Immanuel Kant Research Paper

Kant was born on April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg into a family of manual laborers of very little means. His schooling took place in the strict spirit of Pietism. At the age of 16, Kant began his studies at the university of his native city, financing himself in part by giving private lessons and playing at the billiard table. The breadth of his subjects of study—mathematics, natural science, theology, philosophy, and Latin—was later to be reflected in the wide spectrum of Kant’s fields of inquiry. Initially, his interest in modern physics was particularly strong; he viewed Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis Principia mathematica as the paradigm of rigorous science.

Kant’s first academic publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1747), owes its importance above all to its central claim, which is very much indicative of Kant’s later philosophy. Here the 24-year-old attempts to settle a dispute between Cartesians and Leibnizians by proposing a mediating position relative to the point of view of each party. Kant exclaimed: ‘I have already drawn up the path which I would like to follow. I shall set upon it, and … nothing should prevent me from pursuing it further.’ Having lost the basis of his financial support through the death of his father, Kant left the university in 1746 in order to earn a living as private tutor in various families. During this time, Kant had occasion to pursue several extensive studies in natural science, the results of which he published anonymously in 1755 under the title Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens. Here, both the birth of the cosmos and solar systems, as well as the development of the earth up until the appearance of life and the rational animal, man, are deduced solely from physical laws. In positing the creation of heavenly bodies out of rotating nebula, Kant anticipated Laplace’s theory; and the insight that spiral nebula are actually very distant galaxies secured Kant a sure place in the history of astronomy. In the year 1755, Kant returned to the university. Having attained a doctoral degree with a meditation ‘On Fire’ (De igne), he earned his venia legendi with a postdoctoral treatise on ‘First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition.’ In this work Kant marked out that field of problems with which he was to occupy himself for his entire life. Even the so-called ‘transcendental philosophy’ of the critical period remains connected to the ‘first principles,’ in that it poses the question after the ‘conditions of the possibility’ of our knowledge. Although these ‘conditions of possibility’ are no longer located in a divine understanding—later, Kant came to understand them as the functional conditions of human understanding and in this respect as a priori—they nevertheless continue to be the object of metaphysics.

For Kant, all scientific knowledge is metaphysical insofar as it requires us to go, by means of concepts, beyond purely empirical experience. This is always the case in those passages where Kant speaks of knowledge in general, of ‘world’ and ‘reality,’ of morality, beauty, or history. Understood in this sense, transcendental philosophy is a ‘metaphysics of metaphysics.’ Moses Mendelssohn’s famous statement that Kant was a ‘Crush-All’ of metaphysics should therefore not be so construed, as if all metaphysics had been discredited by critique. Actually, Kant disabled only the claims of a theorational and empirist metaphysics, while setting ‘critical’ standards which all scientific metaphysics must be able to satisfy.

In the over 25-year period between Kant’s postdoctoral thesis of 1755 and the publication of Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, Kant wrote several works concerning the foundation of theoretical and practical metaphysics. He also experimented with empirically designed procedures, and began to show a certain affinity for skeptical methods—an affinity which was to prove lasting. Two works from this period give us the impression that Kant might have considered abandoning metaphysics altogether: the elegantly parleying Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764) and the satirical Dreams of a Spirit-seer (1766). Kant’s appearance of having an antimetaphysical stance must have been strengthened for his contemporaries when, having completed yet another obligatory dissertation ‘On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World’ (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis) in 1770, Kant published nothing worthy of mention for 11 years. In retrospect, we can recognize the approach of critical thought in this second dissertation: space and time are introduced as human forms of intuition which do not belong to things as understanding apprehends them. At this point, however, Kant still thought human understanding capable of a kind of cognition which could apprehend the nature of things as a divine understanding might.

The continuing ‘critical’ insights of the following years forced Kant to renounce the claim that we are able to know the nature of things. From a human perspective, nothing can be said about how ‘things-in-themselves’ are constituted. At this point in Kant’s philosophical development, such ‘things-in-themselves’ as a divine understanding might be able to know can no longer serve us as the idea of a substance which could provide a basis for the things we can know. It does not even make sense to pose the question concerning the reality of ‘things-in-themselves,’ for they are mere concepts—we do not even know if anything corresponds to them. As such, the ‘thing-initself ’ is simply an expression of our own limitation. The ‘thing-in-itself’ may serve as a limiting concept, however, in order to prevent us from deeming human knowledge absolutely certain. Even the pure concepts of understanding and reason do not have access to absolute truth.

Kant by no means contests the possibility of knowledge; he is not an agnostic on this count. Rather, he emphasizes the relativity of human knowledge: every insight, even in the objective natural sciences, is functionally relative to human cognitive capacities. We perceive reality in the manner in which it ‘appears’ to us. Every objective perception is dependent on the sensible intuition in space and time, and remains in this respect limited to experience. But renouncing experience leads either to analytical judgements, which only express what is already contained in concepts, or it misleads us to speculation, in which all certainty is lost. Yet the speculative thinking of pure reason is not sterile. Under conditions of disciplined self-critique, pure reason may contribute to the guidance and ordering of empirical knowledge (its ‘regulative function’), it can ward off dogmatic claims (its ‘critical function’), and it can set practical goals in those areas where certain knowledge is not attainable anyway. In this last case, pure reason becomes ‘practical reason.’

