QUOTATIONS #13

KANT RELATED QUOTATIONS #13

Immanuel Kant --: Philosophy is not some sort of science of representations, concepts, and ideas, or a science of all sciences, or anything else of this sort; rather, it is a science of the human being, of its representing, thinking, and acting - it should present the human being in all of its components, as it is and ought to be, that is, in accordance with its natural determinations as well as its relationship of morality and freedom. Ancient philosophy adopted an entirely inappropriate standpoint towards the human being in the world, for it made it into a machine in it, which as such had to be entirely dependent on the world or on external things and circumstances; it thus made the human being into an all but merely passive part of the world. Now the critique of reason has appeared and determined the human being to a thoroughly active place in the world. The human being itself is the original creator of all its representations and concepts and ought to be the sole author of all its actions. [The Conflict of the Faculties, 1798]

Paul Guyer --: . . . . Kant derived the fundamental principles of human thought and action from human sensibility, understanding, and reason, all as sources of our autonomy; he balanced the contributions of these principles against the ineliminable inputs of external sensation and internal inclination beyond our own control; and he strove both to demarcate these principles from each other and yet to integrate them into a single system with human autonomy as both its foundation and its ultimate value and goal. These were the tasks of Kant's three great critiques. In the *Critique of Pure Reason*, the essential forms of space, time and conceptual thought arise in the nature of human sensibility and understanding and ground the indispensable principles of human experience. He then argued that reason, in the narrow sense manifest in logical inference, plays a key role in systematizing human experience, but that it is a mistake to think that reason offers metaphysical insight into the existence and nature of the human soul, an independent world, and God. In the *Critique of Practical Reason* and Groundwork, however, he argued that reason as the source of the ideal of systematicity is the source of the fundamental law of morality and our consciousness of our own freedom, which is the source of all value, and that we can postulate the truth of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, our own immortality and the existence of God, as practical presuppositions of our moral conduct but not as theoretical truths of metaphysics. In the *Critique of Judgment*, Kant argued that the unanimity of taste and the systematic organization of both individual organisms and nature as a whole could be postulated, again not as metaphysical dogmas but rather as regulative ideals of our aesthetic and scientific pursuits; he then went on to argue that it is through these ideals that we can tie together the realms of nature and freedom, because aesthetic experience offers us a palpable image of our moral freedom, and a scientific conception of the world as a system of interrelated beings makes sense only as an image of the world as the sphere of our own moral efforts. In many of his last writings, from *Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone* (1793) to his final manuscripts, the Opus postumum , Kant refined and radicalized his view that our religious conceptions can be understood only as analogies for the nature of human reason itself. [Kant, Immanuel; Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Kelley L. Ross --: In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Kant had reworked the traditional distinction between the immanent (within the world) and the transcendent (outside the world) by distinguishing between phenomena and things-in-themselves. "Phenomena" are how it is that objects appear in our own conscious minds. We do not have access to the world outside of the experiences we enjoy through our own consciousness, and Kant believed that consciousness itself, or the possibility of conscious experience, imposes certain conditions on the manner in which phenomenal objects appear to us. Among those conditions are the forms of space and time and the abstract forms of connections between events and objects such as the concept of substance and the relation between cause and effect. David Hume (1711-1776) had challenged philosophers to show why it is that we believe in principles such as the one that every event must have a cause. Kant's answer, then, was that the mind itself constructs a phenomenal reality according to just such a rule. Things-in-themselves, in turn, are the way that reality exists apart from our experience, our consciousness, our minds, and all the conditions that our minds might impose on phenomenal objects. The question occurs, then, whether concepts like substance and cause and effect apply to things-in-themselves the same way that they do to phenomena. Kant did not think that we could know. However, he did notice something very curious: it isn't just that we apply the principle of cause and effect to phenomena, it is that we apply in a certain way. In phenomenal reality, cause and effect are applied in a continuous series. Every effect has a cause, but every cause also has a cause, and so forth, ad infinitum. This adds up to a philosophical principle of determinism, that everything is causally determined to act in a certain way. Kant believed that science sees things that way, but we do not, for the idea of free will contradicts determinism. Free will involves a free cause, i.e. a cause that is not determined by some prior cause. We can also call that an unconditioned cause, since it is free of a prior causal condition, and it occurred to Kant that a characteristic of phenomenal reality was that everything was conditioned by something else. In that, Kant hit upon the same point that had been made earlier in Buddhist philosophy: in the reality that we see, everything is conditioned by everything else. One example of this in Buddhist thought is the doctrine of Relative Existence or No Self Nature: Nothing has a essence, nature, or character by itself. Things in isolation are shunya, "empty." The nature of things only exists in relation to everything else that exists. Existence as we know it is thus completely relative and conditioned by everything else. Only Nirvana would be unconditioned, although we cannot know what it is like. If an unconditioned cause cannot occur in phenomenal reality, then it could only occur among things-in-themselves. But for all we know, even if cause and effect do apply among things-in-themselves, determinism may even be true there also. Other kinds of unconditioned objects, like God or the soul -- God is not conditioned by anything, and the soul is free of most of the conditions of phenomenal reality, like corruptibility -- might also exist among things-in-themselves, but we cannot be sure about that either. Thus, Kant did not believe that it was possible to prove things about things-in-themselves. If we try to do so, we create what Kant called "dialectical illusion," involving contradictions in reason itself, e.g. between determinism and free will, which Kant called Antinomies. Kant's Fourth Antinomy lays out equally compelling arguments for and against the idea of a Necessary Being, i.e. a God. Nevertheless, Kant believed that the existence of things like God, freedom, and the soul could not be disproved; and in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), he decides that the Moral Law provides us a basis for making certain decisions about transcendent objects that mere theoretical reason could not do. Thus, we believe in free will because we must if we are to use moral concepts like responsibility, guilt, praise, blame, retribution, punishment, etc.; for according to determinism, no one is actually responsible for their actions, and scientific explanations will always reduce people to creatures of remote causes, e.g. genetics, childhood, society, drugs, disease, etc. All three of what Kant called the "Ideas" of pure reason in the First Critique--God, freedom, and immortality--Kant comes to believe are motivated as objects of rational belief, on the basis of moral considerations, in the Second Critique. {Immanuel Kant]

