Immanuel Kant Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Influence and legacy== {{cleanup list|date=April 2023}} [[File:300Jahrfeier.jpg|thumb|280px|Poster celebrating the 300 years of the [[University of Königsberg]], 1844. Among others, Kant and [[Herbart]] are honored.]] Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound.{{efn|Oliver A. Johnson claims, "With the possible exception of Plato's ''Republic'', (''Critique of Pure Reason'') is the most important philosophical book ever written." Article on Kant within the collection ''Great thinkers of the Western World'', Ian P. McGreal, Ed., HarperCollins, 1992.}} Although the basic tenets of Kant's [[transcendental idealism]] (i.e., that space and time are ''a priori'' forms of human perception rather than real properties and the claim that formal logic and transcendental logic coincide) have been claimed to be falsified by modern science and logic,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Strawson|first=Peter|title=Bounds of Sense: Essay on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason"|id={{ASIN|0415040302|country=uk}}}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Einstein on Kant|url=https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/significance_GR_geometry/Einstein_on_Kant.html#:~:text=Einstein%20wrote:,withstand%20the%20test%20of%20time.&text=However,%20if%20one%20does%20not,and%20norms%20of%20Kant%27s%20system.|access-date=2020-09-02|publisher=University of Pittsburgh|archive-date=9 August 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200809030743/https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/significance_GR_geometry/Einstein_on_Kant.html#:~:text=Einstein%20wrote:,withstand%20the%20test%20of%20time.&text=However,%20if%20one%20does%20not,and%20norms%20of%20Kant%27s%20system.|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Perrick|first=Michael|date=1985|title=Kant and Kripke on Necessary Empirical Truths|journal=Mind|volume=94|issue=376|pages=596–598|doi=10.1093/mind/XCIV.376.596|jstor=2254731|issn=0026-4423}}</ref> and no longer set the intellectual agenda of contemporary philosophers, Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried on at least up to the early nineteenth century.<!--not very long! early twentieth?--> This shift consisted of several closely related innovations that, although highly contentious in themselves, have become important in subsequent philosophy and in the social sciences broadly construed: * The human subject seen as the center of inquiry into human knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they exist independently of human perception or of how they are "for us";<ref>Stephen Palmquist, "The Architectonic Form of Kant's Copernican Logic", ''Metaphilosophy'' 17:4 (October 1986), pp. 266–288; revised and reprinted as Chapter III of [http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/ksp1 Kant's System of Perspectives] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120414204136/http://www.hkbu.edu.hk/~ppp/ksp1 |date=14 April 2012 }}: An architectonic interpretation of the Critical philosophy (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993).</ref> * the notion that is possible to discover and systematically explore the inherent limits of the human ability to know entirely ''a priori''; * the notion of the "categorical imperative", an assertion that people are naturally endowed with the ability and obligation toward right reason and acting. Perhaps his most famous quote is drawn from the ''Critique of Practical Reason'': "Two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence...: ''the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me''";<ref>Kant, ''CPracR'' 5:161</ref> * the concept of "conditions of possibility", as in his notion of "the conditions of possible experience"; that is, that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that, to understand or to know them, several conditions must be understood: :* the claim that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind; :* the concept of moral autonomy as central to humanity; and :* the assertion of the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as mere means. Kant's ideas have been incorporated into a variety of schools of thought. These include [[German idealism]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Beiser |first=Frederick C. |author-link=Frederick C. Beiser |title=German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |date=2002 |volume=Part I}}</ref> [[Marxism]], [[positivism]], [[phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenology]], [[existentialism]], [[critical theory]], [[linguistic philosophy]], [[structuralism]], [[post-structuralism]], and [[deconstruction]].