73

IMMANUEL KANT

OBJECTIVES

1. To differentiate the philosophy of Kant from the

works of other philosophers
2. To name the contribution of Kant’s philosophy to
language instruction.
3. To discuss the philosophy of Immanuel Kant
and its role in the history of ideas.

1724-1804

KEY WORDS
Categorical Imperatives, Copernican Revolution, Kantian Ethics, Morality, Synthetic A
Priori Knowledge, Transcendental Idealism

BIOGRAPHY
Immanuel Kant (originally Cant but was changed to meet the German spelling
and pronunciation practices) was born April 22, 1724 in Konigsberg into an artisan
family of modest means. He lived modestly until he finally became a fully-salaried
professor in his 50s.
Kant’s parents were Pietist and his family was deeply religious. He attended a
Pietist school at age 8 with the aim to study theology when older. However, he
developed interest in Latin and the classics. When he entered college at 16, his interest
in classics was quickly superseded by philosophy and mathematics. Kant’s philosophy
professors exposed him to notable philosophers which eventually influenced some of
his works. In 1746, he was forced to leave the university due to his father’s death. For
nearly a decade, he worked as a private tutor to support his younger siblings.
Kant returned to the University of Konigsberg in 1755 to continue his education. Within
the same year, he received a doctorate from philosophy. He spent the next 15 years
working as a lecturer being paid by students but he also devoted a lot of his time to
writing on various topics.
A decade earlier, he finally became a professor at the University of Konigsberg
and taught metaphysics and logic until 1797. During the last years of his life, he became
embittered due to loss of memory which severely affected his ability to work but he
continued to write nearly until the very end of his life. He died in 1804, aged 80.
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Related Learning Experience
Study the comic strips below. Think of the pros and cons in each of the situation. Write
your answers on the space provided for. After that, weigh your answers. If you decide
that the pros are more essential, put a plus (+) mark beside the word pros, otherwise,
put a plus (+) mark beside the word cons.

Comic Strip from The Philippine Star Sunday Comics January 7, 2018 Issue
PROS: ________________________________________________________________
CONS:________________________________________________________________

Comic Strip from Inquirer Comic Relief December 22, 2017 Issue
PROS: ________________________________________________________________
CONS:________________________________________________________________

Comic Strip from Inquirer Comic Relief December 22, 2017 Issue
 75
PROS: ________________________________________________________________
CONS:________________________________________________________________

Definitely, for this activity, there is no right or wrong answer as Kant also believed
in free will. However, to be Kant’s believer at least morally, there are some habits or
principles that one has to let go. And yes, it is going to hurt.
Find more of this as the discussion on Categorical Imperative ensues.

IMMANUEL KANT’S PHILOSOPHY

Immanuel Kant was born in the Enlightenment Era when secularism was booming
and the belief in Christianity was declining. Kant was alarmed, but which is also ironic
because he was cynical. He said that humans are, by nature, intensely prone to
corruption. These became the reason why he formulated his life project which is his
desire to replace religious authority with authority of reason which is our intelligence. He
felt the need to promote ethical behavior. It was not long when he published
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Moral where Categorical Imperative was written.
Categorical imperative seems to be the most famous work Kant has ever done, evident
in books and articles written about him. This was Kant’s rejoinder to the Divine
Command Theory (what is good and what is not is determined by a deity) and the
Natural Law Theory (morality comes from us because we are made by God who
reloaded us with moral sensibility) by Thomas Aquinas where he said that religion and
morality were a terrible paring; in order to determine what is right one must use reason
and sense of consideration. Religion, to him, does not change the truth. Whether one is
a Buddhist or a Catholic, a lie is still a lie. As for morality, he stated that most of the
time, whether or not we ought to do something isn’t really a moral choice but is just
contingent on our desires.

