Kant
Introduction
Project
David Hume became skeptical of any metaphysical knowledge, any knowledge of the nature of reality. All we know is appearances, phenomenon, and beyond that it’s a matter of best beliefs. In the light of Hume’s metaphysical skepticism, Kant defines his project as the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, that is to say, what are the prospects for metaphysics. He is explicit about that orientation, in the introduction in the Prolegomena. Since the Essays from Locke and Leibniz, nothing has ever happened could be more decisive to it’s fate, than the attack made on by David Hume, he threw no light on species of knowledge, but he certainly struck a spark by which the light might have been kindled had it caught some inflammable substance had it’s fire had been carefully nursed and developed. Hume started from a single but important concept, namely that of the connection between cause and effect. He challenged reason to answer him by what right he thinks anything could be constituted that if that thing is positive something else must necessarily be positive. Hume suffers misfortunes of metaphysicians of not being understood. The question is not whether the concept of cause is right or useful, but whether that concept could thought by reason a-priori independent of experience. Metaphysics consists all sorts of concepts a-priori. Metaphysics is properly concerned with synthetic a-priori propositions. All metaphysicians are therefore legally suspended from their occupations until they adequately answered the question how are synthetic a-priori propositions are possible, for the answer contains the only credentials they must show when there are anything to offer in the name of pure reason, but if they do not possess these credentials, they can expect nothing else from reasonable people, who have been deceived so often then to be dismissed from their occupation without future inquiry. He recognizes in light of Hume’s skepticism, the very possibility of doing metaphysics is a serious question.
Terminology
Dogmatic, Skeptical & Critical Philosophy
Skeptical refers to David Hume. Dogmatic philosophy is the earlier metaphysicians, so he in mind the continental rationalist tradition, including Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke and Berkeley. There were successors of Leibniz in the German rationalism of 18th century and Kant was raised in the rationalistic tradition. He says he was awakened by those dogmatic slumbers by reading David Hume. When he ventures his own project, his project is critical philosophy, trying to examine the conditions that make metaphysics possible, criticizing the epistemological foundations of metaphysics. His major work is called A Critique of Pure Reason. He’s trying to look critically at the possibilities that lie in pure reason, reason independently from experience. In additional to the first critique, he came up with a second critique, A Critique of Practical Reason, which refers to ethical thinking, so this is a critique of moral knowledge. David Hume in his first chapter of his inquiry distinguishes abstract and practical philosophy, where abstract philosophy is about metaphysics and practical philosophy is moral philosophy. Subsequently he produced a third critique, A Critique of Judgment, which has to do with aesthetic knowledge, both in regards to nature, the ordered-ness and beauty of nature, and in regards to art. In each case, what he is looking at is the preconditions that would make knowledge judgments possible.
The critique of pure reason comes to the conclusion that there is no possibility of metaphysical knowledge in the traditional sense that involves objectivity and absolute certainty. Dogmatic certainty in matters of metaphysics is not possible. And that applies to the three areas of metaphysics in his day, philosophical psychology, philosophical cosmology and philosophical theology, dealing with mind, nature and God. His conclusion about natural theology, theology by reason alone, are negative. But he goes on to argue that metaphysical beliefs are possible on the basis of moral and aesthetic knowledge. Again you get a distinction between knowledge and belief. Kant critiques the possibility of metaphysical knowledge, but finds in all his three critiques that there are basis for certain metaphysical beliefs. He also has a work on religion which is called Religion within the Bounds of Reason alone, where he is asking about the possibilities of religious knowledge independently with of revelation.
