Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Introduction
This paper addresses
itself to the conception of metaphysics which Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
advances in his Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics.[1]
The Prolegomena is a rewriting of
some of the central arguments contained in his first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. In the later
work Kant employed the synthetic method of exposition, that is, exposition from
the unknown to the known. But in the Prolegomena,
he uses the analytic method of exposition, that is, exposition from the known
to the unknown, hence he notes that “the method we are now following is to be
analytic.”[2] In the Prolegomena, Kant situates metaphysics
in the realm of the faculty of pure human reason, a faculty which he believes goes
beyond its limits when it attempts to bring all reality into determinable and
conditioned unity, hence his philosophical system is known as critical.[3]
In our discussion of
Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena we shall
see him in conversation with two other philosophical genie, whose conception of
metaphysics, Kant seems to differ with. They are Aristotle and René Descartes.
We must however, admit that Kant is really complicated and difficult to
understand even to himself! W. H. Walsh corroborates this when he notes that:
Kant…enjoyed
a tremendous reputation throughout Germany and was beginning to be known,
though scarcely to be understood, in other European countries. In his declining
years, however, he suffered the mortification of seeing some of the ablest
young philosophers in his own country, among them Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Friedrich von Schelling, and J. S. Beck, proclaim
that he had not really understood his own philosophy [emphasis added] and
propose to remedy the deficiency by producing “transcendental” systems of their
own.[4]
The
Metaphysics of Aristotle
Aristotle
(384-322 BCE) maintains that what constitutes the metaphysical question is
simply: to be – what is there? What
we today call metaphysics is for Aristotle first philosophy. Aristotle
conceives metaphysics as the science of being qua being, the science of the
first principles of being.[5] He also calls it wisdom[6] or divine science.[7] For Aristotle, metaphysics
begins with particular beings, beings in the objective world. Metaphysics
therefore is the study of primary being, which is substance. Primary being is
substance because being refers to what is and, for Aristotle, the question
“what being is, is just the question, what is substance?”[8] Consequently, metaphysics
is the science of the first principles and cause of substance.[9] However, what is does not refer only to substance for:
[S]ome
things are said to be because they are substances, others because they are
affections of substance, others because they are a process towards substance,
or destruction or privations or qualities of substances, or productive or
generative of substance, or of things which are relative to substance, or
negations of one of these things or of substance itself.[10]
Hence, being is predicated of substance
primarily and only secondarily to other things.
Now, Aristotle begins his
philosophical investigation from the observable/empirical world. The
progression is from physics to metaphysics. In this way, he distinguishes three
levels of abstraction of which metaphysics is situated in the topmost and as
such is considered as the most prior of the sciences: Firstly, some objects
depend on matter for their existence and concept, and so sensible matter enters
their definition. Example: plants, goats, etc. Natural or empirical science
treats of these kind of things. Secondly, some other objects of speculation
depend on matter only for existence and not for their concept. Example: triangle,
circle, square, etc. These objects are treated by the mathematical sciences. Thirdly,
there are objects of speculation which do not depend on matter either for their
existence or definition. Example: substance, God, soul, etc. These are treated
by divine science - metaphysics.[11] Metaphysics is the most
prior and first science.[12] It is instructive to note
that these three level of abstraction are indicative of three levels of
things/intelligible/knowable objects.
Furthermore, that which
is, is that which is knowable, intelligible. In Aristotle’s metaphysical
system, being and cognition are correlative concepts. So, being, that is,
whatever it is that is, is knowable. It is because of this intelligibility of
beings, even of those beings outside of the empirical world, that metaphysics
is possible, hence he states in the first sentence of his work classified as
metaphysics that “[a]ll men by nature desire to know.”[13] In contrast, Immanuel
Kant, as we shall see, bars a level of being from cognition. There are certain
things of which we cannot cognize – the noumena,
things-in-themselves simply because they can never be objects of possible
experience.[14]
Kant’s metaphysical cogitation therefore calls into question the classical idea
of the ad equation of cognition and
being that Aristotle represents.