A. AESTHETICS: On Beautiful and Sublime

Kant talked of aesthetics in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
(1763) and in Critique of Judgment (1790). He claimed that judgments of taste are
both subjective and universal: subjective in that they are responses of pleasure and do
not essentially involve any claims about the properties of the object itself and universal
in that they are not merely personal, but must in a crucial way be disinterested.
Moreover, according to Mastin (2008), Kant divided the kinds of aesthetic response into
those of the beautiful (a pleasure in order, harmony, delicacy and the like) and
the sublime (a response of awe before the infinite or the overwhelming).

B. ASTRONOMY: Nebular Hypothesis and Spiral Nebulae

Before his Critical period, according to McCormick (n.d.), Immanuel Kant had already
made a bit of a name for himself. Part of this was due to the Observations on the
Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764), which shows a very different kind of Kant,
as thinker and writer, than what becomes familiar in the later works.
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Albeit, Kant’s General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, said to be his most
remarkable contribution, talked about his two notable theories in physics and
astronomy.
One was the Nebular Hypothesis of planetary formation. Kant reasoned that diffuse
nebulae, dim clouds of dust and gas that were only first being well observed in his
lifetime, would collapse under the force of gravity. As they did, they could begin spinning
and would then spin out into a disk. From these spinning disks stars and planets would
condense.
Unlike the greatest of earlier German philosophers, Leibniz, Kant was not himself much
of a mathematician, so the theory was not given a mathematical form until the great
French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) did so in 1796. Although
there was still argument about the formation of planets, it now seems to be generally
accepted that both stars and planets condense out of nebulae and collapsed, spinning
disks of dust and gas. There are stellar "nurseries" that can be examined in places like
the Orion Nebula.
Kant was right.
The principal addition to Kant's theory may be that diffuse nebulae are now believed to
begin collapsing and spinning because of shock waves from supernova explosions,
which clear voids in nebulae and concentrate material at the edges. Unfortunately,
some astronomy textbooks refer to the Nebular Hypothesis as the theory of Laplace
alone, instead of the Kant-Laplace theory, and do not give Kant proper credit.
Kant’s second theory was also about nebulae, but of a different kind. Along with bright
and dark diffuse nebulae and planetary nebulae, which have nothing to do with planets,
there are spiral nebulae. Telescopes available in Kant’s times couldn’t have determined
the shape but as “nebulous stars”, Kant distinguished them by quoting Pierre-Louis
Moreau de Maupertuis as “the figure of ellipses more or less open”.
Laplace believed that these elliptical nebulae were actually the spinning disks of the
Nebular Hypothesis but Kant had a different idea. In 1750 Thomas Wright had
suggested that the Milky Way, the Galaxy, was a vast spinning disk itself, consisting of
stars and everything else, and that the earth was part of this system. Kant had read a
report of this theory, and his use of it actually first brought it to general attention. An
observational confirmation of it came from the great astronomer William Herschel in
1785. Kant's idea was that the dim, tiny nebulae were themselves external galaxies,
island universes independent of the Milky Way.
There was really no evidence for this. It was just a guess. Nevertheless, it launched a
great debate that lasted all the way until 1924. Astronomers were either Laplacean (pro-
Laplace) or Kantians (pro-Kant). Although Kant is said to have introduced the term
island universes, the term island was not mentioned in his text, just universes.
Nevertheless, the expression became associated with his theory.
Due to this, on April 26, 1920, a formal debate over the issue happened
between Harlow Shapley (a Laplacean) and H.D. Curtis (a Kantian) at the National
Academy of Sciences. It was the older scientist, Curtis, with the modern view. However,
the matter was not settled by the debate but by Edwin Hubble in 1923-1924, using the
recently completed Mount Wilson 100 inch telescope, in the San Gabriel Mountains
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above Pasadena, California. The mirror was made from crushed French wine bottles
and hauled up the mountain by mules. The site is visible from the San Fernando Valley,
although the building is over the crest of the ridge and surrounded by trees.
Hubble was able to identify Cepheid variable stars in nearby spiral nebulae -- initially
the Great Spiral Nebula in Andromeda, whose full extent covers three degrees of arc in
the sky (six times the diameter of the sun or moon), although only the much smaller
core is visible to the naked eye -- actually, the most distance object visible to the naked
eye, at 2.38 million Light Years. With this kind of variable star, their period of variation is
proportional to their absolute brightness. With their absolute brightness (M), compared
to the apparent brightness (m), Hubble would know their absolute distance (m - M = 5
log (r/10), where r is in parsecs). They were far, far further away than the stars of the
Milky Way Galaxy. They were in external galaxies (McCormick, n.d.).
Kant was right. Again.
Hubble's sensational results were presented to a meeting of the American Astronomical
Union in December 1924.
With all of these, it would be fair to give credit to Kant as he was the first person to
conceive the form of the universe as we now see it, filled with billions and billions of
galaxies. However, not only is it rare to see Kant given credit for his theory, but positive
falsehoods can also be found in public discourse.
An example was the Beyond the Big Bang episode of the History Channel program in
2007 called The Universe, credited Hubble with being the first person to conceive as
well as prove that spiral nebulae are external galaxies, completely ignoring Kant and the
long history of the controversy that culminated in the debate between Shapley and
Curtis. The falsehood never ended there and continued with Michio Kaku’s Alien
Galaxies in 2010 shown on the Science Channel How the Universe Works. In March
2016, Lawrence M. Krauss also failed to properly reference Kant in his book.