A-priori and A-posterior, Analytic and Synthetic Propositions, Synthetic A-priori
In Hume, the distinction was between relations of ideas and matter of fact, in the subsequent empiricist tradition, Hume’s distinction remains pretty firm. Relations of ideas are analytic, they have form such as logical truth and mathematics. Matters of fact are described more in synthetic fashion, which contains all the sciences. In analytic propositions, the predicate is contained in the subject. In synthetic propositions, the predicate adds to the subject. The distinctive thing that Kant does is to bring further distinction of a-priori and a-posterior. A-posterior is dependent on experience. There are sure a-posterior statements. Likewise, we have analytic a-priori propositions. The problems comes when he adds to that the notion of synthetic a-priori. Kant wants to say a-priori knowledge is going to be universal and necessary true. It’s not just the analytic that’s necessary true, but the a-priori as well. So you got analytic and synthetic a-priori knowledge. Synthetic a-prior for Kant, involves math, physics(natural science) and metaphysics. And you will find in Critique of Pure Reason there are three sections, the first one the transcendental aesthetic(sense perception) where he explains the basis for mathematics, transcendental analytic(physics) and transcendental dialectic(metaphysic). His point is that whether we have rational knowledge, universal and necessary knowledge a-priori that is synthetic, that adds to the meaning of the terms.
Transcendental Method
Transcendental knowledge is not occupied with objects but with a-priori concepts. By transcendental knowledge, Kant is talking about the inner resources of human spirit and human mind, what is it that reason brings a-priori to the quest for knowledge and the transcendental method is getting at these inner resources the human mind brings. If we say that critical philosophy is to critique the tradition by asking what are the resources that minds brings a-priori, then the transcendental method is the method you want. He is not talking about innate ideas, something that is self evident, but the kind of a-priori idea is not self evident, it’s more of a blueprint, or framework, or a mode in which you will pour into experience. It’s a-priori structure, a-priori lens that brings things to focus. You can’t think without the “lens”. This a-priori structure is what he tries to uncover wit the transcendental method.
Copernican Revolution
This represents a new Copernican Revolution. Philosophically, the perspective in thinking about things in the Enlightenment was that of thorough going objectivity, the objectivity of all perception and knowledge(spectator theory). But the new Copernican Revolution introduces subjectivity, in the sense that human subjects contributes, it’s not all subjective, but human contributes the formal structures, the a-priori concepts. In that sense, the world we know is the world as we shaped it. The world of cause effect mechanisms with necessary connections and forces at work is the world we conceptualized, whether or not it is this way in reality is a further question.
Phenomena and Noumena
The outcome for Kant is his distinction between phenomena and noumena. Because if what we know is the world we structured that way, then it’s just the way it appears to us, whereas the noumena, is the thing in itself. Because the subjectivity structures the world in a certain way, then what we know, we know through that lens. We know only phenomena, not noumena, that’s why his conclusion is negative about metaphysical knowledge. The preconditions that make thinking possible are subjective preconditions. The problem is while Kant regards these a-priori structure are universally the same for all human beings, it doesn’t go very far in the 19th century before they become culturally relativized, that’s what Max Weber did. So as the a-priori structure become relative to culture then all human knowledge becomes relativized.
Epistemology
We’ll cover transcendental aesthetic and transcendental analytic. The aesthetic has to do with perception, faculty of senses and analytic with understanding, with faculty of thinking. Because of a-priori structure of perception, we have clear perceptual ideas. His point is we don’t start with abstract or generalized terms about the natural world or the self without having some input from the faculty of sense which precedes understanding. So Kant says concept without percept are empty and percept without concept are blind.
Transcendental Aesthetic
Mind is immediately aware of its ideas, which are simply subjective representations of external realities. This framework is one which Descartes, Locke, Berkeley all begin with, and Kant as well. Kant is assuming this is part of the rationalist tradition, but also part of tradition of Hume, who awaken him from the dogmatic slumbers. The problem he tries to handle is posed in this tradition. For example, how do we get the idea of cause and effect. There is a confluence of two things, the raw input, sense stimuli and the form the mind gives. John Locke claims in sense perception that mind is a blank slate, or tabula rasa is false. It’s not that we have innate ideas, like Plato said, or self evident concepts, what Descartes said. But mind is pre-formed to handle things. The perceptual experience we have is formed, structured sense experience that comes in a unified fashion. According to Hume, we receive simple impressions and no connections between them, that are completely atomistic. In terms of atomistic nature of sense impressions, there is no coherence, unity, structure or order. And we have five senses with no given relationship between different senses. But what we have is unified sense experiences. So our faculties must provide some structure.
