Oxford Royale Academy:
Philosophy essay: Immanuel Kant
By Fernando Martinez-Periset
1. Introduction:
Immanuel Kant is one of the most influential philosophers whose innovative and radical theories changed the way philosophy was being discussed. On the course of this essay I will give a short overview of his life and I will focus on two main areas of Kant's ideas: his metaphysics, where I will particularly examine his criticism to the ontological argument and his perception theory, and his perspective on ethics, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the latter. I will also be adding my personal thought on the topics discussed once the arguments have been explained. This analysis will lead me to my conclusion on these aspects of the Kantian philosophy.
2. Brief biography and historical background:
He was born in 1724 in Königsberg, a German-Prussian town, where he spent most of his life both as a student and as a professor. He was a cultivated man, who had studied from mathematics and science to theology. Kant was usually regarded as a friendly and welcoming man by his contemporaries, in fact, there are testimonies that state how he frequently invited home his students and friends if they needed it. His most important work is 'Critique of pure reason', which was written when he was in his mid-forties. Some time later, he will publish 'Critique of practical reason'. These works twisted philosophy around and that is why some experts call Kantian ideas a 'Copernican revolution' in philosophy. It is also worth noting that as he got older, Kant was deeply influenced by David Hume's philosophy, as well as Descartes and Leibniz's amongst others, who influenced his early philosophical thoughts. Kant finally died aged 79 in 1804, after suffering from a disease for more than a year.
At the time Kant is working on his philosophy, Europe is being bombarded by new scientific ideas, and discoveries, like those of Newton, that progressively change European mentality. It is also a pre-Napoleonic continent at the time. In addition, Prussia (Kant's native country) is slowly gaining more importance in Europe.
3. Kant's Metaphysics:
3.1 Criticising the ontological argument:
Although it is thought that Kant was a religious man, he was not a rigorous one. That might be one of the reasons why, applying logic and reason, he attempts to defeat the ontological argument for the existence of God. Firstly, to understand what we are discussing and what we mean by 'God' in this essay, we will be focusing on the Western church vision of God as an omniscient, all powerful creator of the universe.
The ontological argument was a deductively valid way of defining God into existence. It was developed by St. Anselm during the 12th century and it rests on the premises that God is the greatest conceivable being and that for him to be the greatest he must exist both in my imagination and in reality. This last premise implies that it is greater to exist than to not exist and if he only existed in one of these forms, he would not truly be the greatest. So the conclusion of the argument is that God exists. Nevertheless, there seems to be something essentially wrong with the ontological argument and it took philosophers a long time to destroy it, until Kant introduced two criticisms to it. Before Kant, both Aquinas and Gaunilo, amongst others, had tried to highlight that there was something fundamentally wrong with it but they had not been able to explain exactly what it was.
To develop his first attack against the ontological argument, Kant points out that predicates can either be separable or inseparable. To illustrate this, an example of a separable predicate would be 'unicorn' and 'sad', since a unicorn can be happy and given that 'sad' is not a part of the definition of 'unicorn'. On the other hand, 'unicorn' and 'horn' would be inseparable as if a unicorn does not have a horn it is no longer a unicorn. Therefore it is true by definition that a unicorn must have a horn; it's a tautology. By doing that, Kant accepts the idea that the predicate 'God' and 'existence' go together and are inseparable, as Anselm tells us in his argument. However, Kant indicates that there is a flaw on the language used in the ontological argument. Kant argues that the argument is not really given us much information. In other words, applying the theory of inseparable predicates that I have just discussed, the same way we would say the phrase: "if a unicorn exists it must have a horn", what the ontological argument is really stating is: "if God exists, he must exist". 'Existence' and 'God' go together the same way 'unicorn' and 'horn' do but that does not tell us if they exist, we are just defining them. Kant point towards a difference between the fact to define something and its real status. Therefore, St. Anselm does not provide us with enough information as we are left with the word "if" in his message. This word leaves the question of God's existence still opened to debate. Some philosophers would argue that with this attack to the ontological argument we get to see the great genius of Kant, as he is moving early into philosophy of language, that will be developed in the 20th century, mainly by Wittgenstein.