The
Metaphysics of René Descartes
The metaphysical cognitions and postulations of René Descartes
(1591-1650) can be said to center around and begin from the human subject as a res cogitans,
that is, a thinking thing. This is the ground, foundation of certainty, the
first principle of philosophy for Descartes, hence, his famous dictum: “I think, therefore I am.”[15]
He arrives at this foundation through the method of doubt by which he brought
himself to doubt all he had ever known, just in case he might find something
which he could not doubt.[16]
By dint of this process, he arrives at the “I” as existent, since he has to
exist in order to be able to doubt. More so, the nature of this “I” is
thinking. This analysis is obviously rationalistic and metaphysical, since,
going further, Descartes avows that he can comfortably doubt that he has a
body, yet this would not tamper with the essence of the “I” as “a thinking
thing.”[17]
The “I” is a rational substance. Descartes also call it the soul.[18]
However, it is on the basis of the certainty of the thinking self that the body
and the external world as extended, is affirmed. Besides, God as infinite, the
origin of ideas in the mind or soul, the cause of good, and preventer of evil
influences also follows from the foundation of the ego, the rational “I.”[19]
Again,
vividly expressing his rationalist commitment to the metaphysical question,
René Descartes would hold contrary to Immanuel Kant, that “all
that can be known of God can be shown by reasons derived from no other source
than our own mind.”[20]
Put simply, that God is, is a cognizable
fact. Besides, Descartes held that the mind is distinct from the body.[21]
The mind is indivisible and body, divisible,[22]
thus “the corruption of the body does not cause the mind to perish, and
thus that mortals may have hope of another life.”[23] In this way he
demonstrates the fact of the immortality of the soul for “the mind is of its
nature immortal.”[24]
In
sum, Descartes upholds the view that being, the primary subject of metaphysics,
is, and that the thinking mind, shielded from error by the perfect God can
access this reality. In his system, however, and unlike Aristotle and Immanuel
Kant, he repudiates the input of the senses in the cognition of reality, hence,
reason alone can cognize reality. Kant would not give leeway to this Cartesian
dismissal of the senses, which is why, against such rationalistic bias for the
senses, he would posit that “thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind.”[25]
The
Metaphysics of Immanuel Kant – Transcendental idealism
In his Prolegomena, Immanuel Kant attempts to
address the question of the possibility of metaphysics and its necessary systematization.
This question comes up because some form of systematization is observed in the
other sciences namely, mathematics and natural science but not in metaphysics. The
basis of the possibility of the knowledge of reality which all three sciences
confirm is the synthetic a priori. Kant begins by showing how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible
in mathematics and natural science.
However, in his attempt
to answer the metaphysical question: “what is there?” Kant rejects the
traditional methodology of cognition and metaphysics, which claims that we can
know things in themselves; and adopts a unique one, which he termed
transcendental idealism. He argues that his transcendental idealism is
different from Descartes’ dreaming idealism, George Berkeley’s visionary and
mystical idealism,[26] for “my idealism concerns
not the existence of things (as is idealism originally)…but concerns the
sensuous representation of things, to which space and time especially belong.”[27] The main point of Kant’s
transcendental idealism is that, although there are things that exist beyond
our experience, knowledge of these things is impossible, since transcendental
knowledge is ideal, not real.[28]
Transcendental idealism
is a theory that holds that all objects of any experience possible to us are
nothing but appearances, that is, mere representations, which have no
independent existence outside our thoughts. It is characterized indirectly by its contrast with
realism according to which these objects are “self-subsistent things,” or
“things in themselves.”[29] It involves the
distinction between phenomena and noumena. Whereas phenomena refers to
objects as they appear to us, that is, the world as we experience it, noumena refers to objects as they are in
themselves, which are purely intelligible, or non-sensual realities.[30]
However, let us clarify
some concepts for a better understanding of Immanuel Kant’s transcendental
philosophical cognition. There is a posteriori knowledge, which is the
particular knowledge we gain from experience, as well as a priori knowledge, which is the necessary and universal knowledge
we have independent of experience. Moreover, there are two kinds of judgment: analytic and synthetic
judgments. Kant posits that in analytic judgment
the concept in the predicate is contained in the subject. Whereas in synthetic judgment, the predicate
concept contains information not contained in the subject concept, hence, it is
informative not just definitional or tautological as analytic judgments are.