And the same is true when it comes to understanding, the perception we have provide perceptual experience, but how do we get from individual perceptual experiences to general abstract ideas? He maintains again that mind is so equipped, just like Scottish Realists talks about mind’s proclivities. Mind can provide structural principles that enable us to conceptualize in the world of perceptual experience. What understanding does is to form judgments about perceptual experiences, for example causal judgments, quantitative judgments.
Mind is not just a random thinker, it’s channeled thinker. It’s not only the Newtonian that is ordered, the mental world is also ordered. The structure of Newtonian is the structure we give to it. We structured the world that way, we talk of it in terms of space, time, cause effect, matter, substances. He work in the Cartesian framework but instead of mind being passive as it was for Locke, the mind is an active contributor, it’s the mind that creates a meaningful world. What science is talking about is the world we experience it, the phenomenal world, not necessarily the world as it is itself, the noumenal world.
Kant is after the structure of the experience rather than the content of the experience. If we deduct from the representation, what belongs to thinking of understanding, substances, forces, divisibility, there still remains some empirical intuition, namely extension, form, these belongs to pure intuition a-priori, regardless what particular form it is, what all have is spacial extension, so there is a pure intuition a-prior that is the form of sensibility, the science of such principles he calls transcendental aesthetic. He is subjectivizing the space time structure of things. When he is dealing with freedom and determinism, in a Newtonian world of space time causal mechanisms, how can there be freedom, he maintains that if the space time structure is something that’s subjective, you can have real freedom. So his distinction between phenomena and noumena, appearance and reality makes it possible for him to have real free will, real objective moral obligation and a real God. He wants to make room for moral law in the Newtonian universe. The conclusion of Critique of Pure Reason is that there is a lot of room to believe other things, and the other critiques goes on to argue for other things.
What he tries to argue is that space and time are not objective realities. This shouldn’t be a surprise. If by space and time you mean Newtonian conception of space and time and you are up to date on the physics, then space time is simply relational possibilities, there is no such thing as infinite span or empty space. The only way we can talk meaningfully about space is when there are physical events occurring and there are spacial relationships between them, space is simply an abstraction, referring to all possible such relationships. Time isn’t a thing, it’s an abstraction that refers to relationships between events. Kant says space and time are just subjective structures we organize things with. Our faculties sensibility is so made that we experience things sequentially, but it’s our subjective structuring of things in those relationship that he is talking about. Any Newtonian conception of space and time has no objective counterpart. Space is not something that’s produced by sensory input, it is rather what makes sensory input possible, the transcendental method is trying to identify the subjective preconditions that makes experience possible. Space is not empirical generalization, it’s a pure intuition, it has no empirical content. The conclusion that he draws is that space does not represent any quality of object by themselves, it’s nothing but the form of all phenomena of the external senses, it’s from the human standpoint only that we can speak of space, if we drop the subjective condition, space means nothing. We maintain the empirical reality of space as far as every possible external experience is concerned, yet you really experience things spatially, in experience it’s real to you, in a world that’s real to you, experience is spacial. At the same time, it’s transcendental ideality, that is the to say space is nothing if we leave out of consideration possible experiences and accept it as something which things by themselves are in any way dependent. It’s simply an ideal that a transcendental mind has. The same is true with regards to time. Time and space are two sources of knowledge from which various a-priori synthetic cognitions can be derived of this pure mathematics gives us a splendor example.
Transcendental Analytic
The transcendental aesthetic is about sense perception, and the transcendental method he is employing is simply a procedure bracketing all particulars of sense experience, the content of the experience, so as to identify the universal structure of perceptual experience which is characteristic regardless of all the variables of particular experiences. He finds two forms of sense perceptions: space and time. The study of these forms gives rise to mathematics. The interpretation of perceptual experience requires us to call on general concepts in talking about it.
