German Idealism of The 18th-19th Centuries

The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), where he lived his entire life until 1804. His father, a craftsman and comb-maker, was, according to Kant, a descendant of a Scottish emigrant. His mother, kind-hearted and intelligent yet little educated, gave birth to nine children, of whom Immanuel was the fourth son and the eldest among those who survived. His parents belonged to a pietistic Lutheran church. At the urging of the pastor, Kant began his education at the age of eight: he entered a school where the instruction was in Latin, and later, in 1740, he attended the Albertina University. At the university, Kant studied theology, although he showed a greater inclination towards mathematics and physics. Following the rationalist tradition of Christian Wolff, whose lectures he attended, and being a fervent admirer of Isaac Newton, Kant became acquainted with the works of the English physicist, and in 1744 he began writing his first scientific paper, “Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces.” The death of his father hindered his academic career, forcing him to earn a living as a tutor for several families. During this time, Kant undertook the longest journey of his life to the town of Arnsdorf, located 96 kilometers from Königsberg.

In 1755, with financial assistance from an influential townsman, Kant was able to return to academia. After defending several dissertations, he initially became a private lecturer and, from 1770, a professor of metaphysics. Kant did not shun worldly life, yet his primary passion remained philosophy—he never established a family of his own. At the university, he delivered various lecture courses, ranging from metaphysics and logic to physical geography and anthropology. He was elected rector twice, in 1786 and 1788. Despite having rather fragile health by nature, through sheer will, strict self-discipline, and regular physical exercise (including daily long walks around the city and its surroundings), his creative biography proved remarkably lengthy: it was not until 1796 that Kant ceased giving lectures, although he continued his scholarly activities nearly until his death.

Typically, scholars of Kant’s work distinguish four main periods in his intellectual journey:

— The "pre-critical period" (1745-1770), during which Kant operated within the Leibniz-Wolffian tradition and wrote works devoted to the analysis of natural phenomena; — The "decade of silence" (1770-1781), during which Kant published nothing but brochures and supplementary materials for his courses; — The "critical period" or "remarkable decade" (1781-1791), marked by the publication of his major philosophical works, primarily the renowned philosophical trilogy: "Critique of Pure Reason," "Critique of Practical Reason," and "Critique of Judgment"; — The "post-critical period" (1798-1802), in which the works published are referred to as his "aging" writings.

It is worth noting that contemporary research emphasizes a deeper unity in Kant’s creative development than previously imagined, highlighting the continuity of ideas and works across different periods.

In the pre-critical period of his work, Kant exhibited an interest in exploring the essence of matter and space. He wrote several significant works addressing issues in the natural sciences. The importance of these writings lies in their introduction of questions regarding development in nature. Among Kant’s scientific achievements in physics and astronomy is the proof of the slowing of the Earth's daily rotation due to tidal forces (the gravity of the Moon); in biology, he explored the field of genealogical classification of the animal kingdom; and in anthropology, he proposed the idea of the natural origin of human races.

Kant's most famous work from his natural philosophy cycle is "Universal History and the Theory of Heaven" (1755). The philosopher depicted a vision of the universe's development, occurring naturally from the chaos of matter under the influence of gravitational and repulsive forces. Over time, order, Kant asserts, gradually displaces chaos, and although matter is governed solely by natural laws, the scientist cannot dispense with the notion of God; for, indeed, the very natural laws that engender cosmic harmony cannot be the result of mere chance. Furthermore, even the most perfected methods of science cannot adequately explain the purpose of the world as a whole or life in particular. This conviction remained with Kant throughout his critical period.

According to Kant, metaphysics still has yet to attain the status of a science. The primary obstacle to this is the arbitrariness that often afflicts its reasoning. This concern is addressed in one of the main works of his pre-critical period, "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics" (1766).

In the work "The Only Possible Basis for a Proof of the Existence of God" (1763), Kant critiques the existing arguments for the Creator's existence and presents his own "ontological" argument: the impossibility of the existence of something from nothing necessarily leads to the thought of His primordial existence.

