Philosophy of Kant

Kant's philosophy is generally designated as a system
of transcendental criticism tending towards Agnosticism
in theology, and favouring the view that Christianity
is a non-dogmatic religion.

Immanuel Kant was born at K�nigsberg in East Prussia,
22 April, 1724; died there, 12 February, 1804. From his
sixteenth to his twenty-first year, he studied at the
university of his native city, having for his teacher
Martin Knutzen, under whom he acquired a knowledge of
the philosophy of Wolff and of Newton's physics. After
the death of his father in 1746 he spent nine years as
tutor in various families. In 1755 he returned to
K�nigsberg, and there he spent the remainder of his
life. From 1755 to 1770 he was Privatdozent (unsalaried
professor) at the University of K�nigsberg. In 1770 he
was appointed professor of philosophy, a position which
he held until 1797.

It is usual to distinguish two periods of Kant's
literary activity. The first, the pre-critical period,
extends from 1747 to 1781, the date of the epoch-making
"Kritik der reinen Vernunft"; the second, the critical
period, extends from 1781 to 1794.

THE PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD

Kant's first book, which was published in 1747, was
entitled "Gedanken von der wahren Schatzung der
lebendigen Kr�fte" (Thoughts on the True Estimation of
Living Forces). In 1775 he published his doctor's
dissertation, "On Fire" (De Igne), and the work
"Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova
Dilucidatio" (A New Explanation of the First Principles
of Metaphysical Knowledge), by which he qualified for
the position of Privatdozent. Besides these, in which
he expounded and defended the current philosophy of
Wolff, he published other treatises in which he applied
that philosophy to problems of mathematics and physics.
In 1770 appeared the work "De Mundi Sensibilis atque
Intelligibilis Formis et Principiis" (On the Forms and
Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World), in
which he shows for the first time a tendency to adopt
an independent system of philosophy. The years from
1770 to 1780 were spent, as Kant himself tells us, in
the preparation of the "Critique of Pure Reason".

THE CRITICAL PERIOD

The first work of Kant in which he appears as an
exponent of transcendental criticism is the "Critique
of Pure Reason" (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), which
appeared in 1781. A second edition was published in
1787. In 1785 appeared the "Foundation for the
Metaphysics of Ethics" (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der
Sitten). Then came a succession of critical works, the
most important of which are the "Critique of Practical
Reason" (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft), the
"Critique of Judgment" (Kritik der Urtheilskraft,
1790), and "Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason"
(Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft,
1793). The best editions of Kant's complete works are
Hartenstein's second edition (8 vols., Leipzig, 1867-
69), Rosenkranz and Schubert's (12 vols., Leipzig,
1834-42), and the edition which is being published by
the Academy of Sciences of Berlin (Kants gesammelte
Schriften, herausg. von der k�niglich preussischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902-).

During the period of his academic career, extending
from 1747 to 1781, Kant, as has been said, taught the
philosophy then prevalent in Germany, which was Wolff's
modified form of dogmatic rationalism. That is to say,
he made psychological experience to be the basis of all
metaphysical 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 metaphysics, and ended by
losing all faith in the validity and value of
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" and brought home to him 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, and also
for the purpose of placing on an unshakable foundation
the metaphysical truths which Hume's skeptical
phenomenalism had overthrown. The old rational
dogmatism had, he now considered, laid too much
emphasis on the a priori elements of knowledge; on the
other hand, as he now for the first time realized, the
empirical philosophy of Hume had gone too far when it
reduced all truth to empirical or a posteriori
elements. Kant, therefore, 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, 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 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.

It will be found most convenient to divide the study of
Kant's critical philosophy into three portions,
corresponding to the doctrines contained in his three
"Critiques". We shall, therefore, take up successively
(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".

"Critique of Pure Reason"

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
forms of (a) sensation, (b) judgment, and (c)
reasoning.

A. Sensation

The first thing that Kant does in his study of
knowledge is to distinguish between the material, or
content, and the form, of sensation. The material of
our sense-knowledge 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 most important forms of
sense-knowledge, the conditions, in fact, of all
sensation, are space and time. Not only, then, are
space and time 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.

