, Spinoza
Biography
Born into a poor family of a saddle maker. The boy was named after St. Emmanuel, in translation this Hebrew name means "God is with us." Under the care of the doctor of theology Franz Albert Schulz, who noticed talent in Immanuel, Kant graduated from the prestigious Friedrichs-Kollegium gymnasium, and then entered the University of Königsberg. Due to the death of his father, he fails to complete his studies and, in order to feed his family, Kant becomes a home teacher for 10 years. It was at this time, in -, that he developed and published the cosmogonic hypothesis of the origin of the solar system from the original nebula, which has not lost its relevance to this day.
Good will is pure (unconditional will). Pure good will cannot exist outside of reason, since it is pure and does not contain anything empirical. And in order to generate this will, reason is needed.
Categorical imperative
moral law- coercion, the need to act contrary to empirical influences. So, it takes the form of a coercive command - an imperative.
Hypothetical imperatives(relative or conditional imperatives) - actions are good in special cases, to achieve certain goals (doctor's advice to a person who cares about his health).
| "Act only in accordance with such a maxim, guided by which you can at the same time wish it to become a universal law." “Act in such a way that you always treat a person, both in your own person and in the person of everyone else, as an end, and never treat him as a means.” "the principle of the will of every man as a will that establishes universal laws with all its maxims." |
These are three different ways of representing the same law, and each of them combines the other two.
To check the compliance of a particular act with the moral law, Kant proposed using a thought experiment.
Idea of law and state
In the doctrine of law, Kant developed the ideas of the French Enlightenment: the need to destroy all forms of personal dependence, the assertion of personal freedom and equality before the law. Kant derived legal laws from moral ones.
In the doctrine of the state, Kant developed the ideas of J.J. Rousseau: the idea of popular sovereignty (the source of sovereignty is the monarch, who cannot be condemned, because "he cannot act wrongfully").
Kant also considered the ideas of Voltaire: he recognized the right to freely express his opinion, but with the caveat: "argue as much as you like and about anything, but obey."
The state (in the broadest sense) is an association of many people who are subject to legal laws.
All states have three powers:
- legislative (supreme) - belongs only to the united will of the people;
- executive (acts according to the law) - belongs to the ruler;
- judicial (acts according to the law) - belongs to the judge.
State structures cannot be immutable and change when they are no longer necessary. And only the republic is durable (the law is independent and does not depend on any individual). A true republic is a system governed by authorized deputies elected by the people.
In the doctrine of relations between states, Kant opposes the unjust state of these relations, against the dominance of strong law in international relations. Therefore, Kant is for the creation of an equal union of peoples, which would provide assistance to the weak. And he believed that such a union brings humanity closer to the idea of eternal peace.
Kant's Questions
What can I know?
- Kant recognized the possibility of cognition, but at the same time limited this possibility to human abilities, i.e. you can know, but not everything.
What should I do?
- One must act according to the moral law; you need to develop your mental and physical strength.
What can I hope for?
- You can rely on yourself and on state laws.
What is a person?
- Man is the highest value.
About the end of existence
In the "Berlin Monthly" (June 1794) Kant published his article. The idea of the end of all things is presented in this article as the moral end of mankind. The article talks about the ultimate goal of human existence.
Three ending options:
1) natural - according to divine wisdom.
2) supernatural - for reasons incomprehensible to people.
3) unnatural - due to human imprudence, misunderstanding of the ultimate goal.
Compositions
- Akademieausgabe von Immanuel Kants Gesammelten Werken (German)
Russian editions
- Immanuel Kant. Works in six volumes. Volume 1. - M., 1963, 543 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 4)
- Immanuel Kant. Works in six volumes. Volume 2. - M., 1964, 510 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 5)
- Immanuel Kant. Works in six volumes. Volume 3. - M., 1964, 799 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 6)
- Immanuel Kant. Works in six volumes. Volume 4 Part 1. - M., 1965, 544 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 14)
- Immanuel Kant. Works in six volumes. Volume 4 Part 2. - M., 1965, 478 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 15)
- Immanuel Kant. Works in six volumes. Volume 5. - M., 1966, 564 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 16)
- Immanuel Kant. Works in six volumes. Volume 6. - M., 1966, 743 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 17)
- Immanuel Kant. Criticism pure mind . - M., 1994, 574 s (Philosophical Heritage, Vol. 118)
- Kant I. Critique of Pure Reason / Per. with him. N. Lossky verified and edited by Ts. G. Arzakanyan and M. I. Itkin; Note. Ts. G. Arzakanyan. - M.: Eksmo Publishing House, 2007. - 736 with ISBN 5-699-14702-0
Russian translations available online
- Prolegomena to any future metaphysics that may appear as a science (translation: M. Itkina)
- The question of whether the Earth is aging from a physical point of view
Translators of Kant into Russian
About him
see also
Links
| Age of Enlightenment | |
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| Prominent people of the era by country | |
| Austria | Joseph II | Leopold II | Maria Theresa |
| France | |
MOSCOW, April 22 - RIA Novosti. The 290th anniversary of the birth of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is celebrated on Tuesday.
Below is a biographical note.
The founder of German classical philosophy, Immanuel Kant, was born on April 22, 1724 in the suburb of Koenigsberg (now Kaliningrad) Vorder Vorstadt in a poor family of a saddler (a saddler is a manufacturer of eyecups for horses that are put on them to limit the field of view). At baptism, Kant received the name Emanuel, but later he himself changed it to Immanuel, considering it the most suitable for himself. The family belonged to one of the areas of Protestantism - pietism, which preached personal piety and the strictest observance of moral rules.
