IMMANUEL KANT

(1724-1804)



CONTENTS
GO TO  Kant:  An Overview
GO TO  His Life and Works
GO TO  His Major Ideas
GO TO  Kant's Writings

KANT:  AN OVERVIEW

Complicated in thought but simple in life-style, Kant--who wrote and taught on a broad range of subjects from physics to metaphysics, from theology to philosophy--lived out his life in the relative confines of his hometown of Königsberg, East Prussia ("Kaliningrad" since its Russian takeover towards the end of World War Two).

In many ways Kant's intellectual life was shaped by the challenge that Hume had issued the world a quarter of a century earlier.  In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant agreed with Hume's empiricism--namely that sense-experience is essential to human knowledge.  But he also agreed with the continental rationalists (most notably Leibniz--whose writings also were a major influence over Kant) that knowledge is also a matter of the exercise of human reason--in particular the use of innate human ideas ("categories") which help us to organize this empirical information.  Thus Kant saw himself as closing the intellectual gap between the British empiricists and the Continental rationalists.

Kant also saw himself as answering Hume's skepticism about ever knowing with any degree of certainty the truth of transcendent ideas, such as moral laws or ethical principles.  In Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788), he proposed a new moral/ethical "categorical imperative," one that did not require the existence of God for its validity.  And yet Kant's concept was of a definite transcendent nature, one with absolute universal validity.  It involved an ingenious piece of moral logic:  we ought to act in such a way that our act could become accepted as a universal principle of behavior.  If it were not able to attain such a universal validity (because, for instance, of an internal contradiction in logic) then that action, by "practical reason," was obviously not to be pursued.

Taking this logic of "practical reason" a step further, he turned to the issue of the existence of God.  He agreed with Hume that no rational argument could be given for God's existence--that is, "pure reason" could not build a case for God's existence.  But "practical reason" could.  Pursuing a traditional line of reason that went back at least as far as Ockham in the early 1300s, Kant claimed that human reason cannot establish the "fact" of God.  But in observing the moral instincts of people we can see (through the eyes of faith) that there is some kind of  source beyond the mere human will itself that directs life.  That higher moral grounding is by definition God.  Thus God exists.  (This kind of theological reasoning did not impress the Prussian government, which censured his work).

Finally--so impressed was Kant that we humans could live in accordance with such higher moral imperatives that in his Perpetual Peace he laid out a vision for a new world order.
 

HIS LIFE AND WORKS

His Early Life

 Born in Königsberg, Kant was brought up in that town in a financially humble and devoutly pietistic family (and he continued to possess throughout his life a pietistic nature).  He attended a pietistic grade school (Collegium Friedericianum) in Königsberg and in 1740 he entered the University of Königsberg.  At the University he was introduced to the rationalist philosophy of Leibniz and Christian Wolff and the physics of Newton.  Here he wrote his first work in 1746, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces--a scientific paper that reflected strongly the intellectual legacy of Leibniz.

After graduation he became a private tutor--until 1755 when he returned to the University of Königsberg as a private lecturer.  This was a position he would hold for the next fifteen years.  During this period his teaching repertoire at the university was vast and varied--though primarily focused on science it included also mathematics and philosophy (especially metaphysics).  In keeping with the German intellectual temperament of his times, his work during this period was strongly shaped by Leibniz' writings.  But Kant also had a deep respect for the works of Newton, whose writings were just being introduced to the university at Königsberg.

The Early Lead-Up to His Critical Philosophy

This was a very formative time for Kant, who struggled to accommodate the rationalism of Leibniz with the empiricism of Newton.  This was a very active time for him in terms of writing.  But it was also a time in which he found himself having an increasingly difficult time of it staying with Leibniz' thoughts.  He certainly agreed with the importance of a system of logic that could demonstrate a mathematical precision about it (as per Leibniz).  But he was beginning to wonder how this could be connected with the empirical world "out there."

Thus in 1764 he published Inquiry into the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals, in which he stated his concern about how one could connect the pure world of mathematics, which rested within the human mind, with the "practical" world of physical life, especially human life as it faced the complexities of actual existence.  He saw a danger in rationalist thought becoming secluded within the confines of its "pure" intellectual world--unable to offer "practical" wisdom for life.

