Kant in a Nutshell

Here Kant wants to uncover the reason that pure reason does not actually accomplish anything with regard to the objects of metaphysics, e.g., God, soul, free will.

Transcendental Aesthetic. The best way to get into Kant's thinking, in my opinion, is through the Transcendental Aesthetic of The Critique of Pure Reason where we speak of different ways of looking at things.We need to introduce the notion of the brainarium where all that we can ever see, touch and experience is presented to us in a projection room in the brain, having been transfered there from our various organs of sense by means of chemical and electrical impulses. The objects appearing to us there we call specters/appearances/Erscheinungen, and they do not exist at all when our eyes blink. Their entire existence is within the brainarium.*

[* See Anschauung for some an additional and more recent (2/4/12) exposition of this important term for Kant.]

Now there are two ways of looking at the projections within our brainarium. There is the Hookian take and there is the Humean take. The Hookian take may also be the animal take.

Hook looks at the appearances in his projection room as real things existing physically just as they appear to him, e.g., where objects actually get physically smaller at a distance. Here the terms “looks like” and “seem” dare without meaning because there is nothing given in the brainarium to which they might pertain. For here the rainbow and the rain are equally appearances and do not exist when the eye blinks.

Surely this is the correct take, Hook would say, for what could be plainer than things being as they appear and where, for example, a finger can split into two ghosts on its own and (as far as we know) at any time, even though the split has only been noticed as the finger approaches the nose?

The Humean take is more difficult. For here we are not dealing with real things but rather only with appearances within us which represent real things. [What a notion! Represents, stands for, depicts, vorstellt, place before!]

Transcendnetal Analytic. The difficulty arises in how we could ever come to conceive of a real thing independent of the appearances, since all that is ever given for us to look at (anschauue) is a variable, namely the appearance. There is obviously only one answer possible Hume and for us, namely we just dream up a real thing to position in contrast to the appearance of the brainarium. And here is how we go about that. There is a form to our understanding of things which is connectional, and this is all we can recognize, some sort of connection, e.g., cause and effect. And so we take the form of our understanding and we essentially conceive of it as an object which is called nature, and then we go about subjecting the various appearances in the projection room to the laws of this nature (the categories or connections of the understanding) and as a result we come to recognize an independently existing world and can differentiate this world from our dreams which also occur in that world (in the brainarium). And so we justify the Humean take on things by recognizing that it is by means of that that we could ever once come to realize that fingers don't split into two ghosts.

Now we back up some and consider the notions of time and space as ways that we look at the appearances. We think about the appearances according to our understanding, but we see them in terms of space and time. Space and time are not things on their own but rather the way we look at the appearances.* It is possible that other beings could look at appearances and not notice that one is here and one is there, or that one is now and the other was earlier. So this is a peculiar make up of our brainarium that we spy the appearances in terms of space and time. Again we notice that the appearance of objects diminishes according to distance. There may be other beings who don't and can't take note of that relationship between distance and size.

[* If space and time were real things on their own then we would have to think of them as two infinite nothings which must necessarily exist in order for any something to exist, including God for that matter.]

Thus we are given objects in the appearances and we spy them in space and time. We then conceive of the “object of experience” and work and experiment to have this object represented by the appearances, e.g., the hand of the same size (in thought) and the hand of varying size (in sight) are one and the same. And so while it certainly seems presumptuous to think that we could dream up something and expect to have something different, the appearances, be subject to that dream, we get away with it because we recognize the object of experience in the appearance (and not just the appearance as an object).

Dialectic of Pure Reason. Now we are better prepared to consider a continuing presumption on the part of our reasoning to take these objects of experience as hints or prompts for some additional objects which can only be thought but not recognized because they go beyond the confines of the brainarium projection room (possible experience). Among these we are especially taken by the soul, freedom of will and God. The latter we will consider here in this abbreviated nutshell.*

[* In the Exposition-Dialectic all three of three Ideas are treated.]

We want to conceive of a God as a necessary being which has to be assumed in order to account for the existence of the world. We imagine a being which possesses all realities and such that the world is a project of this being of all realities. It is helpful in trying to completely identify any object, that all objects can be compared with this super perfect being of all realities and in comparison lack this or that. We want to conceive of this all perfect being such that it would have to exist, because existence is more perfect than non-existence, and since this is an all perfect being as we imagine, it would have to include existence, and so God exists necessarily, for existence is part and parcel of its very possibility as this all perfect being.

But we can find a flaw here in the utilization of the word “existence” as though it were a predicate of a thing. All the word “is” does is to connect a subject and a predicate, and so it is one thing to conceive of anything, and it is still a separarte question as to whether that conceived thing actually exists. There is no difference conceptually between 100 imaginary dollars and 100 actual dollars. The difference is the fact of the latter, and that's what's is also at play with God. There is no difference between an imaginary God (all perfect being) and an actual God with respect to the concept. The difference lies in the fact of an object, whether there is such an object as it represented by the concept.

