When was Kantian philosophy developed?
Immanuel Kant
In one of Kant's major works, the "Critique of Pure Reason" (1781), he attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. Kant wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as David Hume. Kant regarded himself as showing the way past the impasse between rationalists and empiricists which philosophy had led to, and is widely held to have synthesized both traditions in his thought.
Yirmiyahu Yovel
Yovel's first book, based on his PhD dissertation, was "Kant and the Renewal of Metaphysics" (1974, in Hebrew.) While Kant had been often held to have destroyed metaphysics, Yovel's book argues that Kant's actual program was to renew it, by replacing the old dogmatic metaphysics with a new critical one. Metaphysical questions are deeply significant even when they exceed the range of legitimate answers. To either repress the questions or to pretend answering them is equally irrational. Reason in Kant has a metaphysical interest and a critical interest that are equally indispensable, yet contradict each other in the absence of a critique. The critical turn resolves this antinomy in two stages. First, it establishes a system of synthetic a-priori categories and principles that functions as a valid metaphysics of the immanent (empirical) domain; and, secondly, in the Dialectic, it re-orients the metaphysical drive from its search of empty, illusory objects back into the empirical world, and makes us realize our fundamental finitude, as well as the endlessly open horizons within this world which we can explore.
Buddhist philosophy
Tantric Buddhism arrived in China in the 7th century, during the Tang Dynasty. In China, this form of Buddhism is known as Mìzōng (密宗), or "Esoteric School" and "Zhenyan" (true word, Sanskrit: Mantrayana). Kūkai (AD774–835) is a major Japanese Buddhist philosopher and the founder of the Tantric Shingon (true word) school in Japan. He wrote on a wide variety of topics such as public policy, language, the arts, literature, music and religion. After studying in China under Huiguo, Kūkai brought together various elements into a cohesive philosophical system of Shingon.
Ioan Zalomit
His dissertation from 1848 is the first exegesis of Kant's philosophy written by a Romanian. Although the Kantianism was at that time known to Romanians from different courses and textbooks (of Daniil Philippidis, Gheorghe Lazăr, Eufrosin Poteca, Eftimie Murgu, August Treboniu Laurian, Simeon Bărnuţiu, and of course that of Zalomit himself), there were still no monographs on this subject. Zalomit places Kant in the historical context of the modern philosophy, presenting the main figures of the empiricist and rationalist traditions. He considers that Kant is a spiritual successor of Descartes, and that he accomplished the program set forth, but unrealised, by Descartes.
Immanuel Kant
From then on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he continued to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. "The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures", a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: "Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy" and "The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God". In 1764, Kant wrote "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime" and then was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his "Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality" (often referred to as "The Prize Essay"). In 1766 Kant wrote "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer" which dealt with the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. The exact influence of Swedenborg on Kant, as well as the extent of Kant's belief in mysticism according to "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer", remain controversial. On 31 March 1770, aged 45, Kant was finally appointed Full Professor of Logic and Metaphysics ("Professor Ordinarius der Logic und Metaphysic") at the University of Königsberg. In defense of this appointment, Kant wrote his inaugural dissertation ("Inaugural-Dissertation") "De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis" ("On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World)". This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity. To miss this distinction would mean to commit the error of subreption, and, as he says in the last chapter of the dissertation, only in avoiding this error does metaphysics flourish.
Critique of the Kantian philosophy
"Critique of the Kantian philosophy" is a criticism Arthur Schopenhauer appended to the first volume of his "The World as Will and Representation" (1818). He wanted to show Immanuel Kant's errors so that Kant's merits would be appreciated and his achievements furthered.
Philosophical anthropology
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) taught the first lectures on anthropology in the European academic world. He specifically developed a conception of "pragmatic anthropology", according to which the human being is studied as a free agent. At the same time, he conceived of his anthropology as an empirical, not a strictly philosophical discipline. Both his philosophical and his anthropological work has been one of the influences in the field during the 19th and 20th century. After Kant, Ludwig Feuerbach is sometimes considered the next most important influence and founder of anthropological philosophy.
Age of Enlightenment
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom and political authority, as well as map out a view of the public sphere through private and public reason. Kant's work continued to shape German thought and indeed all of European philosophy, well into the 20th century.
History of psychology
Until the middle of the 19th century, psychology was widely regarded as a branch of philosophy. Whether it could become an independent scientific discipline was questioned already earlier on: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) declared in his "Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science" (1786) that psychology might perhaps never become a "proper" natural science because its phenomena cannot be quantified, among other reasons. Kant proposed an alternative conception of an empirical investigation of human thought, feeling, desire, and action, and lectured on these topics for over twenty years (1772/73-1795/96). His "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View" (1798), which resulted from these lectures, looks like an empirical psychology in many respects.
Rule according to higher law
The "Rechtsstaat" doctrine (legal state, state of right, constitutional state, constitutional government) was first introduced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his latest works completed after the U.S. and French constitutions had been adopted in the late 18th century. Kant’s approach is based on the supremacy of country’s written constitution created using principles of the Higher Law. This supremacy meant creating guarantees for the implementation of his central idea: a permanently peaceful life as a basic condition for the happiness and prosperity of the citizens. Kant was basing his doctrine exclusively on the idea of constitutionalism and constitutional government.
Philosophy
Medieval philosophy (5th–16th centuries) is the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and was dominated by the rise of Christianity and hence reflects Judeo-Christian theological concerns as well as retaining a continuity with Greco-Roman thought. Problems such as the existence and nature of God, the nature of faith and reason, metaphysics, the problem of evil were discussed in this period. Some key Medieval thinkers include St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, Anselm and Roger Bacon. Philosophy for these thinkers was viewed as an aid to Theology ("ancilla theologiae") and hence they sought to align their philosophy with their interpretation of sacred scripture. This period saw the development of Scholasticism, a text critical method developed in medieval universities based on close reading and disputation on key texts. The Renaissance period saw increasing focus on classic Greco-Roman thought and on a robust Humanism.
Early modern philosophy in the Western world begins with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes (1596–1650). Following the rise of natural science, Modern philosophy was concerned with developing a secular and rational foundation for knowledge and moved away from traditional structures of authority such as religion, scholastic thought and the Church. Major modern philosophers include Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. 19th-century philosophy is influenced by the wider movement termed the Enlightenment, and includes figures such as Hegel a key figure in German idealism, Kierkegaard who developed the foundations for existentialism, Nietzsche a famed anti-Christian, John Stuart Mill who promoted Utilitarianism, Karl Marx who developed the foundations for Communism and the American William James. The 20th century saw the split between Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy, as well as philosophical trends such as Phenomenology, Existentialism, Logical Positivism, Pragmatism and the Linguistic turn.
Contemporary philosophy
Analytic and continental philosophy share a common Western philosophical tradition up to Immanuel Kant. Afterwards, analytic and continental philosophers differ on the importance and influence of subsequent philosophers on their respective traditions. For instance, the German idealism school developed out of the work of Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and culminated in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who is viewed highly by many continental philosophers. Conversely, Hegel is viewed as a relatively minor figure for the work of analytic philosophers.
