Immanuel Kant

In the Critique of Pure Reason, philosopher Immanuel Kant aims to thoroughly explain his philosophy of the metaphysical world. Within the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant focuses on confirming that space and time are a priori intuitions. He provides reasoning and arguments as to why they are transcendentally ideal but empirically real, making space and time subjectively necessary for experiences. Simultaneously, Kant distinguishes space and time from secondary qualities, which belong to our senses through experience, by confirming that unlike space and time, secondary qualities are not empirically real. Kant does run into conflicts with his theory, he still successfully claims that space and time are transcendentally ideal but empirically real, as well as distinguish them from secondary qualities by supporting his theories with reasoning.

The project of the whole transcendental dialectic is well-known. Kant’s primary aim here is that of warning us against the danger involved in the misunderstanding and subsequent hypostatization of the concepts of reason.4 However, this section of the Critique of Pure Reason does not play a purely negative role; instead, it furthers a positive enquiry of what Reason is and what his contents are. Furthermore, it also provides an explanation of the epistemic role played by these elements, the ideas of pure reason or transcendental ideas5, defined as being those concepts which contain the ‘unconditioned’.6 In other words, these concepts are related to the transcendental premises of any possible experience, that is, to infinite and unconditioned ‘transcendent objects’ unattainable through

Kant credited both empiricism and rationalism movements. He believes that they both contributed to human’s knowledge and should not reject neither one of them. So, he keeps some parts of those principles and defines empiricism a posteriori knowledge and rationalism as a priori knowledge. His goal is to explain and then justify the possibility of scientific knowledge.

Before uncovering Immanuel Kant's work in Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals , let it be known that he claims to be a rationalist who purely seeks the truth and only the truth. Kant's beliefs are consistent of the idea of true knowledge which exists separate from ones sensation. True knowledge exists a priori within a separate body of sensation. Kant exclaims how sensation can tamper with true knowledge due to the fact

In this paper I am going to attempt to answer a question utilizing a little help from one of two philosophers. First of all the question I will be answering is “Should the moral value of an action be determined by the intentions/character that inspire the action, or the consequences that result from the action?” Second, the philosophers I am going to discuss throughout this paper are Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. Now before I tell you my answer to this question I am going to explain these who these two philosophers are and what their viewpoints on ethics are.

Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals, published in 1785, is Kant’s first major work in ethics. Like the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, the Groundwork is the short and easy-to-read version of what Kant deals with at greater length and complexity in his Critique. The Critique of Practical Reason, published three years later, contains greater detail than the Groundwork and differs from it on some points—in the Critique of Practical Reason, for instance, Kant places greater emphasis on ends and not just on motives—but this summary and analysis will cover only the general points of Kant’s ethics, which

Immanuel Kant was a famous philosopher whose philosophical influences impacted almost every new philosophical idea, theory, concept etc. In a sense, he was considered the central face of contemporary philosophy. Kant spent his whole life in Russia. Starting out as a tutor, to then a professor, he lectured about everything; from geography to obviously philosophy. In his early life, he was raised to emphasize faith and religious feelings over reason and theological principles. As he got older though, that position changed. It then became that knowledge is necessarily confided and within the bounds of reason. Now with this in mind, Kant claims many different things that derive from this. There are many different parts and aspects to it which is why it relates to almost every philosophical idea out there. Kant referred his epistemology as “critical philosophy” since all he wanted to do was critique reason and sort our legitimate claims of reasons from illegitimate ones. His epistemology says that we can have an objective, universal, and necessary knowledge of the world, and that science cannot tell us about reality. He claims science cannot tell us anything because it only tells us about the world as it is perceived, whether it’s based on measures, manipulations, experiments and so on. Kant says that we all have knowledge; that the mind and experience work together and that we construct and gain this knowledge by both reason and experience.

