Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

"Without question the most influential modern philosopher." -John Herman Randall

Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of K�nigsberg. Kant was the last influential philosopher of modern Europe in the classic sequence of the theory of knowledge during the Enlightenment beginning with thinkers John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume.

Kant created a new widespread perspective in philosophy which has continued to influence philosophy through to the 21st century. He published important works on epistemology, as well as works relevant to religion, law, and history. One of his most prominent works is the Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the limitations and structure of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas. The other main works of his maturity are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.

Kant suggested that metaphysics [JLJ - a branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science] can be reformed through epistemology [JLJ - the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge]. He suggested that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects about which the mind can think must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it is possible that there are objects of such nature which the mind cannot think, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics cannot be answered by the human mind, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind.

[JLJ - Kant is difficult to read, difficult to follow, and difficult to understand. His mind tears apart basic concepts that we take for granted and don't think too much about, down to their most basic level, so that we might understand what is real and what makes the human mind tick. And what a piece of work it is.]

[Basic Writings of Kant, Wood, 2001]

vii Immanuel Kant's conception of man and his relationship to the world is the pivotal event in the history of modern philosophy. It not only transformed the way philosophers since have thought about human knowledge, the reality of the world, and the foundations of morality, but also significantly impacted the history of the natural sciences

p.17 We had established in the analytical part of our critique the following points: - First, that space and time are only forms of sensuous intuition, therefore conditions of the existence of things, as phenomena only; Secondly, that we have no concepts of the understanding, and therefore nothing whereby we can arrive at the knowledge of things, except in so far as an intuition corresponding to these concepts can be given, and consequently that we cannot have knowledge of any object, as a thing by itself, but only in so far as it is an object of sensuous intuition, that is, a phenomenon. [JLJ - useful for game theory, and as an argument towards those who demand that you 'prove' a strategic concept. Knowledge, for Kant, exists only of phenomena, and understanding comes only from intuition that is based on the senses. Time and space are concepts relating to sensuous intuition. Knowledge is of phenomena that exist in time and space, got it. Deep thoughts.]

p.42 All thought therefore must, directly or indirectly, go back to intuitions (Auschauungen), i.e. to our sensibility, because in no other way can objects be given to us.

p.44 In the course of this investigation it will appear that there are, as principles of a priori knowledge, two pure forms of sensuous intuition (Anschauung), namely, Space and Time.

p.49 nothing which is seen in space is a thing by itself... what we call external objects are nothing but representations of our senses, the form of which is space [JLJ - we might classify something as an object, but it exists as a form in space via a perception of our senses.]

p.49 Time is a necessary representation on which all intuitions depend. We cannot take away time from phenomena in general... In time alone is reality of phenomena possible.

p.52 Time has objective validity with reference to phenomena only, because these are themselves things which we accept as objects of our senses... Time is therefore simply a subjective condition of our (human) intuition

p.58 We shall see hereafter that synthesis in general is the mere result of what I call the faculty of imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of the existence of which we are scarcely conscious. But to reduce this synthesis to concepts is a function that belongs to the understanding, and by which the understanding supplies us for the first time with knowledge properly so called.

p.79 In all phenomena the Real, which is the object of a sensation, has intensive quantity, that is, a degree.

p.82 All changes take place according to the law of connection between cause and effect.

p.83 All substances, so far as they can be perceived as coexistent in space, are always affecting each other reciprocally.

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