Philosophy - German Idealism (Kant)

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.