Categories
In transcendental analytic he is after the abstract concepts which is necessary prerequisite for interpretive understanding of what we experience. Just as the forms give structure to perception, so the category of understanding gives structure to our understanding. Aristotle identifies ten categories of thought that is also categories of being, Kant identifies twelve categories of thought, but he does not know that there are categories of being. His categories are rather Newtonian category. The outcome of this is to conclude that Newtonian science is dealing with the way of our thinking, the way we structure the world, rather than the way the world objectively is. He is not a realist about science but an anti-realist about science. Science does not tell us about reality, but only about phenomena. One other thing to notice is that the twelve categories comes with four groups of three. Some historians points out that this is the beginning of the Hegelian dialectic. The way he identifies categories is simple: If it the way which we classify things, if you can lay out a classifications of different kinds of judgments we make, they comprise a-priori categories. There are four groups judgments: quantitative, qualitative, relational, modality. Each of them has its own form. Another thing to notice is that Kant says the synthesis in general is a result of the faculty of imagination, a blind but indispensable functional of the soul, without which we’d have no knowledge, but of existence of which were scarcely conscious. By means of analysis, different representations are brought under one concept, but how to bring not representations, but the pure synthesis of representations into concept. This is a different concept of imagination than what we have in Hobbes and Locke. Kant is talking about some imaginative way in which minds draws everything together into a unified field of understanding that may have nothing corresponding to it outs there. This is the beginning of the romanticist conception of imagination.
Transcendental Unity & Perception
He is still not satisfied that this is enough for two reasons, one is the fact that we have a variety of sense perceptions coming at us through five senses, so that our perceptions are rather fragmented in their sources yet somehow unified in our experience, so you need to explain the unity of our perceptions, the second thing is while you have forms of perception and categories of understanding, what gets them together, how do they meet? This is Kant’s equivalent of the mind body problem. That’s what he’s talking about in the schematism of the understanding.
As far as the unifying of experience is concerned, he says if every single representation stood by itself, isolated from others, nothing we call knowledge could ever arise because knowledge form a whole. How do you get to begin with from simple ideas to complex ideas? Hume said there are principles of association, psychological association. Kant says I ascribes senses a synopsis because in their intuition they contain something manifold, there corresponds to it always a synthesis, receptivity can make knowledge possible only when joined with spontaneity, and it appears three fold which was necessary takes place in every kind of knowledge, first, apprehension of representations, being aware of it, secondly, reproduction of them in the imagination. Third is the recognition in concepts. The outcome of this is that there is a unity to our perception that is transcendental, it is in the inner resource of the human consciousness, and this is what gives rise in Kant’s mind to the question: what is the I, self, this mind that unifies. The most I can say at this stage is that I’m a transcendental unity of perception, I’m the unified totality of all my thought. In a way that’ very much in keeping with the whole tradition from John Locke, the business of personal identity, how do I know that I am, what is the I that I know. In the empiricist tradition it all depends on memory, it’s an atomized kind of I, but Kant gets further than that by proposing a unified kind of I. It’s because of it’s a-priori that he can call it an unified I. The I is contributing it’s unity, not by creating the world that is out there, but creating its own unity. Kant doesn’t put it that but Sartre does, and he is able to do that because Kant gave him the tools to do that. Existentialism is a by-product of what Kant is doing.
The question is still whether nature itself corresponds to the way we think. It sounds no doubt very strange and absurd that nature should have to conform to our subjective ground and be dependent on it with respect to her laws. The Copernican revolution that Kant was pulling was that it’s not the case that our knowledge is dependent on what nature is like, but that nature is dependent upon what we think. But if we consider that nature is nothing but the whole phenomena, nothing but appearances, that’s what nature is, what we experience, not a thing in itself, but a number of representation in the mind, then we will no longer be surprised that we only see her through the fundamental faculty of our knowing, the transcendental perception, and in that unity, without which it couldn’t called the object of all possible experience, that is nature.