From 1732 to 1740, Kant studied at one of the best schools in Koenigsberg - the Latin Friedrichs-Collegium (Collegium Fridericianum).
The house in the Kaliningrad region where Kant lived and worked will be restoredThe Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Nikolai Tsukanov instructed to complete the development of the concept for the development of the territory in the village of Veselovka, associated with the name of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the regional government said in a statement.In 1740 he entered the University of Königsberg. There is no exact data on which faculty Kant studied at. Most researchers of his biography agree that he should have studied at the theological faculty. However, judging by the list of subjects he studied, the future philosopher preferred mathematics, natural sciences and philosophy. For the entire period of study, he attended only one theological course.
In the summer of 1746, Kant presented to the Faculty of Philosophy his first scientific work- "Thoughts towards a true assessment of living forces", dedicated to the formula for momentum. The work was published in 1747 with the money of Kant's uncle, the shoemaker Richter.
In 1746, due to the difficult financial situation, Kant was forced to leave the university without passing the final exams and without defending his dissertation for a master's degree. For several years he worked as a home teacher on estates in the vicinity of Koenigsberg.
In August 1754, Immanuel Kant returned to Konigsberg. In April 1755, he defended his thesis "On Fire" for a master's degree. In June 1755 he was awarded his doctorate for his dissertation "A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge", which was his first philosophical work. He received the title of Privatdozent of Philosophy, which gave him the right to teach at the university, without, however, receiving a salary from the university.
In 1756, Kant defended his thesis "Physical Monadology" and received the post of ordinary professor. In the same year, he petitioned the king for the post of professor of logic and metaphysics, but was refused. Only in 1770 did Kant receive a permanent position as professor of these subjects.
Kant lectured not only on philosophy, but also on mathematics, physics, geography, and anthropology.
In the development of Kant's philosophical views, two qualitatively different periods are distinguished: the early, or "pre-critical", which lasted until 1770, and the subsequent, "critical", when he created his own philosophical system, which he called "critical philosophy".
The early Kant was an inconsistent supporter of natural-scientific materialism, which he tried to combine with the ideas of Gottfried Leibniz and his follower Christian Wolff. His most significant work of this period is the "General Natural History and Theory of the Sky" of 1755), in which the author puts forward a hypothesis about the origin of solar system(and similarly about the origin of the entire universe). Kant's cosmogonic hypothesis showed the scientific significance of the historical view of nature.
Another treatise of this period, also important for the history of dialectics, is An Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Quantities into Philosophy (1763), in which a distinction is made between real and logical contradiction.
From 1771, a "critical" period began in the work of the philosopher. Since that time, Kant's scientific activity has been devoted to three main topics: epistemology, ethics and aesthetics, combined with the doctrine of expediency in nature. Each of these topics corresponded to a fundamental work: Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique practical reason"(1788)," Critique of the ability of judgment "(1790) and a number of other works.
In his main work, The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant tried to substantiate the unknowability of the essence of things ("things in themselves"). From Kant's point of view, our knowledge is determined not so much by the external material world as by the general laws and methods of our mind. With this formulation of the question, the philosopher laid the foundation for a new philosophical problem- Theories of knowledge.
Twice, in 1786 and 1788, Kant was elected rector of the University of Königsberg. In the summer of 1796, he gave his last lectures at the university, but he left his place on the university staff only in 1801.
Immanuel Kant subordinated his life to a strict schedule, thanks to which he lived a long life, despite his naturally poor health; On February 12, 1804, the scientist died at his home. His last word was "Gut".
Kant was not married, although, according to biographers, he had this intention several times.
Kant is buried at the east corner of the north side Cathedral Koenigsberg in the professorial crypt, a chapel was erected over his grave. In 1809, the crypt was demolished due to dilapidation, and in its place a walking gallery was built, which was called "Stoa Kantiana" and existed until 1880. In 1924, according to the project of the architect Friedrich Lars, the Kant memorial was restored and acquired a modern look.
The monument to Immanuel Kant was cast in bronze in Berlin by Karl Gladenbeck according to the design of Christian Daniel Rauch in 1857, but was installed opposite the philosopher's house in Königsberg only in 1864, since the money collected by the inhabitants of the city was not enough. In 1885, in connection with the redevelopment of the city, the monument was moved to the university building. In 1944, the sculpture was hidden from the bombings in the estate of Countess Marion Denhoff, but was subsequently lost. In the early 1990s, Countess Denhoff donated a large sum to restore the monument.
A new bronze statue of Kant, cast in Berlin by the sculptor Harald Haacke from an old miniature model, was installed on June 27, 1992 in Kaliningrad in front of the university building. The burial place and the monument to Kant are objects of the cultural heritage of modern Kaliningrad.
😉 Greetings to new and regular readers! Gentlemen, we continue to get acquainted with the stories successful people. In the article "Immanuel Kant: a short biography, Interesting Facts» about the main stages life path famous German scientist.
Immanuel Kant: biography
He was born on April 22 (zodiac sign Taurus) 1724 in Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad), where his grandfather emigrated from Scotland. At that time it was a very cosmopolitan city. Kant's parents were devout Lutherans of modest means.
Immanuel was the fourth child in the family. He grew up with his younger brother, older sister and two younger sisters in a working-class neighborhood in the suburbs of Königsberg among laborers, small shopkeepers and craftsmen. Like his father, he was not in good health.
In 1737 his mother died. The boy stood out among his peers, especially in the study of Greek and Latin. Already at the age of 13, the young man showed signs of his legendary perseverance; he was single-minded in his teaching.
In 1740, at the age of 16, he entered the University of Königsberg. Here he met talented professors who opened the world of philosophical and scientific thought to the young scientist.