With regard to Kant's second criticism of the ontological argument, he thinks it is related to a misguiding use of the word "exist". Kant believes it is not a descriptive word and therefore we can not directly draw something into existence. The verb "to exist" does not provide us with any useful descriptive information, it doesn't tell us how God is. We can picture in our imagination properties such as brightness or colour, but this does not occur with the quality "existence". Kant's point is that we simply can't use words to make something exist or stop existing, because that's just part of the definition we have used to create our conception of God. Albeit these reasons are fairly strong to defeat the ontological argument, some theists would respond to that by re-stating the argument saying it is really an attempt to understand God better rather than to prove his existence. The problem with this perspective is called 'death by a thousand justifications' and it means that every time your evidence is questioned and destroyed, the argument is slightly changed again and again, making it impossible to defeat that particular newly created view.
As for my thoughts on Kant's method to wreck this argument, I think he is really clever and convincing. His analysis is brilliant and it demonstrates he is able to think critically. He shows where Anselm went wrong and points out the weaknesses effectively and by applying simple but well-structured logic and rationality. For this reasons I think both of Kant's theories on this matter are correct and valid. From that, we can also conclude that the ontological argument, this 'charming joke' as Schopenhauer calls it, falls apart.
3.2 Perception theory:
One of the ideas Kant is most famous for is his perception one. Once naïve realism, which is the view that reality is as it is perceived, has been defeated by several philosophers like Hume or Locke, Kant tries to bring together and combine the empiricist and the rationalist traditions mixing elements of both to show that the world is not as our perception of it indicates.
Previously, idealist interpretations had been developed by Berkeley, whose theory was that there is no external world and all there is to the world is our perception of it. For Berkeley, it all goes down to the concepts. He also claimed that once something is no longer perceived, it ceases to exist ("esse est percipi"). By contrast, realist theories admit that there are primary and secondary qualities to objects. Primary qualities are objective and measurable, for example weight, and secondary ones are subjective to perception, like colour. Additionally, realists defend the position that there is a real world, hence the name of their philosophical position.
Kant mixes these two types of arguments suggesting that idealist thoughts fail to provide us with an explanation of what causes experiences if there is no external world apart form that of perception. Kant states that there must be something causing those experiences, a 'real world' or, as he calls it, the 'noumenon', the objects themselves. This is a point realists philosophers hold. He also argues that humans need someway to figure out and interpret what our perceptions are. Holding up a dog as an example of this, it would see the world in black and white and it would possibly not be able to know where his experiences come from. These concepts that we need to interpret what we perceive are named 'phenomenal' by Kant.
The problem with this theory is that we can never get out of our heads to see how the real world is like. This issue is called the veil of perception, as we don't have direct access or interaction with the world and this limits our conception of it. As we are not part of the noumenon, there are aspects that we can't possibly know.
Regarding my thoughts on this hypothesis, I believe Kant does have a point and twists philosophy around with this theory. I particularly admire how logically and cleverly he combines both schools of thought and links them in his perception statement. The argument is original and it changes the course of philosophy. Nevertheless, it is rather unsatisfactory that we can never perceive the world as it really is. It also points out that the human mind can't try to understand everything and that our knowledge of the world is limited by our experiences of it. But we probably have to accept that that is the way the human condition presents itself and cope with it. There is no other alternative. I would also venture so far as to say that Kant's perception theory can be based on essentially wrong premises if Descartes' evil demon is correct. In this case, the evil demon would really be the cause of our experiences and there would not be a 'noumenon' as such.
4. Kantian ethics:
Kantian ethics is a way of determining the essential wrongness or rightness of an action according to Kant. These ideas are also called 'duty-based theories on ethics'.