Schematization of the Understandings
Here the question is how do forms and categories get connected. Because one is dealing with particular sense experiences, the other is dealing with abstract concepts. In other words, is there anything in common. You need to find some commonality between sensibility and understanding, between the forms and categories. Well, in a word, time. Space is the form of the our sense and time is the sense of inner sense. In Locke’s language, space is the form of sensation and time is the form of reflections. It’ in the inner consciousness that we are aware of our concepts and abstract ideas. So time is in common to both perception and thought. What he is trying to show is that we can relate the concept of time to all the categories. Including cause effect(cause comes concurrent with or before effect), substance(enduring identity) etc.
Phenomena & Noumena
Phenomena means appearances, the thing for me. Noumena is the thing itself. There is something there even though we structure it in our own mind. He is not an idealist, he’s a phenomenalist, a phenomenalist does not deny the existence of reality in itself, they simply says that our knowledge is confined to things that appear to us. So the conclusion about transcendental analytic is about the phenomena noumena distinction.
He speaks a conception of noumena as being a limiting conception and a problematic conception, it’s limiting because it’s intended to keep our knowledge claims limited, if there is a noumena out there we don’t know then you’re going to be modest in what you claim for what you think you do now. It’s also a problematic concept in the sense that while it’s not contradictory, you can’t know what it is. The problem is what later writer calls the egocentric predicament, I can’t know something without I being involved or I can’t know something without the categories being involved.
Metaphysics
Looking at Kant’s transcendental dialectic, we are really dealing with his metaphysics. The two earlier sections of Critique of Pure Reason introduces epistemology, the transcendental aesthetic has to do with sense perception and the transcendental analytic having to do with judgment we make because of a-priori categories those concepts which interpret experience. The purpose of the whole Critique is really to inquire whether rational metaphysics is possible. It’s the project which Descartes began, it’s the kind of metaphysics which with similar ambitions was proposed by somebody like John Locke. He already made it clear that there are knowledge only extends to phenomena, appearances, things they seem to us rather than the thing themselves, the noumena. So you have an anticipation of a negative response to the question. What he does in the dialectic, is to examine dialectically the arguments metaphysicians put forward. The transcendental dialectic is his attempt to analyze arguments concerning the mind, the physical cosmos and God and show by virtue of the inevitable use of a-priori concepts, that don’t apply to reality, the proofs themselves don’t give us any knowledge about reality.
There are three cases he talks about, in each case, he points out logical problems. In case of Mind, he labels the problem paralogism, which is a step goes beyond logic, the argument fails because the conclusion goes beyond logic. When we come to cosmology section he talks of antinomies, an antinomy occurs when the argument for and against the thesis can both be given, in that case you have something against the law of logic. In the case of the argument for the existence of God, he says what the arguments come up with is an ideal, an ideal of human thought, but it’s an ideal which in the end is not proven.
Paralogism - Mind - Rational Psychology
What he does in the first case is to point out the whole science of logical psychology begins with Descartes’ Cogito, the kind of metaphysics he is talking about is the kind that’s developed since Descartes and in the German rationalist tradition. His objection is in introducing the term “res” or substance. One of the 12 categories is the category of substance. The category of relation begin with the relation between substance and accident. That connection between an accident and its underlying substratum is unknown. As soon as you introduce “res” or substance you are adding to what is known directly, the notion of a substance. If we don’t know any connection between a property and substance, then we can’t make a logical inference from the property I think to the conclusion that I am a thinking thing.
