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Critique Of Pure Reason

Critique of Pure Reason

The Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), first published in 1781 with a second edition in 1787, is widely regarded as the most influential and widely read work of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and one of the most influential and important in the entire history of Western philosophy. It is often referred to as Kant's "first critique," and was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgment. Regarded as a ground-breaking work in Western philosophy, Kant saw the first critique as an attempt to bridge the gap between rationalism and empiricism and, in particular, to counter the radical empiricism of David Hume.

Kant's rejection of Hume's empiricism

Hume's conclusions, Kant realized, rested on the premise that knowledge is empirical at its root. The problem that Hume identified was that basic principles like cause and effect cannot be empirically derived. Kant's goal, then, was to find some way to derive cause and effect without relying on empirical knowledge. Kant rejects analytical methods for this, arguing that analytic reasoning can't tell you anything that isn't already self-evident. Instead, Kant argued that we would need to use synthetic reasoning. But this posed a new problem—how can one have synthetic knowledge that is not based on empirical observation—that is, how can we have synthetic a priori truths. a priori Kant concluded that there are synthetic a priori truths. He reasoned that geometry and Newtonian physics are synthetic a priori knowledges and are fundamentally true and wanted to establish how this could be possible. This also led him to inquire whether it could be possible to ground synthetic a priori knowledge for a study of metaphysics, because most of the principles of metaphysics from Plato through Kant's immediate predecessors made assertions about the world or about God or about the soul that were not self-evident but which could not be derived from empirical observation. This led to his most influential contribution to metaphysics: the abandonment of the quest to try to know the world as it is "in itself" independent of our sense experience. He demonstrated this with a thought experiment, showing that we cannot meaningfully conceive of an object that exists outside of time and has no spatial components and isn't structured in according with the categories of the understanding, such as substance and causality. Although we cannot conceive of such an object, Kant argues, there is no way of showing that such an object does not exist. Therefore, Kant says, metaphysics must not try to talk about what exists, but instead about what is experienced and how it is experienced. thought experiment This provided Kant with the basis to distinguish between phenomena -- things as they appear to our senses (including the inner sense of time) -- and noumena -- things that are purely objects of thought independently of sense perception, which, by definition, we can never experience -- in Kant's words, "thoughts without content [are] empty, and intuitions without concepts [are] blind". The phenomenon is only the representation of the noumenon that a person receives through their sensibilities and structures in accordance with the categories of the understanding. The noumenon exists as the horizon of our experience of a thing, a horizon that can only be circumscribed with philosophical concepts. Kant's whole metaphysical system, which is based on the operations of cognitive faculties, was meant to describe the world as we experience it—a much more modest task than describing the world as it is beyond our experience of it, which, according to Kant, is what all previous philosophy was mistakenly trying to do. Kant termed his critical philosophy "transcendental idealism" (Transcendental Idealism), which for him is intimately linked with empirical realism. That is, our empirical knowledge is real, but it cannot know what transcends the operations of our cognitive faculties. Transcendental idealism describes Kant's method of seeking the conditions of the possibility of our knowledge of the world and recognizes that there are things that transcend the limits of our cognitive faculties. It is because of taking into account the role of our cognitive faculties in structuring the known and knowable world that in the second preface to the "Critique of Pure Reason" Kant compares his critical philosophy to Copernicus' revolution in astronomy. Kant writes: "Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge" [Bxvi]. Just as Copernicus revolutionized astronomy by changing the point of view and taking the position of the observer into account, Kant's critical philosophy takes into account the position of the knower of the world in general and reveals its impact on the structure of his known world. Kant's "transcendental idealism" (Transcendental Idealism) should be distinguished from idealistic systems such as Berkeley's. While Kant claimed that phenomena depend upon the conditions of sensibility, space and time, and on the synthesizing activity of the mind manifested in the rule-based structuring of perceptions into a world of objects, this thesis is not equivalent to mind-dependence in the sense of Berkeley's idealism. For Berkeley, something is an object only if it can be perceived. For Kant, on the other hand, perception does not provide the criterion for the existence of objects. Rather, the conditions of sensibility (space and time) and the categories of the understanding provide the "epistemic conditions", to borrow a phrase from Henry Allison, required for us to know objects in the phenomenal world.

Kant's approach

The Critique of Pure Reason is an attempt to answer two questions: "What do we know?" and "How do we know it?". Kant approaches the questions by looking at the relationship between knowledge based on reason (what we know purely logically, prior to or independently of experience, or a priori) and knowledge based on experience (what we know based on the input of our senses or a posteriori). In Kant's view, a priori intuitions and concepts provide us with some a priori knowledge, which also provides the framework for our a posteriori knowledge. For example, Kant argues that space and time are not part of what we might regard as objective reality, but are part of the apparatus of perception, and causality is a conceptual organizing principle that we impose upon nature. In other words, space and time are a form of seeing and causality is a form of knowing. Both space and time and our conceptual principles and processes pre-structure our experience. When we see a box as three-dimensional, the shape of the box may not be part of the box's nature. Kant argues that the spatio-temporal aspect of our perception of the shape of the box comes from us, in interaction with the box, not just from the box itself. When we experience events as causing other events, it is because we have a concept of causality in nature into which we fit our experience. Things as they are "in themselves" are unknowable. For something to become an object of knowledge, it must be experienced, and experience is prestructured by the activity of our own minds -- both space and time as the forms of our intuition or perception, and the unifying, structuring activity of our concepts. These two aspects of our minds turn things-in-themselves into the world of our experience. We are never passive observers or knowers. Kant's I—the Transcendental Unity of Apperception—is similarly unknowable. I am aware that there is an "I", subject, or self that accompanies all of my experience and consciousness. But since I only experience it in time, which is a "subjective" form of perception, I can never know directly that "I" that is appearing in time as it might be "in itself", outside of time. Thus we can never truly know ourselves as we might be outside of or prior to the forms through which we perceive and conceive ourselves.

Transcendental Aesthetic

Kant separates the mind into two faculties, intuition and understanding. The Transcendental Aesthetic is that part of the CPR that considers the contribution of intuition to our knowledge or cognition. In discussing intuition Kant says: "In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intution is that through which it is in immediate relation to them" (A19/B33). Intuition is responsible for providing the mind with objects, or what Kant calls "appearances". Kant then goes on to distinguish between the matter and the form of appearances. The matter is "that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation" (A20/B34). The form is "that which so determines the manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in certain relations" (A20/B34). Kant's revolutionary claim is that the form of appearances — which he later identifies as space and time — is a contribution made by the faculty of intuition to cognition, rather than something that exists independently of the mind. This is Kant's doctrine that space and time are transcendentally ideal. Kant's arguments for this conclusion are widely debated amongst Kant scholars. Some see the argument as based on Kant's conclusions that our representation of space and time is an a priori intuition. From here Kant is thought to argue that our representation of space and time as a priori intuitions entails that space and time are transcendentally ideal (see Henry Allison, "Kant's Transcendental Idealism"). Others see the argument as based upon the question of whether synthetic a priori judgments are possible. Kant is taken to argue that the only way synthetic a priori judgments, such as those made in geometry, are possible is if space is transcendentally ideal.

Transcendental Logic

The Transcendental Logic is that part of the CPR where Kant investigates the understanding and its role in constituting our knowledge. The understanding is defined as the faculty of the mind which deals with concepts (A51-52/B75-76). The Logic is divided into two parts: the Analytic and the Dialectic. In the Analytic Kant investigates the contributions of the understanding to knowledge. In the Dialectic Kant investigates the limits of the understanding. The idea of a transcendental logic is that of a logic which gives an account of the origins of our knowledge as well as its relationship to objects. This is contrasted by Kant with the idea of a general logic, which abstracts from the conditions under which our knowledge is acquired, and from any relation that knowledge has to objects.

