The Philosophy of
Immanuel Kant

Kantian Criticism represents an attempt to unify Rationalism and
Empiricism in a superior kind of phenomenalism. This superior phenomenalism
consists in considering the human spirit as endowed with a priori forms, which
are the subjective means of organizing the data of experience into perfect
knowledge. Beyond these a priori forms there is no perfect science. Hence any
metaphysics is impossible.

The philosophy is called "Criticism" (from the Greek
"krinein -- to judge") because of the solution given to the problem
of knowledge by means of different judgments. The result of Kant's Criticism is
evident in all subsequent thought.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Immanuel
Kant (picture) was born
in Konigsberg in East Prussia on April 22, 1724. He began his studies at the
Collegium Fredericianum, one of the celebrated centers of German Pietism. Later
he enrolled in the school of philosophy at the University of Konigsberg, where he studied the
rationalistic philosophy of Wolff and the mathematics and physics of Newton. On leaving the University he
spent nine years as tutor in several distinguished families. In 1755 he became privat
docent in the university by appointment. He was appointed professor of
logic and mathematics in 1770, retiring from his professorship in 1797. Kant
never traveled beyond the immediate vicinity of his native town.

Kant's
chief works are the Critique of Pure Reason, in which he examines human
reason and concludes that it is capable of constructing science but not
metaphysics. In 1783 he published the Prolegomena or Prologues to Any Future
Metaphysics, wherein he examines the problem from another point of view. In
1785 his Foundation for the Metaphysics of Ethics appeared, followed by
the Critique of Practical Reason, in which he treats the moral problem
according to the principles of transcendental criticism. In his Critique of
Judgment he examines the problem of finalism in nature and the aesthetic
problem. The three Critiques form a single masterpiece and are an
exposition of Kant's definitive thought.

KANT'S PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM

Kant's
problem is to present a theory of knowledge securing the just claims of reason
and investigating the possibilities of knowledge in its sources, extent, and
boundaries. His rationalism (contributed by Wolff), and his attraction for
English empiricism, had stirred his own thinking. His philosophical conclusions
must penetrate the various currents of his age -- the Enlightenment,
empiricism, skepticism, and mysticism. His problem becomes therefore:

KANT'S CONCEPTION OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge,
Kant maintained, is universal and necessary. He agrees with the rationalists
that such knowledge is in physics and mathematics. He agrees with the
empiricists that knowledge is ideal knowledge, knowledge of phenomena,
knowledge as it appears to our senses, not knowledge of things as they are in
themselves. Hence a rational metaphysics is impossible.

Kant
contends with the empiricists that we can know only what we experience, that
sensation forms the material of our knowledge. He agrees with the rationalists
that universal and necessary truth cannot be derived from experience. So:

We
have, therefore:

Thus
we discover two anti-intellectualistic strains in Kant, one proceeding from the
skepticism of Hume, and the second from Neoplatonism. The skepticism of Hume
gave Kant good reason for distrusting physical science as a complete
explanation of knowledge. The Neoplatonic strain posited a supra-rational self
which for Kant created relational links in the world of ethics. Kant's
examination of Humean skepticism gave him the desire to investigate the
possibility of knowledge. Knowledge, Kant declared, may be considered under two
aspects:
The sensory, which
corresponds to what-we-perceive, the data of experience; and
The logical, which
corresponds to what we think about this experience. (Example: To perceive
a color is sensory, to discriminate a color from among other colors
is logical.)

Kant
regarded sensations as interrelated and not as isolated raw products of the
senses:

The
subject-matter of knowledge comes from knowledge but this is only a fraction of
knowledge. Whence then comes the relatedness of knowledge in space and time
since we have no sense-organs for these aspects of experience?

CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

Kant
observes that there are three kinds of judgment:

Synthetic
a priori judgments alone are the foundation of perfect science. Kant undertakes
the study of these judgments in his Critique of Pure Reason, which is
divided as follows.

Transcendental Aesthetic

Kant
studies the a prior forms, which organize sensible perceptions (or pure
intuitions). These forms are two: space and time. The sciences which are
founded on space and time are geometry and arithmetic; they enjoy universality
and necessity by virtue of the subjective forms of space and time.

