Immanuel Kant

“ Kant (Immanuel) , German critical philosopher, b. Königsberg, 22 April, 1724. He became professor of mathematics in 1770. In 1781 he published his great work, The Critick of Pure Reason, which denied all knowledge of the “Thing itself,” and overthrew the dogmatism of earlier metaphysics. In 1792 the philosopher fell under the royal censorship for his Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason. Kant effected a complete revolution in philosophy, and his immediate influence is not yet exhausted. ”

“ No faculty of the mind can conduct us from the conception of a thing to the existence of something else; and hence he believed he could infer that, without experience, we possess no source from which we can augment a conception, and no ground sufficient to justify us in framing a judgement that is to extend our cognition a priori. That the light of the sun, which shines upon a piece of wax, at the same time melts it, while it hardens clay, no power of the understanding could infer from the conceptions which we previously possessed of these substances ”

“ Immanuel Kant, whose deep and dynamic thinking led to a revolution comparable to a cosmic upheaval in the geological world, compelled his generation to discover a vast new moral system utterly disconcerting to the shallow complacency of those who had no sense of higher values than "practical efficiency." ”

“ There will therefore always be metaphysics in the world; nay, every one, especially every man of reflexion, will have it, and for want of a recognised standard, will shape it for himself after his own pattern. What has hitherto been called metaphysics, cannot satisfy any critical mind, but to forego it entirely is impossible; therefore a Critique of Pure Reason itself must now be attempted or, if one exists, investigated, and brought to the full test, because there is no other means of supplying this pressing want, which is something more than mere thirst for knowledge. ”

“ It is quite admissible to cogitate the soul as simple, for the purpose of enabling ourselves to employ the idea of a perfect and necessary unity of all the faculties of the mind as the principle of all our inquiries into its internal phenomena, although we cannot cognize this unity in concreto. But to assume that the soul is a simple substance (a transcendental conception) would be enouncing a proposition which is not only indemonstrable—as many physical hypotheses are—but a proposition which is purely arbitrary, and in the highest degree rash. The simple is never presented in experience ”

“ And I will content myself with saying, as a closing remark, that this review will detect a principle of steady advance in the purification and elevation of war—such as must offer hope to those who believe in the possibility of its absolute extermination, and must offer consolation to those who (like myself) deny it.
THE LAST DAYS OF IMMANUEL KANT.
I take it for granted that every person of education will acknowledge some interest in the personal history of Immanuel Kant. A great man, though in an unpopular path, must always be an object of liberal curiosity. ”

“ One sees here Kant's strong inclination to these views and how easy it is to establish them by his distinguishing of the appearance from the thing in itself, and on his acceptance of a world of rational beings (mundus intelligibilis) as a kingdom of ends to be thought of as under its own ruler and as necessary to the moral conception of the world, even if at the time of the "Critique" he is afraid to insist on these views dogmatically. ”

“ For to him, as to all great and comprehensive thinkers, Philosophy has only its beginning in the theoretical explanation of things; its chief end is the rational organization and animation and guidance of the higher life in which all things culminate. Kant had carried with him through all his struggle and toil of thought, the cardinal faith in God, Freedom, and Immortality, as an inalienable possession of Reason, and he had beheld the human Personality transfigured and glorified in the Divine radiance of the primal Ideas. ”

“ If any one wishes here to have recourse to the usual subterfuge, and to say, that at least realitates noumena cannot be in opposition to each other, it will be requisite for him to adduce an example of this pure and non-sensuous reality, that it may be understood whether the notion represents something or nothing. But an example cannot be found except in experience, which never presents to us anything more than phenomena; and thus the proposition means nothing more than that the conception which contains only affirmatives does not contain anything negative—a proposition nobody ever doubted. ”

“ There is something so singular in the unbounded esteem for the pure moral law, apart from all advantage, as it is presented for our obedience by practical reason, the voice of which makes even the boldest sinner tremble and compels him to hide himself from it, that we cannot wonder if we find this influence of a mere intellectual idea on the feelings quite incomprehensible to speculative reason and have to be satisfied with seeing so much of this a priori that such a feeling is inseparably connected with the conception of the moral law in every finite rational being. ”

“ Now I maintain that, among all speculative cognition, the peculiarity of transcendental philosophy is that there is no question, relating to an object presented to pure reason, which is insoluble by this reason; and that the profession of unavoidable ignorance—the problem being alleged to be beyond the reach of our faculties—cannot free us from the obligation to present a complete and satisfactory answer. For the very conception which enables us to raise the question must give us the power of answering it ”

“ If any one thinks himself offended, he is at liberty to refute my charge by producing a single synthetical proposition belonging to metaphysics, which he would prove dogmatically a priori, for until he has actually performed this feat, I shall not grant that he has truly advanced the science; even should this proposition be sufficiently confirmed by common experience. No demand can be more moderate or more equitable, and in the (inevitably certain) event of its non-performance, no assertion more just, than that hitherto metaphysics has never existed as a science. ”

“ And, as it is a conception which occupies much of the attention of reason, its loss would be greatly to the detriment of all transcendental philosophy. The word absolute is at present frequently used to denote that something can be predicated of a thing considered in itself and intrinsically. In this sense absolutely possible would signify that which is possible in itself (interne) —which is, in fact, the least that one can predicate of an object. On the other hand, it is sometimes employed to indicate that a thing is valid in all respects—for example, absolute sovereignty. ”

