German Idealism- Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) - Critique
of Pure Reason (1781), sought to explore the nature of the mind; to
trace connections between its a priori nature and its a posteriori sense
impressions in order to unite or synthesize these two aspects of mental
activity.
Hume had negated the laws of causation as
unverifiable by means of sense experience, reducing cause-effect relationships
to the status of mere habitual assumptions.
Kant sought to explain the possibility of
scientific knowledge, or more precisely, that relationship between cause and
effect which enables the mind to grasp scientific truths.
Kant divided the process of attaining
knowledge (his epistemology) into : (1) transcendental aesthetic (2) transcendental analytic (3) transcendental dialectic.
Kant analyzed the nature of the act of
knowing, and concluded that both the mind endowed with a priori perceptions and
the sensory impressions must unite to yield scientific (valid) knowledge.
Transcendental aesthetic - synthesizes sense experience through concepts of time and space;
time and space are a priori, not real objects of the external world but ideal,
creations of the mind.
Transcendental analytic - human understanding changes perceptions into conceptions or ideas
possessing analytical unity; the mind now applies to experience certain
categories of thought (a. quantity b.
quality c. relation
d. modality) without which the mind would be unable to think at
all. It enables us to think
scientifically.
Hume had proved that cause-effect relations
are not objectively real, do not exist in the outer world, they were merely
habitual or customary assumptions applied to phenomena.
Kant tried to show that just as time and
space were a priori categories of human understanding.
Transcendental dialectic - the human mind seeks complete knowledge, a coherent understanding
of the entire universe; as such it tries to go beyond sense experience in order
to discern ultimate reality. Man’s
experience provides him with phenomena only, yet his mind informs him that
there is an ultimate ontological reality, a “thing-in-itself” which produces
each phenomenon.
Kant postulated three kinds of reality (1) phenomena, sensory (2) understanding (3) ultimately real world (transcends our
ability to sense therefore unknowable).
The ultimately
real world becomes a reconstruction of the mind.
Antinomies result from the reason’s attempt
to apply the categories of the understanding to the absolute, to the
transcendental, whereas the categories are applicable only to empirical
experience.
Antinomies - two
contradictory inferences, correctly reasoned from principles, both of which are
regarded as true.
Kant’s Ideals of reason (1) soul (2) ultimate
reality (3) God
- reason transcends the bounds of sensory
experience.
Reason should be used as a controlling
principle which sets up an ideal of perfect knowledge even though it is
unprovable.
- supreme Being is for purely speculative
reason a mere ideal, which completes and crowns the whole of human knowledge.
Kant stated that he had “limited all that
we can know to mere phenomena” and had therefore “found it necessary to deny
knowledge of God, freedom and immortality, in order to find a place for faith”.
Categorical imperative
- moral laws which every person is bound to obey.
- we know what is morally right a priori,
by intuition.
- right is right and mist be done even
under the most extreme conditions.
- if the categorical imperative obligates
the will to obey a moral command, it must necessarily follow that the
individual has the power to carry out the obligation.
- duty represents the individuals
obligation to obey the categorical imperative by choosing the morally right
action.
- the categorical imperative is universal -
allows no exceptions.
For Kant, self-determination, the autonomy
of the rational will, is the indispensable condition of all morality.
Moral consciousness is
a function of (1) freedom of the will
(2) immortality of the soul (3)
the existing Supreme Being - known through practical reason; they are necessary
assumptions based upon the a priori moral law of the categorical imperative.
Pure practical reason - the choice of conduct by the free will.
- speculative reason (ie. science)
subordinate to practical reason (ie. ethics)
- advocated a World State, a federated
republic of free states
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) -
founder of the school of German Idealism
(formulated a philosophy of the absolute), centred on the moral will as the
activating principle of the world.
- regarded the fact of consciousness as the
key to understanding reality (an object cannot exist unless a percipient
experiences it).
Dialectical
method - a logical system for comprehending the
universe as a rational unit.
- as the basic principle of human
knowledge, self-consciousness is the means of searching for the Absolute.
The fundamental “deed-act” is self
consciousness, an absolute principle that can neither be proved or
predetermined by specific causes.
- it is the sole and fundamental task of
philosophy to clarify what is involved in this act of self analysis.
- reason utilises three rational principles
- thesis, antithesis and synthesis to interpret the nature and goals of the
universe (the dialectical process is endless).
thesis = person and
his own consciousness (Ego)
antithesis = the
object of his consciousness, sense phenomena (Non-Ego)
synthesis =
unification of these two opposite into subject-object.
- Fichte’s dialectical method became the
basis for Hegelian philosophy.
- the concept of Ego
or self-consciousness
Fichte sought to synthesize Kant’s pure
reason with practical reason (theory with
practice).
- the entire phenomenal world is simply the
stuff of duty structured in sensory form a the non-Ego which seeks to realise
itself.
- the essence of things and their supreme
principle is freedom
Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) -
nature is the visible form of spirit, and spirit is the invisible form of
nature; the Ego and the world are two poles of one and the same reality;
regarded phenomena as both ideal and real (transcendental
idealism).
Absolute Reality
consists of creative energy evolving through stages as mind and as matter and
at present at its highest level, namely
self-consciousness.
- nature is but a material manifestation of
reason, which in man, becomes conscious of itself.
- it was in the world of aesthetics (eg.
art) that Schelling found a synthesis of the world of sense phenomenon with the
work of mind, or man’s moral spirit.
- art supplants logic as the mode by which
reason develops, art becomes the goal of reason.
God is the supreme creative artist, and the
world is his artistic creation and highest expression.
Art is both the means and ends of
education; it generates the fruits of science and morality (Schiller).
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) - rather than Kant’s view
that morality was the highest religious activity and Schiller who had accorded
it to art, Schleiermacher set forth his own thesis that a mystical awareness of
feeling is the highest religious activity.
God
is “the identity of thought and Being,” the goal of
all learning and knowledge.
- the highest religious activity has
nothing to do with knowledge or ethics, rather it consists of communion with
God, the feeling of absolute dependence upon God.
