Space, language, and the limits of knowledge

Janus Head ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-80
Author(s):  
Alessia Pannese ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
Divine Punishment ◽  
Human Intellect

William Thomas Beckford’s Vathek chronicles the eponymous Caliph’s struggle and ultimate fall into hell as a divine punishment for his unre­strained desire for knowledge. Around the time Beckford wrote Vathek, Immanuel Kant released the Critique of Pure Reason, whose central implication is that human knowledge is restricted to appearances. Drawing on textual evidence from Vathek’s first three editions and from Kant’s Critique, I explore ways in which knowledge is negotiated and mediated by the limits of human intellect and sensory perception as they intersect with the protean boundary between reality and appearance, and suggest that Beckford’s Vathek may be viewed as a literary instantiation of Kant’s transcendental idealism, as they both - albeit in different ways - impose severe limits on man’s epistemic ability.

scholarly journals TINJAUAN KRITIS TERHADAP EPISTEMOLOGI IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Lailiy Muthmainnah
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Metaphysical Problem ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
Personal Invitation

The background of this article is a metaphysical problem that arose in Immanuel Kant's thought in his Critique of Pure Reason. Through a hermeneutic approach this article aims to analyze the metaphysical problems that arise in Immanuel Kant's epistemology of thought. Based on the research results can be concluded that the unequivocal separation between phenomena and noumena will cause humans will never come to the knowledge of the Transcendent, as well as with moral and aesthetics. This is because such knowledge can only be obtained through my participation as a Subject through the process of continuous existence and more of a personal invitation. In the end it can be concluded that the nature of analog knowledge is the meaning of multidimensional side of human life. This brings consequences to the need for intersubjective dialogue and continual openness. Knowledge is an infinite thing. Human knowledge therefore will never reach the end of the journey but only continuously expanded its horizon.

scholarly journals KRITIK IMMANUEL KANT TERHADAP FAHAM RASIONALISME DAN EMPIRISME

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jauhan Budiwan
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
Philosophical Movement ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

Immanuel Kant is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy. His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him. This portion will focus on his metaphysics and epistemology in one of his most important works. The Critique of Pure Reason, A large part of Kant’s work addresses the question “What can we know?” The answer, if it can be stated simply, is that our knowledge is constrained to mathematics and the science of the -natural, empirical world. It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics. The reason that knowledge has these constraints, Kant argues, is that the mind plays an active role in constituting the features of experience and limiting the mind's access to the empirical realm of space and time. In order to understand Kant's position, we must understand the philosophical background that he was reacting to. First, 1 will present a brief overview of his predecessor's positions with a brief statement of Kant's objections, then I will return to a more detailed exposition of Kant's arguments. There are two major historical movements in the early modem period of philosophy that had a significant impact on Kant; Empiricism and Rationalism,

scholarly journals Some Remarks in Defense of Immanuel Kant's Theory of Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Balanovskiy Valentin
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Reliable Knowledge ◽  
Conceptual Nature

The author attempts to answer a question of whether the fact that Immanuel Kant’s theory of experience most likely has a conceptual nature decreases an importance of Kant’s ideas for contemporary philosophy, because if experience is conceptual by nature, then certain problems with the search for means to verify experiential knowledge arise. In particular, two approaches are proposed. According to the first approach, the exceptional conceptuality of Kant’s theory of experience may be a consequence of absence of some important chains in arguments contained in the Critique of Pure Reason, which could clarify a question of how the conceptual apparatus of the subject corresponds to the reality. The author puts a hypothesis that the missing chains are not a mistake, but Kant’s deliberate silence caused by the lack of accurate scientific information that could not have been available to humankind in Enlightenment epoch. According to the second approach even if Kant’s theory of experience is exclusively conceptual by nature, this cannot automatically lead to a conclusion that it is unsuitable for obtaining reliable knowledge about reality, since transcendental idealism has powerful internal tools for verifying data in the process of cognition. The central position among them is occupied by transcendental reflection.

Some Persistent Presumptions of Hegelian Anti-Subjectivism

2019 ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Karl Ameriks
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Recent Criticism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Critical System ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

This chapter responds primarily to a recent criticism of Kant by Stephen Houlgate. Like many other recent Hegelian accounts, Houlgate’s severe critique of Kant’s theoretical philosophy contends that, in contrast to Hegel, Kant’s Critical system, especially because of its doctrine of transcendental idealism, presupposes a subjectivist and therefore inadequate position. On the basis of a moderate interpretation of Kant’s idealism and his general Critical procedure, the chapter defends Kant from the charge of subjectivism, and also gives an account of how subjectivist interpretations in general can arise from a series of understandable misunderstandings of difficult passages in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

Transcendental idealism and metaphysics: Kant’s commitment to things as they are in themselves

