Immanuel Kant

Prepared by:
Vince Moreno
Jezz Briones
Kirsti Anne Vedad
I. Kant in a nutshell:

“In a Rational World

based on Science, is
there a place for Moral
Law?”
 Biography
 Born on 22nd of April, 1724 in Konigsberg, East Prussia
 Free education in Pietist school
 In Konigsberg University, he took a variety of subjects
 He wrote Universal Natural History and The Theory of
the Heavens
 A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical
Cognition was the ticket to start giving lectures at
Konigsberg University
 Death: 12th of February, 1804 (aged 79)
Era:
The Enlightenment
Religion is wrong in content.
Religion, however, latched on to
the need to promote ethical
behavior.
Critique of Practical
Reason
Principals:

1. Objective
- If every rational being considers them
- Imperative
• Hypothetical
- demands a course of action to achieve a specified result; for example, “If I
want to stay dry in the rain, then I should take my umbrella with me.”
• Categorical
- demands a course of action under all possible circumstances; for
example, “Thou shalt not commit murder.”

2. Subjective
- If one person considers them
- Maxims
Categorical
Imperative
“Act only according to the
maxim by which you can at
the same time will that it
should become a universal
law,”
“Act so as to treat people
always as ends of themselves,
never as mere means.”
Hypothetical Imperative
And
Subjective principles
Subjective principles and hypothetical
imperatives are empirically oriented; neither
can be a fundamental determiner of moral
motivation since they serve self-interest.
Kant on:
Self-consciousness
“The I think must be able to accompany all my
representations; for otherwise something would be
represented in me that could not be thought at all, which
is as much as to say that the representation would either
be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me.”
Self-consciousness

1. Inner Sense
- by which we are aware of alterations in our own state. Hence
all moods, feelings, and sensations, including such basic alterations as
pleasure and pain, are the proper subject matter of inner sense.

2. Apperception
- capacity for the awareness of some state or modification of
one’s self as a state
 The Rationalist-Empiricist Dispute

According to Kant, all knowledge begins with sense experience, but not
all knowledge arises out of sense experience.
There are two basic types of human knowledge:
1. a posteriori
-knowledge, which arises from & depends on sense experience; and
2. a priori
-knowledge, which arises from the operations of the mind & is
independent of sense experience
Analytic Judgments
vs.
Synthetic Judgments
 Analytical Judgement:

The predicate makes explicit (explicates)

meanings that are already implicit in the
subject.
Synthetic Judgement:
The predicate adds to our knowledge
of the subject in a way that logical
analysis, by itself, cannot.
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A synthetic a priori judgment is one that is

necessarily & universally true (& thus not derived from

sense experience, i.e., it is a priori)
and in which
the predicate adds something to our knowledge of the
subject that could not be known merely by logical
analysis of the subject.
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Examples of synthetic a priori judgments
(according to Kant)

 "Everything that happens has a cause."

 "7 + 5 = 12"
 "A straight line is the shortest distance between two
points [in space]."
 "In all changes of the material world, the quantity
of matter remains unchanged."
 "In all communication of motion, action and
reaction must always be equal."
 "The world must have a beginning."
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To this general question, Kant adds several
subsidiary questions:

 "How is pure mathematical science possible?"

 "How is pure natural science [physics] possible?"

 "How is metaphysics as a natural disposition possible?"

 "How is metaphysics as a science possible?"

(We will not at this time pursue answers to these questions.)

 Categories of the Understanding

Of Quantity Of Relation
Unity (Singularity) Substance-Attribute
Plurality (Particularity) Cause-&-Effect
Totality (Universality) Community (Interaction)

Of Quality Of Modality
Affirmation Possibility-Impossibility
Negation Existence-Nonexistence
Limitation Necessity-Contingency
Moral Worth
1. A person’s actions determine their moral worth

2. Taking account these aspects:

1. Background
2. Basic Idea
3. Motivation
4. Consequences
5. Interpretation

3. One can have moral worth only if one is motivated by morality.

4. “In law, a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others; in

ethics, he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.