The issue must be addressed, I think, starting from 'criticism', i.e. from that philosophical school that aims to study and judge the problems of philosophical knowledge decomposing them into elementary components, to try and solve them.
Particularly, with Kant, criticism tries to reconcile two opposing and hitherto conflicting conceptions: rationalism and empiricism. Specifically: rationalism, whose greatest exponent was Descartes, the philosophical movement that sought to explain all reality through reason. It was using the only instrument of a priori knowledge, independent of experience such as – for example - mathematics and geometry.
The weakness of rationalism, however, was the inability to state with certainty that the thought corresponded to being and that the logical aspect matched the ontological level.
Empiricism, represented by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and David Hume, was the philosophical movement that asserted the exact opposite of rationalism: according to the empiricists the only way to know reality around us are the senses and our perceptions. That is, they were using exclusively ‘a posteriori’ knowledge, namely concerning all the knowledge based on the sensible data taken on through experience.
In this way, however, the ideas derived from it had no universal value, but only for that time and in that particular situation. Skepticism then followed together with the impossibility of knowing anything with certainty.
With criticism Kant shows that even reason can err. So, it exceeded also rationalism and empiricism, embedding them in part. Criticism, in a sense, judges reason as it proceeds.
In this regard, Kant wrote three important works: 1. "Critique of Pure Reason", that is, the theoretical reason, that gives us a scientific knowledge 2. "Critique of Practical Reason", that is within its practical, ethical, and it shows the path 3. "Critique of Judgement", which deals with the concept of beauty and purpose of nature, then with the judgment in science to reconcile man with nature.
Criticism states that reason can proceed scientifically, in a theoretical and correct way through the intellect. But the novelty consists in seeing that reason may also be dialectic, by which it is given to be scientific what it is not, as it makes mistakes in reasoning.
Kant is aware of the way thought acts. Differently from what his predecessors claimed, it is the object (the world) to turn around the subject (man). It gives up then figuring out the object in itself and try to understand its phenomena.
With this new concept, in sharp contrast with the previous idea of infallibility of reason, Kant makes a "Copernican revolution" whereby with criticism a new concept is inaugurated by which it is the sensible experience to be shaped by our mental structures. The type of knowledge that Kant creates becomes an agreement between the ‘a priori’ knowledge of the rationalists and the ‘a posteriori’ knowledge of the empiricists: it is a synthesis of ‘a priori’ elements already present in the mind of the subject (such as categories, or the concept of space and time), and ‘a posteriori’ elements coming from the outside, from the object to be known: the phenomenon.
Criticism on the one hand admits that knowledge does not come from experience, but on the other lives out that our reason could get to know what is beyond the experience itself. In an effort to investigate on which aspects of knowledge we could express with certainty, Kant puts some limits: beyond these limits there is the idea of God and other metaphysical notions. He inserts the concept of God as a postulate, because it would not be possible to explain it only with the tools of pure reason.
In particular, it would be impossible for Kant to prove the existence of God because, in an attempt to do so, reason inevitably gets into a series of antinomies, that is, in contradiction with itself.
Albeit in line with the approach of Kant, Fichte believed that Kant's position was not entirely critical; on the contrary it was still dogmatic: indeed, before investigating the conditions of validity of science and morality, it should have searched for the circumstances that legitimize itself and the results of its critical investigation. Kant, then, continues to take for granted the existence of a noumenon, of a metaphysical outside reality, which contradicts the impossibility of attributing anything real to what lies beyond sensible experience.
To remedy these impossibilities in order to give an answer, Fichte is forced to admit that the constitutive limit of man and of all our knowledge comes not from outside, but is a product of our own ‘I’, who decides to self-restraint unconsciously to respond to the need of a highly ethical nature.
There is no reconciliation of Cartesian rationalism and Hume's empiricism, except through the subjective idealism of Kant. Otherwise, they are diametrically opposed as Cartesian rationalism presupposes innate ideas that are clear and distinct to reason and Hume's empiricism denies these innate ideas and in fact reduces reason to the collation of sense impressions. All three modern theories of knowledge are irrational because they are in fact contrary to nature of how humans' know things. Knowledge is neither through the senses alone (as empiricism teaches) nor through reason alone as (rationalism teaches) but through BOTH. Therefore, there can be no Kantian solution to a non-existent problem where he presupposes both elements of rationalism in the a priori categories (his version of innate ideas) and elements of empiricism which limits knowledge to phenomena (and never things in themselves). Consequently, the dilemma of modern theory of knowledge is a false dilemma divorced from the nature of human knowledge, as proven by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
Dear All, my thanks for having considered my question worthy of a comment. As it happens in cases similar to the present one, full of ideas, I’d prefer to add a few reflections in which it seems to me be reflected the essence of your thinking .
I’ll begin by saying that the aim of Kant in the formulation of deontology was to establish an ethical system, which did not depend on subjective experience, but on irrefutable logic. So, the correct ethical behavior would be an absolute and undeniable duty.
Then, Kant assigns to logic, via the categorical imperative, the duty to determine the rightness or wrongness of an action. It is based on the idea of a principle that having become universal contradicts itself. The suitable example is that of those who refuse to help others, because indifferent to their fate. Kant, in this case, tells us that in a world in which everyone just thinks of his own happiness is coherently imaginable. He, however, shows us how a will that established this principle would be self-contradictory, because every single subject would lose the chance to be helped in time of need and this is not rationally desirable by anyone.
If the agent of the moral action is irrelevant and if what matters is the good effect, it is evidently clear that he will not be compared exclusively to the individual who has implemented the moral behavior, but will concern primarily those who will be pleased or happy from the effects of such a behavior. Then, the duty of those who act morally is to achieve the greatest happiness for the benefit of all.
The moral law, according to which man improves and becomes ‘good and perfected’, is independent of man himself; it does not receive its legitimacy and its value from perfection nor happiness, which may be reached by obeying it. The philosopher Antonio Rosmini writes: "the obligation to conform ourselves to honesty and justice is simple, immediate, absolute; It is independent from the consideration of the effects that brings such a uniformity in those who performs it. It is an authority, which is manifested to us by only presenting to our mind the rule of honesty; which rule adjusts for herself, not for other reason (hard translation of a learned Italian style of writing in the nineteenth century). "These words of Rosmini, make it clear and incontrovertible what might be called the autonomy of the moral order, that is, its independence and distinction from any doctrine of human perfection, as well as from any ‘eudemonology’ (doctrine of happiness).
Augustine is gradually accentuating the charge of arrogance against philosophers, especially the Stoics, but also Platonics, who claimed to reach the virtue and happiness only by their own efforts. Against the 'optimism of the philosophers', who believe in the omnipotence of reason and its ability to self-determination with full freedom, Augustine is gradually persuading himself of human frailty. The human will does not enjoy full freedom. On 'human activity exerts great force' the habit, founded on the memory of pleasure, amplified by the memory itself. In this life you can only hope to be happy.
The pedagogical value of happiness stems from the disposition of man to 'humiliate' himself in order to give plenty of space to a superior sense of humanity, to a refined thoughtfulness as a consequence of the rejection of 'rough' emotions, such as punishment and envy, and the elevation of more 'subtle' emotional conditions such as the various forms of social compassion.
“How selfish soever man be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it."(Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments).
Dear Gianrocco,
I have to confess, that I do not buy the traditional interpretation of Hume's "empiricism", and the only way I see to reconcile it with Descartes' rationalism is his early interest in scientific methodology.
Best,
Ferenc
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