Transcendental Analytic

The Transcendental Analytic is divided into an Analytic of Concepts and an Analytic of Principles, as well as a third section concerned with the distinction between phenomena and noumena. The main sections of the Analytic of Concepts are The Metaphysical Deduction and the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. The main sections of the Analytic of Principles are the Schematism, Axioms of Intuition, Anticipations of Perception, Analogies of Experience, Postulates and The Refutation of Idealism.

The Metaphysical Deduction

In the Metaphysical Deduction Kant aims to derive the pure concepts of the understanding (what he also calls "categories") from the logical forms of judgment. In the Metaphysical Deduction Kant introduces his table of judgments which he uses to guide the derivation of the table of categories.

The Transcendental Deduction

In the Transcendental Deduction Kant aims to show that the categories are applicable to the objects of experience which are given to us through intuition. Kant rewrote the entire Transcendental Deduction for the second edition of the Critique, published 6 years after the first edition.

The Refutation of Idealism

In order to answer criticisms of the Critique of Pure Reason that Transcendental Idealism denied the reality of external objects, Kant added a section to the second edition (1787) entitled "The Refutation of Idealism" that turns the "game" of idealism against itself by arguing that self-consciousness presupposes external objects in space. Defining self-consciousness as a determination of the self in time, Kant argues that all determinations of time presuppose something permanent in perception and that this permanent cannot be in the self, since it is only through the permanent that one's existence in time can itself be determined. This argument inverted the supposed priority of inner over outer experience that had dominated philosophies of mind and knowledge since Descartes.

Transcendental Dialectic

Terms

Intuition

"Intuition" is "the faculty or power of receiving representations"(see Second Part, Transcendental Logic, Of Logic in General). Objects are given to use through intuition. Intuition can be pure or empirical. Pure intuition contains the a priori forms under which objects of senses can be intuited—such as the space and time. Without these a priori forms, objects of senses cannot be perceived or thought of. Pure intuition is only possible a priori. Empirical intuition includes sensation—which presupposes the actual presence of an object. It is only possible a posteriori.

External links

- [http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Kant/cpr E-text] (Norman Kemp Smith translation, searchable)
- [http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=4280 Raw e-text] (J. M. D. Meiklejohn translation)
- (Meiklejohn translation)
- [http://marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/index.htm Summaries and references] (from marxists.org)
- [http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/ksp1/KSPglos.html Glossary of Kant's Technical Terms]
- [http://www.litfix.com/kant/reason/index.html HTML online text] (Meiklejohn)
- [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/critique-of-pure-reason.txt Online text] (Meiklejohn) Category:1781 books Category:Philosophy books ja:純粋理性批判

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) was a German philosopher and scientist (astrophysics, mathematics, geography, anthropology) from East Prussia, generally considered to be one of Western society's and modern Europe's most influential thinkers and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Kant and his philosophy

Kant defined the Enlightenment, in the essay "Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?", as an age shaped by the motto, "Dare to know". This involved thinking autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. Kant's work served as a bridge between the Rationalist and Empiricist traditions of the 18th century. He had a decisive impact on the Romantic and German Idealist philosophies of the 19th century. His work has also been a starting point for many 20th century philosophers. The two interconnected foundations of what Kant called his "critical philosophy", of the "Copernican revolution" he claimed to have wrought in philosophy, were his epistemology (or theory of knowledge) of Transcendental Idealism and his moral philosophy of the autonomy of reason. These placed the active, rational human subject at the center of the cognitive and moral worlds. With regard to knowledge, Kant argued that the rational order of the world as known by science could never be accounted for merely by the fortuitous accumulation of sense perceptions. It was instead the product of the rule-based activity of "synthesis". This consisted of conceptual unification and integration carried out by the mind through concepts or the "categories of the understanding" operating on perceptions within space and time, which are not concepts, but forms of sensibility that are necessary conditions for any possible experience. Thus the objective order of nature and the causal necessity that operates within it are products of the mind in its interaction with what lies outside of mind (the "thing-in-itself"). With regard to morality, Kant argued that the source of the good lies not in anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but rather only in a good will. A good will is one that acts in accordance with universal moral laws that the autonomous human being freely gives itself. These laws obligate her or him to treat other human beings as ends rather than as means to an end. These Kantian ideas have largely framed or influenced all subsequent philosophical discussion and analysis. The specifics of Kant's account generated immediate and lasting controversy. Nevertheless his theses that the mind itself makes a constitutive contribution to its knowledge (and that knowledge is therefore subject to limits which cannot be overcome), that morality is rooted in human freedom acting autonomously according to rational moral principles, and that philosophy involves self-critical activity irrevocably reshaped philosophy.

Biography

Birth and youth

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724. He spent his entire life in and around Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia (now Kaliningrad). His father was a German craftsman. In his youth, Kant was a a solid, albeit unspectacular, student. He was raised in a Pietist household, a then popular Lutheran reform movement that stressed intense religious devotion, personal humility and a literal reading of the bible. Consequently, Kant received a stern Pietist education, one that favored Latin and religious instruction over mathematics and science. Kant later described this period as a time of unhappiness because of the strict, punitive, and disciplinary quality of this education.

The young scholar

Kant enrolled in the University of Königsberg in 1740, at the age of 16. He studied the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff under Martin Knutsen, a rationalist who was also familiar with the developments of British philosophy and science and introduced Kant to the new mathematical physics of Newton. His father's stroke and subsequent death in 1746 interrupted his studies. Kant became a private tutor in the smaller towns surrounding Königsberg, but continued his scholarly research. 1749 saw the publication of his first work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces. Kant published several more works on scientific topics and became a university lecturer in 1755. From this point on, Kant turned increasingly to philosophical issues, although he would continue to write on the sciences throughout his life. In the early 1760s, Kant produced a series of important works in philosophy. The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, a work in logic, was published in 1762. Two more works appeared the following year: Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy and The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God. In 1764, Kant wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and then was second to Moses Mendelssohn in a Berlin Academy prize competition with his Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (often referred to as "the Prize Essay"). In 1770, at the age of 45, Kant was finally appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Königsberg. Kant wrote his Inaugural Dissertation in defense of this appointment. This work saw the emergence of several central themes of his mature work, including the distinction between the faculties of intellectual thought and sensible receptivity.