19th-century philosophy
The last third of the 18th century produced a host of ideas and works which would both systematize previous philosophy, and present a deep challenge to the basis of how philosophy had been systematized. Immanuel Kant is a name that most would mention as being among the most important of influences, as is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While both of these philosophers were products of the 18th century and its assumptions, they pressed at the boundaries. In trying to explain the nature of the state and government, Rousseau would challenge the basis of government with his declaration that "Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains". Kant, while attempting to preserve axiomic skepticism, was forced to argue that we do not see true reality, nor do we speak of it. All we know of reality is appearances. Since all we can see of reality is appearances, which are subject to certain necessary and subjective forms of perceptions, Kant postulates the idea of an unknowable (while at the same time limiting our use of science and the principle of causality to the appearances). Hegel's distinction between the unknowable and the circumstantially unknown can be seen as the beginnings of Hegel's rational system of the universe.
Immanuel Kant
Kant's reputation gradually rose through the latter portion of the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, "Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science." But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Leonhard Reinhold published a series of public letters on Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the Pantheism Dispute. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (a distinguished dramatist and philosophical essayist) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Moses Mendelssohn, leading to a bitter public dispute among partisans. The controversy gradually escalated into a debate about the values of the Enlightenment and the value of reason.
French philosophy
Modern philosophy began in France with the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650). His "Meditations on First Philosophy" changed the primary object of philosophical thought from ontology to epistemology and overcame the Aristotelian dogmatism inherited in philosophy from Scholasticism, the dominant form of thought in preceding centuries, while simultaneously raising some of the most fundamental problems for future generations of philosophers.
Islamic philosophy
Both arguments were adopted by later Christian philosophers and theologians, and the second argument in particular became famous after it was adopted by Immanuel Kant in his thesis of the first antimony concerning time.
Situated cognition
While situated cognition gained recognition in the field of educational psychology in the late twentieth century, it shares many principles with older fields such as critical theory, (Frankfurt School, 1930; Freire, 1968) anthropology (Jean Lave & Wenger, 1991), philosophy (Martin Heidegger, 1968), critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989), and sociolinguistics theories (Bakhtin, 1981) that rejected the notion of truly objective knowledge and the principles of Kantian empiricism.
Problem of mental causation
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) pointed out that we all shape our experience of things through the filter of our mind, a view sometimes called epistemological solipsism. The mind shapes that experience, and among other things, Kant believed the concepts of "space" and "time" were programmed into the human brain, as was the notion of "cause" and "effect". We never have "direct" experience of things, the "noumenal" world, and what we do experience is the "phenomenal" world as conveyed by our senses, this conveyance processed by the machinery of the mind and nervous system. Kant focused upon this processing. Kant believed in "a priori" knowledge arrived at independent of experience, so-called "synthetic" "a priori" knowledge. In particular, he thought that by introspection some aspects of the filtering mechanisms of the mind/brain/nervous system could be discovered. The following observations summarize Kant's views upon the subject-object problem, called Kant's Copernican revolution:
The Concept of Anxiety
In 1793, forty-one years before Kierkegaard wrote "The Concept of Anxiety", Immanuel Kant wrote his book "Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone"; his book elevated reason in the realm of Christianity. Many continental philosophers wrote their books in relation to Kant's ideas. Kierkegaard was familiar with "Book Two" of Kant's book "The Conflict of the Good with the Evil Principle for Sovereignty over Man" and he made a similar study in this book; however, he might call it the conflict of ethics and anxiety for sovereignty over man. Kierkegaard would replace Kant's term "Good" with "Ethics" and his term "Evil" with "Anxiety about the Good". He wrote about the ideal good versus the actual good that a single individual can do in the following way: "Ethics proposes to bring ideality into actuality. On the other hand, it is not the nature of its movement to raise actuality up into ideality. Ethics points to ideality as a task and assumes that every man possesses the requisite conditions. Thus ethics develops a contradiction, inasmuch as it makes clear both the difficulty and the impossibility." He was wondering how any existing human being can make any movement in an ideal world.
Martin Knutzen
Knutzen sought to strike a balance between Pietist Lutheranism and Christian Wolff's dogmatic philosophy, trying to compatibilize the teachings of Pietism with the hypotheses of Wolff's illustrated philosophy. Knutzen saw philosophy not merely as a propaedeutic for gaining access to theology, but as a separate science that established its own postulates. This is patent from one of his writings, published in 1740, the year in which Kant joined the university, titled “Philosophical Proof of the Truth of the Christian Religion” (Knutzen, 1740). This volume, which was to become his most famous work and built him a reputation in the 18th century, stated that philosophy is the depository of rational proof, even of religion itself. In writing this book, not only did Knutzen show how strongly rooted his thinking was in Königsberg's theological debate, but he also revealed his intimate knowledge of what had until then been an unknown aspect of British philosophy. The book also offers a good picture of Knutzen's theological standpoint. This work originally appeared as a series of articles in the “Königsberger Intelligenzblätter” (Knutzen, 1745). This way, Knutzen brought a breath of fresh, modern and advanced air into the Prussian cultural milieu dominated by Franz Albert Schultz’s Pietist theology.
Kantian ethics
Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory ascribed to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The theory, developed as a result of Enlightenment rationalism, is based on the view that the only intrinsically good thing is a good will; an action can only be good if its maximthe principle behind itis duty to the moral law. Central to Kant's construction of the moral law is the categorical imperative, which acts on all people, regardless of their interests or desires. Kant formulated the categorical imperative in various ways. His principle of universalizability requires that, for an action to be permissible, it must be possible to apply it to all people without a contradiction occurring. If a contradiction occurs the act violates Aristotle's "Non-contradiction" concept which states that just actions cannot lead to contradictions. Kant's formulation of humanity, the second section of the Categorical Imperative, states that as an end in itself humans are required never to treat others merely as a means to an end, but always, additionally, as ends in themselves. The formulation of autonomy concludes that rational agents are bound to the moral law by their own will, while Kant's concept of the Kingdom of Ends requires that people act as if the principles of their actions establish a law for a hypothetical kingdom. Kant also distinguished between perfect and imperfect duties. A perfect duty, such as the duty not to lie, always holds true; an imperfect duty, such as the duty to give to charity, can be made flexible and applied in particular time and place.
Immanuel Kant
Kant defines his theory of perception in his influential 1781 work the "Critique of Pure Reason", which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy. Kant maintains that our understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and "a priori" concepts, thus offering a "non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy", which is what has been referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Mou Zongsan
Following his teacher Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan sought to articulate and justify a moral metaphysics. A moral metaphysics asserts the interconnectedness of ontology and morality, implying the moral value of all objects including the self. Mou's philosophy attempts to demonstrate the limits of Kant, suggesting instead the ways in which Chinese thought may surpass Kantian morality. Several of Mou's titles directly reveal his engagement with Kant – "Intellectual Intuition and Chinese Philosophy", "Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself", and "Treatise of the Perfect Good" – a commitment that is reflected in Mou's decision to express his philosophy in Kantian terms. For example, Mou's philosophy inherits the Kantian concepts of autonomy, intellectual intuition, and Thing-in-Itself, although Confucianism inspires Mou to transform these concepts. The reason behind this decision to use Kantian terms remains unknown, but some scholars argue that Mou's use of certain terminologies aims to facilitate a dialogue between the East and West, pointing to Mou's comparison of Mencius and Kant, whereby he demonstrates the compatibility of Chinese and Western philosophies.