From this analysis, Kant puts forth his philosophical ingenuity in positing of synthetic a priori judgments. These are
such judgments that both give us new knowledge and are not derived from
experience.[31]
The synthetic a priori is the fulcrum of Kant’s adjudication of the age-long
rationalists-empiricist conflict and the root of his critical metaphysics.
Like other modern
philosophers, Immanuel Kant develops his critical philosophy around the
individual, the “I.” The philosophical concern is with the human person and the
possibilities around the human person. Consequently, Kant’s attempt to answer
the metaphysical question “what is there?” sees him describe something similar
to Plato’s two worlds of reality. Unlike Plato, however, who would avow that
the human mind can ascend to the knowledge of things most perfect in the other
transcendental world, Kant holds that the transcendental is an aspect of
reality that theoretical human cognition is not privy to. This the world of noumena, things in themselves.[32] In all discourses of
metaphysics, one sees an intercourse of being and cognition, metaphysics and
epistemology. Indeed this correlation is inevitable since it is that which is,
whether as a state of affairs or as a thing, that can be known. It is on this
premise that one sees Kant developing an epistemological system in answer to
the question of metaphysics. Within this epistemological system he exposes the
limits of the power of human cognition in so far as metaphysics is concerned.
What the human person does cognize and can cognize are those things and
concepts of those things that are given to experience, phenomena in contrast to noumena.[33]
Furthermore, human
cognition is structured in such a way that, for Immanuel Kant, possible and
therefore authentic and reliable human knowledge follows the schema of
sensibility through understanding.[34] Little wonder Kant
believes that “besides intuition there is no other kind of cognition than
through concepts.”[35] This assertion obviously
calls into question the contribution of pure reason in human cognition. Again,
this follows from the fact that what the human person knows are of and about the
experiential, the experientially possible, the phenomenal, the appearances of
things-in-themselves.
Sensibility
and Understanding
Accordingly, cognition by
sensibility
is via the intuition of space and time. Whatever it is that
is cognizable by sensibility is simply spatio-temporal. Space and time, for
Immanuel Kant are a priori forms of
sensible intuitions. It is by means of these forms of sensibility that the
human person cognizes phenomena, things as they appear. Now, because things in
themselves are not part of the possibility of experience, they cannot be
subjected to the a priori forms of
sensibility, namely, space and time. They cannot be cognized at this level of
cognition. Moreover, space and time are the forms of outer and inner sense
respectively. Kant avows that:
By means of outer sense (a property of our mind) we represent to
ourselves objects as outside us, and all as in space. In space their form,
magnitude, and relation to one another is determined, or determinable. Inner
sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself, or its inner state gives, to
be sure, no intuition of the soul itself, as an object; yet it is still a
determinate form, under which the intuition of its inner state is alone
possible, so that everything that belongs to the inner determinations is
represented in relations of time. Time can no more be intuited externally than
space can be intuited as something in us.[36]
Besides, cognition by
sensibility, there is cognition by understanding, which is made
possible by means of a synthesis of experiential data through the application
of the concepts of understanding. These concepts are either transcendental –
not derived from experience, or empirical – derived from experience.[37] By these concepts, the
human mind cognizes objects derived from a synthesis of sense experience, thus
“there are two conditions under which alone the cognition of an object is
possible: first, intuition, through which it is given, but only as appearance;
second, concept, through which an object is thought that corresponds to this
intuition.”[38]
The mark of the operation of understanding is necessity by means of the
categories. The understanding prescribes the rules for the connection of
objects of possible experience, thus, the
understanding does not draw its (a
priori) laws from nature, but prescribes them to it.[39]
It is in this that Immanuel Kant’s Copernican
Revolution must consist: that the
human mind is no longer out in search of the laws of nature, but that the laws
of nature are imposed on nature by the human mind. Nature corresponds to
mind and not mind to nature.
