|
Immanuel Kant
was the foremost thinker of the Enlightenment
and one of the great philosophers of all time, in whom were subsumed new trends
that had begun with the Rationalism (stressing reason) of René Descartes
and the Empiricism (stressing experience) of
Francis Bacon. He inaugurated a new era in the development of philosophical
thought. His comprehensive and systematic work in theory
of knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics greatly influenced all subsequent
philosophy, especially the various German schools of Kantianism and Idealism.
(see also metaphysics)
This article deals with the man, his
achievements, and the subsequent history of Kantianism.
Kant was born on April 22, 1724, at Königsberg
in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) and lived in that remote province for
his entire life. His father, a saddler, was, according to Kant, a descendant of
a Scottish immigrant, although scholars have found no basis for this claim; his
mother, an uneducated German woman, was remarkable for her character and natural
intelligence. Both parents were devoted followers of the Pietist branch of the
Lutheran Church, which taught that religion belongs to the inner life expressed
in simplicity and obedience to moral law. The influence of their pastor made it
possible for Kant--the fourth of nine children, but the eldest surviving
child--to obtain an education.
At the age of eight Kant entered the
Pietist school that his pastor directed. This was a Latin school, and it was
presumably during the eight and a half years he was there that Kant acquired his
lifelong love for the Latin classics, especially for the naturalistic poet
Lucretius. In 1740 he enrolled in the University of Königsberg as a
theological student. But, although he attended courses in theology and even
preached on a few occasions, he was principally attracted to mathematics and physics.
Aided by a young professor who had studied Christian
Wolff, a systematizer of Rationalist philosophy, and who was also an
enthusiast for the science of Sir Isaac Newton,
Kant began reading the work of the English physicist and, in 1744, started his
first book, dealing with a problem concerning kinetic forces. Though by that
time he had decided to pursue an academic career, the death of his father in
1746 and his failure to obtain the post of undertutor in one of the schools
attached to the university compelled him to withdraw and seek a means of
supporting himself. (see also mathematics,
philosophy of)
He found employment as a family tutor
and, during the nine years that he gave to it, worked for three different
families. With them he was introduced to the influential society of the city,
acquired social grace, and made his farthest travels from his native city--some
60 miles (96 kilometres) away to the town of Arnsdorf. In 1755, aided by the
kindness of a friend, he was able to complete his degree at the university and
take up the position of Privatdozent, or
lecturer.
Three dissertations that he presented on
obtaining this post indicate the interest and direction of his thought at this
time. In one, De Igne (On Fire), he
argued that bodies operate on one another through the medium of a uniformly
diffused elastic and subtle matter that is the underlying substance of both heat
and light. His first teaching was in mathematics and physics, and he was never
to lose his interest in scientific developments. That it was more than an
amateur interest is shown by his publication within the next few years of
several scientific works dealing with the different races of men, the nature of
winds, the causes of earthquakes, and the general theory of the heavens.
At this period Newtonian physics was
important to Kant as much for its philosophical implications as for its
scientific content. A second dissertation, the Monodologia physica (1756), contrasted the Newtonian methods of
thinking with those employed in the philosophy then prevailing in German
universities. This was the philosophy of Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz, a universal scholar, as systematized and popularized by
Wolff and by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten,
author of a widely used text, the Metaphysica
(1739). Leibniz' works as they are now known were not fully available to
these writers; and the Leibnizian philosophy that they presented was
extravagantly Rationalistic, abstract, and cut-and-dried. It nevertheless
remained a powerful force, and the main efforts of independent thinkers in
Germany at the time were devoted to examining Leibniz's ideas.
In a third dissertation, Principiorum
Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidato (1755), on the first
principles of metaphysics, Kant analyzed especially the principle
of sufficient reason, which, in Wolff's formulation, asserts that for
everything there is a sufficient reason why it should be rather than not be.
Although critical, Kant was cautious and still a long way from challenging the
assumptions of Leibnizian metaphysics.
During the 15 years that he spent as a Privatdozent,
Kant's renown as a teacher and writer steadily increased. Soon he was
lecturing on many subjects other than physics and mathematics--including logic,
metaphysics, and moral philosophy. He even lectured on fireworks and
fortifications and every summer for 30 years taught a popular course on physical
geography. He enjoyed great success as a lecturer; his lecturing style, which
differed markedly from that of his books, was humorous and vivid, enlivened by
many examples from his reading in English and French literature, and in travel
and geography, science and philosophy.
Although he twice failed to obtain a
professorship at Königsberg, he refused to accept offers that would have
taken him elsewhere--including the professorship of poetry at Berlin that would
have brought greater prestige. He preferred the peace and quiet of his native
city in which to develop and mature his own philosophy.
During the 1760s he became increasingly
critical of Leibnizianism. According to one of his students, Kant was then
attacking Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten, was a declared follower of Newton, and
expressed great admiration for the moral philosophy of the Romanticist
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
His principal work of this period was Untersuchung
über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie
und der Moral (1764; "An Inquiry into the Distinctness of the
Fundamental Principles of Natural Theology and Morals"). In this work he
attacked the claim of Leibnizian philosophy that philosophy should model itself
on mathematics and aim at constructing a chain of demonstrated truths based on
self-evident premises. Kant argued that mathematics proceeds from definitions
that are arbitrary, by means of operations that are clearly and sharply defined,
upon concepts that can be exhibited in concrete form. In contrast with this
method, he argued that philosophy must begin with concepts that are already
given, "though confusedly or insufficiently determined," so that
philosophers cannot begin with definitions without thereby shutting themselves
up within a circle of words. Philosophy cannot, like mathematics, proceed
synthetically; it must analyze and clarify. The importance of the moral order,
which he had learned from Rousseau, reinforced the conviction received from his
study of Newton that a synthetic philosophy is empty and false. (see also synthetic proposition)
Besides attacking the methods of the
Leibnizians, he also began criticizing their leading ideas. In an essay Versuch,
den Begriff der negativen Grössen in die Weltweisheit ein-zuführen (1763),
he argued that physical opposition as encountered in things cannot be reduced to
logical contradiction, in which the same predicate
is both affirmed and denied, and, hence, that it is pointless to reduce
causality to the logical relation of antecedent and consequent. In an essay of
the same year, Der
einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes,
he sharply criticized the Leibnizian concept of Being by charging that the
so-called ontological argument, which would
prove the existence of God by logic alone, is fallacious because it confuses
existential with attributive statements: existence, he declared, is not a
predicate of attribution. Moreover, with regard to the nature of space, Kant
sided with Newton in his confrontation with Leibniz. Leibniz' view that space is
"an order of co-existences" and that spatial differences can be stated
in conceptual terms, he concluded to be untenable.
Some indication of a possible
alternative of Kant's own to the Leibnizian position can be gathered from his
curious Träume
eines Geistersehers erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik (1766).
This work is an examination of the whole notion of a world of spirits, in the
context of an inquiry into the spiritualist
claims of Emanuel Swedenborg, a scientist and
biblical scholar. Kant's position at first seems to have been completely
skeptical, and the influence of the Scottish Skeptic David
Hume is more apparent here than in any previous work; it was Hume, he
later claimed, who first awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers. Yet Kant was not
so much arguing that the notion of a world of spirits is illusory as insisting
that men have no insight into the nature of such a world, a conclusion that has
devastating implications for metaphysics as the Leibnizians conceived it.
Metaphysicians can dream as well as spiritualists, but this is not to say that
their dreams are necessarily empty; there are already hints that moral
experience can give content to the ideal of an "intelligible world."
Rousseau thus acted upon Kant here as a counterinfluence to Hume.
Finally, in 1770, after serving for 15
years as a Privatdozent, Kant was
appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics, a position in which he remained
active until a few years before his death. In this period--usually called his
critical period, because in it he wrote his great Critiques--he
published an astounding series of original works on a wide variety of topics, in
which he elaborated and expounded his philosophy.
The Inaugural
Dissertation of 1770 that he delivered on assuming his new position already
contained many of the important elements of his mature philosophy. As indicated
in its title, De Mundi Sensibilis atque
Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis: Dissertatio, the implicit dualism of the
Träume is made explicit; and it
is made so on the basis of a wholly un-Leibnizian interpretation of the
distinction between sense and understanding.
Sense is not, as Leibniz had supposed, a confused form of thinking but a source
of knowledge in its own right, although the objects so known are still only "appearances"--the
term that Leibniz also used. They are appearances because all sensing is
conditioned by the presence, in sensibility, of the forms of time
and space, which are not objective
characteristics or frameworks of things but "pure intuitions." But
though all knowledge of things sensible is thus of phenomena,
it does not follow that nothing is known of things as they are in themselves.
Certainly, man has no intuition, or direct insight, into an intelligible world;
but the presence in him of certain "pure intellectual concepts, such as
those of possibility, existence, necessity, substance, cause, enables him to
have some descriptive knowledge of it. By means of these concepts he can arrive
at an exemplar that provides him with "the common measure of all other
things as far as real." This exemplar gives man an idea of perfection for both the theoretical and practical orders:
in the first, it is that of the Supreme Being, God; in the latter, that of moral
perfection.
After the Dissertation, Kant published virtually nothing for 11 years. Yet, in
submitting the Dissertation to a
friend at the time of its publication, he wrote:
About a year since I attained that
concept which I do not fear ever to be obliged to alter, though I may have to
widen it, and by which all sorts of metaphysical questions can be tested in
accordance with entirely safe and easy criteria, and a sure decision reached as
to whether they are soluble or insoluble.
In 1781 the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (spelled "Critik" in the first
edition; Critique
of Pure Reason) was
published, followed for the next nine years by great and original works that in
a short time brought a revolution in philosophical thought and established the
new direction in which it was to go in the years to come.
The Critique
of Pure Reason was the result of some 10 years of thinking and meditation.