Meaning of life
Kantianism is a philosophy based on the ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical works of Immanuel Kant. Kant is known for his deontological theory where there is a single moral obligation, the "Categorical Imperative", derived from the concept of duty. Kantians believe all actions are performed in accordance with some underlying maxim or principle, and for actions to be ethical, they must adhere to the categorical imperative.
History of philosophy in Poland
At the turn of the nineteenth century, as Immanuel Kant's fame was spreading over the rest of Europe, in Poland the Enlightenment philosophy was still in full flower. Kantism found here a hostile soil. Even before Kant had been understood, he was condemned by the most respected writers of the time: by Jan Śniadecki, Staszic, Kołłątaj, Tadeusz Czacki, later by Anioł Dowgird (1776–1835). Jan Śniadecki warned against this "fanatical, dark and apocalyptic mind," and wrote: "To revise Locke and Condillac, to desire "a priori" knowledge of things that human nature can grasp only by their consequences, is a lamentable aberration of mind."
A priori and a posteriori
The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1781) advocated a blend of rationalist and empiricist theories. Kant says, "Although all our cognition begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises [is caused by] from experience" According to Kant, "a priori" cognition is transcendental, or based on the "form" of all possible experience, while "a posteriori" cognition is empirical, based on the "content" of experience. Kant states, "[…] it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself sensuous impressions [sense data] giving merely the "occasion" [opportunity for a cause to produce its effect]." Contrary to contemporary usages of the term, Kant thinks that "a priori" knowledge is not entirely independent of the content of experience. And unlike the rationalists, Kant thinks that "a priori" cognition, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any empirical content, is limited to the deduction of the conditions of possible experience. These "a priori", or transcendental conditions, are seated in one's cognitive faculties, and are not provided by experience in general or any experience in particular (although an argument exists that "a priori" intuitions can be "triggered" by experience).
Yirmiyahu Yovel
Yovel's major work on Kant was to become his "Kant and the Philosophy of History" (Princeton 1980, 1986; French 1989). Kant's historical thought had for a long time been ignored, or dismissed as marginal and inconsistent. Yovel's work was instrumental in reversing this outlook. The book goes beyond Kant's customary moral teaching, which revolves on the formal and personal characteristics of morality, to uncover a second, material tier in Kant's practical philosophy, in which the moral will becomes a world-shaping will: the will is not satisfied with its personal morality alone, but works to reshape the entire social-historical world as "a moral totality". The will does not only strive to make itself good, but to reshape its world in its own image—to see its moral goals embodied in the actual world's ways and institutions. This makes possible a critical philosophy of history, and of particular areas within it—politics, law, social ethics, moral education, and a religion of reason.
Wilhelm Dilthey
Dilthey's ideas should be examined in terms of his similarities and differences with Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert, members of the Baden School of Neo-Kantianism. Dilthey was not a Neo-Kantian, but had a profound knowledge of Immanuel Kant's philosophy, which deeply influenced his thinking. But whereas Neo-Kantianism was primarily interested in epistemology on the basis of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", Dilthey took Kant's "Critique of Judgment" as his point of departure. An important debate between Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians concerned the "human" as opposed to "cultural" sciences, with the Neo-Kantians arguing for the exclusion of psychology from the cultural sciences and Dilthey for its inclusion as a human science.
Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period, during a period known as the "Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural developments. Although much of Chinese philosophy begins in the Warring States period, elements of Chinese philosophy have existed for several thousand years; some can be found in the Yi Jing (the "Book of Changes"), an ancient compendium of divination, which dates back to at least 672 BCE. It was during the Warring States era that what Sima Tan termed the major philosophical schools of China: Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism, arose, along with philosophies that later fell into obscurity, like Agriculturalism, Mohism, Chinese Naturalism, and the Logicians.
Political philosophy of Immanuel Kant
The political philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) favoured a classical republican approach. In "" (1795), Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics by establishment of political community. His classical republican theory was extended in "Doctrine of Right" (1797), the first part of "Metaphysics of Morals". At the end of the 20th century Kant's political philosophy had been enjoying a remarkable renaissance in English-speaking countries with more major studies in a few years than had appeared in the preceding many decades.
Expressionist architecture
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries philosophies of aesthetics had been developing, particularly through the work of Kant and Schopenhauer and notions of the sublime. The experience of the sublime was supposed to involve a self-forgetfulness where personal fear is replaced by a sense of well-being and security when confronted with an object exhibiting superior might. At the end of the nineteenth century the German Kunstwissenschaft, or the "science of art", arose, which was a movement to discern laws of aesthetic appreciation and arrive at a scientific approach to aesthetic experience. At the beginning of the twentieth century Neo-Kantian German philosopher and theorist of aesthetics Max Dessoir founded the Zeitschift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, which he edited for many years, and published the work Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft in which he formulated five primary aesthetic forms: the beautiful, the sublime, the tragic, the ugly, and the comic. Iain Boyd Whyte writes that whilst "the Expressionist visionaries did not keep copies of Kant under their drawing boards. There was, however, in the first decades of this century [20th] a climate of ideas that was sympathetic to the aesthetic concerns and artistic production of romanticism.
T. K. Seung
Seung has suggested that the most sensible way to read the three "Critiques" is to take them as Kant's three attempts to bring together his a priori formalism and his normative Platonism. In fact, to write more than one "Critique" was not his original design. He had assumed that "Critique of Pure Reason" was sufficient for laying the foundation for his Critical Philosophy because there was only one pure reason. On the basis of this foundation, he was planning to write two metaphysical treatises: Metaphysics of Nature and Metaphysics of Morals. Instead of writing these two treatises, he changed his mind about the first "Critique" and wrote the second "Critique". But he did not stop there. He changed his mind once more and wrote the third "Critique". Even the first "Critique" marked a huge change of heart, which had terminated his dogmatic slumber in the Inaugural Dissertation. Seung textually substantiates these three revolutions in the development of Kant's philosophy.
Early Islamic philosophy
Both arguments were adopted by later Christian philosophers and theologians, and the second argument in particular became more famous after it was adopted by Immanuel Kant in his thesis of the first antimony concerning time.
Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein
Albeit some sources maintain that Einstein read the three Critiques at the age of 16 and studied Kant as a teenager, Philip Stamp points out that this is contradicted by some of his own claims. For example, in 1949, Einstein said that he "did not grow up in the Kantian tradition, but came to understand the truly valuable which is to be found in his doctrine, alongside of errors which today are quite obvious, only quite late."
Philosophy of space and time
In 1781, Immanuel Kant published the "Critique of Pure Reason", one of the most influential works in the history of the philosophy of space and time. He describes time as an "a priori" notion that, together with other "a priori" notions such as space, allows us to comprehend sense experience. Kant denies that neither space or time are substance, entities in themselves, or learned by experience; he holds, rather, that both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval between (or duration of) events. Although space and time are held to be "transcendentally ideal" in this sense, they are also "empirically real"—that is, not mere illusions.
