The key to understanding Immanuel Kant's philosophy is understanding terms like "analytic", "synthetic", "a-priori", "a-posteriori", "noumena", "phenomena", "transendental", "categorical", "conditional", "intuitive", "thing-in-itself", and a few combinations of the terms, like "synthetic a-priori". It also helps to know something about philosophers who preceded Kant, like Descarte and Leibniz; considered "rationalists"; and Locke, Berkeley, and Hume; considered "empiricists". The terms "analytic", "a-priori", and "noumena" fall into the rationalist camp, while terms like "synthetic", "a-posteriori", and "phenomena" refer to "empiricism".
Descarte is a rationalist because he searched his mind for truth unattached to personal experience. The "cogito" is an example of analytic, a-priori truth because it can be divided into parts, subject and predicate, and determined to be true without reference to any physical perception. Hume and other philosophers pointed out that such logical tautologies, like mathematical equations, may be true or false but do not tell us much about the real world. Only a-posteriori statements, like it is raining outside, statements which have to be tested empirically, tell us about the real world.
Kant tried to disagree with Hume and demonstrate that some statements are synthetic a-priori, true both rationally and emperically. In the statement 7+5 = 12, can it be said that 7+5 is the subject, while 12 is the predicate; and the truth of the statement can also be tested empirically? Does that sound too simple? It probably is. Kant made his case with Euclidean geometry, and it took him twelve years to figure out. Some aspects of his arguments are still being debated.
We usually think that empirical things are not universal. They are subjective, relative to each individual's personal experience. However, synthetic a-priori statements are universal, and they say something about the real world. Did Kant succeed in combining rationalism and empiricism? Well, what if mathematical statements are just an exception to the rule? Can anything else be synthetic and a-priori?
Kant did not really believe we could get to the real truth of something in the real world. He made a distinction between "noumena", the "thing-in-itself", and "phenomena," its appearances. We only deal with these appearances in the context of categories of space and time. This allows for "transcendental" knowledge of universal laws. Space and time are experienced. That makes them synthetic, but they are experienced the same by everybody. That makes them universal. It is as if everybody constantly wears the same colored glasses.
Kant poked holes in the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The Ontological argument was only an a-priori word game. Existence is not a predicate that was a property of the real world, so it is not synthetic a-priori. Synthetic a-priori and universal seems to be what Kant means by objective. Anything less would either not say anything about the real world or be subjective, relative to different experiences.
He did come up with his own argument for God and immortality. He had to inorder to insure justice in his ethical system, which did not consider such things in this life.
Kant's maxims eliminate any concern for self, happiness, or consequences. One acts only out of duty. It's okay if someone enjoys doing his or her duty, but he or she must do it whether he or she likes it or not. Many people remained on the Titanic, not because it would benefit them or even others, just because it was the right thing to do.
Thinking about utilitarian benefits can sometimes cause a person to do immoral things. If we say that we should act so that the greatest good can come to the greatest number, then it would be moral for someone to kill some rich old miser and distribute his wealth to the greatest number. This wouldn't be moral according to Kant. For Kant, if it is okay for one person to do something, then it has to be okay for everyone to do it. If I came up with a rule for myself saying that I should never talk to anyone until I am spoken to first, I have to imagine what it would be like if everybody did that. Hey, if everybody did that, then nobody would talk. So, I use the same reasoning to determine not to cheat or break promises etc. However, Kant did not consider the reasoning it took to reach these conclusions to be what we think of as reasoning. We are using an uncommon definition of what he calls "intuition".
Kant's moral maxims are on a par with the golden rule. They are universal. He believes in natural rights because he believes we should treat each person as an end in him or her self, but he doesn't do it to be more secure or to avoid harm. He does it for duty, even if it does cause unpleasantness or nasty consequences.
Again, did Kant successfully combine rationalism and empiricism avoiding the pitfalls of each while keeping the assets? Ayn Rand would say that he eliminated the assets and kept the pitfalls. She would say that Kant eliminated "self", "pleasure", and "reason" while leaving faith.
In "For the New Intellectual" Rand describes the two camps as: "those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)---and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists)."It was those who abandoned reality, or those who clung to reality by abanding their mind.
"Kant's expressly stated purpose," said Rand, "was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. He knew that it could not survive without a mystic base---and what it had to be saved from was "reason." Kant did say, in the "Critique of Pure Reason," p.29, that he found it necessary to deny knowledge, inorder to make room for faith. In his ethics, he also found it necessary to deny happiness, in order to make room for duty.
Ayn Rand thinks that Aristotle's law of identity can be applied to reality and offer us real knowledge of the real world. Existence exists, she says, and it implies a corollary of causation. There is an objective reality, she maintains, which is reachable by man's mind if he chooses to use reason. Man is such that reason is necessary for his proper survival, as man, and each individual has a natural right, which is universal, objective, to employ reason in the pursuit of his or her goals. Unfortunately, unlike other living things which have automatic functions, man has a volitional consciousness which can be deceived by influences against reason, like faith and philosophies like that of Kant's.
Both Kant and Rand are system-builders. According to the existentialists, starting with Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus; systems are nice to look at but impossible to live in. They crumble when we need them the most. (And, Rand's system seemed to crumble for her when she had a personal crises.)
I think Kant was the much more careful and complete philosopher compared to Rand, but I agree more with Rand. However, I also agree with the existentialists and think there needs to be some combining of Rand's Objectivism with Existentialism. This is what I am trying to accomplish with NickOtani'sNeo-Objectivism.
bis bald,
Nick
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