Modern Philosophy: Kantian Philosophy for discussion purposes only

Dr. Jove Jim S. Aguas

IMMANUEL KANT: CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Introduction: Background of Kant’s Philosophy

 Kant was raised in the tradition of Leibnizian rationalism through its main
interpreter, Christian Wolff. This was the prevalent philosophy in Germany during
Kant’s time. The first period of Kant’s philosophical development was immersed
in this system of rationalism, which he described as dogmatic rationalism
because its proponents failed to critically assess the powers of human reason
before they embarked on their grandiose speculations. There were apparent
contradictions in its interpretation of the physical sciences and it laid too much
emphasis on the a priori elements of human knowledge.

 Towards the end of that period, however, he began to question such rationalism
particularly its notion of the psychological basis of metaphysics, and ended by
losing all faith in the validity and value of metaphysical reasoning.

 After reading Hume’s empiricism he was awaken from his dogmatic slumber.
The conclusions which Hume had reached in his analysis of the principle of
causality awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber and made him realize the
necessity of reviewing or criticizing all human experience for the purpose of
restoring the physical sciences to a degree of certitude which they rightly claim.

 However, he also realized that Hume had gone too far when it reduced all truth to
empirical or a posteriori elements. Kant also wanted place on a solid foundation
the metaphysical truths which Hume's skeptical empiricism had overthrown.

 Becoming disillusioned with the philosophy of his youth he sought to resolve the
tensions between dogmatism of rationalism and the new insights of empiricism.
Kant proposed 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, if
we may so designate them, of knowledge. As he himself says, his purpose is to
"deduce" the a priori or 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 was wont to say that the business of philosophy is to answer the
questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope for? What is
man? 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.

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Dr. Jove Jim S. Aguas

The Initial Assumptions and Tasks of Kant’s Philosophy

 The initial and key assumption which provided the starting point of Kant’s thought
is the unwavering conviction that we do have a knowledge which is to be found in
mathematics and Newtonian physics. Kant believed that the fundamental
propositions of this knowledge were universal and necessary and no future
discoveries would ever undermine our conviction of their truth.

 From this initial conviction emerged three tasks:

 To clear the foundation of scientific knowledge.

 He agreed with the rationalists that anything that deserves to be called

knowledge must be universal necessary and certain. The rationalists
however are not too optimistic with perception, which Kant considered as
essential to knowledge. He agreed with Hume that logical propositions
alone do not give us knowledge of the world of experience. The rationalists
cannot give a full account of knowledge hence he agreed with the
empiricists that knowledge starts with experience.

 The empiricists however have also some drawbacks, according to Kant

experience alone cannot give us necessary, certain and universal
knowledge, hence he repelled Hume’s skepticism which undermined the
validity of scientific knowledge. Hence his first task was to develop a new
understanding of knowledge that would undergird science and steer
between the dogmatism of rationalism and the skepticism of empiricism
while retaining the insights of both.

 To resolve the tension between mechanistic science on the one hand, and
morality, religion and human freedom, on the other hand.

o Where do we situate God in the world of particles in motion and how do

we arrive at values and moral norms in the face of scientific knowledge?
Can science and religion or morality co-exist? In a way, Kant had to deny
knowledge to make room for faith, which means that the domain of scientific
knowledge was limited and that our deepest human concerns must be
based on something other than empirical data.

 To address the crisis of metaphysics.

o Traditional metaphysics and theology had proceeded on the assumption

that reason could tell us about realities that transcend experience. His task
then was to show how traditional metaphysics failed in this respect and
develop a more tempered version of it. Certainly the mathematics and
science provide us with the physical law that explains the physical realities

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but we also feel the demand of the moral law. How to reconcile these two
dimensions of human experience within a revised understanding of
metaphysics was one of Kant’s main concerns.

Theory of Knowledge: Critique of Pure Reason

 The study of Kant's critical philosophy can be divided into three portions,
corresponding to the doctrines contained in his three "Critiques" (1) the doctrines
of the "Critique of Pure Reason"; (2) the doctrines of the "Critique of Practical
Reason"; (3) the doctrines of the "Critique of the Faculty of Judgment".

 In accordance with his purpose to examine all knowledge in order to find what is
and what is not a priori, or transcendental, that is anterior to experience, or
independent of experience, Kant proceeds in the "Critique of Pure Reason" to
inquire into the a priori or transcendental forms of (a) sensation, (b) judgment,
and (c) reasoning. By a priori or transcendental he means not subject to human
experience, necessary conditions of knowledge.

