Please explain Kantian system +y good/bad

[3mpathy]

Plz explain "Kantian system"+y good/bad

Right now I am doing a paper that requires me to research Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz( if there was ever someone who seriously needed a nickname...it was him!). It says that he liked to read Kant, but later went against the "Kantian system" when he was older. Could someone please explain to me what Kant talked about and what his system was about without confusing me... lol. a user friendly website with your explanation would be nice if possible. Thanks for your help in advance. --3mpathy

 

[Tournesol]

"First published in 1781 [ the critique of pure reason ] undertakes a critical examiniation of the capacity of the human intellect to answer what Kant describes as the most important of questions, those which concern the existence of God, the freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul. It is Kant's contention that the human mind can attain to knowledge only when the intellect is brought to bear on the data of the senses; withiout such 'intuitions' concepts, even 'pure concepts of the understanding', remain empty. This argument, if correct, shows that traditional metpahsycial claims to knwoledge of the reality which lies behind or beyond sense-experience are unfounded. But, at the same time it vindicates the reality of scientific knowledge against philosophical scpetics, and leaves the way clear for a different kind of conviction about God, freedom and immortality, the conviction Kant associates with 'pure rational faith'."

 

[hypnagogue]

Tournesol, if you have not written that block of text yourself but have quoted it, then please cite the source.

 

[Tournesol]

The back cover of the Everyman edition of the CPR. Author unknown, possibly A.D. Lindsay.

 

[3mpathy]

thank you very much,tournesol. Now i am curious if this system is still used, since it was made in the 1700's. can anyone tell me that?

 

[selfAdjoint]

thank you very much,tournesol. Now i am curious if this system is still used, since it was made in the 1700's. can anyone tell me that?

Well, first of all, the Crtirique was a cultural icon in Europe, especially in the German-speaking area. Anyone with any intellectual pretensions would have had to be able to quote it and recongnize its ideas when they encountered them. For example Einstein read it as a teenager, just as so many of his contemporaries did. I don't know how much this is still true, but these cultural biases do leave their trraces behind for generations.

Then the basic ideas, that we can know nothing "in itself", that our understandings are seriously modified by our internal structures, and that a universal morality is possible, are attractive to a lot of people. The earlier philosophy seem naive comared to Kant, and the later philosophy, starting with Hegel seems difficult, unbelievable, arid, unpleasant or dangerous, in various combinations.

 

[3mpathy]

Plz help me get this straight:
The "Crtirique" was the article(s) that taught the Kantian system?
(Some of the)/the Main Points Are:
that we can know nothing "in itself"
that our understandings are seriously modified by our internal structures
a universal morality is possible
The Kantian System was attractive to many people because of its optimism


your wording is a little bit hard for me to understand, lol really tired. did i get anything right? What is a universal morality? I picked up a book called "The Moral Maze" a while ago and while it was kinda interesting it never really answered any question that i had so i stopped reading it, so i don't understand.
Also what did Hegel say? "universal morality" is impossible? What are some other people that I should know about(please consider that I am a begineer in this subject and have no proir experience in this( or spelling for that matter :P))

thank you Very much for your answers+time+patience
--3mpathy