Last time I wrote about Voltaire. The next stop can only be Immanuel Kant.
Kant was a revolutionary philosopher. But his revolution was
in the way we think of; a revolution in philosophy. This is also known as the
Kantian revolution.
At one time people thought that the sun revolved around the
earth. When Copernicus came along in the
15th century he totally revolutionized this thinking by postulating
that it is the earth that revolved around the sun.
In philosophy, the contribution of Kant is akin to that of
Copernicus in Astronomy. Till the time of Kant people believed
that the mind perceives the external world as it was present through our
sensory organs. Kant exactly reversed this. He said that the external world is
visible to us in the way the mind wills it. That means the mind itself dictates
how the external world is to be perceived and it is in the structure of our
mind to dictate it so.
We have seen different philosophers who were brought up and
lived a different way of life, each with his own story. Kant’s life is the
simplest life of them all and there is nothing much to narrate about it. He was
born at Konigsberg in Prussia in the year 1724, and died in the same town in
1804. In the 80 years of his life he did not travel beyond 65 kilometers from
Konigsberg.
The ancestors of Kant were from Scotland. They migrated to
Germany and settled down there. They belong to the Pietistic branch of the
German Protestants. His father was a maker of saddles for horses. By the time
Kant was 22 years old both his parents died. Their family was very poor. Of the
9 siblings of Kant only 5 survived.
In his 8th year Kant joined a Pietist school. The
education and religion taught there only made him averse to Christianity. He
joined the University of Konigsberg in his 16th year. He studied
Philosophy, Physics, Geometry, Algebra, Psychology, Astronomy and Logic there.
Since his father could not fund his education, he gave tuitions to his less
able classmates to get along.
After completing his education, for 9 years he worked as a
servant in the houses of the wealthy for some time and as a tutor to their
children. After that he joined the University once again and obtained a
Doctorate and joined the faculty as a lecturer in Physics. After sometime he
became a professor in Philosophy, Logic and Mathematics at the University from
1770 to 1779.
Kant looked pretty inconsequential and below par. He was just
5 feet in height, his chest was flat and he had a paunch. One of his shoulders
was crooked. This of course is only his appearance. The moment he opened his
mouth and started speaking people forgot all about his looks. He was a great
conversationalist and was fond of humor. Even the hardest of things, he
explained in such a way that it is easily and well understood. With his simple
language, oratory and vast knowledge his students forgot themselves in his
class. Kant never married for obvious reasons. Which girl would ever prefer to
marry him with his endowed looks?
Kant was meticulous and precise in his habits. He did
everything at the allocated time each day without any deviation from the allotted
time. He got up at 5 AM in the morning and followed the precise routine up till
the time he went to bed at 10 PM in the night.
When he went out for a walk everyday at 3 PM in the afternoon
it seems he was so precise that people used to set their clocks based on his walkt.
He used to walk in the Limetree Avenue in Konigsberg which was later called the
philosophers walk because he walked there. It seems Kant did not deviate from
this habit for a single day in 30 years. He was very careful with his health
and protected it to the utmost.
Kant never bothered about women, and neither did he like
music or poetry. Surprisingly, although one of his subjects at the University
was Philosophy, he never bothered to read the history of philosophy, but he
digested Leibnitz, Wolf, Voltaire and Rousseau. He read extensively on British
philosophy and literature and also about the theories of Newton.
Despite not moving out of Konigsberg he loved Geography. He
never bothered about politics but welcomed the French Revolution with all his
heart.
Surprisingly Kant started his intellectual life not as a
philosopher but as a scientist. He wrote books on Physics, Astronomy, Geology
and Anthropology.
If not as a philosopher, his name would have been etched in
history as a scientist. He propounded the “Nebular Hypothesis” in 1755 that
explained the formation of Sun and the planets. This hypothesis says that Sun
and the planets have formed by the coalescing of matter out of a great gaseous
cloud. At that time no one even bothered about this hypothesis. In 1796,
Laplace himself propounded the same hypothesis with mathematical proof. Even
today this Nebular Hypothesis is accepted by a large number of scientists and
astronomers. When it was found later that Kant propounded the same thing
earlier, in the honor of both of them it is called the Kant-Laplace theory.
Kant slowly journeyed from Physics to Metaphysics.
John Locke said matter and mind both exist. Berkeley said
there is no matter and only mind existed. Then Hume hopped in and said neither
mind nor matter exist and what exists are mere mental states. Voltaire said
reason is the ultimate but for Rousseau it was feeling that counts. Many
philosophers said many things but ultimately what is the truth?
