The Kantian Revolution in Philosophy
Lesson Objectives
Appreciate the revolution that Immanuel Kant brought to Western Philosophy
Appreciate Kant's realization that Ethics would now arise from reason alone
Understand the difference between Hypothetical & Categorical Imperatives
Understand the distinction between the Noumenal & Phenomenal world
Appreciate why Kant links Ethics & Phenomenology by using Aesthetics
Understand how Kant presents the Self as a Unity of Consciousness
Key Terms
Deontology
Hypothetical Imperative
Categorical Imperative
Autonomous Lawmaker
Maxim
Analytic Truth
Synthetic Truth
Noumenal
Phenomenal (Phenomenology)
Rational Man vs. Natural Man
Aesthetics
Unity of Consciousness
The Kantian Revolution
Only two people have revolutionized Philosophy in 2300 years
• Aristotle organized philosophy ontologically ("what is?")
• His Classical Philosophy focused on existence, form, and function
• This became the way Medieval philosophers and theologians worked
• Kant organized philosophy not according to what is... but on what it is to think
• Kant organizes and categorizes Modern Philosophy epistemologically
Why Does Kant reorganize Philosophy epistemologically?
• The two competing Western views of reality were epistemic claims
• European Cartesian Rationalism – the mind is the path to knowledge
• British Empiricism – all knowledge arises from physical experience
• One held objective truth was internal to our thinking (Rationalism), the other that objective truth was out there (Empiricism), waiting for us to discover it
• In either case, the promise was that objective truth was waiting for us
• Kant's criticisms of both Rationalism and Empiricism will
produce his first two critiques of Western Philosophy
Kant's Three Critiques of Western Philosophy
• 1st Critique (1781): Kant investigates theoretical reason (cf. Phenomenology)
• Thinking done in the service of the natural world
• 2nd Critique (1788): Kant investigates practical reason (cf. Ethics)
• Thinking done in the service of discovering absolute moral laws
• 3rd Critique (1790): Kant investigates our judgment and taste (cf. Aesthetics)
• His first two critiques are theoretical and practical, but our subjective
taste is neither of those. Taste, it turns out, transcends and links the two.