Understanding Kant: The Foundations of Transcendental Idealism
Man cannot be universally known and needed; it limits their own experience. Thus, both refused the claims of dogmatic metaphysics and the possibility of objective knowledge, which threatens science. Kant was now on a mission: he must save the possibility of science and legitimize its foundations (transcendental idealism). Critical Stage: The reason has to overcome the skeptical stage, this much at stake (the science itself), to settle in the very stadium: the critique. This implies examining not only the products of reason but reason itself, to establish what its real possibilities and limits are. Needless to say, the Kantian system belongs to this stage. Kant: A Part of the History of Philosophy Because of the variety and complexity of the issues it covers, and the originality and depth of the solutions proposed (which shows, however, a prodigious sense of the extent and balance), Kant is one of the great thinkers of all time, a classic of philosophy. In general, the work is a kind of Kantian little recap of the History of Philosophy. Kant, in effect, updates and uses many concepts and theories of the philosophical tradition, but gives them a turn with his own original stamp (Ideas of Plato, Aristotle’s categories, etc.). Moreover, although many philosophers, following Kant, have worked successfully in fields he cultivated, these investigations have had to rely, for better or worse, on the position of Kant, who remains there, not undermined, as a milestone, as an ineludible reference. Particular Achievements: They are obvious in Kant. Not only did he surpass, in the theory of knowledge, rationalists vs. empiricists (yet always acknowledged his debt to Hume), and confirmed with scientific philosophy Newtonian physics, but metaphysics brings the impasse in which he was by the power of dogmatism and skepticism. Working for the latter task, Kant reflects on a new type of rationality, practical rationality-law, a discovery that offers all later philosophy. Metaphysics, then, in Kant’s hands, leaves the theoretical rationale and, relying on practical rationality, opens to the problem of freedom and human action. For all this, Kant is a genuine representative of his time, the eighteenth century, the century of the Enlightenment, a cultural movement that has as its supreme values of reason and freedom. Indeed, Kant defined the Enlightenment as man’s departure from his minority. Under this condition, which was the inability to use his own intellect without the direction or supervision of other bodies; according to Kant, man himself is responsible for this failure, since the cause of it lies not in a default intellect, but a lack of determination and courage to dare to think independently. Hence, in the opinion of Kant, this is the slogan of the Enlightenment: “Dare to think, have the courage to serve your own intellect.” Therefore, Kant, from Germany, was enthusiastic about the French Revolution, the social and political event of their time, an event that had been prepared ideologically for the Enlightenment.
III. Contextualizing
I. Kant first published his “Critique of Pure Reason” in 1781. We know that this work did not get either the public acclaim or criticism that its author expected immediately; quite the contrary, their publication sparked a whole wave of indignation among the dominant philosophical environments (pro-rationalist philosophy in particular). Guessed that this attitude of rejection of the work was the result of a misunderstanding, to which must be added the complexity of its doctrinal content and an unfortunate and cumbersome style that was not too thick or too well prepared. Kant set out to write works to summarize his ideas more clearly. The headline: “Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Wants to Stand as a Science” (1783). Later, in 1787, with the 2nd edition of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” Kant writes a second prologue, much of which is to comment on this text.
What does this second prologue add to the first? Of course, and from the standpoint of doctrine, there is no substantial change, yet Kant takes this 2nd edition to facilitate the reader’s understanding of his work, given that the author advances the idea synthetically, schematically, and lastly of his doctrine (transcendental idealism).
Kant’s intellectual biography can be divided into two periods. His earlier writings to 1770 are in the pre-critical stage. During this stage, his interest covers various topics. He became a professor in 1770. Since it was established custom, he began his teaching with a formal conference. This inaugural dissertation is a milestone in his evolution as a thinker. Until then, he had followed the dominant rationalism in German philosophy, which had its origin in Leibniz. After 1770, there comes a period of silence. For eleven years, he wrote little. He was mulling over the critiques. In 1781, with the publication of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” he begins his second phase (critical). Division of the “Critique of Pure Reason”: meaning and content of the division. As for knowing feeling and thinking is needed, the “Critique of Pure Reason” Transcendental Aesthetic is divided, or the theory of sensibility as a condition of knowledge, and Transcendental Logic, or the theory of thought as a condition of the stages of reason. Kant argued that human reason has gone through three stages: dogmatic, skeptical, and critical, which maps with three major philosophical systems. Dogmatic Stage: This stage corresponds to a ratio in an infant state, which historically coincides with the rationalism of the seventeenth century, whose representatives defended the existence of an intellectual intuition (and we know that for Kant, it is only possible sensible intuition), by which reason did not have to undergo experience, but could move to and from itself. For the rationalists (Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz), reason is the only true source of knowledge. This deification of reason was rejected and criticized by empiricists. For Kant, knowledge is a collaboration between sensitivity and understanding. Skeptical Stage: At this stage, reason submits for consideration the products of reason itself. Historically, this coincides with the empiricism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Locke, Berkeley, and Hume), for which the origin of knowledge was in sensory experience. Empiricism was a strong rejection of the rationalist ideals, which involved a refusal to censure the unchecked progress of dogmatic reason to think we know based on illusions overstepping the limits defined by experience. Kant stated that the philosophy of Hume had awakened him from his dogmatic slumber, as the limit of human knowledge to the confines of experience denied the validity of universal concepts and necessary.