“ He sometimes talks of perception reaching objects directly, and refutes the view that we perceive only what is in our mind. (This, indeed, is implied in his distinction of space and time as forms of external and internal sense respectively.) But usually he takes the ordinary idealist view that we do not perceive things, but affections produced in us by things. Owing to this inconsistency Kant constantly seems to be stating very much more than he has any right to. This is especially true in all that he says about knowledge being confined to phenomena and not extending to things in themselves. ”

“ It would seem at first sight that Kant is not interested in art for its own sake, but for the light which it throws upon the nature of our intellectual faculties. Nevertheless he is careful to insist on the distinction between artistic and scientific judgments. The judgment of beauty, he insists, is free, is not determined by a concept. We are not concerned, in such judgments, with asking what an object is. In so far as, in our appreciation of beauty, we bring in such considerations we are wrong. He therefore rules out any theory that beauty is concerned with faithful representation. ”

“ I find that in all ages not only the philosopher, but even the common understanding, has preposited this permanence as a substratum of all change in phenomena; indeed, I am compelled to believe that they will always accept this as an indubitable fact. Only the philosopher expresses himself in a more precise and definite manner, when he says: “In all changes in the world, the substance remains, and the accidents alone are changeable.” But of this decidedly synthetical proposition, I nowhere meet with even an attempt at proof ”

“ It is interesting to note all through Kant's "critical" period this forced attitude of neutrality as long as the inquiry is simply and solely as to the power of the reason as such to create a knowledge of things transcending experience. He is strictly and manfully consistent with himself in rejecting as conclusions of pure reason any experiences of an objective world experimentally observed, whether on this material plane of existence or any other. To refuse to deny the possibility of other planes of existence and other modes of knowing than we now experience, is as far as he will go. ”

“ Accordingly a Practical Philosophy not having Nature, but the Freedom of the Will for its object, will presuppose and require a Metaphysic of Morals. It is even a Duty to have such a Metaphysic; and every man does, indeed, possess it in himself, although commonly but in an obscure way. For how could any one believe that he has a source of universal Law in himself, without Principles a priori? ”

“ Our knowledge is always conditioned by the fact that we are finite minds living in a particular place and at a particular time; but thought can extend the range of our perception in space and in time.
The limitations of our perception have, for Kant, a double aspect, which determines his division of the first part of the Critique into two parts--the Æsthetic and the Analytic. In the first place, our direct knowledge of space at any one time is always knowledge only of a part of space ”

“ There still remains a difficulty in the combination of freedom with the mechanism of nature in a being belonging to the world of sense; a difficulty which, even after all the foregoing is admitted, threatens freedom with complete destruction. But with this danger there is also a circumstance that offers hope of an issue still favourable to freedom; namely, that the same difficulty presses much more strongly (in fact as we shall presently see, presses only) on the system that holds the existence determinable in time and space to be the existence of things in themselves ”

“ The privilege of aiming at a merely mechanical method of explanation of all natural products is in itself quite unlimited; but the faculty of attaining thereto is by the constitution of our Understanding, so far as it has to do with things as natural purposes, not only very much limited but also clearly bounded. For, according to a principle of the Judgement, by this process alone nothing can be accomplished towards an explanation of these things; and consequently the judgement upon such products must always be at the same time subordinated by us to a teleological principle. ”

“ If we are to understand Kant's philosophy, we must know what he means by idealism, and wherein his idealism differs from that of his predecessors.
The word idealism is, naturally, contrasted with realism. It suggests an assertion that something is not real, but only an idea. If we know it to be combined with a distinction between things in themselves, and phenomena, or appearances, it seems to suggest that the objects of knowledge are somehow illusions, or only appearances in the mind, as contrasted with real things. ”

“ When we can bring any flattering thought of merit into our action, then the motive is already somewhat alloyed with self-love and has therefore some assistance from the side of the sensibility. But to postpone everything to the holiness of duty alone, and to be conscious that we can because our own reason recognises this as its command and says that we ought to do it, this is, as it were, to raise ourselves altogether above the world of sense, and there is inseparably involved in the same a consciousness of the law, as a spring of a faculty that controls the sensibility ”

“ This philosopher found his ideas especially in all that is practical,* that is, which rests upon freedom, which in its turn ranks under cognitions that are the peculiar product of reason. He who would derive from experience the conceptions of virtue, who would make (as many have really done) that, which at best can but serve as an imperfectly illustrative example, a model for or the formation of a perfectly adequate idea on the subject, would in fact transform virtue into a nonentity changeable according to time and circumstance and utterly incapable of being employed as a rule. ”

“ When an upright man is in the greatest distress, which he might have avoided if he could only have disregarded duty, is he not sustained by the consciousness that he has maintained humanity in its proper dignity in his own person and honoured it, that he has no reason to be ashamed of himself in his own sight, or to dread the inward glance of self-examination? This consolation is not happiness, it is not even the smallest part of it, for no one would wish to have occasion for it, or would, perhaps, even desire a life in such circumstances. ”

“ The difficulty of even comprehending a supposition does not disquiet it, because—not knowing what comprehending means—it never even thinks of the supposition it may be adopting as a principle; and regards as known that with which it has become familiar from constant use. And, at last, all speculative interests disappear before the practical interests which it holds dear; and it fancies that it understands and knows what its necessities and hopes incite it to assume or to believe. Thus the empiricism of transcendentally idealizing reason is robbed of all popularity ”