Yet, even so, Kant published the first edition only reluctantly after many
postponements; for although convinced of the truth of its doctrine, he was
uncertain and doubtful about its exposition. His misgivings proved well-founded,
and Kant complained that interpreters and critics of the work were badly
misunderstanding it. To correct these wrong interpretations of his thought he
wrote the Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen
Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (1783) and
brought out a second and revised edition of the first "critique" in
1787. Controversy still continues regarding the merits of the two editions:
readers with a preference for an Idealistic interpretation usually prefer the
first edition, whereas those with a Realistic view adhere to the second. But
with regard to difficulty and ease of reading and understanding, it is generally
agreed that there is little to choose between them. Anyone on first opening
either book finds it overwhelmingly difficult and impenetrably obscure.
The cause for this difficulty can be
traced in part to the works that Kant took as his models for philosophical
writing. He was the first great modern philosopher to spend all of his time and
efforts as a university professor of the subject. Regulations required that in
all lecturing a certain set of books be used, with the result that all of Kant's
teaching in philosophy had been based on such handbooks as those of Wolff
and Baumgarten, which abounded in technical jargon, artificial and schematic
divisions, and great claims to completeness. Following their example, Kant
accordingly provided a highly artificial, rigid, and by no means immediately
illuminating scaffolding for all three of his Critiques.
The Critique
of Pure Reason, after an introduction, is divided into two parts, of very
different lengths: A "Transcendental Doctrine of Elements," running to
almost 400 pages in a typical edition, followed by a "Transcendental
Doctrine of Method," which reaches scarcely 80 pages. The ". . .
Elements" deals with the sources of human knowledge, whereas the ". .
. Method" draws up a methodology for the use of "pure
reason" and its a priori ideas. Both are "transcendental,"
in that they are presumed to analyze the roots of all knowledge and the
conditions of all possible experience. The "Elements" is divided, in
turn, into a "Transcendental Aesthetic," a "Transcendental
Analytic," and a "Transcendental Dialectic." (see also transcendental idealism, a
priori knowledge)
The simplest way of describing the
contents of the Critique is to say
that it is a treatise about metaphysics: it seeks to show the impossibility of
one sort of metaphysics and to lay the foundations for another. The Leibnizian metaphysics, the object of his attack, is criticized for
assuming that the human mind can arrive, by pure thought, at truths about
entities, which, by their very nature, can never be objects of experience,
such as God, human freedom, and immortality. Kant maintained, however, that the
mind has no such power and that the vaunted metaphysics is thus a sham.
As Kant saw it, the problem of
metaphysics, as indeed of any science, is to explain how, on the one hand, its
principles can be necessary and universal (such being a condition for any
knowledge that is scientific) and yet, on the other hand, involve also a
knowledge of the real and so provide the investigator with the possibility of
more knowledge than is analytically contained in what he already knows; i.e., than is implicit in the meaning alone. To meet these two
conditions, Kant maintained, knowledge must rest on judgments that are a priori,
for it is only as they are separate from the contingencies of experience that
they could be necessary and yet also synthetic; i.e.,
so that the predicate term contains something more than is analytically
contained in the subject. Thus, for example, the proposition that all bodies are
extended is not synthetic but analytic because the notion of extension is
contained in the very notion of body; whereas the proposition that all bodies
are heavy is synthetic because weight supposes, in addition to the notion of
body, that of bodies in relation to one another. Hence, the basic problem, as
Kant formulated it, is to determine "How [i.e.,
under what conditions] are synthetic a priori
judgments possible?"
This problem arises, according to Kant,
in three fields, viz., in mathematics, physics, and metaphysics; and the three
main divisions of the first part of the Critique
deal respectively with these. In the "Transcendental Aesthetic,"
Kant argued that mathematics necessarily deals with space and time and then
claimed that these are both a priori forms of human sensibility that condition
whatever is apprehended through the senses. In the "Transcendental
Analytic," the most crucial as well as the most difficult part of the book,
he maintained that physics is a priori and synthetic because in its ordering of
experience it uses concepts of a special sort. These concepts-- "categories,"
he called them--are not so much read out of experience as read into it and,
hence, are a priori, or pure, as opposed to empirical. But they differ from
empirical concepts in something more than their origin: their whole role in
knowledge is different; for, whereas empirical concepts serve to correlate
particular experiences and so to bring out in a detailed way how experience is
ordered, the categories have the function of prescribing the general form that
this detailed order must take. They belong, as it were, to the very framework of
knowledge. But although they are indispensable for objective knowledge, the sole
knowledge that the categories can yield is of objects of possible experience;
they yield valid and real knowledge only when they are ordering what is given
through sense in space and time. (see also mathematics,
philosophy of)
In the "Transcendental
Dialectic" Kant turned to consideration of a priori synthetic judgments in
metaphysics. Here, he claimed, the situation is just the reverse from what it
was in mathematics and physics. Metaphysics cuts itself off from sense
experience in attempting to go beyond it and, for this very reason, fails to
attain a single true a priori synthetic judgment. To justify this claim, Kant
analyzed the use that metaphysics makes of the concept of the unconditioned. Reason,
according to Kant, seeks for the unconditioned or absolute in three distinct
spheres: (1) in philosophical psychology it
seeks for an absolute subject of knowledge; (2) in the sphere of cosmology,
it seeks for an absolute beginning of things in time, for an absolute limit to
them in space, and for an absolute limit to their divisibility; and (3) in the
sphere of theology, it seeks for an absolute
condition for all things. In each case, Kant claimed to show that the attempt is
doomed to failure by leading to an antinomy in
which equally good reasons can be given for both the affirmative and the
negative position. The metaphysical "sciences" of rational psychology,
rational cosmology, and natural theology, familiar to Kant from the text of
Baumgarten, on which he had to comment in his lectures, thus turn out to be
without foundation.
With this work, Kant proudly asserted
that he had accomplished a Copernican revolution in philosophy. Just as the
founder of modern astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus, had explained the apparent
movements of the stars by ascribing them partly to the movement of the
observers, so Kant had accounted for the application of the mind's a priori
principles to objects by demonstrating that the objects conform to the mind: in
knowing, it is not the mind that conforms to things but instead things that
conform to the mind.
Because of his insistence on the need
for an empirical component in knowledge and his antipathy to speculative
metaphysics, Kant is sometimes presented as a Positivist before his time; and
his attack upon metaphysics was held by many in his own day to bring both
religion and morality down with it. Such, however, was certainly far from Kant's
intention. Not only did he propose to put metaphysics "on the sure path of
science," he was prepared also to say that he "inevitably"
believed in the existence of God and in a future life. It is also true that his
original conception of his critical philosophy anticipated the preparation of a
critique of moral philosophy. The Kritik
der praktischen Vernunft (1788, spelled "Critik" and
"practischen"; Critique of Practical Reason), the
result of this intention, is the standard source book for his ethical doctrines.
The earlier Grundlegung
zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) is a shorter and, despite its title,
more readily comprehensible treatment of the same general topic. Both differ
from Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797)
in that they deal with pure ethics and try to elucidate basic principles;
whereas the later work is concerned with applying what they establish in the
concrete, a process that involved the consideration of virtues and vices and the
foundations of law and politics.
There are many points of similarity
between Kant's ethics and his epistemology, or theory of knowledge. He used the
same scaffolding for both--a "Doctrine of Elements," including an
"Analytic" and a "Dialectic," followed by a
"Methodology"; but the second Critique
is far shorter and much less complicated. Just as the distinction between
sense and intelligence was fundamental for the former, so is that between the
inclinations and moral reason for the latter. And just as the nature of the
human cognitive situation was elucidated in the first Critique by reference to the hypothetical notion of an intuitive
understanding, so is that of the human moral situation clarified by reference to
the notion of a "holy will." For a will of this kind there would be no
distinction between reason and inclination; a being possessed of a holy will
would always act as it ought. It would not, however, have the concepts of duty
and moral obligation, which enter only when reason and desire find themselves
opposed. In the case of human beings, the opposition is continuous, for man is
at the same time both flesh and spirit; it is here that the influence of Kant's
religious background is most prominent. Hence, the moral life is a continuing
struggle in which morality appears to the potential delinquent in the form of a
law that demands to be obeyed for its own sake--a law, however, the commands of
which are not issued by some alien authority but represent the voice of reason,
which the moral subject can recognize as his own.
In the "Dialectic," Kant took
up again the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality. Dismissed in the first Critique
as objects that men can never know because they transcend human sense
experience, he now argued that they are essential postulates for the moral life.
Though not reachable in metaphysics, they are absolutely essential for moral
philosophy.
Kant is often described as an ethical
Rationalist, and the description is not wholly inappropriate. He never espoused,
however, the radical Rationalism of some of his contemporaries nor of more
recent philosophers for whom reason is held to have direct insight into a world
of values or the power to intuit the rightness of this or that moral principle.
Thus, practical, like theoretical, reason was for him formal rather than
material--a framework of formative principles rather than a content of actual
rules. This is why he put such stress on his first formulation of the categorical
imperative: "Act only on that maxim through which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law." Lacking any insight
into the moral realm, men can only ask themselves whether what they are
proposing to do has the formal character of law--the character, namely, of being
the same for all persons similarly circumstanced.
The Kritik
der Urteilskraft (1790: spelled "Critik")--one of the most
original and instructive of all of Kant's writings--was not foreseen in his
original conception of the critical philosophy. Thus it is perhaps best regarded
as a series of appendixes to the other two Critiques. The work falls into two main parts, called respectively
"Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" and "Critique of Teleological
Judgment." In the first of these, after an introduction in which he
discussed "logical purposiveness," he analyzed the notion of "aesthetic
purposiveness" in judgments that ascribe beauty to something. Such a
judgment, according to him, unlike a mere expression of taste, lays claim to
general validity; yet it cannot be said to be cognitive because it rests on
feeling, not on argument. The explanation lies in the fact that, when a person
contemplates an object and finds it beautiful, there is a certain harmony
between his imagination and his understanding, of which he is aware from the
immediate delight that he takes in the object. Imagination grasps the object and
yet is not restricted to any definite concept; whereas a person imputes the
delight that he feels to others because it springs from the free play of his
cognitive faculties, which are the same in all men.
