18th Century: Transformations to the Modern World
Historical Background
The eighteenth century represents the culmination of all the transformations that led to the modern world and set the stage for the contemporary revolutions at the end of the century. From the fifteenth century, national governments were organized as absolute monarchies. A stratified society persisted, and the economy remained largely agricultural. Political tensions in the Old Regime were accentuated with the rise of the bourgeoisie as a class. The development of mercantile capitalism increased the economic power of this new class, fueling their desire to eliminate a political system that denied them access to power and maintained privileges for the nobility. These bourgeois aspirations materialized in a series of revolutions throughout Europe that would end absolutism. When Kant was born, Frederick William I ruled Prussia. He introduced compulsory primary education and fostered significant internal development.
Sociocultural Framework
Eighteenth-century society comprised aristocrats, bourgeois, craftsmen, and peasants. The bourgeoisie had created a new vision of humanity. This led to the development of the Enlightenment, which was characterized by the elevation of reason over experience, and promoted the ideas of equality among men, freedom of thought, and happiness. The scientific revolution caused a radical change both in the image of the universe and in the scientific method itself. The triumph of modern science allowed philosophy to break away from religion, proclaiming the autonomy of reason.
Philosophical Framework
Kant was educated in Pietism, a branch of Lutheranism. His thinking is part of the Enlightenment, which he defined as the liberation of man from his inability to use his intelligence without the guidance of another. Among his works are: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In the eighteenth century, the fulcrum of philosophy was reason. Enlightenment philosophers abandoned the Cartesian rationalist approach to embrace Newton’s experimentalism. The central point of Kant’s reflection was man, and he proposed a “Copernican revolution” in relation to knowledge.
Influences Received
After Kant’s critical work, we can speak of a before and after in the history of philosophy. This work represented the culmination of Enlightenment thought and the synthesis and improvement of the main philosophical currents of the time: rationalism and empiricism. Kant was formed in the rationalism of Wolff (an interpretation of Leibniz’s philosophy), but reading Hume led him to move away from strict rationalism and admit the value of feeling in knowledge. The result of “awakening from his dogmatic slumber” was the development of a theory of knowledge and the first idealist theory (referred to by Kant as his Copernican revolution). His theory of knowledge needs to be framed within the aspirations of the enlightened Kant. Reason has to be sovereign in practical terms.
Impact
From Kant onward, philosophy was written in German for a long time. His work laid the foundation for the idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Even those who opposed idealism, such as Schopenhauer, started from Kant. The so-called “linguistic turn” in Nietzsche’s philosophy would not have been possible if the Copernican revolution had not taken place before. Neo-Kantians tended to present Kant as a theorist of knowledge or science.
Lasting Influence
Today, the limits of Kantian reason in its theoretical use, as claimed by Kant, are still present in the latest psychological trends, especially in the fields of ethics and politics.