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics
During the 1920s Heidegger read Immanuel Kant extensively. The Kantian influence is pervasive throughout Heidegger's most celebrated and influential book, "Being and Time" (1927). The Kantbook can be seen as a supplement for the unfinished second part of "Being and Time". Additionally, during the winter semester of 1927/28 Heidegger delivered a lecture course dealing explicitly with Kant's philosophy entitled "Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason" (volume 25 of the Gesamtausgabe). However, the main source for the Kantbook was Heidegger's encounter with Ernst Cassirer in Davos, in 1929. It is here Heidegger begins to develop his unique interpretation of Kant which places unprecedented emphasis on the schematism of the categories. Heidegger began writing "Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics" immediately after Davos.
Philosophy
In the Modern era, Chinese thinkers incorporated ideas from Western philosophy. Chinese Marxist philosophy developed under the influence of Mao Zedong, while a Chinese pragmatism under Hu Shih and New Confucianism's rise was influenced by Xiong Shili. Modern Japanese thought meanwhile developed under strong Western influences such as the study of Western Sciences (Rangaku) and the modernist Meirokusha intellectual society which drew from European enlightenment thought. The 20th century saw the rise of State Shinto and also Japanese nationalism. The Kyoto School, an influential and unique Japanese philosophical school developed from Western phenomenology and Medieval Japanese Buddhist philosophy such as that of Dogen.
Schema (Kant)
Kant introduced the concept of the transcendental schema in his chapter entitled "Of the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding." It is considered to be one of Kant's more difficult chapters. Even though he knew that he was not writing for a popular readership, Kant twice tried to apologize for this chapter by calling it "very dry" and "dry and tedious." Kant entered into his 1797 notebook: "In general, the schematism is one of the most difficult points. – Even Herr Beck cannot find his way about in it." Professor W.H. Walsh, of the University of Edinburgh, wrote: "The chapter on Schematism probably presents more difficulties to the uncommitted but sympathetic reader than any other part of the "Critique of Pure Reason". Not only are the details of the argument highly obscure (that, after all, is a common enough experience in reading Kant, though one is not often so baffled as one is here): it is hard to say in plain terms what general point or points Kant is seeking to establish." Arthur Schopenhauer referred to it as "…the strange 'Chapter on the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding,' which is well known for its great obscurity, since no one has ever been able to make anything out of it." Schopenhauer's notebooks contained entries that described Kant's chapter on schemata as "an audacious piece of nonsense" and the schema as "an absurdity whose non–existence is plain." In Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant's schemata, he attempted to clear up the obscurity by attributing Kant's concept of schemata simply to a psychological need for architectonic symmetry in his writings. Empirical concepts are based on empirical perceptions. Kant, however, tried to claim that, analogously, pure concepts (Categories) also have a basis. But this contradicts his previous assertion that pure concepts simply exist in the human mind and are not based on pure, schematic perceptions. Schopenhauer also alleged that schemata were introduced merely to give plausibility to Kant's description of the categories or pure concepts of the understanding. The article on Kant in the "Encyclopedia of Philosophy" calls Kant's schematism a "baffling doctrine " with "cryptic sentences." Josiah Royce referred to "the perplexing doctrine of the Schema." The Scottish philosopher Robert Adamson wrote: "Kant's manner of explaining the functions of schematism is extremely apt to be misunderstood, and to mislead." Kant's early critics (1782 –1789) did not discuss schematism because they couldn't follow Kant's explanation. Heidegger wrote of "the dryness and tediousness of this analysis…." After more than two centuries, Kant's explanation of schema still seems to be unclear to many readers. In their book on parallel distributed processing, the PDP Research Group discussed Kant's schemata when they appropriated that word to designate their concept of image schemata. "The schema," they wrote, "throughout history, has been a concept shrouded in mystery. Kant's … use of the term has been provocative but difficult to understand." After this sentence, no further attempt was made to discuss Kant's term and the concept that it designates. H. H. Price, in "Thinking and Experience", page 292, referred to Kant’s Schema and wrote, "…I must confess I do not fully understand it." In 2004, Professor Georges Dicker of SUNY Brockport stated: "I find the Schematism especially opaque…."
Legitimacy of Chinese philosophy
Western missionaries in the 17th century called Confucius a philosopher. The works of the ancient masters resemble premodern/ancient Western philosophy more so than post-Kantian thought, which could be considered a link to philosophy.
Psychological nativism
The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued in his "Critique of Pure Reason" that the human mind knows objects in innate, "a priori" ways. Kant claimed that humans, from birth, must experience all objects as being successive (time) and juxtaposed (space). His list of inborn categories describes predicates that the mind can attribute to any object in general. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) agreed with Kant, but reduced the number of innate categories to one—causality—which presupposes the others.
Immanuel Kant
Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself, and resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. It has been noted that in 1778, in response to one of these offers by a former pupil, Kant wrote:
When Kant emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the "Critique of Pure Reason". Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, this "Critique" was largely ignored upon its initial publication. The book was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style. It received few reviews, and these granted it no significance. Kant's former student, Johann Gottfried Herder criticized it for placing reason as an entity worthy of criticism instead of considering the process of reasoning within the context of language and one's entire personality. Similar to Christian Garve and Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, he rejected Kant's position that space and time possessed a form that could be analyzed. Additionally, Garve and Feder also faulted Kant's Critique for not explaining differences in perception of sensations. Its density made it, as Herder said in a letter to Johann Georg Hamann, a "tough nut to crack", obscured by "all this heavy gossamer". Its reception stood in stark contrast to the praise Kant had received for earlier works, such as his "Prize Essay" and shorter works that preceded the first Critique. These well-received and readable tracts include one on the earthquake in Lisbon that was so popular that it was sold by the page. Prior to the change in course documented in the first Critique, his books sold well, and by the time he published "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime" in 1764 he had become a notable popular author. Kant was disappointed with the first Critique's reception. Recognizing the need to clarify the original treatise, Kant wrote the "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics" in 1783 as a summary of its main views. Shortly thereafter, Kant's friend Johann Friedrich Schultz (1739–1805) (professor of mathematics) published "Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft" (Königsberg, 1784), which was a brief but very accurate commentary on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason".
Ethical intuitionism
While there were ethical intuitionists in a broad sense at least as far back as Thomas Aquinas, the philosophical school usually labelled as ethical intuitionism developed in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Early intuitionists like John Balguy, Ralph Cudworth, and Samuel Clarke were principally concerned with defending moral objectivism against the theories of Thomas Hobbes. Later, their views would be revived and developed by Richard Price and pitted against the moral sense theory of Francis Hutcheson, himself sometimes considered a sentimentalist intuitionist. Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy would be received in Britain as a German analog to Price, though according to R. M. Hare it is questionable whether Kant is an intuitionist.
Immanuel Kant
Kant published a second edition of the "Critique of Pure Reason" ("Kritik der reinen Vernunft") in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. Most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's "Critique of Practical Reason" (known as the second "Critique") and 1797's "Metaphysics of Morals". The 1790 "Critique of Judgment" (the third "Critique") applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. It was in this critique where Kant wrote one of his most popular statements, ""it is absurd to hope that another Newton will arise in the future who will make comprehensible to us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws"".
Kantian ethics
Although all of Kant's work develops his ethical theory, it is most clearly defined in "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals", "Critique of Practical Reason" and "Metaphysics of Morals". As part of the Enlightenment tradition, Kant based his ethical theory on the belief that reason should be used to determine how people ought to act. He did not attempt to prescribe specific action, but instructed that reason should be used to determine how to behave.
