display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
28 ideas
| 5540 | Cleverness is shown in knowing what can reasonably be asked [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is already a great and necessary proof of cleverness or insight to know what one should reasonably ask. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B082/A58) | |
| A reaction: I admire the asking of unreasonable questions. They stretch the imagination, and the fixing of the limits of human thought requires some attempt to go beyond the limit. Kant sounds wise but conservative. |
| 6200 | Wisdom is knowing the highest good, and conforming the will to it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom, theoretically regarded, means the knowledge of the highest good and, practically, the conformability of the will to the highest good. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) | |
| A reaction: This seems a narrow account of wisdom, focusing entirely on goodness rather than truth. A mind that valued nothing but understood everything would have a considerable degree of wisdom, in the normal use of that word. |
| 21422 | Moral self-knowledge is the beginning of all human wisdom [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Moral self-knowledge, which seeks to penetrate into the depths (the abyss) of one's heart that are quite difficult to fathom, is the beginning of all human wisdom. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 441 I.I) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear what I am supposed to be looking for on this quest. I'm guessing that being completely honest about one's own maxims in moral action would be a good start. And maybe confronting one's murkier desires. |
| 21955 | My dogmatic slumber was first interrupted by David Hume [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I freely admit that remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 4:260), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 5.2 | |
| A reaction: A famous declaration. He realised that he had the answer the many scepticisms of Hume, and accept his emphasis on the need for experience. |
| 6207 | What fills me with awe are the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], Concl) | |
| A reaction: I am beginning to think that the two major issues of all philosophy are ontology and metaethics, and Kant is close to agreeing with me. He certainly wasn't implying that astronomy was a key aspect of philosophy. |
| 5631 | Reason is only interested in knowledge, actions and hopes [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All interest of my reason (the speculative as well as the practical) is united in the following three questions: 1) What can I know?, 2) What should I do?, and 3) What may I hope? | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B833/A805) | |
| A reaction: Maybe reason is also interested in itself. And presumably it doesn't lose interest in what is clearly unknowable, or unachievable, or beyond all hope? |
| 6184 | Consistency is the highest obligation of a philosopher [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Consistency is the highest obligation of a philosopher and yet the most rarely found. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.§3) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this, and it also strikes me as the single most important principle of Kant's philosophy, which is the key to his whole moral theory. |
| 21406 | Because there is only one human reason, there can only be one true philosophy from principles [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Considered objectively, there can only be one human reason, there cannot be many philosophies; in other words, there can only be one true philosophy from principles, in however many conflicting ways men have philosophised about the same proposition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An idea that embodies the Enlightenment ideal. I like the idea that there is one true philosophy, because there is only one world. Kant is talking of philosophy 'from principles', which means his transendental idealism. |
| 5635 | In ordinary life the highest philosophy is no better than common understanding [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In regard to the essential ends of human nature even the highest philosophy cannot advance further than the guidance that nature has also conferred on the most common understanding. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B859/A831) | |
| A reaction: This is a very anti-elitist remark which seems to me to reflect Kant's Christian background. It seems obvious to me that in politics our best leaders are not confined to 'common understanding'. Nor in morality. Moral saints are wiser. |
| 16931 | Metaphysics is generating a priori knowledge by intuition and concepts, leading to the synthetic [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The generation of knowledge a priori, both according to intuition and according to concepts, and finally the generation of synthetic propositions a priori in philosophical knowledge, constitutes the essential content of metaphysics. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 274) | |
| A reaction: By 'concepts' he implies mere analytic thought, so 'intuition' is where the exciting bit is, and that is rather vague. |
| 21954 | Metaphysics is a systematic account of everything that can be known a priori [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics can be ...the investigation of everything that can ever be cognized a priori, as well as the presentation of that which constitutues a system of pure philosophical cognitions of this kind. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B869/A841) | |
| A reaction: [He excludes mathematics from this] Moore says this is Kant's most interesting definition of metaphysics (among several versions). |
| 7918 | Kant turned metaphysics into epistemology, ignoring Aristotle's 'being qua being' [Kant, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Kant turned the question 'How is metaphysics possible?' into 'How is metaphysical knowledge possible?' He thus turned metaphysics into epistemology, obliterating Aristotle's distinction between being qua being and being qua known. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: This makes Kant the number one villain in my philosophical pantheon, although the confusion of ontology and epistemology is found in Berkeley and others. Human speculations are not pointless, though they are difficult to verify. |
| 21438 | Metaphysics might do better to match objects to our cognition (and not start with the objects) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; ...let us try whether we do not get farther with problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to cognition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B Pref xvi) | |
| A reaction: Kant compares this to rethinking our viewpoint on the solar system, and Gardner calls this idea Kant's 'Copernican Revolution'. We can only applaud the idea that we should be more self-conscious when we assess reality. Just don't give up on reality! |
| 16611 | You just can't stop metaphysical speculation, in any mature mind [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In all men, as soon as their reason has become ripe for speculation, there has always existed and will always continue to exist some kind of metaphysics. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B021) | |
| A reaction: I love the word 'speculation' in this, because it is the part of metaphysics which always resists logical positivist scepticism about metaphysics. So what if you can't 'verify' it? |