The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), in which Kant systematically developed these insights, initially received little attention. The second edition (1787), elucidated by the Prolegomena (1783) and expanded by the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, gave rise to a sea change, the likes of which philosophy had seldom seen. Kant’s experimental-philosophical proposal for the foundation of the results of human knowledge proceeded no longer from the character of the object, but rather from the conditions of the subject—an innovation which came to be understood as a revolution in science. The ‘cardinal propositions’ of human knowledge cannot be extracted from ‘things-in-themselves,’ but rather have their fundaments in our very acts of cognition, and only become the fundament of nature qua ‘appearance’ through human activity. This went very well with the heightened self-confidence of the Enlightenment. The critique of reason declares man originator of his world—without contradicting the results of natural science or questioning the traditional claims of the belief in divine origins. At the same time, the delimitation of knowledge by means of critique serves to assign belief a genuine place. God and world, freedom and the person come to be interpreted as concepts of pure reason; they do not denote any object, but are imperative for the conceptual self-determination of the individual.

This attempt to ground human procedural capacities a priori had consequences for practical action; Kant showed these in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788). In ethics, too, the cardinal propositions are not grounded in the world, but are the product of our own capacities. It is not possible to speak of any preexisting ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in the world: one must seek the origin of these terms solely in the human will. Insofar as this will conceives itself as a rational one, it determines by itself what is to count as morally good. The principle of the will is therefore that of self=determination (autonomy) according to the principle of practical reason in the will itself. So long as we acknowledge a commitment to this principle—and we have already done so when we ask ourselves what we ‘should’ do—we understand ourselves as free and autonomous. In this way, we have the possibility to orient the principles of our action (maxims) on rational insight and submit them to the general self-jurisdiction of reason, which consists in the categorical imperative. Like the categorical elements of the perception of nature, the categorical imperative does not emanate from external authority but from man’s own conception of himself as a rational being.

No new virtues are made compulsory in Kant’s critical refoundation of ethics. Instead, principles from Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoicist ethics are made subordinate to specific criteria of reason. In the last analysis, the emancipated individual alone must determine these criteria. Justification of behavior through one’s own insight (and therefore through one’s own reason), which first came into philosophical consciousness through Socrates, ascends to its full conceptual conclusion here. The autonomy of ethical self-determination aspired to since antiquity, while being defined over and against empirical explanation, thereby gains a pointedly individual expression. The ‘categorical imperative’ has meaning only in relation to the ‘maxims’ or ‘subjective principles’ of the individual. It is to be noted that justification always refers only to the ‘form’ or conceptual part of a moral judgement. The concept alone is meaningless without content or ‘material,’ however, and this is also the case in ethics.

There are therefore always certain ‘preferences’ involved in that ‘material’ which must be adduced to every moral judgement and hence to every moral act. Feelings and passions belong to the moral world. Thus, there must be some feeling which gives impetus to moral action—Kant calls it the ‘feeling of reverence.’ He is careful not to conflate the necessary motivation of acting with its justification; as in Plato, justification may only proceed from rational insight. Solely by means of this kind of insight can man experience himself as free.

Kant’s third critique, the Critique of Judgement (1790), contains in Part 1 a grounding of aesthetics, once again departing from human standards alone. Aesthetic judgement is the expression of a harmony of cognitive powers which stimulate the individual pleasurably: whenever sensibility and reason come together and mutually intensify one another, an aesthetic experience is possible. Aesthetic experience also expresses itself in a ‘judgement’ in which the individual, existing in unrestricted subjectivity, communicates himself to others. Kant frees aesthetic judgement from all claims of scientific truth, moral valuation, and purely sensible satisfaction. In aesthetic experience, everything depends on one’s own selfautonomous (‘heautonomous’) judgement. This faculty of judgement binds all sensible and mental powers together in itself and is capable of producing its own pleasure. What is more, it demands expression among those who are like-minded. Hence the faculty of judgement does not at all isolate the individual, but is the very thing which brings him into a conscious relation with those who are congenial to him.

In Part 2 of the Critique of Judgement Kant draws up a theory of living nature. The individual constantly judges nature in analogy to his own experience as an active being. An organism is perceived in accordance with its functional purpose, ‘as if ’ a rational and endoriented will were operating within it—a will which the individual is admittedly only acquainted with through himself. Kant’s theory of the organism attempts to grasp the dynamic complex unity of living beings. In so doing, he draws upon the principle of causation whenever this is possible. In this vein, Kant establishes the definition that the parts of the organism ‘join one another in the unity of the Whole by virtue of being mutually the cause and effect of one another’s form.’ Indeed, a living product of nature stands in itself ‘reciprocally as cause and effect.’ Kant thereby made the way for a theory of ‘self-organization’ which found much attention in the twentieth century, in biology as well as in physics and sociology. The third critique contains the most important impulses for the following generation of German philosophers, particularly for Schelling and Hegel. These philosophers sought to overcome the subjective limitation of aesthetic and teleological judgements emphasized by Kant within the framework of an extensive objectivity of nature or of mind.