Salomon Maimon
It was not until 1787 in Berlin that Maimon became acquainted with Kantian philosophy, and in 1790 he published the "Essay on Transcendental Philosophy" ("Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie"), in which he formulated his objections to Kant's system. Kant seems to have considered Maimon one of his most astute critics. Maimon published a commentary on the "Moreh Nebuchim" of Maimonides in 1791 ("Gibeath Hamore", "The Hill of the Guide"). In 1792/3 he published his "Autobiography" ("Lebensgeschichte").
History of philosophy in Poland
Another Polish proponent of Kantism was Józef Kalasanty Szaniawski (1764–1843), who had been a student of Kant's at Königsberg. But, having accepted the fundamental points of the critical theory of knowledge, he still hesitated between Kant's metaphysical agnosticism and the new metaphysics of Idealism. Thus this one man introduced to Poland both the antimetaphysical Kant and the post-Kantian metaphysics.
Thomas-Institut
According to the account of the development of first philosophy predominant today, this discipline underwent a transformation since the late Middle Ages, in the course of which the Aristotelian theory of being was dissolved and reformed as an onto-logic of that which can be thought, thus immediately preparing Kant's transcendental philosophy. This interpretation needs to be revised in order to show that the said transformation did not exceed the boundaries of the traditional concept of science. On the contrary, in the teachings of the main representatives of the discipline up to Wolff and Baumgarten one finds a new concept of the theory of being as a theory of the universal and necessary structure of reality which is common to God and every possible world. Thus we do not encounter abolition but rather a radicalisation of tendencies which have shaped the development of first philosophy since the medieval reception of Aristotle and his Arabic interpreters. These tendencies are: the turn from a theological to an ontological concept of first philosophy, from its conception as practical wisdom to the idea of a universal theoretical science, from transcendent being as the starting point of thought to the transcategorical and thus transcendental content of being as such.
Eastern philosophy
Confucianism was a major ideology of the imperial state during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and was revived as Neo-Confucianism during the Tang dynasty (618–907). During later Chinese dynasties like Song Dynasty (960–1297) and the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) as well as in the Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1897) a resurgent Neo-Confucianism led by thinkers such as Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and Wang Yangming (1472–1529) became the dominant school of thought, and was promoted by the imperial state. Beginning in the Song dynasty, confucian classics were the basis of the imperial exams and became the core philosophy of the scholar official class. Confucianism suffered setbacks during the 20th century, but is recently undergoing a revival, which is termed New Confucianism.
Kantianism
Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term "Kantianism" or "Kantian" is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics.
German idealism
Kant's work purported to bridge the two dominant philosophical schools in the 18th century: 1) rationalism, which held that knowledge could be attained by reason alone "a priori" (prior to experience), and 2) empiricism, which held that knowledge could be arrived at only through the senses "a posteriori" (after experience), as expressed by philosopher David Hume, whom Kant sought to rebut. Kant's solution was to propose that while we can know, via sensory experience, particular facts about the world (which he termed phenomena), we cannot know the "form" they must take prior to any experience (which he called noumena). That is, we cannot know "what" objects we will encounter, but we can know "how" we will encounter them. Kant called his mode of philosophising "critical philosophy", in that it was supposedly less concerned with setting out positive doctrine than with critiquing the limits to the theories we "can" set out. The conclusion he presented, as above, he called "transcendental idealism". This distinguished it from classical idealism and subjective idealism such as George Berkeley's, which held that external objects have actual being or real existence only when they are perceived by an observer. Kant said that there are things-in-themselves, noumena, that is, things that exist other than being merely sensations and ideas in our minds. Kant held in the "Critique of Pure Reason" that the world of appearances (phenomena) is empirically real and transcendentally ideal. The mind plays a central role in influencing the way that the world is experienced: we perceive phenomena through time, space and the categories of the understanding. It is this notion that was taken to heart by Kant's philosophical successors.
German idealism
Karl Leonhard Reinhold published two volumes of "Letters Concerning the Kantian Philosophy" in 1790 and 1792. They provided a clear explication of Kant's thoughts, which were previously inaccessible due to Kant's use of complex or technical language.
Critical philosophy
"Critical philosophy" is also used as another name for Kant's philosophy itself. Kant said that philosophy's proper enquiry is not about what is out there in reality, but rather about the character and foundations of experience itself. We must first judge how human reason works, and within what limits, so that we can afterwards correctly apply it to sense experience and determine whether it can be applied at all to metaphysical objects.
Michel Foucault
Foucault's secondary thesis (his "thèse complémentaire" written in Hamburg between 1959 and 1960) was a translation and commentary on German philosopher Immanuel Kant's 1798 work "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View" (the title of his thesis was "Introduction à l"Anthropologie"", "Introduction to Kant's "Anthropology""). Largely consisting of Foucault's discussion of textual dating—an "archaeology of the Kantian text"—he rounded off the thesis with an evocation of Nietzsche, his biggest philosophical influence. This work's "rapporteur" was his old tutor and then director of the ENS, Hyppolite, who was well acquainted with German philosophy. After both theses were championed and reviewed, he underwent his public defense, the "soutenance de thèse", on 20 May 1961. The academics responsible for reviewing his work were concerned about the unconventional nature of his major thesis; reviewer Henri Gouhier noted that it was not a conventional work of history, making sweeping generalisations without sufficient particular argument, and that Foucault clearly "thinks in allegories". They all agreed however that the overall project was of merit, awarding Foucault his doctorate "despite reservations".
German idealism
Neo-Kantianism refers broadly to a revived type of philosophy along the lines of that laid down by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, or more specifically by Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy in his work "The World as Will and Representation" (1818), as well as by other post-Kantian philosophers such as Jakob Friedrich Fries and Johann Friedrich Herbart. It has some more specific reference in later German philosophy.
Karl Leonhard Reinhold
In later life he was powerfully influenced by J. G. Fichte, and subsequently, on grounds of religious feeling, by F. H. Jacobi and Christoph Gottfried Bardili. However, his historical importance belongs entirely to his earlier activity. The development of the Kantian standpoint contained in the "New Theory of Human Understanding (1789)", and in the "Fundament des philosophischen Wissens" (1791), was called by its author "Elementarphilosophie".
Cognitive science
The cognitive sciences began as an intellectual movement in the 1950s, called the cognitive revolution. Cognitive science has a prehistory traceable back to ancient Greek philosophical texts (see Plato's Meno and Aristotle's De Anima); and includes writers such as Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Benedict de Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, Pierre Cabanis, Leibniz and John Locke. However, although these early writers contributed greatly to the philosophical discovery of mind and this would ultimately lead to the development of psychology, they were working with an entirely different set of tools and core concepts than those of the cognitive scientist.
Kantian ethics
Philosopher Onora O'Neill, who studied under John Rawls at ￼Harvard University, is a contemporary Kantian ethicist who supports a Kantian approach to issues of social justice. O'Neill argues that a successful Kantian account of social justice must not rely on any unwarranted idealizations or assumption. She notes that philosophers have previously charged Kant with idealizing humans as autonomous beings, without any social context or life goals, though maintains that Kant's ethics can be read without such an idealization. O'Neill prefers Kant's conception of reason as practical and available to be used by humans, rather than as principles attached to every human being. Conceiving of reason as a tool to make decisions with means that the only thing able to restrain the principles we adopt is that they could be adopted by all. If we cannot will that everyone adopts a certain principle, then we cannot give them reasons to adopt it. To use reason, and to reason with other people, we must reject those principles that cannot be universally adopted. In this way, O'Neill reached Kant's formulation of universalisability without adopting an idealistic view of human autonomy. This model of universalisability does not require that we adopt all universalisable principles, but merely prohibits us from adopting those that are not.
