Kant believed in the idea that within the limits of criminal law, every man could do as he pleased. he had a love of freedom and was a believer in democracy. He believed
"There can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another"
meaning you should only do what pleases you, and not because someone tells you too. Kant's theory of perception maintains that our understanding of the external world had its foundations not merely in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts. Kant’s magnum opus, the Critique of Pure Reason, in 1781, aimed to unite reason with experience to move beyond what he took to be failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics. This was Kant's most influential work which has often been cited as the most significant volume of metaphysics and epistemology in modern philosophy.
Kant believes that our understanding of the external world is not found mainly in experience, but in both experience and a priori concepts, offering a non-empiricist critique of rationalist philosophy, which is what he and others referred to as his Copernican revolution.
Kant uses a conceptual disitinction to distinguish propositions in two types. These are analytic propositions and synthetic propositions.
- Analytic Propostions are true by nature of the meaning of the words used in the sentence. There is no further knowledge required to know the sentence is true other than to understand the language and to know the meaning of the words. For example:
"A tall man is tall"
- Synthetic propositions are propositions that tell us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of these statements derive from somethig outside of their linguistic content. For example:
"Tuesday was a wet day"
Kant disagrees unlike empiricists, e.g. Hume, and rationalists, e.g. Leibniz, that all synthetic propositions are only known from experiences.
Kant claims that elemntary mathematics like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, meaning its statement provides new knowledge but not knowledge that has derived from experience. A priori proposition is one which though it may be from experience, is seen, when know to have a basis other than experience. He accepted that geometry and arithmetic are synthetic but are likewise a priori. Emperical propositions are ones we cannot know except by the help of sense and perception, e.g.facts of history and geography. Kant argues Space and Time are not derived from experience but are forms of intuition.
Kant's other influential work included a short story he wrote after the Lisbon earthquake. In this essay he debates whether the west wind in Europe is moist because it has crossed the atlantic ocean. This relates to Rousseau's idea of pureness.
Hegel often criticised Kant although, Hegel's systems could not exist if Kant's hadn't first. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, born August 27th, 1770 and died November 14th, 1831, was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German idealism. He published only four books in his lifetime:
- Phenomenology of Spirit 1807, this was Hegel's account of the development of consciousness from sense-perception to absolute knowledge.
- Science of Logic in three volumes published in 1811, 1812 and 1816, the logical and metaphysical core of Hegel's philosophy.
- Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences 1816, this was a summary of his entire philosophical system.
- Elements of the Philosophy of Right 1822, Hegel's political philosophy.
Hegel was a free-will believer. The French Revolution for Hegel constitutes the introduction of real individual political freedom into European societies for the first time in record history.
He believes in 'the state'. He believes the state is existing realized moral life. Truth and unity is found in the state laws, universal and rational arrangements. He comes to the conclusion that the state is The Divine Idea.
He also believes in a very interesting idea, one that I can't argue with or find any other conclusion for. He says to suppose the universe as a whole to be spherical is self-contradictory. This is because nothing can be a sphere without boundaries and to have boundaries you need something outside of the sphere, at least empty space, but everything is inside the universe so there are no boundaries.
Modern philosophy, culture, and society seemed to Hegel fraught with contradictions and tensions, such as those between the subject and object of knowledge, mind and nature, self and Other, freedom and authority, knowledge and faith, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called "the absolute idea" or "absolute knowledge". This is similar to the big question 'What came first; The chicken or the egg?' The Absolute of an uncle is a newphew because without the nephew, there wouldn't be an uncle as you need a nephew to say you're an uncle. Therefore, the Absolute is a nephew, but then the newphew exists because if his parents etc. This whole system is called 'The Absolute Idea'.
It's also interesting to know that Hegel likes the idea of war. He believes that states are individual and war rightly prevents states from coming together. This relates with his Dialectical process. The Dialectic is the winner and war brings a winner and change which he believes is needed for a civil society. He believes The Absolute of the world is everything inside it and we can't get there as individuals, we get there through the Dialectic and become the absolute through social change.
He says:
"We Progress, we change. This change is a dialectic process. We move in this direction because there is a spirit guiding us into this direction".
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