In the second part, Kant turned to
consider teleology in nature as it is posed by the existence in organic bodies
of things of which the parts are reciprocally means and ends to each other. In
dealing with these bodies, one cannot be content with merely mechanical
principles. Yet if mechanism is abandoned and the notion of a purpose or end of
nature is taken literally, this seems to imply that the things to which it
applies must be the work of some supernatural designer; but this would mean a
passing from the sensible to the suprasensible, a step proved in the first Critique to be impossible. Kant answered this objection by admitting
that teleological language cannot be avoided in taking account of natural
phenomena; but it must be understood as meaning only that organisms must be
thought of "as if" they were the product of design, and that is by no
means the same as saying that they are deliberately produced.
The critical philosophy was soon being
taught in every important German-speaking university, and young men flocked to Königsberg
as a shrine of philosophy. In some cases, the Prussian government even undertook
the expense of their support. Kant came to be consulted as an oracle on all
kinds of questions, including such subjects as the lawfulness of vaccination.
Such homage did not interrupt Kant's regular habits. Scarcely five feet tall,
with a deformed chest, and suffering from weak health, he maintained throughout
his life a severe regimen. It was arranged with such regularity that people set
their clocks according to his daily walk along the street named for him,
"The Philosopher's Walk." Until old age prevented him, he is said to
have missed this regular appearance only on the occasion when Rousseau's Émile
so engrossed him that for several days he stayed at home.
With the publication of the third Critique,
Kant's main philosophical work was done. From 1790 his health began to
decline seriously. He still had many literary projects but found it impossible
to write more than a few hours a day. The writings that he then completed
consist partly of an elaboration of subjects not previously treated in any
detail, partly of replies to criticisms and to the clarification of
misunderstandings. With the publication in 1793 of his work Die
Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Kant became involved in
a dispute with Prussian authorities on the right to express religious opinions.
The book was found to be altogether too Rationalistic for orthordox taste; he
was charged with misusing his philosophy to the "distortion and
depreciation of many leading and fundamental doctrines of sacred Scripture and
Christianity" and was required by the government not to lecture or write
anything further on religious subjects. Kant agreed but privately interpreted
the ban as a personal promise to the King, from which he felt himself to be
released on the latter's death in 1797. At any rate, he returned to the
forbidden subject in his last major essay, Der
Streit der Fakultäten (1798; "The Conflict of the
Faculties").
The large work at which he laboured
until his death--the fragments of which fill the two final volumes of the great
Berlin edition of his works--was evidently intended to be a major contribution
to his critical philosophy. What remains, however, is not so much an unfinished
work as a series of notes for a work that was never written. Its original title
was Übergang von den metaphysische
Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft zur Physik ("Transition from
the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to Physics"),
and it may have been his intention to carry further the argument advanced in the
Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der
Naturwissenschaft (1786) by showing that it is possible to construct a
priori not merely the general outline of a science of nature but a good many of
its details as well. But judging from the extant fragments, however numerous
they are, it remains conjectural whether its completion would have constituted a
major addition to his philosophy and its reputation.
After a gradual decline that was painful
to his friends as well as to himself, Kant died in Königsberg, February 12,
1804. His last words were "Es ist gut" ("It is good"). His
tomb in the cathedral was inscribed with the words (in German) "The starry
heavens above me and the moral law within me," the two things that he
declared in the conclusion of the second Critique
"fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the
oftener and the more steadily we reflect on." (O.A.B.)
As a philosophical designation,
Kantianism can signify either the system of thought contained in the writings of
the epoch-making 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant or those later
philosophies that arose from the study of Kant's writings and drew their
inspiration from his principles. Only the latter is the concern of this section.
The Kantian movement comprises a loose
assemblage of rather diverse philosophies that share Kant's concern with
exploring the nature, and especially the limits, of human knowledge in the hope
of raising philosophy to the level of a science in some sense similar to
mathematics and physics. Participating in the critical spirit and method of
Kant, these philosophies are thus opposed to dogmatism, to expansive speculative
naturalism (such as that of Baruch Spinoza, the Jewish Rationalist), and,
usually, to irrationalism. The various submovements of Kantianism are
characterized by their sharing of certain "family resemblances"; i.e.,
by the preoccupation of each with its own selection of concerns from among
the many developments of Kant's philosophy: a concern, for example, with the
nature of empirical knowledge; with the way in which the mind
imposes its own categorial structure upon experience, and, in particular, with
the nature of the structure that renders man's knowledge and moral action
possible, a structure considered to be a priori (logically independent of
experience); with the status of the Ding
an sich ("thing-in-itself"), that more ultimate reality
that presumably lurks behind man's apprehension of an object; or with the
relationship between knowledge and morality. A brief exposition of Kant's
philosophical system may be found above. (see also epistemology,
science, philosophy of, Empiricism,
category)
A system such as the critical philosophy
of Kant freely lends itself to reconstructions of its synthesis according to
whatever preferences the private philosophical inclinations of the reader may
impose or suggest. Kant's system was a syncretism, or union, of British
Empiricism (as in John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume) that stressed the
role of experience in the rise of knowledge; of the scientific methodology of
Isaac Newton; and of the metaphysical apriorism (or Rationalism) of Christian
Wolff, who systematized the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz, with its
emphasis on mind. Thus it constituted a synthesis of elements very different in
origin and nature, which tempted the student to read his own presuppositions
into it.
The critical philosophy has been
subjected to a variety of approaches and methods of interpretation. These can be
reduced to three fundamental types: those that conceive of the critical
philosophy as an epistemology or a pure theory of (scientific) knowledge and
methodology; those that conceive of it as a critical theory of metaphysics
or the nature of Being (ultimate reality); and those that conceive of it as a
theory of normative or valuational reflection parallel to that of ethics (in the
field of action). Each of these types--known, respectively, as epistemological,
metaphysical, and axiological Kantianism--can, in turn, be subdivided into
several secondary approaches. Historically, epistemological Kantianism included
such different attitudes as empirical Kantianism, rooted either in physiological
or psychological inquiries; the logistic Kantianism of the Marburg
school, which stressed essences and the use of logic;
and the realistic Kantianism of the Austrian Alois Riehl. Metaphysical
Kantianism developed from the transcendental Idealism
of German Romanticism to Realism, a course
followed by many speculative thinkers, who--like nearly all contemporary
Kantians--saw in the critical philosophy the foundations of an essentially
inductive metaphysics, in accordance with the results of the modern sciences.
Finally, axiological Kantianism--concerned with value
theory--branched, first, into an axiological approach (properly
so-called), which interpreted the methods of all three of Kant's Critiques
(i.e., Critique
of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment) as
normative disciplines of thought; and, second, into an eclectic or relativistic
Kantianism, which regarded the critical philosophy as a system of thought
dependent upon social, cultural, and historical conditions. (see also idealism)
The chief representatives of these
submovements are identified in the historical sections below.
It is essential to distinguish clearly
between two periods within the Kantian movement: first, the period from 1790 to
1831 (the death of Hegel); and, second, the period from 1860 to the
present--separated by a time when an antiphilosophical Positivism,
a type of thought that supplanted metaphysics with science, was predominant. The
first period began with the thorough study and emendation of Kant's chief
theoretical work, Kritik der reinen
Vernunft (2nd ed., 1787; the Critique
of Pure Reason, 1929); but it soon became intermingled with the romantic
tendencies in German Idealism. The second period, called specifically
Neo-Kantianism, was, first of all, a conscious reappraisal, in whole or in part,
of the theoretical Critique, but also,
as a total system, a reaction against Positivism. Earlier Neo-Kantianism reduced
philosophy to the theory of knowledge and scientific methodology; systematic
Neo-Kantianism, arising at the beginning of the 20th century, expressed itself
in attempts at building metaphysical structures.
According to Immanuel Kant, his major
work, the Critique of Pure Reason, comprised
a treatise on methodology, a preliminary investigation prerequisite to the study
of science, which placed the Newtonian method (induction, inference, and
generalization) over against that of Descartes and Wolff (deduction from
intuitions asserted to be self-evident). The result was a critique of
metaphysics, the value of which lay not in science but in a realm of being
accessible only to the pure intellect. In exploring this "noumenal"
realm, as he called it, Kant placed his Critique
in a positive role. Recalling the revolution that occurred in astronomy when
Nicolaus Copernicus discerned, in the apparent motions of the planets,
reflections of the earth's own motion, Kant inaugurated a Copernican revolution
in philosophy, which claimed that the subject doing the knowing constitutes, to
a considerable extent, the object; i.e., that
knowledge is in part constituted by a priori or transcendental factors
(contributed by the mind itself), which the mind imposes upon the data of
experience. Far from being a description of an external reality, knowledge is,
to Kant, the product of the knowing subject. When the data are those of sense
experience, the transcendental (mental) apparatus constitutes man's experience
or his science, or makes it to be such. These transcendental elements are of
three different orders: at the lowest level are the forms of space
and time (technically called intuitions);
above these are the categories and principles of man's intelligence (among them
substance, causality, and necessity); and at the uppermost level of abstraction
the ideas of reason--the transcendental
"I," the world as a whole, and God. It is by virtue of the encounter
between the forms of man's sensory intuition (space and time) and his perceptions
that phenomena are formed. The forms arise from
the subject himself; the perceptions, however--or the data of experience--have
reference, ultimately, to things-in-themselves, which nevertheless remain
unknowable, inasmuch as, in order to be known at all, it is necessary for things
to appear clothed, as it were, in the forms of man's intuition and, thenceforth,
to present themselves as phenomena and not as noumena. The thing-in-itself,
accordingly, indicates the limit and not the object of knowledge. (see also noumenon)
These theses of Kant provoked criticism
among the followers of Christian Wolff, the Leibnizian Rationalist, and doubts
among the disciples of Kant, which, as they further developed into systems,
marked the first period of Kantianism. Inasmuch as these disciples took the Critique
of Pure Reason to be a preface to
the study of the pure reason or of the transcendental system and not the system
itself, they saw in this interpretation an explanation for the ambiguities to
which the Critique (as they felt) was
subject. Their doubts revolved around two points: first, Kant had erroneously
distinguished three kinds of a priori knowledge, coordinate with the three
aforementioned levels or faculties of the mind; and second, Kant had accepted
the thing-in-itself as constitutive of knowledge. Regarding the first point,
they claimed that Kant had accepted the three faculties and their respective
transcendental characteristics without investigation, in which case this
structure should be viewed, in accordance with the preliminary character of the Critique,
as a triple manifestation of a single fundamental faculty. For this reason
the distinction between the levels of intuition and understanding
(or between the receptivity and spontaneity of the mind) had to be rejected--for
the three transcendentals--space and time, the categories, and the ideas of
reason--were not existents but were only functions of thought.
