Kant is a giant in the field of philosophy. As such, I am devoting an entire post to him. Though an interesting read, he is not for the faint of mind. Below are several excerpts from Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

“For, as the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be without a system of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of error.”

I disagree with Kant’s notion that metaphysics can be “scientifically” determined in some way. However, I agree it is extremely unlikely that metaphysics will evaporate with increasing education and social progress. It will change forms, no doubt, but will always find a way to survive. What is important is to be meticulous in keeping my and others’ metaphysics separate from our physics.

“Dogmatism is thus the dogmatic procedure of pure reason without previous criticism of its own powers, and in opposing this procedure, we must not be supposed to lend any countenance to that loquacious shallowness which arrogates to itself the name of popularity, nor yet to skepticism, which makes short work with the whole science of metaphysics.”

One of my “10 commandments” is: Challenge uncritical thinking. This could synonymously be rewritten as Challenge dogmatism. However, as Kant says, this does not entail accepting radical skepticism or subjecting knowledge to the whim of the majority. Finding the path that avoids all these pitfalls is difficult, but must be attempted.

“In the science of transcendental aesthetic accordingly, we shall first isolate sensibility or the sensuous faculty, by separating from it all that is annexed to its perceptions by the conceptions of understanding, so that nothing be left but empirical intuition. In the next place we shall take away from this intuition all that belongs to sensation, so that nothing may remain but pure intuition, and the mere form of phenomena, which is all that the sensibility can afford à priori. From this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensuous intuition, as principles of knowledge à priori, namely, space and time.”

Unfortunately, I get lost quite frequently reading Kant, mainly because he uses a lot of terms having definitions with which I am unfamiliar. However, I understand and concur with the a priori deduction of space and time. After all, the law of non-contradiction, which, along with the law of identity and the law of excluded middle, form the foundation for logic, presupposes the concepts of ‘time’ and ‘space’ in order for it to be utilized.

“As to the intuitions of other thinking beings, we cannot judge whether they are or are not bound by the same conditions which limit our own intuition, and which for us are universally valid. If we join the limitation of a judgement to the conception of the subject, then the judgement will possess unconditioned validity.”

There are certain ideas, concepts, and principles that are so intuitively true to me, I take them as universal. However, the most I really can say is, that they are universal from my perspective. Obviously, I don’t know whether anything is intuitively true for everyone. To act as if something is, stems from either extreme ignorance or an utter lack of humility.

Namaste.