Why is Kant considered one of the great philosophers?
I here refer to "Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)" by Kelley L. Ross.
Many people have argued that Kant would come close to being the greatest philosopher of all time, and I never knew why. I was mainly familiar with his ethics, which I simply thought was utterly bizarre, and I never knew why anyone would want to believe in it. At least now I am getting a picture into what makes him great. If he indeed was the first philosopher to claim that certain concepts must originate in our minds because of the kinds of beings that we are, then I can already see that he must be given due credit. But to try to make the kinds of substantive claims that he otherwise makes about ethics and imagine that they could possibly be true a priori seems simply to be going too far.
Ross goes on to argue that Kant's theory does all sorts of things that later philosophy has had trouble doing at all:
Also all good reasons why Kant should be considered one of the great philosophers. It seems to me that the trade-off of Kant was that he was able to solve some of the great problems in philosophy at the expense of creating other great problems elsewhere. Personally, I couldn't give a stuff about trying to preserve a religious perspective at all, so that part of Kant's solution is simply meaningless to me. As for the preservation of morality, I am quite content that it can be accomplished using necessary presuppositions from elements that are empirically observable. It might result in more than one moral view being viable at the end of the day, but this will be because of incommensurability, not subjectivity. In this respect, morality can hardly be any different from philosophy itself. As for the claim that human actions can be caused and free, science does not entail in any way whatsoever that every human action is caused. The only deterministic sciences that exist today are physics and chemistry, both of which have nothing to do with psychology. Psychology rests on a higher level, which in no way needs to reduce to the lower levels, as Paul Davies recognises in his many science-cum-philosophy books. It is entirely possible for higher-order principles to apply to higher-order structures that do not reduce to the lower-order principles of physics and chemistry, and that are themselves not deterministic, thereby allowing for free will. I think that this is a much more satisfactory solution to Kant's antinomy than the positing of a noumenal self.
Kant's most original contribution to philosophy is his "Copernican Revolution," that, as he puts it, it is the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible.
Many people have argued that Kant would come close to being the greatest philosopher of all time, and I never knew why. I was mainly familiar with his ethics, which I simply thought was utterly bizarre, and I never knew why anyone would want to believe in it. At least now I am getting a picture into what makes him great. If he indeed was the first philosopher to claim that certain concepts must originate in our minds because of the kinds of beings that we are, then I can already see that he must be given due credit. But to try to make the kinds of substantive claims that he otherwise makes about ethics and imagine that they could possibly be true a priori seems simply to be going too far.
Ross goes on to argue that Kant's theory does all sorts of things that later philosophy has had trouble doing at all:
- Kant managed to provide for a sphere for science that was distinct and separate from anything that would relate to morality or religion.
- Kant can be a phenomenal determinist with science yet simultaneously allow for free will.
Also all good reasons why Kant should be considered one of the great philosophers. It seems to me that the trade-off of Kant was that he was able to solve some of the great problems in philosophy at the expense of creating other great problems elsewhere. Personally, I couldn't give a stuff about trying to preserve a religious perspective at all, so that part of Kant's solution is simply meaningless to me. As for the preservation of morality, I am quite content that it can be accomplished using necessary presuppositions from elements that are empirically observable. It might result in more than one moral view being viable at the end of the day, but this will be because of incommensurability, not subjectivity. In this respect, morality can hardly be any different from philosophy itself. As for the claim that human actions can be caused and free, science does not entail in any way whatsoever that every human action is caused. The only deterministic sciences that exist today are physics and chemistry, both of which have nothing to do with psychology. Psychology rests on a higher level, which in no way needs to reduce to the lower levels, as Paul Davies recognises in his many science-cum-philosophy books. It is entirely possible for higher-order principles to apply to higher-order structures that do not reduce to the lower-order principles of physics and chemistry, and that are themselves not deterministic, thereby allowing for free will. I think that this is a much more satisfactory solution to Kant's antinomy than the positing of a noumenal self.
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