Taylor Ciali
May 12, 2008
Dean Baer
Kant-Final Paper

The Double Citizenship of Human Existence

Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge has been one of the most influential in modern Western philosophy. His basic premise is that we do not experience the world directly, but we do so by using certain intrinsic cognitive concepts. “Appearances, to the extent that as objects they are thought in accordance with the unity of categories, are called phenomena. If, however, I suppose there to be things that are merely objects of the understanding and that, nevertheless, can be given an intuition, although not to sensible intuition, then such things would be called noumena.” (A249) According to Kant, it is crucial to make a distinction between …show more content…

Kant then continues his theory on judgment by discussing natural philosophy which pertains to the concepts of nature; it is theoretical and comes from pure reason and understanding. While moral philosophy contains the concepts of freedom and action concepts, it is strictly practical reasoning. The field of the supersensible is supplied by ideas. There is a transition from the sensory world, phenomena, to the supersensible world, noumena. This is the ground which is neither factual nor moral and it is called purpose. Purpose is provided by an act of judgment; the only place for truth is an act of judgment. Judgment is defined as subsuming the particular in the universal. There are two types of judgment, determinant judgment where the universal is given and reflective judgment where only the particular is given. There are two types of purposes (meaning) in life and they are something added a priori to things, events, and actions. There is the theoretical purposiveness of nature which rests on the transcendental principle whereas the practical purposiveness of free will rests on the metaphysical principle. The concept of a purposiveness of nature is the bridge that allows for the transformation of the sensible by the supersensible. In talking about morality, Kant offers a proof of freedom from the fact of moral agency to the truth of its condition of free will. Kant’s claim is