Kant’s Critique of Traditional Metaphysics
**Critique of Traditional Metaphysics**
Metaphysics and the Natural Tendency Toward Illusory Knowledge. Kant delivers a devastating critique of dogmatic metaphysics, which sought to present itself as science. Based on the aforementioned theory of knowledge and science, he demonstrates how metaphysics is not, nor can it be, knowledge, much less science, but rather an illusion. However, this illusion is inevitable; it originates in the nature of human reason, which, as it is, will always tend to engage in metaphysics. Thus, metaphysics is older than science and would exist even if science were to disappear. Hence, the need for a critique of reason arises. Moreover, this necessitates maintaining an attitude of constant vigilance against such an impulse, so ingrained in humans, that leads to deception.
Reason
Kant now distinguishes a third faculty in humans: reason. It is not a cognitive faculty but serves to systematize knowledge, providing unity. Such unity is a profound need for human reason, which is not satisfied with any experience, any phenomenon, or any particular object that is relative and subject to another. Therefore, it always tends toward the more general, the ultimate, the absolute, or the unconditioned.
Ideas
These are the acts or operations of reason. Ideas are extremely general notions of the absolute, beyond all possible experience, which serve to synthesize series or sequences, potentially infinite, of mutually conditioned phenomena. Reason ideally traverses the series of phenomena in a single stroke, encompassing a multitude of conditions. It leaps over these conditions and, upon reaching the unconditioned, develops an idea that unifies and totalizes the multiplicity of terms traversed.
World, Soul, and God
There are three ideas of reason, which Kant aligns with the three major themes of the metaphysical tradition: the soul, the world, and God. Thus, with the idea of the soul, reason conceives of the substantial unity and permanence of the subject beneath the changing multiplicity of their experiences. The idea of the world represents the unity of all phenomena, all objects of knowledge, and results from synthesizing everything opposed to the subject. The idea of God signifies unity, in a supreme synthesis of all objects of thought, and therefore serves as the foundation of the other two ideas.
Usefulness of Ideas
Ideas are legitimate, then, being requirements of our reason. They are just that: “ideas,” simple ideas that do not imply the existence or reality of the corresponding content.
The Metaphysical Illusion
Humans cannot think without categories. From the moment we posit, on the one hand, extremely general ideas beyond all possible experience, and on the other hand, the understanding that operates with categories to apply to experience, the conditions for metaphysical illusion are established. This illusion occurs when we illegitimately apply our categories to ideas that are beyond all possible experience and are not spatio-temporal phenomena. The illusion then arises, specific to metaphysics, that the world, the soul, and God are real things and not just ideas. However, this illusion is almost inevitable from the moment reason produces ideas, and the understanding cannot think without categories. Metaphysics, according to Kant, always involves an illegitimate use of categories beyond all experience.
Another Drawback of Metaphysics: Being an Obstacle to Morality. Because knowledge always refers to experience, metaphysics, in its desire to know something that cannot be the subject of experience, effectively renders it a “phenomenon,” thereby distorting and degrading it. This prevents it from being addressed from a different, more accurate, and more modest perspective: the moral approach.
Two Comparisons. Kant employs two images to illustrate the metaphysical illusion. Thus, the metaphysician is as illusory as a dove that, upon feeling air resistance during flight, imagines an empty space to fly better, not realizing that in such a case, flight would be impossible, its wings deprived of all support.
Knowledge and Belief. Kant restores the great themes of metaphysics (the soul, God) afterward, but now presents them not as certain knowledge, demonstrated in the strong sense, as in dogmatic metaphysics, but as mere belief, demonstrated in a weak sense, that is, demonstrated only morally. However, these are rational beliefs, based on practical reason, which is human reason in its capacity to dictate the norms of action or behavior. Therefore, these beliefs, whether or not they constitute knowledge, possess legitimacy and respect and should not be confused with mere psychological beliefs, based on imagination, or religious beliefs, based on faith.
Criticism, Dogmatism, and Skepticism. Kant’s phrase that encapsulates the ultimate meaning of his research, “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith,” is fully justified. In his critique of speculative reason, with its critique of metaphysics, Kant not only seeks to do justice to scientific knowledge but also to give practical reason its due, discarding all objections that have been made to morality and religion from disbelief, as the dogmatism of metaphysics is the very source that feeds skepticism. Indeed, “why believe if I can know?” and ultimately, if you know, you do not believe.