Catherine Wilson --: Kant criticized arguments for God's existence (presumably brought to his attention through Wolff's Theologia Naturalis) that departed from the premise that the concept of God is noncontradictory as fallacious hyperrationalism. The Leibnizian argument rested, he thought, on the uncritical notion that every noncontradictory concept was a possible thing, though it is unclear why he attacks this claim in particular. Kant did not think any rationalistic proofs for the existence of God actually worked, though, at least before the mauling it received at the hands of Hume, he considered the physico-theological argument the best available. He noted perceptively the arbitrariness of merging into one theological idea a creator and a judge. Without revelation, we might be drawn to the ideas of a creator God, but why would we suppose this same being to have the power of reward and punishment after death? Taking a page from Locke, Kant decided that, since the existence of God was unknowable, philosophical effort should be directed to the idea of God, especially the separate functions that the idea of God plays in regulating our moral conduct (judge concept) and our mode of address to the problems of form and function in the organic realm (creator concept). The distinction between the realm of grace and the realm of nature, one standing under moral laws of reward and punishment, the other under natural laws, Kant describes as a *practically necessary idea of reason* (KRV A 812 f./B 840.) We conceive the world both as a community of active spirits, willing and representing, and as an aggregate of objects in mechanical interplay and shift perspectives as needed. [Kant and Leibniz, Standford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy]

Immanuel Kant --: For in order to bring the principles of this criticism into operation as soon as possible, and to show their sufficiency even when dialectical illusion is at its height, it is absolutely necessary that the attacks which seem so terrible to the dogmatist should be made to exercise their full force upon the pupil's reason, which though still weak has been enlightened through criticism, and that the pupil should thus be allowed the opportunity of testing for himself, one by one, by reference to the critical principles, how groundless are the assertions of those who have launched these attacks. As it is by no means difficult for him to resolve these arguments into thin air, he early begins to feel his own capacity to secure himself against such injurious deceptions, which must finally lose for him all their illusory power. Those same blows which destroy the structures of the enemy must indeed be equally destructive to any speculative structure which he may perchance himself wish to erect. This does not, however, in the least disturb him, since he has no need of any such shelter, being still in possession of good expectations in the practical sphere, where he may confidently hope to find firmer ground upon which to erect his own rational and beneficial system. There is, therefore, properly speaking, no polemic in the field of pure reason. Both parties beat the air, and wrestle with their own shadows, since they go beyond the limits of nature, where there is nothing that they can seize and hold with their dogmatic grasp. Fight as they may, the shadows which they cleave asunder grow together again forthwith, like the heroes in Valhalla, to disport themselves anew in the bloodless contests. But neither can we admit that there is any sceptical employment of pure reason, such as might be entitled the principle of neutrality in all its disputes. To set reason at variance with itself, to supply it with weapons on both sides, and then to look on, quietly and scoffingly, at the fierce struggle, is not, from the dogmatic point of view, a seemly spectacle, but appears to suggest a mischievous and malevolent disposition. If, however, we consider the invincible obstinacy and the boastfulness of those who argue dogmatically, and who refuse to allow their claims to be moderated by any criticism, there is really no other available course of action than to set against the boasting of the one side the no less justified boasting of the other, in the hope that the resistance thus offered to reason may at least serve to disconcert it, to awaken some doubts as to its pretensions, and to make it willing to give a hearing to criticism. But to allow ourselves simply to acquiesce in these doubts, and thereupon to set out to commend the conviction and admission of our ignorance not merely as a remedy against the complacency of the dogmatists, but likewise as the right method of putting an end to the conflict of reason with itself, is a futile procedure, and can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason. At best it is merely a means of awakening it from its sweet dogmatic dreams, and of inducing it to enter upon a more careful examination of its own position. Since, however, the sceptical method of escaping from the troublesome affairs of reason appears to be, as it were, a short cut by which we can arrive at a permanent peace in philosophy, or [if it be not that], is at least the road favoured by those who would feign make show of having a philosophical justification for their contemptuous dislike of all enquiries of this kind, I consider it necessary to exhibit this way of thinking in its true light. [Doctrine of Method, Critique of Pure Reason]

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