A-priori conception of substance has intruded itself, and it has no objective reference. Having said that, Kant on the other hand talks about why we are lead to such a jump. To say I am a substance, a thinking thing, implies continuity of existence. The intrusion of the concept of substance is not a bad thing but it’s simply that it affirms more than what is logically possible. It also guards the danger of materialism. Kant is afraid that a realistic reading of Newtonian science with its blind causal mechanism will produce a deterministic universe in which there is no such thing as freedom and no moral responsibility. And the intrusion of the idea of soul substance is a denial of any reductionism of material sort. But introducing soul substances introduces mind body problem, what is the relationship between the mind substance and body substance? Neither mind nor body are known as substances so the mind body problem is a pseudo problem, created by the intrusion of the concept of substance. There are three kinds of answer to the problem, 1. There is a physical cause, but that’s going to introduce the a-priori of causation 2. There are some pre-established harmony between the two, from Leibniz 3. There is a super natural assistance, the occasionalism which says it’s God that produces corresponding effects. The fact to hypostasise mind body as we do is logically a paralogism. Apart from soul is substance, which is in category of relation, there are three more, number two is: soul is simple, in category of quality, which means it is indivisible. Number three has to do with different times in which it exists numerically identical and its unity, in category of quantity, it has one singular identity through time. Number four in relation of the possible objects of space, in category of possibility and necessity. He runs through four kinds of categories, quantity, quality, relation, modality and shows how in rational psychology all of the categories are involved. What you have is an imaginative construct. His point is these a-priori categories are categories of understanding and not categories of reality. He is not denying or affirming the existence of soul substance, he is saying that we don’t a valid argument.
Antinomies - Nature - Rational Cosmology
His point here is the terms soul and world should both be regarded not as representations of reality but as regulative concepts, in the sense they regulate what we say. Here are again the identification of four areas of cosmology according to four titles of categories. The first one, dealing with absolute completeness of composition, whether the cosmos is finitely or infinitely extended in time and space. The second with division, finite or infinite divisibility. The third with relationship, origination. The fourth with modality, the complete dependence.
The thesis is that the world has a beginning in time and is limited in terms of space, it’s finite in duration and extension. The anti-thesis is the opposite, the world has no beginning and no limit. His procedure is in logic we call “reductio ad absurdum”, which starts by assuming the falsity of the thesis, if the thesis if false, what follows from it, then you goes on to show what follows is true on the assumption of falsity of the thesis, what should be true is itself false, then if that is false then the denial of the thesis is false, then the thesis is true.
If we assumes that the world has no beginning in time, then eternity must have last in any given point in time, and therefore an infinite series of states must have pasted at any given point, however, an infinite series can never be completed, so an infinite series is impossible, an the beginning of the world is a necessary condition of its existence, the world has a beginning. He does the same thing on the anti-thesis and the result is both of them are proven to be true. He does the same again for all four pairs of thesis and anti-thesis.
What he does is to argue that because of these contradictions, we can prove nothing about the infinity of cosmos in time and space as against its finiteness, about divisibility as against indivisibility, determinism as against freedom and necessity as against contingency. Because the arguments has equal weights on both sides. As a result, what we end up with is that what he called transcendental idealism, which allows objects of external intuition, maybe real as perceived in space and time as represented, but space itself as well as time with all phenomena and not things by themselves, they cannot exists outside of mind.
Ideal - God - Rational Theology
Here what he does involves three arguments for the existence of God. 1. The ontological argument 2. Cosmological argument 3. Physical Theological, a version of the teleological argument. The ontological argument, the idea of a being who necessarily exists, the problem is that it introduces the conception of necessity. Kant says “A God exists” is not a proposition, since a proposition has a subject and a predicate, exists is not logically a predicate. Because existence is not a property. The ontological argument says God necessarily exists, that God is necessary being, but as soon as you predicate something, you are invoking a-priori concept, one of the categories of modality, contingency and necessity. So the ontological argument trying to unpack the concept of God as necessary being is invoking the concept. The cosmological argument really depends on the ontological, because it argues about causal dependence, it assumes the contingence of the cosmos of a necessary being. The teleological argument tries to talk about the ordered unity which we observe, that is arguing from the form, not the material existence of the cosmos, to argue for some architect, designer but you cannot affirm the existence of the designer, without having a premise the existence of ordered universe, but that would entail a cosmological argument for the existence, so the teleological argument depends on the cosmological argument. Since they all depend on the previous one and the ontological argument fail, none of them work.