Finally, these disciples argued that the existence of a single transcendental
subject, the Ego, would render the thing-in-itself superfluous and even
pernicious for the scientific treatment of epistemology.
This function of human thought (the
transcendental subject), which serves as the absolute source of the a priori,
was variously designated by different early Kantian thinkers: for the German
Realist Karl L. Reinhold, it constituted the faculty of representation; for the
Lithuanian Idealist Salomon Maimon, it was a mental capacity for constructing
objects; for the Idealist Jakob S. Beck, a protégé of Kant's, it
was the act of synthesis; for the empirical critic of Kantianism G.E.
Schulze, it was experience in the sense intended by Hume--a volley of
discrete sense impressions; for the theory of knowledge of the outstanding
ethical Idealist Johann G. Fichte, it was the
original positing of the Ego and the
non-Ego--which meant, in turn, in the case of the aesthetic Idealist F.W.J. von
Schelling, "the absolute self," and in the case of G.W.F. Hegel
"the Geist
or absolute Spirit," and finally, in the case of the pessimistic
Romanticist Arthur Schopenhauer, "the absolute Will."
In each case (excepting Schulze) the interpretation of the thing-in-itself in a
realistic metaphysical sense was rejected in favour of various degrees of
transcendental Idealism. Removed from the main current of Kantianism was the
empirically oriented thinker Jakob Friedrich Fries
(the one figure in this group who was not an Idealist in the true sense), who
interpreted the a priori in terms of psychological faculties and elements.
Having earlier renounced these apostates
on a large scale, Kant, at the end of his life, prepared a new exposition of the
transcendental philosophy (the second part of his Opus Postumum), which showed that he was ready tacitly to accede to
the criticisms of his adversaries.
The rejection of all of philosophy by
Positivism had the anomalous effect of, itself, evoking an awakening of
Kantianism, for many thinkers wished to give to Positivism itself a
philosophical foundation that, while respecting the phenomenological attitude,
would yet be hostile to the metaphysics of Positivism, which was usually a
tacit, but inconsequent, Materialism. It was justifiably held that Kant could
provide such a foundation because of his opposition to metaphysics and his
limitation of scientific knowledge to the sphere of phenomena. The complexity of
the critical philosophy was such that the theoretical criticism could be
approached in diverse ways and that, through the facts themselves, diverse
interpretations of the Critique of Pure
Reason could be obtained. In the order of their origin (though not of their
worth or importance), there thus arose currents of Kantianism that were
empiricist, logicist, realist, metaphysical, axiological, and psychological--of
which the most important have survived into the 20th century.
The return to Kant was determined by the
historical fresco of the incomparable historian of philosophy Kuno
Fischer entitled Kants Leben und die Grundlagen seiner Lehre (1860; "Kant's Life
and the Foundations of his Teaching"), which replaced the earlier work of
the semi-Kantian Ernst Reinhold, son of the more notable Jena scholar (published
1828-30), and especially that of the outstanding historian of philosophy Johann
Eduard Erdmann (published 1834-53). In 1865 the order: "Zurück nach
Kant!" ("Back to Kant!") reverberated through the celebrated work
of the young epistemologist Otto Liebmann, Kant
und die Epigonen ("Kant and his Followers"), which was destined to
extricate their spirits from the Positivistic morass and, at the same time, to
divert the Germans from romantic Idealism.
The empiricist, logistic, and realistic
schools can be classed as epistemological.
Empiricist Neo-Kantianism was
represented by the erudite pioneering physicist and physiologist Hermann L.F. von
Helmholtz and, in part, by F.A. Lange,
author of a famous study of Materialism. Helmholtz found support in Kant for his
claim, first, that, although perception can represent
an external thing, it usually does so in a way far removed from an actual
description of its properties; second, that space and time comprise an empirical
framework created for thought by the perceiving subject; and, third, that
causality is an a priori law allowing the philosopher to infer a reality that is
absolutely unknowable. Similarly, Lange reduced science to the phenomenal level
and repudiated the thing-in-itself.
Logistic Neo-Kantianism, as represented
in the most well-known and flourishing school of Kantianism, that at Marburg,
originated with Hermann Cohen, successor of
Lange, who, in a book on Kant (1871), argued that the transcendental subject is
not to be regarded as a psychic being but as a logical function of thought that
constructs both the form and the
content of knowledge. Nothing is gegeben ("given"),
he urged; all is aufgegeben ("propounded,"
like a riddle) to thought--as when, in the infinitesimal calculus, the analyst
generates motion by imagining thin slices of space and time and adding up their
areas. Hence experience is a perfect construction of man's logical spirit.
Cohen's example inspired many authors, among them Cohen's colleague at Marburg Paul
Natorp, who, in his work on the logical foundations of the exact
sciences, integrated even psychology into the Marburgian transcendentalism; and Ernst
Cassirer, best known for stressing the symbolizing capacities of man,
who, in his memorable work Das
Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit (1906-20;
The Problem of Knowledge: Philosophy,
Science, and History since Hegel, 1966), transposed this same logisticism
into a form that illumines the history of modern philosophy.
Realistic Neo-Kantianism, the third
manifestation of epistemological Neo-Kantianism, was represented in the Realism
of the scientific monist Alois Riehl and of his disciple Richard Hönigswald.
In a work on the significance of the critical philosophy for the positive
sciences (published 1876-87), Riehl held, in direct opposition to the Marburgian
logisticism, that the thing-in-itself participates positively in the
constitution of knowledge inasmuch as all perception includes a reference to
things outside the subject.
Ten years after the appearance of the
aforementioned ground-breaking book Kant
und die Epigonen, its author, Otto Liebmann, introduced the new metaphysical
approach in his book on the analysis of reality (1876), which came near to the
Kantianism of Marburg. The Romanticist Johannes Volkelt, in turn, took up the
theme of a critical metaphysics and expressed his persisting aspirations toward
the Absolute in the claim that, beyond the
certainties of man's own subjective consciousness, there exists a new kind of
certainty in a transsubjective realm. Subjectivity is, thus, inevitably
transcended, just as the sciences are surmounted when they presuppose a
metaphysics. The influential spiritual moralist Friedrich Paulsen defended the
claim that Kant had always behaved as a metaphysician, even in the Critique
of Pure Reason, in spite of the epistemological restrictions that he imposed
upon himself--a claim that made an impact that was felt throughout the following
century.
Inasmuch as the two principal
representatives of the axiological interpretation both taught at Heidelberg,
this branch is also known as the Southwest German or Baden school. Its initiator
was Wilhelm Windelband, esteemed for his "problems" approach to the
history of philosophy. The scholar who systematized this position was his
successor Heinrich Rickert, who had come from
the tradition of Kuno Fischer. Drawing a parallel between the constraints that logic
exerts upon thought and those that the sense of ought exerts upon ethical
action, these thinkers argued that, while man's action
must answer to an absolute value (the Good), his thought
must answer to a regulative value (the True), which imposes upon him the
duty of conforming to it. The Critique of
Pure Reason, they held, elaborates this rule--which is not an entity but an
imperative, or absolute, charge to act. Rickert regarded the critical endeavour
as having been too narrow, since it was suited merely to physics. Actually, he
charged, it should be the foundation for all of the sciences of the spirit. The
distinctive characteristic of this school thus consisted in reintegrating German
Idealism (as in Fichte and Hegel) into a rather personal Kantianism.
Consequently, it succeeded in annexing more than one area of semi-Kantian
thought: e.g., "the philosophy of
the spiritual sciences" of Wilhelm Dilthey,
who held that intellectual life cannot be explained by means of naturalistic
causality but only through historical understanding (Verstehen); "the life-philosophy" of the social
philosopher Georg Simmel, who deviated from an
earlier naturalistic relativism to the espousal of objective values; "the
philosophy of value" of the experimental psychologist Hugo
Münsterberg, author of one of the earliest systems of values; the
"semi-Hegelianism" of Richard Kroner, a philosopher of culture and
religion; and the general works of Bruno Bauch, Liebmann's successor at Jena.
All of these philosophers were more or less related to axiological
Neo-Kantianism. (see also axiology)
An initial attempt to interpret Kantian
transcendentalism in psychological terms was
made by the Friesian Empiricist Jürgen Bona Meyer in his Kants Psychologie (1870). Later, a more important contribution in
this field was made by the Göttingen philosopher of ethics and law Leonard
Nelson and published in the Abhandlungen
der Fries'schen Schule (1904 ff; "Acts of the Friesian School").
Even this title suggests an intimate agreement with the Kantianism of Fries's
new critique of reason (1807); and Nelson, indeed, is regarded as the founder of
the Neo-Friesian school. At a time when other Kantian schools were concerned
with the transcendental analysis of objective or outer knowledge, Nelson held
that, in the analysis of the subjective or inner self, the transcendental
equipment of the mind--the a priori--is directly revealed. It thus fell to
psychology to lay bare this equipment, which belongs in itself to the
metaphysical order. It was upon this basis that the Marburg theologian Rudolf
Otto, in his book Das Heilige (1917; The Idea of
the Holy, 1958), ventured a type of religious phenomenology that has proved
very successful.
