Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

By Professor Jon Saul

 

Immanuel Kant  was a German philosopher whose ideas have been extremely influential in modern thought. 

 

FREEDOM AND REASON

            For Kant, determinism was not compatible with morality because only those who are true authors of their acts which they are free to or not perform, can be praised or blamed for what they do. Responsibility entails freedom of choice (from Rousseau) AND spawns the cult of moral autonomy. All decisions of moral will are to be guided by freely adopted principles. Kant's intellectual debt to Rousseau lies in the idea that man is an active being, possessor of will which makes him free to resist temptations of the senses: Kant's free moral will.

Critique of Practical Reason: was Kant's attempt to create a purely rational ethic; to show that reason controls, drives and determines external ends. Kant sought a priori (prior to human experience) categorical laws of the rational will; he sought to base morality on pure reason (not on experience). [This is because even the empiricists themselves understood that human experience was different for each individual.]

Freedom: for Kant, the human will is free; people use reason and voluntarily chose to be moral; morality and freedom are both parallel and dovetail.

Kant's law is like Rousseau's general will:

it is a condition of freedom and morality

there is no real distinction between freedom and law

• Diderot: in his work Rameau's Nephew shows freedom to be self-consciousness

• Rousseau sees freedom as what humans must do to be natural

• Kant defines freedom as the individual's commitment to his or her own conscience; 

      the capacity of pure reason to determine the will's total activity.

 

This is an objective ethic based on freedom, e.g. not subject to conditions (not "relative").

Therefore, according to Kant, moral laws cannot be based on the pleasure/pain principle.

Maxims (moral law) claim universality because they are based on form (reason) not content (experience); i.e., a priori (prior to human experience).

The moral test for Kant: Universalize the statement and see if the maxim negates itself (this is the categorical imperative.)

For example:

To make one man happy as a goal is OK.

To make all men happy as a goal is not possible.

Therefore, this cannot be a moral maxim.

According to Kant, humans know freedom through experiencing moral law as duty, rational necessity:

"thou ought" implies "thou canst"

 

The moral law allows us to know ourselves to be free.

This fundamental law of pure practical reason is the Categorical Imperative:

"So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law."

 

This imperative is categorical because it is unconditioned, e.g., it is universal, not grounded in particulars.

 

It is imperative because it is experienced as DUTY, as an inner compulsion provided by reason

This is a philosophical statement of the golden rule.

- This is an extension of the maxim of self love to include the happiness of others.

- Freedom's objectiveness is perceived through reason's practical operation (rather than theoretical).

- Reason: every moral postulate is objective and rational.

 

REASON  What is Enlightenment? Published 1784

Kant states that immaturity is the condition of not using one's own reason.

He defines a crucial distinction (which is later picked up by Romantics):

The German word verstand means use of reason, understanding, intelligence.

The connotation is more human.

The German word vernumft means REASON

The connotation is more abstract.

Enlightenment is embodied in natural things, it is waiting to be discovered, it is objectively there (see Plato and Idealism). It exists a priori (prior to human experience).

For Kant, reason is used in a functional sense; it is the activity and process of knowing (Kant focuses on the use of reason, the function of the human mind, and not of an individual entity.)

The person who thinks is the center of reality: - the individual becomes the center of thought; cause and effect is located in humans.

The categories of understanding impose structure our reality. 

Humans are defined by reason and use of reason. 

[as distinct from Hume's subjectivism and skepticism]

 

FOR KANT, THE ONLY PRECONDITION FOR REASON IS FREEDOM - really, reason is a part of Kant's definition of freedom - free use of reason is implicit in his definition.

For the philosophes, freedom was not a necessary condition of enlightenment. The philosophes believed that an Enlightened Despot could reform society.

For Kant, the use of reason cannot be promulgated by an Enlightened Despot, society must have freedom.

 

For Kant, both free thought and speech in the public forum are required for society to be free.

Kant does not see Enlightenment as a revolutionary process; he recognizes that both

political revolution: can change leaders and

social revolution: can change structure.

Even if both occur, there may not be a revolution because the state of mind may not be reformed.

For Kant, TRUE REVOLUTION is intellectual revolution (what we now call a change in paradigm).

