1.
Introduction
In a park
a man was sitting on the bench for a while doing nothing. An inspector was
watching this, suspected, came to him and asked “Who are you and what are you
doing here sitting idle?”, that man replied, I was thinking about “Who am I”,
“Why I am here in this world”, and he is none other than Immanuel Kant.
Immanuel Kant, F. Hegel and David Hume were considered to be the greatest
thinkers of all time, the reason and revelation which they expressed made
various thinkers not only in 19th century but also 20th
and continuing even in 21st century. This paper tries to sketch out
their ideas and their impression over the times.
1.1.Philosophy
The
etymological meaning of the word ‘Philosophy’[1](literally
“love of wisdom”) is ‘love of learning’.
It signifies a natural and necessary urge in human beings to know
themselves and the world in which they live and move and have their being. Philosophy can be traditionally divided into
three major branches: Natural Philosophy
(Physics), Moral Philosophy (ethics) and Metaphysical Philosophy (logic)[2].
1.2.Beginnings
of Philosophy
The Greek
historian Herodotus (484-424 B.C.E) appears to be the first to use the verb “to
philosophize”. As for the word
“philosopher” (etymologically, a lover of wisdom), a certain unreliable tradition traces it back to
Pythagoras (about 582-500 B.C.E). Both
the words “philosopher” and “philosophy” are freely used in the writings of the
disciples of Socrates.[3]
It can be clearly understood that the thought of philosophy emerged in Greek
and from their school of thoughts.
2.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German Philosopher
from Konigsberg in East Prussia. He is
regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last
major philosopher of the Enlightenment.
Kant’s writing represents the climax of eighteenth-century rationalism
and empiricism. In other sense, it is the beginning of modern.[4] His skepticism cast a long shadow over the
nineteenth and twentieth century.
2.1.
Moral Philosophy
Kant argued that the source of the God lies not in
anything outside the human subject, either in nature or given by God, but
rather only the good will itself. A good
will is the one that acts from duty in accordance with the universal moral law
that the autonomous human being freely renders.
The genuine moral life consists of human’s repeated attempts to conform
his will to the wholly Good Will.[5]
2.2.
Aesthetic Philosophy
Kant’s contribution to Aesthetic theory is developed
in his critique of judgment. In the
first major division of the Critique of judgment, kant used the term “aesthetic.” Kant was one of the first philosophers to
develop and integrate aesthetic theory into a unified and comprehensive
philosophical system, utilizing ideas that played an integral role throughout
his philosophy.[6]
2.3.
Political Philosophy
The political philosophy developed by Kant can be
seen in his, perceptual peace: a philosophical sketch, kant listed
several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a
lasting peace. The philosophical
movement known as German Idealism developed from Kant’s theoretical and
practical writings. Kant distinguished
his view from contemporary views of realism and idealism.[7]
2.4.
Theory of Knowledge
The important terms used in the theory of knowledge
are a priori and posteriori. A priori
knowledge is knowledge that is absolutely of all experience. This contrasts with posteriori knowledge,
which is empirical knowledge, that is possible only through experience. Posteriori knowledge –knowledge of people,
places and things – depends upon experience. To some extent, these concepts
overlap. Analytic knowledge is also a
priori knowledge. It is a matter of
logical definition of terms and concepts.
Synthetic knowledge is posteriori.
It involves observation and experience through the senses.[8] Kant believed that knowledge was also both
synthetic and priori.
2.5.
Transcendental Idealism
Perhaps the central and most controversial thesis of
the Critique of Pure Reason is that human beings experience only appearances,
not things in themselves; and that space and time are only subjective forms of
human intuition that would not subsist in themselves if one were to abstract
from all subjective conditions of human intuition.[9]
Kant calls this thesis transcendental idealism.
2.6.
Copernican Revolution
Kant’s Copernican Revolution is considered to be one
of the major swift/trend. The way celestial phenomena appear to us on earth,
according to Copernicus, is affected by both the motions of celestial bodies
and the motion of the earth, which is not a stationary body around which
everything else revolves. For Kant, analogously, the phenomena of human
experience depend on both sensory data that we receive passively through
sensibility and the way our mind actively processes this data according to it's
own 'a priori' rules. These rules supply the general framework in which
the sensible world and it's phenomena are not entirely independent of the human
mind, which contributes to it's basic structure.[10]
Thus, Kant brought epistemology into perception, recognizing that not only our
sense perception but modes of thinking were subjective and thus not necessarily
representative of the world around us.
