Immanuel Kant: Reason, Knowledge, and Morality

Posted on Dec 11, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Kant: Theme 1: Sense of a Critique of Reason

Kant’s philosophy arises from the need to analyze reason, which had been used inappropriately by rationalists, empiricists, and irrationalism.

1.1 Need for a Critique of Reason

  1. The dogmatic rationalist believes that reason is self-sufficient for interpreting reality, regardless of experience.
  2. Empiricist positivism (the maximum expression is skepticism) reduces thought to what the senses perceive, negating reason.
  3. Irrationalism emphasizes feeling, mysticism, and the subjective, that is, it denies reason.

1.2 Enlightenment and Freedom: Goals of Reason

The trial of reason (i.e., reason is on trial) means, for Kant, the critical exercise of reason (a trial is made by reason itself; reason itself is judged). The aim of reason is to help man become more free. This freedom is related directly to the Enlightenment in two ways:

  1. Criticism is aimed at the achievement of the Enlightenment, i.e., as an “enlightened age” (getting an “enlightened age” = a goal). That goal may never be achieved at all (this is the utopia of Kantianism).
  2. As it had reached an enlightened age of reason, criticism is the answer to an age of “Enlightenment” (the era of Enlightenment = criticism of reason).

1.3.1 Concept of Worldly Philosophy

According to Kant, philosophy is the science that relates all knowledge aimed at human reason. This is called the mundane or cosmic concept of philosophy.

  1. It is necessary to establish the principles and limits that allow a scientific understanding of nature. That is the answer to the question “What can I know?”
  2. To say which are the principles of action, justified, and also the conditions of freedom. Answering the question “What should I do?”
  3. To make a project of the ultimate destiny of man and the conditions and possibilities of its realization. That is, “What may I hope for?” – Of human life.

Theme 2: Nature and Theoretical Reason

2.1 Science and Metaphysics

Kant feels obliged to explain how to understand reason. The criticism of reason from the theoretical point of view raises the question: What can I know?

  1. It tries to understand and explain how science is, scientific knowledge.
  2. It tries to explain the problem that is metaphysics.

Science, for Kant, is an indisputable fact. Metaphysics, instead, is an insoluble problem (no solution). So the question is: Is metaphysical knowledge possible? Is metaphysics possible as a science? Science is possible under certain conditions; can metaphysics comply with those conditions? If the answer is yes, metaphysics will have the rank of science; if the answer is no, it cannot be constituted as a science. Kant wants to purify philosophy and metaphysics of all that is foreign to it, and debug it through critics. The fundamental idea of metaphysics was obscured by two things:

  1. Not setting out clearly the difference between the elements a priori and a posteriori elements in our knowledge.
  2. Pretending that metaphysics (which is closely related to mathematics) has the sole objective of physical-mathematical knowledge.

The question “What can I know?” that affects reason in its theoretical use is the basis of the work “The Critique of Pure Reason,” which attempts to explain:

  • How can the science of his time?
  • Raising the possibility (or impossibility) of metaphysics and its meaning.

2.2 Nature of Knowledge

Kant asserts that not everything real can be known, and to know signifies scientific knowledge. “Elements” are sensible knowledge (what you see) and logical-rational. This first part is divided into:

  1. “Transcendental Aesthetic”, which studies sensitivity (senses).
  2. “Transcendental Logic”, which studies the “logos”, there are two ways to study:
    • “Transcendental Analytic”: that is, as of understanding, with its pure concepts.
    • “Transcendental Dialectic”, using the reason why their concepts or ideas.

2.2.1 Key Sources of Knowledge

According to Kant, one can know through:

  1. Sensitivity (empiricism). Sensitivity is passive; it only receives impressions.
  2. Understanding (rationalism). Understanding is active, i.e., it produces concepts or ideas.

2.2.2 Pure Empiricism: A Posteriori – A Priori

  1. “A posteriori” is the knowledge that comes from experience through sensation. It is empirical knowledge. Empirical and retrospective is also unique and contingent.
  2. “A priori” knowledge is the part that does not come from experience, that comes before, regardless of experience. Kant says that it is also universal and necessary.

The two (intuitions and concepts) are either pure or empirical:

  1. Empirical: when a sense is contained in the object.
  2. Pure: when any sensation affects the object.

The pure concept means only what we think of an object without mixed feelings. The elements that allow a priori knowledge and experience are what Kant called the study of the “transcendental”.