{{citation needed|date=October 2015}} ===Historical influence=== During his own life, much critical attention was paid to Kant's thought. He influenced [[Karl Leonhard Reinhold|Reinhold]], [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte|Fichte]], [[Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling|Schelling]], [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]], and [[Novalis]] during the 1780s and 90s. [[File:Kant Kaliningrad.jpg|thumb|upright=.8|Statue of Immanuel Kant in [[Kaliningrad]], Russia. Replica by {{Interlanguage link|Harald Haacke|de}} of the original by [[Christian Daniel Rauch]] lost in 1945.]] [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] was greatly influenced by Kant and helped to spread awareness of him, and of German Idealism generally, in the UK and the US. In his ''[[Biographia Literaria]]'' (1817), he credits Kant's ideas in coming to believe that the mind is not a passive, but an active agent in the apprehension of reality. Hegel was one of Kant's first major critics. In Hegel's view the entire project of setting a "transcendental subject" (i.e., human consciousness) apart from the living individual as well as from nature, history, and society was fundamentally flawed,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Hegel|first=Georg Wilhelm Friedrich|title=Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline|year=1827|location=Heidelberg|pages=14–15}}</ref> although parts of that very project could be put to good use in a new direction. Similar concerns motivated Hegel's criticisms of Kant's concept of moral autonomy, to which Hegel opposed an ethic focused on the "ethical life" of the community.{{efn|Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, ''Natural Law: The Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, Its Place in Moral Philosophy, and Its Relation to the Positive Sciences''. trans. T. M. Knox. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975. Hegel's mature view and his concept of "ethical life" is elaborated in his ''Philosophy of Right''. Hegel, ''Philosophy of Right''. trans. T. M. Knox. Oxford University Press, 1967.}} In a sense, Hegel's notion of "ethical life" is meant to subsume, rather than replace, [[Kantian ethics]]. And Hegel can be seen as trying to defend Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "desires", by means of reason. Thus, in contrast to later critics like Nietzsche or Russell, Hegel shares some of Kant's concerns.{{efn|Robert Pippin's ''Hegel's Idealism'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) emphasizes the continuity of Hegel's concerns with Kant's. Robert Wallace, ''Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) explains how Hegel's ''Science of Logic'' defends Kant's idea of freedom as going beyond finite "inclinations", contra skeptics such as David Hume.}} Kant's thinking on religion was used in Britain by philosophers such as [[Thomas Carlyle]]<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cody |first=David |date= |title=Carlyle: Sources and Influence |url=https://victorianweb.org/authors/carlyle/sources.html |access-date=28 July 2023 |website=The Victorian Web}}</ref> to challenge the nineteenth-century decline in religious faith. British Catholic writers, notably [[G. K. Chesterton]] and [[Hilaire Belloc]], followed this approach.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}} Criticisms of Kant were common in the realist views of the new [[positivism]] at that time. [[Arthur Schopenhauer]] was strongly influenced by Kant's [[transcendental idealism]]. He, like [[Gottlob Ernst Schulze|G. E. Schulze]], [[Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi|Jacobi]], and Fichte before him, was critical of Kant's theory of the thing-in-itself. Things-in-themselves, they argued, are neither the cause of what we observe, nor are they completely beyond our access. Ever since the ''Critique of Pure Reason'', philosophers have been critical of Kant's theory of the thing-in-itself. Many have argued that, if such a thing exists beyond experience, then one cannot posit that it affects us causally, since that would entail stretching the category "causality" beyond the realm of experience.{{efn|For a review of this problem and the relevant literature see ''The Thing in Itself and the Problem of Affection'' in the revised edition of Henry Allison's ''Kant's Transcendental Idealism''.}} With the success and wide influence of Hegel's writings, Kant's own influence began to wane, but a re-examination of his ideas began in Germany in 1865 with the publication of ''Kant und die Epigonen'' by [[Otto Liebmann]], whose motto was "Back to Kant". There proceeded an important revival of Kant's theoretical philosophy, known as [[Neo-Kantianism]]. [[File:DR 1926 391 Immanuel Kant.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Weimar Republic]] stamp honoring Kant, 1926]] Kant's notion of "critique" has been more broadly influential. The early German Romantics, especially [[Friedrich Schlegel]] in his "Athenaeum Fragments", used Kant's reflexive conception of criticism in their Romantic theory of poetry.<ref>Schlegel, Friedrich. "Athenaeum Fragments", in ''Philosophical Fragments''. Trans. Peter Firchow. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. See especially fragments Nos. 1, 43, 44.