| 5586 | The voyage of reason may go only as far as the coastline of experience reaches [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The voyage of our reason may proceed only as far as the continuous coastline of experience reaches. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A395) | |
| A reaction: This is a strikingly empiricist remark, coming from Kant. It is certainly a firm rejection of what we might call 'speculative metaphysics', but allows what Peter Strawson calls 'descriptive metaphysics'. Cf. Idea 3722. |
| 21462 | It is still possible to largely accept Kant as a whole (where others must be dismantled) [Kant, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Unusually, Kant's system has continued to seem possible, to some degree, to endorse as a whole, as opposed to an edifice that has most to offer by being dismantled. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 10 Intro | |
| A reaction: I think Aristotle passes this test, but Plato has to be dismantled. No one ever swallows Leibniz whole. I suppose Hume can be taken complete, but only because of his minimal commitments. |
| 5600 | Human reason considers all knowledge as belonging to a possible system [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Human reason is by nature architectonic, i.e. it considers all cognitions as belonging to a possible system, and hence it permits only such principles as do not render an intended cognition incapable of standing together with others in some system. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B502/A474) | |
| A reaction: Speak for yourself! However, there is no denying that the making connections seems basic to thought, and there is clearly an enticing magic in making lots of extended connections. Beautiful finished structures may, though, be coherent but false. |
| 21457 | Reason has two separate objects, morality and freedom, and nature, which ultimately unite [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The legislation of human reason (philosophy) has two objects, nature and freedom, and thus contains the natural law as well as the moral law, initially in two separate systems, but ultimately in a single philosophical system. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B868/A840) | |
| A reaction: Pure reason is for nature, and practical reason (which has priority) is for freedom and morality. There is a streak of religiosity in Kant which makes him give morality and normativity priority over truth and science. |
| 9752 | Kant showed that theoretical reason cannot give answers to speculative metaphysics [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: In the 'Critique of Pure Reason' Kant shows that theoretical reason is unable to answer the questions of speculative metaphysics. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Intro to 'Creating the Kingdom of Ends' 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I don't think I really agree with Kant. We can draw very extended inferences from experience, but the process rapidly becomes exceedingly difficult. The concepts we have built up are rather piecemeal, and not really designed for the job. |
| 6584 | A priori metaphysics is fond of basic unchanging entities like God, the soul, Forms, atoms… [Kant, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Kant stresses that reason, when it turns dialectical, posits immutable basic entities; these are the standard inhabitants of traditional a priori metaphysics - God, souls, Platonic ideas, Democritean indestructible atoms, and the like. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a good warning, but it just invites the meta-question in a priori metaphysics 'Are we searching for something unchanging, or is this impossible?' Aristotle certainly addressed this question. The search strikes me as sensible. |
| 3722 | Metaphysics goes beyond the empirical, so doesn't need examples [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics doesn't let itself be held back by anything empirical, and indeed goes right to Ideas, where examples themselves fail. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785], 412.36) |
| 9349 | A dove cutting through the air, might think it could fly better in airless space (which Plato attempted) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. ..Plato made no headway in the empty space of understanding; he had no resistance, no support. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B008/A5) | |
| A reaction: Who says Kant can't write? This is the classic image of the excesses of metaphysics which Kant wished to curtail. His attacks culminates in the contempt of logical positivism for such things, but no one would now disagree with Kant on this. |
| 6203 | Metaphysics is just a priori universal principles of physics [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics only contains the pure a priori principles of physics in their universal import. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI) | |
| A reaction: 'Universal' seems to imply 'necessary'. If you thought that no a priori universal principles were possible, you would be left with physics. I quite like the definition, except that I think there would still be metaphysics even if there were no physics. |
| 21408 | For any subject, its system of non-experiential concepts needs a metaphysics [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A philosophy of any subject (a system of rational knowledge from concepts) requires a system of pure rational concepts independent of any conditions of intuition, that is, a metaphysics. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 375 Pref) | |
| A reaction: 'Pure rational concepts' must be a priori, and (in Kant's case) transcendental - i.e. discovered from the study of presuppositions. Does this actually say that the philosophies of science, biology, psychology, economics etc each needs a metaphysics? |
| 12767 | Kant exposed the illusions of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic [Kant, by Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: The truly critical part of his First Critique was the Transcendental Dialectic; there Kant exposed the Illusions of Reason. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Bas C. van Fraassen - The Empirical Stance 1.1 |
| 18259 | Analysis is becoming self-conscious about our concepts [Kant] |
| Full Idea: To analyze a concept is to become self-conscious of the manifold that I always think in it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B011/A7) |
| 9350 | Our reason mostly analyses concepts we already have of objects [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A great part, perhaps the greatest part, of the business of our reason consists in analyses of the concepts that we already have of objects. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B009/A5) | |
| A reaction: I am quite happy to think of this as the central and crucial aspect of philosophy, though I am much more sceptical about purely linguistic analysis, as developed by Frege and Russell. It describes much of what Aristotle did. |
| 5530 | Analysis of our concepts is merely a preparation for proper a priori metaphysics [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The mere analysis of the concepts that inhabit our reason a priori, is not the end at all, but only a preparation for metaphysics proper, namely extending its a priori cognition sythetically. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B023) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be evidence that Kant is not an 'analytical' philosopher, because he is willing to speculate, but that is a narrow twentieth century view of analysis. I take the aim to be an analysis of reality, not of human thought. |