Biography

1. 1724-1804; born, educated, and taught at the University of Koeningberg Germany; his parents whom he greatly admired were Pietists

2. taught by Metaphysical Realist (Wolff, Leibnizean philosophers); eventually rejected it after David Hume's philosophy (he was "awakened from his dogmatic slumber")

3. after being a tutor and lecturer at the University, 1755 became Professor of Philosophy (students had to come one hour early to find a seat)

4. very regimented in his life and philosophy; the "Philosopher's Walk"

5. bibliography Critique of Pure Reason, 1781, 2^nd edition in 1787

Critique of Practical Reason, 1788

Critique of Judgment, 1793

The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals

Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 1793

I. Kant's Philosophical Hypothesis about Pure Reason

A. His two main pursuits:

1. to justify science in light of Hume's criticism of knowledge

2. to justify the place of morality and religion in light of Hume's criticism

B. Tried to reconcile Rationalism and Empiricism

1. experience and reason are both necessary for knowledge--"experience without concepts are blind and concepts without experience are empty."

2. his Copernican revolution in philosophy--instead of trying to explain the knowing process by assuming the mind conforms to the object, consider how the experience of the object conforms to the workings of mind

a. the mind "regulates" knowledge and is a judgment about experience

b. we know the formal constitution of experience

c. the world is hence divided into phenomenal and noumenal

C. What kind of knowledge does the mind produce?

1. basic distinctions between a posteriori, a priori, analytical, and synthetical

a. analytical a posteriori--impossible

b. analytical a priori--warranted by law of non contradiction, "roses are flowers"

c. synthetical a posteriori--warranted by experience, "this rose is red"

d. synthetical a priori--universal and necessary knowledge of the world?

D. Kant's proof of the Synthetic A Priori

1. Metaphysics cannot be synthetic a priori because it's not derived from experience

a. metaphysics is concerned with self, being, and God

b. the idea of the self as a substantive being is logically impossible; commits

the "fallacy of the fourth term"

1) there are two senses of the self--empirical that can be experienced

and the transcendental which is the condition of experience but cannot be

experienced

c. the notion of being is logically incoherent--it leads to antinomies

1) the following antinomies are separately truth but contradictory to each

# thesis--world is finite antithesis--it cannot have a beginning

# thesis--the soul is simple antithesis--nothing exists simply

# thesis--we are free antithesis--natural law governs all

# thesis--there must a necessary being antithesis--it can't exist in the world

d. God as a necessary being cannot be known by pure reason

1) ontological argument is mistaken because it tries to predicate existence

2) cosmological argument is based on ontological argument

e. what is the value of self, being, and God--only regulative, not metaphysical

2. Mathematics--

a. it's synthetic because the conclusion is not contained in the numbers

3. Physics

a. it's a priori because based on a priori categories of quantity, quality, relation, and

modality

b. knowledge is organized by the thinking "I"--the "transcendental unity of

appreception"

c. it's synthetic because its conclusions are new knowledge from its premises

c. to experience an object, three things are needed: 1) an intuition of an object, 2)

a priori categories, and 3) the thinking self

II. Practical Reason--the basis for morality and religion

1. since there is no pure metaphysical knowledge of the Good or God, then they only have regulative values.

a. instead of asking, "what is the Good," need to ask, "what is the right and my duty"

2. the only truly good things is the Good Will done out respect of duty

3. duty must be categorical, not hypothetical

a. this means it must be universal

b. must be necessarily imperative

4. the categorical imperatives--three forms of it

a. "I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should

become a universal law"

b. " So act as to treat humanity whether in your person or that of any other, in every

case as an end, never as means only"

c. "So act as though you are a universal moral legislature"

5. how can we follow the categorical imperative?

a. must act rationally, autonomously, and be free

b. these are necessary conditions to be moral

6. the highest happiness to live according to duty

III. Kant's Reasonable Religion

A. The moral foundation of rational faith

1. morality is more certain than science because it's not dependent on experience

2. morality is more certain than religious faith because there is no experience for faith,

but morality needs religious faith to sustain its hope

a. religion is the "trust in the promise of the moral law"

b. "the distribution of happiness in exact proportion to morality is necessary to

maintain the Good Will"

c. the summum bonum--union of Good Will with nature

3. must believe in a God who will ensure the summum bonum

B. Rational faith and Christianity

1. Christianity comes closest to a rational faith

a. it starts with description of evil and moral perversity

b. but the will can still regenerate itself; otherwise there would not be a moral law

2. evil is "self-love" and we need a supernatural aid to break out of self-love but the aid

cannot be heteronomous to our autonomy

a. Christ is an example

b. the Church is "an ethical Commonwealth whose supreme lawgiver is God"

c. the Kingdom of Ends is the church's goal

3. false worship puts the ecclesiastical and doctrinal beliefs in place of the moral law

a. we don't really pray to God but live in the "spirit of prayer"

b. religious hence gives a sublime moral seriousness

IV. Kant's Explanation of Beauty, Art, and the Goal of Nature

A. Analysis of the Beautiful

1. since there is no metaphysical knowledge of the Beautiful, must start with "taste" which is not a cognitive but subjective activity

2. in art there is a satisfaction from a representation; the interest is not in the object nor does it comes from the person; it arises from the experience

a. it's a disinterested satisfaction

3. it also is a "subjective universality" since not from the object or our subjectivity

a. beauty is not just a private feeling

b. beauty is thus represented in an object of a universal satisfaction

c. beauty though is universal is always experienced in a particular object

d. the judgment of beauty acts as though it's universally communicable

4. when does this occur? when the experience imputes "purposiveness without purpose"

a. inspires purposiveness without telling the purpose

5. the experience of beauty is strictly formal which causes us to contemplate it and it stimulates the imagination of what is possible for life

B. Analysis of the Sublime

1. is aesthetical taste a synthetic a priori? there is no objective principle of taste, but they are synthetic (add the knowledge of the feeling of gratification), and since they are universal, they are a priori

2. the object must be natural and not just conforming to presupposed concepts and arbitrary rules--"Nature is beautiful because it looks like art, and art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as art while yet it looks like nature."

a. art is both formal and natural

3. what can do this--only Genius, which is a natural gift, innate mental disposition through which nature gives the rule to art.

a. the genius artist cannot explain how they get their art; it's ineffable

4. the highest art is poetry

a. it's the most formal and sets the imagination at liberty

b. second highest--art of tone

C. the Dialectic of the Aesthetical Judgment

1. the reason why beauty is universal and ought to recognized by everyone is that it is a symbol of the good

2. the experience of beauty the imaginative reconciliation of the good will with nature

3. the best way to teach aesthetical taste is to develop moral ideas and the culture of moral feelings.