IMMANUEL KANT

Immanuel Kant
Philosopher

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who is

widely considered to be a central figure of modern
philosophy. He argued that human concepts and
categories structure our view of the world and its
laws, and that reason is the source of morality.
Born: April 22, 1724,
Died: February 12, 1804,
Education:Konersberg University (17401746)

 Immanuel Kant (17241804) is the central figure in

modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern
rationalism and empiricism, The fundamental idea
of Kant's critical philosophy especially in his
three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781,
1787), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and
the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) is
human autonomy. He argues that the human
understanding is the source of the general laws of
nature that structure all our experience; and that
human reason gives itself the moral law, which is
our basis for belief in God, freedom, and
immortality.

Concepts of Political Philosophy

favoured a classical republican approach
to political philosophy.

Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch(1795)

 "No secret treaty of peace shall be held valid in which

there is tacitly reserved matter for a future war"
"No independent states, large or small, shall come
under the dominion of another state by inheritance,
exchange, purchase, or donation"
"Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished"
"National debts shall not be contracted with a view to
the external friction of states"
"No state shall by force interfere with the constitution
or government of another state"
"No state shall, during war, permit such acts of hostility
which would make mutual confidence in the
subsequent peace impossible: such are the
employment of assassins (percussores), poisoners
(venefici), breach of capitulation, and incitement to
treason (perduellio) in the opposing state"

Rechtsstaat
Rechtsstaat (German: Rechtsstaat) is
a doctrine in continental European legal
thinking, originally borrowed
from German jurisprudence.
It is a "constitutional state" in which the
exercise of governmental power is constrained
by the law.
the power of the state is limited in order to
protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise
of authority.

IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES OF
RECHTSSTAAT
The state based on the supremacy of national constitution and exercises
coercion and guarantees the safety and constitutional rights of its citizens
Civil society is equal partner to the state (the Constitution of the Republic
of Lithuania describes the Lithuanian nation as "striving for an open, just,
and harmonious civil society and State under the rule of law (Legal State)
Separation of powers ,with the executive, legislative and judicative
branches of government limiting each other's power and providing for
checks and balances
The judicature and the executive are bound by law (not acting against the
law), and the legislature is bound by constitutional principles
Both the legislature and democracy itself are bound by elementary
constitutional rights and principles

 Transparency of state acts and the

requirement of providing a reason for all state
acts
Review of state decisions and state acts by
independent organs, including an appeal
process
Hierarchy of laws, requirement of clarity and
definiteness
Reliability of state actions, protection of past
dispositions made in good faith against later
state actions, prohibition of retroactivity.
Principle of the proportionality of state action
Monopoly of the legitimate use of force

The main topic of the Critique of Pure Reason is the

possibility of metaphysics, understood in a specific way.
Kant defines metaphysics in terms of the cognitions
after which reason might strive independently of all
experience, and his goal in the book is to reach a
decision about the possibility or impossibility of a
metaphysics in general, and the determination of its
sources, as well as its extent and boundaries, all,
however, from principles .
Thus metaphysics for Kant concerns a priori knowledge,
or knowledge whose justification does not depend on
experience; and he associates a priori knowledge with
reason. The project of the Critique is to examine
whether, how, and to what extent human reason is
capable of a priori knowledge.

 Practical reason is the faculty for determining the will,

which operates by applying a general principle of
action to one's particular situation. For Kant,
aprinciple can be either a mere maxim if it is based on
the agent's desires or a law if it applies universally. Any
principle that presupposes a previous desire for some
object in the agent always presupposes that the agent
is the sort of person who would be interested in that
particular object. Anything that an agent is interested
in can only be contingent, however, and never
necessary. Therefore it cannot be a law.

 To say, for example, that the law is to serve God means that
the law is dependent on interest in God. This cannot be the
basis for any universal moral law. To say that the law is to seek
the greatest happiness of the greatest number or the greatest
good, always presupposes some interest in the greatest
happiness, the greatest number, the greatest good, and so on.
Kant concludes that the source of the nomological character
of the moral law must derive not from its content but from
its form alone. The content of the universal moral law,
the categorical imperative, must be nothing over and above
the law's form, otherwise it will be dependent on the desires
that the law's possessor has. The only law whose content
consists in its form, according to Kant, is the statement:

Act in such a way that the maxim of your will

could always hold at the same time as a
principle of a universal legislation.

 Kant then argues that a will which acts on the practical law
is a will which is acting on the idea of the form of law, an
idea of reason which has nothing to do with the senses.
Hence the moral will is independent of the world of the
senses, the world where it might be constrained by one's
contingent desires. The will is therefore fundamentally free.
The converse also applies: if the will is free, then it must be
governed by a rule, but a rule whose content does not
restrict the freedom of the will. The only appropriate rule is
the rule whose content is equivalent to its form,
the categorical imperative.
To follow the practical law is to be autonomous, whereas to
follow any of the other types of contingent laws
(or hypothetical imperatives) is to be heteronomous and
therefore unfree. The moral law expresses the positive
content of freedom, while being free from influence
expresses its negative content.

JUDGEMENT
The good is essentially a judgment that something is ethical the
judgment that something conforms with moral law, which, in the Kantian
sense, is essentially a claim of modality a coherence with a fixed and
absolute notion of reason. It is in many ways the absolute opposite of the
agreeable, in that it is a purely objective judgment things are either
moral or they are not, according to Kant.
The remaining two judgments - the beautiful and the sublime - occupy a
space between the agreeable and the good. They are what Kant refers to
as "subjective universal" judgments. This apparently oxymoronic term
means that, in practice, the judgments are subjective, and are not tied to
any absolute and determinate concept. However, the judgment that
something is beautiful or sublime is made with the belief that other
people ought to agree with this judgment - even though it is known that
many will not. The force of this "ought" comes from a reference to a
"sensus communis" - a community of taste. Hannah Arendt, in
her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, suggests the possibility that
this sensus communis might be the basis of a political theory that is
markedly different from the one that Kant lays out in the Metaphysic of
Morals.

 The judgment that something is beautiful is a claim that it

possesses the "form of finality" - that is, that it appears to have
been designed with a purpose, even though it does not have any
apparent practical function. The judgment that something is
sublime is a judgment that it is beyond the limits of comprehension
- that it is an object of fear. However, Kant makes clear that the
object must not actually be threatening - it merely must be
recognized as deserving of fear.
Kant's view of the beautiful and the sublime is frequently read as an
attempt to resolve one of the problems left following his depiction
of moral law in the Critique of Practical Reason - namely that it is
impossible to prove that we have free will, and thus impossible to
prove that we are bound under moral law. The beautiful and the
sublime both seem to refer to some external noumenal order - and
thus to the possibility of a noumenal self that possesses free will.
In this section of the critique Kant also establishes a faculty of mind
that is in many ways the inverse of judgment - the faculty of genius.
Whereas judgment allows one to determine whether something is
beautiful or sublime, genius allows one to produce what is beautiful
or sublime.

Rules for Happiness:

something to do,
someone to love,
something to hope for.
GODBLESS