Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a man of mind-bending complexity and meditative personality. His work in the field of philosophy was localised to include the development of his own ideas on epistemology, metaphysics (fundamentally ontology) and a supreme code of ethics or innate moral laws. Kant has been referred to as the founding father of modern philosophy and appointed himself as the guiding force of logic in a "Copernican revolution for philosophy". To some he is evidently mad; for others this is a clear indication of the man's intense genius.
The focal points of the study of Kant's philosophy are grinding at conceptualising epistemological proofs of existence, both of knowledge itself and ourselves as bearers of this knowledge in our world. For knowledge of external objects in our world to be certain, Kant devised two separate determining categories:
1) analytic truths: these are propositions that bear the origin of the subject in the predicate, e.g. the fat man is a man - this cannot be disputed and is based on the belief in a priori knowledge or something we know to be indisputably true;
2) synthetic truths: these are propositions from which we can gather further information and without which we would simply be left with the analytic, e.g. the fat man cannot run fast - this relates to Kant's enthusiasm for universality, in which something without being observed is only 100% true when it 'feels' right or we know it for certain.
Kant shows determination when it comes to discussing the combination of a priori with synthetic truth; a synthetic a priori is something we can expand upon without the need for observational basis on this proposition, e.g. there are other worlds besides ours - this is something we do not know from experience, but somehow we a priori understand it as a possibility.
What Kant then introduced were his two forms of world: the noumenal and phenomenal. The noumenal is that which is felt innately yet not understood and not observed without intuition. The phenomenal is that which we know from experiencing objects in the immediate realm of our world.
As if Kant couldn't get any more intricate, he continues to postulate on the abstract noumenal world by suggesting our links to it are meagre and almost redundant, except for when we are assisted by what he calls intuition. Intuition, as found in the work of abstract artists or surrealists like Salvador Dali (famous for his melting clocks and prong-legged elephants), is an expression of indescribable feeling towards an object. Basically someone with intuition perceives standard objects as examples or interpretations of emotion, e.g. you look at a tin can but you don't see it as it is, you proceed to extrapolate the form of a mass of colours from it.
For Kant the gift of intuition was a gateway to a transcendental plane of expression, a realm where the complex logic and investigative thought of human beings isn't necessary. This flows in the same vein as Rousseau's Romanticism in that it strays from the empirical into the inextricable - it's fantastic in a way.
I suppose Kant couldn't help but bewilder with his ideas. The bizarre notion of 'things-in-themselves' or objects that exist without us needing to perceive them is a spin on Plato's perfect forms. Kant suggests that a perfect example of, say, an apple exists in itself when we aren't looking at a particular apple; but when we look at the apple it adopts a specific form in our mind. He is saying our mind's eye transforms the perfect using sense-perception into what we are currently looking at, i.e. the apple is no longer perfect, but just an average apple from an orchard of hundreds of different apples.
What bothers me about this is that, relative to his intuition idea, if 'things-in-themselves' or ghost forms are apparent when we're not perceiving a particular object, why is it then that when someone who uses intuition sees an object in a transcendental way fails to see it instead in its perfect form? Surely the most perfect form is transcendental and something that our perception, our universe struggles to provide. Kant might well have fared better had he known about psychology and physiology.
Finally we come to the awkward 'innate sense' idea from Kant's ethical beliefs. The prominent concept of innate right and wrong is used by Kant alongside his categorical imperative. Imperative is the precise term to be applied to such a rigid take on morality; Kant was propounding that for a being to be completely morally right he had to never sway from what he knew to be right. For example a person cannot kill another because killing people is wrong. This seems straightforward enough, until you start to elaborate on circumstances. To carry on the same example but with circumstantial evidence, what if the person in question is being threatened with his own death: does he fight back and kill to survive or simply surrender to the universal will of the right path?
Crazily enough Kant would, at least from his theory, advocate the latter. This is the stark opposite to John Stuart Mills' utilitarian perspective, in which the outcome justifies the actions taken to achieve it and the greater good of humanity is desirable in all case scenarios. Through this lens we can see Kant as strictly egalitarian in approach. Whereas an advocate for equality of opportunity would permit killing a social deviant as it prevents the acceptance of such behaviour, an advocate of Kant's insane egalitarianism would trust that eventually the universal right will prevail against the will of the wrongdoers. Pure poppycock, to phrase it gently.
