German classical philosophy

Francois Marie Voltaire (1694-1778).

French Enlightenment materialists and atheists 18th century

Agnosticism

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

“ Emile: or, On Education ”

“The New Eloise”

“Social Contract”

Rousseau was the first in political philosophy who tried to explain the reasons for social inequality and its types.

“Treatise on Tolerance”, “Candide: or, The Optimist”

In theory of knowledge he was a supporter of sensationalism. He criticized Leibniz’s Monadology, based on the latest discoveries in physics, in particular – the Newton’s teachings.

Man is a social creature and all attempts to consider him in a Christian term have useless importance. History is the process of gradually increasing role of mind.

Charles Montesquieu (1689 - 1755)

Geographical determinism

In “ Persian letters ” he criticized absolute monarchy, religion, sets out elements of materialistic views.

State systems he reduced to three forms: republican, monarchic and despotic.

Freedom is the right to do everything that is permitted by law

German classical philosophy became one of the peaks of world philosophy.

It reflected the peculiarities and contradictions of Germany as the backward (отсталый) country in socio-economic sense, divided into small principalities (княжества), into the Catholic and Protestant churches

But in Germany dialectic begins to develop, almost forgotten since the Greeks. This feature of German classical philosophy was a reflection of a compromise of German society.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Kant created a new perspective in philosophy that had widespread influences on philosophy continuing through to 21th century.

In Kant’s philosophy there are two stages:

1) before critical

2) critical.

At the first stage Kant is a materialist.

In the second stage he moves to the position of agnosticism, and in many respects, idealism, maintaining in his philosophy part from materialistic doctrines.

In before critical period Kant’s philosophy was a combination of natural-scientific materialism and the philosophy of Leibniz. In 1855 Kant wrote a work “General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies”

Critical period of Kant’s philosophy begins in 1770. In 1781 he published “Critique of Pure Reason” in which Kant explored the possibilities of the human mind in cognition.

Kant raises questions whether certain knowledge that is necessary and universal knowledge? How can pure mathematics be? How can pure science be? How can metaphysics be as a science?

And he answers: reliable knowledge is possible in mathematics and natural sciences.

Scientific knowledge, according to Kant, is based on two sources:

v a posteriori, that is, empirical data

v a priori forms of sensibility and reason.

A priori forms of sensibility are space and time. They exist within us before any experience.

Relationship, causality (причинность) and regularity (закономерность) are not objective qualities.

Kant was the first in the history of philosophy divided cognitive activity on senses (чувства), intellect and reason. Intellect is an ability to construct logic conclusions.

Considering the world as a set of causes and consequences, Kant reveals (обнаруживает) four contradictions, which he calls the antinomies.

1) The world is limited in space and time at the same time the world is infinite in space and time.

2) The world consists of infinitely divisible particles of matter and the world is made up of indivisible particles of matter.

3) There is freedom in the world and there is no freedom

4) There is a original cause of the world (God) and there is no original cause.

Due to the fact that these antinomies can be proved by logical means, Kant shows that human mind has come into conflict with itself. Here, there are limits of human reason to cognize the ideas.

The idea of the soul and the idea of God can not obtain (получить) experimental verification.

Kant wrote that he limited sphere of reason, to make place for faith.

Something that goes beyond the limits of such knowledge, Kant calls transcendentalknowledge.

An important part of Kant was the division between “thing in itself” (noumenon) and “thing for us” (phenomenon).

Agnosticism

The basic idea of Critique of Pure Reason is to understand how to construct a priori synthetic judgments (how to combine space and time in human mind).

Mind is a true source of morality. Morality is derived (выводится) from the concept of duty.

Work: “Critique of Practical Reason”

Categorical imperative:

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”.

“ Critique of the Power of Judgment”, is the third work of Kant. It is a project of foundations for aesthetics as sensibility.