Transcendental Analytic

The
forms of space and time have given us a manifold series of pure intuitions. The
human spirit, which tends to the unification of knowledge, feels impelled to
progress to a higher degree of understanding, which is centered in the
intellect. The intellect is endowed with twelve a priori forms, called categories.
In virtue of these, the intellect collects and makes stable many data of
experience under the concept of substance; it connects phenomena by means of
the concept of cause and effect. Substance and causality are categories of the
intellect. These categories give us an understanding of the physical world.
Hence physics is endowed with universality and necessity, not because its laws
represent a universal and necessary aspect of reality but because the intellect
gives the phenomena such universality and necessity by virtue of its
categories.

Transcendental Dialectic

The
unification of phenomena through the categories is not absolute. The spirit,
which tends to the absolute unity of all knowledge, reorganizes the data of the
intellect in a higher degree. The a priori forms of this reorganization are
called ideas; reason is the faculty directing this operation.

The
reorganizing ideas are three:

For
Kant these three ideas of reason are beyond true knowledge; for true knowledge
can only be drawn from a phenomenon perceived according to the categories of
the intellect. God, the soul, and the world belong to the noumenal world, in
which there is no such thing as phenomenal perception.

CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON

In the
Critique of Practical Reason, Kant studies the problem of what makes a
human action morally good. Kant resolves the question by means of the categorical
imperative, which imposes itself with the force of duty, without any regard
for the good or evil that may result from it. The categorical imperative enjoys
universality and necessity; hence it comes from the subject, that is, from the
will itself. Thus it is an a priori form of will.

Kant
observes that the a priori forms of the intellect are empty and need to be
applied to some empirical element in order to become effective. On the other
hand, the categorical imperative is already determined in itself and itself
determines the empirical element (the human action to be performed); it is the
will which make the human act good, not vice versa. Thus the will belongs to
the world of the noumena, of the absolute and unconditioned. Kant
teaches that the categorical imperatives can only be explained on the basis of
three postulates: namely, liberty, the immortality of the soul, and God. Thus
Kant believed not only that he had reconstructed metaphysics, but also that he
had reestablished it on a more solid basis.

CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT

In the
Critique of Judgment, Kant studies the judgments of sentiment. He believed
that the two aspects of reality (phenomenal and noumenal) are synthesized,
through the judgment of sentiment, into a single act of perception of the
thinking-ego.

Judgments
of sentiment arise:

In
both judgments, the ego is not subordinate to the phenomena; on the contrary,
the phenomena are supposed to be subordinate to the ego. Thus the ego is
conscious of itself as a person, as a reality of the absolute and unconditioned
world.

CONCLUSION

Kant
does not deny the existence of God, the soul and the world; but he holds that
we cannot have perfect knowledge of them. And he holds this because of the
prejudice that man can have perfect knowledge only of the world of phenomena.

Confusion
in thought reigned after Kant -- the philosopher of reformed thinking. Kant was
variously regarded. Some thought him to be a skeptic, others held he was the
savior of religious faith. Some successors to Kant, such as Schiller, Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel, made philosophy the time honored mental discipline.

Kantian
epistemology needed to be developed. The Kantian dualism of the intelligible
and phenomenal worlds, freedom and mechanism, form and matter, knowledge and
faith, practical and theoretical reason, presented many problems. The Kantian
critical foundation became the challenge left to Kant's followers: Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel.

But
some critics of Kant appear. Herder opposes the Kantian dualism of mental
faculties and urges the unity of the soul-life. Thought and will, he
maintained, spring from a common ground. The history of mankind is a process of
evolution directed toward the ideal of humanity. Our rational capacity should
therefore be educated and fashioned into reason, our more refined senses into
art, our impulses into genuine freedom and beauty, our motives into the love of
humanity.

Jacobi
declared that the Critique logically ends in subjective idealism, and
rejected its conclusions. Jacob Fries seeks to combine the teachings of Kant
and Jacobi.

The positive contributions of Immanuel Kant to

the Perennial Philosophy

None.
But despite errors, absurdities, and contradictions, Kant's philosophy has
exercised a tremendous influence upon human thinking for over a century and a
half. It exhibits the roots of those weaknesses we have come to regard as
characteristic of what is loosely called "the German philosophy." It
refuses to face reality (witness the wholly subjectivistic character of
knowledge); it unduly stresses the ego (witness the inner and autonomous
character of knowledge and morality); it proclaims the perfectibility of the
will, upon which the followers of Kant were soon to harp most strongly -- and
from Nietzsche to Hitler we are to hear of "the will to power," the
will which makes "the superman" and "the master race." Many
historians of philosophy consider Immanuel Kant to be the father of modern
Idealism.