About the modest life of the great scientist
In the next 7 years, Immanuel not only deepened the study of mathematics, he also continued his passion for the methodology of various sciences. In 1746, his father died, and Kant realized that he could not complete his studies, since he had no funds.
He leaves his native city (in 1747) and begins to teach children from wealthy families of Yudshen (now the village of Veselovka). The young scientist also devoted most of his time to working on his dissertation. In 1755 he received the degree of Privatdozent.
The position of freelance assistant professor, which he held for the next fifteen years, was not profitable. The scientist was forced to live on the little money that students paid him. In the end, he was forced to work as an assistant librarian for several hours a week in the library of the royal castle.
Kant could only afford a small room with modest living conditions. After lecturing on geography, mineralogy, physics, pedagogy, anthropology and philosophy, he enjoyed reading newspapers over a cup of coffee.
Sometimes he rested, playing billiards or cards, occasionally drinking one or two beers with friends. In the evening, Kant returned to his room to his table, chair, bed, and a few selected books. The only thing that adorned its walls was a portrait of the French theorist J.-J. Rousseau.
Philosophy of Immanuel Kant
Kant's judgments during this early period of his life were shaped by the provocative ideas of Rousseau and the rationalism of Leibniz. But he was also deeply moved by the achievements of the scientist and theologian. At that time, Newton's work had just begun to be studied at the University of Königsberg.
Soon the scientist publishes several books and many essays on metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, logic and other sciences, including astronomy. Kant used Newton's principles in his hypothesis of the primordial nebula, which best explained the origin of the universe and has not lost its relevance to this day.
In 1764 - Kant published his "Study of the degree of clarity of the principles of natural theology and morality." He views religious worship as "idolatry". He is sure that religion as a state institution corrupts people and breeds hypocrisy.
The work testifies that Kant understood the limits of the rationalistic: in particular, he began to feel the inconsistencies of the logical demonstrations performed by such rationalists as Wolf, who assumed that making a false proposition necessarily implied that the proposition that was controversial to him must be true.
Kant's premonitions indicate that even in the early period of his work he was already moving towards a dialectical understanding of truth, which would later become his method of thinking.
Kant became a very famous teacher. He was a popular professor among students, not only because his lively teaching method included provocative ideas, but also because of his humor. The effectiveness of his teaching and the stable reputation of an interesting author attracted many students to Koenigsberg.
Alma mater
In 1770 (when Kant was 46 years old) his alma mater accepted him as a full member of the faculty: he was confirmed professor of logic and metaphysics. He continued to work at the University of Königsberg for the next 27 years, in 1786 he became its rector.
Königsber University
At the age of 57, the philosopher completed his greatest work, Critical Analysis of Pure Reason. His work is dialectical and subtle; on the one hand, this makes "pure reason" a subject critical analysis, and on the other hand, it is the use of "pure reason" for development in accordance with requests.
Kant's basic idea is that the mind plays an active role in structuring reality. The mind gives the structure of the objects as they must conform to the structure of the mind in order to be perceived first.
Kant rejects the ideas of dogmatic metaphysicians-rationalists (Spinoza, Leibniz) and the skepticism of empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume). He uses an unusual method of analyzing judgments and methodologies.
Kant divided his philosophy into 4 parts (questions):
- What can I know? (metaphysics).
- What should I do? (morality).
- What can I hope for (religion).
- What is a person? (anthropology).
last years of life
The philosopher Immanuel Kant is undoubtedly one of the most famous thinkers in the world. For example, in his monumental Critique of Pure Reason, he showed how the cognitive faculties of the mind can be used to determine the limits of these very faculties.
His life is of interest to neurologists for several reasons: he had a specific personality type; he suffered from a headache; died with dementia. Kant was a man of legendary calmness and pedantry.
For example, his morning walks always took place at the same time. Residents said they could check their watches when he passed by.
He always walked the same route and even walked the same number of steps. He suffered from headaches, which were probably migraines. It has long been believed that people with an obsessive personality type often suffer from migraines. And in last years During his lifetime, Kant showed clear signs of dementia.
Various causes have been considered, such as vascular dementia or a slowly growing tumor such as a frontal meningioma. Because he had impaired cognitive function, the presence of hallucinations and recurring loss of consciousness.
The philosopher never married. His name can be found in the famous list Kant died on February 12, 1804. He was 79 years old. Many geniuses had symptoms of the mentally ill.
Immanuel Kant: short biography and philosophy (video):
German Immanuel Kant
German philosopher, founder of German classical philosophy
short biography
The largest German scientist, philosopher, founder of German classical philosophy, a man whose works had a huge impact on the development of philosophical thought in the 18th and subsequent centuries.
In 1724, on April 22, Immanuel was born in Prussian Konigsberg. His whole biography will be connected with this city; if Kant left its limits, then for a short distance and not for long. Future great philosopher was born in a poor large family; his father was a simple craftsman. Immanuel's giftedness was noticed by the doctor of theology Franz Schulz and helped him become a student at the prestigious Friedrichs Collegium gymnasium.
In 1740, Immanuel Kant became a student at the Albertina University of Koenigsberg, but the death of his father prevented him from completely unlearning. For 10 years, Kant, providing financial support for his family, has been working as a home teacher in different families, having left his native Koenigsberg. Difficult everyday circumstances do not prevent him from engaging in scientific activities. So, in 1747-1750. Kant's attention was focused on his own cosmogonic theory of the origin of the solar system from the original nebula, the relevance of which has not been lost to this day.
In 1755 he returned to Konigsberg. Kant finally managed not only to complete his university education, but also, having defended several dissertations, to receive a doctorate degree and the right to engage in teaching activities as an assistant professor and professor. Within the walls of his alma mater, he worked for four decades. Until 1770, Kant worked as an extraordinary associate professor, after that he was an ordinary professor in the department of logic and metaphysics. Philosophical, physical, mathematical and other disciplines Immanuel Kant taught students until 1796.