A discipline known as the Kant Philologie,
concerned with the history, development, and works of Kant, has pre-empted a
considerable portion of philosophical historiography since 1860. These studies
began with the immense commentary on the Critique
of Pure Reason produced in 1881-92 by Hans
Vaihinger, known for his philosophy of the "As If " (which
stresses man's reliance on pragmatic fictions), and with the founding of the new
journal Kantstudien (1896) and the
Kant-Gesellschaft ("Kantian Society," 1904)--both still extant. The
most conspicuous result of this philological movement, however, was undeniably
the monumental edition, in 23 volumes, of all of Kant's available works prepared
(1900 ff) by the Academy of Sciences at Berlin under the editorship of the
champion of humanistic studies, Wilhelm Dilthey. These volumes include: Sect. 1,
Works; Sect. 2, Correspondence; Sect. 3, The "Nachlass." Since the
transfer of this task to the University of Münster, Sect. 4, Kant's
Lectures, has been undertaken. Those on logic and metaphysics (vols. 24-25) have
been splendidly edited by Gerhard Lehmann.
The recent development of
Neo-Kantianism, except for innumerable historical studies, is very one-sided: no
longer considered as exclusively epistemological, it merely prolongs the
metaphysical school. Moreover, a large portion of the present Kant research is
covered by the so-called Problems of
Kantianism (see below). Important studies have been made on the development
of Kant's philosophical thought, on Kant as a metaphysician, on his ontology and
teachings on science, and on his transcendental deduction.
The Kantian awakening, in no wise
limited to Germany, extended throughout Western philosophy. Its principal
initiators were as follows: France was the first to open to its influence,
beginning with the eclectic thinker Victor Cousin, who had studied German
authors and made several trips to Germany. The relativistic personalist Charles
Renouvier then defended a rather personal critical philosophy, which
exerted an enduring influence through its impact upon the extreme Idealist
Octave Hamelin of the Sorbonne; upon the metaphysician and cofounder of French
neospiritualism Jules Lachelier; and upon his pupil, the philosopher of science
Émile Boutroux.
The English-speaking countries, on the
other hand, have not seemed disposed to assimilate the critical philosophy as
they did Hegelian Idealism. Except for the Scottish religious absolutist Edward
Caird (The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel
Kant, 1889), who was chiefly an Hegelian, there was in Britain at the close
of the 19th century only another Scot, the critical Realist Robert Adamson, who
was a Kantian. After him, however, can be cited the commentary, published in
1918, of Norman Kemp Smith, producer of the standard English translation of
Kant's first Critique, and more
recently, the remarkable exposition by the Oxford Kantian Herbert J. Paton, Kant's
Metaphysic of Experience (2 volumes, 1936). Finally, Kantian methods can be
discerned today in the later work of the prominent Oxford "ordinary
language" philosopher, Peter F. Strawson, entitled Individuals:
An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959). Kantianism became known
in the United States toward 1840 primarily through the New England
transcendentalist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson--who was not, however, a Kantian
himself. The physicist and logician Charles Sanders
Peirce owes his Pragmatism largely to Kant's role as a counterweight
against Hegelianism. The former southern California philosopher William H.
Werkmeister represents a type of Neo-Kantianism inspired by the Marburg school (The
Basis and Structure of Knowledge, 1948). (see also "Critique
of Pure Reason," )
Italian scholars, on the other hand,
have been vigorously engaged in Kantian studies since the initiative was taken
by Alfonso Testa. The chief Neo-Kantian in Italy, however, was the Realist Carlo
Cantoni, who took an anti-Positivist stance. Later, in the period from 1900 to
1918, Kantianism was represented by the extreme Realism of the theist Francesco
Orestano. A school of Kantian philology has formed at Turin around the erudite
Christian Idealist Augusto Guzzo and his journal Filosofia. More independent in spirit is the work of the critical
ontologist Pantaleo Carabellese, Giovanni Gentile's successor at Rome. (see also
idealism)
At the present time there does not
exist, either in Germany or elsewhere, a purely Kantian philosopher; but all
acknowledge the obligation to come to grips with him. Within the four great
currents of contemporary thought, however--i.e.,
in Phenomenology, in the traditionalistic
metaphysics, in Existentialism, and in the Positivistic
Empiricism of the Vienna Circle and of Analytical
philosophy--the predominant attitude toward Kant is negative.
As far as epistemology is concerned, the
critical philosophy constitutes a theory of science that agrees with current
trends; for science must have a base that is empirical though also real. On the
other hand, the transcendental or a priori is implicated; and severe
complications ensue whenever the question is posed whether a type of
apprehension can be acquired apart from experience that conveys, however, some
new and genuine knowledge--whether, in short, synthetic
a priori judgments can be made. Significantly, the founder of
Phenomenology, the German philosopher Edmund Husserl,
came back to the fold of Kantian transcendentalism after previously opposing it
bitterly. As against the Kantian position, Empiricism entirely rejects the
possibility (and even the meaning) of the synthetic a priori and, robbed thereby
of everything traditionally regarded as the subject matter of philosophy,
directs its philosophical inquiries principally to the study of language. The
foremost recent analyst of language, however, the pioneering philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein, imposed upon philosophy the obligation to limit reason (or
the transcendental element in knowledge)--a semi-Kantian position, which he
nonetheless later renounced. As for Existentialism, one of recent Germany's
foremost philosophers, Martin Heidegger, has
presented in his Kant und das Problem der
Metaphysik (1929; Eng. trans., Kant
and the Problem of Metaphysics, 1962) a highly personalized interpretation.
A student of Cohen at Marburg, the metaphysician Nicolai
Hartmann, became the harbinger of the Realistic approach, elaborating in
his analysis of the metaphysics of knowledge (1921) an ontological relation that
he discerned to obtain between two forms of being: between thought and reality.
Accordingly, the principles of thought correspond, in his view, to those of
reality--a position at odds with Kant (even when he is interpreted as a
Realist). Moreover, Hartmann treated the problems of mathematics--so urgent in
current philosophy--in a manner that is again completely opposed to Kant; in
particular, he questioned the validity of Kant's a priori intuition (or
positing) of the spatio-temporal framework in terms of which man thinks about
the world, challenging Kant at this point not merely to accommodate the non-Euclidean
geometries (with curved space) that afforded a Realist alternative to the
a priori but above all to reflect the distinctly logistic position regarding the
foundations of mathematics to which he adhered. Discussion of the status of the thing-in-itself
in man's knowledge of the real remained on the philosophical agenda both during
and after Hartmann's time, but invoked the same indecision as it always had. At
a time when Hartmann was accepting the thing-in-itself almost naïvely,
Empiricism (in all its forms) rejected it categorically and attempted to
construe the real in terms merely of what Kant had called phenomena. In the
realm of ethics, Phenomenologists and Existentialists were dissatisfied with the
purely formal character of Kant's ethics--i.e.,
with its lack of specificity--and substituted a "material" ethic,
of concrete duties, which was no less absolute than that of Kant. For their
part, Empiricists were only interested in the
analysis of expressions of moral judgment, which they reduced to imperative
statements that are emotive and aimed at winning adherents. (see also Marburg
school, mathematics, philosophy of)
It must be acknowledged that Kant has
furnished many of the most significant themes that are found in the currents of
contemporary philosophy, even in the forms that they still assume today. Yet, as
compared with the state of affairs that existed from 1860 to 1918, Kantianism
has suffered an impressive decline--though a slight recovery seems to have
occurred during the third quarter of the 20th century.
What were the reasons for this decline?
In general, since World War I the reduction of philosophy to the philosophy
of science has no longer been accepted, though contemporary Positivistic
Empiricism has offered hardly any objection to it. The philosophy of science
comprises, in fact, only one problem area, not the entire assemblage of philosophical
problems. From this a second objection arises: Kantianism in general is too
formalistic to satisfy man's actual inquisitiveness, which inclines more and
more toward concrete concerns. Kantianism restricts itself to examining the a
priori forms of thought and cares little for its diverse contents. Were this
objection pertinent only to the exact sciences, it would not be serious--for
these sciences attend to their own applications; but the objection becomes very
grave for the field of ethics. For this reason, the objection against Kant's
formalism has been raised most passionately against his ethical treatise, the Critique
of Practical Reason--as by Hartmann, by the Phenomenologist Max Scheler, and
by others. This transcendental formalism immediately encounters the further
objection of subjectivism--in spite of efforts (from the side of logic) to evade
it--i.e., it is blamed for obstructing
man's apprehension of the real universality of his Ego, of the thinking subject,
and for inexorably impelling the scholar to the view that man's knowledge is
merely the product of subjective construction. This subjectivistic
transcendentalism, by its intrinsic logic, denies man access to the external
world. Not only does it debar him from the world of things-in-themselves but it
also prevents him from granting objective reality to phenomena as such, inasmuch
as the transcendental source is here viewed as playing a constructive role with
respect to experience and the phenomenon. (see
also a
priori knowledge, "Critique of Practical
Reason," )
These three major objections, which
stand out in the midst of many criticisms of minor details, recur constantly in
the Kantian literature of the past quarter of a century. The result of these
objections, as far as the evaluation of the critical philosophy is concerned, is
that it is repudiated in its entirety--without, however, being thereby
considered barred by limitation. Kant thus remains, in spite of everything, an
inexhaustible source of problems and ideas, comparable in this respect to Plato
and Aristotle, with whom he forms the great triad of Western philosophical
thought. (H.J. de V.)
|
칸트 (Immanuel Kant). 1724. 4. 22 프로이센
쾨니히스베르크~1804. 2. 12 쾨니히스베르크. 독일의 계몽주의 사상가.
철학사를 통틀어 가장 위대한 철학자 중 한 사람이다.
이마누엘 칸트는 르네 데카르트에서 시작된 합리론과
프랜시스 베이컨에서 시작된 경험론을 종합했다. 그는
철학적 사유의 새로운 한 시대를 열었다. 인식론·윤리학·미학에
걸친 종합적·체계적인 작업은 뒤에 생겨난 철학들에 큰
영향을 주었다.
