The transcendental idealism of Inmanuel Kant

The itranscendental dealism is a concept epistemological and metaphysical With which Immanuel Kant gives his philosophy its name, as opposed to Berkeley's idealism. According to this theory, the only thing that can be known are the phenomena, being the thing itself or noumenon, unknowable to the subject. The novelty of his theory lies in the consideration of the subject as active in the act of knowing, that is, it is the subject the one who sets the conditions, and not the object, thus putting limits to human knowledge. This contradicts the realist theses, which affirm that it is the object that determines the subject and not the other way around, and that reality is shown as it is. In this one Professor we will discover what the Inmanuel Kant's transcendental idealism.

The doctrine of Kant's transcendental idealism establishes that, in every act of knowing, two elements intervene, the subject (what I put on) and the object (the given). And in this process it is the subject who knows who sets the conditions of knowing and not the known object. The subject puts

forms a priori, of sensitivityThe space and time) and understanding (the categories)

In his fundamental work, Criticism of the razon pure, it states Kantabout: "Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind”. This means that the sensitivity for something to be given, the same as the understanding for something to be thought.

Everything intuited in space and time and with it all the objects of our possible experience, is nothing more than phenomena, that is, mere representations, which the way they are represented, as extended substance or series of alterations, have no independent existence of their own apart from Our thinking. I call this concept transcendental idealism..

Thus, according to Kant, all that the human being can know is the phenomenon and the noumenon, the thing itself, is out of reach.

What can I know? This is one of the three fundamental questions that Marx intends to answer in his critical stage, next to what should I do?, Y what can I expect. These are collected in a fourth that includes them, what is man?

Well, the answer to the first question is found in the Critique of pure reason. Because at the philosophy it corresponds to establish the principles and limits that will make possible a knowledge nature scientist. Likewise, the philosopher must establish the laws that regulate human behavior and the ultimate purpose of reason.

The empiricistsThey claimed that there was no other source of knowledge than the experience, through the data of the senses. The rationalists believed the opposite, that only reason is capable of knowing outside of experience. For their part, the irrationalists valued the role of feelings and subjectivity. These three postures are antagonistic and irreconcilableThat is why Kant says, it is necessary to carry out a critique of reason.

Kant, in the Critica of reason pure, between three levels of knowledge (sensitivity, understanding and reason). Thus, the work is divided into three parts (the transcendental aesthetic, the transcendental analytic and the transcendental dialectic), each of them dedicated to a level of knowledge.

Classification of trials

The question about conditions of possibility of knowledge scientist raises a preliminary question: what are the conditions of possibility of the science? Taking into account that science is a set of judgments, Kant makes a classification of them.

• Analytical judgments: are those in which the predicate is included in the subject. That is, they do not provide new information. For example: " the whole is greater than the sum of the parts"Or" two plus two is four”. They are not extensive, which means that they do not offer new knowledge.
• Synthetic judgments: are those in which the predicate is not included in the subject. They are extensive, provide new information and expand knowledge. For example: "all the people in country X are blondes”.
• Judgments a priori: They are the type of trials that allow you to know the truth regardless of experience. They are universal and necessary. The first example: " the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”Is a priori judgment.
• Post-trial trials: They are the type of trials in which the truth is known from experience. They are particular and contingent. Example: "tall the people in country X are blondes " it is a posteriori judgment.

Contrary to Hume, Kant defends the existence of synthetic a priori judgments, in fact the mathematics and physics they have them. So, the one from Königsberg asks,are synthetic a priori judgments possible in metaphysics? And this will be the fundamental question for the thinker.

Transcendental aesthetics

The conditions sensitive of understanding Kant will study them in transcendental aesthetics. Sensitivity, he says, orders the impressions starting at a priori forms of sensibility or pure intuitions, space and time, which do not have a real existence, but are the forms under which we can know.

In transcendental aesthetics he also studies the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments in math.

Transcendental analytics

To the conditions intellectuals of knowledge the philosopher will dedicate transcendental analytics to them. The andperformance, ensures, organizes the prints from the pure concepts or categories (unity, plurality, totality, reality, negation, limitation, substance, cause, community, possibility, existence and necessity), ways of knowing reality and making judgments about it.

The categories are necessary to know the phenomena, what appears, what is shown, which is the only thing that human beings have access to. On the contrary, the thing itself or nóumenor it is not accessible to the subject.

In this section Kant will deal with the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments in physical.

Transcendental dialectic

In the transcendental dialectic he deals with the possibility of metaphysics. According to him, from the judgments of the understanding, the reason establishes relationships in search of general principles or unconditional conditions, from the a priori forms of reason that exist beyond experience and are independent of this (transcendental idealism).

Metaphysics, he says, it is not possible as science, since it consists of a series of judgments that go beyond experience and applying the categories beyond this is impossible and gives rise to ghosts and illusions. Metaphysics does not distinguish the phenomenon from the noumenon.

The reason of the human being tends to seek the unconditioned, tends to go beyond its limits, so look for answers about God, soul, world. These ideas of reason does not provide us with objective knowledge, but has a regulative character and they are an expression of the ideal of reason in its search for general principles, they broaden the horizon and urges us to always keep looking.