Emmanuel Kant (1724-1807) is one of the most prolific philosophers of the western world history. His works have had a tremendous impact in the fields of aesthetics, ethics, epistemology and metaphysics which created a profound movement to the philosophers who followed him. It is imperative to explore some of the important works of Kant, that is epistemology and metaphysics as they are some of the fundamental concepts that were featured in his publication, The Critique of Pure Reason.
In this work, Kant addresses the fundamental question of “what can we know?”. To answer this Kant argues that what we know is constrained to the natural of science and mathematics in the empirical world. He argues that the reason as to why knowledge is constrained is because the human mind plays a fundamental role in the constituting of knowledge (Kant, 2016). This is in the aspect of constituting the domains of experience and making the access of the mind be limited to the frame of time and space. Kant was quick to dismiss the earlier scholars such as John Locke who were empiricists and regarded the mind as a blank slate that should be written in the empirical world. Also, he rejected the notion of the rationalist in that it was possible to have a mind-independent world.
To be able to understand the stand and conviction of Kant in the aspect of empiricism and rationalism, it is essential that one understands the philosophical background of the issue which he is responding about. Empiricism and rationalism are some of the earlier philosophical issues which had tremendous impact on Kant. In his analysis, he noted that there were serious flaws in the content and arguments of the philosophers who were proponents of empiricism and rationalism. The problem as he noted it was the epistemological objective that would liberate the human mind from the confines of the immediate knowledge which is around people to be able to gain it from the outside of what they already know (Kant, 2001). In this case, the empiricists tried to explain this by noting that it can be accomplished by posteriori reasoning and through our senses. The rationalists tried to explain this by using the priori reasoning. The posteriori reasoning is the ability to using the outside world to experience which would then provide knowledge. The priori reasoning is the one which does not depend on one’s experience of the outside world to gain information (Kant, 2016). In his conviction, Kant believed that these two convictions were inadequate to a complete understanding of metaphysics for the reasons which will be discussed below.
In an attempt to answer his disagreements with the two traditions, Kant tried to change the face of philosophy generated by empiricism and rationalism. In his analysis, Kant noted that the distinction which was brought about by a priori and posteriori was not adequate to fully answer and complement the metaphysical claims which were in dispute. He therefore noted that to analyze knowledge there should be a distinction of the analytic and synthetic truths (Dudley & Engelhard, 2014). In the context of the analytic claim, Kant noted that the subject matter must contain the predicate. This is the example that “every body occupies space” can only be understood form the context of analysis at what point do a body occupy space. On the synthetic matter, Kant noted that the subject should not contain the predicate.
This is in the example that “that tree is 130 feet tall”, in this case, Kant (2001), noted that the concepts are brought together or synthesized to bring about a new individual claim which was not encompassed in the subject matter.
This is in the sense the he admonished the empiricist by noting that they had been unable to provide evidence that “every event must have a cause” which is based on the priori reasoning. This is because the philosophers had fused “posteriori” and a “synthetic” together with “a priori” and an “analytic” (Dudley & Engelhard, 2014). In this case, he notes that they assumed the results of the categories which they had given were exhaustive. Kant gives his analysis on the matter by noting that in a priori synthetic claim, one should find truth without the appeal to experience. The predicate, should not be contained within the subject because it would be illogical which is not surprising the empiricists failed to justify their claims (Kant, 2001). The rationalists had fuse the four categories and therefore failed in their justification of the claim of inward gaining of information.
On the synthetic claims, Kant argues that a priori needs a distinctive kind of justification for synthetic priori claims or analytic priori claims. Kant gives the indication to proceed, as they are found in mathematics or natural science especially in geometry (Kant, 2001). He noted that the claims of newton that the “all angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees” or “the quantity of the matter is always preserved” can be understood as priori. However, he argued that they cannot be understood from the analysis of the matter of the triangle. He therefore argues that a priori synthetic claim adds and contracts what is contained analytically in the concept without having to appeal to experience (Dudley & Engelhard, 2014). He denotes that if the philosophers were to exhaustively handle the questions generated in rationalism and empiricism, they should have to reduce their analyses to the central question to metaphysics. His proposal was that the question should be reduced to “how are synthetic priori judgements possible?” in his critique of the metaphysics, in the publication of The Critique of Pure Reason, he argued that if philosophers were to answer the questions regarding empiricism and rationalism, then one will be able to determine the legitimacy, the range and the possibility of all the claims of metaphysics (Kant, 2016).
To conclude, Kant offered a different perspective on the claims of empiricism and rationalism, on how the philosophers before him would have handled the claims exhaustively. His new approach of metaphysics has a tremendous effect on how people acquire knowledge and have a conclusive justification of the processes therein. As rational agents in this world, the contribution of Kant in ethics especially in the field of metaphysics in rationalism and empiricism is fundamental to the understand of the world and nature.
References
Dudley, W., & Engelhard, K. (2014). Immanuel Kant. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Kant, I. (2001). Prolegomena to any future metaphysics. Raleigh, NC: Alex Catalogue.
Kant, I. (2016). The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics. Lanham: Dancing Unicorn Books.
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