By In the field of modern philosophy, the dispute between idealism and empiricism is well known. Immanuel Kant came to break this debate by proposing his philosophical criticism.
Criticism, also known as transcendental idealism, is the theory proposed by the Prussian Immanuel Kant. It considers that human knowledge must have precise limits in order to achieve a valid understanding according to our cognitive capacities.
This theory attempted to be a response to idealism, whose greatest exponent was René Descartes, and also to the empiricism of John Locke and David Hume. Therefore, Kant took the foundations of both currents and created a critical system that sought to establish the limits of all possible knowledge.
Criticism of Immanuel Kant
The philosophical doctrine of criticism aims to criticize knowledge. It means that reason is subjected to a critical examination to determine the conditions under which it is possible to achieve rational knowledge a priori, that is, before any sensible experience.
This theory was first put forward in 1781 when Immanuel Kant published his book Critique of Pure Reason.
On this basis, this idealism reflects in detail on knowledge itself. In this examination, Kant discovers that the mental structures of the knowing subject play a very active role in the process of apprehending the world around him.
Background of Kantian philosophy
In order to understand the origin of Kantian idealism, it is very important to take into account the context of the time and, in turn, the pre-critical phase of the author. In this sense, critical philosophy develops in a period of emancipation and confidence in human reason.
Thus, modern thinkers maintained that the only true, valid, and universal knowledge was that which was based on rational foundations.
Only in this way can we understand Kant’s interest in examining reason to its ultimate consequences. This inclination can be found in his pre-critical writings, especially in his work Dissertation of 1770, in which the conception of sensible knowledge as an immediate intuition is explained for the first time.
This means that the objects of the world manifest themselves to the subject, who apprehends them from the structural conditions of sensibility, which are space and time. This will be a fundamental thesis of transcendental idealism.
Characteristics of criticism
Critical theory represented a turning point in the reflection of the discipline. Its postulates allowed us to solve some problems of rationalism; for example, the difficulty in explaining how we know the outside world only through ideas. In this regard, the Prussian proposal was always to investigate the limits and scope of human knowledge. Let’s look at it in more detail.
Pointers to dogmatism
It is often said that Kantian doctrine represents a transcendence of idealism and empiricism. The empiricist proposal formulated by David Hume had a lot to do with this discovery. This Scottish intellectual maintained that the only valid source of knowledge was sensory impressions, which the subject receives passively.
Kant himself states that this position awakened him from his dogmatic slumber, as he realized that knowledge does not come only from innate ideas. However, his proposal focuses on discovering and establishing the mental structures that make understanding possible, thus granting a leading role to the subject.
Starting point: knowledge is a fact
This philosophy is based on the fact that knowledge is possible for human beings. Thus, it does not question whether it is feasible or not, since it is based on the idea that the subject knows. However, its entire system seeks to show what the conditions of possibility are for man to be able to know.
Transcendental character
The term “transcendental idealism” refers to the subjective conditions that enable human beings to experience and have knowledge of the world around them. In this way, Kant establishes sensitivity and understanding as innate or a priori structures of knowledge.
The limits to reason
In this critical examination of the understanding, Kant discovers and exposes the finite nature of human reason. That is, although we can think of an infinite number of things, many of them cannot be known. This is because we are limited by our mental structures that only allow us to know the phenomena or objects that appear to us.
In this line of idealism, the limits of knowledge are established. Kant maintains that we can only have knowledge of phenomena and not of things in themselves or noumena (which is the object of pure rational knowledge).
This is because the latter are not objects of sensible intuition and, therefore, escape the mental structures of the subject. However, this does not mean that they have no place in Kantian philosophy, since, in any case, the noumenon or thing in itself can be thought, but not known.
Copernican turn
Within modern philosophy , transcendental idealism is considered a Copernican turn. According to this, philosophical reflections should not think of the subject revolving around the object, as the idealist current proposed. Instead, it is the object that must revolve around the subject. Consequently, the phenomena that surround us have to adapt to how human beings know.
Sensitivity and understanding
Sensitivity and understanding are structures that are proper to the subject who knows and not to the object to be known. Without them we cannot feel or understand the objects that surround us. In this respect, Kant maintains that the mode of functioning of sensitivity is spatiotemporal. That is, space allows us to represent things or objects outside of ourselves. For its part, time implies a certain internal ordering of what is given in exteriority.
Understanding provides sensitivity with the concepts that serve to order and unite sensitive multiplicity from categories.
The trials of knowledge
According to the Kantian perspective, scientific knowledge is formulated from propositions or judgments of a universal nature. These have the form of a subject and a predicate. An example might be the statement “The chair is white.”
The Prussian philosopher classifies judgments into two large groups. On the one hand, there are a priori analytical judgments that are universal but do not provide new data to the subject. They do not expand knowledge.
On the other hand, there are synthetic a priori judgments, which Kant considers to be the statements that constitute science. Therefore, they always add new content to the subject and do not resort to experience, which is why they are a priori.
Later criticisms of transcendental idealism
The criticism proposed by Immanuel Kant generated many controversies in the philosophical field, especially because his philosophy was not fully understood. In this regard, an article published by the Journal of Studies on Fichte mentions two well-known remarks about Kantian theory, made by Christian Garve and Friedrich Jacobi.
Garve’s critique holds that transcendental idealism reduces objects to mere appearances. Consequently, it is impossible to distinguish the imaginary from the real. Therefore, any illusory object can be presented in spatiotemporal coordinates and thus become an object of sensible intuition that, in reality, it is not.
Jacobi , for his part, maintains that objects are, for transcendental idealists, mere subjective determinations of the mind. They lack any objective value, since, in the Kantian perspective, objects are reduced to subjective conditions of the mind.
Jacobi also believes that everything that exceeds our mental world cannot be known or understood. Thus, it would seem that we are locked inside our own intellect.
Criticism today
Today, Kant’s theory is seen as an attitude towards life. This means that it is a position that views the world around us in a very critical manner. Any knowledge that is considered by the majority to be true is therefore subjected to a thorough examination in order to establish its truth or falsity.
Therefore, nothing goes unnoticed. And it is common that when faced with deeply rooted beliefs, such as religion and politics, rational foundations are sought that allow them to cease being beliefs and become universal truths.
An important theory for the development of later philosophy
Immanuel Kant’s philosophy introduced new interpretations of the possibility of knowledge for human beings. Despite the criticisms he has received, his intellectual effort cannot be ignored, which, in short, showed us what we can know and what we cannot.
In this sense, criticism came to destroy centuries of metaphysical speculation that sought to enunciate knowledge about things that, in reality, transcend the limits of our experience.
But not everything is negative, since transcendental idealism gave the discipline a new impetus. Thus, the years following the formulation of this doctrine were marked by the reflection of the speculative idealist current and positivism. The first is more in the field of philosophy and the second is limited to the space of science.