Immanuel Kant's Philosophy: Reason and Knowledge Limits

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

Immanuel Kant was a man of manners who followed a very precise routine. The people of the city set their clocks by his afternoon walk: every day he went through the same place at the same time. He led a life that was, strangely, very interesting. He never married, never fell ill, and did not leave his hometown in East Prussia. However, Immanuel Kant was a great thinker. He died at age 80.

Kant's Philosophical Revolution

We come to know things when men reach their limits. From this issue arises a revolution, manifested in an illustrated project.

Awakening from Dogmatism

It starts with an awakening. Kant says that this awakens philosophy from the dream of all dogmatic philosophers. Kant's metaphysics leads to a trial court: the court of human reason. If metaphysics is science, it is naive; if metaphysics is guilty, it is not a science.

The Copernican Turn in Knowledge

Kant understands the problem of knowledge by making what is called a Copernican turn. This shift is the realization that humans are far from being able to know true reality based solely on their powers applied to the world. Kant states that the problem is not knowing the facts, but rather understanding exclusively the possibilities and limits of our cognitive powers.

The Possibility of Science

When asked if sciences exist, Kant responds affirmatively (referring to mathematics and physics). Analyzing their judgments, Kant reaches the conclusion that all scientific judgments are synthetic a priori judgments. Therefore, Kant possesses the key to determining whether or not something constitutes science.

Conditions for Scientific Judgments

For anything science states—that is, makes judgments—these judgments must meet two conditions:

1. These judgments must be universal and necessary, meaning they must hold true in all cases and forever.
2. These judgments must be extensive; they must provide new information.

A judgment is an affirmative or negative relationship between two concepts. When asked if synthetic a priori judgments are possible in mathematics and physics, Kant answers yes. Instead, regarding the question of whether synthetic a priori judgments are possible in metaphysics, Kant states that we cannot know.

Structure of the Critique of Pure Reason

• Part 1: Analysis of Sensitivity (Aesthetics)
• Part 2: Understanding (Analytic)
• Part 3: Pure Reason (Dialectic)