Kant on the RPF

Bio

"Kant was born, lived and died in Königsberg (at the time a town in
Prussia; today it is the Russian town of Kaliningrad). He spent much of
his youth as a solid, albeit unspectacular, student living more off playing
pool than his writings. He lived a very regulated life: the walk he took at
three-thirty every afternoon was so punctual that local housewives would
set their clocks by him. He never married and he owned only one piece of
art in his household, advocating the absence of passion in favor of logic
so that he may better serve. He never left Prussia, and rarely stepped
outside his own home town. However, despite his reputation of being a
solitary man, he was considered a very sociable person: he would
regularly have guests over for dinner, insisting that sociable company
was good for his constitution, as was laughter. Kant was a respected and
competent university professor for most of his life, although he was in his
late fifties before he did anything that would bring him historical repute.

"He entered the local university in 1740, and studied the philosophy of
Leibniz and Christian Wolff under Martin Knutsen, a follower of Wolff. He
also studied the then new mathematics of Sir Isaac Newton. In 1746 he
wrote a paper on measurement, reflecting Leibniz's influence. He, at the
same time, absorbed pietism as a basic part of his make up.

"In 1755 he became a private lecturer at the University, and while there
published 'Inquiry into the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural
Theology and Morals', where he examined the problem of having a logical
system of philosophy that connected with the world of natural philosophy,
a concern typical of The Enlightenment period. Indeed, Kant left one of the
most influential definitions of Aufklärung, or enlightenment, in philosophy.
In 1763 he wrote The Only Possible Ground of Proof for a Demonstration
of God's Existence, which questioned the Anslemic ontological argument
for God: essentially, that the idea of the greatest of all possible ideas
proves that the idea exists. René Descartes had used this argument in
his philosophy, as had others after him.

Having questioned both the principle of contradiction - that the seeming
opposite of a false idea must be true - and the ontological proof of God -
Kant had attacked the fundamental tools of axiomic rational philosophy,
but, as yet, he had nothing to replace them with.

"In 1770, he became a full professor, and began reading the works of
David Hume. Hume was fiercely empirical, scorned all metaphysics, and
systematically debunked great quantities of it. His most famous thesis is
that nothing in our experience can justify our assuming that there are
'causal powers' inherent in things--that, for example, when one billiard
ball strikes another, how can we assume the second one 'must' move. Of
course, things have always happened this way, and through 'custom and
habit' we tend to assume they will continue to do so, even though we have
no rational grounds for the assumption. He simultaneously found Hume's
argument irrefutable and his conclusions unacceptable.

"'It was this that roused me from my slumber', he would later write. For the
next 10 years he worked on the architecture of his own philosophy,
beginning with what he called 'the scandal of reality', that there was no
philosophical proof of the outside world. In 1781, he released the
massive Critique of Pure Reason, one of the most widely argued over,
widely cited - and widely influential works in Western Philosophy. He
followed this with Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and then in
1785 Critique of Practical Reason and in 1790, Critique of Judgement.
The effect was immediate in the German speaking world, with readership
including Ludwig van Beethoven and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. But
the attention was far from universally approving: on the contrary, almost
every aspect of the works were attacked and criticized fiercely, particularly
his ideas on categories, the place of free will and determinism and
particularly on the knowledge of the outside world.

"The Critique of Practical Reason dealt with morality, or action, in the
same way that the first Critique dealt with knowledge, and the Critique of
Judgement dealt with the various uses of our mental powers that neither
confer factual knowledge nor determine us to action, such as aesthetic
judgment, for example of the beautiful and sublime, and teleological
judgment , that is construing things as having 'purposes'. As Kant
understood them, aesthetic and teleological judgment connected our
moral and empirical judgments to one another, unifying his system.

"Aside from this Kant wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history,
politics, and the application of philosophy to life. When he died he was
working on a projected 'fourth critique', having come to the conviction that
his system was incomplete; this incomplete manuscript has been
published as Opus Postumum. Kant died in 1804."

Kant's moral philosophy

"Kant develops his moral philosophy in three works: Fundamental
Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Critique of Practical Reason
(1788) and Metaphysics of Morals (1797).

"Under this heading Kant is probably best known for his theory about a
single, general moral obligation that explains all other moral obligations
we have: the Categorical Imperative (found in the Critique of Practical
Reason).

"A categorical imperative, generally speaking, is an unconditional
obligation, or an obligation that we have regardless of our will or desires.
Our moral duties can be derived from the categorical imperative. The
categorical imperative can be formulated in three ways, which he believed
to be roughly equivalent (although many commentators do not):

* The first formulation (the Formula of Universal Law) says: 'act only in
accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will
that it become a universal law.'

* The second formulation (the Formula of Humanity) says: 'Act that you
use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other,
always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.'

* The third formulation (the Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the
previous two. It says that we should so act that we may think of ourselves
as legislating universal laws through our maxims. We may think of
ourselves as such autonomous legislators only insofar as we follow our
own laws.

"Example of the first formulation: If I breathe air, and I can will it so that
everyone breathes air, we can see that breathing air is a moral obligation.

"Example of the second formulation: If I steal a book from you, I am
treating you as a means (to get a book) only. If I ask to have your book, I
am respecting your humanity (or ability of rational thought).

"The theory that we have universal duties, which hold despite one's own
inclinations or the desire to pursue one's own happiness instead of these
duties, is known as deontological ethics. Kant is often cited as the most
important source of this strand of ethical theory (in particular, of the theory
of conduct, also known as the theory of obligation).

"Kant's moral philosophy has come under some criticism as his lectures
on anthropology have become further studied. A small minority of critics
have argued that statements such as 'All races will be exterminated
except for that of the Whites' and that Africans are born for slavery
(Reflexionen, 878) indicate that he does not consider non-whites to be
persons in any meaningful ethical sense. This interpretation is by no
means dominant, and the most accepted interpretation is that these
lectures represent prejudices rather than serious philosophical thought."

(Excerpts adapted and portrait taken from the Wikipedia article on Kant. Click here
for complete article.)

Works

Critique of Practical Reason

Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals