Western philosophy in the 18th century was characterized by the emergence of oppositional thought to ancient notions of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. Immanuel Kant occupies a central role in the generation of several radical new frameworks, many of which continue to hold relevance in the 21st century. Born in 1724 to a Prussian family, Kant grew up in a staunchly religious household. While he remained a practicing Christian throughout his life, his works on ethics reveal a deep discontentment he felt for the religiously prescribed ways of ethical conformity, as he believed that ethics was intimately connected to logic and reason, while religion largely believed in the stringent observance of prescribed norms out of a fear of punishment. At the age of 16, Kant entered the University of Konigsberg as a student, and commenced his lifelong association with the institution. As a young philosopher, he studied the works of both the Rationalists and Empiricists. While the influences of both these schools of thought are visible in his own works, he was vocal about his strong disagreement with his contemporaries, who believed that the world could be seen only with one or the other of these intellectual lenses. Kant made noteworthy contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics and ethics. He is best known for his book, ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ which had a sensational impact in terms of steering western philosophy into unexplored avenues, although it was seldom read or appreciated in Kant’s lifetime, which ended in 1804.
In order to understand the works of Kant, a background to the intellectual traditions that defined the discipline of philosophy is necessary. Western philosophy was largely divided into two camps: the Rationalists and the Empiricists. Empiricists, such as John Locke, Bishop Berkeley and David Hume, were believers in experience as the only source of true knowledge. Locke famously proposed the idea of ‘tabula rasa’ or a blank slate, implying that the mind resembled a blank slate, devoid of any inherent notions and biases, upon which experience would leave its mark. Berkeley believed in the idea of phenomenalism, which also proposed that the phenomenal world and our interactions with this world through our senses was the only way to gain true knowledge. In strong opposition were the Rationalists, with Rene Descartes, B. Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz as the spokesmen for this school of thought. Rationalists believed that senses were capable of being deceived, and that true knowledge came from the mind’s inherent rational capacity and ability to understand the world through certain inbuilt notions about self, existence and morality.
Immanuel Kant agreed with certain elements of both schools of thought, but believed that both sets of philosophers were propagating an excessively reductionist manner of thought. He partook in this charged debate on the source of true knowledge by proposing the unusual idea of synthetic a priori knowledge. A priori knowledge, synonymous with the Rationalist school, is knowledge which can be verified without experience. On the contrary, the a posteriori or empirical knowledge propagated by the Empiricists, is knowledge which can only be known through experience. In close connection with these two forms of knowledge are the conceptions of synthetic and analytic propositions. An analytic proposition is one in which the predicate of the sentence is contained in the subject, such as, all dogs are animals. Here, the predicate ‘animal’ is automatically contained in the subject, as all dogs are animals. Synthetic propositions are those wherein the predicate is not contained in the subject, and as a consequence, they genuinely provide new information and extend knowledge. The dog is aggressive is one such synthetic proposition, as the word ‘dog’ does not automatically imply aggression. Kant believed that synthetic a priori knowledge was that only form of knowledge that could truly extend our understanding of the world. His basis in transcendental idealism provided a set of conditions which would hold true in order for other forms of knowledge to fall into place. He cited mathematics as an example of such knowledge. If it is said that the sum of the interior angles of a square is 360 degrees, it is a synthetic a priori statement, because the predicate (360 degrees) is not implicitly contained in the subject (square). Therefore, our knowledge is both extended and verified, as the sum of the angles in a square cannot be anything but 360 degrees.
Kant’s contribution to moral philosophy is as significant. In contrast to his predecessors, who clearly defined virtues and vices, Kant made an effort to infuse unquestionable rationality into ethics. He believes that as rational beings who possess the free will to exert control over their actions unlike animals who act out of physical necessity, the only way in which an action we undertake can be truly good is if “good will” is present. For Kant, it is the motive behind the action which is more important than the act or the consequence. If one acts a particular way to get to a particular goal, then one is acting according to the hypothetical imperative. However, if one is acting in the right way not for any personal gain, but because the action in itself is the right thing to do, then one is said to be acting according to the categorical imperative, which to Kant, serves as the truest representation of morality.These frameworks of morality and epistemology shook the core of Western philosophy, and aided in the creation of a new path for thinkers who wished to remain free of the intellectual dogma of the philosophers of the past. Immanuel Kant died in 1804, but his work remains the subject of discussion and debate till date.