For Kant, an action is truly moral if we have a look at the motives and reasons and why people act in a moral way. Kant would go one step further and would dispute the claim that nothing is really moral unless there is the recognition of a sense of duty going on. For example, if I donate 3€ to Nepal either because I care about people in Nepal or because I want to impress somebody by pretending I care, none of those would be moral actions in nature for Kant. On the other hand, if I donate 3€ to Nepal out of a sense of duty and an acceptance that it is what I must do, then the action is ethical. For us to figure out what our duties are, Kant would call for a 'categorical imperative', which means "follow the command". He thinks there are universal truths concerning ethics and that these are objective. For him, these truths are in fact logical ones that we can deduce. In other words, we can figure out our duties if we apply logic to the situation discussed. So if I am thinking whether or not to give 3€ to Nepal, logic tells me to donate those 3€.
Nonetheless, Kantian ethics seems to show weaknesses right away. One of the most famous criticisms is the so-called "axe-man illustration". This problem is one of the reason why Kant's ethics can be regarded as a good idea but, eventually, impractical. The axe-man illustration works as follows: Imagine a mad axe-man knocks on your door and asks for somebody you know is in your house. If we follow logic, our duty would be to tell the killer that the person he is looking for is at home. Fundamentally, this seems to create more evil than it solves, the axe-man will kill that person, as common sense tells us. Surely telling the killer where the person is is not a moral action. So we are left with the question: isn't it better to lie to avoid a major wrong action from happening? What Kant asks us to do is related to applying cold logic to look for the categorical imperative but in some circumstances, it looks like humans are unable to be that impersonal. We attach feelings to morals and actions, we can't always use cold logic. That is one of the reasons why philosophers like Bernard Williams consider Kantian ethics a good idea theoretically but impossible pragmatically. Williams said that the impartial position Kant wants us to adopt could be possible for factual aspects but not for practical moral actions.
What I think about Kantian ethics is that most of what Kant proposes is well thought. I do understand why he bases his argument on the recognition of a sense of duty, since he is looking for an objective way to determine the moral rightness or wrongness of an action. Having said that, I personally disagree with this belief. I think there are more important aspects in a moral action than that of duty. For that reason, I agree as well with the "axe-man illustration" as I believe that there are strong reasons to suppose that solely duty is not enough to make an action moral. Surely, there are times when an alternative is better than another one and this does not necessarily have to be duty-related. I would also add to the criticisms of Kant in this section by stating that, even if we accept Kant's vision of a duty-based moral theory, due to "the problem of other minds" we can never get into other people's heads and therefore we can never know if their motives for doing a moral action rest on a sense of duty or not.
5. Conclusions:
To conclude, I think that Kant is one of the most influential philosophers of all time and I find his way of explaining both metaphysics and ethics fascinating. Just like every single philosopher, he can be criticised, which is really the target of philosophical reasoning and critical analysis of argumentation and logic.
6. Bibliography:
-Wikipedia (Kant's biography and Bernard Williams)
-"Kant" by the Spanish newspaper "El País".
-Philosophy notes ORA 2015 Summer School
-Philosophy notes Year 12
-Personal knowledge
Word count: 2454
Entradas
Developing that point, people like the U.S. secretary of defence in 2001 Paul Wolfowitz [www.johndclare.net] are of the view that the Cold War was caused by the 'evil regime of the USSR'. They say that the USSR's aggressive policies were the root causes of the Cold War. Most historians, both traditionalists and revisionists, would add to that by saying that Stalin's way of ruling was another important factor [www.johndclare.net]. Personally, I do agree with these views to some extent, as I also believe the way of governing the USSR definitely played a big role in the process of creating tensions. It is a fact that Stalin asked some of his ministers to draft a population report and when this document indicated that the population in the Soviet Union was slightly lower than what Stalin had publicly declared, he sent all the ministers who had drafted that report in exile to Siberia ["Why nations fail"]. Moreover, in order to seize power, Stalin ordered Trotsky's death in 1940, as the latter had been appointed by Lenin to continue with his project and not Stalin. Trotsky was an obstacle for Stalin's rise [History notes Year 11]. This obviously, began to make Stalin an unpopular leader, deteriorating the USSR's public image. If Stalin's way of ruling was been seen as controversial by the Allies, it is logical to think that this created tense relationships for which the Soviet Union definitely has a certain amount of responsibility.