Once he had completed his critical works, the elderly Kant went about the business of drawing systematic consequences for particular areas of research. He only managed this, however, in the domain of practical action. Against the resistance of the Prussian Censor, Kant showed these consequences for religious belief (Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 1793) and published in 1796 7 the Metaphysics of Morals, containing not only a ‘doctrine of virtue’ for self-responsible action but also doctrines of law and state. Together with the brief essay Perpetual Peace, this work exercised direct influence on the political opinions of Kant’s contemporaries.

Kant put the productivity of his principle of critical justification to the test in numerous smaller writings on political philosophy and the philosophy of history, also concerning the concept of mankind or the relation among the sciences. Though he added no new model to the pre-existing political constructions of his time, he did develop a new principle of legitimization for political rule under the auspices of a conception of law and the idea of international treaty. He showed how, under general conditions of law, morality, and politics are connected through the medium of the principle of publicity without being derived from one another. He probably was the first to see that the action of states is not only to be justified with regard to the obligations to its own citizens, but is rather to be measured by ‘cosmopolitan’ standards which require international protection. Where once was the primarily religiously motivated idea of a Christian and European peace order, Kant placed the concept of an international peace order founded upon legal institutions—a concept upon which was drawn in the foundation of the League of Nations in the twentieth century.

Kant’s theory of world peace was an innovation in political theory. It was based upon a historically and economically well-founded diagnosis of the state of mankind on the verge of the complete colonialization of the earth. There is no longer a single political entity on the globe which is independent from the political events in any other given part of the world. Because the surface of the earth offers only limited space, people can no longer make way for one another. War, the historical importance of which Kant recognized, can therefore no longer be a means for political ends. The French Revolution had shown that a people’s claim to freedom is capable by itself of causing overdue changes in law. Hence Kant arrived at a comprehensive conception of the right, of morality and politics on the basis of ‘human rights.’ These rights, which guarantee freedom and equality for all, are to be made binding within states by means of a republican and representative constitution, and are to be secured among different states through a system of treaties. A stop is put to colonial politics by ‘world citizens’ rights’; at the same time, each individual citizen has the basic right to humane treatment, even in states other than his own. The individual states remain intact as indispensable units of social self-determination, but they are compelled by the dynamics of self-binding law to make internal reforms and to rely upon a federal alliance in their external relations. In his brief treatise on Perpetual Peace, Kant sketched a theory of politics appropriate to modern conditions of action through the combination of juridical, moral, rhetorical, and power-political elements.

Kant was prevented from completing his system of natural philosophy by numerous obligations which resulted from the broad public debate over his works. Inspired by the French Revolution, Germany experienced a euphoric decade of critique before the turn of the eighteenth century. Kant was thus exposed not only to a growing following, but also to a rapidly formed and primarily religiously motivated polemic. He gave proof of his literary ability in his equally polemical responses to this polemic. It is an ability which, in Kant’s main works of critique, only reveals itself to those who have penetrated the difficult coherence of his thought.

In 1796 Kant ceased to teach and in 1801, at the age of 77, retired. His physical strength, already weak, deteriorated rapidly thereafter. Kant could hardly influence the edition of his lectures on anthropology, pedagogy, logic, and geography which were prepared by his students. Nevertheless, he continued working on the yet incomplete philosophy of nature. In doing so, Kant returned once again to the premises of his epistemological critique and conceived a unity of man and nature which bears a remarkable resemblance to the systems of Schelling and Hegel. While writing, Kant’s strength suddenly failed him. The speculative notes break off with increasing regularity, and comments on everyday incidents are interspersed among Kant’s notes. These writings, which today are collected and published under the title Opus postumum, document the way in which Kant’s body gradually failed his mind.

Kant’s final years were marked by a deterioration of physical and mental powers which was nevertheless born with dignity. On February 12, 1804 Kant died of old age in his city of birth. Despite numerous offers from other universities, Kant never left Konigsberg. Yet he always took an active interest in world events, and kept company with businessmen, administration officials, and officers. He knew the travel literature of his time so well that one might think he had been to Java, America, or London himself. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the ideas of the French Revolution, both in the daily society gathered at his table and in public. In Kant’s main œuvre of critique as well as in his wide-ranging biological, social, and political interests, one driving incentive of Kant’s philosophy is manifest: the exploration of the possibilities and boundaries of man.

In his lectures on logic Kant often summarized the ‘cosmopolitan importance’ of philosophy in four central questions: (a) ‘What can I know?’ (b) ‘What should I do?’ (c) ‘What may I hope for?’ (d) ‘What is man?’ To the first question, Kant added by way of explanation, ‘answer metaphysics; to the second, morality answers; to the third, religion; and to the fourth, anthropology.’ The true meaning of this catalogue of questions is only recognized then when Kant adds that the last question encompasses all the others. In conclusion Kant writes that one could basically count metaphysics, morality, and religion to anthropology, ‘since the first three questions are related to the last.’ Thus Critical Philosophy appears to be, above all, a comprehensive inventory of the best human faculties—and these are the faculties of reason.

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