C. COPERNICAN REVOLUTION: Mind That Can Have Knowledge

This account is analogous to the heliocentric revolution of Copernicus in astronomy
because both require contributions from the observer to be factored into explanations of
phenomena, although neither reduces phenomena to the contributions of observers
alone. The way celestial phenomena appear to us on earth, according to Copernicus, is
affected by both the motions of celestial bodies and the motion of the earth, which is not
a stationary body around which everything else revolves. For Kant, analogously, the
phenomena of human experience depend on both the sensory data that we receive
passively through sensibility and the way our mind actively processes this data
according to its own a priori rules. These rules supply the general framework in which
the sensible world and all the objects (or phenomena) in it appear to us. So the sensible
world and its phenomena are not entirely independent of the human mind, which
contributes its basic structure.
Thus, the mind's active role in helping to create a world that is experiencable must put it
at the center of our philosophical investigations. The appropriate starting place for any
philosophical inquiry into knowledge, Kant decides, is with the mind that can have that
knowledge (McCormick, n.d.).
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D. POLITICS: Moral Principles and Human Motives
Kant’s political philosophy is entwined with his moral philosophy. Political activity is
ultimately governed by moral principles based on human autonomy. Therefore, in his
essay On the Common Saying: This May be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in
Practice, Kant is critical of political thinkers, such as Machiavelli, who believe that
amoral and immoral means are allowed in politics. Still, although Kant argues that
morality is obligatory in politics, he does not believe that people’s actual political
behavior is controlled by duty (Great Thinkers, 2018).
The establishment of a Rechtsstaat, a state based upon law, is one of the most
important political acts required by duty. In the Doctrine of Right (second part of the
Metaphysics of Morals), Kant tells us that the only innate right is “freedom, insofar as it
can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law”. Human
freedom and dignity must be respected. For this, a constitutional state governed by law
which protects the civil rights of individuals is needed.
In relation to constitutional state, Kant also separates republics (the kind of government
he advocates) from despotisms. When executive and legislative powers are invested in
a single body, the government becomes despotic because law is no longer universal but
is determined by a particular will. Direct democracies, then, are unavoidably despotisms
because the majority oppresses the minority rather than acting according to universal
law.
Unlike the justifications offered by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and his other
predecessors, Kant does not reason purely that individual enter the state or social
contract for prudential reasons, because their interests are best served by the state, but
also because we have an obligation to reverence human freedom. For this, the creation
of a Rechtsstaat is needed, if one does not yet exist.
Humans, as Kant sees, are governed by their inclinations and desires, making them
partial to themselves and dangerous to one another. Rulers also often control their
constituents. Even so, Kant shuns the notion of revolting against the existing
governments to create more perfect ones; also happens in the Philippines which, in all
honesty, do nothing. For Kant, it is illogical to revolt since the government is the
embodiment of right. He argues that the constituents should always obey the
government but can always use their public reason to criticize them.
The political philosophy of Kant is characterized by a disconnection between the realm
of political principle and the material motives of human behavior. Kant argues that it is
precisely by means of humankind’s negative or asocial characteristics that societies are
created and drawn closer to meeting the requirements of morality.
In Kant’s essay titled Perpetual Peace, he says that the problem of civil government can
be solved even for a race of devils, if they be intelligent. In his words, the establishment
of a lawful and peaceful state “does not require that we know how to attain the moral
improvement of men but only that we should know the mechanism of nature in order to
use it on men, organizing the conflict of the hostile intentions present in people in such a
way that they must compel themselves to submit to coercive laws”.
On international relations, Kant’s ideas exhibit the same tension between principle and
fact. Kant argues that a state of perpetual peace is required morally. Albeit, achieving
this is a painful process. Kant says that, for perpetual peace to take place, all states
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must possess a republican civil constitution, participate in a union of states, abolish
standing armies, and refuse to take on national debts for war, among several other
conditions (Great Thinkers, 2018).
As Kant further writes,” a good constitution is expected from morality, but, conversely, a
good moral condition of people is to be expected only under a good constitution.”

