Kant’s Philosophy: Reason, Morality, and Knowledge
Immanuel Kant’s philosophy begins with the analysis of reason as the foundation of human action. He considers that moral consciousness is expressed in principles by which individuals adjust their actions and judge their own conduct and the behavior of others, leading to what he calls the moral fact.
Kant’s Practical Reason: Morality and Duty
The Foundation of Moral Action
Kant rejects material ethics because they justify actions based on what is good in specific circumstances, rather than universal laws. The foundation of morality, he argues, must be established a priori. Only through the autonomy of the moral law, discovered internally, is the foundation of human dignity established. This forms a universal moral principle.
Categorical Imperatives and Duty
For Kant, the law of pure reason determines the will. It acts out of respect for duty. Law and duty arise through obligation, which is expressed in categorical imperatives (universal, objective commands). These imperatives stem from reason itself and are therefore the same for everyone.
Postulates of Practical Reason
Kant posits a process aimed at unifying the highest good. To achieve this highest good, reason must apply three principles, or postulates of practical reason: freedom, the immortality of the soul, and God. These ideas of pure reason regain a foundation they had lost in their theoretical use.
Morality, Religion, and Happiness
Moral mandates lead to a rational belief in God; the moral law leads to religion. Kant highlights two essential aspects: recognizing the Supreme Good as a morally perfect, holy, and powerful will, and considering the duties of free will as divine commands. These are essential laws that lead to happiness, which Kant defines as the realization of the moral good.
The question “What should we expect?” requires social and political action throughout history. Man, as a rational creature, cannot individually develop all the capacities of human nature. The ultimate philosophical question for Kant is to understand “who is man?”
Kant’s Theoretical Reason: Knowledge and its Limits
Kant provides a synthesis between two opposing currents: rationalism and empiricism, both of which he criticized for their dogmatism. He begins with critical and transcendental knowledge as a prerequisite, considering the subject’s experience as what makes knowledge possible. This is possible through space and time, which are a priori forms of the faculty of knowledge. Man is the active element of knowledge, and the object is known when the subject integrates it into their cognitive system.
Transcendental Idealism and A Priori Knowledge
Kant’s transcendental idealism posits that judgments must be synthetic a priori because they expand knowledge. He examines how the human mind forms judgments, and from this theoretical use of reason, he delineates the limits of what can be known. To do so, he examines the various faculties of knowledge and demonstrates the scientific rigor of mathematics and physics, unlike metaphysics.
The Faculties of Knowledge and Scientific Rigor
- In the Transcendental Aesthetic, he demonstrates how mathematics is a true science. This faculty performs the first synthesis of knowledge, and its result is the phenomenon.
- In the Transcendental Analytic, he shows how physics has principles independent of experience, which are a priori (universal and necessary). He points out that understanding unifies and synthesizes sensory experiences, creating concepts. It uses judgments and categories, which are applied to the data of experience—phenomena.
The Limits of Metaphysics
In the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant concludes that without sensibility and understanding, metaphysics is impossible as a science. If space and time are conditions for the possibility of knowing phenomena, then all that lies outside them is inaccessible to knowledge. Metaphysical realities (God, soul, and world) are impossible as sciences because they escape phenomenal experience. Metaphysical ideas are entities that dialectical reason universalizes and unifies. The world makes external experience possible, the soul unifies all internal experience, and God is the convergence of both in principle and purpose.
The limits of knowledge are the objects of experience; the metaphysical world lies beyond them. This necessitates opening up the practical use of reason, which answers the questions “What should I do?” and “What should we expect?”, thereby responding to the human tendency toward the unconditional.