Philosophy Of Immanuel Kant Essay Research Paper

Philosophy Of Immanuel Kant Essay, Research Paper

Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

Kant’s philosophy is generally labeled a system of transcendental criticism, that is, he tries to explain which parts of knowledge precede experience, and which don t, or, what is and isn t a priori.

The first work of Kant in which he appears a proponent of transcendental criticism is the “Critique of Pure Reason , which appeared in 1781. A second edition was published in 1787. In 1785 appeared the “Foundation for the Metaphysics of Ethics”. Then came a succession of critical works, the most important of which are the “Critique of Practical Reason”, the “Critique of Judgment , and “Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason”.

During the period of his academic career, from 1747 to 1781, Kant, as has been said, taught the philosophy that was then prevalent in Germany, which was Wolff’s modified form of dogmatic rationalism . That is to say, he made experience out to be the basis of all truth, rejected skepticism, and judged all knowledge by the test of reason. Towards the end of that period, however, he began to question the solidity of the psychological basis of truth, and ended by losing all faith in metaphysical reasoning. The apparent contradictions which he found to exist in the physical sciences, and the conclusions which Hume had reached in his analysis of the principle of causation, “awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber”. This brought home to him the necessity of reviewing or criticizing all human experience for the purpose of restoring the physical sciences to a state of certainty. His old mindset had, he now considered, laid too much emphasis on the a priori parts of knowledge. On the other hand, as he now for the first time realized, the philosophy of Hume had gone too far when it labeled all truth empirical or a posteriori. Kant proposes to pass all knowledge in review in order to determine how much of it is to be assigned to the a priori, and how much to the a posteriori factors of knowledge. As he himself says, his purpose is to “deduce” the transcendental forms of thought. Hence, his philosophy is essentially a “criticism”, because it is an examination of knowledge, and “transcendental”, because its purpose in examining knowledge is to determine the a priori, or transcendental, forms.

Kant himself has said that the business of philosophy is to answer three questions: What can I know. What ought I to do. What may I hope for. He considered, however, that the answer to the second and third depends on the answer to the first; our duty and our destiny can be determined only after a thorough study of human knowledge.

“Critique of Pure Reason”

Going along with his purpose to examine all knowledge in order to find what is and what is not a priori, or that which precedes experience, Kant proceeds in the “Critique of Pure Reason” to inquire into the a priori forms of sensation, judgment, and reasoning.

Sensation

The first thing that Kant does in his study of knowledge is to distinguish between the content and the form of sensation. The content of our sense-knowledge comes from experience. The form, however, is not derived through the senses, but is imposed on the material by the mind, in order to render the material, or content, universal and necessary. The form is, therefore, a priori; it is independent of experience. The most important forms of the conditions of all sensation are space and time. Not only are space and time mental entities in the sense that they are filtered by experience into the mind; they are strictly subjective, purely mental, and have no objective entity, except that the mind applies them into an objective world.

Because of what is to follow, it is important to ask at this point: Do the transcendental forms of our senses extend our senses beyond the material and physical worlds. Kant holds that they do not. Now, the data of the senses represent only the appearances of things; therefore, all sensation is confined to knowledge of appearances. Sense-knowledge cannot penetrate to the noumenon, the reality of the thing (Ding-an-sich).

Judgement

Taking up now the knowledge which we acquire by means of the understanding, Kant finds that thought in the strict sense begins with judgment. As in the case of knowledge from the senses, he distinguishes here the content and the form. The content of judgment, or in other words, that which the understanding joins together in the act of judgment, can be nothing but the sense-intuitions, which take place, as has been said, by the imposition of the forms of space and time on the content of sensation. Sometimes the sense-intuitions are joined together in a manner that implies particularity. An example would be the judgment, “This table is square.” With judgments of this kind, Kant is not really concerned. He is interested rather in judgments such as “All the sides of a square are equal”, in which the relation said to exist between the subject and the predicate is consistant and universal. With regard to these, Kant’s first remark is that their necessity and universality must be a priori. That nothing that is universal and can come from experience is assumed with Kant. There must be forms of judgment, as there are forms of sensation, which are imposed by the understanding, which do not come from experience at all, but are a priori. These forms of