The critical turn

At the age of 46, Kant was an established scholar and an increasingly influential philosopher. Much was expected of him. But, surprisingly, Kant would not publish another work in philosophy for the next eleven years. In response to a letter from his student, Markus Herz, Kant came to recognize that in the Inaugural Dissertation, he had failed to account for the relation and connection between our sensible and intellectual faculties. Kant spent his silent decade working on a solution to this problem. When he emerged from his silence in 1781, the result was the Critique of Pure Reason. Although now uniformly recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy, the first Critique was largely ignored upon its initial publication. The work was long, over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a dry, scholastic style. It received few reviews, and these failed to recognize the Critiques revolutionary nature. Kant was disappointed with the work's reception. Recognizing the obscurity of the original treatise, he wrote the Prolegomena in 1783 as a summary of its main views and he encouraged his friend, Johann Schultz, to publish a brief commentary of the Critique. Kant's reputation gradually rose through the 1780s, sparked by a series of important works: the 1784 essay, "Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?"; 1785's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (his first work on moral philosophy); and, from 1786, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. But Kant's fame ultimately arrived from an unexpected source. In 1786, Karl Reinhold began to publish a series of public letters on the Kantian philosophy. In these letters, Reinhold framed Kant's philosophy as a response to the central intellectual controversy of the era: the Pantheism Dispute. Friedrich Jacobi had accused the recently deceased Lessing (a distinguished philosopher of the period) of Spinozism. Such a charge, tantamount to atheism, was vigorously denied by Lessing's friend Mendelssohn, and a bitter public dispute arose between them. The controversy gradually escalated into a general debate over the values of the Enlightenment and of reason itself. Reinhold maintained in his letters that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason could settle this dispute by defending the authority and bounds of reason. Reinhold's letters were widely read and made Kant the most famous philosopher of his era.
Kant's later work
Kant published a second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1787, heavily revising the first parts of the book. But most of his subsequent work focused on other areas of philosophy. He continued to develop his moral philosophy, notably in 1788's Critique of Practical Reason (known as the second Critique) and 1797's Metaphysics of Morals. The 1790 Critique of Judgment (the third Critique) applied the Kantian system to aesthetics and teleology. He also wrote a number of semi-popular essays on history, religion, politics and other topics. These works were well received by Kant's contemporaries and confirmed his preeminent status in eighteenth century philosophy. There were several journals devoted solely to defending and criticizing the Kantian philosophy. But despite his success, philosophical trends were moving in another direction. Many of Kant's most important disciples (including Reinhold, Beck and Fichte) transformed the Kantian position into increasingly radical forms of idealism. This marked the emergence of German Idealism. Kant was against these developments and publicly denounced Fichte in an open letter in 1799. It was one of his final philosophical acts. Kant's health, long poor, turned for the worst and he died in 1804. His unfinished final work, the fragmentary Opus Postumum, was (as its title suggests) published posthumously.
Kantian myths
A variety of myths have arisen concerning Kant's biography and legend. It is often held, for instance, that Kant was a late bloomer, that he only became an important philosopher in his mid-50s after rejecting his earlier views. While it is true that Kant wrote his greatest works relatively late in life, there is a tendency to underestimate the value of his earlier works. Recent Kant scholarship has devoted more attention to these "pre-critical" writings and has recognized a degree of continuity with his mature work. Another common myth concerns Kant's personal mannerisms. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. Again, this is only partly true. While still young, Kant was very gregarious and, though he never married, he remained fond of dinner parties through most of his life. Only later in his life, under the influence of his friend, the English merchant Joseph Green, did Kant adopt a more regulated lifestyle.
Kant's moral philosophy
Kant developed his moral philosophy in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/metaphys-of-morals.txt] (1785), Critique of Practical Reason [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/critique-of-practical-reaso.txt] (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/intro-to-metaphys-of-morals.txt] (1798). Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the Categorical Imperative, from which all other moral obligations are generated. He believed that the moral law is a principle of reason itself, and is not based on contingent facts about the world (e.g., what would make us happy). Accordingly, he believed that moral obligation applies to all and only rational agents. A categorical imperative is an unconditional obligation; that is, it has the force of an obligation regardless of our will or desires. (Contrast this with hypothetical imperative.) Kant's categorical imperative was formulated in three ways, which he believed to be roughly equivalent (although many commentators do not):
- The first formulation (Formula of Universal Law) says: "Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature."
- The second formulation (Formula of Humanity) says: "Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means."
- The third formulation (Formula of Autonomy) is a synthesis of the first two. It says that we should so act that we may think of ourselves as legislating universal laws through our maxims. We may think of ourselves as such autonomous legislators only insofar as we follow our own laws.
Example of the first formulation:
The most popular interpretation of the first formulation is called the "universalizability test." An agent's maxim, according to Kant, is his "subjective principle of volition" — that is, what the agent believes is his reason to act. The universalizability test has five steps: # Find the agent's maxim. # Imagine a possible world in which everyone in a similar position to the real-world agent followed that maxim. # Decide whether any contradictions, or irrationalities, arise in the possible world as a result of following the maxim. # If a contradiction or irrationality arises, acting on that maxim is not allowed in the real world. # If there is no contradiction, then acting on that maxim is permissible, and in some instances required.
Example of the second formulation:
If I steal a book from you, I am treating you as a means only (to obtain a book). If I ask to have your book, I am respecting your right to say no, and am thereby treating you as an end-in-yourself, not as a means to an end. However, if I only ask you to be perceived by you as a nice person and to induce you to do things for me in the future, then again I am treating you as a means only. Kant applied his categorical imperative to the issue of suicide in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, writing that:
If a man is reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes and feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life, he should ask himself a question. He should inquire whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim is: From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. It is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence the maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty.
The theory that we have universal duties, which hold despite one's own inclinations or the desire to pursue one's own happiness instead, is known as deontological ethics. Kant is often cited as the most important source of this strand of ethical theory; in particular, of the theory of conduct, also known as the theory of obligation.
Influence
Kant's most powerful and revolutionary effect on philosophy, which changed forever its meaning, modes of thinking, and language(s), was not "positive" in the sense of producing specific assertions about the world that have become accepted truths, as in the positive sciences. Rather it was "negative" in the sense of restricting the areas about which such knowledge was possible — by making philosophy "critical" and self-critical. Kant's idea of "critique" was to examine the legitimate scope of the mind or of knowledge. In this regard the "critique of pure reason", which was also the title of his most important work (see below and Critique of Pure Reason), meant examining what certain and legitimate knowledge human beings could arrive at simply by thinking about things independently of experience and perception, with his conclusion being: not very much. Prior to Kant, the entire mode of functioning of most philosophy was drawing conclusions about the nature of the universe, of God, or of the soul simply by logical thinking about them, by what seemed to make sense through "a priori" thinking, i.e. thinking on purely logical grounds. For this sort of thinking it must be the case that God or the universe is this way or that way, because it makes sense logically. But, in the history of philosophy, for every philosophical theory that God or the universe or the mind must be one way, some philosopher arrived at another theory stating that it must be precisely the opposite way. Kant called this unproductive, unresolvable, back-and-forth, dogmatic thinking the "dialectic of pure reason". That is, it was an inevitable consequence of trying to arrive at knowledge on purely logical grounds independently of experience or of scientific knowledge based on the evidence of the senses. For Kant, this entire style of pursuing knowledge was bankrupt and must be abandoned. According to Kant, philosophy must henceforth operate within the narrow "limits of pure reason" and recognize that most positive knowledge could come only through the sciences based on sense perception and not through metaphysics, which was about things of which we could never have direct sense perception. Some important philosophers and schools of thought, such as German Idealists, neo-Thomists and other theologically oriented philosophers, and Heidegger's "fundamental ontology" have refused to accept the limitations that Kant imposed upon philosophy and attempted to come up with new metaphysical systems about "the Absolute", "God", or "Being" , although even these philosophers have generally tried doing so by taking Kant into account. Over-all, however, post-Kantian philosophy has never been able to return to the style of thinking, arguing, and asserting conclusions that characterized philosophy before him. In this way, Kant was correct in asserting that he had brought about a "Copernican revolution" in philosophy. According to Kant, Copernicus's revolution in the understanding of the cosmos lay in taking the position of the observer into account. This explained why it looks as though the sun revolves around the earth even though in reality the earth revolves around the sun. Taking the observer's position into account prevents the unaware projection of the observer's perception or point of view onto the picture of the universe. Kant saw his own Copernican revolution in philosophy, analogously, as consisting in taking the position of the knower into account and thereby preventing the unaware projection of the knower's way of thinking ("pure reason") onto the philosophical map of reality. According to Kant, it was philosophers unawarely doing this that had created the illusions of metaphysics that dominated the prior history of philosophy. Kant saw this revolution, in turn, as being part of "Enlightenment" (as conceived of in the Age of Enlightenment) and the creation of an enlightened citizenry and society freed from dogmatism and irrational authority. Kant's wider influence not only in philosophy but in the humanities and social sciences generally lies in the central concept of the Critique of Pure Reason, namely that it is the synthesizing, unifying, constitutive activity of the subject of knowledge that is at the basis of our having an ordered world of experience and of the objects of knowledge themselves. This idea has spread out through many intellectual disciplines in which it has manifested itself in different forms, for example from Marx's notion, in social theory, of the constitutive role of human labor in the creation of history and society through Freud's notion, in psychology, that the activity of the ego produces the reality principle through Durkheim's notion, in sociology, that society creates collective consciousness through social categories through Chomsky's notion, in linguistics, of transformational grammar, to current notions, in several of the humanities and social sciences, of the "social construction of reality". In this way Kant's conception of synthesizing, ordering mental activity has become central to modern intellectual culture.
Tomb
social construction of reality His tomb and its pillared enclosure outside the cathedral in Königsberg are some of the few artifacts of German times preserved by the Soviets after they conquered East Prussia in 1945. A replica of a statue of Kant that stood in front of the university was donated by a German entity in 1991 and placed on the original pediment. Near his tomb is the following inscription in German and Russian, taken from the "Conclusion" of his Critique of Practical Reason [5:161-2]: :Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and perseveringly my thinking engages itself with them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Works and links to texts, in English and German