By the late 1760s, Kant developed his own theory of space and time, radically distinct from the traditional Leibniz-Wolffian scheme, which he articulated in his dissertation "On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World" (1770). He rejected the relativistic theory of space, clarifying that explaining space through the relations of substances does not allow for an understanding of non-congruent similarity (for example, right and left gloves are identical in terms of the relationship of their parts but are not interchangeable). However, how can one assert the absoluteness of space while avoiding the Newtonian conception of it as "the receptacle of all things," which Kant deemed unacceptable? He accomplishes this by reinterpreting one of the ideas of Leibniz’s monadology—conceiving space and time as "well-founded phenomena" (phenomena bene fundata): the world is presented to us incorrectly; however, its phenomenon in our experience (the phenomenon) is rooted in the way in which it (the world) truly exists; we neither photograph nor hallucinate reality: in such a case, phenomena would not only be false but also unfounded. The essence of Kant’s solution lies in the interpretation of the unity of space as a subjective condition for the human perception of external impressions, or, in other words, as an a priori form of sensory contemplation.

"A priori" (from Latin, meaning "before experience") here indicates that it is determined not by the content being known, but by the very "arrangement" of the knower. By analogy with space, Kant reinterprets time (in this case, it pertains not to "external" but to "internal" experience of the subject).

Thus, the objects perceived by a person are thereafter conceived not as existing independently of knowledge but as constructs of our cognitive apparatus—"phenomena." This concept was later defined by Kant as transcendental idealism.

An important role in the intellectual development of Immanuel Kant was played by his acquaintance with the works of David Hume. Notably, Hume's thesis that the causal connection is one of the forms of thought that humans impose upon their experience, rather than a characteristic intrinsic to the contents experienced, had a profound impact on him. This idea, as Kant acknowledged, awakened him from a "dogmatic slumber."

Kant regarded Hume's critique of rationalism—the notion of the possibility of "pure knowledge," determined solely by the activity of the intellect, independent of sensibility and, more broadly, experience—as methodologically sound. However, Hume concluded that reliable knowledge of reality is generally impossible, and it was this skepticism that proved unacceptable to Kant.

In seeking to resolve this theoretical contradiction, Kant concluded that human cognitive activity extends beyond mere analysis of experience and that neither Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz nor Hume acknowledged the possibility of (the presence of) synthetic a priori knowledge. Kant's interpretation of a priori knowledge differs from Plato's or Nicolas Malebranche's (the latter of whom believed that knowledge is initially contained in the divine intellect); it does not concern itself primarily with what humans "know" before the occurrence of experiential fact, but rather with the forms through which our experience is organized, which are not caused by external influences but are somehow related to the structure and activity of the knower, to the very "constitution" of the one who knows.

Before Kant, it was believed that perception passively reflects what occurs in reality. The philosopher from Königsberg overturned this relationship: "It is not knowledge that must conform to the object, but rather the object that must conform to knowledge."

The influence of the material world upon consciousness is a necessary condition for knowledge; however, it is simultaneously insufficient. The objectively existing external world causes corresponding changes in the internal states of the human soul. Nevertheless, matter is changeable, in a state of constant flux. It would seem that nothing on the side of the psyche should remain constant or equal to itself. Yet experience is encapsulated in phenomena that, despite all changes in the external object, remain identical to themselves.

Since such constancy and identity cannot be ensured by correspondence to external circumstances (such correspondence acts, conversely, against identity), the explanation lies in a certain effort we ourselves exert—an effort aimed at eliminating our dependence on external influence. Thus, where philosophers previously saw only the "trace" of the object in the psyche, Kant recognized, for the first time, the act, the action of the subject itself.

According to Kant, there are two types of causality—natural and free. Natural causality is the connection between one state and another in the sensuous world. Free causality is the capacity to initiate something that has not been previously determined. Thus, the forms of perception are shown to be conditioned (limited) anthropologically, by our human nature, by the ways in which the free essence of humanity is realized. This essence, indeed, proves itself to be transcendent in its own right, yet it manifests itself in experience in the manner described above.

The objectively existing world appears for Kant as the noumenon, the unattainable "thing-in-itself"; however, this is the necessary price we must pay for the ability to think of it in stable, universal forms of laws and categories.