3. G.W.F. Hegel
(1770-1831)
Few thinkers in
the history of philosophy are more controversial than Hegel. Philosophers are either for or against
him. Rarely do they regard him with cool
detachment, weighing his merits and faults with strict impartiality. Hegel has been dismissed as a charlatan and
obscurantist, but he has also been praised as one of the views, Hegel has been
either completely neglected or closely studied for decades.[11]
Hegel demands
our attention for more than historical reasons.
If we consider any fundamental philosophical problem, we find that Hegel
has proposed an interesting solution for it.
He claimed that his system provides the only viable middle path between
every philosophical antithesis. He held
that it preserves the strengths, and cancels the weaknesses, of realism[12]
and idealism[13],
materialism[14]
and dualism[15],
relativism[16]
and absolutism[17],
skepticism[18]
and dogmatism[19],
nominalism[20]
and Platonism[21],
pluralism[22]
and monism[23],
radicalism[24]
and conservatism[25]. Indeed, the more we study Hegel the more we
find that his system seems to accommodate every objection.[26]
3.1. Hegel’s
Philosophy
Hegel’s philosophy marked an important break with the age of reason. He agreed with the enlightenment that
philosophy is related to the attainment of truth, but he redefined the focus of
the philosophical enterprise. He
reshaped philosophy into the image of natural science by finding truth and God
in the realm of nature. Nature was
viewed as a static reality, a finished product.
As such it was the object of human knowledge. And its delicately adjusted machinery implied
the existence of a Designer. In contrast
to the enlightenment theorists, Hegel placed philosophy above the
sciences. He viewed philosophy as a
means not only toward the discovery of but also towards the coming into being
of ultimate truth.[27]
3.2. Concept of
Spirit
The basic idea in all Hegel’s teaching is denoted by the German word
Geist. The word may be translated as
Mind or Spirit. Perhaps it is best to
let Hegel state his meaning in his own words.
3.3. Hegelian
Dialects
Of the various aspects of Hegel’s philosophy the most widely known is his
dialectic. This dimension is related to
his thesis of the dynamic nature of philosophy.
In his view, philosophy is concerned with the reality that presents
itself, or comes to know itself, through the ongoing process of life.[28]
To understand the movement of the historical reality in its progression
towards the Absolute, Hegel uses the key concept of dialectics. Dialectics, he mentioned, is the synthesis of
opposites. Contradiction is at the heart
of dialectics. Progress in nature and
mind occurs because of the opposition of one reality, one idea, with
another. But in all cases, sooner or
later, the conflict of opposites is overcome and surmounted by a superior term
– synthesis.[29]
The Hegelian dialectic is generally described in logical terms as the
triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
This helped to understand his proposal.
First a thesis arises. This immediately generates its antithesis. The two are then merged in their
synthesis. The synthesis constitutes a
new thesis, and the process continues.[30]
4. David Hume (1711-1776)
David Hume was a
Scottish philosopher who is best known for his highly influential system of
philosophical empiricism, skepticism and naturalism. Humen engaged with
contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James
Boswell and Adam Smith.
4.1. Bundle theory
Hume’s views on personal identity
concentrates the features or properties of an object are all that really exist,
and there is no actual object or substance of which they are the features. Thus, he argued, an apple which stripped of
all its properties like colour, size, shape, smell, taste, etc, is impossible
to conceive of and effectively ceases to exist.
Hume believed that the same argument applied to people and he held that
the self was nothing but a bundle or collection of interconnected perceptions
linked by the properties of constancy and coherence, a view sometimes known as
“bundle theory”. This theory is directly opposite to the idea of Rene
Descartes. “I think therefore I am”.[31]
4.2. Philosophy of
Language
Hume as an empiricist concerned
with going back to experience and observation, and this led him to touch on
some difficult ideas in what would later become known as the Philosophy of
language. For Hume if a word to mean
anything at all, it had to relate to a specific idea, and for an idea to have
real content it had to be derived from real experience. If no such underlying experience can be found, therefore the word effectively
has no meaning. In fact, he drew a
distinction between thinking and everyday talking. This reasoning also led him to develop what
has become known as “Hume’s Fork”. For
any new idea or concept under consideration, Hume opines, we should always ask
whether it concerns either a matter of fact (in which case one should then ask
whether it is based on observation and experience) or relation between ideas.