- (1749) Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte)
- (1755) Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie Des Himmels [http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/kant2g.htm])
- (1762) The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren)
- (1763) The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes)
- (1763) Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy (Versuch den Begriff der negativen Größen in die Weltweisheit einzuführnen)
- (1764) Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen)
- (1764) Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality (the Prize Essay) (Untersuchungen über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral)
- (1770) Inaugural Dissertation (De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis)
- (1781) First edition of the Critique of Pure Reason [http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html] (Kritik der reinen Vernunft [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/krva/krva.htm])
- (1783) Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant-prolegomena.txt] (Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik)
- (1784) "An Answer To The Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? [http://www.prometheusonline.de/heureka/philosophie/klassiker/kant/aufklaerung.htm])
- (1784) Idea For A Universal History With A Cosmopolitan Purpose (Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht)
- (1785) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten)
- (1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft)
- (1787) Second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason [http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/cpr/toc.html] (Kritik der reinen Vernunft [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/krvb/krvb.htm])
- (1788) Critique of Practical Reason [http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/critique-of-practical-reaso.txt] (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/kritikpr/kritikpr.htm])
- (1790) Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft [http://wikisource.org/wiki/Kritik_der_Urteilskraft])
- (1793) Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft)
- (1795) Perpetual Peace [http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm] (Zum ewigen Frieden [http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb5/frieden/themen/Theorie/kant.html])
- (1797) Metaphysics of Morals (Metaphysik der Sitten)
- (1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht)
- (1798) The Contest of Faculties [http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/564/] (Der Streit der Fakultäten [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kant/streit/streit.htm])
- (1800) Logic (Logik)
- (1803) On Pedagogy (Über Pädagogik [http://www1.uni-bremen.de/~kr538/kantpaed.html])
- (1804) Opus Postumum
- (More German works at [http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Immanuel_Kant Wikisource])
- (More German works at [http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/autoren/kant.htm Project Gutenberg])
- (More English works at [http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/aut/kant_immanuel.html The University of Adelaide Library])
Quotes
Two things fill the mind with ever new, and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
-Epitaph (from Critique of Practical Reason 5:161)
External links

- [http://ethics.acusd.edu/theories/kant Kant & Ethics]
- [http://naks.ucsd.edu/ North American Kant Society (NAKS)] (many helpful links!)
- [http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/Kant.html Kant on the Web]
- [http://comp.uark.edu/~rlee/semiau96/kantlink.html Kant Links]
- [http://www.friesian.com/kant.htm Epistemology and Metaphysics]
- [http://www.phil.upenn.edu/~cubowman/kant.html Kant and the project of enlightenment]
- [http://www.e-text.org/text/ Several Kant's works in clickable pdf]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html#k Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (many entries on Kant)]
-
- [http://www.philos.msu.ru/community/staff/vasiliev/Kant_Interview/Kant_Interview.html International Kant Interview - 2004]
See also

- Kantianism
- Neo-Kantianism
- Liberalism
- Contributions to liberal theory
- Kant Russian State University
References and further reading
Any suggestion of further reading on Kant has to take cognizance of the fact that his work has dominated philosophy like no other figure after him. Nevertheless, several guideposts can be made out. In Germany, the most important contemporary interpreter of Kant and the movement of German Idealism which he began is Dieter Henrich, who has some work available in English. P.F. Strawson's "The Bounds of Sense" (1969) largely determined the contemporary reception of Kant in England and America, but his positions have been challenged by a number of recent thinkers including Henry Allison, Paul Guyer, Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, and Béatrice Longuenesse. This body of work has begun to lessen the divide between academic interpretations of Kant in the English speaking world and in Europe. John Rawls' Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, is particularly useful in its investigation of Kant's moral philosophy within the vicissitudes of ethical systems from Hume to Leibniz to Hegel. More recently, Gary Banham has published a key interpretation of Kant's practical philosophy that has corrected exclusive focus on the categorical imperative in favour of an inclusive comprehension of right and virtue. John McDowell is perhaps the most important contemporary analytic philosopher who explicitly builds upon Kantian themes. Howard Caygill's dictionary of Kantian terms is an excellent guide to the overall terrain of the influence and nature of Kant's concepts.
General introductions to Kant's thought

- Broad C. D. Kant: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 1978. ISBN 0521217555, ISBN 0521292654
Biography and historical context

- Beck, Lewis White. "Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors." Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969. ::a survey of Kant's intellectual background
- Beiser, Frederick C. "The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte." Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
- Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0521497043
- Pinkard, Terry. German philosophy, 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge, 2002.
- Sassen, Brigitte. ed. Kant's Early Critics: The Empiricist Critique of the Theoretical Philosophy, 2000.
Collections of essays

- Guyer, Paul. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0521365872, ISBN 0521367689 ::an excellent collection of papers that covers most areas of Kant's thought
- Mohanty, J.N. and Robert W. Shahan. eds. Essays on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1982. ISBN 0806117826
- Proceedings of the International Kant Congresses. Several Congresses (numbered) edited by various publishers.
- Förster, Eckart ed. "Kant's Transcendental Deductions: The Three 'Critiques' and the 'Opus Postumum.'" Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. ::includes an important essay by Dieter Henrich'
- Cohen, Ted and Paul Guyer eds. Essays in Kant's Aesthetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. ::essays on Kant's Critique of Judgment
On Kant's theoretical philosophy

- Allison, Henry. Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1983, 2004. ISBN 0300036299, ISBN 0300030029 ::very influential defense of Kant's idealism, recently revised
- Ameriks, Karl. "Kant's Theory of Mind: An Analysis of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. ::one of the first detailed studies of the Dialectic in English
- Gram, Moltke S. The Transcendental Turn: The Foundation of Kant's Idealism. Gainesville : University Presses of Florida, 1984. ISBN 0813007879
- Guyer, Paul. "Kant and the Claims of Knowledge." Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ::a modern defense of the view that Kant's theoretical philosophy is a "patchwork" of ill-fitting arguments
- Henrich, Dieter. The Unity of Reason: Essays on Kant’s Philosophy. Edited and with an introduction by Richard L. Velkley ; translated by Jeffrey Edwards ... [et al.]. Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 0674929055
- Kemp Smith, Norman. "A Commentary to Kant's ‘Critique of Pure Reason.’" London: Macmillan, 1930. ::a somewhat dated, but influential commentary on the first Critique, recently reprinted
- Kitcher, Patricia. "Kant's Transcendental Psychology." New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
- Longuenesse, Béatrice. Kant and the Capacity to Judge. Princeton University Press, 1998. ISBN 0691043485 ::argues that the notion of judgment provides the key to understanding the overall argument of the first Critique
- Melnick, Arthur. "Kant's Analogies of Experience." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. ::an important study of Kant's Analogies, including his defense of the principle of causality
- Paton, H. J. "Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience: A Commentary on the First Half of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft." Two volumes. London: Macmillan, 1936. ::an extensive study of Kant's theoretical philosophy
- Pippin, Robert B. Kant's Theory of Form: An Essay on the Critique of Pure Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. ::an influential examination of the formal character of Kant's work
- Strawson, P.F. The Bounds of Sense: an essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge, 1989. ::the work that revitalized the interest of contemporary analytic philosophers in Kant
- Wolff, Robert Paul. Kant's theory of mental activity: A commentary on the transcendental analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963. ::a detailed and influential commentary on the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason
On Kant's practical philosophy