The year 1770 also became a milestone in his scientific biography: he divides his work into the so-called. subcritical and critical periods. In the second, a number of fundamental works were written, which not only enjoyed great success, but also allowed Kant to enter the circle of outstanding thinkers of the century. The field of epistemology includes his work Critique of Pure Reason (1781), ethics - Critique of Practical Reason (1788). In 1790, the essay "Critique of the Faculty of Judgment" touching on issues of aesthetics was published. Kant's worldview as a philosopher was formed to a certain extent thanks to the study of the writings of Hume and a number of other thinkers.
In turn, the influence of the works of Immanuel Kant himself on the subsequent development of philosophical thought is difficult to overestimate. german classical philosophy, the founder of which he was, later included large philosophical systems, developed by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. The romantic movement experienced the impact of Kant's teachings. Schopenhauer's philosophy also shows the influence of his ideas. In the second half of the XIX century. “neo-Kantianism” was very relevant; in the 20th century, Kant’s philosophical heritage influenced, in particular, existentialism, the phenomenological school, etc.
In 1796, Immanuel Kant stopped lecturing, in 1801 he retired from the university, but did not stop scientific activity until 1803, the Thinker could never boast of iron health and found a way out in a clear daily routine, strict adherence to his own system, useful habits that surprised even pedantic Germans. Kant never connected his life with any of the women, although he had nothing against the fair sex. Regularity and accuracy helped him live longer than many of his peers. He died in his native Konigsberg on February 12, 1804; they buried him in the professorial crypt of the city cathedral.
Biography from Wikipedia
Born into a poor family of a saddle maker. Immanuel had been in poor health since childhood. His mother tried to give her son the highest quality education. She encouraged curiosity and fantasy in her son. Until the end of his life, Kant remembered his mother with great love and gratitude. The father instilled in his son a love of work. Under the care of the doctor of theology F. A. Schulz, who noticed talent in him, he graduated from the prestigious Friedrichs-Collegium gymnasium (de: Collegium Fridericianum), and then in 1740 he entered the University of Königsberg. There were 4 faculties - theological, legal, medical and philosophical. It is not known exactly which faculty Kant chose. Information about this has not been preserved. Biographers differ in their assumptions. Kant's interest in philosophy was awakened by Professor Martin Knutzen. Knutzen was a pietist and Wolfian, fascinated by English natural history. It was he who inspired Kant to write a work on physics.
Kant began this work in his fourth year of study. This work progressed slowly. The young Kant had little knowledge and skills. He was poor. His mother had died by then, and his father could barely make ends meet. Kant worked part-time with lessons; in addition, rich classmates tried to help him. He was also helped by Pastor Schultz and a relative maternal line, Uncle Richter. There is evidence that it was Richter who took on most of the costs of publishing Kant's debut work, Thoughts on the True Evaluation of Living Forces. Kant wrote it for 3 years and printed it for 4 years. The work was fully printed only in 1749. Kant's work has elicited various responses; there was a lot of criticism among them.
Due to the death of his father, he fails to complete his studies and, in order to feed his family, he becomes a home teacher in Yudshen (now Veselovka) for 10 years. It was at this time, in the years 1747-1755, that he developed and published his cosmogonic hypothesis of the origin of the solar system from the original nebula.
In 1755, Kant defended his dissertation and received a doctorate, which gives him the right to teach at the university. For him, forty years of teaching began.
During the Seven Years' War from 1758 to 1762, Koenigsberg was under the jurisdiction of the Russian government, which was reflected in the business correspondence of the philosopher. In particular, in 1758 he addressed an application for the position of an ordinary professor to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Unfortunately, the letter never reached her, but was lost in the governor's office. The issue of the department was resolved in favor of another applicant - on the grounds that he was older both in years and in teaching experience.
The period of domination of the Russian Empire over East Prussia was the least productive in Kant's work: for all the years, only a few essays on earthquakes came out from the philosopher's pen, but immediately after its completion, Kant published a whole series of works.
During several years of the stay of the Russian troops in Koenigsberg, Kant kept several young nobles in his apartment as boarders and met many Russian officers, among whom there were many thinking people. One of the officers' circles suggested that the philosopher give lectures on physics and physical geography (Immanuel Kant, after being refused, was very intensively engaged in private lessons: he even taught fortification and pyrotechnics).
Kant's natural-science and philosophical researches are supplemented by "political science" opuses; so, in the treatise "K eternal peace» he first prescribed cultural and philosophical foundations the future unification of Europe into a family of enlightened peoples.
Since 1770, it has been customary to count the "critical" period in Kant's work. This year, at the age of 46, he was appointed professor of logic and metaphysics at Königsberg University, where until 1797 he taught an extensive cycle of disciplines - philosophical, mathematical, physical.
The plan long conceived as to how the field of pure philosophy was to be cultivated consisted of three tasks:
- what can i know? (metaphysics);
- what should I do? (morality);
- what can I hope for? (religion);
During this period, Kant wrote fundamental philosophical works that brought the scientist a reputation as one of the outstanding thinkers of the 18th century and had a huge impact on the further development of world philosophical thought:
- "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781) - epistemology (epistemology)
- "Critique of Practical Reason" (1788) - ethics
- "Critique of the Faculty of Judgment" (1790) - aesthetics
Being in poor health, Kant subjected his life to a harsh regimen, which allowed him to outlive all his friends. His accuracy in following the routine became a byword even among punctual Germans and gave rise to many sayings and anecdotes. He was not married. He said that when he wanted to have a wife, he could not support her, and when he already could, he did not want to. However, he was not a misogynist either, he willingly talked with women, he was a pleasant secular interlocutor. In his old age he was cared for by one of his sisters.
