Immanuel Kant and His Literary Works
Immanuel Kant was a German professor of logic and metaphysics who lived from 1724 to 1804. Immanuel Kant was born to an esteemed but poor saddler in Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) that was located in the eastern side of Prussia. The ideologies of his father is said to have influenced Kant. Kant attended Collegium Fridericianum and joined the University of Koningsberg when he was sixteen. His subjects of study were physics, mathematics and philosophy and listened to speeches in religious studies. When Kant’s father died he worked as a tutor to support his family. However, he found time for research and wrote books such as Theory of Heavens and General History of Nature that aimed to prove that the solar system and other heavenly bodies were developed out of an embryonic nebula, and “On Fire” for which he was awarded a doctor’s degree and gained the job as a university lecturer. Kant then became the professor for metaphysics, moral philosophy, anthropology, natural theology, logic, physics, mathematics, and physical geography. Kant wrote his most famous books such as Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Pure Reason, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics and Critique of Judgment while he served as a dean of faculties and preacher of university at Köningsberg. Though his speeches on anthropology and geography were admired, Kant never traveled outside his home-town and always believed in his own logical philosophy. His writings were intended to provide scientific reasoning to philosophy but his lingo made his writings difficult to understand by many proficient philosophers let alone the amateurs (Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)).
Critique of Practical Reason
Kant, in his book “Critique of Practical Reason,” argues that a person’s ethical verdicts are based on logical principles that have nothing to do with world knowledge and hence shows the effect of self-determination. The thesis is further categorized into a table of Elements and a Methodology. Kant explains that individuals are accustomed by the rule of causality, which proclaims that every outcome has a preset reason. In practice this would tear down the probability of self-determination. Kant also asserts that a person considers himself as a wholly sensible and logical individual. By itself, an individual’s behavior may be trained by aesthetic reasons or stuck in the ethical law, the ‘definite essential’ which obliges us to ‘operate only on that saying during which you can at the same occasion resolve that it must happen to be a worldwide law’. Kant also emphasizes in closing his urging about self-determination that the notions of God and being eternal, while amused as a simple option for abstract basis are essential for realistic rationale (Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism).
According to Kant, practical reasons are schemes including a wide-range of willpower. They are dictums or one-sided schemes when conveying an individual’s determination; purpose on the other hand is convincing terms of the motivation of logical being in general. Practical principles which assume a purpose of yearning are merely experimental and they do not have any practical laws. All sensible people essentially desire pleasure but they do not concur with each other’s ideas of attaining the pleasure or the essence which gives them enjoyment. It would be impossible to determine any rule to bring all men into agreement. The best theory would be that ethical perception decides liberty of mind. But the fact is that ethics would be completely shattered if the motive is not as logical and piercing in connection to the willpower of the majority of men. Doing something with a wrong motive or for falsification of facts is not as acceptable as doing something for self satisfaction. Since happiness is relative to a particular situation or an individual, a need for happiness cannot determine morality in general. Moral law expects everyone’s agreement such that anyone can distinguish what is right and what is wrong. Thus morality is easier to understand and live accordingly than attributable to self contentment. The only major demerit of moral law is that it believes that a punishment for a morally wrong action is a natural outcome which is not acceptable. Here practical reason should be connected with a crime and moral legislation should be altered to make sure the individual gets proper punishment as in the case of a legal offence. The practical principles may be classified as Subjective and Objective. Subjective and Objective principles can be further classified as external and internal. The external subjective principles can be education and social structure and the internal subjective principle, ethical. The Objective principles can be of excellence as external and God’s force as internal. The subjective elements are investigational and cannot support ethical laws as they are explained by writers like Mandeville, Montaigne, Hutcheson and Epicurus. The objective elements speak of attaining perfection as obtaining them through God which can be considered by sensible ideas. The one attractive concept behind Divine force is that happiness attained or expected to attain through Spirituality will also motivate people. The recognized practical principle of the pure reason claims that the sheer outline of a worldwide legislation must comprise the definitive influential principle of the determination. It is the only potential practical principle which is adequate to provide clear-cut imperatives, that is, practical laws which make deed a duty. Good and evil are the only essence of practical reason. By the term ‘good’ is recognized as an object inevitably required and by ‘evil’ something essentially despised motive triggering the mind in each case. In essence, the laws of practical reason asserts on the never-ending existence of the spirit and the God (Hughes).
Appraisal of Kant’s Position on Practical Reason
Kant’s critique of practical reason explains about individual morality and how it affects their actions. Kant claims that a person’s actions are completely dependent on the individual’s ethics. An individual’s ethics may or may not coincide with another individual’s ethics. Kant asserts that commonly accepted ethics should also be written down similar to laws. But this affects the individual’s freedom of thoughts. Kant goes to the extent of claiming that ultimate perfection can motivate people to do ethically correct actions. Again the confusion remains as to the action whether it is based on individual’s ethics or the universal ethics. Kant asserts that an ethically wrong deed should be considered a crime and be punished. This concept may be agreed to some level with Kant’s theory of morality.
Morality to some extent does influence a person’s actions. But that constitutes only a meagre percentage of actions and individuals can confirm to this theory. If this theory is to be accepted, every person will be correct in every action according to his own ethics. Since there are some formal legal rules already formed, it is always better to go according to those rules rather than informal moral principles to make out right from wrong. In practice, the rules will have to be reviewed and altered periodically to make sure that it confirms to the present mental and physical circumstances of the action. If a proper regulatory system is established, people will begin to comply with them on their own and hence there would be fewer crimes. Kant’s theory of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is dependent on many issues and cannot be depended upon universally. When God’s existence itself seems to be a matter of dispute for many, spirituality cannot be the only motive for good deeds. There are people who believe on different ‘Gods’ and yet act is similar ways on given circumstances. They confirm more to the legislations formally laid upon and to some level of universally accepted ethics.