- Banham, Gary. Kant's Practical Philosophy: From Critique to Doctrine Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
- Michalson, Gordon E. Fallen Freedom: Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
- Michalson, Gordon E. Kant and the Problem of God. Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
- Rawls, John. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, 2000.
- Wolff, Robert Paul. The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. New York: HarperCollins, 1974. ISBN 0061317926
On Kant's aesthetics

- Guyer, Paul. Kant and the Claim of Taste. Cambridge MA and London, 1979.
- Crawford, Donald. Kant's Aesthetic Theory. Wisconsin, 1974.
- Makkreel, Rudolf, Imagination and Interpretation in Kant. Chicago, 1990.
- McCloskey, Mary. Kant's Aesthetic. SUNY, 1987.
- Schaper, Eva. Studies in Kant's Aesthetics. Edinburgh, 1979.
Other work on Kant

- Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass., USA : Blackwell Reference, 1995. ISBN 0631175342, ISBN 0631175350 ::a very useful resource
Contemporary philosophy with a Kantian influence

- Korsgaard, Christine. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0521496446, ISBN 0521499623 (pbk.) ::not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics
- McDowell, John. Mind and World. Harvard University Press, 1994. ISBN 0674576098 ::offers a Kantian solution to a dilemma in contemporary epistemology regarding the relation between mind and world Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant, Immanuel ko:이마누엘 칸트 ja:イマヌエル・カント simple:Immanuel Kant th:อิมมานูเอิล คานท์

Critique of Practical Reason

The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, first published in 1788. It deals with his moral philosophy, and picks up from the Critique of Pure Reason. Many of the themes and arguments of this book are spelled out far more clearly in his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals.

External links

- Category:1788 books Category:Philosophy books

Rationalism

:This article is not about continental rationalism. Rationalism, also known as the rationalist movement, is a philosophical doctrine that asserts that the truth can best be discovered by reason and factual analysis, rather than faith, dogma or religious teaching. Rationalism has some similarities in ideology and intent to humanism and atheism, in that it aims to provide a framework for social and philosophical discourse outside of religious or supernatural beliefs; however, rationalism differs from both of these, in that:
- As its name suggests, humanism is centered on the dignity and worth of people. While rationalism is a key component of humanism, there is also a strong ethical component in humanism that rationalism does not require. As a result, being a rationalist does not necessarily mean being a humanist.
- Atheism, a disbelief or lack of belief in God, can be on any basis, or none at all, so it doesn't require rationalism. Furthermore, rationalism does not, in itself, affirm or deny atheism, although it does reject any belief based on faith alone. Historically, many rationalists were not atheists. Presumably, people who are rationalists today generally do not believe that theism can be rationally justified, because modern-day rationalism is strongly correlated with atheism. As a result, most—if not all—prominent rationalists today, including scientists such as Richard Dawkins and activists such as Sanal Edamaruku are atheists. Outside of religious discussion, the discipline of rationalism may be applied more generally, for example to political or social issues. In these cases it is the rejection of emotion, tradition or fashionable belief which is the defining feature of the rationalist perspective. During the middle of the twentieth century there was a strong tradition of organised rationalism, which was particularly influenced by free thinkers and intellectuals. In the United Kingdom, rationalism is represented by the Rationalist Press Association, founded in 1899. Modern rationalism has little in common with the historical philosophy of continental rationalism expounded by René Descartes, however it has large affinities with the work of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz which influenced the development of empirical rationalism, or logical positivism. Indeed, a reliance on empirical science is often considered a hallmark of modern rationalism, whereas continental rationalism rejected (naïve) empiricism entirely.

Rationalists

- Anaxagoras
- Isaac Asimov
- Sanal Edamaruku
- Benjamin Franklin
- Sigmund Freud
- Paul Kurtz
- Robert A. Heinlein
- Julian Huxley
- Robert G. Ingersoll
- Gottfried Leibniz
- John Locke
- Jim Herrick
- H. P. Lovecraft

- Nicolas Malebranche
- Thomas Paine
- Plato
- Karl Popper
- Taslima Nasrin
- Gene Roddenberry
- Bertrand Russell
- Abraham Kovoor
- Joseph Edamaruku
- Barbara Smoker
- Baruch Spinoza
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- Voltaire
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- René Descartes

External links

- [http://www.rationalistinternational.net/ Rationalist international]
- [http://www.rationalistinternational.net/home/agenda.htm A Rationalist Agenda for the new Century by Sanal Edamaruku]
- [http://www.rationalistinternational.net/conferences/2000/in_praise_of_rationalism.htm In Praise of Rationalism by Paul Kurtz]
- [http://www.atheistfoundation.org.au/humanist.htm Differences between Humanism and Rationalism by Nigel Sinnott]
- [http://www.rationalist.org.uk/ Rationalist Press Association]
- [http://www.iheu.org/node/349 100 Years of Rationalism by Jim Herrick]
- [http://thomasinechurch.org The Thomasine Church] Category:Philosophical movements Category:Epistemology Category:Secularism

Empiricism

Empiricism comes from the Greek word εμπειρισμός, a noun meaning a "test" or "trial". The -pir- is ultimately related to the -per- of the Latin words experientia and experimentum, both of which mean "experiment," and from which our words "experiment" and "experience" come. (Interestingly, it is also related to the Latin word periculum, "essay, trial, danger," which gives the English word "peril".) Empiricism is therefore the philosophical doctrine (-ism) of "testing" or "experimentation," and has taken on the more specific meaning that all human knowledge ultimately comes from the senses and from experience. Empiricism denies that humans have innate ideas or that anything is knowable without reference to experience. Empiricism is contrasted with continental rationalism, epitomized by René Descartes. According to the rationalist, philosophy should be performed via introspection and a priori deductive reasoning. Names associated with empiricism include St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (also see naturalism), Francis Bacon, John Locke (who originally developed the doctrine during the 17th and early 18th centuries), George Berkeley, and David Hume. It is generally regarded as the heart of the modern scientific method, that present theories should be based on our observations of the world rather than on intuition or faith; that is, empirical research and a posteriori inductive reasoning rather than purely deductive logic. Empirical is an adjective often used in conjunction with science, both the natural and social sciences, which means the use of working hypotheses which are capable of being disproved using observation or experiment (ie: ultimately through experience). In a second sense "empirical" in science may be synonymous with "experimental". In this sense, an empirical result is an experimental observation. In this context, the term "semi-empirical" or "semiempirical" is used for qualifying theoretical methods which use in part basic axioms or postulated scientific laws and empirical (experimental) results. Such methods are opposed to theoretical ab initio methods which are purely deductive and based on first principles. This terminology is particularly important in theoretical chemistry.

Empiricism and Science

Empiricism was a precursor of logical positivism, also known as logical empiricism. Empirical methods have dominated science until the present day. It laid the groundwork for the scientific method, which is the traditional view of theory and progress in science. However, in the past couple of decades quantum mechanics, constructivism, and Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions have created some challenges to empiricism as the exclusive way in which science works and should work. On the other hand, some argue that theories such as quantum mechanics provide a perfect example of the solidity of empiricism: the ability to discover even counter-intuitive scientific laws, and the ability to rework our theories to accept these laws.