Because of what is to follow, it is important to ask at
this point: Do the a priori forms of sensation, since
they admittedly enhance the value of sense-knowledge by
rendering it universal and necessary, extend the domain
of sense-knowledge, and carry us outside the narrow
confines of the material, or data, of the senses? Kant
holds that they do not. They affect knowledge, so to
speak, qualitatively, not quantitatively. Now, the data
of sensation represent only the appearances
(Erscheinungen) of things; therefore all sensation is
confined to a knowledge of appearances. Sense-knowledge
cannot penetrate to the noumenon, the reality of the
thing (Ding-an-sich).

B. Judgment

(b) Taking up now the knowledge which we acquire by
means of the understanding (Verstand), Kant finds that
thought in the strict sense begins with judgment. As in
the case of sense-knowledge, 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
data of sensation. Sometimes the sense-intuitions
(subject and predicate) are joined together in a manner
that evidently implies contingency and particularity.
An example would be the judgment, "This table is
square." With judgments of this kind the philosopher is
not much concerned. He is interested rather in
judgments such as "All the sides of a square are
equal", in which the relation affirmed to exist between
the subject and the predicate is necessary and
universal. With regard to these, Kant's first remark is
that their necessity and universality must be a priori.
That nothing which is universal and necessary can come
from experience is axiomatic with him. There must,
then, 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 judgment are the categories. It
is hardly necessary to call attention to the contrast
between the Kantian categories and the Aristotelean.
The difference is fundamental, a difference in nature,
purpose, function, and effect. The important point for
the student of Kant is to determine the function of the
categories. They serve 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 while
representations (or intuitions) without the categories
would be blind, the categories without representative,
or intuitional, content, would be empty. 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,
therefore, which we acquire by the understanding is
confined to the appearances of things, and does not
extend to the noumenal reality, the Ding-an-Sich.

It is necessary at this point to explain what Kant
means by the "synthetic a priori" judgments. The
Aristotelean philosophers distinguished two kinds of
judgments, namely, synthetic judgments, which are the
result of a "putting-together" (synthesis) of the
facts, or data, of experience, and analytic judgments,
which are the result of a "taking-apart" (analysis) of
the subject and predicate, without immediate reference
to experience. Thus, "This table is round" is a
synthetic judgment; "All the radii of a circle are
equal" is an analytic judgment. Now, according to the
Aristoteleans, all synthetic judgments are a
posteriori, because they are dependent on experience,
and all analytic judgments are a priori, because the
bond, or nexus, in them is perceived without appeal to
experience. This classification does not satisfy Kant.
He contends that analytic judgments of the kind
referred to do not advance knowledge at all, since they
always "remain within the concepts [subject and
predicate] and make no advance beyond the data of the
concepts". At the same time he contends that the
synthetic judgments of the Aristoteleans have no
scientific value, since, coming as they do from
experience, they must be contingent and particular.
Therefore he proposes to introduce a third class,
namely, synthetic a priori judgments, which are
synthetic because the content of them is supplied by a
synthesis of the facts of experience, and a priori,
because the form of universality and necessity is
imposed on them by the understanding independently of
experience. An example would be, according to Kant,
"Every effect must have a cause." Our concepts of
"effect" and "cause" are supplied by experience; but
the universality and necessity of principle are derived
from the a priori endowment of the mind. The
Aristoteleans answer, and rightly, that the so-called
synthetic a priori judgments are all analytic.