</ref> Also in [[aesthetics]], [[Clement Greenberg]], in his classic essay "Modernist Painting", uses Kantian criticism, what Greenberg refers to as "immanent criticism", to justify the aims of [[Abstract art|abstract painting]], a movement Greenberg saw as aware of the key limitation—flatness—that makes up the medium of painting.<ref>Greenberg, Clement. "Modernist Painting", in ''The Philosophy of Art'', ed. Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley, McGraw-Hill, 1995.</ref> French philosopher [[Michel Foucault]] was also greatly influenced by Kant's notion of "critique" and wrote several pieces on Kant for a re-thinking of the Enlightenment as a form of "critical thought". He went so far as to classify his own philosophy as a "critical history of modernity, rooted in Kant".<ref>See "Essential Works of Foucault: 1954–1984 vol. 2: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology". Ed. by James Faubion, Trans. Robert Hurley et al. New York City: The New Press, 1998 (2010 reprint). See "Foucault, Michel, 1926 –" entry by Maurice Florence.</ref> Kant believed that mathematical truths were forms of [[Synthetic a priori|synthetic ''a priori'']] knowledge, which means they are necessary and universal, yet known through the ''a priori'' intuition of space and time, as transcendental preconditions of experience.<ref>For a discussion and qualified defense of this position, see Stephen Palmquist, "A Priori Knowledge in Perspective: (I) Mathematics, Method and Pure Intuition", ''The Review of Metaphysics'' 41:1 (September 1987), pp. 3–22.</ref> Kant's often brief remarks about [[mathematics]] influenced the mathematical school known as [[intuitionism]], a movement in [[philosophy of mathematics]] opposed to [[David Hilbert|Hilbert]]'s [[Formalism (mathematics)|formalism]], and [[Gottlob Frege|Frege]] and [[Bertrand Russell]]'s [[logicism]].{{efn|[[Stephan Körner|Körner, Stephan]], ''The Philosophy of Mathematics'', Dover, 1986. For an analysis of Kant's writings on mathematics see, Friedman, Michael, ''Kant and the Exact Sciences'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992.}} ===Influence on modern thinkers=== [[File:DBP - 250 Jahre Immanuel Kant - 90 Pfennig - 1974.jpg|thumb|upright|[[West German]] postage stamp, 1974, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Kant's birth]] With his ''Perpetual Peace'', Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the [[democratic peace theory]], one of the main controversies in [[political science]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Ray|first=James Lee |url=http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ray.htm |title=Does Democracy Cause Peace?|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080217032515/http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/ray.htm |archive-date=17 February 2008|journal=Annual Review of Political Science|year=1998|volume=1|pages=27–46|doi=10.1146/annurev.polisci.1.1.27|doi-access=free}}</ref> More concretely, Constructivist theorist Alexander Wendt proposed that the anarchy of the international system could evolve from the 'brutish' Hobbesian anarchy understood by Realist theorists, through Lockean anarchy, and ultimately a Kantian anarchy in which states would see their self-interests as inextricably linked to the well being of other states, thus transforming international politics into a far more peaceful form.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wendt |first=Alexander |title=Social Theory of International Politics |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1999 |pages=chapter 6}}</ref> Prominent recent Kantians include the British philosophers [[P. F. Strawson]],{{efn|Strawson, P. F., ''The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason''. Routledge: 2004. When first published in 1966, this book forced many Anglo-American philosophers to reconsider Kant's ''Critique of Pure Reason''.}} [[Onora O'Neill]],<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/books/onora-oneill-wins-holberg-prize.html|title=Onora O'Neill Wins Holberg Prize for Academic Research|last=Aridi|first=Sara|date=March 14, 2017|work=The New York Times|access-date=9 January 2019|archive-date=9 January 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190109111404/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/books/onora-oneill-wins-holberg-prize.html|url-status=live}}</ref> and [[Quassim Cassam]],<ref>Cassam, Q. ''The Possibility of Knowledge'' Oxford: 2009</ref> and the American philosophers [[Wilfrid Sellars]]<ref>Sellars, Wilfrid, ''Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes''. Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1967</ref> and [[Christine Korsgaard]].{{efn|Korsgaard, Christine. ''Creating the Kingdom of Ends''. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.{{ISBN|978-0-521-49644-5}} ''Not a commentary, but a defense of a broadly Kantian approach to ethics''.}} Due to the influence of Strawson and Sellars, among others, there has been a renewed interest in Kant's view of the mind. Central to many debates in [[philosophy of psychology]] and [[cognitive science]] is Kant's conception of the unity of consciousness.