Empiricism in history

Within historiography, empiricism refers to empiricist historiography, a school of documentary interpretation and historical teleology derived from the works of Ranke.

Classical Empiricism

Refers mostly to the epistemological work of St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. Aristotle argued that all forms of knowing come from induction. Aquinas wrote the famous peripatetic axiom, "Nihil in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu" which means "Nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses."

Modern Empiricism

Also known as traditional empiricism. David Hume, John Locke and George Berkeley were among the British philosophers who rejected the theory of innate ideas. Theories of the existence of innate ideas were the subject of much debate between the Continental rationalists and British empiricists in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century David Hume was critical of Immanuel Kant's doctrine of the a priori as positing innate ideas, while proponents of innate ideas rejected Kant's doctrine of intuition and deduction as not innatist, but part of a rationalist doctrine. Modern empiricism contends that all knowledge must be attained through internal and external sensations.

Radical Empiricism

Radical empiricists believe that all human knowledge is purely empirical. William James was a proponent of one form of radical empiricism.

Moderate Empiricism

Moderate empiricists believe that all human knowledge of "matter of fact propositions" is purely empirical. This is the view that David Hume held.

Other forms

Naïve Empiricism: Our ideas and theories need to be tested against reality and not be affected by preconceived notions. Constructive Empiricism: According to this view of science coined by Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image, 1980), we should only ask that theories accurately describe observable parts of the world. Theories that meet these requirements are considered "empirically adequate". If a theory becomes well established, it should be "accepted". What that means is the theory is believed to be empirically accurate, used to solve further problems, and used to extend or refine the theory.

Criticisms

Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

One of the most famous challenges against empiricism is Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which built upon Norwood Russell Hanson's Patterns of Discovery (1958). In this, he argues that theory change is actually developed through paradigm shifts, where a new idea is offered that doesn't follow on existing theories but instead offers a unique, creative solution to existing problems. Scientific thinking, in Kuhn's view, goes through revolutions, instead of gradual theory development through testing and experimentation. After the revolution occurs, scientists can see things they weren't able to see before in the former framework. Kuhn also questioned whether scientific experimentation is truly unbiased and neutral since the experimenter had previous theories and preconceptions which could affect what experiments are chosen and the way in which the results are interpreted. Kuhn also questioned whether we can trust the reliability of our senses, and cited the famous illusions printed in Hanson's 1958 book.

Constructivism

Knowledge and reality is actively constructed by the individual, not passively received from the environment. There are many forms of constructivism, such as social constructivism and cultural constructivism.

Quantum mechanics

Addresses the question whether experience can be used to determine an ontological reality. For example, the Many-worlds interpretation, one of the answers to the EPR paradox, argues that there are multiple versions of every observed object in every possible observable state, existing in a state of Quantum superposition. If every observable entity within our reality has a counterpart in an alternate state, then our experience of these entities does not indicate any ontological reality.

External links

- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Rationalism vs. Empiricism] ko:경험론 ja:経験論

David Hume

David Hume (April 26, 1711 – August 25, 1776
- ) was a philosopher and historian from Scotland. Along with Adam Smith and Thomas Reid, Hume was one of the most important figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. Many regard Hume as the third and most radical of the so-called British Empiricists, after the English John Locke and the Anglo-Irish George Berkeley. Historians most famously see Humean philosophy as a thoroughgoing form of Scepticism, but many commentators have argued that the element of naturalism has no less importance in Hume's philosophy. Hume scholarship has tended to oscillate over time between those who emphasize the sceptical side of Hume (such as Reid, Greene, and the logical positivists), and those who emphasize the naturalist side (such as Don Garrett, Norman Kemp Smith, Kerri Skinner, Barry Stroud, and Galen Strawson). Hume was heavily influenced by empericists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with various Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, and Joseph Butler.
- (N.B. The birthdate is May 7 by the Gregorian reckoning of his time; this date being used by the International Humanist and Ethical Union when celebrating his birthday)

Career

By his own account, Hume "was born the 26th April 1711, old style, at Edinburgh". From time to time throughout is life, he repaired to the family home at Ninewells by Chirnside, Berwickshire, Scotland. He attended Edinburgh University from the age of twelve. At first he considered a career in law, but came to have, in his words, "an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning." He did some self-study in France, where he also completed A Treatise of Human Nature at the age of twenty-six. Although many scholars today consider the Treatise to be Hume's most important work and one of the most important books in the history of philosophy, the public in Britain did not at first agree. Hume himself described the (lack of) public reaction to the publication of the Treatise in 1739–40 by writing that the book "fell dead-born from the press." After a few years of service to various political and military figures, Hume went back to his studies. After deciding that the Treatise had problems of style rather than of content, he reworked some of the material for more popular consumption in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. It did not prove extremely successful either but was more successful than the Treatise. Hume failed to gain chairs of philosophy in Edinburgh and in Glasgow, probably due to charges of atheism, and to the opposition of one of his chief critics, Thomas Reid. However, between philosophical pursuits, Hume did achieve literary fame as an essayist and historian. Attention to his works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumber" (circa 1770). Critics of religion during Hume's time needed to express themselves cautiously. Less than 15 years before Hume was born, an 18-year-old college student was put on trial for saying openly that he thought Christianity was nonsense, was convicted and hanged for blasphemy. Hume followed the common practice of expressing his views obliquely, through characters in dialogues. Hume did not acknowledge authorship of Treatise until the year of his death, in 1776. His Two Essays ("Of Suicide", "Of the Immortality of the Soul") and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion were held from publication until after his death (published 1778 and 1779, respectively), and they still bore neither author's nor publisher's name. So masterful was Hume in disguising his own views that debate continues to this day over whether Hume was actually a deist or an atheist.

Legacy

Though Hume wrote in the 18th century, his work seems still uncommonly relevant in the philosophical disputes of today compared to that of his contemporaries. A summary of some of Hume's most influential work in philosophy might include the following::

Ideas and impressions

Hume believed that all human knowledge comes to us through our senses. Our perceptions, as he called them, can be divided into two categories: ideas and impressions. He defines these terms thus in his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: "By the term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned." He further specifies ideas, saying, "It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses." This forms an important aspect of Hume's scepticism, for he says that we cannot be certain a thing, such as God, a soul, or a self, exists unless we can point out the impression from which the idea of the thing is derived.

The problem of causation

When one event continually follows after another, most people think that a connection between the two events makes the second event follow from the first. Hume challenged this belief in the first book of his Treatise of Human Nature and later in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He noted that although we do perceive the one event following the other, we don't perceive any necessary connection between the two. And according to his skeptical epistemology, we can only trust the knowledge that we acquire from our perceptions. Hume asserted that our idea of causation consists in little more than expectation for certain events to result after other events that precede them. Such a lean conception robs causation of all its force, and some later Humeans like Bertrand Russell have dismissed the notion of causation altogether as something akin to superstition. But this defies common sense, thereby creating the problem of causation – what justifies our belief in a causal connection and what kind of connection can we have knowledge of? – a problem which has no accepted solution. Hume held that we (and other animals) have an instinctive belief in causation based on the development of habits in our nervous system, a belief that we cannot eliminate, but which we cannot prove true through any argument, deductive or inductive, just as is the case with regard to our belief in the reality of the external world. For relevant contemporary work, see Beauchamp and Rosenberg's Hume and the Problem of Causation and Wesley Salmon Causality and Explanation.