There is an opinion that Kant sometimes showed anti-Semite phobia.
Kant wrote: “Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own mind! - this is ... the motto of the Enlightenment.
Kant was buried at the eastern corner of the north side of the Königsberg Cathedral in the professorial crypt, a chapel was erected over his grave. In 1924, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Kant, the chapel was replaced with a new structure, in the form of an open columned hall, strikingly different in style from the cathedral itself.
Stages of scientific activity
Kant passed in his philosophical development two stages: "subcritical" and "critical". (These concepts are defined by the philosopher's Critique of Pure Reason, 1781; Critique of Practical Reason, 1788; Critique of Judgment, 1790).
Stage I (until 1770) - Kant developed the questions that were posed by the previous philosophical thought. In addition, during this period, the philosopher was engaged in natural science problems:
- developed a cosmogonic hypothesis of the origin of the solar system from a giant primordial gaseous nebula (General Natural History and Theory of the Sky, 1755);
- outlined the idea of a genealogical classification of the animal world, that is, the distribution of various classes of animals in the order of their possible origin;
- put forward the idea of the natural origin of human races;
- studied the role of ebbs and flows on our planet.
Stage II (begins in 1770 or 1780s) - deals with issues of epistemology (the process of cognition), reflects on the metaphysical (general philosophical) problems of being, cognition, man, morality, state and law, aesthetics.
Philosophy
Epistemology
Kant rejected the dogmatic method of cognition and believed that instead it should be based on the method of critical philosophizing, the essence of which lies in the study of the mind itself, the boundaries that a person can reach with the mind, and the study of individual ways of human cognition.
Kant's main philosophical work is the Critique of Pure Reason. The original problem for Kant is the question "How is pure knowledge possible?". First of all, this concerns the possibility of pure mathematics and pure natural science ("pure" means "non-empirical", a priori, or inexperienced). Kant formulated this question in terms of a distinction between analytical and synthetic judgments - "How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?" By "synthetic" judgments, Kant understood judgments with an increment of content in comparison with the content of the concepts included in the judgment. Kant distinguished these judgments from analytical judgments that reveal the meaning of concepts. Analytic and synthetic judgments differ in whether the content of the judgment predicate follows from the content of its subject (such are analytic judgments) or, conversely, is added to it "from outside" (such are synthetic judgments). The term "a priori" means "out of experience", as opposed to the term "a posteriori" - "from experience".
Analytic judgments are always a priori: experience is not needed for them, so there are no a posteriori analytic judgments. Accordingly, experimental (a posteriori) judgments are always synthetic, since their predicates draw content from experience that was not in the subject of the judgment. Concerning a priori synthetic judgments, then, according to Kant, they are part of mathematics and natural science. Due to their a priori nature, these judgments contain universal and necessary knowledge, that is, such that it is impossible to extract from experience; thanks to syntheticity, such judgments give an increase in knowledge.
Kant, following Hume, agrees that if our knowledge begins with experience, then its connection - universality and necessity - is not from it. However, if Hume draws a skeptical conclusion from this that the connection of experience is just a habit, then Kant refers this connection to the necessary a priori activity of the mind (in the broad sense). The revelation of this activity of the mind in relation to experience, Kant calls transcendental research. “I call transcendental ... knowledge that deals not so much with objects as with the types of our knowledge of objects ...”, writes Kant.
Kant did not share the boundless faith in the forces human mind calling this belief dogmatism. Kant, according to him, made the Copernican revolution in philosophy, by being the first to point out that in order to justify the possibility of knowledge, one should proceed from the fact that not our cognitive abilities correspond to the world, but the world must conform to our abilities, so that knowledge could take place at all. In other words, our consciousness does not just passively comprehend the world as it really is (dogmatism), but, rather, on the contrary, the world conforms to the possibilities of our knowledge, namely: the mind is an active participant in the formation of the world itself, given to us in experience. Experience is essentially a synthesis of that sensory content ("matter"), which is given by the world (things in themselves) and that subjective form, in which this matter (sensations) is comprehended by consciousness. A single synthetic whole of matter and form Kant calls experience, which by necessity becomes something only subjective. That is why Kant distinguishes the world as it is in itself (that is, outside the formative activity of the mind) - a thing-in-itself, and the world as it is given in the phenomenon, that is, in experience.
In experience, two levels of shaping (activity) of the subject are distinguished. First, these are a priori forms of feeling (sensory contemplation) - space (external feeling) and time (internal feeling). In contemplation, sensory data (matter) are realized by us in the forms of space and time, and thus the experience of feeling becomes something necessary and universal. This is a sensory synthesis. To the question of how pure, that is, theoretical, mathematics is possible, Kant answers: it is possible as an a priori science on the basis of pure contemplations of space and time. Pure contemplation (representation) of space is the basis of geometry (three-dimensionality: for example, the relative position of points and lines and other figures), a pure representation of time is the basis of arithmetic (the number series implies the presence of an account, and the condition for the account is time).
Secondly, thanks to the categories of the understanding, the givens of contemplation are connected. This is a mental synthesis. Reason, according to Kant, deals with a priori categories, which are "forms of thought". The path to synthesized knowledge lies through the synthesis of sensations and their a priori forms - space and time - with a priori categories of reason. “Without sensibility, not a single object would be given to us, and without reason, not a single one could be thought” (Kant). Cognition is achieved by combining intuitions and concepts (categories) and is an a priori ordering of phenomena, expressed in the construction of objects based on sensations.