E. EPISTEMOLOGY: Analytic vs Synthetic; A Priori (Non-Empirical Knowledge) vs

A Posteriori (Empirical Knowledge)
Kant, according to Mastin (2008), started with the traditional distinction between truths
of fact (which Kant called analytic propositions, ones which are true simply by virtue of
their meaning, and only elucidate or explain words e.g. "all bachelors are unmarried")
and truths of reason (which Kant called synthetic propositions, ones which make claims
beyond that e.g. "all bachelors are happy"). He added to this two other concepts: a
priori knowledge (which comes purely from reasoning, independent of experience, and
typically applies to analytic propositions) and a posteriori knowledge (which comes from
experience alone, and typically applies to synthetic propositions).
However, Kant maintained that the two could be combined, and that synthetic a
priori statements were in fact possible, that there existed propositions which applied
to the physical world but were not derived from the world, but which were established
simply by argument. He argued that knowledge comes from a synthesis
of experience and concepts: without the senses, we would not become aware of any
object, but without understanding and reason we would not be able to form
any conception of it.

F. ETHICS: Categorical Imperatives

Kantian Ethics is one of the most commonly taught deontological theories. He
attempted to derive a deontological ethic system from pure logic alone. It rests on a
central tenant known as the categorical imperative.
It is founded on his view of rationality as the ultimate good, and his belief that all people
are fundamentally rational beings. He believed that morality was derived from rationality
and that, just as rational thought leads us to an objective reality; it also leads us to
an objective morality, which could be rationally supported.
His major contribution to Ethics was the theory of the Categorical Imperative, an
absolutely universal, non-negotiable moral law which holds up regardless of context. At
its simplest, it states that one should act only in such a way that you would want your
actions to become a universal law, applicable to everyone in a similar situation (a kind
of Moral Universalism or Moral Absolutism). Additionally, one must strive to treat others
not as mere means, but as ends in themselves, so that (in stark contrast
to Utilitarianism) it can never be right to manipulate, abuse or lie to individuals, even in
the interests of others or even the perceived greater good. This latter maxim was, and
remains, highly controversial when taken to extremes, but Kant insisted that it should
remain sacrosanct. He asserted that each person is his own moral agent, and we
should only be responsible for our own actions, not those of others.
Categorical imperative seems to be the most famous work Kant has ever done, evident
in books and articles written about him. This was Kant’s rejoinder to the Divine
 80
Command Theory (what is good and what is not is determined by a deity) and the
Natural Law Theory (morality comes from us because we are made by God who
reloaded us with moral sensibility) by Thomas Aquinas where he said that religion and
morality were a terrible paring; in order to determine what is right one must use reason
and sense of consideration. Religion, to him, does not change the truth. Whether one is
a Buddhist or a Catholic, a lie is still a lie. As for morality, he stated that most of the
time, whether or not we ought to do something isn’t really a moral choice but is just
contingent on our desires.
Categorical imperative is divided into three formulations: 1) universality or the
universalizability principle 2) ends versus means and 3) kings of ends.