초기생애
칸트는 1724년 4월 22일 동프로이센 쾨니히스베르크(1946년부터
소련에 속하게 되었음)에서 태어나, 전생애를 거기에서
보냈다. 칸트는 마구상인이었던 아버지가 스코틀랜드에서
이민온 사람의 자손이라고 했지만 뚜렷한 증거를 찾기
어렵다. 어머니는 독일인으로 교육을 받지 못했지만, 타고난
인품과 지성으로 유명했다. 부모 모두 루터교 경건파의
독실한 신자였다. 이 교파는 검소한 내적 삶과 도덕법에
대한 복종을 가르쳤다. 이 교파 목회자의 영향으로 칸트는
교육을 받을 수 있었다.
8세 때 담임목사가 운영하던 경건주의 학교에 들어갔다.
라틴어를 가르치던 이 학교에서 8년 6개월 동안 배웠는데,
일생에 걸쳐 라틴어 고전을 좋아하게 된 것은 바로 이때
받은 교육 때문이었다. 1740년에 쾨니히스베르크대학교에
신학생으로 입학했다. 신학과정을 이수하면서 때때로
설교도 했지만, 주로 흥미를 느낀 것은 수학과 물리학이었다.
합리론 철학을 체계화시킨 크리스티안 볼프를 연구했으며,
동시에 아이작 뉴턴의 과학을 열렬히 신봉했던 어떤 젊은
교수의 도움으로 뉴턴의 저작도 읽기 시작했다. 1744년에는
최초의 책을 썼는데, 주제는 운동력에 관한 것이었다. 당시
그는 학자의 길을 택하기로 마음먹었지만, 1746년 아버지가
죽고, 대학부속학교에서 조교직을 얻는 데 실패하자 그는
가정교사직을 구해서 9년 동안 일했다. 1755년에 친구의
도움으로 대학에서 학위를 마치고 무급(無給) 대학강사가
되었다.
15년 동안의 강사 시기는 칸트가 강사와 저술가로서 점점
큰 명성을 얻게 되는 시절이다. 첫 강의는 수학과 물리학에
관한 것이었고, 과학 발전에 대한 관심을 결코 잃지 않았다.
관심의 수준이 아마추어 이상이었다는 것은 이때부터 몇 년
동안 인종, 바람의 본질, 지진의 원인, 천체에 대한 일반이론
등을 다룬 과학저작들을 다수 발간했다는 사실에서 알 수
있다. 수학과 물리학에서 시작된 강의는 다양한 분야로
확대되었다. 논리학·형이상학·도덕철학 등 철학의
주요분야 및 자연지리학에 이르기까지 강의 주제가
넓어졌다. 글을 쓰는 스타일과 달리 강의는 유머와 박진감이
넘쳤으며, 영국·프랑스의 문학은 물론, 여행기와 지리학,
과학과 철학 등 광범위한 독서에서 얻은 풍부한 실례를 들어
실감 있고 생기 있었다.
쾨니히스베르크에서 교수직을 얻는 데 2번이나
실패했음에도 불구하고 그를 교수로 데리고 가려 한 다른
대학의 제안들을 받아들이지 않았다. 베를린대학교는 다른
곳에 비해 많은 특권을 부여하면서까지 시학 교수로
초빙했으나 이것도 거절했다. 그는 고향에서 조용하고
평화롭게 지내면서 자신의 철학을 발전시키고 완성해가기를
더 원했다.
이 시기에 칸트는 뉴턴 물리학의 과학적 내용과 철학적
함축을 똑같이 중요하게 생각했다. 칸트는 뉴턴의
사유방법과 당시 볼프와 알렉산더 코틀리프 바움가르텐에
의해 체계화되고 대중화되어 독일대학에 널리 퍼져 있던
코틀리프 빌헬름 라이프니츠의
철학을 서로 대립적인 것으로 보았다. 뉴턴을 지지하고
라이프니츠를 비판했지만, 1750년대에는 라이프니츠
형이상학의 전제들에 관해 노골적으로 도전하지는 않았다.
그러나 1760년대에 들어서는 라이프니츠주의에 대한 비판의
강도를 점점 높여갔다. 어떤 제자의 증언에 따르면 당시
칸트는 라이프니츠·볼프·바움가르텐을 공격하면서, 자신을
뉴턴의 추종자로 선언했고, 장 자크 루소의 도덕철학에 큰
찬사를 표했다고 한다. 라이프니츠 철학에 대한 칸트의
비판은 크게 두 방향에서 이루어진다. 우선 철학은 수학을
모델로 하여 자명한 전제들에 근거해서 증명된 진리의
체계를 구성하는 것을 목표로 삼아야 한다는
라이프니츠주의 철학의 방법적 주장을 공격했다. 그리고
라이프니츠주의자의 핵심적인 이론들을 비판했다. 모순과
인과에 대한 논리주의적 입장, 존재론적 신의 증명,
공간개념 등이 주요한 비판의 쟁점이었다. 마침내 1770년
칸트는 15년간의 무급 대학강사 생활을 마감하고
쾨니히스베르크대학교에서 논리학·형이상학 교수로
임명되었다. 이때부터 죽기 몇 년 전까지 그는 다양한
문제에 대해서 놀랄 만큼 독창적인 저작들을 연달아
발표한다. 이미 비판철학의 중요한 요소들을 많이 포함하고
있던 1770년의 교수취임논문 이후 11년 동안 아무 글도
발표하지 않고 연구에 전념한 끝에 1781년 〈순수이성비판
Kritik der reinen Vernunft〉이 나오는데, 이때부터 비판철학
시기가 시작된다.
비판철학 시기
1781년 〈순수이성비판〉이
나온 이후 9년 동안 위대하고 독창적인 저술들이 계속
나옴으로써 단기간 동안 철학 사상에서의 혁명이 일어나고
이후 철학의 나아갈 방향이 정립된다. 〈순수이성비판〉은
칸트가 10년 동안 생각하고 명상한 결과이다. 그럼에도
불구하고 칸트는 여러 번 연기하면서 주저한 끝에 초판을
발간했다. 자기 이론이 옳다는 것을 확신했지만, 해명을
제대로 했다고 확신하지 못했기 때문이다. 그의 걱정은
적중했다. 그는 이 책에 대한 해석자들의 비판이 많은
오해를 범하고 있다고 불평했다. 그래서 자신에 대한 잘못된
해석들을 바로 잡기 위해 〈학으로 성립할 수 있는 모든
미래의 형이상학에 대한 입문 Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen
Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können〉(1783)을 썼고,
1789년에는 초판을 개정하여 재판을 발간했다. 이 두 판의
장단점에 대한 논쟁은 아직도 계속되고 있다. 관념론적인
해석을 선호하는 독자들은 보통 초판을 더 좋아하고, 반면에
실재론적인 견해를 가진 사람들은 재판을 선호한다. 그러나
읽고 이해하기 어렵기는 모두 마찬가지이다. 이 책이 난해한
이유는 칸트가 고도의 전문적 기법과 엄밀성을 추구하던
볼프나 바움가르텐의 저작을 철학 저술의 모범으로 삼고
썼기 때문이다.
〈순수이성비판〉은 형이상학에
대한 저술이다. 칸트는 여기서 자기 이전의 형이상학이
잘못된 것임을 보여주면서 새로운 형이상학의 기초를
닦고자 했다. 그의 주된 공격대상은 라이프니츠주의
형이상학이었다. 라이프니츠주의 형이상학은 신, 인간의
자유, 영혼불멸 등 본성상 경험의 대상이 될 수 없는 것들에
대해서도 인간 정신이 순수사유를 통해 참된 인식에 도달할
수 있다는 점을 전제하고 있다고 비판했다. 인간 정신은
결코 그런 능력을 갖고 있지 않기 때문에 라이프니츠주의
형이상학은 다 속임수라는 것이다. 칸트에 따르면 진정한
학으로서 형이상학이 당면한 문제는 어떻게 학의 원리들이
한편으로는 필연적이고 보편적이면서도(이것은 모든 학적
인식의 조건임) 다른 한편으로는 실재에 대한 인식을 포함해
탐구자에게 그가 이미 알고 있는 것 속에 분석적으로
포함되어 있는 것, 즉 그 의미 속에 함축되어 있는 것 이상을
알 수 있게 하는가를 설명하는 것이었다. 이 두 조건을
만족시키려면 인식이 선험적이면서 동시에 종합적인 판단에
의존해야 한다는 것이 칸트의 주장이다. 왜냐하면 우연적인
경험들로부터 분리되어 선험적일 때에만 필연적일 수 있고,
그러면서 동시에 주어에 분석적으로 포함되지 않은 것을
술어가 포함하고 있으면서 종합적이어야 하기 때문이다.
예를 들어 '모든 물체는 연장적이다'라는 명제는 종합적이지
않고 분석적이다. 왜냐하면 연장개념이 물체 개념에 이미
포함되어 있기 때문이다. 반면에 '모든 물체는 무게를
가진다'라는 명제는 종합적이다. 왜냐하면 무게는 물체
개념에 덧붙여서 물체들이 서로 관계되어 있다는 개념을
전제하기 때문이다. 그래서 칸트는 이 문제를 "선험적
종합판단이 어떻게(즉 어떤 조건 아래에서) 가능한가?"라는
물음으로 정식화했고, 이 문제를 밝히는 것이
〈순수이성비판〉의 근본 문제가 된다.
