Immanuel Kant

(1724-1804)

Immanuel Kant is perhaps the most influential European philosopher of the modern era. Kant was born, lived, and died in Konigsberg in East Prussia. He studied at the University of Konigsberg from 1740 to 1746, returned after a time to gain his master's degree, and by 1770 was appointed professor. He lectured on a wide variety of subjects from math, physics, anthropology, teaching, music, to rhetoric and geography. Kant's primary concern was with the foundational questions in the sciences and the search for proper methods of inquiry in metaphysics.

Kant is considered a Platonist (a follower of Plato), especially after stating that "rhetoric deserves no respect at all." Kant argues that rhetoric reached its zenith when Hellenism was descending and the Roman Empire was ascending (Second Sophistic).

For our purposes, Kant's discussions of the critique of judgement serve as a crucial starting point. Kant argues that the use of language has two forms:

1. poetry - which he argues is the highest art because it originates in freedom because it is the least guided by rules, directives, and examples.
2. rhetoric - Kant believes, includes only pure eloquence and the art of persuasion. Kant argues that pure eloquence is innocuous because it entertains and has little intrinsic consequence. Yet he argues that persuasion is not an art because it deprives men of their freedom.

Kant believes that persuasion is produced by following a series of ingenious technical rules. He holds that it is used by calculating minds with designs on influencing the minds of others in order to deprive them of their freedom. Rhetoric, then, is not categorized by honesty and sincerity (as poetry is) but by cunning, artifice, and tricks. In effect, Kant is repeating Plato's denigration of the Sophists. He argues that because of rhetoric, individuals aren't allowed to make free judgements as rhetors limit the free exercise of judgement.

For Kant, if a rhetor is committed to freedom, they must demonstrate:

1. Clear insight into things (knowledge)
2. Perfect command of the language (eloquence)
3. A sound and creative imagination (an element of poetry)
4. True morality.

Kant viewed language as a neutral instrument over which individual users have control. Thus, language can be simply manipulated to express ideas. Kant's view of language is very innocent in that he holds that language says precisely what the speaker means without harboring a hidden agenda. This trend was to continue throughout the 18th century.

Critique of Pure Reason

Thoughts without content are empty, perceptions without
conceptions are blind...Understanding can perceive
nothing, the senses can think nothing. Knowledge arises
only from their united action.
---From Critique of Pure Reason

In this work, Kant addresses epistemology. He argues that philosophical knowledge, especially metaphysics, transcends experience. He holds that metaphysics claims to provide necessary truths which cannot be proven based on apriori claims ( the empirical evidence of Bacon or Locke) nor can they be proven based on their synthetic claims (a reasoned analysis of the concepts contained in the claim). Kant holds that the argument: "God Exists" or "Everything has a Cause" are examples of such arguments. He contrasts this with what he calls analytic arguments (an appeal based on the common understanding of the meaning of the words in the claim) such as "God is Omnipotent" which are explanatory rather than philosophical.

Kant's critique of reason also addresses the problem of antinomies (Greek derivation, meaning contradictory laws). Kant is convinced that all reason inevitably falls into self contradiction when it attempts to go beyond experience to address such questions as: "Does the Universe have a beginning in time, a limit in space, an initial cause, or is it infinite?" The antimony arises because it is possible to construct valid arguments to argue both sides of the question. Kant argues that if this conflict of reason is not resolved that humanity would lapse into hopeless skepticism which he called the "euthanasia of pure reason."

Kant felt he could resolve these two problems through what he termed the "Copernican Revolution in Philosophy." Basically, this involves consciously reversing the way we see cognition. Kant argues that we currently understand the world as our knowledge conforms to a realm of actual objects existing "out there." This revolution forces us to think of those objects as conforming to our ways of knowing them. Thus, our method of gaining knowledge of a thing shapes that thing and that knowledge.

This reversal creates "forms of sensibility" through which objects are given to the mind in sensory experience and the pure concepts (or categories) through which they are thought. What this means is that since an object has to appear in a form that fits our way of knowing, then we only know the appearance of a thing not its true substance. So, a cat appears to us as a cat category, and we can't know what it is, only the category in which we can think about it. (Whew!) Therefore, according to Kant, our knowledge is limited to:

1. appearances - phenomena we can "know"
2. noumena -"things-in-themselves" or what they really are. Noumena are thinkable but not knowable.

Kant called this transcendental idealism. It also addresses the problem of synthetic/apriori knowledge because knowledge of such things must conform to the categories which we can know. This argument assumes that the human mind is endowed with the conditions and categories necessary to engage in transcendental idealism. To account for this, he gives us the following forms:

1. transcendental aesthetic - which argues that space and time are subjective forms of human understanding. Through this, he argues it is the "manifold of sense" that is given to the mind rather than either object (self-subsisting reality) themselves.
2. transcendental analytic - which, through transcendental deduction, allows for the existence of certain pure categories or concepts through which we can understand universally valid (through experience) objects (such as substance and causality).

Basically, Kant rules out all traditional questions of metaphysics as impossible to resolve due to any hope of a possible useable experience.

For more Kant, head to:Kant Links.