Kant: summary of the thought and philosophy of the German thinker, a great exponent of the Enlightenment; useful resources for further study.
KANT’S PHILOSOPHY: SUMMARY
Immanuel Kant is the greatest representative of the German Enlightenment, the fundamental problem of his reflection is to determine the supreme end of reason and through it to form a comprehensive system of knowledge and culture. His philosophical path can be distinguished into two fundamental periods :
– The pre-critical period , during which Kant dedicates himself to the study of natural phenomena, and tries to find a rigorous philosophical method, to have a metaphysical knowledge and certainty similar to that of the sciences, such as mathematics and physics, to arrive. He therefore criticizes traditional metaphysics that claims to go beyond the limits of sensitive experience by opposing it with a metaphysics as a “science of the limits of reason”.
– The so-called “critical” period from 1771 to 1790.
Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
Kant sets out to subject human reason to judgment . By Critique of Pure Reason he means the rigorous investigation of the capacity of reason with regard to all knowledge to which it can aspire independently of experience. Knowledge deriving from experience is called a Posteriori, and knowledge independent of experience is called a Priori and is therefore universal and necessary. Kant asks himself how is science possible (physics, geometry, arithmetic) that operates with synthetic a priori judgments? Is metaphysics as a science possible? The conditions of possibility of science and knowledge reside in the a priori elements that order impressions, in fact: the object of experience results from a synthesis between a datum of sensibility and an a priori element, which Kant defines as Phenomenon .
The Critique of Pure Reason is divided into:
- Transcendental aesthetics studies the pure forms of sensibility, that is, Space and Time, which condition the way things appear to us.
- Transcendental Logic deals with pure concepts, or categories of the intellect (12 categories) and is divided into Transcendental Dialectic and Transcendental Analytics (=doctrine of the a priori forms of the intellect), concepts and principles. The intellect is the faculty by which objects are ‘thought’, or sensible intuitions are elaborated, unified, into concepts.
- The Analytic of Concepts : Kant proposes to research all the a priori forms of the intellect and to do this he points out that the proper function of concepts consists in unifying, in ordering a manifold under a common representation through the activity of Synthesis. Concepts can be empirical, when the manifold is constituted by certain sensations and pure concepts, which unify only the pure intuitions of space and time. The pure concepts which are pure unifying or synthesizing forms, are the a priori forms of the intellect or Categories, that is, ways of functioning of thought.
- The Analytic of Principles teaches how to apply concepts to phenomena. Thinking and knowing are not the same thing, an object can be thought through categories but can only be known through sensible intuitions of space and time. Hence the Kantian distinction between Noumenon, that which is only thinkable, and Phenomenon. Science can only study the phenomenon, that is, things as they appear and not as they are. Transcendental dialectic, the doctrine of the a priori forms of reason, intends to demonstrate that synthetic a priori judgments are valid only for phenomena and not for things in themselves or noumena. Kant understands Dialectic as the logic of appearance. Reason is the Intellect insofar as it goes beyond experience, thus falling into a series of natural errors, since the tendency of the intellect to go beyond experience cannot be eliminated. If the Intellect is the faculty of judging, so Reason is the faculty of syllogizing. While judgment always contains an element provided by sensitive intuition, the syllogism moves on pure concepts, regardless of experience.
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Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
The Critique of Practical Reason aims to research the conditions of morality . In man there is a Moral Law that commands him as a Categorical Imperative, that is, unconditionally. Man feels he must obey reason as a form of law of duty, “duty for duty’s sake”, universal and which has as its goal the respect of the human person, postulating freedom, the immortality of the soul and the existence of God.
Critique of Judgment (1790)
The activity of judgment is the subject of the work, this activity must perceive in the phenomenal world the reflection of the kingdom of ends (that is, according to the dictates of the moral law), and it can do so in two ways: as a determining judgment or as a reflecting judgment . The first is that of the epistemological and moral judgment, while the need for the reflecting judgment can be aesthetic or finalistic.