G. TELEOLOGY: Religion and Morality

Part of Kant's aim in the Critique of Teleological Judgment, as Rohlf (2016) suggested,
is to clarify the relation of natural teleology to religion, and to argue in particular against
physicoteleology, that is, the attempt to use natural teleology to prove the existence of
God. The topic of physicotheology was of concern to Kant throughout his career: Kant
proposes a “revised physicotheology” in the Only Possible Argument for the Existence
of God (1763), and offers a more far-reaching criticism of physicotheology in
the Critique of Pure Reason. Appeal to natural teleology may justify the assumption of
an intelligent cause of nature, but it cannot justify the assumption that this cause has
wisdom, let alone that it is infinite in every respect, and in particular supremely wise. For
this we need to appeal, not to natural, but to moral, teleology, and in particular to the
idea (itself belonging not to natural, but to moral teleology) of man as final purpose of
nature. The idea of nature as purposively directed towards the existence of rational
beings under moral laws allows us to conceive of an author of nature who is not merely
intelligent, but also has the other attributes associated with the traditional idea of God,
for example omniscience, omnipotence and wisdom (which includes omnibenificence
and justice). We have to assume the existence of a being with these attributes if we
ourselves are to adopt the purpose required by the moral law, a purpose which Kant
calls the “highest good” and which is discussed in his moral writings.
Although natural teleology cannot prove the existence of God, it nonetheless has a
positive role to play with respect to religion and morality, in that it leads us to ask what
the final purpose of nature is, and relatedly, to inquire into the attributes of God as
author of nature. Thus, as Kant puts it, it “drives us to seek a theology”, and thus serves
as a preparation or propadeutic to theology.
A different kind of connection between Kant's natural teleology and his views about
morality is suggested by Kain (2009), which interprets Kant's biological theories as
supporting his view that all members of the human species (including infants and the
severely disabled) have moral status (Rohlf, 2016).

H. METAPHYSICS: Critique of Pure Reason

The original inspiration for the Enlightenment was the new physics, which was
mechanistic. If nature is entirely governed by mechanistic, causal laws, then it may
seem that there is no room for freedom, a soul, or anything but matter in motion. This
threatened the traditional view that morality requires freedom. We must be free in order
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to choose what is right over what is wrong, because otherwise we cannot be held
responsible. It also threatened the traditional religious belief in a soul that can survive
death or be resurrected in an afterlife. So modern science, the pride of the
Enlightenment, the source of its optimism about the powers of human reason,
threatened to undermine traditional moral and religious beliefs that free rational thought
was expected to support. This was the main intellectual crisis of the Enlightenment.
The Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's response to this crisis. Its main topic is
metaphysics because, for Kant, metaphysics is the domain of reason – it is “the
inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically” — and the
authority of reason was in question. Kant's main goal is to show that a critique of reason
by reason itself, unaided and unrestrained by traditional authorities, establishes a
secure and consistent basis for both Newtonian science and traditional morality and
religion. In other words, free rational inquiry adequately supports all of these essential
human interests and shows them to be mutually consistent. So reason deserves the
sovereignty attributed to it by the Enlightenment.