Kant Yearbook ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Allais
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Epistemological Position ◽  
Metaphysical Position ◽  
The Way

Abstract One of Kant’s central central claims in the Critique of Pure Reason is that we cannot have knowledge of things as they are in themselves. This claim has been regarded as problematic in a number of ways: whether Kant is entitled to assert both that there are things in themselves and that we cannot have knowledge of them, and, more generally, what Kant’s commitment to things in themselves amounts to. A number of commentators deny that Kant is committed to there actually being an aspect of reality which we cannot cognise; they argue that he is committed merely to the idea that we cannot avoid the concept of things as they are in themselves. I will argue in this paper that while transcendental idealism is partly an epistemological position, it is also partly a metaphysical position, and in specific, that Kant is committed to the claim that the things we cognise have, in addition to the way they appear to us, a nature that is independent of us, which we cannot cognise.

The Scope of Reason: An Epistle to the Persians

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 195-208
Author(s):  
Renford Bambrough
Keyword(s):  
International Symposium ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
World Views ◽  
Limits Of Knowledge ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Dialogue Among Civilizations

‘Does the planetary impact of Western thought allow for a real dialogue among civilizations?’ This arresting question was set to the lecturers at the first international symposium of the Iranian Centre for the Study of Civilizations, which took place in Tehran in October 1977. Plans were made for a second symposium to be held in January 1979 under the title ‘The Limits of Knowledge According to Different World-views’. The Director's letter of invitation amplified the theme in a series of questions:For instance, is the agnosticism which has now extended to a world-wide level the consequence of the destruction of objective reason, namely the universal logos, as conceived earlier in the great metaphysical doctrines of the East and the West? Is there any organic link among these: the creation of modern political myths, the individual's fragmentation and the reduction of thought to its mere instrumentality? Is knowledge limited solely to our calculating reason or can it lead to spheres raising us above the limits determined by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason?

The Remarriage of Reason and Experience in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
J. Colin McQuillan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Intelligible World

This article argues that Immanuel Kant recreates in his critical philosophy one of the most distinctive features of Christian Wolff’s rationalism—the marriage of reason and experience (connubium rationis et experientiae). The article begins with an overview of Wolff’s connubium and then surveys the reasons some of his contemporaries opposed the marriage of reason and experience, paying special attention to the distinctions between phenomena and noumena, sensible and intellectual cognition, and empirical and pure cognition that Kant employs in his inaugural dissertation On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World (1770). The final section of the article argues that, in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), Kant rejects the anticonnubialist positions he defended in his inaugural dissertation and introduces a new account of the relation between reason and experience that recreates Wolff’s connubium within the context of his critical philosophy.

scholarly journals Critique of Pure Reason: Sebuah Pengantar

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Hardian Susanto Herho
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Pure Reason ◽  
Critique Of Pure Reason

Kaum cendikiawan umumnya memiliki sejumlah buku di lemari kerjanya. Buku – buku itu menjadi koleksi mereka yang sangat berharga. Kalau ada uang lebih, mereka akan membeli buku –buku baru. Tidak heran bila koleksi mereka bertambah dari waktu ke waktu.Persoalannya adalah, buku apa saja yang pantas dikoleksi oleh kaum yang merasa diri cendikia? Jawabannya tergantung pada minat masing-masing. Tetapi, umumnya kolektor buku akan mengoleksi buku –buku tentang bidang ilmu yang mengubah dunia. Artinya buku ini layak untuk dibaca oleh kaum cendikia.Buku ini bukan ditulis oleh tokoh yang mengubah dunia, tetapi ia bercerita tentang filsafat yang telah mengubah dunia. Buku ini membahas tentang filsafat Imanuel Kant yang diterbitkan pada 1781 didalam kesendirian kehidupannya di Konigsberg dalam mahakarya Critique of Pure Reason yang kemudian direvisi pada tahun 1787.Gagasan – gagasan filsafat yang ditawarkan Immanuel Kant dalam Critique of Pure Reason merupakan filsafat yang bersifat kritis. Kritis dalam artian, Kant menawarkan analisis kritis terhadap kekuatan dan batas nalar kita dalam kapasitas untuk memahami dunia, tempat di mana kita berpijak. Kant dengan demikian merupakan Bapak Filsafat Kritis yang kemudian mengilhami gagasan – gagasan filsuf lainnya, seperti Schopenhauer dan Wittgenstein. Buku ini merupakan pengantar untuk memahami Critique of Pure Reason yang terkenal akan kesulitannya di kalangan pelajar filsafat. Oleh karena itu buku ini, di samping bisa menjadi koleksi yang berharga, juga bisa dipakai untuk pihak – pihak yang tertarik mempelajari filsafat secara serius.

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