The problem of induction

Most of us think that the past acts as a reliable guide to the future. For example, physicists' laws of planetary orbits work for describing past planetary behavior, so we presume that they'll work for describing future planetary behavior as well. But how can we justify this presumption – the principle of induction? Hume suggested two possible justifications and rejected them both: # The first justification states that, as a matter of logical necessity, the future must resemble the past. But, Hume pointed out, we can conceive of a chaotic, erratic world where the future has nothing to do with the past – or, more tamely, a world just like ours right up until the present, at which point things change completely. So nothing makes the principle of induction logically necessary. # The second justification, more modestly, appeals only to the past reliability of induction – it's always worked before, so it will probably continue to work. But, Hume pointed out, this justification uses circular reasoning, justifying induction by an appeal that requires induction to gain any force. The problem of justifying induction remains with us. Hume seems to hold the view that we (as well as other animals) have an instinct-like belief that the future will resemble the past based on the development of habits in our nervous system, a belief that we cannot eliminate but which we cannot prove true by any kind of argument, deductive or inductive, just as is the case with regard to our belief in the reality of the external world. For relevant contemporary work, see Richard Swinburne's compilation The Justification of Induction.

The bundle theory of the self

We tend to think that we are the same person we were five years ago. Though we've changed in many respects, the same person appears present as was present then. We might start thinking about which features can be changed without changing the underlying self. Hume, however, denies that there is a distinction between the various features of a person and the mysterious self that supposedly bears those features. After all, Hume pointed out, when you start introspecting, you notice a bunch of thoughts and feelings and perceptions and such, but you never perceive any substance you could call "the self". So as far as we can tell, Hume concludes, there is nothing to the self over and above a big, fleeting bundle of perceptions. Note in particular that, on Hume's view, these perceptions do not belong to anything. Rather, Hume compares the soul to a commonwealth, which retains its identity not by virtue of some enduring core substance, but by being composed of many different, related, and yet constantly changing elements. The question of personal identity then becomes a matter of characterizing the loose cohesion of one's personal experience. (Note that in the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume said mysteriously that he was dissatisfied with his account of the self, and yet he never returned to the issue!) For relevant contemporary work, see Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons.

Practical reason: instrumentalism and nihilism

Most of us find some behaviors more reasonable than others. Eating aluminum foil, for example, seems to have something unreasonable about it. But Hume denied that reason has any important role in motivating or discouraging behavior. After all, reason is just a sort of calculator of concepts and experience. What ultimately matters, Hume said, is how we feel about the behavior. His work is now associated with the doctrine of instrumentalism, which states that an action is reasonable if and only if it serves the agent's goals and desires, whatever they be. Reason can enter the picture only as a lackey, informing the agent of useful facts concerning which actions will serve his goals and desires, but never deigning to tell the agent which goals and desires he should have. So, if you want to eat aluminum foil, reason will tell you where to find the stuff, and there's nothing unreasonable about eating it or even wanting to do so (unless, of course, one has a stronger desire for health or the appearance of sensibility). Today, however, many commentators argue that Hume actually went a step further to nihilism and said there's nothing unreasonable about deliberately frustrating your own goals and desires ("I want to eat aluminum foil, so let me wire my mouth shut"). Such behavior would surely be highly irregular, granting reason no role at all, but it would not be contrary to reason, which is impotent to make judgments in this domain. For relevant contemporary work, see Jean Hampton's The Authority of Reason and David Schmidtz's Rational Choice and Moral Agency.

Moral anti-realism and motivation

Drawing on his attack on reason's role in judging behavior, Hume argues that immoral behavior is not immoral by being against reason. He first claims that moral beliefs are intrinsically motivating – if you believe killing is wrong, you will be ipso facto motivated not to kill and to criticize killing and so on (moral internalism). He then reminds us that reason alone can motivate nothing – reason discovers matters of fact and logic, and it depends on our desires and preferences whether apprehension of those truths will motivate us. Consequently, reason alone cannot yield moral beliefs. Hume proposed that morality ultimately rests upon sentiment, with reason only paving the way for our sensitive judgments by analysis of the moral matter in question. This argument against founding morality on reason is now one in the stable of moral anti-realist arguments; Humean philosopher John Mackie argued that, for moral facts to be real facts about the world and, at the same time, intrinsically motivating, they would have to be very weird facts. So we have every reason not to believe in them. For relevant contemporary work, see J. L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Mackie's Hume's Moral Theory, David Brink's Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics, and Michael Smith's The Moral Problem.

Free will versus determinism

Just about everyone has noticed the apparent conflict between free will and determinism – if your actions were determined to happen billions of years ago, then how can they be up to you? But Hume noted another conflict, one that turned the problem of free will into a full-fledged dilemma: free will is incompatible with indeterminism. Imagine that your actions are not determined by what events came before. Then your actions are, it seems, completely random. Moreover, and most importantly for Hume, they are not determined by your character – your desires, your preferences, your values, etc. How can we hold someone responsible for an action that did not result from his character? How can we hold someone responsible for an action that randomly occurred? Free will seems to require determinism, because otherwise, the agent and the action wouldn't be connected in the way required of freely chosen actions. So now, nearly everyone believes in free will, free will seems inconsistent with determinism, and free will seems to require determinism. Hume's view is that human behavior, like everything else, is caused, and therefore holding people responsible for their actions should focus on rewarding them or punishing them in such a way that they will try to do what is morally desirable and will try to avoid doing what is morally reprehensible. (See also Compatibilism.) For a relevant contemporary work, see Daniel C. Dennett's Freedom Evolves.

The is-ought problem

Hume noted that many writers talk about what ought to be on the basis of statements about what is (is-ought problem). But there seems to be a big difference between descriptive statements (what is) and prescriptive statements (what ought to be). Hume calls for writers to be on their guard against changing the subject in this way without giving an explanation of how the ought-statements are supposed to follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can you derive an 'ought' from an 'is'? That question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible. (Others interpret Hume as saying not that one cannot go from a factual statement to an ethical statement, but that one cannot do so without going through human nature, that is, without paying attention to human sentiments.) G. E. Moore defended a similar position with his "open question argument", intending to refute any identification of moral properties with natural properties—the so-called "naturalistic fallacy".

Utilitarianism

It was probably Hume who, along with his fellow members of the Scottish Enlightenment, first advanced the idea that the explanation of moral principles is to be sought in the utility they tend to promote. Hume's role is not to be overstated, of course; it was his countryman Francis Hutcheson who coined the utilitarian slogan "greatest happiness for the greatest numbers". But it was from reading Hume's Treatise that Jeremy Bentham first felt the force of a utilitarian system: he "felt as if scales had fallen from [his] eyes". Nevertheless, Hume's proto-utilitarianism is a peculiar one from our perspective. He doesn't think that the aggregation of cardinal units of utility provides a formula for arriving at moral truth. On the contrary, Hume was a moral sentimentalist and, as such, thought that moral principles could not be intellectually justified. Some principles simply appeal to us and others don't; and the reason why utilitarian moral principles do appeal to us is that they promote our interests and those of our fellows, with whom we sympathize. Humans are hard-wired to approve of things that help society – public utility. Hume used this insight to explain how we evaluate a wide array of phenomena, ranging from social institutions and government policies to character traits and talents.

The problem of miracles

One way to support a religion is by appeal to miracles. But Hume argued that, at minimum, miracles could never give religion much support. There are several arguments suggested by Hume's essay, all of which turn on his conception of a miracle: namely, a violation of the laws of nature by God. One argument claims that it's impossible to violate the laws of nature. Another claims that human testimony could never be reliable enough to countermand the evidence we have for the laws of nature. The weakest and most defensible claims that, due to the strong evidence we have for the laws of nature, any miracle claim is in trouble from the get-go, and needs strong supporting evidence to defeat our initial presumptions. In a slogan, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This point has been most applied to the question of the resurrection of Jesus, where Hume would no doubt ask, "Which is more likely – that a man rose from the dead or that this testimony is mistaken in some way?" Or, more blandly, "Which is more likely – that Uri Geller can really bend spoons with his mind or that there is some trick going on?" This is somewhat similar to Occam's Razor. This argument is the backbone of the sceptic's movement and a live issue for historians of religion. For a critical and technical (Bayesian) analysis of Hume, see John Earman's Hume's Abject Failure – the title of which gives you an idea of his assessment. For a rebuttal of Earman's interpretation of Hume, see Robert Fogelin's A Defense of Hume on Miracles.