IMPACT TO LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

Kant having a philosophy on language had been a point of discourse, written and
spoken, for years now. According to Forster (2012), In the sense that Kant, besides
espousing a version of Leibniz-Wolff counter-paradigm with its anticipation of doctrines,
also developed from 1790 to 1798 a position that incorporated more full-blooded
versions of doctrines and the most distinctive doctrines of modern philosophy of
language, then he may be said to have a philosophy on language. However, his
versions of these were just borrowed from other people. Moreover, there is little
evidence that he adopted arguments or established new ones. So considering the
extent of unoriginality and inflexibility, Kant does not really have any philosophy of
language.
However, from years of teaching and his work Pedagogy, Kant is known for his
educational theory which comes along morality. Kant, together with Rousseau, agree in
regarding pedagogy as form of human interest whose foundations must lie as deep as
the human nature it attempts to mold, rather than as comprising a set of voluntary
quibblings and carpings about the way of doing particular tasks of school routine.
To Kant, morality starts from learning discipline in the school and religious instruction is
necessary. Kant believes that education is a positive constructive force in human
character.

SUMMARY

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant discussed four main ways in which
reflecting judgment leads us to regard nature as purposive: first, it leads us to regard
nature as governed by a system of empirical laws; second, it enables us to make
aesthetic judgments; third, it leads us to think of organisms as objectively purposive;
and, fourth, it ultimately leads us to think about the final end of nature as a whole.
Looking at it differently, it seems as a collection of his many ideas and theories.
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First, to discover laws, we must form hypotheses and devise experiments on the
assumption that nature is governed by empirical laws that we can grasp. Reflecting
judgment makes this assumption through its principle to regard nature as purposive for
our understanding, which leads us to treat nature as if its empirical laws were designed
to be understood by us. Second, we judge objects to be beautiful not because they
gratify our desires, since aesthetic judgments are disinterested, but rather because
apprehending their form stimulates what he calls the harmonious “free play” of our
understanding and imagination, in which we take a distinctively aesthetic pleasure.
Third, since we have a discursive intellect and cannot know how things would appear to
a being with an intuitive intellect, and yet we can only think of organisms teleologically,
which excludes mechanism, Kant now says that we must think of both mechanism and
teleology only as regulative principles that we need to explain nature, rather than as
constitutive principles that describe how nature is intrinsically constituted. Last, although
theoretical and practical philosophy proceed from separate and irreducible starting
points — self-consciousness as the highest principle for our cognition of nature, and the
moral law as the basis for our knowledge of freedom — reflecting judgment unifies them
into a single, teleological worldview that assigns preeminent value to human autonomy.

STUDENT ACTIVITY
Draw a diagram depicting your understanding on Analytic vis Synthetic, A Priori
vis A Posteriori and Empiricism vs Rationalism.

LITERATURE CITATION

Immanuel Kant. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from philosophers.co.uk:

http://www.philosophers.co.uk/immanuel-kant.html

Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy. Retrieved April 9, 2018, from Northwestern University

Press: http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/kants-conception-pedagogy

An Introduction to the Work of Kant. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from Great Thinkers:
http://thegreatthinkers.org/kant/introduction/

Baird, F. E. & Kauffmann, W. 2003. Philosophy Classics: From Plato to Derrida 4 th

Edition. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Butler-Bowdon, T. 2013. 50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing:

Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from 50 Key Books. Clerkenwell: Nicholas
Brealey Publishing.

Cahn, S. M. 1977. Classics of Western Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing

Company, Inc.

Cahn, S. M. 1990. Classics of Western Philosophy 3 rd Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett

Publishing Company, Inc.
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Cahn, S. M. 2005. Political Philosophy: The Essential Texts. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Davids, C. 2004. Kant on Education. Boston: D.C. Health and Co.

Forster, M.N. 2012. Kant’s Philosophy of Language? Retrieved February 28, 2018, from
University of Chicago: http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/forster/Kant%20Phil
%20Lnguage%20Forster-1.pdf

Guyer, P. 2006. Kant. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.