Kant proclaimed that Hume’s thought has awoken him from his
philosophical dogmatic slumber. How can anyone say that mind does not exist? It
irrefutably exists because if there is no mind then how do we understand the
world? In fact it is the mind that dictates how the world is to be understood.
Kant had written 3 books to expound his thought. The first
was the “Critique of Pure Reason”, then the “Critique of Practical reason” and
finally the “Critique of Judgment”. His first book was the most important and
it is the foundation for all his philosophy.
Now Kant’s thinking is extremely hard to understand, but he
makes it even harder to understand it by the way he writes. His theory is like
a tunnel with innumerable turns with the walls closing in on itself. We do not
know where we will begin and where we will end up. He never tells anything
directly but puts it forth in an abstruse manner. He tells the same thing in
different places and sometimes he states the opposite of what he said earlier. What
he can say in 1 line, he stretches up to 10 pages.
Before publication, Kant sent the manuscript of his book “Critique
of Pure Reason” to one contemporary philosopher for his comments. That man was
supposed to have returned the book after sometime stating that he had gone
through half of the book and feared insanity if he went on with it. Kant’s works
being so difficult to understand attracted many commentaries later.
The commentators say once a person goes into the subject
matter of the book after getting through the confusing language and style, then
one can see the beautiful edifice of Kant’s philosophy.
Philosophy before Kant was different and after him it is
totally different. He changed the thinking of philosophy and influenced the
later philosophers like Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Henry Bergson, Henry James
and Jean Paul Sartre etc. In western philosophy
his place is beside Aristotle and Plato themselves.
Kant said Man is an end in himself. An individual should
never be used as a tool for anything else. He has a free will and it is his
inner reasoning alone that defines his ethics.
If a person is by nature is good and does good things with
his nature then they need not be considered ethical. Unless he knows what is
his duty (like our Gita), then decides that it is what he should do by his free
will and acts it only then the thing can be called ethical.
Whatever one believes to be the Universal ethic, one has to
act by that ethic. He named it the “Categorical
Imperative” which is the undeniable duty which has to be enacted. As per
this an individual cannot have one ethic for himself and another for others. Only
then, one agrees to the equality of all men and their freedom.
In his “Critique of Pure Reason” what he meant by critique
was analysis. Pure is used to denote reason without any experience (a priori).
So what he meant by the title was analysis of a priori knowledge without any
experience.
Kant wanted to synthesize the various discordant philosophies
previous to him. At that time there are two strains in Western philosophy. The
first one is rationalism of the likes of Descartes and the second one is the
Empiricism of the likes of Locke.
As per Rationalism, just by sensory experiences certain and absolute
knowledge cannot be obtained and that is available only through reasoning. It
says there are certain innate ideas in the mind which makes us analyze the
sensory experiences and enable us to arrive at absolute knowledge.
Empiricists reject this view. Locke said all the knowledge we
have is only through experiences and there are no innate ideas. That for an
infant the mind is like a blank slate (tabula rasa) and later only through
sensory experience ideas arise.
Therefore Locke totally rejects any a priori knowledge which
the rationalists maintain and says that there is no knowledge before sensory
experiences.
And thence, Hume took this Empiricism to its logical
conclusion. He says, it is true that we get knowledge only through perception
but such knowledge cannot be either absolute or universal. We perceive because
of sensory organs that deliver sensations in a particular order and we get
knowledge, but it is not necessary that the knowledge so gotten is absolute.
Therefore it is impossible for man to have certain and absolute knowledge. This
led Empiricism to Skepticism.
Now the challenge that lay before Kant is how to synthesize
these two contrarian philosophies. He tried to find a solution to that.
Kant said Rationalists made one mistake. Yes, it is true that
innate ideas exist before sensory perception, but the rationalists have
neglected the part sensory perception plays in knowledge because despite a
priori knowledge being there only sensory experience begins the way to
knowledge.
Kant then says the Empiricists made another mistake. They
neglected the part played by the mind in the sensations obtained that led to
knowledge. As Hume said it is true that it is impossible to obtain absolute
knowledge from sensory perception, but that does not mean there is no absolute
knowledge at all. Why should not be there knowledge beyond our sensory
perception? Why should such knowledge not be absolute and certain? These are
the questions that are raised by Kant on his way.
He said the mistake committed by the Empiricists is that they
restricted our understanding merely to sensory perception. By sensory
perception we know that a thing is there. But why it should be like that and
not as another is something beyond us. However much we analyse perception we
can never arrive at absoluteness and universality. It is beyond our way of thinking.
