BY MAK LAI POH & SAI BHANU JEGATHESAN

Introduction

Immanuel Kant, according to Leslie Stevenson (http://www.mullasadra.org/), is generally recognized as the greatest Western philosopher since Plato and Aristotle. In contradiction to traditional nature of philosophy, Kant faced the over-arching problem of attempting to reconcile the claims of morality and religion with scientific knowledge. He hoped to put forward his understanding of the physical nature and human nature in one big picture. And because of this Kant remains to be a significant and characteristic figure of the whole "modern" age since the rise of science in the 17th century.

Born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), April 22, 1724, Kant received his education at the Collegium Fredericianum where he mainly studied the classics. Then at the University of Königsberg he went into physics and mathematics. After his father died, he discontinued his studies to earn his living as a private tutor. In 1755, aided by a friend, he resumed his studies and obtained his doctorate. And for 15 years he taught at the university, lecturing first on science and mathematics, but gradually expanding to cover almost all branches of philosophy. Although Kant's lectures and works written during this period established his reputation as an original philosopher, he did not receive a chair at the university until 1770, when he was made professor of logic and metaphysics. For the next 27 years he continued to teach gaining popularity amongst the students. Kant's unorthodox religious teachings, based on rationalism rather than revelation, brought him into conflict with the government of Prussia, and in 1792 he was forbidden by Frederick William II, King of Prussia, to teach or write on religious subjects. Kant obeyed this order for five years until the death of the king and then felt released from his obligation. In 1798, the year following his retirement from the university, he published a summary of his religious views. He died February 12, 1804.

Immanuel Kant (1729-1804) lived and taught at Konigsberg, then in Prussia. His early works (known as the ‘pre-Critical’ writings) were followed by a period of science (1770-1781), and then by the first of three great Critiques – the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, second edition 1787). This dealt in a systematic way with the entire field of epistemology and metaphysics; it was followed by the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), concerned with ethics, and the Critique of Judgment (1790), concerned largely with aesthetics. Among Kant’s other works, the most important are the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (1783) and The Foundation of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), the being of popular exposition of his mature metaphysics, the second of his lifelong stance towards morality. His writings on logic, jurisprudence and political philosophy have not been directly influential, although Hegel’s political transformation of the Critique of Practical Reason has had an incalculable effect on subsequent political thought and practice (Scruton, 1984: 137).

Though he lived a hermit like life, Kant was nevertheless a gregarious man, a brilliant talker and a loved and respected member of social and literary circles. He was the founding spirit of the German Romantic movement which was to change the consciousness of Europe, and also the father of 19^th-century idealism. He was (and remains) the greatest philosopher since Aristotle and his most important book – the Critique of Pure Reason – is an intellectual depth and grandeur that defy description.

The second analogy : causation

The second analogy is intended both to replace the rationalists’ in explaining the law of logic and to counter Hume’s doubt on the human ability to understand causal connections among distinct states of affairs (Guyer, 1987: 237). Here, Kant combined the versions of two principles of Critique that is “everything that happens (begins to be) presupposes something from which it follows according to a rules” and “all alterations take place according to the law of cause and effect”.

“The rule is that the condition under which the event always follow is to be found in what precedes and the relation of appearances (as possible perceptions) according to which that which succeeds (what happens) is determined as to its existence in time necessarily and according to a rule by something which precedes, thus the relation of cause to effect, is the condition of the objective validity of our empirical judgments” (Guyer, 1987:239).

Causation and objective time-determination

The recognition of an alleged a priori argument by some commentators from the structure of time as a pure form of intuition to the existence of rules for the determination of empirical objects in time (241). For example, 1924 is necessarily the year which follows 1923. The first stage of time must fully decides the following stage of time. Kant put forward only a single, epistemological argument that the existence of causal connections is the presupposition of objective time-determinations. The causal rule is important to decide the succession of affairs and to judge every event:-

Principium rationis is the principle of the determination of things in the time-series; for they cannot be determined through time, rather the latter must be determined in the understanding through the rule of the existence of appearances…Therefore it is not possible to determine the position of things in time without the presupposition of this principle, through which the flow of appearances is first made uniform… (242).

This brings out several points. The principles of the analogies do not ground some special determinations about the behavior of what already are, in some more basic way, judged to be objects; they are the basis for any empirical judgment of objects at all. They are what we must add to mere apprehension, structures by the forms of intuition alone, in order to make confirmable claims to empirical knowledge. Second, although the principle of causation functions to place the objects of appearance in the whole of time, it does not do so by itself. There is, rather, a twofold function which must be performed on potential representations of successive states of affairs comprising objective events. 

