Thursday, December 1, 2011

Dissertation on Kant

Dissertation on Kant

Immaneul Kant was a philosopher during the european enlightenment period. Kant lived from 1724 to 1804. During his lifetime he dedicated his life to teaching and studying philosophy. He came up with the concept of "practical reason". In Kant's Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and Critique of Pure Reason (1788) he proposed a new moral / ethical "categorical imperative". This meant that his philosophy did not require the existence of God to be a valid argument. Kant's philosophy involved a piece of moral logic. He wrote "..we ought to act in such a way that our act could become accepted as a universal principle of behavior ". He also turned to the issue of the existence of God. He stated that "no pure reason" could prove the existence of God but "practical reason" could. His major works were his theories on human knowledge. Kant agreed that human knowledge is founded on the information we receive from our physical senses . He called this information "sensibility". An a priori process in our minds turns the information we get from our senses into conceptual knowledge. The " thing-in-itself " is the noumenon. These are transcendental objects not attainable directly by human perception. He says our minds fashion the information or senses direct us about matter around us into recognizable forms. This he called the phenomena of our minds. Then the information is turned into knowledge, this knowledge is determined by what the information means to us. This is Kant's epistemology. This is his major philosophical work.
David Hume was an earlier philosopher. He lived from 1711-1777. The foundation of Hume's philosophical works is unquestionably his theory on how it is that we come to understand things. Hume thought that our awareness or perception of reality was a result of external objects acting upon our senses. The strongest and most basic perceptions comes in the form of impressions upon our minds. For Hume the secondary order of perceptions are ideas. Hume said that ideas are reflections of impressions. Hume's major philosophical argument is that all knowledge is founded by experience.

Kant answers Hume when he was making his philosophical arguments. Both philosophers share similar ideas. It was David Hume who awoke Kant from his "intellectual slumber" and caused Kant to undertake the task of responding to the challenge that Hume had issued to those who would claim to understand human nature. Kant agreed with Hume's philosophy that sense experience is essential to human knowledge. Kant also answered Hume's skepticism about the truth of transcendent ideas such as moral laws or ethical principles. As previously stated Kant came up with a new moral "categorical imperative" which did not require the existence of God for its validity. In addition to answering Hume's skepticism, Kant agreed with Hume that no rational argument could be given for God's existence. When Kant explained his Epistemology, theory of human knowledge, he answers Hume's separation of cause and effect. Kant here recognizes that we cannot absolutely know the cause and effect at work in the world around us. Kant also defines mental judgments as true knowledge.

In the on going search for human truth philosophers often use past philosophers arguments to further improve and assist them in there own theories. David Kant was driven by Immaneul Hume's arguments and he managed to take his own philosophical arguments a step further.

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