- Quantity categories
- Unity
- A bunch of
- Wholeness
- Quality categories
- Reality
- Negation
- Limitation
- Categories of relationship
- Substance and belonging
- Cause and investigation
- Interaction
- Categories of modality
- Possibility and impossibility
- Existence and non-existence
- Necessity and chance
The sensory material of cognition, ordered through the a priori mechanisms of contemplation and reason, becomes what Kant calls experience. On the basis of sensations (which can be expressed by statements like “this is yellow” or “this is sweet”), which are formed through time and space, as well as through a priori categories of reason, judgments of perception arise: “the stone is warm”, “the sun is round”, then “the sun shone, and then the stone became warm”, and further - developed judgments of experience, in which the observed objects and processes are subsumed under the category of causality: “the sun caused the heating of the stone”, etc. e. The concept of experience in Kant coincides with the concept of nature: “... nature and possible experience is exactly the same" representation i think which must be able to accompany all other representations and be the same in every consciousness. As I. S. Narsky writes, transcendental apperception Kant is “the principle of constancy and systemic organization of the action of categories, arising from the unity of the one who applies them, reasoning"I". (...) It is common to ... empirical "I" and in this sense, the objective logical structure of their consciousness, ensuring the internal unity of experience, science and nature.
Much space is devoted in the Critique to how representations are subsumed under the concepts of the understanding (categories). Here the decisive role is played by the ability of judgment, imagination and rational categorical schematism. According to Kant, there must be a mediating link between intuitions and categories, thanks to which abstract concepts, which are categories, are able to organize sensory data, turning them into law-like experience, that is, into nature. The intermediary between thinking and sensibility in Kant is productive power of the imagination. This ability creates a scheme of time as "a pure image of all sense objects in general." Thanks to the scheme of time, there exists, for example, the scheme of "multiplicity" - a number as a successive attachment of units to each other; the scheme of "reality" - the existence of an object in time; the scheme of "substantiality" - the stability of a real object in time; scheme of "existence" - the presence of an object at a certain time; the scheme of "necessity" - the presence of a certain object at all times. By the productive power of the imagination, the subject, according to Kant, generates the foundations of pure natural science (they are also the most general laws of nature). According to Kant, pure natural science is the result of a priori categorical synthesis.
Knowledge is given by synthesis of categories and observations. Kant showed for the first time that our knowledge of the world is not a passive reflection of reality; according to Kant, it arises due to the active creative activity of the unconscious productive power of the imagination.
Finally, having described the empirical application of reason (that is, its application in experience), Kant asks the question of the possibility of a pure application of reason (reason, according to Kant, is the lowest level of reason, the application of which is limited to the sphere of experience). Here a new question arises: "How is metaphysics possible?". As a result of the study of pure reason, Kant shows that the mind, when it tries to get unambiguous and conclusive answers to the actual philosophical questions, inevitably plunges itself into contradictions; this means that the mind cannot have a transcendent application that would allow it to achieve theoretical knowledge about things in themselves, because, seeking to go beyond experience, it "entangles itself" in paralogisms and antinomies (contradictions, each of whose statements is equally justified); reason in the narrow sense - as opposed to reason operating with categories - can only have a regulatory meaning: to be a regulator of the movement of thought towards the goals of systematic unity, to give a system of principles that any knowledge must satisfy.
Kant argues that the solution of antinomies "can never be found in experience ...".
Kant considers the solution of the first two antinomies to be the identification of a situation in which "the question itself does not make sense." Kant argues, as I. S. Narsky writes, “that the properties of “beginning”, “boundary”, “simplicity” and “complexity” are not applicable to the world of things in themselves outside of time and space, and the world of phenomena is never given to us in its entirety precisely as an integral “world”, while the empirical evidence of fragments of the phenomenal world cannot be invested in these characteristics ... ". As for the third and fourth antinomies, the dispute in them, according to Kant, is "settled" if one recognizes the truth of their antitheses for phenomena and assumes the (regulative) truth of their theses for things in themselves. Thus, the existence of antinomies, according to Kant, is one of the proofs of the correctness of his transcendental idealism, which contrasted the world of things in themselves and the world of appearances.
According to Kant, any future metaphysics that wants to be a science must take into account the implications of his critique of pure reason.
Ethics and the problem of religion
In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant expounds the theory of ethics. Practical reason in Kant's teaching is the only source of principles moral behavior; it is the mind growing into the will. Ethics of Kant is autonomous and a priori, it is aimed at what is due, and not at what exists. Its autonomy means the independence of moral principles from non-moral arguments and grounds. The reference point for Kantian ethics is not the actual actions of people, but the norms arising from the "pure" moral will. This is ethics debt. In the apriorism of duty, Kant seeks the source of the universality of moral norms.
Categorical imperative
Imperative - a rule that contains "objective coercion to act." Moral law - coercion, the need to act contrary to empirical influences. So, it takes the form of a coercive command - an imperative.
Hypothetical imperatives(relative or conditional imperatives) say that actions are effective in achieving certain goals (for example, pleasure or success).
The principles of morality go back to one supreme principle - categorical imperative, prescribing actions that are good in themselves, objectively, without regard to any goal other than morality itself (for example, the requirement of honesty). The categorical imperative says:
- « act only in accordance with such a maxim, guided by which you can at the same time wish it to become a universal law"[options: "always act in such a way that the maxim (principle) of your behavior can become a universal law (act as you would wish everyone to act)"];
- « act in such a way that you always treat humanity, both in your own person and in the person of everyone else, as an end, and never treat it only as a means"[wording option: "treat humanity in your own person (as well as in the person of any other) always as an end and never - only as a means"];
- « principle the will of every person will, with all its maxims establishing universal laws”: one should “do everything from the maxim of one’s will as such, which could also have itself as an object as a will that establishes universal laws.”