Kant follows the statement of his problem with what is both the most detailed account of his solution that he offers and also the one that has caused the most confusion about his theory:

But I also notice that, if in the case of an appearance which contains a happening I call the preceding state of the perception A and the succeeding one B, B can only follow A in apprehension, whereas the perception A cannot succeed B but only precede it. For example, I see a ship descending downstream. My perception of its position downstream follows the perception of its position higher up in the course of the river, and it is impossible that in the apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived downstream and only afterward higher up in the stream. The order in the succession of the perceptions is here determined, and to this order the apprehension is bound down. (245).

Such a rule is supposed to be causal law:

In our case I must therefore derive the subjective succession of apprehension from the objective succession of appearance, since the former is otherwise entirely undetermined and distinguishes no appearance from any other. The former [succession] alone prove nothing about the connection of the manifold in the object, because it is entirely arbitrary. The latter [succession] will therefore consist in the order of the manifold of appearance according to which the apprehension of the one [state] (that which happens) follows on that of the other (which precedes) according to a rule. Only by that means can I be justified in saying of the appearance itself, and not merely of my apprehension, that in it a succession is to be found, which means as much as that I cannot order the apprehension otherwise than in this very succession.

From this, Kant draws out a few conclusions. First, the objective is to show how I can ground a judgment that “appearances follow one another, that is, that a state of things obtains at one time the opposite of which existed in the prior state. But, second, it is presupposed that I cannot directly a part of the content of any single representation, and because “I am conscious only that my imagination sets [the representation of] one state before the other, not that one state precedes the other in the object; or, in other words, the objective relation of successive appearances remains undetermined on the basis of mere perception. Finally, Kant mentions for this [relation] to be known as determined, the relation  between the two states must be so thought that it is thereby necessarily determined which state must be set first and which in succession, and not vise versa. This Kant takes to imply that, since necessity is required, there must be a pure concept of the understanding, and that it must be that of “the relation of cause and effect”.

Objections to Kant’s argument

(1) An interpretation which produces an objection, that is, the argument of the second analogy proceeds essentially by analyzing the concept of an event. Graham Bird’s interpretation displays the failure to explain the crucial requirement of causal laws (249). According to Bird, “the second analogy may…. be understood as an analysis of the concept ‘event’ which is comprised of “two different characteristics, or states” of a single object, and these two “constituent states of the object” must also be “regarded as irreversible”. Bird adds that if we mean by the concept of a particular event is just that one state of affairs must follow another, “then it presupposes the notion of a reason or ground for the constituent states of an object being in such a determinate order.” Thus it follows that any event has a cause. He tries to justify his introduction of causal laws by the following supplement to Kant’s ‘analysis’:

What we mean by ‘event’ is …. a determinate temporal order of two states in the same object. But the idea of a determinate order between two states presupposes that something which determines it; and this idea of the determinant or reason for such an order is that of a cause….. Kant has, therefore, some ground for saying that the concept of a cause is required for our discrimination of a time order in phenomena (250-1).

Bird’s derivation of the necessity of a cause from the identification of the event begs Kant’s question of just how we can identify the event.

            (2) Connected confusions underlie two more illustrative objections to Kant’s argument. First, Kant can show that knowledge of some determinate relations among states of objects is an epistemological precondition of recognizing events, but not that causal relations are. It is because the recognition of an event requires the assumption that the two relevant states of affairs are opposite or incompatible states of affairs, but these already answers the question: If the two states are incompatible, then they cannot exist at the same time, so there must be an event, namely that constituted by the change from one of the incompatible states to the other. Nothing in addition to the presupposition of incompatibility is needed to judge that there is an event.

            Such objection brings about two problems. First, it fails to appreciate Kant’s distinction between logical and real opposition, for it overlooks the fact that the kind of incompatibility which will typically be involved in an event is not logical incompatibility derivable from mere concepts of the states of affairs concerned, but real opposition.

            Second, the incompatibility of two states of affairs could known independently of any knowledge of causation can only tell us some event has taken place, but not which. For example, if A and B are mutually incompatible states of affairs, then both A and B must represent some event, but we fail to know whether it represent the change from A to B or that from B to A.

            Strawson’s famous charge that Kant’s argument “can seem legitimate only if the critical faculty is numbed by the grossness of the non sequitur.” Simply put, the charge is that Kant confuses “causal transactions or dependencies relating objects of subjective perception to one another … with the causal dependencies of subjective perceptions themselves upon their objects.” (255)  For the two objective states of affairs, A and B, and two representations of them, Ar and Br , if Ar and Br are irreversible or lack order-indifference – had come in order rather than in the order Br then Ar – it can be judged that they represent the event A-then-B, whereas if the representations possess order-indifference, they must be taken to represent the coexistence of A and B and not the event A-then-B. Strawson charges all that is required is the supposition of causal laws relating the states of affairs to the representations of them, that is laws linking A to Ar and B to Br respectively. 

