Critique of a “Critique Philosophy”
Introductory Essay on Immanuel Kant’s Philosophy
Part One
by
George Cummins IV
Critique of a “Critique Philosophy”
Part One or The Examining Our Reason
Preface
Word before we start
Introduction to My Philosophical Motives
Before the "Critique period"
The Birth of The Critique
Two kinds of judgment
Do we have any objective knowledge?
Of the Logical Functions of the Understanding in Judgments
“Objective knowledge?”
Possibilities of human examination
Categories
proof
Part Two or «Practical Reasoning»
Work of our reason in the meaning of our understanding
The Ethics
And thus is evident that moral laws are not based on church but church on morality.
End notes
1
2
Part One or The Examining Our Reason
Preface
It is much easier to create a criticism of lapses and mistakes in order to attack a completely new philosophical world that would have such a powerful and strong, possibly even a controversial influence for all periods of time ahead, that could, and in this case it came through, and did develop the very reconstruction in the world-- and therefore-- world of new conceptions and new view of our understanding. In this "critique" I will not describe the facts that have been known, verified, since the date of Immanuel Kant's general works, now outdated in comparison to present time. My effort is only a brief summary of my conception of Kant’s thoughts.
A Word before we start
Introduction to My Philosophical Motives
A Human being, in case of his self-consciousness, is completely transcendental. Transcendental is inside us, but we do not know about this fact because transcendental is also in-out-of-us and "an-und-fur-sich"[1]. When I mentioned those terms, I meant a priori self-knowledge, and a priori cognition. Why am I talking about a priori cognition? Because it is a basic way how to know phenomena such as "das Ding an sich" - even though it is "unreal". Transcendental philosophy means delivering all kinds of a posteriori elements from phenomena - the object that is affecting us with our senses, because knowledge a priori is an instrument how to think about objects above us. If we have an organ, and will do one general empirical move, that we will put out all the empirical properties, like a color, hardness or softness of the organ, each time we just cannot get rid of the space (where the organ is out of us - "behind, next") In the same way we cannot get rid of a time when we are thinking about the organ. A priori cognition are consequently inside us and general work of transcendental thinking is most important imposition for The Queen of all knowledge, metaphysics, perhaps only this modality can say if other sciences are possible and even if we can have at least to a certain extent objective possibilities of our understanding. Basic things are litigates. Under the laws of nature. There are two kinds of them. Analytical judgement is only statement diffusive, because in conception A, that pertains to predicate B in a case where is something (even hidden fully inside) is something what only deduce what is in the object. - But in synthetic statement conception A is extending something new, because it exceeds what is in the object behind us. So, especially in synthetic statements a priori is the common way how to build the system of this kind of philosophy. The duties of all metaphysics are God, Liberty and Immortality, which are axioms, and both together natural antagonisms of our reason. Reason is a faculty to create the principles of all a priori cognition.(!!) But these notes are reaching far beyond the frame of this preface, so I will explain them next time. And also why. So time and space are conditions of our perception. - They are completely not empirical. Well why are synthetic judgments a priori so powerful and need are needed for the pursuit of metaphysics? - I think, it is clear for now.
With this preface, I am beginning a series of articles about transcendental and idealistic, possibly later even irrational philosophy.
author
Before the "Critique period"
This period contains influences from Immanuel Kant's own teachers, rationalists Wolf and Leibniz. They supposed that the relation between a reason and an effect is the same as coherency between the reason and the effect[2]. Under the guidance of David Hume, Kant realized that there is only a factual relationship, empirical.[1] That is why we cannot derive the effect by logic; perhaps the pure logic is not enough to make a subjective reasoning of theoretical natural knowledge. Rationalism taught him that knowledge contains a universal and vital availability, strict universality,[2] (mathematics, natural histories, natural knowledge) that cannot be derived from an experience, which is always only incomplete and unfinished[3]. The reason is not the source of mentioned bases, but though there exists a knowledge with universal, and with the strict availability, which its own special form of a knowledge. The sources are a priori forms of perception and reasoning, completely independent of empirical knowledge.
