Kant’s contribution to thought is immense. He renewed epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, while leaving notable contributions in politics, history and anthropology. Let us briefly recall why the philosopher from Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) occupies this enviable place.
Pure reason
His first major contribution is found in his major work which is The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). In this difficult-to-summarize opus, Kant wonders how synthetic judgments a priori, which are not drawn from experience and which nevertheless increase knowledge, may be possible. We find this type of judgment especially in science and metaphysics. To achieve this, the philosopher operates what he calls a Copernican revolution: it is the objects which are regulated by the structures a priori of our knowledge and not our knowledge which would adapt to the world as it is. We do not know things as they are in themselves (Ding an sich), but only as our faculties of knowledge allow them to appear as phenomena. From a priori Sensitivity (the intuition of space and time) and understanding (categories – twelve in all – which order our experiences) are found. It is in these rules of experience a priori that it is possible to expand our knowledge.
Kant thus offers a synthesis of two schools of thought which were opposed before him: rationalism, for which the essential was already contained in reason, and empiricism, according to which everything comes from experience alone.
Ethics
Kant proceeds in much the same way when he reflects on the universal foundations of ethics, his second great contribution. These foundations are not obtained empirically, for example by observing customs. To do so would mean wading into contingency. Its ethics, a bit like science, wants to rise beyond beliefs and eras. He first notes that an act sincerely accomplished by good will is good a prioriit doesn’t matter if its results have a happy ending or not.
This good will acts out of moral duty. It applies a categorical imperative, which is to be distinguished from the utilitarian calculation of advantages and disadvantages. This imperative consists of acting in such a way that the principle of our action can be transformed into a universal law. If this is impossible, the action has no moral value. Kant will be criticized for certain difficulties. For example, lying cannot become a universal law. The truth must be said. But will we tell the truth to an assassin who asks us where the person he wants to kill is hiding?
According to Antoine Grandjean (University of Lille), it is not contrary to the categorical imperative to lie if someone forces me to speak against my convictions, since the very conditions of sincere speaking are canceled. It would even be possible to make a truthful but misleading statement. Answer for example: I saw this person at the market this morning (true statement), without specifying that I just saw her enter the store across the street is not directly lying.
The summit in his ethics remains this insurmountable truth which is his practical imperative: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity as well in your person as in the person of any other always at the same time as an end, and never simply as a means. » This imperative does not exclude that a person can serve as a means. Others serve us constantly: drivers, mechanics, doctors, therapists, teachers, etc., in short, almost everyone. What this imperative says is that we must not reduce the other to being only a means, in other words a thing. For what ? Because a human being is unique in that he is the only being who, in addition to being subject to the laws of nature, is capable of submitting to the laws he gives to himself.
This autonomy makes him a person, not an object. It gives him dignity. Such a being deserves respect. Today, when we use the vocabulary of the person, their autonomy and their dignity, we practice Kantian ethics without always being conscious of it.
His third major contribution concerns aesthetic judgment. Once again, Kant’s analysis is about types of judgments. He distinguishes the pleasant — a judgment of subjective taste valid only for me — from the beautiful — a judgment seeking objectivity and the support of others. A thing beautiful aspires to the universal (the works of Bach) without allowing itself to be demonstrated rationally. It is tested more than it is proven. The sublime, for its part, transports us to what is completely beyond us. It returns us to our finitude. Thus the eclipse of April 8 represented for many a manifestation of this sublime.
In these warlike times, it would be wise to reread his Perpetual Peace Project (1795) which inspired the League of Nations after the First World War. In Idea of a universal history from a cosmopolitical point of view (1784), Kant considered human “unsociability” as a trick of Nature that would lead to peace.
An outdated white male?
This Prussian who never left his town is not immune to the prejudices of his time. There are a number of sexist remarks in his work. Our current sensibilities are shocked when we read from his pen: “Humanity achieves the greatest perfection in the race of Whites. The Yellow Indians already have less talent. The N… are located much lower. »
Should we then reject this philosopher because of the presence of the prejudices of his time? It would be to deprive oneself of the best of his work. Refusing humanity to others is an attitude that we find even among so-called peoples primitives. Gayatri Spivak, specialist in feminist and postcolonial studies, would have many reasons to cancel the illustrious thinker. And yet, in an interview given to Philosophy Magazine (February 2024), she pleads in favor of “affirmative sabotage”: “we use her theory to correct it”. Thus, its practical imperative condemning the reduction of others to a mere means can be used to defend women’s rights and condemn slavery.
In What is the Enlightenment? (1784), Kant formulated the motto of his century: “Have the courage to use your own understanding. » Thinking for ourselves allows us to reach our majority. Further, he questions whether we are currently living in an enlightened century. His answer: “No, but in a century moving towards enlightenment. » Kant advanced the enlightenment of humanity in many ways. It’s up to us to continue his task with and, when necessary, against him.