Foundation of Kant’s Moral Philosophy and Its Reinterpretation. a Quintessential Humanistic Doctrine

1 considered the founder of modern philosophy, was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, (which today is Kaliningrad in Russia) on April 22, 1724. He came from a Protestant family of Pietists. Kant attended the University of Königsberg and became an instructor at the university. For fifteen years he lectured and wrote on various topics in metaphysics, logic, natural sciences: physics, astronomy, geology, meteorology. In 1770 he became a university professor of logic and metaphysics. In 1781 he published his important work, Critique of Pure Reason, which was a starting point for a new field of studies and extensive writing. Second edition which contains many revisions was published in 1787. His reaction to critique to his first edition is found in Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). Both these works represent his transcendental idealism (also termed " formal " or " critical "). This doctrine maintains that our theoretical knowledge is limited to systematization of spatiotemporal appearance. Subsequently Kant published almost every year a new book: Idea of a Universal History Kant differentiated between pure reasons and practical reason. Pure reason or pure theoretical reason does not depend on any experience thus it can make determination of the realm of nature a priori. Pure practical reason (or Wille = will) determines the rules for the faculty of desire and will independently of sensibility. It deals with the realm of freedom and of what ought to be. It is opposed to the faculty of cognition and of feeling and it deals with laws which have unconditional character (in one aspect of his theory) and apply to a being with absolute freedom, that is, the faculty to choose (Willkür) to will or not to will to act. Thus Kant argued that human freedom does not derive from the empirical knowledge of ourselves as part of the spatiotemporal nature. But Kant also argued that there is this empirical and spatiotemporal realm but it does not exhaust the reality. Its principles Kant terms as " metaphysics of experience " and they do not define the ultimate reality hence the term used for his philosophy – " transcendental idealism. " What he meant by this can be exemplified by his treatment of mathematics. Mathematical principles are transcendental, a priori, that is the philosophical argument that these principles apply in experience. The mathematical proof of these principles is 72 not in itself transcendental. In other knowledge we …