Progresos de la Metafisica desde Leibniz y Wolf

by Immanuel Kant

=The progress of metaphysics in Germany since the time of Leibniz and Wolf

Genres: Philosophy

424 pages, paper

First published January 1, 1804

About the author

Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century philosopher from Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He's regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe & of the late Enlightenment. His most important work is The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics & epistemology, & highlights his own contribution to these areas. Other main works of his maturity are The Critique of Practical Reason, which is about ethics, & The Critique of Judgment, about esthetics & teleology.

Pursuing metaphysics involves asking questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed thru epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources & limits of human knowledge we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects that the mind can think about must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality–which he concluded that it does–then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it's possible that there are objects of such a nature that the mind cannot think of them, & so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. So the grand questions of speculative metaphysics are off limits, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists & the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired thru experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists & empiricists. The philosophers Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer saw themselves as correcting and expanding Kant's system, thus bringing about various forms of German Idealism. Kant continues to be a major influence on philosophy to this day, influencing both Analytic and Continental philosophy.

Reviews

[Karla Denisse Cardona Canales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cómo científica es un poco complicado integrar los conceptos metafísicos sobre todo a temas actuales, aunque estoy segura que acordé al avance tecnológico todos estos enigmas podrán ser interpretados "La magia es solo ciencia que no entendemos"

[Joaquin Siabra-Fraile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnífico. Y ello por las siguientes razones:
1. La extensa introducción-estudio de Felix Duque (ocupa la mitad del libro) es uno de los mejores estudios que existen en castellano sobre la "aetas" kantiana (Reinhold, Beck y sobre todo, Maimon), y una magistral contextualización a la vez histórica y sistemática.
2. Esta obra de Kant es fundamental para entender el tránsito de la filosofía crítica al idealismo (paso de la síntesis a priori a la composición, problema de la autoafección, doble estatuto de espacio y tiempo como formas de intuición e intuiciones formales), pero también para comprender el propio pensamiento kantiano, puesto que de lo tratado aquí depende la posibilidad de que el criticismo se cierre en sistema o no.