Immanuel Kant: Life, Works, and Philosophy
Practical Use of Reason (Moral Theory)
- Reason, other than its theoretical use, has a moral function as it is concerned with human behavior and the principles that determine men to act if their conduct is to be moral. The faculty responsible for all this is practical reason, which makes imperatives (commands).
- For an action to have moral value, it cannot be expressed by an imperative for just anyone, but by a categorical imperative (a universally valid moral law based on a commandment that obliges us to do something because we have a duty to do so).
- Kant believes that actions taken by duty are the only ones with moral value, and not the actions we take to get something, which are expressed in hypothetical imperatives (commands that force you to do something else as an end).
- Therefore, the only requirement that can be called moral imperatives are categorical imperatives, which represent the subject’s freedom since only a being with free will can impose a moral law on itself.
- The individual is free only in the moral realm because he only obeys his reason. Categorical imperatives represent an action in itself, without reference to any order, as necessary, while the hypothetical imperative is an action taken as a means to an end.
- Virtue is the desire always to act out of duty, and virtuous conduct requires respecting all people as rational, moral beings.
- Kant’s ethics is a formal ethics, devoid of content, independent of experience, and aims to be universal (valid for all) and sound. It is a priori categorical in its autonomy (since the use of categorical imperatives is the subject’s freedom, since only a being with free will can impose a moral law on itself).
Kant’s ethics culminates in the application of the three postulates of practical reason (propositions required for practical reason because of the existence of the categorical imperative or moral law and, as they are the practical use of reason, do not expand our knowledge but have a moral meaning):
- The liberty of the subject: due to the existence of moral law or categorical imperative.
- The immortality of the soul: Kant defends the guarantee that after this life, there will be infinite progress toward virtue.
- The existence of God: Ensuring that our virtue will be rewarded with happiness.
These three principles answer the question, “What do you expect, man?” They show us the true meaning of the ideas of reason. While in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant shows that these assumptions are noumena, we now see that the true meaning of these ideas is practical and moral, not theoretical. Yet, we can say that Kant totally rejects material ethics (which provide the moral principles of the object of the will). Material ethics do not provide categorical imperatives but hypothetical imperatives, and therefore say that we act to get something (happiness, pleasure, etc.) and show us how best to achieve it. Materialist ethics are also based on experience and are therefore a posteriori and cannot provide the unconditional necessity that corresponds to the moral law.
For Kant, the will is autonomous or free when it acts out of respect to duty, following the moral law without regard to sensitive constraints. The will to act independently is free because it does not depend on anything outside itself; it only obeys the moral law. The subject falls into moral heteronomy when his will acts on a hypothetical imperative and under the conditions imposed by any end outside itself, without regard to the moral law or categorical imperative of duty.
Life
Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg to a Pietistic family. He entered college in 1740, where he studied under Martin Knutzen (a disciple of Wolff), who introduced him to mathematics, physics (especially Newton), and metaphysics. In 1770, he took the chair of Metaphysics and Logic at the University of Königsberg. He left college at 74 and died in 1804.
Works: Three Periods
- Pre-critical period: Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Dissertation on the Forms and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World
- Critical period (1770-1790): Critique of Pure Reason, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment
- Post-critical period: Religion within the Bounds of Reason, Metaphysics of Morals
Historical, Cultural, and Philosophical Background
Introduction
Kant lived in the 18th century, a time of great change in all aspects.
Sociocultural Context
At this time, the proletariat appeared. In addition, the Enlightenment developed, a movement with which Kant shared his ideals of tolerance, equality, freedom, and human progress. These ideals were espoused in the Encyclopédie (a work that aimed to reach all with the set of knowledge and new ideas). With the Enlightenment, reason was freed from any religious or political tutelage and was used to explain reality, regardless of religion.
Political Framework
During this time, enlightened despotism predominated (monarchs dominated the sciences, applied arts, and social reforms to improve people’s living conditions, but regardless of what they thought).
Scientific Framework
There was a very important advance in science. Newtonian physics stood out, culminating in the revolution begun by Copernicus (continued by Kepler and Galileo).
Religious Context
In terms of religion, three different attitudes existed at this time: Deism (a natural religion without dogma), Pietism (a religious sect that relies on personal reflection and the practice of virtue), and Mystical-Occult.
Philosophical Framework
This period was marked by enlightened ideas of morality, politics, science, and religion. Rationalism (dogmatic rationalism emphasizing Wolff), which advocated the possibility of metaphysics about the soul, world, and God, coexisted with empiricism, which denied it. Kant adopted an intermediate position between the two streams, stating that there is knowledge that comes from experience, but then saying that knowledge begins with experience.