Pure
Reason
While the understanding
connects experience in terms of laws by means of the categories, and thereby
making judgements of experience possible, pure reason searches for
deeper unity by means of its ideas.
Immanuel Kant asserts that the ideas
are “necessary concepts whose object nevertheless cannot
be given in any experience.”[40] Now, because no objects
of the ideas can be ever given in possible experience, they are transcendental.[41]
Accordingly, Immanuel
Kant distinguishes three transcendental ideas of pure reason: psychological
ideas, cosmological ideas, and theological ideas.[42] First, psychological
ideas try to identify some sort of substance or ultimate subject underlying all
the predicates that can be applied to a subject. For instance, when describing
internal states: “I think or “I dream” for example, we refer back to an “I”
that is fundamental, indivisible, and unique. However, Kant is of the opinion
that this “I” is not a thing or a concept that we can have knowledge of in
itself. But by being capable of experience at all, suggests that we have some
sort of consciousness. For Kant, the “I” is merely “a
designation of the object of inner sense insofar as we do not further cognize
it through any predicate.”[43] This
self is the matrix of consciousness and the principle of the transcendental
unity of apperception. Apperception is a Leibnizan concept which
describes the consciousness or “awareness of one’s perceptions.”[44]
Second, cosmological
ideas, according to Kant, are classified into four distinct antinomies[45] or, pairs of seemingly
contradictory metaphysical propositions:
Thesis
- The world has, as to time and
space, a beginning (limit)
Antithesis
- World is, as to time and space,
infinite.
Thesis
- Everything in the world is
simply constituted.
Antithesis
- There is nothing simple, but
everything is composite.
Thesis
- There are in the world causes
through freedom
Antithesis
- There is no freedom, but all
is nature
Thesis - In the series of world-causes there
is some necessary being.
Antithesis
- There is nothing
necessary in the world, but in these series, all are contingent.[46]
According to Immanuel Kant,
the thesis and the antithesis as represented above are the extreme positions of
the rationalist and the empiricists respectively, which are unknowable to us.
While the rationalist held onto the knowledge of the noumena, the empiricists held onto the phenomena. However, Kant avows that the first two theses and
antitheses were all false because they view the world itself as a totality.
This according to Kant is impossible since our knowledge of the world is
discursive,[47]
that is, in instalments, and not in its totality.
Third, in theological
ideas, Kant opines that any “proof” of God’s existence is a purely intellectual
exercise, and cannot lead us to fundamental and substantial conclusions
regarding the nature of experience. For any rational science or metaphysics
that seeks to prove the existence of God run beyond the boundaries of reason.[48]
More so, in order to
address the question of how metaphysics is possible, he demonstrates how both
mathematics and pure natural sciences are possible by appealing to our pure
intuitions of time and space, and our faculty of understanding to make sense of
experience. However, metaphysics deals with matters that are beyond the realm
of experiences such as God and soul, or with the totality of possible
experience like whether the world has a beginning and an end. Thus, intuition
and understanding are irrelevant to metaphysical realities. Immanuel Kant thus avers that:
All
pure cognitions of the understanding have the feature that the concepts can be
given in experience, and the principles can be confirmed by it; whereas the
transcendent cognitions of reason cannot either, as ideas, be given in
experience or, as propositions, ever be confirmed or refuted by it.[49]
Consequently, as we have
already seen in the summary above, Immanuel Kant was of the view that
mathematics, natural science and metaphysics contain synthetic a priori knowledge. And this is what distinguishes his
metaphysics from that of others. For in his cognition, he opines that the mind
has a priori concepts of time, space
and causation, which it imposes on sensations in order to understand them or
make them intelligible. Thus, by subjecting the sensations, which we perceive
to the intuitions of space and time, we have empirical intuitions and judgments
of perception,[50]
which is subjective. To give objectivity or universality to this our
experience, we subject it to the faculty of understanding. Thus, Kant claims
that space and time only apply to phenomena and not to noumena for things in themselves are non-spatial and non-temporal.
However, if, according to Kant, we cannot know the transcendental world, and we
know things if and only if they exist in space and time, how do we relate to
the ideas of space and time, which are forms? How is it possible that we
experience such?