The focal points of the study of Kant's philosophy are grinding at conceptualising epistemological proofs of existence, both of knowledge itself and ourselves as bearers of this knowledge in our world. For knowledge of external objects in our world to be certain, Kant devised two separate determining categories:
1) analytic truths: these are propositions that bear the origin of the subject in the predicate, e.g. the fat man is a man - this cannot be disputed and is based on the belief in a priori knowledge or something we know to be indisputably true;
2) synthetic truths: these are propositions from which we can gather further information and without which we would simply be left with the analytic, e.g. the fat man cannot run fast - this relates to Kant's enthusiasm for universality, in which something without being observed is only 100% true when it 'feels' right or we know it for certain.
Kant shows determination when it comes to discussing the combination of a priori with synthetic truth; a synthetic a priori is something we can expand upon without the need for observational basis on this proposition, e.g. there are other worlds besides ours - this is something we do not know from experience, but somehow we a priori understand it as a possibility.
What Kant then introduced were his two forms of world: the noumenal and phenomenal. The noumenal is that which is felt innately yet not understood and not observed without intuition. The phenomenal is that which we know from experiencing objects in the immediate realm of our world.
As if Kant couldn't get any more intricate, he continues to postulate on the abstract noumenal world by suggesting our links to it are meagre and almost redundant, except for when we are assisted by what he calls intuition. Intuition, as found in the work of abstract artists or surrealists like Salvador Dali (famous for his melting clocks and prong-legged elephants), is an expression of indescribable feeling towards an object. Basically someone with intuition perceives standard objects as examples or interpretations of emotion, e.g. you look at a tin can but you don't see it as it is, you proceed to extrapolate the form of a mass of colours from it.
For Kant the gift of intuition was a gateway to a transcendental plane of expression, a realm where the complex logic and investigative thought of human beings isn't necessary. This flows in the same vein as Rousseau's Romanticism in that it strays from the empirical into the inextricable - it's fantastic in a way.
I suppose Kant couldn't help but bewilder with his ideas. The bizarre notion of 'things-in-themselves' or objects that exist without us needing to perceive them is a spin on Plato's perfect forms. Kant suggests that a perfect example of, say, an apple exists in itself when we aren't looking at a particular apple; but when we look at the apple it adopts a specific form in our mind. He is saying our mind's eye transforms the perfect using sense-perception into what we are currently looking at, i.e. the apple is no longer perfect, but just an average apple from an orchard of hundreds of different apples.
What bothers me about this is that, relative to his intuition idea, if 'things-in-themselves' or ghost forms are apparent when we're not perceiving a particular object, why is it then that when someone who uses intuition sees an object in a transcendental way fails to see it instead in its perfect form? Surely the most perfect form is transcendental and something that our perception, our universe struggles to provide. Kant might well have fared better had he known about psychology and physiology.
Finally we come to the awkward 'innate sense' idea from Kant's ethical beliefs. The prominent concept of innate right and wrong is used by Kant alongside his categorical imperative. Imperative is the precise term to be applied to such a rigid take on morality; Kant was propounding that for a being to be completely morally right he had to never sway from what he knew to be right. For example a person cannot kill another because killing people is wrong. This seems straightforward enough, until you start to elaborate on circumstances. To carry on the same example but with circumstantial evidence, what if the person in question is being threatened with his own death: does he fight back and kill to survive or simply surrender to the universal will of the right path?
Crazily enough Kant would, at least from his theory, advocate the latter. This is the stark opposite to John Stuart Mills' utilitarian perspective, in which the outcome justifies the actions taken to achieve it and the greater good of humanity is desirable in all case scenarios. Through this lens we can see Kant as strictly egalitarian in approach. Whereas an advocate for equality of opportunity would permit killing a social deviant as it prevents the acceptance of such behaviour, an advocate of Kant's insane egalitarianism would trust that eventually the universal right will prevail against the will of the wrongdoers. Pure poppycock, to phrase it gently.
You can begin to imagine a world formulated through Kant's thinking: a realm where nothing is as it seems or is, where a table is probably the actual meaning of life incarnate and defending your property by killing someone is not only wrong because you should never kill, but also because there's no way of actually knowing that property even exists based on phenomena you've known all your life.
Maybe such notions of imperceptibility are so difficult for me to get my head round because I've been raised in an empirical era; however, I'm inclined to believe it's just because the majority of it is really futilitarian confusion.
Maybe such notions of imperceptibility are so difficult for me to get my head round because I've been raised in an empirical era; however, I'm inclined to believe it's just because the majority of it is really futilitarian confusion.
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