifests knowledge, practical reason makes judgments based on principles that are preferred rules or imperatives. Kant argues that moral imperatives, like scientific judgments, must also be universal, as morality must be the same for everyone. Kant asserts that the moral imperative is categorical, not hypothetical.
Kant’s Critique of Materialistic Ethics Kantian ethics can be described as formal, as opposed to the material ethics that preceded it. Material ethics considers the rightness or wrongness of behavior as a function of good or end. This means it is an ethic that determines the ultimate end result of actions and establishes rules to reach it. Kant criticizes material ethics for three reasons: it is empirical or a posteriori, it is hypothetical, and it is heteronomous.
Exposition of Kant’s Formal Ethics If all empirical material ethics are hypothetical imperatives, then formal ethics should not be empirical but a priori. Imperatives must be categorical, and the will is formal ethics. It is universal because it does not provide any order to be pursued and does not tell us what we should do; rather, it is the actual content of our conduct. It tells us how we need to change and what our actions must conform to. A duty, to which our actions must respond, is none other than establishing a duty. Kant distinguishes between acting morally and the evidence of duty. However, our duty is not understood as something imposed from outside; rather, it is a standard we recognize as necessary. According to Kant, the duty that must always be our objective is reason itself. Now, he distinguishes three types of actions in relation to duty: contrary to duty, in accordance with duty, and the first duty. We should not repeat what our duty commands us to do; rather, we should act for reasons of our own.
The Imperative Categorically: What is Our Duty? Our duty is to act according to morality. Kant argued that we know an action is moral if it can be completed by all; it must be collected in the mandate.
What Can Be Expected? History and Philosophy of Religion The first most obvious area in which man can pour their hopes or expectations is the historical society in which man lives. Kant disposes of a good and evil relationship to society. On one side, as a sensitive being, the individual tends to be guided by selfishness and self-esteem; on the other hand, as a moral creature, he is sociable, rational, and lives in a kingdom of ends. The antagonism between these two aspects is what he calls Kant’s unsocial sociability of man. Yet, human society is not perfect. In his vision of perpetual peace, Kant sees that while the antagonism between individuals has been resolved in civil society, it is mediated by law. Kant’s submission of the proposed move towards a society creates a federation of states in which they coexist. The vision of Kantian history is based on the Enlightenment belief in the moral progress of mankind. The Role of Religion A man can hope beyond their history because we know that in this supreme good can never be completely achieved. As we have seen, for Kant, morality is independent of religion.
Impact of Kantian Philosophy After his death, Kant became a master of human rights and equality before the law. Thanks to Kant, Germany and Prussia became the undisputed center of German idealist philosophy in the 19th century, although it soon led idealists to deny its existence. Later, neo-Kantianism emerged, highlighting the value of Kantian theory of knowledge. The doctrines of Kant’s philosophy continue to generate interest.