Philosophy
After the Muslim conquests, Early Islamic philosophy developed the Greek philosophical traditions in new innovative directions. This Islamic Golden Age influenced European intellectual developments. The two main currents of early Islamic thought are Kalam which focuses on Islamic theology and Falsafa which was based on Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. The work of Aristotle was very influential among the falsafa such as al-Kindi (9th century), Avicenna (980 – June 1037) and Averroes (12th century). Others such as Al-Ghazali were highly critical of the methods of the Aristotelian falsafa. Islamic thinkers also developed a scientific method, experimental medicine, a theory of optics and a legal philosophy. Ibn Khaldun was an influential thinker in philosophy of history.
Western philosophy
Late modern philosophy is usually considered to begin around the pivotal year of 1781, when Gotthold Ephraim Lessing died and Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" appeared.
Christian Wolff (philosopher)
Christian Wolff redefined philosophy as the science of the possible, and applied it in a comprehensive survey of human knowledge to the disciplines of his time. Wolffian philosophy has a marked insistence everywhere on a clear and methodic exposition, holding confidence in the power of reason to reduce all subjects to this form. He was distinguished for writing copies in both Latin and German. Wolff's teachings held virtually undisputed sway in Germany till the Kantian revolution, and even after that, Wolff continued to be regarded as one of the most important philosophers from German-speaking lands.
History of philosophy in Poland
The Kantian and Scottish ideas were united in typical fashion by Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838). The younger brother of Jan Śniadecki, Jędrzej was an illustrious scientist, biologist and physician, and the more creative mind of the two. He had been educated at the universities of Kraków, Padua and Edinburgh and was from 1796 a professor at Wilno, where he held a chair of chemistry and pharmacy. He was a foe of metaphysics, holding that the fathoming of first causes of being was "impossible to fulfill and unnecessary." But foe of metaphysics that he was, he was not an Empiricist—and this was his link with Kant. "Experiment and observation can only gather... the materials from which common sense alone can build science."
Metaphor in philosophy
The major shift which occurs in Kantian continental philosophy, according to Cazeaux, is the departure 'from dualistic thought, i.e. thinking which remains within the boundaries created by oppositions, such as mind—body and subjective—objective' . The turn away from dualistic thought is made by Kant on account of his representing experience as the subjective determination of an objective world, thereby placing in a relationship terms which normally stand as opposites in a dualism. As a result of this shift, without conventional dualisms to fall back upon, the process of conceptual borrowing and cross-referral presented by metaphor becomes central as the means by which the textures and complexities of experience can be articulated. Theses to this effect, but with significant differences, can be found in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, Paul Ricoeur, and Derrida.
Józef Kalasanty Szaniawski
From 1802 to 1808 Szaniawski published his philosophical works in rapid succession. He expounded Kant's philosophy, but with a special purpose—to turn people's minds toward learning; and, in learning, to break with Enlightenment philosophy, which he condemned for dogmatic unbelief and morally damaging hedonism. He was the first to lead the campaign against the Enlightenment in Poland. He became an apostle of German philosophy and was the first to introduce it into Poland.
Continental philosophy
The history of continental philosophy (taken in its narrower sense) is usually thought to begin with German idealism. Led by figures like Fichte, Schelling, and later Hegel, German idealism developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s and was closely linked with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. Besides the central figures listed above, important contributors to German idealism also included Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, and Friedrich Schleiermacher.
Philosophy
Western philosophy is the philosophical tradition of the Western world and dates to Pre-Socratic thinkers who were active in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE such as Thales (c. 624–546 BCE) and Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BCE) who practiced a "love of wisdom" ("philosophia") and were also termed "physiologoi" (students of "physis", or nature). Socrates was a very influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no "wisdom" but was a "pursuer of" wisdom. Western philosophy can be divided into three eras: Ancient (Greco-Roman), Medieval philosophy (Christian European), and Modern philosophy.
Immanuel Kant
At age 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher, and much was expected of him.
Immanuel Kant
Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" (1785), "Critique of Practical Reason" (1788), and "Metaphysics of Morals" (1797).
Critique of the Kantian philosophy
Fundamental error: Kant did not distinguish between the concrete, intuitive, perceptual knowledge of objects and the abstract, discursive, conceptual, knowledge of thoughts.
Literary language
N'Ko is a literary language devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa. It blends the principal elements of the mutually unintelligible Manding languages. The movement promoting N'Ko literacy was instrumental in shaping the Maninka cultural identity in Guinea, and has also strengthened the Mande identity in other parts of West Africa. N'Ko publications include a translation of the Qur'an, a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics and geography, poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers.
Critique of Pure Reason
Christian Gottlieb Selle, an empiricist critic of Kant influenced by Locke to whom Kant had sent one of the complimentary copies of the "Critique of Pure Reason", was disappointed by the work, considering it a reversion to rationalism and scholasticism, and began a polemical campaign against Kant, arguing against the possibility of all "a priori" knowledge. His writings received widespread attention and created controversy. Though Kant was unable to write a reply to Selle, he did engage in a public dispute with Feder, after learning of Feder's role in the review published in "Zugaben zu den Göttinger gelehrte Anzeigen". In 1788, Feder published "Ueber Raum und Causalität: Zur Prüfung der kantischen Philosophie", a polemic against the "Critique of Pure Reason" in which he argued that Kant employed a "dogmatic method" and was still employing the methodology of rationalist metaphysics, and that Kant's transcendental philosophy transcends the limits of possible experience. Feder believed that Kant's fundamental error was his contempt for "empirical philosophy", which explains the faculty of knowledge according to the laws of nature. With Christian Meiners, he edited a journal, the "Philosophische Bibliothek", opposed to Kantianism.
Cartesianism
Cartesianism is the philosophical and scientific system of René Descartes and its subsequent development by other seventeenth century thinkers, most notably Nicolas Malebranche and Baruch Spinoza. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, the philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge, and expressed it in this way:
Western philosophy
The approximate end of the early modern period is most often identified with Immanuel Kant's systematic attempt to limit metaphysics, justify scientific knowledge, and reconcile both of these with morality and freedom.
Critique of the Kantian philosophy
At the time he wrote his criticism, Schopenhauer was acquainted only with the second (1787) edition of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". When he later read the first (1781) edition, he said that many of Kant's contradictions were not evident.
Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann
He was born and educated at Erfurt. In 1788, he became a lecturer on the history of philosophy at the University of Jena. Ten years later he became a professor at the same university, where he remained till 1804. His great work is an eleven-volume history of philosophy ("Geschichte der Philosophie"), which he began at Jena and finished at the University of Marburg, where he was professor of philosophy from 1804 till his death. He was one of the numerous German philosophers who accepted the Kantian theory as a revelation.