2.2.3 The Trial and its Class

Knowledge is expressed in trials. Kant seeks to what kind of trial is the scientific knowledge. It must have 3 characteristics:

  1. Universality
  2. Necessity
  3. The increase of knowledge

To the trials that have these 3 characteristics, Kant calls synthetic judgments a priori. The trial is related to a subject and a predicate, and as this relationship, we establish a difference:

  1. A trial is analytic if the predicate is included in the subject. These judgments do not expand our knowledge. Trial is a priori: the truth of this view can be known without experience.
  2. A trial is synthetic if the predicate is not contained in the subject. These trials do provide information, they expand our knowledge. It is a post-trial: in them, the truth is known through the data of experience.

2.3 The Transcendental Aesthetic

The sensitivity allows knowledge through space and time; these are “a priori forms of sensibility” in Kant:

  1. Space and time are forms, that is, not sense impressions (colors, sounds, etc.), but the forms or modes of how we perceive our perceptions.
  2. “A priori” means that they do not come from experience, that they emerge before. These are the conditions necessary for possible experience.
  3. They are forms that occur before sensitive knowledge (knowledge = sensible experience).

Kant also calls space and time “pure intuitions”:

  1. Intuitions are not concepts of the understanding. Concepts can be applied to many individuals, but space and time are unique.
  2. Pure means that they are not from the knowledge that comes with experience.

2.4 The Analytical Transcendental: Knowledge of the Intellectual

Sensitivity puts us ahead of many phenomena, but perceiving these phenomena is not understood. Perceiving is the role of sensibility, and understanding is the role of understanding:

  1. The role of understanding or understanding is done by concepts.
  2. There are two types of concepts:
    • Empirical concepts are those from experience (they are a posteriori, in Kantian terminology).
    • A priori concepts or categories that do not come from the experience of understanding.
  3. The fundamental role of understanding is to make judgments. There are different types of judgments:
    1. Depending on the amount, judgments may be universal, special, and unique.
    2. According to the quality, the trials may be affirmative, negative, and indefinite.
    3. According to the relationship.
    4. By modality.
  4. The pure concepts are necessary conditions for our knowledge of phenomena. They give knowledge an objective.

2.5 Phenomenon and Noumenon

The object known through the senses is called the phenomenon. The object itself (intellectual knowledge, without the intervention of the senses) is called the noumenon. Kant distinguishes two forms of the concept of noumenon:

  1. Negatively: a thing cannot be known through intuition (directions).
  2. Positively: the object can be known by non-sensible intuition (through intellectual intuition).

According to Kant, as we have no intellectual intuition, only sensible intuition, our knowledge may only perceive phenomena. So, for Kant, the concept of the noumenon is negative because we do not know it through experience. There is the limit of our knowledge. No knowledge of things in themselves, the noumena.

Theme 3: Freedom and Practical Reason

3.1 Reasons for Moral Formalism: Theoretical and Practical Reason

The theoretical reason is concerned to know how things are. Science (theoretical reason) is concerned with what is. Theoretical reason makes theoretical objective judgments (i.e., heat expands metals). Practical reason is concerned with how human behavior should be (not interested in motives or psychology). What has to be motivated to act is the moral so that his behavior is rational. Morality (practical reason) is concerned with what it should be. Practical reason produces imperatives or commands (do not kill, etc.).

3.2 Moral Formalism

Kant’s ethics is a genuine novelty; it is called moral formalism, which is opposed to the old ethics.

3.2.1 Ethical Materials

Do not confuse materialist ethics with ethical materials. Ethical materials speak of a supreme good for human beings to distinguish the goodness or badness of human beings. In ethics, there are two material elements (content of ethics):

  1. A good to get (good things for man: pleasure, happiness, etc.).
  2. Rules that help us achieve that good.

3.2.2 Critique of Kant to Ethical Materials

Kant rejected ethical materials because they have the following defects:

  1. They are empirical, they are a posteriori, i.e., their content comes from experience.
  2. Trials are not valid materials for themselves, i.e., they are conditional, they are used as means to an end.
  3. Ethical materials are heteronomous: this means that the rules come from outside. Kantian ethics seeks that the law is created by man himself.

3.2.3 Kant’s Formal Ethics: Sense of Formal Ethics

Kant’s reasoning is simple:

  1. All materials are empirical ethics.
  2. A universal and rational ethics should not be empirical, it must be universal, that works for everyone and forever.
  3. A universal and rational ethics cannot be material, it must be formal.

For Kant, it is important to act on duty; the important thing is how, not the content. Formal ethics is an ethic that has no content, i.e.:

  • Its sole purpose is the moral law.
  • It tells us how we should act. It does not tell us what to do.

Duty: A man acts morally when he acts out of duty, and duty is directly related to the law. The action should not be a means to an end.

The Categorical Imperative: The need to act morally is an imperative (command) categorical (no doubt):

  1. Anything you do, do it for others too. It makes no specific rule.
  2. Objective reasons for the good of humanity. Do not use humanity as a medium.