It is neither then the idea has no value and no real meaning and should be
discarded.[32]
4.3.
Hume on Knowledge
Hume was an empiricist, regarding
knowledge, empiricists usually give importance to experience through senses,
and underestimate the role of reason.
Hume mentions that there are only two kinds of knowledge: knowledge
regarding relations of ideas and knowledge regarding matter of facts. There is no third kind of knowledge, Hume
argues that knowledge regarding mater of facts can occur only through
perception and don’t follow from the rules of logic, such as law of
contradiction. Whereas, knowledge
regarding relations of ideas don’t depend on perception, but since denying them
leads to contradiction, They are accepted true as a priori. But since, this knowledge results from
logical analysis of the given ideas, no new knowledge apart from those given
ideas is possible and also his analysis cannot prove anything regarding truth
or falsity of the given ideas.[33]
5. Points to Ponder
5.1.
In many
respects kant’s work set the stage for subsequent discussions in both
philosophy and theology. However, he was
unable to overcome certain destructive tendencies of the age. He sought to establish religion as the
devotion to a transcendent Lawgiver whose will ought to be the goal of
humankind.[34]
5.2.
The
relationship between Christianity and philosophy that Hegel set forth provided
a way out of the dilemma in which the enlightenment had culminated, the dilemma
of traditional orthodoxy versus radical scepticism. Hegel elevated Christianity to the status of
being the revealed religion, because it sets forth in representational form the
ultimate philosophical truth concerning the unity of God and humanity.[35]
The
Kantian understanding of metaphysics closes the door to transcendence. For Kant, while the reality of God cannot be
demonstrated (by theoretical reason), it has to be believed (by practical
reason). Kant replaced reason by
faith. He holds that theoretical reason
is incapable of approaching the transcendent, practical reason posits the
existence of God as a postulate of moral life.[36]
5.3. Hegel and Kant : The young Hegel was a devout Kantian. Then he became
a follower of Fichte. Then he became a follower of Schelling. Then he launched
out on his own, and by this time, he had a very clear idea of the difference
between his own theory and the theory of Kant. In a nut shell; Firstly, Kant was the first to discover a formal logic
in triads, namely, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, also called the Dialectical
Method. Secondly, Hegel (like Fichte and Schelling) was duly impressed at this
breakthrough in the science of logic — shifting the paradigm set by Aristotle
over 2,200 years before. Thirdly, Hegel was unhappy with Kant’s restriction on
the Dialectical Method. Finally, According to Hegel, Kant failed to recognize
the great power of the tool that he had discovered. Kant failed to recognize
that the entire Encyclopedia of Human Knowledge should be reconstructed along
these Dialectical lines.[37]
This was the exact point where Hegel and Kant disagrees each other.
5.4. Kant and Hume : Kant partly agreed with Hume, and partly disagreed
with Hume. Kant was smitten with Hume, and realized that he must create an
answer to Hume. Kant ultimately agreed
that the Human Mind is too “frail” to make contact with Reality, with the
Thing-in-itself, with the Truth, with True Nature. That includes Cause and
Effect in Reality — we are too weak to observe that.
However,
Kant disagreed with Hume about the nature of this failure. For Hume, it was the
five senses that failed to get at the Truth of Nature. For Kant, it was the
five senses PLUS the Transcendental Aesthetic, the Table of Categories and the
Table of Judgments. Some think this was a big difference called Epistemology
(how we know what we know).[38]
For Hume,
we take in data from our five senses, but it is never sufficient for us to
attain to Knowledge with a Certainty. We can only attain Beliefs, because our
intake from sense data is always limited, finite, partial, and even minuscule.
For Kant,
the finitude of sense data is not the reason we can never attain Knowledge with
a Certainty — the real reason is that our biological structure is such that we
cannot even see Real Space or Real Time. We can only see Human Space and Human
Time. We cannot see Real Nature, we can only see Nature through our Human
bodies — which is like a prism — and to think at all we must always impose our
judgments of Cause/Effect, Species/Family, Active/Passive, Quality, Quantity,
Positive, Negative, Possible, Impossible and so many more.[39]
So, Kant went only half-way in opposing Hume.
6. Conclusion
20th
century in general histories focused on the wars, political shifts, major
technological or scientific breakthroughs. Particularly in the field of
theology, theologians like Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoffer,
Gustavo Gutierrez, Rudolf Bultmann, Hans Kung, Reinhold Neibur, C. S. Lewis,
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Rahner, Jurgen Moltmann, Albert Schweitzer and the
list goes on. All these above theologians and their writings somewhere had the
color or influence of Hume/kant/Hegel irrespective of Scottish/German
Philosophy. That much of intensity was made by them even after a century. Not only in 20th century but even
in 21st century, we are following with the question raised by kant
in the park, Who am I? and Why I am here?
7. Bibliography
Beiser,
Fredrich C, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Brown, Colin. Philosophy and the Christian Faith.
Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1968.
Fullerton,
George Stuart. An Introduction to Philosophy.
A public domain book.
Gcyer,
Paul, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.
Grenz, Stanley
J. and Roger E. Olson. 20th
Century theology: God and the world in a
Transitional Age. Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004.
Regulas,
Bouvert. Christian Philosophy. Delhi:
ISPCK, 2013.
Schwarz, Hans. Theology in a Global Context The Last Two
Hundred Years. Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans publishing company, 2005.
Sharma,
Chandradhar. A critical survey of Indian
Philosophy. Delhi: Motilal banarsidass, 1987.
8.
Webliography
[1] A belief or system of beliefs
accepted as authoritative by particular group or school.
[2] Chandradhar Sharma, A
critical survey of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Motilal banarsidass, 1987),
1-2.
[3] George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy (A public
domain book), 5-6.
[4] Bouvert Regulas, Christian Philosophy (Delhi: ISPCK, 2013), 150.
[5] Colin, Brown. Philosophy and the
Christian Faith (Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1968), 102.
[6] Paul Gcyer, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to
Kant (UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 22.
[7] Bouvert Regulas, Christian
Philosophy (Delhi: ISPCK, 2013), 153.
[8] Colin Brown. Philosophy and the Christian Faith
(Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1968), 95.
[11] Hans Schwarz. Theology in a Global Context The Last Two
Hundred Years (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans publishing company, 2005),
16-20.
[12] The attribute of accepting the
facts of life and favoring practicality and literal truth, which maybe equal to
pragmatism.
[13] Impracticality by virtue of
thinking of things in their ideal form rather than as they really are; the
philosophical theory that ideas are the only reality.
[14] A desire for wealth and material
possessions with little interest in ethical or spiritual matters; the
philosophical theory that matte is the only reality.
[15] The doctrine that reality
consists of two basic opposing elements, often taken to be mind and matter (or
mind and body) or good and evil.
[16] The philosophical doctrine that
all criteria of judgment are relative to the individuals and situations
involved.
[17] Dominance through threat of
punishment and violence.
[18] The disbelief in any claims of
ultimate knowledge, which can also be called as agnosticism.
[19] The intolerance and prejudice of
a bigot.
[20] The doctrine that the various
objects labeled by the same term have nothing in common but their name.
[21] The philosophical doctrine that
abstract concepts exist independent of their names.
[22] The doctrine that reality
consists of several basic substances or elements
[23] The doctrine that reality
consists of a single basic substance or element.
[24] The political orientation of
those who favor revolutionary change in
government and society.
[25] A political or theological
orientation advocating the preservation of the best in society and opposing
radical changes.
[26]
Fredrich C. Beiser, Ed., The
Cambridge Companion to Hegel (UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14.
[27] Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E.
Olson, 20th Century
theology: God and the world in a
Transitional Age (Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 33.
[28] Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E.
Olson, 20th Century
theology: God and the world in a
Transitional Age (Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 34.
[29] Bouvert Regulas, Christian Philosophy (Delhi: ISPCK, 2013), 155.
[30] Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E.
Olson, 20th Century
theology: God and the world in a
Transitional Age (Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 35.
[34] Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E.
Olson, 20th Century
theology: God and the world in a
Transitional Age (Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 31.
[35] Stanley J. Grenz and Roger E.
Olson, 20th Century
theology: God and the world in a Transitional
Age (Hyderabad: Authentic, 2004), 38.
[36] Bouvert Regulas, Christian Philosophy (Delhi: ISPCK,
2013), 153.
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