Immanuel Kant: Difference between revisions

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So the problem of '''pure reason''' is this: ''how can any reason be possible which is not reducible to experience, or itself reduced to the bare form of non-contradiction?'' Kant's answer is the '''synthetic a priori''', which he arrives at by subverting the traditional divide between analytic-a-priori and synthetic-a-posteriori. He takes mathematics hostage, demonstrating in the introduction to the first critique that geometrical proofs and arithmetic sums are not analytic as supposed (do you really have the sum of 172128 + 8492817 contained in the concept of these numbers?), that they are synthetic, and since math is obviously not derived from experience. Kant has won a beachhead, from which he promptly deploys his forces, seizing first space and time in the '''Transcendental Aesthetic''' and later the categories in the '''Transcendental Logic.''' With this, metaphysics was (for the time being) saved.

Rationalists took the transcendentally real as the object of their metaphysics - they sought to pierce the veil of sense with reason and grasp God, time, the transcendental order of reality. Kant is not interested in this object, and sets it aside as the 'thing in itself.' Empiricists on the other hand waged war on Reason's Dogma until they found themselves in the ashes of the empirically ideal, that is, the Humean shadow realm of experience structured by nothing but repetition within its field. Kant takes this seriously, but limits it to the fleeting realm of sense-perception, of color, taste, card-tricks and rainbows. Space & Time are in the middle, empirically real but transcendentally ideal. By empirically real Kant means that within the realm of "all possible experience" space and time are real, that is to say that they are non-negotiable and constant throughout, making them valid ground for scientific judgement. But they are also transcendentally ideal; transcendental meaning that they transcend the bounds of our possible experience (do you ever experience pure or complete space or time?), are not reducible to or derived from that experience, but at the same time transcend only as limits transcend a set, they are not 'out-side' - they are ideal, that is, they are of relevance only to the operations of our mind, transcendent only as conditions of appearance, the realm to which we must limit ourselves.

=== space and time ===

Rationalists took the transcendentally '''transcendentally real''' as the object of their metaphysics - they sought to pierce the veil of sense with reason and grasp God, time, the transcendental order of reality. Kant is not interested in this object, and sets it aside as the 'thing in itself.' Empiricists on the other hand waged war on Reason's dogma until they found themselves in the ashes of the '''empirically ideal''', that is, the Humean shadow realm of experience structured by nothing but repetition within its field. Kant takes this seriously, but limits it to the fleeting realm of sense-perception, of color, taste, card-tricks and rainbows. Space & Time are in the middle, empirically real but transcendentally ideal. By '''empirically real''' Kant means that within the realm of "all possible experience" space and time are real, that is to say that they are non-negotiable and constant throughout, making them valid ground for scientific judgement. But they are also '''transcendentally ideal'''; transcendental meaning that they transcend the bounds of our possible experience (do you ever experience pure or complete space or time?), are not reducible to or derived from that experience, but at the same time transcend only as limits transcend a set, they are not 'out-side' - they are ideal, that is, they are of relevance only to the operations of our mind, transcendent only as conditions of appearance, the realm to which we must limit ourselves.

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 So the problem of '''pure reason''' is this: ''how can any reason be possible which is not reducible to experience, or itself reduced to the bare form of non-contradiction?'' Kant's answer is the '''synthetic a priori''', which he arrives at by subverting the traditional divide between analytic-a-priori and synthetic-a-posteriori. He takes mathematics hostage, demonstrating in the introduction to the first critique that geometrical proofs and arithmetic sums are not analytic as supposed (do you really have the sum of 172128 + 8492817 contained in the concept of these numbers?), that they are synthetic, and since math is obviously not derived from experience. Kant has won a beachhead, from which he promptly deploys his forces, seizing first space and time in the '''Transcendental Aesthetic''' and later the categories in the '''Transcendental Logic.''' With this, metaphysics was (for the time being) saved.
-Rationalists took the transcendentally real as the object of their metaphysics - they sought to pierce the veil of sense with reason and grasp God, time, the transcendental order of reality. Kant is not interested in this object, and sets it aside as the 'thing in itself.' Empiricists on the other hand waged war on Reason's Dogma until they found themselves in the ashes of the empirically ideal, that is, the Humean shadow realm of experience structured by nothing but repetition within its field. Kant takes this seriously, but limits it to the fleeting realm of sense-perception, of color, taste, card-tricks and rainbows. Space & Time are in the middle, empirically real but transcendentally ideal. By empirically real Kant means that within the realm of "all possible experience" space and time are real, that is to say that they are non-negotiable and constant throughout, making them valid ground for scientific judgement. But they are also transcendentally ideal; transcendental meaning that they transcend the bounds of our possible experience (do you ever experience pure or complete space or time?), are not reducible to or derived from that experience, but at the same time transcend only as limits transcend a set, they are not 'out-side' - they are ideal, that is, they are of relevance only to the operations of our mind, transcendent only as conditions of appearance, the realm to which we must limit ourselves.
 === space and time ===
 Rationalists took the transcendentally '''transcendentally real''' as the object of their metaphysics - they sought to pierce the veil of sense with reason and grasp God, time, the transcendental order of reality. Kant is not interested in this object, and sets it aside as the 'thing in itself.' Empiricists on the other hand waged war on Reason's dogma until they found themselves in the ashes of the '''empirically ideal''', that is, the Humean shadow realm of experience structured by nothing but repetition within its field. Kant takes this seriously, but limits it to the fleeting realm of sense-perception, of color, taste, card-tricks and rainbows. Space & Time are in the middle, empirically real but transcendentally ideal. By '''empirically real''' Kant means that within the realm of "all possible experience" space and time are real, that is to say that they are non-negotiable and constant throughout, making them valid ground for scientific judgement. But they are also '''transcendentally ideal'''; transcendental meaning that they transcend the bounds of our possible experience (do you ever experience pure or complete space or time?), are not reducible to or derived from that experience, but at the same time transcend only as limits transcend a set, they are not 'out-side' - they are ideal, that is, they are of relevance only to the operations of our mind, transcendent only as conditions of appearance, the realm to which we must limit ourselves.