Kant, and Hegel

Immanuel Kant

Turn Inwards: Like Descartes, Kant's work (1724-1804) represents a turn inwards, focusing on foundations by stripping away assumptions.
Key Works:
- Critique of Pure Reason
- Critique of Practical Reason
- Critique of Judgment (or Critique of the Power of Judgment)
More Accessible Works:
- Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (for Pure Reason)
- Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (for Practical Reason)
- Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason (related, but not directly, to the critiques).

Pure Reason

Focus on How We Know: Kant was more interested in how we conceptualize objects of thought and the limits of knowledge than in the objects themselves.
Influence of Hume: Kant stated that reading David Hume woke him from his "dogmatic slumbers."
Causation as a Key Theme: Hume's attack on causation was significant for Kant. Kant valued order and questioned what would remain of metaphysics and ethics without causation or if morality were reduced to sentiment.
Rearguard Action: Kant did not start with God as the foundation, as Christian philosophers often did, because God was not evident enough for Kant.
Lutheran Pietism: Kant's Lutheran background, influenced by pietism, separated faith and reason, leading him to seek a foundation for reason independent of faith and transcendence.
Individualistic Faith: Kant's approach aligns with a very individualistic notion of faith, limiting its capacity to act as a universal foundation.
Critique of Universal Reason: Later philosophy and Christian theology challenged Kant, arguing that reason is less universal and faith is less individual than Kant assumed.
Causation as a Problem: Kant agreed with Hume that causation is problematic, as it cannot be empirically observed.
Transcendental Turn: Instead of God, Kant turned to the transcendental, the structures of human thought, to uphold causation.
A Priori Concepts: Causation is an $a \space priori$ concept or category, pre-existing in the structure of reason.
Other A Priori Concepts: Existence, necessity, and possibility are also $a \space priori$ concepts without which experience is impossible.
Copernican Revolution: Kant termed his approach a Copernican revolution, shifting the source of knowledge from external things to the mind.
Table of Categories: Kant provided a list of categories:
- Quantity: unity, plurality, totality
- Quality: reality, negation, limitation
- Relation: adherence and subsistence (substance and accident), causality and dependence (cause and effect), community (reciprocity)
- Modality: possibility, existence, necessity, and their opposites
Transcendental Method (Meta-Method): Kant's categories are transcendental, structuring thought before structuring reality.
Meta-Move: Kant is considered the father of this meta move which involves thinking about thinking about things.
Critique of Excess: While valuable in moderation, this meta-move, if taken to an extreme, misses the point, necessitating a return to the world and creation.
Phenomena vs. Noumena: Kant distinguished between phenomena (available to us) and noumena (beyond us), with a true reality lying beneath appearances.
Noumena and Limits of Thought: Kant's noumena exists outside of space and time which are $a \space priori$ therefore, lies beyond the limits of thought.
Antimonies: Kant believed that contradictions (antimonies) arise when thought exceeds its limits. These involve proving something is both true and false.
Law of Non-Contradiction: Kant believed in the law of non-contradiction, though some philosophers had begun to question it.
Examples of Antinomies: The world is both eternal and not eternal, finite and infinite.
Proto-Postmodernism: Kant's position anticipates postmodernism, where certain statements are neither true nor not true.
Limits of Knowledge: We should not attempt to think about the whole universe, as it is neither $a \space priori$ nor an object of sense perception.

Practical Reason

Unshakable Foundations for Ethics: Kant sought unshakable foundations for ethics, exploring practical reason.
Moral Crisis: Questioning of established authorities and Hume's attack on the naturalistic fallacy contributed to a moral crisis.
Universal Foundation for Behavior: Kant located a universal foundation for behavior in the structures of thought.
Hypothetical vs. Categorical Imperative: Kant moved from the hypothetical imperative (if you want A, do B) to the categorical imperative (do B no matter what).
Deontology: Kant's approach to ethics based on law or duty is called deontology (from the Greek deon, meaning necessity or obligation).
Formulations of the Categorical Imperative: Kant expressed the categorical imperative in three ways that are supposedly equivalent.
```
1.  Formulate maxims that you would want to be followed universally.

2.  Treat people as ends and not merely as means.
```
Ethics as Foundation for Belief in God: Ethics is the foundation for belief in God, not vice versa.
God as Guarantee of Justice: Since we have a duty to attain the highest good, which requires justice, God must exist to ensure that every wrong is punished and every right rewarded.
Good as Duty: For Kant, the good is about law and duty, lacking the allure of the Platonic Good.
Critique of Self-Interest: Kant argued that actions motivated by self-interest, even if they are right, are not truly good.

Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason

Focus on Ethics and Duty: Kant's account of religion is primarily concerned with ethics and duty.
Individualistic Perspective: Kant's perspective is individualistic, with the church being a useful site for pooling effort rather than a necessity.
Pelagianism: Kant's picture is essentially Pelagian, with individuals saving themselves through moral self-improvement, supplemented by grace.
Radical Evil: Kant placed heavy emphasis on sin, introducing the idea of radical evil.

Aesthetics

Critique of the Faculty of Judgment: Deals with aesthetics and teleology.
Categories of Aesthetics:
- Beautiful
- Sublime
- (Less importantly) Agreeable
Disinterestedness: Kant placed disinterestedness at the heart of aesthetics, opposing the Platonist account of aura and involvement.
Universality: Finding something beautiful implies an expectation that everyone else would also find it beautiful.
Subjectivity: Beauty is also internal and subjective; there is no basis for arguing about why something is beautiful or not.
Teleology: The beautiful object presents a sense of purposefulness without purpose.
Critique of High Art: Dismissal of more practical art forms is useful as well as beautiful and exhibiting naivety on the ways in which all art serves an economic, social, and political purpose.
The Sublime: In contrast to the beautiful, the sublime concerns pleasure in the face of terror when faced with overwhelming force.

Reception of Kant

Positive Reception from Protestants: Influenced the growth of liberal Protestantism, which rejected metaphysics and emphasized morality.
Rejection by Roman Catholics: Later seen as a philosopher to engage with for a neo-Thomism respectable in the modern age.
Transcendental Thomism: Karl Rhaner produced transcendental Thomism that focuses on human knowing.

Hegel

Influence on Theology: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) has significantly influenced theology, with Christian doctrines figuring prominently in his system.
Absolute Idealism: Saw the universe as developing from God, but denied the ontological distinction between creatures and creator.
Pantheism: Asserted that God is not God without the world, implying that creation is part of God's development.
Spirit (Geist): Creation, human consciousness, religion, art, and philosophy are all part of the development of Spirit (Geist) coming to self-awareness.
Significance of History: Hegel emphasized the significance of history for philosophy and theology.
Monism: Did not deny the reality of the material universe, but rather included it within the picture of a single reality.
Human Imperfection: The human, the finite, and the negative are within God himself.
Process Theology: Hegel was the father of process theology, with its emphasis of God as always becoming.
Rejection fo Traditional Views : Process theology sells out the doctrine of god for the sake of an anthropomorphic God. It also goes hand in hand with pantheism or panentheism.
Creation as Necessary: Creation is a necessary part of self-estrangement of spirt so the quality of gift and grace is lost.
Hegels Views on Incarnation: Incarnation is necessary to a larger scheme. Hegle focused on the union of God and humanity instead of the Cross.
Three Dimensions of Human Expression: Spirit comes to freedom and awareness in art, religion, and philosophy.
Dialectic: The idea that reality has a dialectic quality.
Sublation (Aufhebung): A partial negation that already remains that something else builds off of biology comes from this as a metaphor.

Tragedy

Influence of Tragedy: Hegel's influence subsequent theology and woundedness are commonly accepted notions of this time.
Tragedy and Suffering: Tragedy and good theology go hand in hand to acknowledge the terrible human condition and that redemption cannot be a magic fix all.

History

Philosophy and Naive Theology: Philosophy helps to bring to light what it is we are doing, reading, and writting in texts and how we discuss history.
Historians and Truth: How historians use interpret history by means of telling a story says much about how much something is interpreted by an interpreter's world view.
Lessing on History: If no historical truth can be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated by means of historical truths. However historical arguments re not deducted why they are so often rejected, since they are not so simply rational.
Romanticism : Focus from history to aesthetics.

Novalis

Philosophical Writing Through Fragmentation: Writing through broken structure and literary style to criticize literary writing.
Open-Ended Philosophy: Philosophy should be forever on its way and thoroughly inductively minded.
Interest in Language : There was an interest in language that lead to a