The world as it presents itself in experience emerges as a picture painted by humanity as a free artist. All substantive elements of this picture—all its colors, its canvas—are drawn from nature, from the primal material that arises as a result of the influence of matter on our sensory organs. However, the outlines and composition of the picture exist solely because we exert a certain effort regarding the colors that tend towards constant changeability and dilution. This effort does not exceed the bounds of experience, but rather encloses and holds it within a framework; without this framework, the meanings of experience would disintegrate and merge.

The work from which begins the reckoning not only of Kant's "critical" period of creativity but also, according to the majority of scholars, of all German idealism, is Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (1871), a remarkable monument of European culture.

This work represents the culmination of a decade of intellectual exploration and effort, having been published after numerous delays. Kant understood well how complex his text would be for readers; thus, he hesitated long before publishing it. These hesitations were not in vain: not only ordinary readers but also translators often misinterpreted his text. To rectify this situation, Kant found it necessary to write a new supplementary work clarifying the most important propositions of the first "Critique"—the "Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Can Appear as Science" (1783). However, disputes regarding how to understand Kant's thoughts continued unabated. They persist even today.

The difficulty of grasping Kant's text is primarily connected with the style of his writing, which was influenced largely by the circumstances in which Kant worked. The position of a university professor necessitated reference to a specific set of books and textbooks; for Kant, this meant primarily the works of Christian Wolff and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, which were saturated with terminology and artificial systematics claiming comprehensiveness. Following these models, Kant created largely artificial, rigid, and unadapted conceptual structures that did not align with readers’ comprehension.

Structurally, the "Critique of Pure Reason" is divided into an introduction and two parts of differing lengths: the larger one titled "Transcendental Doctrine of Elements" and the smaller one titled "Transcendental Doctrine of Method" (in the Ukrainian translation—"Transcendental Methodology").

The elements concern the sources of human knowledge, while the method elaborates on the means of utilizing "pure reason" and its a priori ideas. The term "transcendental" indicates that Kant intended to analyze the roots of any knowledge and the conditions for any possible experience. The elements are further divided into transcendental aesthetics, transcendental analytics, and transcendental dialectics.

Substantively, the "Critique" represents a treatise on metaphysics. It endeavors to demonstrate the limitations and fallacies of one mode of metaphysical thinking while laying the foundations for another. Kant's critical analysis focuses on the metaphysics of Leibniz, with its assertion that human reason can arrive at truths about essences that, by their very nature, cannot become objects of experience (for instance, God, freedom, immortality). Kant asserts and substantiates that reason does not possess such authority and that such metaphysical inquiries are fictitious.

Kant himself took a different path: the problem of metaphysics, as with any science, lies in: 1) justifying how its principles are (or can be) necessary and universal (conditions applicable to any scientific knowledge); 2) how such knowledge enables the researcher to know more than what is analytically contained in already existing knowledge. To satisfy these two conditions, Kant asserts, knowledge must rely on judgments that are a priori since only in this way can we rid ourselves of the contingencies of experience, and synthetic—where the predicate must contain something more than what is contained in the subject of the judgment. For instance, the judgment "all bodies are extended" is analytical, as the concept of a body already implies something extended; conversely, the judgment "all bodies have weight" requires consideration of how a body relates to other bodies, and thus is synthetic.

Thus, the fundamental problem of the "Critique of Pure Reason" is formulated as the question: "How (under what conditions) are synthetic judgments possible?"

This problem is articulated and resolved in three domains (spheres of knowledge): mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. Accordingly, the text of Kant's first part of the "Critique..." is distributed into three sections.

In the "Transcendental Aesthetics," Kant asserts that mathematics necessarily deals with space and time, which are a priori forms of human sensibility that constitute the conditions for everything given to humans through sensation. In the "Transcendental Analytics"—the most important and, according to many researchers, the most complex part of the book—Kant states that physics is a priori and synthetic, as it organizes experience using concepts of a special kind—categories.