Critique of Aesthetic Judgment
Kant talks about judgments of taste and rationale in Critique of Judgment. The effort is divided into a “Critique of Teleological Judgment” and a “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. In the first division of Critique of Judgment, Kant discards the subsequently stylish mechanistic dispute as an account for the concord of elements of organisms, as well as the theological dispute that it is the creation of a clever design. Rather, rationale in nature must be assumed as a methodological assumption in any scientific explanation. The second section is devoted to artistic opinions about the beautiful, which for Kant are prejudiced but across the world valid. Kant explains that in the consideration of a beautiful object, a person experiences a free play of thought and imagination (Critique of Judgment). The critique has been divided into two books and each book into further sections that talks about different aspects of judgment. In Book 1, Kant talks about judgment of the Beautiful. Kant divides the analytic of the Beautiful into various moments.
According to Kant’s first moment of judgment of the beautiful, taste is the ability of assessing an item or a form of demonstration by way of a delight or dislike distant from any interest. The item of such a pleasure is called beautiful. According to the second moment, the beautiful can be defined as that which spaced out from a perception that satisfies matter across the world. According to the third moment, Beauty is the outline of conclusiveness in an object, to the extent that is apparent in it apart from the depiction of a conclusion. According to the fourth moment, the beautiful is that which is considered as an object of an essential delight. Summarizing Kant’s first four moments, an object of beauty is the finalized, interest free, unconditional like or dislike, which is accepted universally and is an essential delight. In the second book, Kant describes about sublime or the inspiration. Kant discussed the relations between the beautiful and the sublime. Kant defines sublime as ‘absolutely great’. When people begin to assess the magnitude of greatness of the pleasure derived from natural things, they begin to measure their magnificence. The quality of such things brings about the idea of sublime. There are things that please our sensations which can be quantified and such delight cannot be demanded.
Certain things bring delight just by the thought of which and it cannot be quantified. Kant considers art and music to explain his ideas of the beauty and sublime. Music and plays that brings about laughter are not thought provoking and hence can be considered sublime. They delight our mind and not our senses and are aesthetic. But when it comes to fine art, it gives delight only when it is interpreted by the admirer’s mind. It involves a thought process which when successful brings bout delight. This is more concerned with the taste. There is an element of confusion existing with the judgment of taste. The confusion is that though Kant claims in one portion that the judgment of taste is not based on theory, since if it were it would be open to difference of opinion; it is based on theory, since if it were not, there would be no agreement regarding the judgment among others also. The basic idea is that an aesthetic idea when coupled with a concept makes it universally accepted. Kant arrives at a conclusion that:
- The beautiful delights right away (but only in reflective instinct, not, like ethics, in its theory).
- It delights apart from all interest.
- The liberty of thoughts (consequently of our sense in respect of its responsiveness) is, in assessing the beautiful, symbolized as in harmony with the understanding’s compliance to law.
- The individual principles of the assessment of the beautiful is signified as universal, that is., valid for every man, but as not supported by means of any universal theory (the purpose behind the principle of morality is also universal, i.e., for everyone, and, for all deeds of the same individual, and, supported by means of a worldwide theory).
Hence moral principles cannot alone bring about universal delight; it has to be backed up by some universal concept to be accepted completely.
Criticism of Kant’s View of Aesthetic Judgment
Kant’s critique of Aesthetic judgment deals with judgment of the beautiful and the sublime. Kant explains that a thing of beauty is that which appeals universally to everyone’s senses and gives them delight. This need not confirm to any existing concept and will be unconditional. Kant says that ultimate perfection makes an object beautiful. This concept cannot be agreed since ultimate perfection can never be attained for most of the objects on earth. The concept of Ultimate perfection itself differs from person to person. Hence an object of beauty is relative to a particular individual or the given circumstances.
Sublime according to Kant is the ultimate great. Music and comedy are not thought provoking according to Kant but they do provide delight. This ideology also cannot be agreed in this context since Music relaxes the mind such that the thought process can be rejuvenated. Thus music actually helps a person to concentrate harder on something. In practice, the contradiction would depend on the kind of music one is listening to. Jokes are also thought provoking. An individual has to interpret the joke or an act of comedy and understand it to laugh. Therefore the thought process is definitely involved but it can be considered as a diversion which rejuvenates the actual thought process. Universal acceptance of any theory would be practically impossible since it would affect the freedom of thought of at least some group of people. Kant asserts that universal delight is possible if an action is supported by a universal concept. This cannot be considered correct since if that was the case the world could have avoided many wars. Any theory will have to be reviewed and altered periodically since the world is evolving continually. Beauty cannot be described based on principles. It is something that delights the mind and hence cannot be quantified. Any attempt to quantify real beauty will only reduce its dignity (The Critique of Judgment).
Conclusion
Kant believes that setting a new rule for morality, judgment of beauty and greatness can make it universally accepted. This is far from reality. Ethics, beauty and greatness are outcomes of mind which cannot be quantified. It gives mental pleasure which is far superior to physical pleasure. Morality does affect a person’s actions but once it is written down it’ll affect an individual’s freedom of imagination and thoughts. Human thought process has and will always be a vast area to be explored by the philosophers. It cannot be tied down to some written and universally accepted theories. It is this freedom of thought that creates great literary works and many innovations that help in the betterment of human life.
Works Cited
Critique of Judgment. 2008. Web.
Hughes, Glyn . Critiques of Pure & Practical Reason. 2002. Web.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). 2008. Web.
Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. 2008. Web.
The Critique of Judgement. 2004. Web.