[Lecture Three] Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 38 minutes
Course summary: Presented as two complementary twelve-lecture courses—Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume and Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present—The History of Philosophy covers the whole of western philosophy from its discovery in Ancient Greece to the twentieth century, including Objectivism. Dr. Peikoff argues that philosophy is the means by which we can understand any human culture and, more broadly, the history and changing course of a civilization. Read more »
In this lecture: Continuing the discussion of Kant’s philosophic system, Dr. Peikoff explains how Kant used his Transcendental Deduction to prove the existence of the categories built into the human mind as well as the Metaphysical Deduction of the same. Peikoff also explicates the revolution in thought that Kant put forward to justify his duty-based ethical system. He concludes by showing how Kant claimed to connect the categorical imperative to God, Freedom, and Immortality.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| Explain the difference between what Kant calls the sensibility and the understanding. |
| Why is it important to Kant to note the flow of experience (the manifold) on the sensory level? |
| Given our experience of synthesis of sense experience, what does Kant deduce must be necessary? |
| How does Kant explain the necessity of concepts to govern the mind’s activity? |
| Explain what Kant means by a “category.” |
| What is the Transcendental Unity of Apperception? |
| How does Kant think that concepts are used? |
| What does Kant believe is inescapable about human concepts? |
| How does Kant claim to demonstrate that reality is unknowable as it really is? |
| What were the two major approaches to ethics prior to Kant, and why does he reject them? |
| Why does Kant eliminate the goal-directedness of conventional ethics? |
| How does Kant establish a non-experiential basis for moral obligation? |
| What is the Categorical Imperative? How does it connect us to the noumenal world? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 2:08:44 | [Clipped] the mind supports the notion of an a priori content? |
| 2:09:53 | What is the name of the third set of categories? |
| 2:10:53 | Why isn’t it universalizable to commit suicide? The consequences are unfortunate, but Kant isn’t supposed to be considering consequences, is he? |
| 2:14:00 | Why is the proof the categories exist necessary when Kant has to go about proving the existence of the specific categories? |
| 2:16:42 | When one hears three knocks with a sneeze in between, how does he retain memory of the sneeze if the synthesis discards irrelevancies? |
| 2:17:26 | Could you please clarify this point: I thought you said last week that Kant said that space and time are themselves categories which determine and structure experience. Now we find that they too have preconditions. What then is the status of time and space? |
| 2:19:12 | What is the basis of Kant’s assertion that we perceive fragments rather than wholes? Also, if we perceive a face as a nose, eyes, ears, etc., is each one of those also perceived as fragments and each fragment as fragments, etc.? |
| 2:21:38 | If all the categories make us think a certain way and no other way, does Kant make an exception with the categorical imperative giving man a choice? |
| 2:23:19 | If one is an end in himself, not a means, then why should he help others? If he did help others, he would in fact make himself a means to an end. Therefore, why didn’t Kant consider selfishness a virtue? |
| 2:26:04 | I didn’t follow your explanation of how Kant gets from morality to the existence of an after-life and God. Is it simply because morality does not lead to happiness on Earth? The best combination would be virtue and happiness and therefore they must exist somewhere? And then where does God come from? |
| 2:27:29 | Last week, in answer to a question, you said that since the noumenal world is unknowable one couldn’t say if similar things in the phenomenal world correspond to similar things in themselves in the noumenal world. When Kant speaks of a noumenal soul corresponding to a phenomenal soul, isn’t he doing just this? |
| 2:29:16 | If our minds synthesize all fragments before we experience something, how can we experience fragments before the synthesizing activities of the mind? |
| 2:29:53 | You said that Kant claims that, in order to perceive a whole, one must have a concept of that whole, for instance “face,” to guide one’s synthesis of what one actually observes. How, according to Kant, are such concepts acquired? If they are a priori, how can they deal with data that must be acquired by experience, for example, the parts of a face? |
| 2:32:58 | Once Kant has derived the various categories and proved they are necessary, why does he have to prove that they will remain reliable? Why does he need the Transcendental Unity of Apperception? |
| 2:34:06 | A word about what the Transcendental Unity of Apperception is. |