The Birth of The Critique
To understand all of these three Critiques[4] we need to know what "The thing actually" or “The things-in-themselves” is (Das Ding an sich) and what phenomena are. There is an existence of the world of things that is independent of our consciousness (aesthemas and thinking). These things are basically the things actually affecting our senses. At this time there is a birth of cognition, because the things actually are affecting our senses with the resulting resulting in aesthemas.[5] This thought is also included in knowledge of materialism, but Kant did not restrict his argument with this incongruous position, and he extended the idea father: to analyzing questions of modalities and borders, he is leaving the materialistic position and ends in an idealistic theory of knowledge.[6]
The basic idea of Kant’s philosophy is agnosticism, synthetical conception of materialism and idealism. His idealism is teaching that the existence of the things which actually are unknown, transcendental, and their existence is behind current world of phenomena as we can perceive them. These mentioned terms are even beyond the space and time, quantity, quality, relations between principium causalitatis,[7] and other existence of adjectival relationships, relationships based on our subjective thinking. Thus they become the modalities of cognition, sensuousness, apperception and reason.[8]
Two kinds of judgment
Teaching of cognition is based on theory of judgment. Cognitions are each time in form of a judgment. With those we are thinking some relations or correlations between two conceptions, and that is subject and predicate of the judgment. There exists two kinds of relations - analytic and synthetic judgments. The first cause is when predicate does not contain a new knowledge or new realizing from the judgment. "All bodies are spread inside the space" – In this case the predicate does not contain any new search for any information about the object "body" in correlation with the subject. When we are analyzing the subject, what does it contain, we are able to say that beyond another things, we discover the fact that "bodies" are spread in the space.
Now we have the second judgment, which the relation between subject and predicate does not come from an analytical thinking, but predicate in this case is synthetically connected with the subject. "Some bodies are heavy". The conception of body independently and universally does not contain any sign of heaviness. This is based on synthetic path of thinking between subject and object in the judgment. There exist two classes of synthetic judgments. In the first one: Synthetic quality of predicate and subject, thinking perhaps of discovering from experience? The example is "Some swans are black". Because this synthetic judgment is based on experience, is called a synthetic judgment a posteriori. The most common and important are judgments a priori for many reasons, on which I will talk more in the future. This example takes a place when the synthesis of predicate and subject is not based on experience. "Everything which is happening has a reason", it is evident that such an independent and strict relation of this judgment, that is impossible to consider it a product of experience, because experience tells us only a part (usually slight) from the real happening. The judgment a priori has all this attributes of something which experience cannot show in such a form. That is why those judgments were too important for all philosophical system, perhaps of their signification. To apply the most important spawn of philosophy, the ethics, the practical side of reason, we have to examine these judgments and its borders in any case of knowledge as mathematics, natural history, and metaphysics as a speculative cognition of all being.
Do we have any objective knowledge?
Sample:
Of the Logical Functions of the Understanding in Judgments
-- if we abstract all the content of a judgment, and consider only the intellectual form thereof, we find that the function of thought in a judgement can be brought under four heads, of witch each contains three momenta. These may be conveniently represented in the following table:
I
Quality of judgments
universal
particular
singular
II III.
Quality relation
affirmative categorical
negative hypothetical
infinite disjunktive
IV
modality
problematical
assertorical
apodictical
1) How are possible synthetic judgments in natural history? 2) How are possible synthetic judgments in mathematics? 3) How are possible synthetic judgments in metaphysics?[9]
“Objective knowledge?”
The examining of possibilities in these questions is the basic idea of transcendental philosophy.
To examine problems in transcendental idealism is strict to know the three instruments of behavior of cognition:
a) work of our senses b) considering c) reason
The first is a conception of aesthemas, second is a thinking in conceptions and the last one is a speculation, which is transformed to the ideas. Ideas are conceptions of a reason about the strictness unity of phenomena.
The forms of cognition of our senses are the very possibilities to create statements of synthetic judgments a priori. In mathematics there is not the point in the conception of a cognition but via visual demonstration (the intuitive sensousness). In case of judgments in mathematics is synthetic attribute of a subject and predicate based either on a view upon space (geometry) or perception of thinking of time, arithmetic. The space is a priori modality of outer apperception, and exactly this attribute of a priori gives to its view of absolute availability (versatility) and strict universality[3]. The same thing in case of time that is a form (modality), but of an inner sensuous view. Thus space and time are not the form of existence of things above us.
Possibilities of human examining
Synthetic judgments a priori are in mathematics possible, because the base of all mathematics sentences are a priori forms of mankind perception. The absolute strict universality of proof in mathematics has acceptance in our reason only, the human reason with its own a priori forms of apperception. So, for a reason that would be organized differently than is ours, the mathematics sentences would not
be acceptable. (!!)
A priori synthetic judgments in theoretical knowledge are possible for the existence of categories, which are conceptions of cognition, independent on material according to the experience. Category is not a form of being but conceptions of human cognition. They are not reverberation of what perception of experience contains. It is only a pure forms under which is our reason consigning and subsuming the raw material of our senses. As they have been examined in this way, they are categories with a priori classification. They are not under development, and transfer between them does not exists.
Categories
Kant's teaching of apperception, sensuousness and conditioning needs a special introduction of human understanding. That means, that even aesthemas, “conceptions actually”[10] are not the source of cognition. An aesthema without conception is blind, and conception without aethema is empty; the real cognition starts when becomes the synthetic knowledge of conceptions with aesthemas. The main thing is to examine problematic between varieties of material of our sensuality through a priori forms in considering in the unity. The unity of material of an object is not general, but a priori unity of self-consciousness which becomes a possibility of every synthetic-like attribute of a human perception. That unity is independent on the conception in concreto, and thus formal.