Kant says we cannot prove the existence of God, and we cannot know that God exists anymore than we can know things about the cosmos or know you’re a soul substance. The idea of God however is an ideal, a concept we come up with becomes it completes the whole scope of our purporting knowledge, it caps off everything else. The purely speculative use of reason therefore, the supreme being, remains an ideal only, but an ideal without a flaw, a concept which finishes and crowns the whole of human knowledge, the objective reality of which though cannot be proved or disproved. So if there should be an ethical theology to supply the deficiency, transcendental theology which before was problematic, would prove indispensable in determining its concept in constantly testing reason which is so often deceived by sensibility, not always in harmony with its own ideas. So this is an idea and if it could be proven that this exists then the ideal we have in the teleological argument can come into play and we can affirm that God is the orderer, the designer of the entire cosmos.
Belief
He talks of doctrinal belief and moral belief. Doctrinal belief has to do with ideal. Moral belief takes us further, it’s based on action, it’s based on the fact that I must obey the moral on all points. Since I must obey the moral law, this has further implications of the practical validity about the existence of God in the future world. And nothing can shake this belief, because it is conviction that’s not of logical but moral certainty, it rests on the subjective ground. He hopes then to anticipate the moral argument for the existence of God.
The outcome Critique of Pure Reason, as he says in the introduction, is that he’s doing away with knowledge, making room for belief.
Ethics
Preliminary
In the end of Critique of Pure Reason, Kant points out that even though in terms of doctrinal belief we can know metaphysically and rationally, we can not demonstrate the existence of God, it may be possible in terms of ethics. So there is a natural transition from the first critique to the second critique. The first critique is dealing with our faculty of knowing and second is dealing with our faculty of willing, and the third is dealing with feeling.
Kant is a moral realist, that is, he insists objective moral truth. His famous categorical imperative tells us how we can know the difference between right and wrong. There is a saying that 18th century can be described as an age of moral crisis, because the aftermath of the scientific revolution in physics was turned to mechanistic science, without teleology, therefore without the conception of good, with all inclusive ideal which everything strives to imitate, the result was after scientific revolution there was a groping of new way of addressing ethical questions. We saw in Bacon and Descartes early version of utilitarianism. There was a sophisticated development in Thomas Hobbes, whom the 18th century saw as an unqualified hedonist, a thorough going determinist, without recognizing a shred of human good will, benevolence. That reading of Hobbes precipitated a great deal of concern of 18th century philosophers, for providing some objective grounding of morals, a concern about moral realism. With that in mind, Kant writes ethics.
His approach to ethics is remarkably like his approach to metaphysics, in examining the faculty of knowing, he looks for a-priori structures that shape the ways we think. In Critique of Practical Reason, he is again looking for mental structures, the subjective structures or principles that we bring to our moral thinking and again the question is whether the structures are purely subjective as is the case with forms and categories, or they are objective, so that when it turns out that subjective structure involve some sense of duty, of respect for moral law, the question is whether there is any objective moral law. While he concludes that forms and categories used in science and metaphysics are purely subjective, it turns out categories used in ethics are objective. There is an objective moral duty. He is, in those regards, a moral realist.
Categorical Imperative
He is seeing the synthetic a-priori nature of the ethical judgment. The ethical judgment involves two kinds of inputs, empirical input and a-priori principle. So that when we say stealing is wrong, you get an empirical description as stealing and you get the concept of wrong as the a-priori principle. What you get is the introduction of an a-priori principle in our awareness. This a-priori principle is the categorical imperative.
There is only one thing that is unconditionally good, that is, good will. The focus is on intention, motive, character and the inner disposition of an individual. The goodness is only in a moral disposition that can be regarded as good without qualification. After all our natural inclinations can be twisted, our desires may be self-indulgent. He makes a clear distinction between inclinations towards empirical objects and sense of duty on the other hand. He makes the distinction another way by talking about a hypothetical imperatives as distinct of categorical imperatives. A hypothetical one is if you want this then do that, it is oriented on end, outcomes, inclinations and not unqualifiedly good. On the other hand, in categorical imperative there is no if at all, without qualification, categorical imperative tells you what’s right. So while he starts by saying the only unconditionally good thing is acting out of sense of will, he develops the notion of the completely unconditional imperative. It’s the good will to act out of respect for duty, not just in accordance with duty. Goes that far alone, he calls common sense morality.