These are three different ways of representing the same law, and each of them combines the other two.
The existence of man "has in itself the highest goal ..."; “... only morality and humanity, insofar as it is capable of it, have dignity,” writes Kant.
Duty is the necessity of action out of respect for the moral law.
In ethical teaching, a person is considered from two points of view:
- man as a phenomenon;
- man as a thing in itself.
The behavior of the former is determined solely by external circumstances and is subject to a hypothetical imperative. The behavior of the second must obey the categorical imperative, the highest a priori moral principle. Thus, behavior can be determined by both practical interests and moral principles. Two tendencies arise: the pursuit of happiness (the satisfaction of certain material needs) and the pursuit of virtue. These strivings can contradict each other, and thus the “antinomy of practical reason” arises.
As conditions for the applicability of the categorical imperative in the world of phenomena, Kant puts forward three postulates of practical reason. The first postulate requires the complete autonomy of the human will, its freedom. Kant expresses this postulate with the formula: "You must, therefore you can." Recognizing that without the hope of happiness, people would not have had enough spiritual strength to fulfill their duty in spite of internal and external obstacles, Kant puts forward the second postulate: “there must be immortality human soul." Thus, Kant resolves the antinomy of striving for happiness and striving for virtue by transferring the hopes of the individual to the supra-empirical world. For the first and second postulates, a guarantor is needed, and only God can be it, which means that he must exist- such is the third postulate of practical reason.
The autonomy of Kant's ethics means the dependence of religion on ethics. According to Kant, "religion is no different from morality in its content."
The doctrine of law and the state
The state is an association of many people subject to legal laws.
In the doctrine of law, Kant developed the ideas of the French Enlightenment: the need to destroy all forms of personal dependence, the assertion of personal freedom and equality before the law. Kant derived legal laws from moral ones. Kant recognized the right to freely express his opinion, but with a caveat: "argue as much as you like and about anything, just obey."
State structures cannot be immutable and change when they are no longer necessary. And only the republic is durable (the law is independent and does not depend on any individual).
In the doctrine of relations between states, Kant opposes the unjust state of these relations, against the dominance of strong law in international relations. He advocates the creation of an equal union of peoples. Kant believed that such a union brings humanity closer to the realization of the idea of eternal peace.
The doctrine of expediency. Aesthetics
As a connecting link between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant creates the Critique of Judgment, which focuses on the concept of expediency. Subjective expediency, according to Kant, is present in the aesthetic ability of judgment, objective - in teleological. The first is expressed in the harmony of the aesthetic object.
In aesthetics, Kant distinguishes between two types of aesthetic ideas - the beautiful and the sublime. The aesthetic is what one likes about an idea, regardless of its presence. Beauty is perfection associated with form. In Kant, the beautiful acts as a "symbol of the morally good." The Sublime is the perfection associated with infinity in force (dynamically sublime) or in space (mathematical sublime). An example of a dynamically sublime is a storm. An example of the mathematically sublime is mountains. A genius is a person capable of embodying aesthetic ideas.
The teleological ability of judgment is connected with the concept of a living organism as a manifestation of expediency in nature.
About a human
Kant's views on man are reflected in the book Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). Its main part consists of three sections in accordance with the three abilities of a person: knowledge, feeling of pleasure and displeasure, the ability to desire.
Man is “the most important thing in the world”, since he has self-consciousness.
Man is the highest value, it is a person. Self-consciousness of a person gives rise to egoism as a natural property of a person. A person does not manifest it only when he considers his "I" not as the whole world, but only as part of it. It is necessary to curb egoism, to control the spiritual manifestations of the personality with the mind.
A person can have unconscious ideas - "dark". In darkness, the process of the birth of creative ideas can take place, which a person can know only at the level of sensations.
From the sexual feeling (passion) the mind is clouded. But in a person, a moral and cultural norm is imposed on feelings and desires.
Such a concept as genius was subjected to Kant's analysis. "The talent for invention is called genius."
Memory
- In 1935, the International Astronomical Union named a crater on the visible side of the Moon after Immanuel Kant.
Popular biographies
Immanuel Kant, famous German philosopher, b. April 22, 1724; he was the son of a saddler. Kant's initial education and upbringing had a strictly religious character in the spirit of the pietism that prevailed at that time. In 1740, Kant entered the University of Koenigsberg, where he studied philosophy, physics and mathematics with particular love, and only later began to listen to theology. After graduating from the university, Kant took up private lessons, and in 1755, having received his doctorate, he was appointed Privatdozent at his native university. His lectures on mathematics and geography were a great success, and the popularity of the young scientist grew rapidly. As a professor, Kant tried to encourage his students to think independently, less concerned about communicating the finished results to them. Soon Kant expanded the range of his lectures and began to read anthropology, logic, metaphysics. He received an ordinary professorship in 1770 and taught until the autumn of 1797, when senile weakness forced him to stop his teaching activities. Until his death (February 12, 1804), Kant never traveled beyond the vicinity of Koenigsberg, and the whole city knew and respected his unique personality. He was an eminently truthful, moral and strict man, whose life went on with the punctual correctness of the wound hours. The character of Immanuel Kant was also reflected in his style, precise and dry, but full of nobility and simplicity.
Immanuel Kant in his youth
Kant's literary activity was very prolific and varied, but only three major works are of inestimable importance for philosophy: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the Critique of Judgment (1790). The greatest merit of Immanuel Kant, as a philosopher, lies in the fact that he proposed a thoughtful solution to the problem of the theory of knowledge, which has long divided thinkers into adherents of empiricism and rationalism. . Kant set out to show the one-sidedness of both of these philosophical schools and to elucidate that interplay of experience and intellect of which all human knowledge consists.