칸트에 따르면 이 문제는 수학·물리학·형이상학의 세
영역에서 제기된다. 그리고 〈순수이성비판〉의 1부 '초월적
원리론'의 세 부분이 각각 한 영역씩 다룬다. '초월적 감성론'에서
칸트는 수학이 시간과
공간을 다룬다는 것을 논증했고, 또 시간과 공간은 둘 다
인간 감성의 선험적 형식으로서 감관을 통해 포착되는 것의
조건이라고 주장했다. 가장 어려우면서 가장 핵심적인
부분인 '초월적 분석론'에서는 물리학이 선험적이면서
종합적인데 그 이유는 물리학이 경험을 질서지울 때 특별한
종류의 개념을 사용하기 때문이라고 주장했다. 칸트가 '범주'라고
불렀던 이 개념들은 경험을 통해 생긴 것이 아니고 오히려
경험을 해석하는 전제가 되기 때문에 선험적이며,
경험적이지 않다는 점에서 순수한 것이다. 그러나 범주는 그
기원 면에서만 경험적 개념과 다른 것은 아니다. 인식에서의
역할이 전혀 다르다. 경험적 개념은 특정한 경험들을 서로
관련지어서 구체적으로 질서지워진 경험을 산출하는 반면,
범주는 이 구체적인 질서지움이 따라야 할 일반 형식을
제시하는 기능을 가진다. 달리 말하면 범주는 인식의 틀에
해당한다. 그러나 비록 범주가 객관적 인식을 위해 반드시
필요하지만, 범주가 줄 수 있는 인식은 단지 가능한 경험의
대상에 대한 것이다. 범주는 감각을 통해 시공 중에
주어지는 것을 질서지울 때만 타당하고 실질적인 인식을 줄
수 있다. '초월적 변증론'에서는 형이상학의 선험적
종합판단들을 검토한다. 칸트에 따르면 여기서는 상황이
수학이나 물리학과는 반대이다. 형이상학은 감각경험을
초월하여 절대적 무제약자를 추구하기 때문에
감각경험으로부터 스스로를 차단해버린다. 이때문에 진정한
선험적 종합판단을 확보할 수 없게 된다. 자신의 주장을
정당화하기 위해 칸트는 형이상학이 영혼·세계·신과 같은
무제약자 개념을 어떻게 사용하고 있는지를 분석하여,
형이상학의 시도가 이율배반에 빠지고 실패할 수밖에 없는
운명임을 밝히려 했다.
칸트는 〈순수이성비판〉을 통해 철학에서
코페르니쿠스적 혁명을 성취했다고 자랑스럽게 주장했다.
근대 천문학을 기초한 코페르니쿠스가 겉으로 보기에 별이
움직이는 것처럼 보이는 현상을 사실은 관찰자가
움직인다는 사실을 통해 설명했던 것과 마찬가지로, 칸트는
마음의 선험적인 원리가 대상에 적용됨을 설명함으로써
마음이 대상에 따르는 것이 아니라 대상이 마음에 따른다는
것을 보여주었기 때문이다.
그러나 칸트가 형이상학을 비판한 것은 결코 종교와
도덕을 거부하기 위한 것이 아니다. 오히려 그는 형이상학을
'확실한 학의 길 위에' 올려놓으려 했고 이것이 비판철학의
진정한 의도였다. 이런 의도 때문에 칸트는 앞서 발간한
〈도덕형이상학기초 Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten〉(1785)를
체계적으로 확대하여 1788년 〈실천이성비판
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft〉을 발간함으로써 진정한 도덕의
체계를 제시하려 했다. 〈실천이성비판〉에서 확립한
원리를 구체적인 차원에 적용하려는 노력을 계속하여, 1797년에
발간된 사회철학저술인 〈도덕형이상학 Die Metaphysik der Sitten〉에서는
덕의 문제를 검토하고 법과 정치의 기초를 제시한다.
비판철학을 마감하는 제3비판서인 〈판단력비판
Kritik der Urteilskraft〉(1790)에서는 크게 2가지 문제를 다룬다.
첫째, 미의 문제를 다룸으로써 최초의 체계적인 미학을
제시하고 있으며, 둘째, 자연에서 목적론의 문제를 심각하게
다룬다.
말년
비판철학은 곧 독일어를 쓰는 모든 중요한 대학에서
강의되었고 많은 젊은이들이 철학의 성지가 된
쾨니히스베르크에 몰려들었다. 그들은 마치 신탁을
구하듯이 칸트에게서 온갖 종류의 문제에 대한 답을 구하려
했다. 이런 존경을 받으면서도 칸트는 자신의 규칙적인
습관을 어긴 적이 없으며 엄격한 생활을 유지했다. 5피트가
채 되지 않는 키에 기형적인 가슴을 가진 칸트는 몸이
약했기 때문에 평생 엄격한 식생활을 했다. 칸트 때문에 '철학자의
산책로'라 이름붙여진 거리를 규칙적으로 산책했기 때문에,
사람들이 그의 산책을 기준으로 시간을 맞추었다. 그는
노령으로 산책이 힘들어질 때까지 루소의 〈에밀 Émile〉을
읽는 데 열중하느라 며칠 집에서 나오지 않은 때를
제외하고는 1번도 규칙적 산책을 어긴 적이 없었다.
〈판단력비판〉이 출판됨으로써 칸트의 중요한 철학
저작은 완성된 셈이다. 1790년부터 그는 건강이 심각할
정도로 나빠지기 시작했다. 여전히 그는 많은 저술계획을
가지고 있었지만, 하루 2~3시간 이상 저술활동을 하는 것은
불가능했다. 그때 그가 완성한 저작들은 한편으로는 전에는
자세히 다룬 적이 없는 주제들을 정교하게 다루는 것이었고,
다른 한편으로는 비판과 명확한 오해들에 대답하는
것이었다. 1793년 〈이성의 한계 내에서의 종교
Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft〉를 출간하면서
칸트는 프로이센 당국과 종교의 믿음을 표현할 권리에 대한
논쟁에 휘말려들었다. 이 책에서 종교에 접근해가는
지나치게 합리주의적인 태도가 정통종교에 문제가 되었다.
그래서 칸트는 성서와 그리스도교의 중요한 많은 근본
교리를 왜곡한 책임을 지고, 종교적 주제에 대한 강의나
저술활동을 금지당했다. 칸트는 일단 수긍했지만 이 금지를
왕에 대한 개인적 약속으로 여겼고, 1797년 왕이 죽자 스스로
이 금지에서 풀린 것으로 생각했다. 그래서 1798년에는 그의
마지막 주요저서인 〈학부들의 논쟁 Der Streit der Fakultäten〉에서
금지된 주제를 다시 다루었다.
그가 죽을 때까지 열심히 쓴 방대한 유고는 베를린판
전집의 마지막 2권에 모아져 있는데, 내용은 주로
비판철학을 더욱 발전시키려던 것이었다. 그러나 그
유고들은 미완성 저작이라기보다는 어떤 저작을 준비하기
위한 단편적인 메모들이다. 그가 쓰려 한 책의 제목은
〈자연과학의 형이상학적 근거로부터 물리학으로의 이행
Übergang von den metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft zur
Physik〉이었다. 이 책은 〈자연 과학의 형이상학적 근거
Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft〉(1786)에서 제시한
주장을 더욱 발전시켜, 자연과학의 일반적 체제만이 아니라
상당히 자세한 부분까지도 선험적으로 구성할 수 있음을
보이려고 했던 것 같다. 남아 있는 유고들로 판단해볼 때,
비록 유고의 양이 많기는 하지만, 그 유고가 완성되었더라도
비판철학의 체계와 명성에 중요한 내용이 덧붙여질 수
있었을지는 의문이다. 점점 쇠약해지면서 고통스런 나날을
보내다가 1804년 2월 12일 칸트는 쾨니히스부르크에서 죽었다.
그의 마지막 말은 "이제 되었다"는 것이었다. 그의
묘비에는 제2비판의 결론에서 선언한 다음 문구가 새겨져
있다. "더욱더 자주, 그리고 더욱더 곰곰이 생각해볼수록,
내 위에 별이 반짝이는 하늘과 내 속의 도덕법칙은 더욱더
새롭고 큰 존경과 경외심으로 마음을 가득 채워준다."
O. A. Bird 글
|
|
MAJOR WORKS
PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS: Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte und
Beurteilung der Beweise derer sich Herr von Leibniz und anderer Mechaniker in
dieser Streitsache bedient haben (1746); Allgemeine
Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (1755; Kant's Cosmogony . .
. ,
1900 and 1968; Universal Natural History and Theories of the Heavens, 1969); Principiorum
Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidatio (1755; Eng. trans. by
F.E. England in Kant's Conception of God, 1929);
Metaphysicae cum geometria iunctae usus in
philosophia naturali, cuius specimen I. continet Monadologiam physicam (1756);
Versuch einiger Betrachtungen über
den Optimismus (1759); Die falsche
Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figurerewiesen (1762; trans. in Kant's
Introduction to Logic and His Essay on the Mistaken Subtilty of the Four
Figures, 1963); Der einzige mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns
Gottes (1763; Enquiry into the Proofs
for the Existence of God, 1836); Versuch,
den Begriff der negativen Grössen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen (1763;
An Attempt to Introduce the Conception of
Negative Quantities into Philosophy, 1911); Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen
Theologie und der Moral (1764); Beobachtungen
über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (1764, 1766, 1771; Observations
on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, 1960); Träume
eines Geistersehers erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik (1766; Dreams
of a Spirit-Seer, Illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics, 1900; Dreams
of a Spirit Seer, and Other Related Writings, 1969); De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis:
Dissertatio (1770; Kant's Inaugural
Dissertation and Early Writings on Space, 1929); Von den Verschiedenen Racen der Menschen (1775).
