Reality is shaped by the perceiving mind.
Human knowledge is limited to phenomena (reality as presented to the mind)
Noumena (things in themselves) exist, but are unknowable- metaphysics must be limited to a critique of human reason.
Ethics:
Based in human autonomy: capacity for rational deliberation.
Categorical Imperative: Act only in such a way that you could want the motivating principle of your action to become a universal law. Kant. Immanuel Kant. Kant's most original contribution to philosophy is his "Copernican Revolution," that, as he puts it, it is the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible [§14, A92/B124, note].
This introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception. Something like this now seems obvious: the mind could be a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet," no more than a bathtub full of silicon chips could be a digital computer. Perceptual input must be processed, i.e. recognized, or it would just be noise -- "less even than a dream" (weniger, als ein Traum, A112) or "nothing to us" (vor uns nichts sein, A120) as Kant alternatively puts it. But if the mind actively generates perception, this raises the question whether the result has anything to do with the world, or if so, how much. The problems that must be sorted out with Kant are at the same time formidable. "Thus," [F.T.] Kant on Judaism. Kant, Immanuel: Metaphysics Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy.
His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him. This article focuses on his metaphysics and epistemology in one of his most important works, The Critique of Pure Reason. A large part of Kant’s work addresses the question “What can we know?” The answer, if it can be stated simply, is that our knowledge is constrained to mathematics and the science of the natural, empirical world. It is impossible, Kant argues, to extend knowledge to the supersensible realm of speculative metaphysics.
Kant responded to his predecessors by arguing against the Empiricists that the mind is not a blank slate that is written upon by the empirical world, and by rejecting the Rationalists’ notion that pure, a priori knowledge of a mind-independent world was possible. Table of Contents 1. A. B. 2. 3. Kant's Moral Philosophy. 1. Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy The most basic aim of moral philosophy, and so also of the Groundwork, is, in Kant's view, to “seek out” the foundational principle of a metaphysics of morals. Kant pursues this project through the first two chapters of the Groundwork.
He proceeds by analyzing and elucidating commonsense ideas about morality. Although these are the two fundamental aims of moral philosophy, they are not, in Kant's view, the only aims. Throughout his moral works, Kant returns time and again to the question of the method moral philosophy should employ when pursuing these aims. In one sense, it might seem obvious why Kant insists on an a priori method. Perhaps something like this was behind Kant's thinking. The first is that, as Kant and others have conceived of it, ethics initially requires an analysis of our moral concepts. Contents 2. Kant's analysis of commonsense ideas begins with the thought that the only thing good without qualification is a ‘good will’. 3. 4.
Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals - Kantsum.pdf. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Critique-Pure-Reason6x9.p65 - Critique-Pure-Reason6x9.pdf. Glossary of Kant's Technical Terms.