Kant built a theory of synthetic modalities between categories as pure conceptions of human considering and forms of the material in our perception where the structure is quite complicated. A great role is the schematized of pure conceptions inside the consideration or formal synthetic - a priori function through which we are able to submit the perception’s factum under categories.
-- proof
We cannot think any object except by means of the categories; we cannot cognize any thought except by means of intuitions corresponding to these conceptions. Now all our intuitions are sensuous, and our cognition, in so far as the object of it is given, is empirical. But empirical cognition is experience; consequently no a priori cognition is possible for us, except of objects of possible experience.
But this cognition , which is limited to objects of experience, is not far, that reason derived entirely from experience, but - and this is asserted of the pure intuitions and the pure conceptions of the understanding - there are , unquestionably elements of condition which exist in the mind a priori.
The foregoing is an exposition of the pure conceptions of the understanding, (and with them of all theoretical, a priori cognition), as a principles of the possibility of experience, but of experience as the determination of all phenomena in space and time in general - of experience, finally, from the principle of the original synthetical unity of apperception, as the form of the understanding in relation to time and space as original forms of sensibility.
Part Two or «Practical Reasoning»
Because of existence of categories we can answer to a question how is possible theoretical natural history, but still, we need more strict and universal question: "How is possible a scientific knowledge which has an objective meaning?" Adjectival[4] knowledge is logical strict universality. The basics of every judgment in natural history has a strict and universal meaning. The object of natural history, in its form has one thing in common: their scientific knowledge is possible only in case that considering is thinking the natural objects and phenomenons as a subcategory under three laws:
1)the states of preservation of a substance
2)the states of causation
3)the states of reciprocal between incidence and the substances
Work of our reason in the meaning of our understanding
The greatest states for considering are a priori states of synthetic manner of everything what is possible to be thought in our considering. Our consciousness is not developing any object in reason that is given. A developing, or better «giving a spirit of being[5]» in sense that gives to the object of examination the form through we are able to think mentioned. The form of strict and universal behavior. Natural objects are under a development of our form of reason. Our reason is finding in the nature only that what it has been given into it, before it becomes an independent on experience, through its own modalities. So the «things actually» are all secrets for our reason. This is, in philosophical terminology, agnosticism. Even forms of perception, time and space, even categories of considering nor highest principles of knowledge does not have anything in common for determination of the things actually.
And now we are coming into the greatest question of metaphysical examination: "How are possible synthetic judgment a priori in metaphysics?" That belongs to the reason alone. The potent is of human reason, and its definition is ability which is develops ideas. The object of ideas is something that will not be absorbed by senses, in experience. Ideas are independent, but in experiences is everything dependent on something. The reason is making three kind of ideas:
1)Idea as a spirit of independent unity of all depending phenomena phenomenon by psyche
2)Idea of world as an absolute unity of etherning raw of a resort depending phenomena
3)Idea of God as the absolute reason of all depended phenomena
The one possible knowledge about psychical phenomena every time depends but philosophical knowledge as about a soul which is absolute unity of all mentioned phenomena. In that case are nature phenomena possible only during in some depending relationships. But not as a world as an independent complex. And above all is impossible a philosophical knowledge about God as the absolute reason of all phenomenons and beings.
Kant calls the proof by existence of God because they are based on a logic mistake, that being of God is constructed simply from conception of God. But from the simple conception is impossible to construct existence of something that is an object of thinking. The existent itself is available to construct from the experience only. In the being of God is need to believe only, and because this is a requirement according to our practical reason, which is ethic consciousness. Kant is believing that without believing in God, there is no ethic behavior.
Thus metaphysics is the general part of philosophy, but still not as a knowledge in adjectival form[6]; it is critique of reason which is discovering the borders of theoretical reason and necessary transit from theoretical reason to practical, to ethics.
The Ethics
Critique of ideas by reason had and influences to a future development of classical idealism in determinations about antinomies of pure reason. The common goal of human reason is then theoretical answer to a questions of the world as an absolute unit which faces to natural antinomy of our reason; it is possible to declare that world has no beginning in the time or ending like a statement that has not got any borders in the space, and also is possible to say that the world began in a some determined time and same determined space and also it has got a space borders. This simply means that world as an absolute unit is unrecognizable thing actually.(!!)
And thus is evident that moral laws are not based on church but church on morality.
