Review of Klassische deutsche Philosophie (3)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Part 3 of a review of Wolfgang Förster, Klassische deutsche Philosophie: Grundlinien ihrer Entwicklung [Classical German Philosophy: The Basic Lines of Its Development] (2008)

Immanuel Kant is such a major figure in philosophy, I’m hesitant to attempt any kind of brief summary of his thought. So I’ll link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s accessible summary of Kant’s thought by Martin Schönfeld and focus more on Förster's treatment of his work.

Kant developed a philosophy of transcendental Idealism that conceived human perception as being formed by its own a priori structures of processing appearances, such as time and space. For Kant, time and space were inherent features of human perception, not (as Einstein eventually established) material qualities of the universe. He argued that objects of human perception had their own independent existence but people could never fully understand the essence, the thing-in-itself, of external objects because our understanding was inevitably limited by the appearances into which the categorical imperatives of perception organized the information we receive from outside objects. This was a specific rejection of empiricism, the theories associated with David Hume and John Locke. His Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] (1781) is his most important work and the one in which he elaborated this theory.

As Förster explains, Kant attempted here to find a more satisfactory scientific framework for the contemporary knowledge of his time than that provided by Newton’s mathematical theory of nature. An essential and important feature of this theory was Kant’s description of human knowledge as being not just a reflection of external reality but a perception shaped by the human sense organs and mind. “Doch Ersheinung und Wesen warden bei Kant starr getrennt” (“But appearance and essence [of external objects] were strongly separated with Kant”), Förster notes. Perception united the physical reception of outside stimulus with the internal human structures of perception. This understanding of perception emphasized the creative function in human perception. It also defined a new conception of individualism and with it, individual freedom.

Kant’s ethics argued for categorical imperatives which defined the necessary principles of good conduct, as he described in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) and Kritik der praktischen Vernunft [Critique of Practical Reason] (1788)

Kant’s Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels [Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens] (1755) discussed humanity as a part of nature and was a key influence on Herder’s theories of laws of history. Herder, however, argued against his former teacher’s transcendental Idealism. Förster emphasizes the significance of this early work of Kant’s.

Kant sought to define the relationship of the Christian belief in God to his rational philosophy. In Förster’s summary, Kant understood God to be the “unbedingten Ursache alles Seienden und Gedachten” (“ultimate source of all beings and thoughts”). Consistent with the general tendency of Protestant theology, he rejected the idea that the existence of God could be proven. Catholic theology, with its panoply of saints and angels and officially-approved visions, didn’t understand God as being so radically removed from the material world as Protestantism did. However, Förster argues that this abandonment of the idea that the existence of God could be proven by philosophical reason represented a final blow to the previous rationalistic philosophy in Germany, which had sought to do just that. It became a major step in defining the focus of philosophy on scientific understanding of the material world.

Kant’s historical views saw a progressive development of human history to more advanced forms. But Förster notes that Kant emphasized the complex, incomplete, at times contradictory course of history; he didn’t understand human history as a linear story of progress. He also gives special emphasis to Kant’s opposition to war as an exceptionally destructive phenomenon, against which he postulated that rational understanding of that destructiveness would eventually lead the nations of the world to produce a state of permanent peace through the formation of a worldwide alliance. Kant didn’t understand this as a Utopian vision of the future. He saw it rather as a practical and necessary goal. As this example shows, Kant had definite views about political questions that weren’t confined to the conventional position assumed by the monarchs of his time. But he also was not an explicit advocate of revolt against oppressive rulers. His differences, some of them radical, with previous accepted understandings of the world did not lead him to advocate revolutionary changes to remove temporal political barriers to their achievement.

For much more discussion of Kant's Views on Space and Time, see this linked article by Andrew Janiak Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 09/14/09

Both Herder and Kant were much influenced by the notion of antagonistic forces in nature having a creative function. Kant even development a speculative version of the Big Bang based on it.

Kantian philosophers and critics of Kant that Förster discusses briefly include J. G. Ch. Kiesewetter (1766-1819), Salomon Maimon (1753-1800), L. Bendavid (1762-1832), Karl Leonhard Teinholds (1758-1823), Gottlieb Ernst Schulze, aka, Aenesidemus (1761-1833), Immanuel Carl Diz (1766-1796). Förster’s book unfortunately is without an index, but I don’t recall his mentioning the Kantian philosopher August Wilhelm Rehberg (1757-1836), who is considered the father of German conservatism.

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