Let us note and emphasize once again that Immanuel Kant is interested not in the content (which comes to us from the outside, from the material world) but in the a priori form of knowledge manifested through such content. In this regard, unlike René Descartes, who regarded the nature of knowledge as intuitive, Kant insists on its discursive character. Knowledge is not "assimilated" from the external world directly, through sensory experience, but is produced by the subject in the form of concepts. It is through concepts that "the understanding judges," meaning it makes judgments, affirming or denying something about the object. Concepts emerge as predicates of possible judgments, and the quality of the predicate determines the quality of the judgment. Judgments can be of several types or categorized into distinct groups. Kant presents the categories (types of judgments) in the form of a table. This table (or system) of categories must satisfy several conditions: 1) purity (non-empirical); 2) the categories must belong to the understanding, not to sensibility; 3) they must be elementary, containing no simpler components; 4) their list must be exhaustive, allowing no possibility of expansion with the growth of knowledge. Kant divides all judgments into four main groups, each of which includes three types of judgments: 1) quantity (unity, plurality, totality); 2) quality (reality, negation, limitation); 3) relation (substance, cause, interaction); 4) modality (possibility, actuality, necessity). The epistemological significance of the categories lies not in the classification of other concepts but in revealing the types of relations between the subject and the predicate in judgment, which are interpreted by him as a priori forms of synthesis—a wholly independent source of new knowledge from experience. When we consider a temporal sequence of events as causal, we do not perceive this characteristic from experience but interpret it as such, thereby subsuming our experience under the relevant a priori category.

The categories serve the function of prescriptive general forms of connection that experience must acquire, thus forming the structure of our knowledge. However, despite the fact that categories are inseparable from objective knowledge (data of experience), their sole purpose lies in that they create a logical outline of the objects of possible experience, delineating them. They become true knowledge only when they organize what we have obtained through sensation in space and time. At the beginning of his investigation, the scholar knows that the object he will study is subject to certain regularities, but the nature of these regularities will be clarified only during the research.

In the "Transcendental Dialectic," Kant returns to the examination of a priori synthetic judgments in metaphysics. Here, he believes, the situation is contrary to that of mathematics and physics. Metaphysics separates itself from any sensory experience, striving to transcend its bounds, and for this reason, it fails to achieve its singular a priori synthetic judgment. To prove this thesis, Kant analyzes how metaphysics employs the concepts of pure reason, applying them in three distinct fields: 1) in philosophical psychology, it seeks the absolute object of knowledge; 2) in cosmology, the absolute beginning of things in time and their absolute limits in space, as well as the absolute limit of their division; 3) in theology, it seeks the absolute condition (cause) of all things. In each of these instances, Kant shows, its attempts are doomed to failure and lead to "antinomies" (contradictions), according to which equal arguments can be presented to support and simultaneously deny opposing viewpoints. Kant identifies four such antinomies: 1) the world is infinite—the world is limited; 2) everything in the world consists of the simple—nothing is simple in the world; 3) there is causality through freedom in the world—there is no causality through freedom in the world; 4) there exists a first cause of the world (God)—there is no first cause of the world (God). Thus, Kant concludes that metaphysical "sciences," particularly psychology, rational cosmology, and natural theology, are unfounded. "The human mind, in one of its modes of knowledge, has an unusual fate: it is beset by questions that it cannot dismiss, for they are posed to it by its own nature; yet it cannot answer them, for they transcend all the capabilities of the human mind."

Proud of his work, Kant notes that he has achieved a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. Just as the founder of modern astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus, explained the apparent movement of the stars by the movement of the observer himself, Kant ascribes the application of a priori principles of reason to objects, demonstrating that it is not the understanding that conforms to the object, but rather that things align with reason.

Kant's ethics is an extension of his understanding of the human being as a free entity from the sphere of knowledge into the realm of human action, particularly actions towards other human beings, in the sphere of human deeds. The primary work in which Kant develops ethical issues is "Critique of Practical Reason."

The concept of pure practical reason signifies a mode of defining moral consciousness that recognizes no other motivations for human action beyond the duty free from any human inclinations.

To better understand this concept, it is important to realize that morality is a system of social customs that regulate interpersonal relationships and serve as a measure for condemning or approving a person's actions toward others. The norms and evaluations that form in the moral consciousness of society are historically determined: any moral norm is characteristic of a specific society under particular historical circumstances of its existence and may lose its significance at the subsequent stage of social development. Furthermore, each more or less stable human community formulates its own system of demands regarding the relations and behavior of its individual members as an integral part of its identity and the way individuals experience their belonging to that community.

