Philosophy of Kant

Immanuel Kant is the founder of German classical idealism. This philosopher was a professor at the University of Konigsberg.

The philosophy of Kant can be conditionally divided into two periods:

• Subcritical period;
• Critical period.

During the subcritical period, Kant's philosophy was aimed at problems of nature, as well as natural science. In the period critical Kant began to study the problems of reason, the mechanisms of behavior, the mechanisms of cognition, its boundaries. He was also interested in questions of logic, ethics, social philosophy.

Kant's philosophy of the critical period is associated with three great works. We are talking about "Critique of Pure Reason", "Critique of Practical Reason", and "Criticism of Judgment".

As already mentioned above, in the subcritical period of Kant were interested in the problems of nature, natural science. Important for him were the problems of being. In fact, all of Kant's innovation lies in the fact that he was the first to consider all these problems with a greater emphasis on the problem of development.

The philosophy of Kant kept the revolutionary conclusions for that time. He stated that our entire universe originated from a huge initial cloud, which consisted of sparse particles. He argued that nature has its own history in time, and that it has its own beginning, as well as its end. With all this, nature is constantly evolving and changing. All the living things change, which means that the person himself. Man in Kant is the natural result of evolution.

Kant's philosophy has a large imprint of worldviews of that time, it is expressed in the fact that he claims that mechanical laws have their original cause and are not laid in matter. Also here it is necessary to say that the root cause he considered God.

Contemporaries considered the discovery of Kant in importance equivalent to the discoveries that Copernicus at the time made.

The philosophy of Kant's critical period is directly related to the problems of cognition.

In The Critique of Pure Reason, the philosopher defends his ideas of agnosticism-proves that reality can not be known. He puts forward the idea that the world can not be first learned, not because it is constantly changing, but precisely because the human mind is weak and simply can not do it. The cognitive abilities of the human mind are weak. The transcendental philosophy of Kant assures us that beyond our limits, the human mind immediately encounters numerous contradictions. Kant pointed out four such contradictions . He called them antinomies. The very first antinomy is directly connected with the limited space, the second is called simple and complex, the third - freedom and causality, the fourth - the presence of God.

The mind gives the opportunity to prove both antagonisms at once. For this reason, the thinker is at an impasse. Kant argued that the existence of antimony confirms the limitations of human cognitive abilities.

In the same work, Kant classifies knowledge itself as a result of absolutely any cognitive activity, and also distinguishes concepts that characterize knowledge. This is about:

• A posteriori knowledge;
• Knowledge of a priori:
• "Things in themselves."

In the first case, we are talking about acquired knowledge, in the second - about the original. "Thing in itself" is one of the key concepts in Kant's whole philosophy. This refers to that inner essence that the human mind can never comprehend.

Especially noteworthy is the moral philosophy of Kant. The philosopher asks the following questions:

• What a true morality should be;
• What would be the moral behavior of a person.

After analyzing, he draws the following conclusions:

• Pure morality is a public virtuous consciousness that is perceived by the individual as its own;
• Pure morality and real life are in constant contradiction;
• Morality should not depend on external circumstances.