What we already know from the chapter:
Locke
· Believed that there were three way of clarifying what we class as knowledge
o The ability to be Intuitive of our own knowledge
o The ability to be demonstrative of God’s knowledge
o The ability to be sensitive of things present to sense
· Simple ideas are the product of things operating on the mind in a natural way
· And what I can gather from the chapter, being inconsistent helps develop ideas
Berkeley
· Only minds and our ideas are what is real
· Wanted to abolish the physical, external world
· Didn’t deny god’s knowledge but was held back from doing so because of his own feelings towards the religion
Hume
· Denied the idea of ‘self’
· Felt doubts in the idea of induction and causation (ignoring common cause)
· He accepted Berkeley’s idea of abolishing physical matter
· Couldn’t argue that impressions or experiences give knowledge
Rousseau
He came at a time when people, especially men (that’s what the book said before anyone thinks I’m making a sexist comment) were growing tired of hearing about reason. Rousseau believed in letting the heart decide or answer questions the head found doubtful. Because of this outlook, as of 1750, letting the heart make decisions that the head couldn't became more and more popular with great thinkers. However under the
power of Napoleon the head AND the hearts were silenced.
This idea links to the song "Head and the Heart" by "Chris De Burgh"
The reason I have mentioned all of the above is because they all were great influences in the way that Kant created his theories and ideas.
Kant
MAIN PHILOSOPHY = HEART OVER HEAD
Kant is considered a great importance throughout modern philosophy.
An important feature of Kant’s life is that he abandoned his education of the Leibniz’s Philosophy. He did this because of the influences of Rousseau and Hume, namely the concept of causality.
Kant admired Rousseau’s work and often described it as beautiful. In the chapter, it states that he had to read his works several times over because he was distracted by the beauty of the presentation and structure. Kant’s main philosophy was clearly influenced by Rousseau as it is practically the same.
His principle: ‘there can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another’
Kant’s early works were more concerned with science than Philosophy. For example, he wrote a theory on Earthquakes after an earthquake in Lisbon. This was part of his most important scientific writings “General Natural History and Theory of Heaven (1755)”. Also in these writings he talks about Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis and he discusses a possible origin of the solar system. He believed all planets were inhabited and the furthest away planets had the best inhabitants. However, he couldn’t support any of his theories with scientific evidence, leading people to over look his statements.
As well as writing scientific theories, he wrote treatise on the sublime and beautiful, much like Rousseau. He had these examples to explain his beliefs on what was sublime and what was beautiful:
· Night is sublime and day is beautiful
· Sea is sublime and land is beautiful
· Man is sublime and woman is beautiful
Baring in mind that the definition of beautiful is “very pleasing and impressive to look at, listen to, touch, smell or taste” and the definition of sublime is “so awe-inspiringly beautiful as to seem almost heavenly” these statements, I feel, can be questioned but they are however relatively true.
The most important book Kant has written is the “The Critique of pure Reason”. This books purpose was to prove that although we cannot get more knowledge without experience, it is existing in the mind independently (a priori) and we draw conclusions influenced by our experiences.
The part of our knowledge that is ‘a priori’ embraces logic. He believed that there were four types of propositions.
Analytic Propositions: something that describes an action or quality of an object. E.g. A tall man is a man. The aim of an analytic proposition is so it cannot be contradicted.
Synthetic propositions: ones that aren’t analytic – things we know only through experience are synthetic. E.g. “Tuesday was a wet day”
Empirical Propositions: something we find out through another’s perception. Facts of history or geography or laws of science are empirical as our mind relies on observational data.
‘A priori’ propositions: something we learn from experience, but are used so frequently we no longer require an example to refer from. For example a child may learn 2+2=4 by using 2 marbles and putting them together with another 2 marbles. The child will eventually grasp this concept of maths and no longer need marbles to count and apply maths to them.
His view on God:
Kant believed it is a practical necessity to have a belief in god. God cannot be separated from the relation to happiness. He is the supreme God. He believed religion to be natural or naturalistic. He saw reason as a natural thing and parts of Christianity are based loosely on reason and morality, therefore this provided his religious beliefs. He sometimes however questioned this idea too. He believed that Christianity is natural but can be un-naturalistic because it fails to allow room for the belief of the super-natural.
“if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him”