 But before doing so, he needed to establish a method that would ground our
necessary and universal knowledge about the world. The method of the
empiricist cannot serve this purpose since the argued from particular facts to the
generalization of those facts (inductive method). Since our experience is always
limited, empirical information will always be inconclusive, future empirical
information can contradict our empirical convictions.

 To carry out his task he proposed a method which he called the transcendental
method, by transcendental he means prior and not subject to experience. This
method proceeds from the nature of sense experience in general to the
necessary conditions of its possibility. The transcendental or a priori structures of
experience are those formal features that are not limited to any particular
experience but are the necessary and universal features of all experience.
(hence transcendental should not be equated with transcendent which means
beyond all possible experience.)

 There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with sense experience, but
although this is true, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience alone.
While the empiricists thought that the mind is passive when confronting the world
and simply records impressions, and hence the mind simply conforms to its
objects, Kant believed that for sense data to be experienced as sense data by
the mind, the mind must impose certain rational structure on them, hence objects
conforms to our mind.

 Here Kant is not saying that the mind brings objective reality into existence out of
nothing, but rather that the way in which reality appears to us depends on the

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contributions of the senses and the mind. The mind imposes its own form on the
material experience and through this activity we have objects to be known.

 When we become aware of objects, the mind, has already done its work of
imposing its rational structure, hence, what we experience is sensory input that
has been processed by the mind. Kant believed that our experience is a product
of both what comes from the external world and the particular structure that mind
imposes on it. We cannot go out of our experience to compare reality as it
appears to us with reality as it exists in itself before the mind processes it, but if
all human minds are structured in the same way, then within the bound of human
experience, it is possible to have knowledge that is universal and objective.

 An experience cannot be without certain structural features which are necessary

conditions of the experience. Hence if we can make spatial judgments or
knowledge about our experience it is so because of the transcendental
conditions with which the mind structure such experience spatially and if we can
make causal judgment it is because the mind is capable of organizing experience
in terms of a causal order. Hence knowledge would have two elements: the
material or the content which comes from experience and the form or the a priori
or transcendental forms imposed by the mind on the material or content.

Sense Perception (Sense Knowledge)

 The material of our sense-perception comes from experience. The form,

however, is not derived through the senses, but is imposed on the material, or
content, 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
transcendental conditions (form) of all sense perception are space and time.

 Space and time are mental entities in the sense that they are elaborated by the
mind out of the data of experience; they are strictly subjective, purely mental, and
have no objective entity, except in so far as they are applied to the external world
by the mind. It is through them that we are able to experience things spatially and
temporally, they are the fundamental frames of reference in terms of which object
appear to us.

 Kant also called them “forms of intuition,” by intuition he means the object of the
mind’s direct awareness, to experience something is to have sensory intuition for
example to experience “redness” is to have sensory intuition of “redness;” all
human intuition is limited to sensory awareness.

Judgment/Understanding

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 Aside from sense-perception the other stem or form of knowledge is judgment or

understanding. While through sense perceptions objects are given to us, it is
through judgment or understanding that these objects are thought of. Without
sense-perception our thoughts would be empty but without understanding or
judgment no object would be thought. Kant said: thoughts without contents are
empty and intuitions (sense awareness) without concepts are blind. The
understanding cannot intuit anything and the senses cannot think anything,
hence only through their union can knowledge arise.

 The content of judgment, or of that which the understanding joins together in the
act of judgment, are the sense-intuitions, which take place through the imposition
of the forms of space and time on the data of sensation.

 Knowledge is more than sense data, it takes the form of judgment or

understanding that can be expressed in propositions, the perception of a flame
and the illumination of the room and the sensation of burning and touching a
flame are different from knowing that a flame illumines the room or that touching
a flame can cause burning. The two experiences, flame and illumination or
touching and burning should be connected in thought in certain way to produce
knowledge. But understanding actively organizes experience by means of pure
concepts or categories of understanding. Now these pure concepts or categories
of the mind are a priori and not derived from experience.

 Kant deduced twelve a priori concepts or categories that constitute the general
nature by which the mind structure experience.
 quantity – unity, plurality and totality
 quality – reality, negation and limitation
 relation – substance, causality and community or reciprocation
 modality – possibility-impossibility, existence-non-existence and necessity-
contingency.

 Although Kant took the cue from Aristotle about the categories, the difference is
fundamental, a difference in nature, purpose, function, and effect. For Kant the
function of the categories is to confer universality and necessity on our
judgments. They serve, moreover, to bring diverse sense-intuitions under some
degree of unity. But they do not extend our knowledge. For Kant we are still
within the narrow circle of knowledge covered by our sense-experience. Space
and time do not widen that circle; neither do the categories. The knowledge
which we acquire by the understanding is confined to the appearance of things,
and does not extend to the noumenal reality.

