Immanuel Kant philosophy (His Fundamental Contribution to Philosophy)

August 24, 2021August 24, 2021MyInfo Basket.com 6 Commentsimmanuel kant contribution to philosophy, Immanuel Kant philosophy, immanuel kant philosophy of self, Immanuel Kant's Critical Philosophy, kant critical theory, Kant's critical theory of knowledge, What is Critical philosophy, What is ethics in Philosophy

What basically is the so-called “Immanuel Kant Philosophy”? Immanuel Kant contribution to philosophy includes answering “what is ethics in philosophy” and the famous “Immanuel Kant philosophy of self” and Kant’s critical theory of knowledge.

However, Kant’s contribution to the fundamental list of philosophical methods deals with his Critical Theory or Method. And this is what Filipino Philosophy professor and textbook author Jensen DG. Mañebog tackles in one of his lectures in Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. His discussion is significantly the basis of this article.

The so-called Critical Method (also called Kant’s Transcendental Idealism and Critical Theory) suggests that in knowing things we should focus on the analysis of the conditions and limits of knowledge. The idea was introduced by the influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Kant believes that the material of our knowledge is presented by the senses, but the necessity and universality about it come from the very nature and constitution of the understanding, which is the knower of all things in the world.

Professor Jensen DG. Mañebog thus teaches that for Kant, the correct philosophical method is not to ponder on the nature of the world around us but to do a critique of our mental faculties, exploring what we can know, defining the limits of knowledge, and ascertaining how the mental processes through which we make sense of the world influence what we know.

The Critical Method teaches that to get the answers to our philosophical questions is to investigate our mental faculties and not to do a metaphysical speculation of the universe around us. For Kant, the mind is not a passive receptor as it dynamically forms our perception of reality.

Immanuel Kant contribution to philosophy: phenomena and noumena

The Critical Method of Kant indicates a precise distinction between phenomena and noumena. Noumena are “things-in-themselves” (das Ding an sich), the reality that exists independent of our mind, while phenomena are appearances, the things as they appear to an observer, that is, reality as our mind makes sense of the things.

Under this Critical Method of Kant, because all our knowledge of the external world is sorted through our mental faculties, we can know only the world that our mind casts to us, we can never know with assurance what is out there. Thus, all our knowledge is only knowledge of phenomena, since noumena are essentially unknowable.

Immanuel Kant philosophy vs Some Idealists

Idealists are those who hold that the world is made up principally of mental ideas, not of physical things. But Kant differs from most idealists in the sense that he does not deny the existence of an external reality and does not claim that ideas are more elemental than things.

Kant, nonetheless, argues that we can never transcend the limitations and the contextualization provided by our minds, so that the only reality we will ever know is the reality of phenomena.

What can be learned from Critical Method (Kant’s Transcendental Idealism)

Professor Jensen DG. Mañebog further identifies what we can learn from the Critical Method (Kant’s Transcendental Idealism) as a philosophical method that leads to truth and wisdom. We can learn from it that reason, though a beneficial tool, must be well controlled to avoid impulsively accepting things for which we have no enough evidence.

The method tells us that reason is not an unqualified good, that it must be used analytically in order to avoid being led to the wrong path.

As a philosophical attitude, the Critical Method enables us to determine which questions reason can answer, and which ones it cannot. As an application, this method teaches us to give up things we do not really need, like traditions and manmade religious practices that are baseless or needless for moral conduct.

To better understand this method of philosophy, compare it to Socratic Method: The Elenchus, Methodic Doubt: The Cartesian Method of Philosophy, Phenomenology Study: The Phenomenological Inquiry and the ‘Lived Experience’, and Dialectic: The Hegelian Method

Note: Teachers may share this as a reading assignment of their students. For other free lectures like this (especially for students), visit Homepage: Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person

*Free lectures on the subject Pambungad sa Pilosopiya ng Tao

Philosophy of Man Articles:

Distinguish Opinion from Truth

Do a philosophical reflection on a concrete situation from a holistic perspective

Realize the Value of Doing Philosophy in Obtaining a Broad Perspective on Life

Distinguish a Holistic Perspective from a Partial Point of View (Holism vs Partial Perspective)

The Blind Men and the Elephant: Attaining a Holistic Perspective

Socratic Method: The Elenchus

Methodic Doubt: The Cartesian Method of Philosophy

Phenomenology Study: The Phenomenological Inquiry and the ‘Lived Experience’

Dialectic: The Hegelian Method

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