Furthermore, Immanuel
Kant affirms that all concepts, including the categories, only have meaning in
relation to possible experience and the objects of possible experience, that
is, to phenomena and not to noumena.
This claim is a limitation to Kant’s transcendental idealism since he
recognises that, we are not passive recipients of sensory experience. However,
in his book, I and Thou, Martin Buber
(1878-1965), who was highly influenced by Kant’s Prolegomena found two answers to the nature of time. If time and
space are pure forms of perception, then, they pertain to phenomena and not to
things in themselves, noumena. Thus,
time has to do with the ways in which we experience not just things but people
also. This would imply that we have an object experience of people. If this is
the case, then it would be contrary to Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which
states that people should not be used as a means to an end; since our
experience of people would involve “I – it relation.” Furthermore, Buber goes
beyond Kant to describe man as one who has two distinct ways of engaging the
world, namely, experience and encounter.[51] The former involves a
subject-object relationship - that which exist between I and It; while the
latter involves a subject – subject relationship, an encounter between I and
You (thou), and this, according to Buber is deeper than the former.[52]
More so, Immanuel Kant
argues that we cannot know things in themselves. This assertion raises some
problems. The first concern is, if things exist and we do not know them in
themselves, an objective knowledge of things can no longer be considered but
only subjective personal knowledge. Hence, individual knowledge of things must
always prevail and be accepted far and above common and general knowledge, even
when such individual knowledge seems contrary to the obvious. Besides, if we
cannot know things in themselves, it means that we cannot know the essence of
things. Now, if we cannot know the essence of things, how do we know then that
things exist? If we know things only as they appear to us, does it mean that we
know only the shadow of things?
On the contrary, Thomas
Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, opines that we can know the essence of
things, that is, we can know things as they are themselves. He argues that what
we know subjectively, is the same as what is out there objectively, since the
material things known must necessarily exist in the knower, not materially but
immaterially;[53]
thereby giving us a remedy to Kant’s limitations. For Aquinas, our conceptions
of things are abstracted from the sensory data, which are authentic
representations of the concrete reality.[54] Hence, the subject and
object will become one in an ideal order; the object will become known by the
knowing subject. The imperative of Aquinas’ concept of cognition of things
comes to be appreciated when there is a synthesis of cognitive processes and
substantial experience.
From the foregoing, one
would agree to the fact that Immanuel Kant has rebutted traditional metaphysics
by critiquing pure reason; and by reducing the issues of mathematics and
natural sciences to the faculties of sensibility and understanding; and then
that of metaphysics to the faculty of pure reason, which helps us reason
independent of experience, that is, a
priori cognition.[55] Hence, metaphysics for
Kant is the product of pure reason. Not reason as applied to experience as
traditional metaphysics conceived it. But reason as that which tries to
complete experience; tries to tie all experience together, thereby giving it
meaning.
Does
the Moral Agent Need God and/or organized Religion?
If,
as Immanuel Kant wants the human person to believe, that the latter cannot make
any assertive claim about God because such a being is beyond possible human
experience and cannot be subjected to the forms of intuition and the categories
of understanding, how does a morality that is founded on this same God survive?
Moreover, if the moral agent can be moral simply based on a rational subjective
ascent to a moral maxim, does such a person need any religious authority to
stay moral? Based on his deontological, duty-based system of ethics, Kant
answers in the preface to the first edition of his Religion within the Bounds of Reason that:
So
far as morality is based on the conception of the human being as one who is
free but who also, just because of that, binds himself through reason to
unconditional laws, it is in need neither of the idea of another being above
him in order that he recognize his duty, nor, that he observe it, of an
incentive other than the law itself.[56]
For Kant therefore, the moral agent is
simply a rational agent who, though free, conditions herself to a moral maxim
simply on the grounds of duty and respect for the law, not because the law was
given by God or imposed by some religious institution. The kind of religion
that Kant proposes in the Religion within
the Bounds of Reason is the religion of the moral ideal that he believes
all religions are supposed to emulate.[57]
More so, this moral
religion is very unlike and simply opposed to organized religion. It does not
require any form of liturgy or public devotional practices. All that is needed
is the keeping of the moral maxim. Members of this religion just need to be moral.
