Understanding Human Knowledge: Kant’s Philosophy

Posted on Mar 9, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

The diagram of human knowledge explores the analysis of human cognitive difficulties, including sensitivity, understanding, and reason. It examines the roles of two sources of knowledge and understanding of sensibility:

  1. Sensitivity: This is passive and merely receives impressions from the outside world.
  2. Understanding: This is active and occurs spontaneously, forming concepts and drawing from experience.

What is Science?

Science is a set of judgments that can be of different types:

  • Analytic / Synthetic
  • A priori / A posteriori
  1. Analytical Judgments: These do not provide any new information about the world.
  2. Synthetic Judgments: The predicate is not included in the subject, expanding our knowledge of the world.
  3. A Priori Judgments: These are known to be true apart from experience and are universally necessary.
  4. A Posteriori Judgments: These are known to be true based on experience and are not universally necessary.

Kant introduces a new class of trial:

  1. Synthetic Judgments A Priori: Because they are synthetic, they provide new information about the world, expanding our knowledge. Because they are a priori, they are universal and necessary. Kant believed that key judgments in mathematics and physics are of this type. The principle of causality is a necessary and universal law; without it, experience and science would be impossible.

Kant concludes that metaphysics is a natural tendency of reason that we cannot abandon, but it is not possible as reliable theoretical knowledge.

Practical Use of Reason

While pure reason investigates things in nature, practical reason concerns itself with how things should be. It asks, “What can I do?” and uses the ideas of theoretical reason to turn them into principles. The basic postulate of reason allows for freedom.

Kant’s Works

Perpetual Peace is one of Kant’s notable works.

Influences on Kantian Philosophy

Newton, rationalism, and Hume significantly influenced Kant.

The Problem of Knowledge in Kant

The aim of Kant’s theory of knowledge is to answer the question, “What can I know?” It explores the possibilities and limits of knowledge, a central concern in the modern age. The theory of knowledge proposed here aims to resolve the scientific nature of metaphysics through a critical analysis carried out by reason. This represents a shift in the way of conceiving knowledge, moving beyond Cartesian approaches and Hume’s skeptical empiricism, towards a critical reason.

Historical Reasons:

There have been many interpretations:

  • Rationalism: Reason, independent of experience, can know the truth.
  • Empiricism: Knowledge comes from experience, and reason plays no role in this process.

Philosophical Reasons:

Empiricism and rationalism analyze the process of knowledge as the subject itself. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the knower, the active element of knowledge that shapes understanding.

Critical Reason

We must bring reason to justice. If a true use of reason makes men free, we must subject reason to trial to determine its potential and recognize its limits. Four key questions are:

  1. How can I know?
  2. What should I do?
  3. What can I expect?
  4. What is man?

The most important question encapsulates all the others and represents the ultimate human concern, primarily addressed from an anthropological perspective.