In his publication, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant supplies his readers with a thesis that claims morality can be derived from the principle of the categorical imperative. The strongest argument to support his thesis is the difference between actions in accordance with duty and actions in accordance from duty. To setup his thesis, Kant first draws a distinction between empirical and “a priori” concepts. Empirical concepts are ideas we reach from our experiences in the world. On the other hand and in contrast, “a priori” concepts are ideas we reach as an end point of reasoning prior to or apart from any experience of how things occur in the world. Kant

In 1724, in the Prussian city of Konigsberg Immanuel Kant was born and spent most of his life at the university. Kant was recognized as a noble philosopher and scientist specializing in many areas. Kant wrote several difficult to read books, but included influential context regarding to practical morality, science, history, politics, and metaphysics. Along with many scholars and philosopher of Kant’s era the published works about nature of reality, free will. Although, the books were commended at the time, they are currently influential in terms of ethics. Kant’s most remarkable books are Groundwork in the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1798) contributing to Kant’s foundation of

Kant has made a difference in metaphysics and epistemology yet his contributions to ethics have been even more substantial. In Kant’s view, the feature that gives an action moral worth is not the outcome that is achieved by the action, but the motive that is behind the action. This is very interesting because a lot of times, we only worry about the outcome of the action instead of our intention behind it. The motive that can award an act with moral value, he argues, is one that arises from universal principles discovered by reason.  Kant says “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Kant's next concern is with the faculty of judgment, "If understanding

Kant concurred with empiricists that “concepts without perceptions are empty” (lonestar). He acknowledged that concepts and ideas cannot constitute knowledge alone and that innate ideas do not constitute knowledge at all. This brought about his conviction that there must be experience(s) in life for there to be knowledge. His theory was that there are two sorts of reasoning to acquire knowledge: posteriori reasoning and priori reasoning. The posteriori reasoning depends upon experience in the world that provides us with information. For example, if I said that “Barack Obama was the president of the United States in 2010,” I would only know that this is true through experience; I would not be able to determine this through an analysis of the concepts of “president” or “Barack Obama.” In contrast, a priori reasoning does not rely on experience to inform it, but to create the knowledge. Kant believed that with priori reasoning, the dynamic mind relates and understands experiences in terms of causes and effects where an event takes place and causes an experience to happen with the effect of knowledge being gained. Kant's crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world as we have it is only conceivable if the psyche provides an efficient organizing of its representations; the mind makes deductions prior to experiences, but can only truly experience something in the event that it obtains knowledge from the

In Immanuel Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment”, he discusses his view of enlightenment and how “reason” can be brought to the public masses. During the late 17th century, many individuals found it very difficult to break away from their self-incurred tutelage, and often faced a power struggle between one’s individual thought versus how society deems one to think. As a result, it stemmed the Age of Enlightenment, hence the motto – “dare to know, dare to be wise”. In Kant’s terms, enlightenment is humanity 's escape from “self-imposed ignorance through reason”. This ignorance is self-imposed because of fear and cowardice which, in turn, prevents one from inquiring into certain areas of thought and opinion. Ultimately, Kant urges political institutions to protect “proper use of reason”, and discourse to enable its citizens with reason so that they can take care of themselves – which is essential for the wellbeing of a functioning and cohesive society.

On the other hand, Kant, who is a Newtonian, sincerely desires to make Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics as real knowledge (106). To fulfill his desire, Kant concludes that the science could be real knowledge if synthetic a priori is possible (255). Kant claims that the mind of a human being is the source of synthetic a priori to get true knowledge (257), and the mind is not passive but active to get knowledge. This active mind is imposing various meaning unto the world where a man is experiencing (256). According to Kant, the knowledge made by the active mind is a priori and synthetic. Then, Kant calls it epistemological change ‘Copernican revolution’.

I will provisionally think of it as referring to the faculty of understanding and not solely one or more of the pure concepts of the understanding.11 The main interpretive dilemma of this passage revolves around the term ‘transcendental content.’ It may be the case that Kant wants to contrast the Transcendental Logic’s possession of objective content with general logic’s lack of content. However the term could also refer to the fact that the understanding has a transcendental function, and could be indicating the transcendental nature of the categories. Each of these interpretations will be evaluated in turn.

For Immanuel Kant, truth is accessible to the mind only because it derives from rational categories already in the mind. Although knowledge begins in the senses, Kant claims, “besides what is given to the sensuous intuition, special concepts must yet be superadded—concepts which have their origin wholly a priori in the pure understanding, and under which every perception must be first of all subsumed and then by their means changed into experience.”6 The sources of such synthetic a priori concepts are categories inherent in reason, and Kant supplies a table of such categories, including in it: Unity (measure), Plurality (magnitude), Totality (whole), Reality, Negation, Limitation, Substance, Cause, Community, Possibility, Existence, and Necessity.7 Thus, the understanding of any perceived thing as a whole entity, or as having an independent material existence, or as being caused by anything, or as itself the cause of anything has its origin in rational categories in the mind and is not traceable to any essential quality or state of being that can be attributed to the thing in itself, according to Kant.