{{efn|[[Andrew Brook|Brook, Andrew]]. ''Kant and the Mind''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. See also, Meerbote, R. "Kant's [[Functionalism (philosophy of mind)|Functionalism]]". In: J. C. Smith, ed. ''Historical Foundations of Cognitive Science''. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1991. Brook has an article on Kant's View of the Mind in the [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mind/ Stanford Encyclopedia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100709014732/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mind/ |date=9 July 2010 }}}} [[Jürgen Habermas]] and [[John Rawls]] are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy.{{efn|See Habermas, J. ''Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action''. Trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1996. For Rawls see, Rawls, John. ''Theory of Justice'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971. Rawls has a well-known essay on Kant's concept of good. See, Rawls, "Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy" in ''Kant's Transcendental Deductions''. Ed. Eckart Förster. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989.}} They have argued against relativism,<ref>Habermas, J. (1994): The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Its Voices. In: Habermas, J. (Ed.): ''Postmetaphysical Thinking. Political Essays'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: 115–148.</ref> supporting the Kantian view that universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. [[Mou Zongsan]]'s study of Kant has been cited as a highly crucial part in the development of Mou's personal philosophy, namely [[New Confucianism]]. Widely regarded as the most influential Kant scholar in China, Mou's rigorous critique of Kant's philosophy{{mdash}}having translated all three of Kant's [[Critique of Pure Reason|critiques]]{{mdash}}served as an ardent attempt to reconcile Chinese and Western philosophy whilst increasing pressure to [[Westernization|westernize]] in China.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Palmquist |first1=Stephen |title=Cultivating Personhood: Kant and Asian Philosophy |url=https://archive.org/details/cultivatingperso00palm |url-access=limited |year= 2010 |publisher=De Gruyter, Inc. |location=Hong Kong |isbn=978-3-11-022624-9|page=[https://archive.org/details/cultivatingperso00palm/page/n43 25] |edition=}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wing-Cheuk |first1=Chan |title=Mou Zongsan's Transformation of Kant's Philosophy |journal=Journal of Chinese Philosophy |date=February 21, 2006 |volume=33 |issue=1 |page=1 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-6253.2006.00340.x }}</ref> [[File:Kant-Münze DDR.jpg|thumb|upright|[[East German]] commemorative coin honoring Kant, 1974]] Kant's influence has also extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences{{mdash}}as in the sociology of [[Max Weber]], the psychology of [[Jean Piaget]] and [[Carl Gustav Jung]],<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Balanovskiy |first1=Valentin |title=Whether jung was a kantian? |journal=Con-Textos Kantianos |year=2016 |issue=4 |pages=118–126 |doi=10.5281/zenodo.2550828 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323218719 |access-date=29 May 2020 |archive-date=20 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201220055819/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323218719_Whether_jung_was_a_kantian |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Balanovskiy |first1=Valentin |title=Kant and Jung on the prospects of Scientific Psychology |journal=Estudos Kantianos |year=2017 |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=357–390 |doi=10.36311/2318-0501.2017.v5n1.26.p375 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323540339 |doi-access=free |access-date=29 May 2020 |archive-date=20 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201220055820/https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323540339_Kant_and_Jung_on_the_prospects_of_Scientific_Psychology |url-status=live }}</ref> and the linguistics of [[Noam Chomsky]]. Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic ''a priori'' knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist [[Albert Einstein]] as an early influence on his intellectual development, though one which he later criticized and rejected.<ref>Issacson, Walter. "Einstein: His Life and Universe". p. 20.</ref> In recent years, there has also been renewed interest in Kant's theory of mind from the point of view of [[Logic|formal logic]] and [[computer science]].<ref>Theodora Achourioti & Michiel van Lambalgen, 'A Formalization of Kant's Transcendental Logic', ''The Review of Symbolic Logic'', 4 (2011), 254–289.</ref> Because of the thoroughness of Kant's paradigm shift, his influence extends well beyond this to thinkers who neither specifically refer to his work nor use his terminology. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. 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