Kantian Philosophy: A Critical Approach to Knowledge and Morality
Kantian Philosophy
Introduction
Immanuel Kant developed his philosophy in his book Critique of Pure Reason. With his critical method, he argued that the purpose of philosophy is not to extend our knowledge of the world, but to deepen our understanding of ourselves. He posed three fundamental questions:
- What can I know?
- What ought I to do?
- What may I hope for?
These questions can be summarized as: What is man? For Kant, philosophy is a project of clarification in the service of a free and just humanity. It is an activity that rejects submission to the past and tradition, subject only to the rule of reason: a critical activity. This is what Kant considers the fundamental principle of enlightenment.
Knowledge
Kant criticized classical philosophy as a set of often irreconcilable opinions that had made little progress. He argued that philosophy is an uncertain form of knowledge because its principles can never be derived from experience. To understand the characteristics of knowledge, Kant distinguished two types of judgments:
Analytic Judgments
These judgments have absolute validity because the predicate is included in the subject. They are absolutely true but do not provide new knowledge.
Synthetic Judgments
These judgments relate directly to experience and expand our knowledge. The predicate is not contained in the subject, establishing a new connection between previously unrelated phenomena or events.
Synthetic Judgments a Priori
These judgments are a mixture of the previous two types. They are independent of experience and can provide increased knowledge about it. This is possible only if the subject, regardless of experience, brings something that is not contingent and is valid for all subjects.
Our knowledge begins with experience, but not all knowledge comes from experience. There can be knowledge outside our empirical knowledge, derived from impressions and from what our faculty of knowledge generates itself. Kant denies the possibility of knowledge beyond experience but considers that knowledge and experience are not identical. All knowledge is a synthesis of matter and form, the given and what the subject contributes. These forms are not prior to experience but independent of it; they are a priori conditions of knowledge. Transcendental metaphysics determines the possibility, principles, and scope of all a priori knowledge. It attempts to say something definite about the ultimate questions of human existence.
Sensibility
The way we receive information about things is through sensibility. We receive evidence (not raw data) that we synthesize and shape. The a priori forms of sensibility are space and time. Space and time do not belong to the physical empirical world but are structures of knowledge. Therefore, reality in itself is unknown to us, and things-in-themselves are called noumena. We cannot go beyond the phenomena of space and time, the sensible data we collect. We cannot speak about the noumenon because we have no experience of it. With the a priori forms of sensibility, arithmetic and geometry are possible.
Understanding
Understanding requires a synthesis that can relate phenomena and go beyond the merely given. From the phenomena as a subject, understanding structures the intuitions through categories of quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Concepts are expressed in judgments. This allows us to state that one phenomenon causes another or to describe its quality. This is the task of thinking: to relate events or attributes to each other. The phenomena we think about necessarily refer to experienced phenomena, and experience is the limit of knowledge.
Reason
Metaphysics cannot be a science because applying categories beyond experience leads to errors and illusions. Transcendental dialectic deals with the possibilities of establishing a priori reason. Reason seeks to know the unconditioned and unlimited, tending to ask questions and formulate answers about God, the soul, and the world. But these are not realities given in experience but limits to which knowledge tends. We can think about all phenomena, but we cannot know them because we have no intuition of them; they are unknowable. Metaphysical concepts do not refer to objects about which scientific knowledge is possible.
Ethics
Human activity is not limited to the knowledge of things but also extends to knowing how to act. Pure reason and practical reason are two different powers. The same reason has two dimensions or functions. In practical reason, we determine how things should be (ethics and morality). Unlike judgments made by theoretical reason, practical reason formulates imperatives, commands, and orders. It is not content to say how things are but how they should be, extending a series of new consequences and approaches. We are located in the inner dimension of the human being, the dimension of the will. The will directs our actions. Faced with the mere acceptance of things, it is necessary to lead them, govern them, and decide what can or cannot be. In ethics, it is considered that there is a supreme good for man, and behavior will be ethically good or bad, right or wrong, as it approaches or moves away from the pursuit of this supreme good. Not all ethical systems consider the same ultimate goal (joy, pleasure, progress, etc.). Determining the ultimate goal is fundamental in ethics because it supports specific behaviors. This is problematic because not all human beings at the same time or place consider the same desires. Ethics based on material goals (if you want…, you must…) are problematic. The ultimate goal is not purely rational, valid, and necessarily universal but rather sentimental, dependent on the feeling of each individual. The maximum for action is taken from experience itself or from others. Kant seeks a sure foundation, safe from any variability and contingency of human experience. He proposes a formal ethics that is strictly universal and rational, given a priori, with categorical imperatives and autonomy. It cannot tell us what to do, which would go against our autonomy, but merely prescribes how we should do it. In this sense, moral actions are those executed autonomously, without seeking any other purpose (pleasure, happiness, etc.). Actions carried out out of respect for duty must be done because they are right and not to achieve an end that might be correct but would not be moral. Kant seeks an autonomous principle that originates from pure reason, is not part of experience or the natural tendencies of human beings, and is independent of any consideration that does not need spatial knowledge to be reached. He proposes the categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” This imperative assumes the freedom of man, oblivious to the causality of phenomena. Doing good does not guarantee happiness, but it makes us suppose that justice will occur at some time and place for those who have done good, as well as the immortality of the soul and just retribution for good deeds (and punishment for bad ones). The requirement of reason to do good makes us assume a superior entity that guarantees justice and identifies with happiness: God. Freedom, immortality, and God are noumena, and although we cannot have certainty about them, we have a rational faith in them.