The antagonism between strictness and liberty is not a real antionomy. Human being is acting in a current determinate necessity in other of absolute freedom. He is acting strictly perhaps with his thoughts, feeling and passions between others nature phenomena and in this meaning he is under influence of necessity which is dominant in world of phenomena. The same subject is also a subject of morality, man is a moral viewer, and as a moral being belongs to the world of intelligibility according to the things actually. At that point it is free. The moral law is by Kant's terminology well-known as a categorical imperative which tells to individual which requires an acting in order to make sure that the acting is a personal rule that can be a rule of acting of others. Or more precisely "The human acting supposed to be a maximum of your volition that can be also a Principe of universal legislation."(!!) In case when an acting of an individual which are similar to command of moral law, then we cannot tell that he is a moral person. Individual becomes moral when the moral behavior is acted under the moral principles. Thus is impossible not built on luck in empirical world. If the moral consciousness is similar to an agreement of moral Principles and its luck in empirical world it is only possible to believe that satisfaction is in world of intelligibility. A strict postulate of practical reason in believing in the three conceptions; conceptions imaginary-like, which is thought by reason, but also together imperceptible by human reasoning:
The questions are :
God
Freedom
Immortality
And thus is evident that moral laws are not based on church but church on morality.
End notes
1
And now a few words of aesthetics. (Critique of discretion) Through the theoretical cognition is impossible to pass over, to view of nature that we can see via our senses. See to the land of imaginary world of liberty. It is in common in case of our reason that thinking about nature in the way as a building of a destinations according to laws of nature. This is called discretion - which means to think something unique as a consist in universality[7]. Of this Principe we are able to make a judgment of a forms of the art. Also this is a general role to subsuming nature organism as a reason of collecting a nature organisms. The reason is a strict view of reflecting judgment , which is supposed to find universal or unique seeing of a form inside the art. Unique of discretion in aesthetic inherent inside of esthetically judgment is not based on conception but on a unique pleasure which is available, because of a form of an act by a aesthemas moving through our senses. It is a subjective judgment, and thus we cannot declare it. But the judgment has a strict universality, but in discretion of art is something more, perhaps there is going of manifestation statement. The highest level of art is completely on the instant art which meaning is stands besides of a content. So according to Kant it is poetry because is contain an esthetic ideas, to possibility of the highest idea.
The second attribute of objects where we are using according to a reflecting discretion: that are nature organism. As a phenomena of senses and as an objects concerning are under subsuming only by mechanic principles of nature. Under conception of reason is need to have unity; but the human considering this fact is not in our minds but under control of understanding.
2
And finally the political attitudes by Kant. In this regard he was influenced by Rousseau. Mankind souverrinety in its practical way is just incorrible perhaps the human should be living under existence of power. Souverrinety of a state is exposure by people. The real freedom was not realized because of human is not in a level of completely freedom. The resident's freedom is inherent in acting under power of law which he himself voted; this liberty is a law of every citizen. The antagonisms between subjects are movements in a desire of social living and throughts its non-sociability to together are going to develop an adversity which is running toward to break the existence of a state. There would not exist any development without antagonical behavior in human society.
---------------------------
[1] The relationship between two concepts in principium causalitatis is absolutely empirical. Because human who comes into the world of phenomena, using his a priori knowledge to collect and treat empirical existence, does not exactly “know that if he will undermine construction of his house, his house will fall apart.” Simply because the fact, that the house will fall apart in certain conditions, he must know it from the experience. (GMC)
[2] The general differences between the empirical and a priori dwells in its own nature: all empirical is just absolute versatility. All a priori is absolute strict and universal, always the same and noting else.
[3] Because of its versatility it is impossible to absorb all empirical knowledge, thus it is always incomplete.
[4] Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of esthetics
[5] The very purest material derived through our senses
[6] The basics of this point of view is that mentioned “undermining of the house” must be derived from empirical knowledge, simply because the fact that bodies are heavy, we can realize according the experience.
[7] Imagine a body, then erase all what is empirical: heaviness, color, extends in the space, there still is a conception of time and space, as an instruments to imagine the very object of our thinking. Thus time and space are one of those a priori knowledge
[8] As a best way to recognize a priori knowledge from a posteriori there is the fact that as our innermost ego is – always the same and never against itself, how was born and how is acting, we can derive this as a example from all what is not us –absolute versatility – empirical, never completed existence of phenomena.
[9] It is most important role inside examinations the conception these judgments because to extend and examine all a priori cognition in order to examine this problem: “Does human have any objective knowledge?” (GMC)
[10] Look for “Das Ding an sich”
[1] Hegel’s definition of «instant nature» of being.
[2] Mechanism of contradiction.
[3] The very basic sign that the subject mater is a priori.
[4] Knowledge examining the factum of human possibility of reasoning in a priori condition.
[5] Hegel
[6] Meant in its purest sense.
[7] The Critical thinking.
end of part one