C. Reasoning

In the third place, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" is
occupied with the reasoning faculty (Vernunft). Here
"ideas" play a role similar to that played in sensation
and judgment by space and time and the categories,
respectively. Examining the reasoning faculty, Kant
finds that it has three distinct operations, namely,
categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive reasoning.
To these, he says, 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). He first
takes up the idea of the soul, and, examining the
course of reasoning of the psychologist who teaches the
substantiality, immateriality, and immortality of the
human soul, he pronounces that line of philosophical
thought to be 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. This, he claims, is an erroneous
supposition, for, while we can and do know our
conscious states, we cannot know the subject of them.
Rational psychology, then, makes a wrong start; its way
is full of contradictions; it does not conclusively
establish the immortality of the soul. Next, Kant
subjects the cosmological idea to a similar analysis.
He finds that as soon as we begin to predicate anything
concerning the ultimate nature of matter we 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. The
conclusion is that by pure reason alone we cannot
attain a knowledge of the nature of the material
universe. Finally, Kant takes up the theological idea,
the idea of God, and criticizes the methods and
arguments of rational theology. The speculative basis
of our belief in the existence of God is unsound he
says, 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; it confounds the order of
things with the order of ideas. The cosmological
argument carries the principle of causality beyond the
world of sense-experience, where alone it is valid. And
the physico-theological argument from design, while it
may prove the existence of an intelligent designer,
cannot establish the existence of a Supreme Being.
Kant, of course, 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. But, although the ideas do not extend
our experience, they regulate it. The best way to think
about our conscious states is to represent them as
inhering in a substantial subject, about which,
however, we can know nothing. The best way to think of
the external world is to represent it as a multiplicity
of appearances, the ground of which is an unknowable
material something; and the best way to organize and
systematize all our knowledge of reality is to
represent everything as springing from one source,
governed by one law, and tending towards one end, the
law, the source, and the end being an unknown and
(speculatively) unknowable God. It is very easy to see
how this negative phase of Kant's philosophy affected
the subsequent course of philosophic thought in Europe.
The conclusions of the first "Critique" are the
premises of contemporary Agnosticism. We can know
nothing except the appearances of things; the senses
reach only phenomena; judgment does not go any deeper
than the senses, so far as the external world is
concerned; science and philosophy fail utterly in the
effort to reach a knowledge of substance (noumenon), or
essence, and the attempts of metaphysics to teach us
what the soul is, what matter is, what God is, have
failed and are doomed to inevitable failure. These are
the conclusions which Kant reaches in the "Critique of
Pure Reason"; they are the assumptions of the Agnostic
and of the Neo-Kantian opponent of Scholasticism.

"Critique of Practical Reason"

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 aims at showing
that these truths rest on a solid moral basis, and are
thus placed above all speculative contention and the
clamour of metaphysical dispute. He has overthrown the
imposing edifice which Cartesian dogmatism had built on
the foundation "I think"; he now sets about the task of
rebuilding the temple of truth on the foundation "I
ought." 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 is not, so to speak, a
constitutional monarch amenable to reason, judgment, or
any other faculty. 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, such as "If you wish to be a
clergyman you must study theology." One should not,
however, overlook the peculiarly empty character of the
categorical imperative. Only in its most universal
"hollow" utterances does it possess those qualities
which render it unique in human experience. But as soon
as the contingent data, or contents of a specific moral
precept, are presented to it, it imposes its
universality and necessity on them and lifts them to
its own level. The contents may have been good, but
they could not have been absolutely good; for nothing
is absolutely good except good will--the acceptance,
that is, of the moral law.

We know the moral law not by inference, but by
immediate intuition. This intuition is, as it were, the
primum philosophicum. It takes the place of Descartes'
primary intuition of his own thought. 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
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 fulfilment 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"

Intermediate between the speculative reason, which is
the faculty of knowledge, and practical reason, which
is the faculty of voluntary action, is the faculty
which Kant calls judgment, and which is the faculty of
aesthetic appreciation. As the true is the object of
knowledge, and as the good is the object of action, the
beautiful and purposive is the object of judgment. By
this peculiar use of the word judgment Kant places
himself at once outside the ranks of the sensists, who
refer all the constituents of beauty to sense-perceived
qualities. He is an intellectualist in aesthetics,
reducing the beautiful to elements of intellectuality.
The beautiful, he teaches, 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, Kant is careful to remark that the enjoyment
of the beautiful is not purely intellectual, as is the
satisfaction which we experience in contemplating the
perfect. The perfect appeals to the intellect alone,
while the beautiful appeals also to the emotions and to
the aesthetic faculty. Closely allied to the beautiful
is the purposive. The same faculty, judgment, which
enables us to perceive and enjoy the aesthetic aspect
of nature and of art, enables us also to perceive that
in the manifold variety of our experience there is
evidence of purpose or design. Kant introduced in his
"Critique" of the teleological judgment an important
distinction between external and internal adaptation.
External adaptation, he taught, exists between the
organism and its environment, as, 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. The
former, he believed, could be explained by merely
mechanical causes, but the latter necessitates the
introduction of the concept of final cause. Organisms
act as though they were produced by a cause which had a
purpose in view. We cannot clearly demonstrate that
purpose. The teleological concept is, therefore, like
the "ideas" (the soul, the world, God) 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.
What speculative reason fails to find in nature,
namely, a beautiful, purposive order, is suggested by
the aesthetic judgment and fully attained by religion,
which rests on the practical reason.