Epistemology of Kant
Kant develops his epistemology in his Critique of Pure Reason. Before starting to solve the main problem, before characterizing our knowledge and defining the area to which it extends, Kant asks himself the question of how knowledge itself is possible, what are its conditions and origin. All previous philosophy did not touch upon this question and, since it was not skeptical, was content with a simple and unfounded certainty that objects are cognizable by us; that is why Kant calls it dogmatic, in contrast to his own, which he himself characterizes as a philosophy of criticism.
The cardinal idea of Kant's epistemology is that all our knowledge is composed of two elements - content, with which experience provides, and forms, which exists in the mind prior to any experience. All human knowledge begins with experience, but experience itself is realized only because it is found in our intellect a priori forms, pre-given conditions of all cognition; Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to investigate these non-empirical conditions of empirical knowledge, and such a study Kant calls transcendental.
The existence of the external world is first communicated to us by our sensibility, and sensations point to objects as the causes of sensations. The world of things is known to us intuitively, through sensory representations, but this intuition is possible only because the material brought by sensations is inserted into a priori, independent of experience, subjective forms of the human mind; these forms of intuition, according to Kant's philosophy, are time and space. Everything that we cognize through sensations, we cognize in time and space, and only in this temporal-spatial shell does the physical world appear before us. Time and space are not ideas, not concepts, their origin is not empirical. According to Kant, they are “pure intuitions” that form a chaos of sensations and condition sensory experience; they are subjective forms of the mind, but this subjectivity is universal, and therefore the knowledge that follows from them has an a priori and obligatory character for everyone. That is why pure mathematics is possible, geometry with its spatial content, arithmetic with its temporal content. The forms of space and time are applicable to all objects of possible experience, but only to them, only to phenomena, while things in themselves are hidden to us. If space and time are subjective forms of the human mind, then it is clear that the cognition conditioned by them is also subjective-human. From this, however, it does not follow that the objects of this knowledge, phenomena, are only an illusion, as Berkeley taught: a thing is available to us only in the form of a phenomenon, but the phenomenon itself is real, it is a product of an object in itself and a knowing subject and stands in the middle between them. It must be noted, however, that Kant's views on the essence of the thing-in-itself and phenomena are not entirely consistent and are not the same in his various works. Thus, sensations, becoming intuitions or perceptions of phenomena, are subject to the forms of time and space.
But, according to Kant's philosophy, knowledge does not stop at intuitions, and we get a complete experience when we synthesize intuitions through concepts, these functions of the mind. If sensibility perceives, then the understanding thinks; it binds the intuitions and gives unity to their diversity, and just as sensibility has its a priori forms, so does the understanding have them: these forms are categories, i.e., the most general and experience-independent concepts, by means of which all other concepts subordinate to them are combined into judgments. Kant considers judgments in terms of their quantity, quality, relation and modality, and shows that there are 12 categories:
Only thanks to these categories, a priori, necessary, all-encompassing, is experience possible in a broad sense, only thanks to them is it possible to think about an object and create objective, binding judgments for everyone. Intuition, says Kant, states facts, reason generalizes them, deduces laws in the form of the most general judgments, and that is why it should be considered the legislator of nature (but only of nature, as an aggregate phenomena), that is why pure natural science (the metaphysics of phenomena) is possible.
In order to obtain judgments of the understanding from the judgments of intuition, it is necessary to bring the first into the appropriate categories, and this is done through the faculty of the imagination, which is able to determine under which category this or that intuitive perception fits, due to the fact that each category has its own category. scheme, in the form of a link, homogeneous with both the phenomenon and the category. This scheme in Kant's philosophy is considered to be the a priori relation of time (full time is the scheme of reality, empty time is the scheme of negation, etc.), a relation that indicates which category is applicable to a given subject. But although the categories in their origin do not in the least depend on experience and even determine it, yet their use does not go beyond the limits of possible experience, and they are completely inapplicable to things in themselves. These things in themselves can only be thought, but not known, they are for us - noumena(objects of thought), but not phenomena(objects of perception). With this, Kant's philosophy signs the death sentence for the metaphysics of the supersensible.
Nevertheless, the human spirit still strives for its cherished goal, for the overexperienced and unconditional ideas of God, freedom, immortality. These ideas arise in our mind because the diversity of experience receives a higher unity and final synthesis in the mind. Ideas, bypassing the objects of intuition, spread to the judgments of the understanding and give them the character of the absolute and unconditional; so, according to Kant, our knowledge grades, starting with sensations, moving on to reason and ending in reason. But the unconditionality that characterizes ideas is only an ideal, only a task, to the solution of which a person is constantly striving, wanting to find a condition for each conditional. In Kant's philosophy, ideas serve as regulative principles that govern the mind and lead it up an endless ladder of greater and greater generalizations, leading to higher ideas of the soul, the world, and God. And if we use these ideas of the soul, the world, and God, without losing sight of the fact that we do not know the objects corresponding to them, then they will serve us as reliable guides of knowledge. If the objects of these ideas are seen as cognizable realities, then there is a foundation for the three imaginary sciences that, according to Kant, constitute the stronghold of metaphysics - for rational psychology, cosmology and theology. An analysis of these pseudosciences shows that the first is based on a false premise, the second is entangled in insoluble contradictions, and the third tries in vain to rationally prove the existence of God. So, ideas allow one to discuss phenomena, they expand the limits of the use of reason, but they, like all our knowledge, do not go beyond the boundaries of experience, and before them, as before intuitions and categories, things in themselves do not reveal their impenetrable secret.
