Eine zu einheitliche Vorstellung der historischen Aufklaerung wird in diesem Text kritisiert. Um die gegensaetzlichen Strömungen dieser Epoche aufzuzeigen, wird der weitgehend unbekannte Philosoph La Mettrie vorgestellt und die negative Reaktion der bekannten Aufklaerer auf ihn. La Mettrie ging weit über die 'offizielle' Aufklaerung hinaus. Seine Analyse des Schuldgefühls und seine Ethik scheinen parallell zu zu sein. Alle Probleme der aktuellen > aufgeworfen worden.

Eine zu einheitliche Vorstellung der historischen Aufklaerung wird in diesem Text kritisiert. Um die gegensaetzlichen Strömungen dieser Epoche aufzuzeigen, wird der weitgehend unbekannte Philosoph La Mettrie vorgestellt und die negative Reaktion der bekannten Aufklaerer auf ihn. La Mettrie ging weit über die 'offizielle' Aufklaerung hinaus. Seine Analyse des Schuldgefühls und seine Ethik scheinen parallell zu zu sein. Alle Probleme der aktuellen > aufgeworfen worden.

This chapter examines the question of Kant's relation to Hume's skepticism and then considers the evidence for Kant's attitude toward Hume in three contexts: the A Critique, the Prolegomena, and the B Critique. It argues that in the A Critique Kant viewed skepticism positively, as a necessary reaction to dogmatism and a spur toward critique. In his initial statement of the critical philosophy Kant treated Hume as an ally in curbing dogmatism, but one who stopped short of what was really (...) needed: a full critique of reason, to establish the boundaries of metaphysical cognition. Kant found fault with Hume's analyses of cognition and experience, and specifically his failure to see the crucial importance of synthetic a priori cognition in metaphysics. In particular, he held that Hume's empiricist account of cognition could neither explain the synthetic a priori cognition actually found in mathematics and natural science, nor provide a principled account of the limits on what can be known--and what can be thought--through the pure concepts of the understanding. According to Kant, Hume therefore failed in his attempt to determine the limits of metaphysics, whereas he was able to succeed because his transcendental philosophy provided a thorough account of cognition, its structure and limits. In the Prolegomena and the B Critique Kant distinguished his position more sharply from Hume's. He also adopted a more negative attitude toward "skeptical idealism" than before; but he attributed such skepticism to Descartes, not Hume. Prior to the B Critique Kant did not see Hume as attacking natural science or ordinary cognition. In none of the three works was Kant's main aim to "answer the skeptic." His primary aim was what he said it was: to firmly establish the boundary of metaphysics, by discovering the elements of human cognition and fixing its proper domain. His purported discoveries about the limits of metaphysical cognition meant that the traditional objects of metaphysical knowledge, God, the soul, and the world as it is in itself, are unknowable, hence that traditional metaphysics itself is impossible. Besides settling the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics, his findings would also prevent the illegitimate extension of principles of sensibility to God and the noumenal self, an extension that would threaten the metaphysics of morals by incorrectly denying the thinkability of noumenal freedom, and that might otherwise lead to "materialism, fatalism, atheism, and freethinking unbelief" (B xxxiv). (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the "incompleteness thesis" of Kant's General Metaphysics before completing a full analysis of the power of judgment which only occurred in the Critique of Judgment-Power. Kant scholars have argued that Kant's General Metaphysics was completed with the Critique of Pure Reason and the Third Critique added nothing significant to this quest. One of the issues in this paper is to understand Kant's various "transition problems" and their solution to unify knowledge under a metaphysics, all (...) of which has implications for the natural and cognitive sciences even today. (shrink)