Indian philosophy
Jain philosophy is the oldest Indian philosophy that separates body (matter) from the soul (consciousness) completely. Jainism was revived and re-established after Mahavira, the last and the 24th "Tirthankara", synthesised and revived the philosophies and promulgations of the ancient Śramaṇic traditions laid down by the first Jain tirthankara Rishabhanatha millions of years ago. According to Dundas, outside of the Jain tradition, historians date the Mahavira as about contemporaneous with the Buddha in the 5th-century BC, and accordingly the historical Parshvanatha, based on the c. 250-year gap, is placed in 8th or 7th century BC.
Space
In the eighteenth century the German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed a theory of knowledge in which knowledge about space can be both "a priori" and "synthetic". According to Kant, knowledge about space is "synthetic", in that statements about space are not simply true by virtue of the meaning of the words in the statement. In his work, Kant rejected the view that space must be either a substance or relation. Instead he came to the conclusion that space and time are not discovered by humans to be objective features of the world, but imposed by us as part of a framework for organizing experience.
Immanuel Kant
With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's influence began to wane, though there was in Germany a movement that hailed a return to Kant in the 1860s, beginning with the publication of "Kant und die Epigonen" in 1865 by Otto Liebmann. His motto was "Back to Kant", and a re-examination of his ideas began (See Neo-Kantianism). During the turn of the 20th century there was an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as the Marburg School, represented in the work of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and anti-Neo-Kantian Nicolai Hartmann.
19th-century philosophy
One of the first philosophers to attempt to grapple with Kant's philosophy was Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose development of Kantian metaphysics became a source of inspiration for the Romantics. In "Wissenschaftslehre", Fichte argues that the self posits itself and is a self-producing and changing process.
Critique of Pure Reason
Kant decided to find an answer and spent at least twelve years thinking about the subject. Although the "Critique of Pure Reason" was set down in written form in just four to five months, while Kant was also lecturing and teaching, the work is a summation of the development of Kant's philosophy throughout that twelve-year period.
Inductivism
Awakened from "dogmatic slumber" by Hume's work, Immanuel Kant sought to explain how metaphysics is possible. Kant's 1781 book introduced the distinction "rationalism", whereby some knowledge results not by "empiricism", but instead by "pure reason". Concluding it impossible to know reality in itself, however, Kant discarded the philosopher's task of unveiling appearance to view the "noumena", and limited science to organizing the "phenomena". Reasoning that the mind contains categories organizing sense data into the experiences "substance", "space", and "time", Kant thereby inferred uniformity of nature as knowledge "a priori".
Naturphilosophie
As an approach to philosophy and science, "Naturphilosophie" has had a difficult reception. In Germany, Neo-Kantians came to distrust its developments as speculative and overly metaphysical. For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was poorly understood in Anglophone countries. Over the years, it has been subjected to continuing criticism. Since the 1960s, improved translations have appeared, and scholars have developed a better appreciation of the objectives of "Naturphilosophie".
Wilfrid Sellars
In his paper, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1961), Sellars introduces the concept of Kantian empiricism. Kantian empiricism features a distinction between (1) claims whose revision requires abandonment or modification of the system of concepts in terms of which they are framed (i.e., modification of the fallible set of constitutive principles underlying knowledge, otherwise known as framework-relative "a priori" truths) and (2) claims revisable on the basis of observations formulated in terms of a system of concepts which remained fixed throughout.
History of Germany
In remote Königsberg philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to reconcile rationalism and religious belief, individual freedom, and political authority. Kant's work contained basic tensions that would continue to shape German thought – and indeed all of European philosophy – well into the 20th century.
Philosophy
East Asian philosophical thought began in Ancient China, and Chinese philosophy begins during the Western Zhou Dynasty and the following periods after its fall when the "Hundred Schools of Thought" flourished (6th century to 221 BCE). This period was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural developments and saw the rise of the major philosophical schools of China, Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism as well as numerous other less influential schools. These philosophical traditions developed metaphysical, political and ethical theories such Tao, Yin and yang, Ren and Li which, along with Chinese Buddhism, directly influenced Korean philosophy, Vietnamese philosophy and Japanese philosophy (which also includes the native Shinto tradition). Buddhism began arriving in China during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), through a gradual Silk road transmission and through native influences developed distinct Chinese forms (such as Chan/Zen) which spread throughout the East Asian cultural sphere. During later Chinese dynasties like the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) as well as in the Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1897) a resurgent Neo-Confucianism led by thinkers such as Wang Yangming (1472–1529) became the dominant school of thought, and was promoted by the imperial state.
Immanuel Kant
His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant left Königsberg shortly after August 1748—he would return there in August 1754. He became a private tutor in the towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. In 1749, he published his first philosophical work, "Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces" (written in 1745–47).
History of physics
In Indian philosophy, Maharishi Kanada was the first to systematically develop a theory of atomism around 200 BCE though some authors have allotted him an earlier era in the 6th century BCE. It was further elaborated by the Buddhist atomists Dharmakirti and Dignāga during the 1st millennium CE. Pakudha Kaccayana, a 6th-century BCE Indian philosopher and contemporary of Gautama Buddha, had also propounded ideas about the atomic constitution of the material world. These philosophers believed that other elements (except ether) were physically palpable and hence comprised minuscule particles of matter. The last minuscule particle of matter that could not be subdivided further was termed Parmanu. These philosophers considered the atom to be indestructible and hence eternal. The Buddhists thought atoms to be minute objects unable to be seen to the naked eye that come into being and vanish in an instant. The Vaisheshika school of philosophers believed that an atom was a mere point in space. It was also first to depict relations between motion and force applied. Indian theories about the atom are greatly abstract and enmeshed in philosophy as they were based on logic and not on personal experience or experimentation. In Indian astronomy, Aryabhata's "Aryabhatiya" (499 CE) proposed the Earth's rotation, while Nilakantha Somayaji (1444–1544) of the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics proposed a semi-heliocentric model resembling the Tychonic system.
History of philosophy in Poland
Jan Śniadecki's younger brother, however, Jędrzej Śniadecki, was the first respected Polish scholar to declare (1799) for Kant. And in applying Kantian ideas to the natural sciences, he did something new that would not be undertaken until much later by Johannes Müller, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz and other famous scientists of the nineteenth century.
Syllogism
In the 19th century, modifications to syllogism were incorporated to deal with disjunctive ("A or B") and conditional ("if A then B") statements. Kant famously claimed, in "Logic" (1800), that logic was the one completed science, and that Aristotelian logic more or less included everything about logic there was to know. (This work is not necessarily representative of Kant's mature philosophy, which is often regarded as an innovation to logic itself.) Though there were alternative systems of logic, such as Avicennian logic or Indian logic elsewhere, Kant's opinion stood unchallenged in the West until 1879 when Frege published his "Begriffsschrift" ("Concept Script"). This introduced a calculus, a method of representing categorical statements (and statements that are not provided for in syllogism as well) by the use of quantifiers and variables.
Immanuel Kant
During his own life, there was much critical attention paid to his thought. He had an influence on Reinhold, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Novalis during the 1780s and 1790s. The school of thinking known as German Idealism developed from his writings. The German Idealists Fichte and Schelling, for example, tried to bring traditional "metaphysically" laden notions like "the Absolute", "God", and "Being" into the scope of Kant's critical thought. In so doing, the German Idealists tried to reverse Kant's view that we cannot know what we cannot observe.
Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
The essay was published as Kant was gaining repute as a philosopher following the publication of his revolutionary treatise on epistemology, "The Critique of Pure Reason" (1781) and preceding his critique of ethical theory, "Critique of Practical Reason" (1788). "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" embroiled Kant in controversy due to the political implications of its critique of his contemporary Johann Gottfried Herder.
Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
"Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" or "The Idea of a Universal History on a Cosmopolitical Plan" () is a 1784 essay by Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), a lecturer in anthropology and geography at Königsberg University.
Immanuel Kant
Kant lectured on anthropology for over 25 years. His "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View" was published in 1798. (This was the subject of Michel Foucault's secondary dissertation for his State doctorate, "Introduction to Kant's Anthropology".) Kant's Lectures on Anthropology were published for the first time in 1997 in German. "Introduction to Kant's Anthropology" was translated into English and published by the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series in 2006.
Yangism
Yangism () was a philosophical school founded by Yang Zhu, existent during the Warring States period (475 BCE – 221 BCE), that believed that human actions are and should be based on self-interest. The school has been described by sinologists as an early form of psychological and ethical egoism. The main focus of the Yangists was on the concept of "xing", or human nature, a term later incorporated by Mencius into Confucianism. No documents directly authored by the Yangists have been discovered yet, and all that is known of the school comes from the comments of rival philosophers, specifically in the Chinese texts "Huainanzi", "Lüshi Chunqiu", "Mengzi", and possibly the "Liezi" and "Zhuangzi". The philosopher Mencius claimed that Yangism once rivaled Confucianism and Mohism, although the veracity of this claim remains controversial among sinologists. Because Yangism had largely faded into obscurity by the time that Sima Qian compiled his Shiji, the school was not included as one of the Hundred Schools of Thought.
Immanuel Kant
Kant was born on April 22, 1724 into a Prussian German family of Lutheran Protestant faith in Königsberg, East Prussia. Baptized 'Emanuel', he later changed his name to 'Immanuel' after learning Hebrew. He was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant maintained Christian ideals for some time, but struggled to reconcile the faith with his belief in science. In his "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals", he reveals a belief in immortality as the necessary condition of humanity's approach to the highest morality possible. However, as Kant was skeptical about some of the arguments used prior to him in defence of theism and maintained that human understanding is limited and can never attain knowledge about God or the soul, various commentators have labelled him a philosophical agnostic.
Immanuel Kant
Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. He won the Berlin Academy Prize in 1754 for his argument that the Moon's gravity would eventually cause its tidal locking to coincide with the Earth's rotation. The next year, he expanded this reasoning to the formation and evolution of the Solar System in his "Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens".
In the "Universal Natural History", Kant laid out the Nebular hypothesis, in which he deduced that the Solar System had formed from a large cloud of gas, a nebula. Kant also correctly deduced that the Milky Way was a large disk of stars, which he theorized formed from a much larger spinning gas cloud. He further suggested that other distant "nebulae" might be other galaxies. These postulations opened new horizons for astronomy, for the first time extending it beyond the Solar System to galactic and intergalactic realms. According to Thomas Huxley (1867), Kant also made contributions to geology in his "Universal Natural History", and according to Lord Kelvin (1897), he made contributions useful to mathematicians and astronomers.
Legitimacy of Chinese philosophy
The discipline of philosophy did not enter China until the 19th century. Nishi Amane, a Japanese scholar, first translated the term “philosophy” into Chinese as "zhexue" (wisdom learning) in 1873. Though he originally coined this term solely to refer to the concept of Western Philosophy, he argued that the nature of the discipline of philosophy was in a constant flux, thus creating an opening for the realm of Chinese philosophy. After the Western infusion at the turn of the 20th century, an emulation of the Western educational system and its way of categorization spread through China. While ancient Chinese education had been based on ethical education, after the Opium War the educational system was considered an obstruction in the realization of Chinese potential. The "Dao tong" (Confucian orthodoxy) was refashioned into the “history of Chinese philosophy,” effectively objectivizing a concept meant to be lived. The Chinese philosophy of the past included classical learning (jinxue), the learning of the ancient masters (zhuzixue) speculative learning (xuanxue), Buddhist learning, and learning of principle (lixue). While all these branches share common elements with Western philosophy, it was definitively decided that these were not philosophy in their original state. Hence, there was the subsequent distillation by later scholars using Western notions to form a history of Chinese philosophy.
17th-century philosophy
The period is usually taken to start in the seventeenth century with the work of René Descartes, who set much of the agenda as well as much of the methodology for those who came after him. The period is typified in Europe by the great system-builders — philosophers who present unified systems of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and ethics, and often politics and the physical sciences too. Immanuel Kant classified his predecessors into two schools: the rationalists and the empiricists, and early modern philosophy is often characterised in terms of a conflict between these schools.
Women in philosophy
In the May 13, 2015 issue of "The Atlantic", Susan Price notes that even though Kant's first work in 1747 cites Émilie Du Châtelet, a philosopher who was a "...scholar of Newton, religion, science, and mathematics", "her work won’t be found in the 1,000-plus pages of the new edition of The Norton Introduction to Philosophy." The Norton Introduction does not name a female philosopher until the book begins to cover the mid-20th century. Scholars argue that women philosophers are also absent from the "...other leading anthologies used in university classrooms." Price states that university philosophy anthologies do not usually mention 17th century women philosophers such as Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Lady Damaris Masham. Price argues that the philosophical "...canon remains dominated by white males—the discipline that some say still hews to the myth that genius is tied to gender." Amy Ferrer, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, states that “...women have been systematically left out of the canon, and that women coming in have not been able to see how much influence women have had in the field." "The Encyclopedia of Philosophy", which as published in 1967, had "...articles on over 900 philosophers, [but it] did not include an entry for Wollstonecraft, Arendt or de Beauvoir. "[T]hese women philosophers were scarcely even marginal" to the canon set out at the time.
Philosophical anthropology
Philosophical anthropology as a kind of thought, before it was founded as a distinct philosophical discipline in the 1920s, emerged as post-medieval thought striving for emancipation from Christian religion and Aristotelic tradition. The origin of this liberation, characteristic of modernity, has been the Cartesian skepticism formulated by Descartes in the first two of his "Meditations on First Philosophy" (1641).
Victor Kanke
In 1996-2011, Kanke developed the theory of conceptual transitions. According to this theory, philosophy in its modern form is divided into two parts, namely, substantial and metascientific philosophy. Substantial philosophy, unable to keep pace with science, inevitably takes on a metaphysical form, which is characteristic of post structuralism, critical hermeneutics and analytic philosophy. In its metascientific form, philosophy has to do with subsciences, examining and criticizing their contents. The metascientific approach is opposed to metaphysics in philosophy and substantialism in Science, according to which science does not need to study metascience. The metascientific approach gives priority to the conceptual structure of modern theories that implement some form of transition from one concept to another.
Kanke believes that the metascientific approach is an antidote to SPAM (syndrome of acquired antimetascientificity in sciences) and SPAN (syndrome of acquired antiscientificity in philosophy).
German idealism
German idealism (also known as post-Kantian idealism, post-Kantian philosophy, or simply post-Kantianism) was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It began as a reaction to Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." German idealism was closely linked with both Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment.