Kant's Metaphysics

Immanuel Kant was a Prussian philosopher who was mostly known for his metaphysics. He referred to metaphysics as the studying of being or what exists. Conversely, epistemology was defined by Kant as the study of knowledge; knowledge dealt with limits or what can be known or unknown. Metaphysics makes claims but we need epistemology to solidify these claims. In terms of epistemology, Kant separates us into to categories: empiricists and rationalists. An empiricist obtains all information through sense experiences while a rationalist believes that most information is derived from reason instead of sense experience. A rationalist believes that we are born with ideas already present within us. They do not think that the senses lie, but do find
When discussing human reason, Kant uses the terms “tower” and “teleology”. He believes that reason likes to build towers then knock them down and look at the foundations all over again. Also, reason has a teleology; meaning that it has an aim or goal in sight. Reason wants to make sure that everything is right. Kant draws two distinctions between the types of judgments that we make, one type is called a priori and the other, a posteriori. An a priori judgment is based strictly off of reason and disregards all sensory experience. An a posteriori judgment is based on experiences; this limits the ability of an a posteriori judgment to be specifically applied to cases we encounter in
Judgments are assertions or statements that are made which can either be deducted from reason or experience. Prior to Kant’s critique it was a common understanding that a prior and analytic were a pair along with synthetic and a priori. Kant is pushing for a type of knowledge that is a priori, but synthetic instead of analytic. While doing so, he also rules out the possibility of an analytic a posteriori. According to Kant, a priori knowledge is based off of reason while the existence of a posteriori knowledge relies on experience. Only a priori knowledge can be applied universally because it cannot be interpreted in multiple ways as a posteriori knowledge can due to it’s dependence on experience. Different people may experience the same situations in separate ways which allows for us to believe that a posteriori judgments are relative to certain individuals. Kant is arguing that pure reason allows for universality because reason has properties that can never be determined through our knowledge and therefore leaves no room for individual judgment. Kant exemplifies this by claiming all mathematical problems to be a