In this way they contribute to the incumbency of the moral law. Consequently, “Kant thinks that our own reason gives us the law. Morality
can be understood only if we see that each of us is equally a law giving member
of the group of those who must also obey the moral law. He holds that each of
us is both to legislate the law and to obey it.”[58] Such a religion is made
up of autonomous rational individuals, who may ascent to the idea of God. The
idea of God comes in as tenable since a being necessary to make sense of moral
experience is needed.[59] E. L. Allen asserts this
need in this way:
We
desire a state of things in which goodness is accompanied by the happiness it
deserves. We could not be content to see good for ever in the dungeon and evil
for ever on the throne. But happiness belongs to the realm of what is and duty to that of what ought to be, and only the latter is
within the range of our freedom. We must therefore postulate, believe that
there is God who can bring these two
realms together and effect the union of goodness and happiness.[60]
Hence, in Immanuel Kant’s moral
philosophy, God is a necessary postulate of rational faith and is needed by the
moral agent. However, the moral agent does not do good and avoid evil just in
order to be rewarded by God, for if it is done so, the act would cease to be
good.[61] This is because it would
become a hypothetical rather than a categorical imperative.[62] Moreover, organized
religion is not necessary for the moral life. This is because the rational
agent makes the inner choice of conscience to obey the moral law that she herself was part of making.
This conclusion is indeed the seedbed of a secularization true to its name.[63] Is secularization – the
expulsion of God and religion from the public sphere, not the approaching and
abiding trend today?
Conclusion
The
paper has attempted to discuss Immanuel Kant’s reflection on the metaphysical
question: what is there? In this discourse, it has been a thing of interest to
note that the metaphysical question: “what is there?” almost always presupposes
and leads to the epistemological question: can what is there be known? The
answer to the first question cannot be: nothing. This is insofar as the
inquirer is a something asking the question. So, at least, the inquirer is
there and so nothing cannot be the answer. An affirmative answer to the second
question is indicative of a positive answer to the first question. Hence, if
knowledge is possible, then the object of knowledge must exist. Aristotle says
that every object of knowledge exists and every existent object is knowable.
So, for him, the epistemological and the metaphysical questions really
coincide. René Descartes’ perspective to the epistemo-metaphysical question
describes the requirement of the inquirer into the question. This requirement,
for him is the foundation of knowledge of all that there is. He concludes that
the inquirer into the epistemo-metaphysical question is a thinking self, a res cogitans. This thinking self is the
basis of all questions and answers, both epistemological and metaphysical.
Nevertheless,
a further development in and a new twist to the epistemo-metaphysical question
is introduced by Immanuel Kant who answers positive to the metaphysical
question but discusses the limits of the epistemological question. So, yes! To
the metaphysical question, there is something. There are things. But, to the
epistemological question, the human knower cannot know them as they are. They
are there, at least, they help the human person to make sense of experience.
Thus, things-in-themselves are transcendentally ideal. They must be posited for
reality to make sense. They can only be
known as they appear to the human knower. Is this a limitation on the
things themselves? Kant answers in the negative. The problem is with human
cognition. If things do not enter human cognition through the senses, the
knowing human cannot know them. Little wonder Kant would keep reiterating as
his philosophical mantra: “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions
without concepts are blind.”[64] His metaphysical system
then, is a critique of the powers of reason, a limitation of reason’s reach.
But is this effort not rather too ambitious of Kant? How does he claim to know
in entirety, the reach of reason? Is reason itself a given in possible
experience that he can claim to know fully and even determine its extent?
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[3] W. H. Walsh, “Kant, Immanuel,”
Donald M. Brochert (ed.), Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, vol 5, 2nd edition. Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale,
p.10.
[4] W. H. Walsh, “Kant, Immanuel,”
Donald M. Brochert (ed.), Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, vol 5, 2nd edition, 2006. Farmington Hills: Thomson
Gale, pp.8-9.
