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 KANT

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EANT

Otto. He was consecrated titular Bishop of Assurita 13 Jan., 1891. In 1907 the mission had: 1 bishop, 16 European missionaries, 2 native priests, 24 churches and chapels, 9 schools with 127 students, 1 college with 25 students, 2 orphan asylums with 35 children, and 249S Catholics. In 1908: 1 bishop, 20 mission- aries, 1 native priest, 23 churches and chapels, and 2702 Catholics.

Mis.wnes CathoHco!. V. H. MoNTANAR.

Kant, Philosophy of. — Kant's philosophy is gen- erally designated as a system of transcendental critic- ism tending towards .\gnosticism in theology, and fa- vouring the view that Christianity is a non-dogmatic religion. Immanuel Kant was born at Konigsberg in East Prussia, 22 April, 1724; d. there, 12 Feb., 1804. From his sixteenth to his twenty-first year, he studied at the university of his native city, having for his teacher Martin Knutzen, under whom he acquired a knowledge of the philosophy of Wolff and of Newton's physics. After the death of his father in 1746 he spent nine years as tutor in various families. In 1755 he returned to Konigsberg, and there he spent the re- mainder of his life. From 1755 to 1770 he was Privat- dozent (unsalaried professor) at the University of Ko- nigsberg. In 1770 he was appointed professor of phi- losophy, a position which he held until 1797. It is usual to distinguish two periods of Kant's literary activity. The first, the pre-critical period, extends from 1747 to 1781, the date of the epoch-making "Kritik der reinen Vernunft "; the second, the critical period, extends from 1781 to 1794.

The Prc-Cniical Period. — Kant's first book, which was published in 1747, was entitled ' ' Gedanken von der wahren Schiitzung der lebendigen Krafte" (Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces). In 1775 he published liis doctor's dissertation, "On Fire" (De Igne), and the work " Principiorum Primorum Cogni- tionis Metaphysicse Nova Dilucidatio" (.A New Ex- planation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge), by which he qualified for the position of Privatdozent. Besides these, in which he expounded and defended the current philosophy of Wolff, he pub- lished other treatises in which he applied that philoso- phy to problems of mathematics and physics. In 1770 appeared the work "De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intclligibilis Formiset Principiis" (On the Forms and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World), in which he shows for the first time a tendency to adopt an independent system of philosophy. The years from 1770 to 1780 were spent, as Kant himself tells us, in the preparation of the "Critique of Pure Reason".

Tlic Critical Period. — The first work of Kant in which he appears as an exponent of transcendental criticism is the "Critique of Pure Reason " (Kritik der reinen Vernunft), which appeared in 1781. A second edition was published in 1787. In 1785 appeared the "Foundation for the Metaphysics of Ethics" (Grund- legung zur Metaphysik der Sitten). Then came a succession of critical works, the most important of which are the "Critique of Practical Reason" (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft), the "Critique of Judg- ment" (Kritik der Urthcilskraft, 1790), and "Reli- gion within the Limits of Mere Reason " (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 1793). The best editions of Kant's complete works are Hart- enstein's second edition (8 vols., Leipzig, 1867-69), Rosenkranz and Schubert's (12 vols., Leipzig, 1834- 42), and the edition which is being published by the Academy of Sciences of Berlin (Kants gesammelte Schriften, herausg. von der koniglich preussischen Akadcmie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1902 — ).

During the period of his academic career, extending from 1717 to 17S1, Kant, as has'been said, taught the phildsoiihy then prevalent in Germany, which was Wolff's modified form of dogmatic rationalism. That is to say, he made psychological experience to be the

basis of all metaphysical truth, rejected scepticism, and judged all knowledge by the test of reason. To- wards the end of that period, however, he began to question the solidity of the psychological basis of metaphysics, and ended by losing all faith in the valid- ity and value of metaphysical reasoning. The appar- ent contradictions which he found to exist in the physical sciences, and the conclusions which Hume had reached in his analysis of the principle of causa- tion, "awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber" and brought home to him the necessity of reviewing or criticizing all human experience for the purpose of restoring the physical sciences to a degree of certitude which they rightly claim, and also for the purpose of placing on an unshakable foundation the metaphysical truths which Hume's sceptical phenomenalism had overthrown. The old rational dogmatism had, he now considered, laid too much emphasis on the a priori elements of knowledge; on the other hand, as he now for the first time realized, the empirical philo.sophy of Hume had gone too far when it reduced all truth to empirical or a posteriori elements. Kant, therefore, proposes to pass all knowledge in review in order to determine how much of it is to be assigned to the a priori, and how much to the a posteriori factors, if we may so designate them, of knowledge. As he him- self says, his purpose is to "deduce" the a priori, or transcendental, forms of thought. Hence, his philos- ophy is essentially a "criticism ", because it is an e.x- amination of knowledge, and "transcendental", because its purpose in examining knowledge is to de- termine the a priori, or transcendental, forms. Kant himself was wont to say that the business of philosophy is to answer three questions: What can I know? What ought I to doV What may I hope for? He consid- ered, however, that the answer to the second and third depends on the answer to the first ; our duty and our destiny can be determined only after a thorough study of human knowledge.

It will be found most convenient to divide the study of Kant's critical philosophy into three por- tions, corresponding to the tloctrines contained in his three "Critiques". We shall, therefore, take up successively (1) the doctrines of the "Critique of Pure Reason"; (2) the doctrines of the "Critique of Practical Reason"; (3) the doctrines of the "Critique of the Faculty of Judginent".

In accordance with his purpose to examine all knowledge in order to find what is and what is not a priori, or transcendental, that is anterior to experi- ence, or independent of experience, Kant proceeils in the "Critique of Pure Reason" to inquire into the a priori forms of (a) sensation, (li) judgment, and (c) reasoning, (a) The first thing that Kant does in his study of knowledge is to distinguish between the material, or content, and the form, of sensation. The material of our sense-knowledge comes from experience. The form, however, is not derived through the senses, but is imposed on the material, or content, by the mind, in order to render the material, or content, universal and necessary. The form is, therefore, a priori; it is independent of experience. The most important forms of sense-knowledge, the con- ditions, in fact, of all sensation, are space and time. Not only, then, are space and time mental entities -n the sense that they are elaborated by the mind out of the data of experience; they are strictly subjective, purely mental, and have no objective entity, except in so far as they are applied to the external world by the mind.

Because of what is to follow, it is important to ask at this point: Do the a priori forms of sensation, since they admittedlv enhance the value of sense-knowl- edge by rendering it universal and necessary, extend the domain of sense-knowledge, and carry us outside t'.:e narrow confines of the materi:d, or data, of the senses? Kant holds that they cio not. They affect