 From these categories, belongs the concept of substance. Substance is not an

empirical category acquired through sensation not a metaphysical reality beneath
the appearances, , but rather it is a logical category by means of which the mind
picks out various groups or sensations or perceptions from the flow of experience
and unifies them into a meaningful units that we identify as objects. Similarly,

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causality is not a subjective addition to what is experienced but a category of the

mind under which objective, consistent and rule-ordered patterns of events are
subsumed.

 Types of Judgments
a. Analytic
b. Synthetic

 Two kinds of Knowledge

a. A priori
b. A posteriori

 Analytic a priori
 Analytic a posteriori
 Synthetic a posteriori
 Synthetic a priori

Reasoning: Critique of Traditional Metaphysics

 All our knowledge about the world is limited to what can be perceived in space
and time and known through the categories of understanding. But because we
are burdened by our finitude, we seek knowledge or reality that transcends our
understanding. These are what Kant called “transcendent illusions.”

 For Kant the only world that can make sense to us is the world of objects that
appear within our experience. These are the things-as-they-appear-to-us or the
phenomena. This world is intelligible to us, and anything outside of it is
unintelligible to us. But we cannot but help thinking about what is beyond or on
the other side of the boundaries of sense and intelligibility. They are the things-in-
themselves or the noumena.

 But there is a wide and an unbridgeable gap between the phenomenal and
noumenal world. The categories of the mind like substance and causality cannot
be applied to those that are in the noumenal world. Traditional metaphysics has
always attempted to go beyond the limits of reason, and apply the categories of
the mind to the noumena, such is its transcendent illusion.

 The faculty of pure reasoning produces its own concepts which refer to what
transcends any possible experience. It has three distinct operations, namely,
categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive reasoning and to these correspond the
three "ideas", the idea of the soul as thinking subject (psychological idea), the
idea of matter as the totality of phenomena (cosmological idea), and the idea of
God as the supreme condition of all reality (theological idea). The problem with
pure reason is that it falls into the trap of applying the categories of

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understanding beyond the limits of their legitimate employment and because of

this it draws conclusions that are tainted with paradoxes and illusions, namely the
illusions of the self, cosmos and God.

 For Kant, the course of reasoning of the psychologist who teaches the
substantiality, immateriality, and immortality of the human soul is fallacious,
because it starts with the false supposition that we can have an intuitive
knowledge of the soul as the substantial subject of conscious states. While we
can and do know our conscious states, we cannot know the subject of them. This
kind of psychology makes a wrong start with its contradictions and does not
conclusively establish the immortality of the soul.

 For Kant the cosmological idea fall into a whole series of contradictions, which he
calls "antinomies". Thus, the propositions, "Matter has a beginning", "The world
was created", are apparently no more true than their contradictories, "Matter is
eternal", "The world is uncreated." To every thesis regarding the ultimate nature
of the material universe an equally plausible antithesis may be opposed. So by
pure reason alone we cannot attain knowledge of the nature of the material
universe.

 Kant criticized the methods and arguments of rational theology. The speculative
basis of our belief in the existence of God is unsound because the proofs brought
forward to support it are not conclusive. St. Anselm's ontological argument tries
to establish an existential proposition without reference to experience. The
cosmological argument carries the principle of causality beyond the world of
sense-experience, where alone it is valid. The argument from design, while it
may prove the existence of an intelligent designer, cannot establish the existence
of a Supreme Being.

 Kant does not deny the existence of God, neither does he deny the immortality of
the soul or the ultimate reality of matter. His aim is to show that the three ideas,
or, in other words, speculative reasoning concerning the soul, the universe, and
God, do not add to our knowledge. What they do is to serve as regulative ideas,
they play a positive role in our thinking, even though we cannot know them as
objects of experience; they help us think about our experience. They are useful
in regulating our thoughts; they serve as goals or ideals of reason but not its
objects.

 Through the idea of the self we strive to bring together mental phenomena such
as desires, emotions and images into a unified scheme as if there were a
permanent and substantial subject behind them. The idea of cosmos although
we experience it as the finite collection of objects, we think of the world as if it
were composed of a totality of objects. The notion of God enables us to think as
if there is a single and intelligent designer and cause of everything.

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 These ideas are not the basis of metaphysical knowledge, but rather, they are
regulative concepts that provide points of reference beyond all possible
experience that help to order and make sense out of what occurs within
experience.

Critique of Practical Reason: Duty, Freedom, Moral Law, Immortality and God

 Kant, it has often been said, tore down in order to build up. What he took away in
the first "Critique" he gave back in the second. In the "Critique of Pure Reason"
he showed that the truths which have always been considered the most
important in the whole range of human knowledge have no foundation in
metaphysical, that is, purely speculative, reasoning. In the "Critique of Practical
Reasoning" he aimed at showing that these truths rest on a solid moral basis,
and are thus placed above all speculative contention and the clamor of
metaphysical dispute.