CRITICAL AND POST-CRITICAL WRITINGS: Critik
der reinen Vernunft (1781; rev. ed., Kritik
der reinen Vernunft, 1787; Critique of
Pure Reason, 1929, 1950); Prolegomena
zur einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können
(1783; Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics, 1951); Grundlegung zur
Metaphysik der Sitten (1785; The
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, 1938; The
Moral Law; or, Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 1948; Foundations
of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1969); Metaphysische
Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (1786; Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science, 1970); Critik
der practischen Vernunft (1788; Critique
of Practical Reason, 1949); Critik der
Urteilskraft (1790, 2nd ed. 1793; Kant's
Kritik of Judgment, 1892, reprinted as Kant's
Critique . . ., 1914; new version, Critique
. . ., vol. 1, Kant's Critique of
Aesthetic Judgment and vol. 2, Critique
of Teleological Judgment, 1911-28, republished 1952); Über eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neu Critik der reinen Vernunft
durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll (1790; 2nd ed.,
1791); Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen
der blossen Vernunft (1793; 2nd ed., 4 pt., 1794; Religion Within the Boundary of Pure Reason, 1838; Religion
Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 2nd ed., 1960); Zum
ewigen Frieden (1795; 2nd ed., 1796; Project
for a Perpetual Peace, 1796, many later editions
called Perpetual Peace; 1915 ed.
reprinted 1972); Die Metaphysik der Sitten
(1797; 2nd ed., 1798-1803; The
Metaphysic of Morals, 2 vol., 1799 and 1965; The
Metaphysic of Ethics, 1836), comprising Metaphysische
Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre (The
Philosophy of Law, 1887) and Metaphysische
Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre (The
Doctrine of Virtue, 1964); Der Streit
der Facultäten (1798); Von der
Macht des Gemüths durch den blossen Vorsatz seiner krankhaften Gefühle
Meister zu seyn (1798; Kant on the Art
of Preventing Diseases, 1806); Anthropologie
in pragmatischer Hinsicht abgefasst (1798; improved ed., 1800; The
Classification of Mental Disorders, 1964); Immanuel
Kants Physische Geographie, 3 vol. in 6 pt., 1801-04); I.
Kants Logik: Ein Handbuch zu Vorlesungen (1800; Logic,
1819); Immanuel Kant über Pädagogik
(1803; Kant on Education, 1899; The
Educational Theory of Immanuel Kant, 1904; Education,
1960); Welches sind die wirklichen
Fortschritte, die Metaphysik seit Leibnizens und Wolf's Zeiten in Deutschland
gemacht hat? (1804).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The main sources for Kant's life are
three memoirs published in 1804: LUDWIG ERNEST VON BOROWSKI, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kants (reprinted
1968); REINHOLD B. JACHMANN, Immanuel Kant
geschildert in Briefen an einen Freund (reprinted 1968); and CHRISTOPH
WASIANSKI, Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten
Lebensjahren (the basis of THOMAS DE QUINCEY'S "The Last Days of
Kant" included in his Works). See
also JOHN H.W. STUCKENBERG, The Life of
Immanuel Kant (1882); FRIEDRICH PAULSEN, Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine (1902, reissued 1963;
originally published in German, 1898); ERNST CASSIRER, Kant's Life and Thought (1981; trans. of 2nd German ed., 1921); and
KARL VORLÄNDER, Immanuel Kants Leben,
3rd ed. (1974), and Immanuel Kant: Der
Mann und das Werk, 2 vol. (1924, reissued 1977).
The standard edition of Kant's works is
that of the Berlin Academy (later the DDR Academy), Gesammelte Schriften (1902- ), 29 vol. by 1980, which contains
Kant's lectures, correspondence, and literary remains as well as his published
writings. There are also modern collected editions by ERNST CASSIRER, 11 vol.
(1912-23); and by KARL VORLÄNDER, 10 vol. (1920-29). A convenient edition
of the Critique of Pure Reason is that
by RAYMOND SCHMIDT, 1926).
RUDOLF EISLER, Kant-lexicon (1930, reprinted 1971); HEINRICH RATKE, Systematisches
Handlexikon zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1929, reprinted 1965).
The best introduction is STEPHAN KÖRNER,
Kant (1955, reissued 1982). See also
EDWARD CAIRD, The Critical Philosophy of
Immanuel Kant, 2 vol. (1889, reprinted 1969); KUNO FISCHER, Kants
Leben und die Grundlagen seiner Lehre (1860); ALOIS RIEHL, Der
philosophische Kriticismus . . . , 3rd ed., 3 vol. (1924-26); BRUNO BAUCH, Immanuel
Kant, 4th ed. (1933), in German; HENRICH RICKERT, Kant
als Philosoph der modernen Kultur (1924); MAX WUNDT, Kant als Metaphysiker (1924); MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Kant
and the Problem of Metaphysics (1962, reissued 1972; originally published in
German, 1929); HERMAN J. DE VLEESCHAUWER, La
Déduction transcendentale dans l'oeuvre de Kant, 3 vol. (1934,
reissued 1976), and L'Évolution de
la pensée kantienne (1939); PANTALEO CARABELLESE, Il
problema della filosofia in Kant (1938); GOTTFRIED MARTIN, Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science (1955, reissued 1974;
originally published in German, 1951); HEINZ HEIMSOETH, Studien zur Philosophie Immanuel Kants, 2nd ed. (1971); RICHARD
KRONER, Kant's Weltanschauung (1956;
originally published in German, 1914); FRIEDRICH DELEKAT, Immanuel Kant, 3rd ed. (1969), in German.
MARIANO CAMPO, La genesi del criticismo kantiano (1953); GIORGIO TONELLI, Elementi
metodologici e metafisici in Kant dal 1745 al 1768 (1969), in German.
NORMAN KEMP SMITH, A Commentary to Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," 2nd ed.
rev. (1923, reissued 1979); HERBERT J. PATON, Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, 2 vol. (1936); ALFRED C. EWING, A
Short Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1938, reprinted 1974);
THOMAS D. WELDON, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed. (1958); HERMANN COHEN, Kants
Theorie der Erfahrung, 4th ed. (1925), and Kommentar
zu Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 4th ed. (1925); HANS
VAIHINGER, Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der
reinen Vernunft, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1922, reissued 1970); HEINZ HEIMSOETH, Transzendentale
Dialektik, 3rd vol. (1966-69). See also GRAHAM BIRD, Kant's
Theory of Knowledge (1962, reissued 1973); PETER F. STRAWSON, The
Bounds of Sense (1966, reissued 1975).
JEFFIRIE G. MURPHY, Kant: The Philosophy of Right (1970); PAUL A. SCHILPP, Kant's
Pre-Critical Ethics, 2nd ed. (1960, reprinted 1977); HERBERT J. PATON, The
Categorical Imperative (1947, reissued 1971); ORNA NELL, Acting
on Principle: An Essay on Kantian Ethics (1975); VIGGO ROSSVAER, Kant's
Moral Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Categorical Imperative (1979);
LEWIS W. BECK, A Commentary on Kant's
Critique of Practical Reason (1960); A.E. TEALE, Kantian
Ethics (1951, reprinted 1975); WILLIAM D. ROSS, Kant's Ethical Theory (1954, reprinted 1978); HERMANN COHEN, Kants
Begründung der Ethik, 2nd ed. (1910); MAX SCHELER, Der
Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 6th ed. (1980). See
also PAUL MENZER'S ed. of Eine Vorlesung
Kants über Ethik (1924; Eng. trans., Lectures
on Ethics by Immanuel Kant, (1930); MORRIS STOCKHAMMER, Kants Zurechnungsidee und Freitheitsantinomie (1961); HENRICH W.
CASSIRER, A Commentary on Kant's Critique
of Judgement (1938, reprinted 1970); ALFRED BAEUMLER, Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft (1923).
(Science):
ERICH ADICKES, Kant als Naturforscher,
2 vol. (1924-25); JULES VUILLEMIN, Physique
et métaphysique kantiennes (1955). (Ontology):
CHRISTOPHER B. GARNETT, The Kantian
Philosophy of Space (1939, reprinted 1965); MARTIN HEIDEGGER, Kants
These über das Sein (1963), and What
Is a Thing? (1968; originally published in German, 1962). (Philosophy
of history): YIRMIAHU YOVEL, Kant and
the Philosophy of History (1980); KLAUS WEYAND, Kants Beschichtsphilosophie: Ihre Entwicklung und ihr Verhältnis
zur Aufklärung (1963). (Political
philosophy): SUSAN M. SHELL, The
Rights of Reason: A Study of Kant's Philosophy and Politics (1980); GEORGES
VLACHOS, La Pensée politique de
Kant (1962). (Religion): CLEMENT
C.J. WEBB, Kant's Philosophy of Religion
(1926, reprinted 1970); JOSEF BOHATEC, Die
Religionsphilosophie Kants . . . (1938, reprinted 1966); ALLAN W. WOOD, Kant's
Rational Theology (1978). (Comparative
studies): JOHANNES B. LOTZ (ed.), Kant
und die Scholastik heute (1955); KARL JASPERS, Die
grossen Philosophen, 2 vol. (1957-81; abridged Eng. trans., The Great Philosophers, ed. by HANNAH ARENDT, 1966). (Aesthetics):
DONALD W. CRAWFORD, Kant's Aesthetic
Theory (1974); PAUL GUYER, Kant and
the Claims of Taste (1979).
ERICH ADICKES, Kants Opus Postumum (1920, reprinted 1978); GERHARD LEHMANN, Kants
Nachiasswerk und die Kritik der Urteilskraft (1939).
Many important works of Kantian
scholarship have been published in the periodical Kant-studien
(quarterly).
Though the literature on Kant himself
comprises innumerable titles, that on Kantianism is relatively scanty. One work
that contains the complete history of Kantianism is Freidrich Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, 13th
ed. (1953), vol. 3:606-620 and 4:1-128 for the first period and pp. 410-483 for
the second. For the first period, there is an abundant literature. Of particular
interest for the present purposes are JOHANN E. ERDMANN, Versuch
einer wissenschaftlichen Darstellung der Geschichte der neuern Zeit, 2nd
ed., vol. 3 (1923); and G. LEHMANN, "Kant im Spätidealismus und die
Anfänge der neukantischen Bewegung," in Zeitschrift
für philosophische Forschung, 17:438-456 (1963). For the second period,
MARIANO CAMPO has begun the history in his Schizzo
storico della esegesi e critica Kantiana (1959); and summaries have been
written by LEWIS W. BECK in the Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, 5:468-473 (1967, reissued 1972); and by HERMANN NOACK in his Die
Philosophie Westeuropas, pp. 143-196 (1962). See also the Enciclopedia
Filosofica, new ed., vol. 3, col. 1225, and vol. 4, col. 953 (1967);
WOLFGANG RITZEL, Studien zum Wandel der
Dantauffassung (1952); HENRI DUSSORT, L'École
de Marbourg (1963); and HEINRICH RICKERT, Die Heidelberger Tradition und Kants Kritizismus (1934).
|
