Immanuel Kant: Historical Freethinker
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By Contact the author. 1998. During the Eighteeth century, new intellectual thoughts arose throughout much of Europe, although the great majority of these thinkers were in France. Many historians study the works of such French philosophes, as they were called, but few seem to address the lives of other European thinkers of the time who were not of French origin. Such is the case of the German intellectual logician Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who used pure logic and reason to analyze topics ranging from physics and religion to mathematics and moral philosophy. As is evident, Kant had a wide range of interests and was learned in different methods of analysis; these components combined to create one of the most brilliant philosophic scholars in the Eighteenth century, and certainly the most respected metaphysical genius in history. Born in Königsburg, Prussia in April 1724, Immanuel Kant, the fourth of nine children born to his parents, was exposed to altered methods of thinking early in life. His mother, a devout Lutheran, inspired Kant throughout his philosophical lectures with her ideas on tranquillity, godliness, and truthfulness. Kant's studies at a young age were perhaps too intense for a youngster, which set his negative view towards his determined tutors; Kant illustrates this in a lecture excerpt: "Many people imagine that the years of their youth are the pleasantest and best of their lives, but it is not really so. They are the most troublesome; for we are then under strict discipline, can seldom choose our friends, and still more seldom have our freedom." After years of determined studies, Kant was commissioned as a tutor for the families of Königsburg, and, soon after, was appointed as the private lecturer at the University of Königsberg. And, although Kant was dedicated to his lecturing career, he spent his spare time compiling extensive works on human cognitive limitations with regards to reason, logic, experience, and morality. Foremost, let us examine the ideas of Immanuel Kant. First, he concluded that humans can have knowledge about what we have not yet experienced, but that knowledge could only be limited knowledge of a possible experience. Second, Kant established that noumena, the existence of things within themselves, is present. Further, he stated that the existence of God cannot be either proven nor disproven by using reason. But Kant also concluded that humans cannot obtain a just society without faith in God! According to Kant, reason is based on experience, yet the idea of God defies (or surpasses) any experience. Kant concluded that the mind and the objects within the mind are two separate components, and should not be mistaken to be the same. He also unearthed a theory stating the predictions of scientists should not be followed because their predictions cannot effect our own free will and duty to live in a moral society. Moreover, he ruled that doing duties (or commandments) should only be completed if the duty is applied to society and self equally. The above conclusions all took place within three periods of Kant's philosophical work; the 'pre-critical period' (1747-1770), the 'silent decade' (1771-1780), and the 'critical period' (1781- 1797). The pre-critical period included Kant's first publication, On the True Estimate of Living Forces. During this time period, Europe had shifting views which were eventually unified by Kant's concerns within scientific questioning, mainly forming around his search to resolve disputes of all contemporary and traditional metaphysics. Kant did this through reinterpreting the conditions for human knowledge. In his metaphysical analysis, he concluded that metaphysics had failed to establish basic understanding of human freedom, God, and morality. The middle period, called the 'silent decade' because Kant published virtually nothing, was devoted to the study and reflection that led eventually to the "Critique of Pure Reason". The third, or 'critical period', dates from the publication of the first edition of the Critique in 1781. This was followed by the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783), the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals" (1785), the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1787), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), as well as many important essays on topics in metaphysics, science, morals, legal and political theory, and the philosophy of history. In addition, Kant published compilations of his lectures on anthropology, logic and edification. In his last years he devoted himself to a major revision of some of his basic views on metaphysics and the foundations of science. The work remained incomplete at his death, but has since been edited and published under the title Opus Postumum. Within his most famous piece, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which aimed to achieve a structure of human knowledge based on rational thinking, Immanuel Kant stated: "[To] know an object I must be able to prove its possibility, either from its actuality as attested by experience, or a prior by means of reason. But I can think whatever I please, provided only that I do not contradict myself, that is, provided my concept is a possible thought." This passage illustrates Kant's views on reason. He claimed that, although our knowledge is derived from experience, it is possible to have knowledge of objects in advance of experience. Also within The Critique, Kant examined scientific and religious concepts. His resolution on metaphysics declared that they do not provide any truth based on evidence, but the analysis of metaphysical concepts can help one to make conclusions. A second concern of Immanuel Kant on metaphysics was the problem with antinomies. Kant concluded that the contradiction or antinomy arises because it is possible to construct valid proofs for each of the two conflicting positions; the universe has a beginning in time and the universe has existed for an infinite period of time. He also thought that, if unresolved, this problem would lead to a hopeless skepticism, which he termed the 'euthanasia of pure reason'. Consequently, Kant came to see the fate of metaphysics as crucially dependent on a successful resolution of the antinomies as well as an account of the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge. Kant himself said that his projects could be codified in the following three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? For what may I hope? These three questions have occupied every philosopher in the history of Western thought, but Kant's answers to them dramatically altered how they were approached by all of his successors. No one before Kant had regarded human minds as actively operative! Since Kant, in fact, no one has been able to neglect the transforming and intrusive influence of the observer's cognizant process about observation. In essence, Immanuel Kant's declarations, all of which were based on knowledge, reason, logic, experience, and morality, were essential to the European society. |
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