Introduction to Kant’s Ethical and Political Philosophy

Abstract

Pre-Kantian Philosophy was RATIONALISM; – it held that theoretical or logical reason is capable of discovering the nature of all ULTIMATE REALITY. “Scepticism” doubted this and felt- back upon EMPIRICISM on sense as the only organ of knowledge. In modern Philosophy these stages viz. “Dogmatism” and “Scepticism” are represented by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Locke, Burkley and Hume; Leibnitz (Spinoza) and Hume are Kant's immediate predecessors. — “Dogmatism” and “Scepticism” had come to their completion in them. On the question of knowledge Dogmatism (Rationalism) held the Sense can give no knowledge whatsoever — the “Ideas” it gives are “Obscure” and “Confused” thoughts. Only Reason or Thought reveals truth; and it reveals the whole truth. “Scepticisin” (Empiricism) on the contrary asserts that Sense alone and not Thought is the Source of all knowledge. What you call Universal propositions are but generalisations from empirical facts. Knowledges is Confined to experience—. Thus raged the controversy between the two schools. But Kant’s main work consists not only in distinguishing (negative) but also determining the positive nature of morality and of the Moral Law. Philosophy does not investigate the nature of This or That particular phenomenon or group or groups of phenomena. Its business is to inquire into the Universal nature of things, into what is their “Form” and not what is their “Matter”, into their essence ( i.e. a priori elements), and not into their accidents (i.e. a posteriori elements). This again was properly brought out first by Kant. He asked: What is the “Form of Morality (not of the morality of this or that act or individual, but of all acts and all individuals), What is the “Form” of the Moral law (not of the ethos of this or that age, but of all ages); just as he asked: What is the form of Knowledge and what is the form of science (logos). He puts this question to himself in this shape: ‘What synthetic judgments a priori are involved in morality etc