And so the upshot is that reason (understanding) is very productive with regard to experience and indeed first makes experience possible (via the connective understanding), but fails badly when seeking to go beyond the realm of experience (beyond the projection room of the brainarium) and into the world of pure thought. We find that we can conceive of the immortal soul, free-will and God, but we have no way of recognizing them and so we end up as agnostics, namely unable to prove or disprove the existence of these three (as well as some other ideas).

Chapter 1. we (with Kant) wonder about the meaning of the good will and investigate it in terms of duty (which means a good will in the face of incentives to the contrary). Immediately we find that duty is commonly understood as acting for the sake of the law (where the law is as yet undetermined, and so could be conceived of as being externally imposed). Where did such a notion come from? How does it arise in our consciousness?

Chapter 2. Now we will investigate the origins of this duty and see that the source of duty cannot be experience. So we turn to reason and find that reason is able to issue three sorts of principles for action, i.e., rules of skill (efficiency in constructions), counsels of prudence (recommendations for happiness) and laws of morality. The first two are analytical and their compulsion is self-evident. Only the moral needs a justification. We go into pure reason and conceive of a realm of free beings and discover in that way that each person would issue his own laws in this format: in order to exclude all subjective influence we must conceive of the law as requiring us to universalize our maxims and to treat them as though they were a law of nature. We also see that this thinking requires us to realize that we and all members of this free realm would be purposes on our own and never merely a means to some happiness, be it our own or another's. Now the next question is how could such a notion be meaningful to us as humans?

Chapter 3. We know now analytically that a free realm would be ruled by the moral law (for freedom can't be laws of nature and it can't be lawless), and so we must ask: assuming we were in fact free, how could such a synthetic a priori requirement to universalize our maxims be possible for us? We assume the freedom of ourselves and all rational beings, and accordingly see that all would be bound by the moral law (again, this is now analytical). But how could such a notion we have dreamed up in pure reason be of any interest to us? We take an interest, but what is required for us to do this? In the first place we have to conceive of ourselves as “intelligible beings” who are subject to the moral law in an intelligible realm of free beings, and who have a sensitive nature which is revealed to us in the brainarium of experience. Accordingly we come to take an interest in this law by understanding in this dual way of existence how we might be free and thus responsible for universalizing our maxims (which otherwise would be impossible to fathom in the sensible existence in the brainarium). Now we also can understand how a categorical imperative could arise and be meaningful. For the intelligible being (commonly thought of as a “soul” or “spirit”) would as a matter of course be responsive to, and bound by, the moral law. But a sensitive being would have incentives to go for happiness before the moral (and function according to laws of nature), and so the categorical imperative means that we have to act in a certain way (in the intelligible realm) but that we also don't have to act in that certain way (in the brainarium realm). But, again, this doesn't prove that we are free or that we are subject to the moral law. All we have done so far is to establish the necessary conditions for a recognition of any freedom and any subjugation to the moral law, and thus what duty and a good will are. There is as yet no recognition of freedom or any obliation to the moral law.

Now that we can understand what is necessary for a human to conceive that he is free and subject to the moral law of universlized maxims, we can turn to discover how it is that we find ourselves in fact bound by, and subject to, this moral law via our human rational and emotional make up. This is one of the tasks of the Critique of Practical Reason.

We can now investigate reason in the practical realm. Earlier we came to take an interest in this law, and now we come to find that we have respect for this law, and that we cannot be pleased with ourselves when thinking of a previous violation. And it is by virtue of this respect that we recognize our freedom (instead of merely assuming it as earlier). This respect is manifested through the moral feeling which is unique among all feelings in that this can only be engendered by a mere idea, that of the moral law. It humiliates us on the on hand because we have to ignore the desires of the self, but then it also prompts us to want to comply, which is an exaltation, or lawful pride.

When we consider all this more closely we realize that the counsels of prudent action are often at odds with the commands of the moral law, and yet both are a product of reason. Either happiness should result in morality, or morality should result in happiness. We unify them by the latter, i.e., by letting morality lead to happiness and be the condition of happiness where happiness is a function of moral deserving. That unifying object is called the Highest Good. Thus in this way there is a purpose which unifies the moral and prudent act and makes the moral act into the most prudent act possible. Without this particular unification, none is possible and there is continuing conflict between the prudent and the moral.

But the only way that this Highest Good can be considered to be practical and necessary is by means of a longer existence than earthly life in order to attain to the moral perfection promised in the concept (as a practical goal) and to become happy, and only by means of a God (omnipotent moral judge) to force nature to adhere to moral laws.

Thus the agnostic of the critique of pure reason ends up as “moral certain” of the existence of God in the critique of practical reason. So theoretically he is agnostic, in a moral way he is a believer in God. And the same holds true of the soul.

The next step is to see how reason can guide us in advance with reference to any communications with this God or any relationships with this God. Here we attend to Kant in his work on rational religion.

Religion Within The Bounds Of Sheer Reason