 The moral law is supreme. In point of certainty, it is superior to any deliverance of

the purely speculative consciousness; I am more certain that "I ought" than I am
that "I am glad", "I am cold", etc. In point of insistence, it is superior to any
consideration of interest, pleasure or happiness; I can forego what is for my
interest, I can set other considerations above pleasure and happiness, but if my
conscience tells me that "I ought" to do something, nothing can gainsay the voice
of conscience, though, of course, I am free to obey or disobey. This, then, is the
one unshakable foundation of all moral, spiritual, and higher intellectual truth.
The first peculiarity of the moral law is that it is universal and necessary.

 When conscience declares that it is wrong to tell a lie, the voice is not merely
intended for here and now, not for "just this once", but for all time and for all
space; it is valid always and everywhere. This quality of universality and
necessity shows at once that the moral law has no foundation in pleasure,
happiness, the perfection of self, or a so-called moral sense. It is its own
foundation. Its voice reaches conscience immediately, commands
unconditionally, and need give no reason for its behests.

 It exacts unconditional, and in a sense unreasoned obedience. Hence the "hollow

voice" of the moral law is called by Kant "the categorical imperative". This
celebrated phrase means merely that the moral law is a command (imperative),
not a form of advice or invitation to act or not to act; and it is an unconditional
(categorical) command, not a command in the hypothetical mood.

 We know the moral law not by inference, but by immediate intuition. From it all
the important truths of philosophy are deduced, the freedom of the will, the
immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. The freedom of the will follows
from the existence of the moral law, because the fact that "I ought" implies the
fact that "I can." I know that I ought to do a certain thing, and from this I infer that

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I can. In the order of things, of course, freedom precedes obligation. In the order
of knowledge, I infer freedom from the fact of obligation.

 Similarly, the immortality of the soul is implied in the moral law. The moral law
demands complete fulfillment of itself in absolute human perfection. But the
highest perfection that man can attain in this life is only partial or incomplete
perfection, because, so long as the soul is united with the body, there is always in
our nature a mixture of the corporeal with the spiritual; the striving towards
holiness is accompanied by an inclination towards unholiness, and virtue implies
a struggle. There must, therefore, be a life beyond the grave in which this
"endless progress", as Kant calls it, will be continued.

 Finally, the moral law implies the existence of God. And that in two ways. The
authoritative "voice" of the law implies a lawgiver. Moreover, the nature of the
moral law implies that there be somewhere a good which is not only supreme,
but complete, which embodies in its perfect holiness all the conditions which the
moral law implies. This supreme good is God.

Critique of the Faculty of Judgment

 Between the pure reason, which is the faculty of knowledge, and practical
reason, which is the faculty of voluntary action, is the faculty of judgment - the
faculty of aesthetic appreciation. Truth is the object of knowledge, good is the
object of action and the beautiful and purposive is the object of judgment. By this
peculiar use of the word judgment Kant places himself among the intellectualists.

 As an intellectualist in aesthetics, he reduces the beautiful to elements of

intellectuality. The beautiful is that which universally and necessarily gives
disinterested pleasure, without the concept of definite design. It differs,
consequently, from the agreeable and the useful. However for Kant the
enjoyment of the beautiful is not purely intellectual, as is the satisfaction which
we experience in contemplating the perfect. While the perfect appeals to the
intellect alone, but the beautiful appeals also to the emotions and to the aesthetic
faculty.

 Closely allied to the beautiful is the purposive. The faculty of judgment enables
us not only to perceive and enjoy the aesthetic aspect of nature and of art, but it
also enables us also to perceive in our various experiences purpose or design.

 Kant introduced the distinction between external and internal adaptation. External
adaptation exists between the organism and its environment, like for instance,
between the plant and the soil in which it grows. Internal adaptation exists among
the structural parts of the organism, or between the organism and its function.
External adaptation could be explained by merely mechanical causes, but
internal adaptation necessitates the concept of final cause. Organisms act as

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though they were produced by a cause which had a purpose in view. However,
we cannot clearly demonstrate that purpose. The teleological concept is like the
"ideas" (the soul, the world, God) it is not constitutive of our experience but
regulative of it.

 The highest use of the aesthetic faculty is the realization of the beautiful and the
purposive as symbols of moral good. Hence, what speculative reason fails to find
in nature – a beautiful and purposive order, is suggested by the aesthetic
judgment. This beautiful and purposive order is attained through religion which
rests on the practical reason.

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