 

MORALITY

Kant attempted a synthesis between rationalist and empiricist views of morality. He believed that "moral sense" and hedonism were mistaken concepts of morality. According to Kant, moral principles must have the characteristics of universal law and feelings only apply to the individual experiencing them.

The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's attempt to reconcile 2 contemporary (of his time) theories of knowledge: British empiricism and Continental thought

for British Empiricism (see John Locke, Berkeley, David Hume)

for Continental thought (see Rationalism, Descartes, Leibnitz, Wolff)

The Kantian Bridge (synthesis) of these two schools of thought is marked by

the passive empiricist mind of David Hume (skepticism, habit = human ideas are bereft of necessity)

changing to an active critical mind (which organizes the world according to reason)

Key terms for understanding Kant include "forms of intuition" and "categories of thought".

Forms of intuition: space, and time are forms of intuition, as distinct from the content of sense experience.

 

Categories of thought or categories of understanding: there are 12 of these, including quantity, quality, and causality. These categories organize sense experience and are the ordering principles for reality. Human beings understand the world by interpreting our sensory perceptions (experience) via our reason (using the categories of thought).

For Kant, necessity means the universal operation of human reason.

 

To establish possibility of metaphysics as a science, it must be shown that synthetic a priori truths (prior to human experience) are possible; that a priori laws (prior to human experience) of cognitive activity exist. In other words, there are important truths knowable by reason alone independent of perceptual experience.

 

Kant’s most famous formulation was his categorical imperative, which he postulated as a guide for moral action:

 

One formulation that is important for us in the categorical imperative is the formula of the end in itself: roughly, "act so as to treat people always as ends in themselves, never as mere means." The idea here is that everyone, insofar as he or she is a rational being, is intrinsically valuable; we ought therefore to treat people as having a value all their own, rather than merely as useful tools or devices by means of which we can satisfy our own goals or purposes. Other people are valuable not merely insofar as they can serve our purposes; they are also valuable in themselves.

 

 The other is the universal aspect categorical imperative. This is the formulation Kant regards as most basic: "act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should be a universal law."

 

What would happen if everyone lied?...there would be no trust and therefore no civilization. Therefore, it is immoral to lie.

 

 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 –1831)

 

Hegel was a student of Immanuel Kant. In Kant’s view, humans could never really know reality. Taking from John Locke, he thought that all knowledge of the real world came through sensory experience. There was some knowledge that was a priori, in other words, prior to experience. This includes concepts, such as space and time, which Kant thought were inherent in human nature.

 

Hegel, Kant’s student, went much further. He thought that anything that was real, was rational (and that anything that was rational was real). Therefore, he simply declares life to be rational.

 

He then sets about to figure out, logically, what the world is all about.

 

Freedom, for Hegel, was embodied in reality. Reality, in Hegel's view, was the product of the self-realization of the Spirit of Freedom, unfolding in history...

In ancient times, one was free (the king).
Then, in Medieval times, some were free (the Aristocracy).
In Hegel's time, all are free (to participate in the nation).

In Hegel's view, Nationalism was the pinnacle of freedom because all citizens could support and take part in the life of the nation.

 

A little more about Hegel and Freedom....

Hegel developed a new perspective on the idea of freedom. Unlike John Locke and the Philosophes, Hegel did not justify authority (the state, the government) in the name of “liberty”. You will recall that Liberty is ‘freedom within the law’, as documented in the Declaration of Independence…

From Hegel’s vantage point, ‘freedom "from" must be transformed to freedom "to"…

‘negative freedom’ must be transformed to ‘positive freedom’…

‘Old, negative’ freedom is particularistic; it is based on caprice (whim); individual desire…

-‘New, positive’ freedom consists of participation in the nation state based on law.

Hegel lived through the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and personally witnessed the power of nationalism (the patriotic nationalism of the French enabled them to conquer all of Continental Europe)…

Thus, for Hegel, freedom and the state were associated with an Emperor (Napoleon).

He thought that certain individual, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, were able to embody the Spirit of freedom unfolding…such individuals were World Historical Figures…the spirit of freedom acted through them to become (actualize itself)…

Hegel wrote, "The owl of Minerva flies at night!" (or hindsight is a wonderful thing).