Main Lines of Thought
Introduction
For Kant, philosophy is an activity designed to answer four questions: What can I know? What should I do? What can I expect? What is man? To answer these questions, he will make a critical analysis of reason, by which reason itself is analyzed to establish the principles governing the knowledge of nature, the laws regulating moral behavior, the ultimate ends of reason, and the limits of reason. This reason that imposes itself on the principles and laws is the reason for (a set of innate structures a priori) pure (devoid of empirical knowledge). Pure reason has two functions: theoretical, responsible for knowing how things are, and practical, which deals with knowing what human behavior can be called.
Using Theoretical Reason: Introduction
The study of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge is done by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, where he will try to solve the problem of the possibility of metaphysics. To answer this and other issues, Kant analyzed the requirements for scientific knowledge. According to Kant, scientific knowledge is expressed through litigation, which means that scientific knowledge should be synthetic (provide new information, do not clarify the subject of the sentence) and a priori (not from experience but preceding it). Having established the existence of the lawsuits, he sought the conditions of their ability in mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. This study will be conducted with the Transcendental Aesthetic, the Transcendental Analytic, and the Transcendental Dialectic.
Transcendental Aesthetic
Transcendental refers to that which does not derive from experience but provides us with experience. It is the science of all principles of sensitivity (the ability or power of feelings). It explains how to have feelings and, as a momentous deal with knowledge, the transcendental conditions (not dependent on circumstances or empirical characteristics of the subject but which lie in the structure of the mind). These are universal and necessary and cannot be given or changed, even with the development of technology or the advancement of science; they are a priori forms of sensitivity and the categories of understanding) that allow sensitive knowledge, a prelude to all knowledge. Kant distinguishes two moments in perception:
- Matter: It consists of sensations (the effect of objects on sensitivity) that are a posteriori.
- A priori forms or pure intuition (pure = empty of empirical content) are space and time, which are conditions of sensitive knowledge. They are the way in which we perceive those impressions. They are also intuitions because they are not concepts of understanding and are pure (devoid of empirical content) and a priori (preceding experience).
Forms applied to empirical data from reality are called phenomena. We can define the phenomenon as the object as perceived by us once the contents have been felt under the a priori forms of space and time, with respect to sensitivity, and the categories with respect to understanding. Kant says that space and time allow synthetic judgments (they say something new about the subject, not merely to clarify) a priori in mathematics. Space is the pure intuition of geometry, and time is the pure intuition of arithmetic. A knowledge level of sensitivity occurs when sensitivity shapes events, synthesizing evidence and a priori forms.
Transcendental Analytic
This is the study of understanding, which is responsible for understanding what is perceived by applying concepts to phenomena. Understanding is the faculty of concepts, the power to judge. Concepts are applied by judgments, and Kant claims that understanding, in addition to developing a posteriori empirical concepts (table, tree, chalk, etc.) from experience, produces pure a priori concepts or categories (substance, cause, necessity, etc.). From the classification of trials, he shows that there are 12 categories. The categories are just a source of knowledge applied to phenomena; they cannot be applied to realities that go beyond experience, called noumena. Therefore, we can say that there is no knowledge at the level of understanding when there is no synthesis between phenomena and categories. From these categories are derived the principles of pure understanding that express rules on what happens empirically, and these principles, together with the categories, make it possible for physics to be a science.
Transcendental Dialectic
With Kant, the transcendental dialectic will ask whether metaphysics is possible and will make a study of ideas (which, according to Kant, have a transcendental sense, critical and subjective, designating the unconditioned principles of reason that can synthesize our knowledge) of reason (using ideas to think). Kant says that metaphysics, understood as a set of judgments about realities lying beyond experience (noumenal realities), is impossible since the categories can only be applied to phenomena. In studying reason, Kant says that it seeks to find ever more general judgments. This trend, while reason remains within the limits of experience, enables the construction of science. However, if it exceeds the limits of experience in search of the unconditional, we end up finding:
- Antinomies in cosmology: Trials on the same topic that contradict each other and have no arguments to demonstrate them.
- Fallacies in psychology: False arguments that lead philosophers to speak of the soul.
- Metaphysical theories about God: Seeking to prove His existence.
Kant says that God, Soul, and World are three ideas of reason, which is shown as the law of reason that seeks to find larger but do not give us objective knowledge. In fact, these ideas relate to noumena, and so when it comes to knowing, reason falls into contradiction with itself.