[5] Cf. Aristotle, “Metaphysica,” in
Richard McKeon (ed.) The Basic Works of
Aristotle (New York: Modern Library, 2001), p.731
[6] Cf. Samuel Enoch Stumpf, The History and Problem of Philosophy,
(New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994) p.88.
[11] Cf. Aristotle, “Metaphysica,” in
Richard McKeon (ed.) The Basic Works of
Aristotle, p.779
[13] Aristotle, “Metaphysica,” Richard
Mckeon (ed.) Basic work of Aristotle,
p.689
[14] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), p.338
[15] René Descartes, Discourse on Method,
translated by Donald A. Cress (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993),
p.19
[17] René Descartes, Meditations on
First Philosophy, translated by Donald A. Cress (Cambridge: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1993), p.65
[20] René Descartes, Meditations on
First Philosophy, translated by Michael A. Moriarty (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008), p.4
[25] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), pp.193-194
[26]Cf. Immanuel Kant,
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, revised
by James W. Ellington (Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1985), pp.4-6.
[27]Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, revised by James W.
Ellington, pp.36–7.
[28] Matt McCormick, “Immanuel Kant:
Metaphysics” Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/kantmeta accessed 24/11/15
[29] Wilfrid Sellars, “Kant’s
Transcendental Idealism” http://www.ditext.com/sellars/ktl.html accessed 19/11/15
[30] Cf. Samuel E. Stumph, Philosophy: History and Problems, 5th
ed., p.309.
[32] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), p.338
[34] See the section on “The
Transcendental Doctrine of the Elements” in Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and edited by Paul Guyer and
Allen W. Wood, p.153
[35] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, p.205
[36] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, p.157
[37] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, p.220
[38] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, p.225
[39] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics,
translated and edited by Gary Hatfield, p.72
[40] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics,
translated and edited by Gary Hatfield, p.80
[41] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics,
translated and edited by Gary Hatfield, p.82
[42] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,
revised by James W. Ellington, p.79
[43] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics,
translated and edited by Gary Hatfield, p.86
[44] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics,
translated and edited by Gary Hatfield, p.xxv
[45] The word antinomy means a
contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or between
inferences correctly drawn from such principles.
[46] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, revised
by James W. Ellington, p.80.
[47] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics
translated and edited by Gary Hatfield, p.86
[48] William F. Lawhead, The Voyage of Discovery: A Historical
Introduction to Philosophy (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2004), p.337.
[49] Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, revised
by James W. Ellington, p.71.
[50] Thus, judgment of perception and
empirical intuition deal with our senses and what they tell us, while judgment
of experience deals with the faculty of understanding. It would seem that while
judgements of perception are subjective, some form of objectivity of experience
comes from judgments of experience.
[51]One (that of encounter) of which
the modern age totally ignores.
[52] Cf. Michael Zank, Zachary
Braiterman, “Martin Buber”, last modified December 4, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/ accessed 23/11/15.
[53] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae, I, q. 84, art. 2. Transl. by Fathers of the English Dominican
Province. Benziger Bros edition, 1947.
[54] Fernand ‘Van Steenberghen, Epistemology (New York: Joseph F.
Wegner, Inc., 1949), p.61.
[55] Cf. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, revised by James W. Ellington, p.11.
[56] Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Reason in Kant: Religion within the Bounds of Reason
and other Writings edited by Allen
Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), p.33
[58] J. B. Schneewind, Why Study Kant’s Ethics in Immanuel
Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of
Morals edited and translated by Allen W. Wood (London: Yale University
Press, 2002), p.84
[59] For Bertrand Russell, Kant’s moral
argument for the existence of God rests on this: that there must be a being who
would bring about justice. See Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian (Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications,
1929) pp.4-6
[62] A line of action is a hypothetical
imperative if it is just a matter of expediency - a means to an end; and it is
categorical if it is a matter of duty.
[63] The term secularization is believed to have evolved from the Latin word saeculum that was used to describe the
world as separated from the cloistered framework of the religious or monastic
community.
[64] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason translated and
edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, pp.193-194
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