The Greatest Works of Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, “Foundations of the Metaphysic of Ethics” (see T. K. Abbott, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, 3rd ed. 1907).

      1786. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, “Metaphysical Elements of Natural Science” (ed. A. Höfler, 1900; trans. Belfort Bax, Prolegomena and Metaphysical Foundations, 1883).

      1788. Ueber den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie, “On the Employment of Teleological Principles in Philosophy.”

      1788. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, “Kritik of Practical Reason” (trans. T. K. Abbott, ed. 1898).

      1790. Kritik der Urtheilskraft, “Kritik of Judgment” (trans. with notes J. H. Bernard, 1892).

      1790. Ueber eine Entdeckung, nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Vernunft durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll, “On a Discovery by which all the recent Critique of Pure Reason is superseded by a more ancient” (i.e. by Leibnitz's philosophy).

      1791. Ueber die wirklichen Fortschritte der Metaphysik seit Leibnitz und Wolff, “On the Real Advances of Metaphysics since Leibnitz and Wolff”; and Ueber das Misslingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodicee.

      1793. Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, “Religion within the Bounds of Reason only” (Eng. trans. J. W. Semple, 1838).

      1794. Ueber Philosophie überhaupt, “On Philosophy generally,” and Das Ende aller Dinge.

      1795. Zum ewigen Frieden (Eng. trans., M. Campbell Smith, 1903).

      1797. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre (trans. W. Hastie), and Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre.

      1798. Der Streit der Facultäten, “Contest of the Faculties.”

      1798. Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht.

       The Kantian Philosophy.

      Historians are accustomed to divide the general current of speculation into epochs or periods marked by the dominance of some single philosophic conception with its systematic evolution. Perhaps in no case is the character of an epoch more clearly apparent than in that of the critical philosophy. The great work of Kant absolutely closed the lines of speculation along which the philosophical literature of the 18th century had proceeded, and substituted for them a new and more comprehensive method of regarding the essential problems of thought, a method which has prescribed the course of philosophic speculation in the present age. The critical system has thus a two-fold aspect. It takes up into itself what had characterized the previous efforts of modern thought, shows the imperfect nature of the fundamental notions therein employed, and offers a new solution of the problems to which these notions had been applied. It opens up a new series of questions upon which subsequent philosophic reflection has been directed, and gives to them the form, under which it is possible that they should be fruitfully regarded. A work of this kind is essentially epoch-making.

      In any complete account of the Kantian system it is therefore necessary that there should be constant reference, on the one hand, to the peculiar character of the preceding 18th-century philosophy, and, on the other hand, to the problems left for renewed treatment to more modern thought. Fortunately the development of the Kantian system itself furnishes such treatment as is necessary of the former reference. For the critical philosophy was a work of slow growth. In the early writings of Kant we are able to trace with great definiteness the successive stages through which he passed from the notions of the preceding philosophy to the new and comprehensive method which gives its special character to the critical work. Scarcely any great mind, it has been said with justice, ever matured so slowly. In the early essays we find the principles of the current philosophies, those of Leibnitz and English empiricism, applied in various directions to those problems which serve as tests of their truth and completeness; we note the appearance of the difficulties or contradictions which manifest the one-sidedness or imperfection of the principle applied; and we can trace the gradual growth of the new conceptions which were destined, in the completed system, to take the place of the earlier method. To understand the Kantian work it is indispensable to trace the history of its growth in the mind of its author.

      Of the two preceding stages of modern philosophy, only the second, that of Locke and Leibnitz, seems to have influenced practically the course of Kant's speculation. With the Cartesian movement as a whole he shows little acquaintance and no sympathy, and his own philosophic conception is never brought into relation with the systematic treatment of metaphysical problems characteristic of the Cartesian method. The fundamental question for philosophic reflection presented itself to him in the form which it had assumed in the hands of Locke and his successors in England, of Leibnitz and the Leibnitzian school in Germany. The transition from the Cartesian movement to this second stage of modern thought had doubtless been natural and indeed necessary. Nevertheless the full bearings of the philosophic question were somewhat obscured by the comparatively limited fashion in which it was then regarded. The tendency towards what may be technically called subjectivism, a tendency which differentiates the modern from the ancient method of speculation, is expressed in Locke and Leibnitz in a definite and peculiar fashion. However widely the two systems differ in details, they are at one in a certain fundamental conception which dominates the whole course of their philosophic construction. They are throughout individualist, i.e. they accept as given fact the existence of the concrete thinking subject, and endeavour to show how this subject, as an individual conscious being, is related to the wider universe of which he forms part. In dealing with such a problem, there are evidently two lines along which investigation may proceed. It may be asked how the individual mind comes to know himself and the system of things with which he is connected, how the varied contents of his experience are to be accounted for, and what certainty attaches to his subjective consciousness of things. Regarded from the individualist point of view, this line of inquiry becomes purely psychological, and the answer may be presented as it was presented by Locke, in the fashion of a natural history of the growth of conscious experience in the mind of the subject. Or, it may be further asked how is the individual really connected with the system of things apparently disclosed to him in conscious experience? what is the precise significance of the existence which he ascribes both to himself and to the objects of experience? what is the nature of the relation between himself as one part of the system, and the system as a whole? This second inquiry is specifically metaphysical in bearing and the kind of answer furnished to it by Leibnitz on the one hand by Berkeley on the other, is in fact prescribed or determined beforehand by the fundamental conception of the individualist method with which both begin their investigations. So soon as we make clear to ourselves the essential nature of this method, we are able to discern the specific difficulties or perplexities arising in the attempt to carry it out systematically, and thus to note with precision the special problems presented to Kant at the outset of his philosophic reflections.

      Consider, first, the application of the method on its psychological side, as it appears in Locke. Starting with the assumption of conscious experience as the content or filling-in of the individual mind, Locke proceeds to explain its genesis and nature by reference to the real universe of things and its mechanical operation upon the mind. The result of the interaction of mind, i.e. the individual mind, and the system of things, is conscious experience, consisting of ideas, which may be variously compounded, divided, compared, or dealt with by the subjective faculties or powers with which the entity, Mind, is supposed to be endowed. Matter of fact and matter of knowledge are thus at a stroke dissevered. The very notion of relation between mind and things leads at once to the counter notion of the absolute restriction of mind to its own subjective nature. That Locke was unable to reconcile these opposed notions is not surprising; that the difficulties and obscurities of the Essay arise from the impossibility of reconciling them is evident on the slightest consideration of the main positions of that work. Of these difficulties the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume are systematic treatments, In Berkeley we find the resolute determination to accept only the one notion, that of mind as restricted to its own conscious experience, and to attempt by this means to explain the nature of the external reality to which obscure reference