            Strawson claims that Kant confuses the necessity that Ar and Br occur in that order, but the fallacy is Strawson’s, not Kant’s. He takes for granted knowledge of the order of A and B and uses it to infer the irreversibility of Ar and Br, whereas it is precisely the order of the objective states of affairs which cannot be made a “supposition” but which must somehow be established on the basis of the – insufficient – evidence furnished by the order of perceptions.

            Beside that, he also concedes that if the irreversibility of the sequence Ar then Br could be known, then it could legitimately be inferred that this sequence represents the occurrence A-then-B.   He does not misunderstand Kant’s irreversibility of a sequence of representations can ever be directly given. He is directly known simply (1) what the sequence of the representations is, and (2) that each representation stands in the same temporal relation to its object, then (3) it can be inferred that the objective states of affairs are indeed ordered as are the representations of them and so constitute an event.

            The non sequitur charge claims that the event A then B could be inferred from the sequence Ar then Br combined with knowledge of how Ar is caused by A, and Br by B; in particular, knowledge that they are caused with the same time lag – for instance, the production of Ar has not been delayed by any medium or mechanism such that Ar succeeds Br even though B succeeds A. Therefore, causal laws governing the mechanisms of perception could not be confirmed independently of determinate knowledge about the order of objective states of affairs themselves could be derived. 

The Purpose of Kant's philosophy

Kant perceived God in a manner quite different from other philosophers and scientist. He believes in his conviction of the existence of God entirely on faith and that because learnt knowledge is incapable of proving God’s existence, Kant does not have to prove it either. Yet his faith and conviction in Gods existence by his understanding is enough.:-

“I had to do away with knowledge,” Kant famously declares, “in order to make room for faith”. Kant defines “knowledge” (Wissen) as the “holding” (Fürwahrhalten) of a proposition that is “sufficient” both “objectively” and “subjectively,” whereas “faith” or “belief” (Glaube) is “sufficient” only “subjectively,” not “objectively”. But faith as much as knowledge is justified by reasons that are “valid for everyone”; in this respect, it is distinguished from here “opinion” (Meinung), which is “insufficient” subjectively as well as objectively.       (Guyer 1992: 401)

"Though our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises out of experience (Steven Kreis 2002).” Kant propounded the definite existence of God, and faith is a valid reason to base that belief on, even though it is insufficient in it’s inability to solidly proven existence of God. It is not a matter of knowledge or proof gained through empiricism, so it is put aside to give room for faith.

To recap, Kant says that the created cannot perceive or understand the Creator in His true sense, nor can he invent a matter capable of proving the existence of the Creator. As man can only clone man but cannot create man again by unnatural devices.

            Kant’s discussion on God is based on the view that God is “an ens logice orginarium, whose necessary existence is naturally thought to follow from its status as the root of all possibilities,” and a “supremely perfect being or ens realissimum”. Thus proof of that existence is none other than the being of a priori. And these theistic proofs are divided into 3 general types by Kant, as (Guyer 1992: 398):

1. Ontological proofs, which argue for the necessary existence of supremely perfect being from its concept alone
2. Cosmological proofs, which argue for the necessary existence of a supremely perfect being from the contingent existence of a world in general.
3. Physicotheological proofs, which argue for the existence of a supremely perfect being from the contingent constitution of the world (e.g., from the teleological arrangement found in it).

Kant believes that these 3 proofs are integral and interrelated in proving the existence of God, but one alone without the other cannot prove that God exists. The existence of God is a ‘presupposition’ inferring that a supremely perfect being exists, above man.

KANT: God in relation to the exiting world of science and mathematics

Kant was not one to separate God from science, claiming that both exist in contradiction to each other. In his view, God is a part of science and mathematics, or more accurately science and mathematics are a part of God (a priori) yet God is not subjected to their laws. As Magee (1987: 174), put it, “they certainly were… undoubted propositions of science and mathematics which were not analytic but were not empirical and contingent either.” Kant put forward a point which he found crucial, that:-

“…the world is – any ‘world’ must be – a common object of experience to an indefinite array of subjects of experience. And if there is to be such a world, one that can be experienced, talked about, and known about in common by a community of subjects of experience, then, he argued, there are conditions which it must satisfy. And so we can say a priori that ‘appearance’ must satisfy these conditions.”