He goes on to develop in his more philosophical way in trying to articulate his categorical imperatives in three forms. 1. Universalizability 2. Respect for Persons 3. Autonomy of Will. Universalizability means you should always act according to a maxim that you could will as a universal moral law. One is all persons would recognize as morally biding. The other is whether it’s logically possible to will that. We should always treat persons as ends in itself, rather than means only. In the way in which we use people, treat them as value in themselves. That emphasis on respect for persons has been made a great deal of use, for instance you saw in contemporary medical ethics and business ethics. The third version of categorical imperative involves his distinction between the autonomous will and the heteronomous will. His point is that categorical imperative you act out of your own will, it will be a free act, rather than driven by other people’s desire and expectations, conforming to social pressures, following you own desires rather than acting out of free will and slaved by you own inclinations.
Four levels of Ethical Discussion
- A particular case 2. An area rule, a rule applies to an area of moral responsibility 3. Overall principles, principles applies to every kind of area of responsibility 4. Basis on which the principles rest, which could be theological, philosophical or metaphysical. In Kant’s case, the principle is the categorical imperative, he might have a rule about truth telling which is based on the categorical imperative. When you try to formulate rules or try to handle conflicts between moral obligations then you go back to what the overall principle demands.
Corollary
Freedom
You can see already how he handles the question of freedom, the freedom of will is a corollary of moral duty, that is to say, if we say morality consists of acting out of a sense of duty, then if there must be the freedom to act out out of a sense of duty, there must be free will. If he is right about this matter of duty, then it follows that we have freedom of will.
Immortality of the Soul
He goes further than that, and if the first is the logical corollary, the second is more postulates. That is to say, the achievement of good will in this life is never completed, you don’t achieve moral perfection in this life. Moreover, there is God given desire for happiness, which is never achieved in this life while pursing duty in the face of one’s desires. So for both of these reasons, there must be a continuation of this life, in which your moral development continues and is awarded with happiness. The morality of the soul is a practical necessity.
Existence of God
If there is to be a future life, in which that is possible, then we have to postulate the existence of a moral being who would guarantee happiness that is proportioned to one’s virtue.
Summary
| Moral Consciousness | God | Religious Attitude |
|---|---|---|
| Reason Legislates | Holy Lawgiver | Reverence |
| Inclination to Happiness | Good Provider | Love |
| Conscience | Just Judge | Respectful Fear |
He is simply saying God whose existence we have to postulate has to this sort of a God and this is the way we respond to it. Or is he saying that the conception of God and the religious life is simply a psychological projection of our moral experience. The latter is taken by ethical humanist, naturalistic interpretations of the religion. And the former was taken by more traditional religious approaches with qualifications. Out of this approach developed some of the early trains of moral theology in the 19th century.
Religious Views
In the religion book what he does is to talk about kingdom of God, to talk about the Christ. Christ, represents, in Christian religion, the ideal of moral perfection, the great example, the death of Christ, is the supreme example of acting out of sense of duty, not my will but thine. So Kant, in that context, gave birth to what since became known as the example theory of the atonement. The significance of the death of Christ is in providing a supreme moral example. If that is all that is said then obviously the orthodox Christian traditions are going to object to Kant that it is not enough. The topic of his book is not pretending to say everything about religion that can be said but only what can be said within the limits of reason alone. Perhaps the significant thing at this juncture is that whereas the Enlightenment want to demonstrate the basic truth of religion, Kant doesn’t try, that sort of metaphysical proof is impossible, but he does maintain it is rational to postulate the basic truth of religion and it’s the overall rational coherence of resultant scheme that involves a moral Lawgiver and so forth which makes it so plausible and so rational to postulate.