Understanding Kantian Metaphysics and Its Implications
Understanding Kantian Metaphysics
In this excerpt, Kantian metaphysics is the problem that revolves around all the criticism of pure reason. The aim of Kant’s philosophy is to experience his own “Copernican revolution,” which would mean a change of method: the transcendental method. Kant seeks to challenge the power of reason and understanding, as well as awareness of the limitations of his own philosophy, as metaphysics has access to the status of science.
Axial had just concluded that all knowledge is based on experience but is not limited to it; rather, this experience is governed by its own structure of thought (categories) that are part of our cognitive framework.
The Copernican Revolution in Philosophy
We can start doing fragment analysis with reference to the “Copernican revolution” in the field of philosophy that Kant speaks of. The analogy with the revolution that Copernicus held is clear: the scientist, seeing that the Earth stood still in the middle of the universe while the planets revolved around it, noted many unexplained phenomena. Hence, he decided to “move” the Earth and make it revolve around the sun. Thus, Kant considered that it is the subject who, in knowing, discovers the laws of the object; rather, the reverse is true: the subject adapts to the laws of the object from the cognitive point of view.
In conclusion, a priori knowledge of things is only what we ourselves have placed on them, that is, space and time. We will analyze this in the transcendental aesthetic. Moreover, when we refer to a priori knowledge, we are referring to that which gives us the trait of universality and necessity, and that therefore occurs prior to experience.
Physics as a Science
To see if physics is a science, we should look at it based on a priori synthetic judgments (universal, necessary, prior to experience, and opposed to a posteriori).
Understanding Intuitionism
We should clarify what Kant referred to when he speaks in the text of intuitionism. The intuition would be the immediate knowledge of objects. According to Kant, man is endowed with a single kind of intuition, which is characteristic of sensitivity. Therefore, the human mind does not intuit but always refers to data supplied by sensation. The object of sensible intuition is called a phenomenon.
Within this phenomenon, Kant distinguishes between a subject and a way: the material element of the phenomenon consists of the sensations in us (ex post), while the formal element is constituted by the subject’s own structure that allows us to order the data we receive from the senses. Within the structure of the subject itself, we have two pure intuitions: space and time.
Pure Intuitions and Synthetic Judgments
Axial, pure intuitions are responsible for the conjugation of synthetic judgments a priori, as we have said characterizes all science.
Understanding and Sensitivity
Besides sensitivity, man has a second source of knowledge: understanding. If we sense through sensitivity, we think through understanding. However, it is important to clarify that understanding and intuition go together to meet the phenomenal. The general understanding in science is logic, which has two branches: general and transcendental logic. The latter is further divided into analytic and dialectic.
The analytical analysis promotes transcendental formal elements of understanding. Axial, Kant distinguishes between pure concepts and empirical concepts. These are called pure concepts or Kantian categories, which have a relationship with Aristotle that we shall see. These categories are 12 and are divided into 4 groups: quantity, quality, relation, and modality.
Conditions for Thought
Thus, the pure concepts or categories are the only conditions under which we can think about the subject of intuition. Therefore, the response to how synthetic judgments are possible a priori is resolved: they are possible because we have the pure forms of intuition of space and time a priori.
The Transcendental Dialectic
But if the new method only allows us to learn about transcendental phenomena, what happens to those concepts that are designed purely for reason? Kant answers this question through the transcendental dialectic. The philosopher understands these concepts or ideas to be in the realm of the noumenal, but as he states in the text, they are necessary concepts.
Axial, these ideas (which follow from the table of syllogisms) are summarized in three: soul, world, and God. That’s why when we make an illegal use of ideas, we commit a series of mistakes, which is precisely what happens in the field of metaphysics. These errors arise because humans do not have the ability to know the existence of these ideas, as it would require purely a priori knowledge; for that, one would need to possess an intellectual intuition, which we do not have.
Normative Use of Ideas
That is why ideas have a normative use: these are schemes that allow us to order experience and give the greatest possible unity (we can think about them but not in their knowability).
The Role of Metaphysics
You might think that metaphysical knowledge does not help us, but it is indeed useful. Kant does not banish metaphysics; it is the misuse that has echoed it and puts it in place as a knowledge that gives us an exercise in understanding.
Kant’s Background and Influence
This text belongs to the Critique of Pure Reason, the work of Immanuel Kant. The author of that work was born in Königsberg in 1724. He began his studies in 1740, influenced by the rationalist school, and then read Hume, who, according to him, roused him from his dogmatic slumber.
Much of his work was written during the reign of Frederick the Great, an enlightened monarch who maintained good relations with intellectuals and an attitude of religious tolerance. However, after his death, heavy censorship was imposed against anything that could attack religious dogma, and Kant was forced to give up these items.
The Enlightenment Era
It is therefore the Enlightenment, an intellectual current of thought that dominated Europe, especially France and England during the 18th century. It ranged from rationalism and empiricism of the 12th to the 13th centuries, through the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and liberalism.
The Enlightenment thinkers argued that human reason could combat ignorance, superstition, and tyranny, and build a better world with the light of reason. For Kant, enlightenment is the output of man from his self-imposed “minority” through reason and, within it, the exercise of critical reason.
Kant’s Philosophical Project
Thus, the Kantian criticism is a response to prior dogma and skeptical reason. Since it was an era that sought to illustrate the human being and make the best of it, it conducted an anthropological turn to the declaration of human rights. It is necessary to create a useful philosophy, modern and worldly, not merely academic.
Influences on Kant’s Philosophy
Of course, Kant’s philosophical project was influenced by the philosophical currents mentioned above. We emphasize the following: First, he acquired the Aristotelian concept of categories, but whose meaning he corrected with respect to the Copernican revolution, as he had done with space and time. Axial, for Aristotle, the categories were the laws of the objects (forms of being); however, Kant defined them as working modes of thought.
Furthermore, Kant defined his table of 12 categories from the table of judgments of formal Aristotelian logic, which he viewed as perfected. Unlike Aristotle, for Kant, intuitions—the material element—are the feelings, while the formal elements are space and time. The formal element is the categories, and the material element of the phenomenon is reason, with a priori formal elements being the ideas.