The design argument

One of the oldest and most popular arguments for the existence of God is the design argument – that all the order and 'purpose' in the world bespeaks a divine origin. Hume gave the classic criticism of the design argument in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and though the issue is far from dead, many are convinced that Hume killed the argument for good. Here are some of his points: #For the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But order is observed regularly, resulting from presumably mindless processes like generation and vegetation. Design accounts for only a tiny part of our experience with order and 'purpose'. #Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a brick wall. But in order to point to a designed Universe, we would need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we only experience one, the analogy cannot be applied. #Even if the design argument is completely successful, it could not (in and of itself) establish a robust theism; one could easily reach the conclusion that the universe's configuration is the result of some morally ambiguous, possibly unintelligent agent or agents whose method bears only a remote similarity to human design. #If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then God's mind (being so well-ordered) also requires a special designer. And then this designer would likewise need a designer, and so on ad infinitum. We could respond by resting content with an inexplicably self-ordered divine mind; but then why not rest content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world? #Often, what appears to be purpose, where it looks like object X has feature F in order to secure some outcome O, is better explained by a filtering process: that is, object X wouldn't be around did it not possess feature F, and outcome O is only interesting to us as a human projection of goals onto nature. This mechanical explanation of teleology anticipated natural selection. (see also Anthropic principle) For relevant contemporary work, see J. C. A. Gaskin's Hume's Philosophy of Religion, and Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God; for a view from a philosopher of biology, see Elliott Sober's Philosophy of Biology, ch. 2.

Conservatism and political theory

Many regard David Hume as a political conservative, sometimes calling him the first conservative philosopher. He expressed suspicion of attempts to reform society in ways that departed from long-established custom, and he counselled people not to resist their governments except in cases of the most egregious tyranny. However, he resisted aligning himself with either of Britain's two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories, and he believed that we should try to balance our demands for liberty with the need for strong authority, without sacrificing either. He supported liberty of the press, and was sympathetic to democracy, when suitably constrained. It has been argued that he was a major inspiration for James Madison's writings, and the Federalist No. 10 in particular. He was also, in general, an optimist about social progress, believing that, thanks to the economic development that comes with the expansion of trade, societies progress from a state of "barbarism" to one of "civilization". Civilized societies are open, peaceful and sociable, and their citizens are as a result much happier. It is therefore not fair to characterise him, as Leslie Stephen did, as favouring "that stagnation which is the natural ideal of a sceptic". (Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1876), vol. 2, 185.) Although strongly pragmatic, Hume produced an essay titled "Towards a Perfect Commonwealth", where he detailed what any reforms should seek to achieve. Strong features for the time included a strict separation of powers, decentralisation, extending the franchise to anyone who held property of value and limiting the power of the clergy. The Swiss militia system was proposed as the best form of protection. Elections were to take place on an annual basis and representatives were to be unpaid, which was aimed at keeping the interests of constituents in the minds of politicians. For more, see Douglas Adair's "That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science: David Hume, James Madison and the Tenth Federalist" in Fame and the Founding Fathers; Donald W Livingston, Hume's Philosophy of Common Life; John B Stewart, Opinion and Reform in Hume's Political Philosophy; Bradley C. S. Watson, "Hume, Historical Inheritance, and the Problem of Founding" in The American Founding and the Social Compact.

Works

- A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. (1739–40)
- Book 1: "Of the Understanding" His treatment of everything from the origin of our ideas to how they are to be divided. Important statements of Scepticism.
- Book 2: "Of the Passions" Treatment of emotions.
- Book 3: "Of Morals" Moral ideas, justice, obligations, benevolence. :Hume intended to see whether the Treatise met with success, and if so to complete it with books devoted to Politics and Criticism. However, it did not meet with success (as Hume himself said, "It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots"), and so was not completed.)
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) :Contains reworking of the main points of the Treatise, Book 1, with the addition of material on free will, miracles, and the argument from design.
- An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) :Another reworking of material from the Treatise for more popular appeal. Hume regarded this as the best of all his philosophical works, both in its philosophical ideas and in its literary style.
- Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (posthumous) :Discussion among three fictional characters concerning arguments for the existence of God, most importantly the argument from design. Despite some controversy, most scholars agree that the view of Philo, the most skeptical of the three, comes closest to Hume's own.
- Essays Moral and Political (first ed. 1741–2) :A collection of pieces written over many years and published in a series of volumes before being gathered together into one near the end of Hume's life. The essays are dizzying and even bewildering in the breadth of topics they address. They range freely over questions of aesthetic judgement, the nature of the British government, love, marriage and polygamy, and the demographics of ancient Greece and Rome, to name just a few of the topics considered. However, certain important topics and themes recur, especially the question of what constitutes "refinement" in matters of taste, manners and morals. The Essays are written in clear imitation of Addison's Tatler and The Spectator, which Hume read avidly in his youth.
- The History of England (1754–62) :This forms more a category of books than a single work, a monumental history spanning "from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688". This work brought Hume the most fame during his own lifetime, going through over 100 editions. Many considered it the standard history of England until the publication of Thomas Macaulay's own monumental History of England.

Quotes

Objects have no discoverable connexion together; nor is it from any other principle but custom operating upon the imagination, that we can draw any inference from the appearance of one to the existence of another. -A Treatise Of Human Nature, Bk 1 Pt 3.8 Be a philosopher, but, amid all your philosophy, be still a man. -An Inquiry Concerning Human Nature, §1

References

- Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.

External links

- Online editions of Hume's work:
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- [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/search?amode=start&author=Hume%2c%20David e-texts of some of David Hume's works]
- [http://utilitarian.net/hume David Hume]: Resources on Hume, including books, articles, and encyclopedia entries.
- [http://humesociety.org Hume Society]: An international scholarly society.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/ David Hume]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-aesthetics/ Hume's Aesthetics]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/ Hume's Moral Philosophy]
- [http://www.jamesboswell.info/People/people.php?person=59 David Hume] at James Boswell - a Guide
- [http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/ READABLE versions of Treatise Book 1, First Enquiry, and Dialogues on Natural Religion] Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David Hume, David ko:데이비드 흄 ja:デイヴィッド・ヒューム simple:David Hume th:เดวิด ฮูม

A priori

:This article is about the a priori in philosophy. You may be looking for information about a priori constructed languages. A priori is a Latin phrase meaning "from the former" or less literally "before experience". In much of the modern Western tradition, the term a priori is considered to mean propositional knowledge that can be had without, or "prior to", experience. It is usually contrasted with a posteriori knowledge meaning "after experience", which requires experience. For those within the mainstream of the tradition, mathematics and logic are generally considered a priori disciplines. Statements such as "2 + 2 = 4", for example, are considered to be "a priori", because they are thought to come out of reflection alone. The natural and social sciences are usually considered a posteriori disciplines. Statements like "The sky is usually mostly blue", for instance, might be considered "a posteriori" knowledge.

Philosophical thought

One of the fundamental questions in epistemology is whether there is any non-trivial a priori knowledge. Generally speaking rationalists believe that there is, while empiricists believe that all knowledge is ultimately derived from some kind of experience (usually external), or else is in some sense trivial. The use of the term gained foothold through rationalist thinkers like René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, who argued that knowledge is gained through reason, not experience. Descartes considered the knowledge of the self, or cogito ergo sum, to be a priori, because he thought that one needn't refer to past experience to consider one's own existence. John Locke, in admitting that reflection is a part of experience, gave a platform by which the entire notion of the "a priori" migh

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