Immanuel Kant

1. Immanuel Kant by Katherine Amerson

2. Biography • Born in 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia • His name was initially spelled Emanuel, though he later changed it to Immanuel • Household was Pietist and practiced intense religious devotion • His father was a Scottish immigrant who still spelled his surname ‘Cant’ • His education focused much more on Latin and religious teachings than science and mathematics • He never travelled more than 50 miles away from Konigsberg in his life. • He seemed to very strict and diligent in his routines, though he was actually quite sociable.

3. His Works • Inaugural Dissertation (1770) • Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787) – his most well known text, dealt with knowledge • Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783) – expressed some of his concepts in a simpler way • “What is Enlightenment?” (1784) • The Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) • Metaphysical Foundations of the Science of Nature (1786) • On Comprehension and Transcendental Consciousness (1788-1791) • Critique of Practical Reason (1788) – dealt with morality • Critique of Judgment (1790) – dealt with mental facilities that don’t spur us to action or convey factual knowledge (aesthetic judgment and “construing things as having purpose” or teleological judgments) • Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

4. Historical Context • Enlightenment – wave of new philosophical thought • Hume: his skepticism about certain ideas cause Kant to wake from his “dogmatic slumber.” • German Enlightenment was different than that of other countries in Europe; the nobility and middle class weren’t as fractured, and there wasn’t as much conflict over religion. • Germans rejected empiricism, which was highly popular in France at the time. • Leibnitz and Goethe are the other two big names in the German Enlightenment

5. Important Terms to Know • Rationalism – we understand the world through reason • Empiricism – all knowledge is grounded in experience • Two types of Propositional Knowledge • a priori – independent of experience • a posteriori – dependent on experience or empirical evidence • analytic statement – true by definition, predicate doesn’t add new information to a sentence • synthetic statement – adds information to a sentence • “the possibility of human knowledge presupposes the active participation of the human mind” • Before Kant, what was considered a priori was considered only to be analytic, meaning it was independent of experience. Ex. An intelligent man is intelligent. • Kant thought that synthetic a priori statements were the most important kind.

6. Critique of Pure Reason • First published in 1781, a second edition was published in 1787. • Over 800 pages long in the original German • Concept of transcendental idealism • Rejects that knowledge is gained through the senses, instead it is due to the inherent structure and nature of the mind. • Sense data does NOT equal knowledge. • Space and time are modes of perception

7. Critique of Pure Reason Cont’d • Doctrine of Elements (Book 1) • Transcendental Aesthetic – space and time are pure forms of intuition • Transcendental Analytic – appropriate uses of a priori • Transcendental Dialectic – transcendental illusion • Doctrine of Method (Book 2) • Discipline of Pure Reason • Canon of Pure Reason

8. Categorical Imperative • Introduced in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals • Opposed to hypothetical imperatives • Kant’s central philosophy on morals • Syllogism: two different premises = conclusion • First, Second, and Third Maxim • Compared to the Golden Rule • Sense of innate moral duty

9. Lasting Impact • Created his own “Copernican Revolution”, in essence. • Shaped most of modern philosophy. • German Idealist School • Fichte • Hegel • Schelling