Also he was having second thoughts about the logical method that Leibniz and Wolff (in particular the latter) had built much of their logical "demonstrations" on:  the principal of contradiction.  Kant was beginning to view this with the skepticism of a classic anti-scholastic (such as Ockham)--for it seemed fallacious to Kant to build a logical system of "truths" on the assertion that the opposite of a proposition proven to be false must automatically be true.

It seemed to him also equally weak to build a proof for the existence of God on the logic of the popular ontological argument--which the rationalists employed regularly.  In his The Only Possible Ground of Proof for a Demonstration of God's Existence (1763) he questioned very strongly how simply the fact that we can hold in our minds the idea of God (as the greatest of all conceivable ideas) therefore proves the existence of God--the essence of the ontological argument once put forth by Anselm (in the late 1000s).

Gradually Kant's critical facilities were being fine-tuned in a way that stood him apart from the intellectual currents of his time.  Finally (to use his own words), it was Hume who "awoke him from his intellectual slumber"--forcing him to admit to the lack of a proper demonstration within contemporary philosophical circles of the connection between the world "out there" and the world within the human mind.  He became determined himself to try to build such a demonstration.

His Critical Philosophy Comes of Age

At about this time (1770) he was admitted as a full member of the university faculty, teaching logic and metaphysics--a vocation he would stay with until just a few years before his death in 1804.

During the first ten years of this period (1770-1780) he was focused on developing his critical system of thought.  No serious publication occurred during this time.  But during the next ten years (1780-1790) he was ready to publish.  In 1781 his Critique of Pure Reason was published; in 1785 he published Metaphysics of Morals; three years later (1788) he came out with his Critique of Practical Reason.

But it was not just in the realm of philosophy, metaphysics, theology ethics that he poured forth an enormous productivity.  He was also interested in science and the philosophy of science.  He was was also interested in history and the philosophy of history.  He was interested in anthropology.  He was interested in geography. 

His Opus Postumum

His last years were focused on an effort to write a great integrative work, one which he hoped would establish a definitive metaphysics for an emerging modern world-view.  Though what we have of that work is voluminous--it is merely fragmentary and quite undisciplined as a philosophy.  Clearly he intended a major work to emerge from his notes.  But time overtook him.  He died in 1804 at 80 years of age.

HIS MAJOR IDEAS


Kant's Epistemology (Theory of Human Knowledge)

 He agreed with the British empiricists that human knowledge is fundamentally founded on the information that our physical senses provide our minds.  This process of receiving such information he terms "sensibility."  But this kind of knowledge is not yet truly part of our "understanding."  An a priori process in the mind turns this kind of knowledge into conceptual knowledge.  Both are knowledge.  Thus he links the empiricists' understanding of knowledge with the rationalists understanding of knowledge.

Again, with the empiricists, he agrees that what we know is in fact only what appears by the intuition of our minds to be so.  We do not have direct knowledge of the "objects" of our senses, the "thing-in-itself, what he terms the noumenon.  These are transcendental objects--not attainable directly by human perception.

What our minds do is fashion the information our senses direct to us about the transcendent or objective matter around us into recognizable forms, the phenomena of our minds.  The two, matter and forms, are quite distinct.  Matter gives rise to our sensations--but our mind gives form to these sensations in such a way that objects become recognizable to us.  For instance, space and time are not matter--they are forms that the mind, on an a priori basis, imposes on matter.

This acquiring of human knowledge all occurs in a three-step process.  The first step is the process of intuition--receiving the sensory information.  The second step is the process of synthesis, organizing the information into recognizable categories, such as "table."  This step is enhanced through experience.  The third step involves judgments of our own about this information--what our minds determine that this information means to us.  This process is entirely a priori--independent of the empirical process.

Here Kant is responding to Hume's separation of cause and effect.  Kant recognizes that we cannot know with absolute certainty the empirical cause and effect at work in the world around us.  But we certain can--and do--form cause and effect connections in our own mind--which are quite valid.  Kant defines such mental judgments as true knowledge.

In any case for Kant what is important for us is not the objective reality "out there" but the reality (which he also calls "objective") in our own minds.  This "practical" realm of reality is really the only one that should honestly concern us.  It is our truly "objective" world.

It is a world that is shared by others.

KANT'S WRITINGS

  Kant's major works or writings:
Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783)
Idea for a Universal History (1784)
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785)
Metaphysical Foundationsof Natural Science (1786)
Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
The Critique of Judgment (1790)
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)
Perpetual Peace (1795)


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  Miles H. Hodges