(Magee 1987, The Great Philosophers: 175)

The explanation for Kant’s philosophy here can be simply put as, God or the a priori is the key to all that exist. Our perceptions of the world, or empirical discoveries, have only uncovered what was already there, which had been predetermined by God. Thus all possibilities of experiences (vast as it may seem), is actually limited to what the Creator has set, because the Creator has already made situations that will satisfy all these conditions. So our experience of the world is limited, but the ceiling of those limitation unknown to us. Kant explained that God is a subject that stands alone, needing no other support to exist for “God is” or “There is a God”. God created the predicate or objects that is existence, the universe that we perceive and beyond. But God, unlike creation, “Is not anything that could be added to the concept of a thing”.

KANT: On Moral Faith

Kant believed that:-

“…in the final moment, only the purest candor concerning our most hidden inner convictions can stand the test and (it is) a sin to flatter God and make inner confessions, perhaps forced out by fear, that fails to agree with what we freely think… By “moral faith” I mean unconditional trust in divine air, in achieving all the good that, even with our most sincere efforts, lies beyond our power…”                                       (Guyer 1992: 396)

Religious rites, ceremonial offerings or even confessions of sin, were not the means of gaining pardon for our sins from God, Kant says. They only offer “consoling hope” for the doer, and does not forgive wrong doings, since it is done in fear or retribution. Instead, a person who has true faith in the existence of God, will partake in “divine supplements” – not out of fear, but because of the sincerity of ‘Moral Faith’ within that person. Kant was convinced that, in the final hour, how we have to live our lives is the key. We need God in our lives, and need to offer all our efforts and achievements to God because on our own, without God, we cannot achieve perfection.

Steve Palmquist (2001) summarizes Kant’s theory on God and religion as:

1. The highest good: The true end of human life on earth is to realize the highest good, by seeking to be worthy of happiness through obedience to the moral law. It is a human duty to work toward this goal.

2. Radical evil: Human beings on their own are wholly incapable of achieving the highest good, because of the radical corruption of the heart of each individual.

3. Politics fails: No organization based on externally legislated rules (i.e., no "political commonwealth") can achieve this goal, because the moral law can be legislated only internally (i.e., through an "ethical commonwealth").

4. "Ought" implies "can": Anything reason calls us to do (i.e., any human duty) must be possible; if it seems impossible, we are justified in making assumptions that will enable us to conceive of its possibility.

5. People of God: The only way a human organization can ever hope to become such an ethical commonwealth is through the assistance of a higher Being, who legislates inter­nally the moral law to each individual, thus insuring the unity of their actions.

6. God exists. In order to work toward the fulfillment of the highest good, we must therefore presuppose that God exists as a gracious moral lawgiver, and that to obey the moral law is to please God.                       (http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/)

Critiques to Kant’s Philosophy On God

There is no philosophical reason to obey God.

Paul Harrison (1997) challenged the need for man to follow the commands of God even if he should believe in the existence of God. He says that “The fact that God commands is in itself a weak philosophical basis for ethics. It is simply an edict of naked power, which is never a satisfactory basis for action,” and there is still a need for a “philosophical reason to obey God's command.” Though the common reason given is that God is perfectly good, so we should follow the commands of God, God still is seen, being the creator, “producing babies blind or paralyzed from birth, or massacring thousands of people in earthquakes or epidemics. By human standards, this is very far from good.”

In the end, he claims that there is no sufficient answer to the questions of: (1) What proof is there to support the existence of God? and (2) What is God’s function in this world since so much suffering and negativity is seen still?

These questions are the primary basis of many atheists’ beliefs.

I did the summary on a different file and I can't seem to find it right now. But it's not that important anyway.

REFERENCE

TEXT REFERENCES

Scruton, Roger. 1992. A short history of modern philosophy: From Descartes to

Wittgenstein. London: Routledge.

Bochenski, I.M. 1974. Contemporary European philosophy. London: University of

California Press.

Cassirer, Ernst. 1970. Rousseau, Kant, Goethe. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Guyer, Paul. 1987. Kant and the claims of knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Guyer, Paul. 1992. The Cambridge companion to Kant. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Meiklejohn, J.M.D. 1969 : Immanuel Kant: Critique of pure reason. London: Everyman’s Library.

Magee, Byran. 1987. The great philosophers: An intruduction to western philosophy. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

INTERNET REFERENCES

http://www.connect.net/ron/kant.html

http://www.wfu.edu/~hhardgra/kantmet.html

http://www.knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509/philosophers/kan.html

http://www.friesian.com/kant.htm

Kreis, Steven. 2002.     http://www.historyguide.org/index.html

Palmquist, Steve. 2001 http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/