Kant, as is well known, reduces religion to a system of
conduct. He defines religion as "the acknowledgement
that our duties are God's commandments". He describes
the essence of religion as consisting in morality.
Christianity is a religion and is true only in so far
as it conforms to this definition. The ideal Church
should be an "ethical republic"; it should discard all
dogmatic definitions, accept "rational faith" as its
guide in all intellectual matters, and establish the
kingdom of God on earth by bringing about the reign of
duty. Even the Christian law of charity must take
second place to the supreme exigencies of duty. In
fact, it has been remarked that Kant's idea of
religion, in so far as it is at all Scriptural, is
inspired more by the Old than by the New Testament. He
maintains that those dogmas which Christianity holds
sacred, such as the mystery of the Trinity, should be
given an ethical interpretation, should, so to speak,
be regarded as symbols of moral concepts and values.
Thus "historical faith", he says, is the "vehicle of
rational faith". For the person and character of Christ
he professes the greatest admiration. Christ, he
declares, was the exemplification of the highest moral
perfection.

EVALUATION OF KANT Critics and historians are not all
agreed as to Kant's rank among philosophers. Some rate
his contributions to philosophy so highly that they
consider his doctrines to be the culmination of all
that went before him. Others, on the contrary, consider
that he made a false start when he assumed in his
criticism of speculative reason that whatever is
universal and necessary in our knowledge must come from
the mind itself, and not from the world of reality
outside us. These opponents of Kant consider, moreover,
that while he possessed the synthetic talent which
enabled him to build up a system of thought, he was
lacking in the analytic quality by which the
philosopher is able to observe what actually takes
place in the mind. And in a thinker who reduced all
philosophy to an examination of knowledge the lack of
the ability to observe what actually takes place in the
mind is a serious defect. But, whatever may be our
estimate of Kant as a philosopher, we should not
undervalue his importance. Within the limits of the
philosophical sciences themselves, his thought was the
starting-point for Fichte. Schelling, Hegel, and
Schopenhauer; and, so far as contemporary philosophic
thought in Germany is concerned, whatever of it is not
Kantian takes for its distinguishing characteristic its
opposition to some point of Kantian doctrine. In
England the Agnostic School from Hamilton to Spencer
drew its inspiration from the negative teaching of the
"Critique of Pure Reason". In France the Positivism of
Comte and the neo-Criticism of Renouvier had a similar
origin. Kant's influence reached out beyond philosophy
into various other departments of thought. In the
history of the natural sciences his name is associated
with that of Laplace, in the theory which accounts for
the origin of the universe by a natural evolution from
primitive cosmic nebula. In theology his non-dogmatic
notion of religion influenced Ritschl, and his method
of transforming dogmatic truth into moral inspiration
finds an echo, to say the least, in the exegetical
experiments of Renan and his followers.

Some philosophers and theologians have held that the
objective data on which the Catholic religion is based
are incapable of proof from speculative reason, but are
demonstrable from practical reason, will, sentiment, or
vital action. That this position is, however,
dangerous, is proved by recent events. The Immanentist
movement, the Vitalism of Blondel, the anti-
Scholasticism of the "Annales de philosophie
chretienne", and other recent tendencies towards a non-
intellectual apologetic of the Faith, have their roots
in Kantism, and the condemnation they have received
from ecclesiastical authority shows plainly that they
have no clear title to be considered a substitute for
the intellectualistic apologetic which has for its
ground the realism of the Scholastics.

WILLIAM TURNER Transcribed by Rick McCarty

[New Advent Catholic Website]
http://www.knight.org/advent

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright �
1996 by New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver,
Colorado, USA, 80228. ([email protected])

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