In circumstances where a person must live on the brink of two historical epochs or two or more communities, the moral corporate demands of which fundamentally contradict one another, this gives rise to rather painful moral experiences in the individual's consciousness. An action that is approved within one moral "coordinate" may be condemned from the perspective of another system of norms.

Moreover, it has long been recognized in culture (and expressed in artistic form) that the true moral content of an action may be clarified (and most often is clarified) only after the action has taken place. Take, for example, Sophocles' "Oedipus." The hero of this tragedy violates the cultural prohibition (taboo) against incest, which effectively delineates the boundary between animal and human existence. However, this becomes clear and understandable only once the violation has irrevocably occurred. King Oedipus, we recall, blinded himself to physically quell the moral suffering arising from the awareness of his downfall, feeling unworthy of being considered human henceforth.

It is worth noting that philosophy, since antiquity, has approached moral prescriptions with a critical eye. Socrates, for instance, realized that the application of any such prescription would invariably encounter conditions under which it loses its ethical justification, meaning that a situation could arise in which not applying the prescribed rule appears more ethically acceptable.

The revelation of contradictions within morality leads to the search for a prescription whose adherence could not result in a possible alteration in the evaluation of an action under different circumstances, in another community, or at a different historical time.

Moral consciousness itself, largely for the purpose of self-affirmation of the existing moral norm, tends to extreme generalizations, appealing to divine sanction or the "nature" of humanity.

Among the most well-known of such generalizations are the Decalogue (the Biblical Ten Commandments) and the so-called Golden Rule of morality: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." However, it should be noted that the inherent limitations of moral prescriptions are only superficially overcome here.

The ethical doctrine of Immanuel Kant stands as one of philosophy's attempts to address humanity's intrinsic quest for a universal regulative of action. Kant does not abandon the notion of morality as a general form of regulating human conduct; however, he employs this concept in a specific sense: he speaks of "autonomous morality," that is, a moral principle that justifies itself and does not rely on any external (social, historical, or other) circumstances. This refers to an internally inherent factor of action, linked to the free nature of the human being, capable of being determined by Reason as its essence, reflecting a morality that, notably in the Russian equivalent "нравственность," emphasizes the internal, anthropological origin of the prescribed behavior.

Every human action is prompted by will. Yet, this will may be directed toward a particular goal, or it may strive solely for the expression of will itself as such, manifesting self-affirmation. Kant designates the direction of our action as an imperative (from the Latin imperativus—commanding, and impero—to command).

In a precise sense, any action is imperative. However, Kant points out the necessity of distinguishing between imperatives aimed at achieving external goals and those whose purpose is the action itself. The former type is what Kant calls hypothetical or conditional imperatives. The objectives of a hypothetical imperative can vary; indeed, the more our goal is imbued with empirical (positive) content, the less universal such a rule becomes. What serves one goal often proves unsuitable for others. The converse is also true: the very empirical (positive) nature of the imperative delineates the finiteness and limitations of such prescriptions.

Thus, for an imperative to attain universality (generality), it must be stripped of any sensory content. Consequently, at the heart of Kantian ethics lies the doctrine of the categorical imperative, or unconditional command, which poses the problem of formulating a formal (devoid of sensory content) prescription that allows us to act in a manner that our actions do not lose their value or alter their evaluative polarity under any conceivable circumstances.

"There exists but one categorical imperative, namely: act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." In this way, action is elevated to the status of law, universally applicable to all rational beings. This requirement implies that every rational being must become an end, contrary to which one must never act. Hence, the second formulation of the categorical imperative states: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means." The categorical imperative also establishes that the will of each rational being possesses the capacity to establish moral law.

Since it is asserted that a genuinely ethical human action cannot be determined by any external causes, Kant designates the categorical imperative as the principle of the autonomy of will. This implies that, unlike heteronomous will (from the Greek ἔτερος—other and νόμος—law), which derives its normative behavior not from reason but from something else, such a will is self-governing, autonomous (from the Greek αὐτός—self)—it abstracts from any private interest and is guided solely by the dictates of reason as a general practical legislator.

Pure autonomous will is always good will, in contrast to heteronomous will, which is prone to transforming into arbitrariness.